Occupy Liam Flynn’s: Our Bi-Weekly Political Roundup

Tomorrow is the second Wednesday of the month, and as usual some of Baltimore’s finest progressives of all stripes will gather for pints and politics in Station North. The Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally meets twice a month at Joe Squared, Liam Flynn’s Ale House, which will be our new home for the Winter months. Meetings are 7 pm til whenever, and open to all. Just look for the big red, white and blue bottle on the table.

Of course the big story in the news right now is the Occupy Wall Street movement, which has now spread to more than 100 cities including our own. What was at first all but a non-story has become an ongoing top national headline for the last week or so. While much of that is attributable to those in the movement who are especially tech savvy, we suspect a lot of it has to do with just plain good luck. There’s not a whole hell of a lot else happening at the moment. The news has been pretty slow this week overall, so all we’ve got to blog about is Occupy.

We’re certainly no expert in protest and demonstration tactics, but we do know that the main thing in any protest is just showing up- boots on the ground, bodies in the crowd. The Participants have done a decent job of that, but unfortunately that’s about all they’ve done so far. It’s kind of like that scene in The Jerk where Navin is asked if he’d like to be president of Shell Oil. You don’t get to run the whole system just by showing up.

Ever since the movement came to Baltimore, we’ve been in an odd position. We’re actually very sympathetic to this cause, yet all we’ve done all week is find ourselves making snarky wisecracks at the Participants’ expense. We were at the harbor during the first day of the protest, when it was mainly 20-something kids from middle class backgrounds playing campout. Those kids are easy enough to make fun of, but the truth is we felt a little guilty about not participating. (Not much.) Stopping by again Yesterday morning though, the entire face of the thing had changed. people who are used to sleeping in nice beds and eating 3 square meals a day all seemed to have found their way out of McKeldin Square, and the only people we could see about all looked like they’d recently fallen off a boxcar.

Littered signs outnumber people down there now. There’s composting going on. People have staked out their own little areas and are going about their daily ablutions in a way that makes us think that they are not the 99% but are in fact the other one percent. The one percent that is perfectly comfortable not showering for a week on end; that eats food directly from cans, that actually sees itself as America’s happy, noble poor and likes it that way.

The real 99% don’t find anything particularly noble about living in poverty, and are not happy being poor. And things are going to have to get a lot worse for them before they start showing up to occupy.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Weiner’s COCK Edition

Today is the second Wednesday of the month, and as usual Progressives of all stripes will be gathering on the patio of Joe Squared to swap stories, talk politics, and drink beers at the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Meetings start at 7 pm and are open to anyone who wishes to attend. Just look for the table with the red, white, and blue bottle and introduce yourself.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

Of course, the topic of Weiner’s wiener is bound to come up, but we’ve been tired of that pun for at least two weeks. We’re going to insist on calling it Weiner’s COCK if we have to talk about it at all. Come on… that’s how people talk anyway. When’s the last time anybody sent a wiener pic? No one ever has. People send cock pics. Weiner sent a picture of his cock.

As far as where that leaves us now… well, we still think Andrew Breitbart is a sleazy, sensationalist, predatory asshole. He just happened to be right, the same way a broken clock will be twice a day. It’s safe to say that we won’t be seeing much more of Weiner on programs like Maddow and sites like Twitter. He’ll be going about his job much more quietly from now on. As to whether or not he gets to keep his seat, that’s up to the voters to decide, but we’re thinking he does. As we pointed out two weeks ago, sex scandals happen all the time now, and you’ve got to be pretty sleazy these days to seriously raise eyebrows. We don’t think that being a horny 16 year old who just got his first Myspace page will ultimately prove that destructive to the distinguished gentleman from New York.

In non-Weiner’s cock related news, this is also a good day to talk about who will be the next mayor of Baltimore. SRB, Otis Rolley, Jody Landers, and Catherine Pugh are all officially in, and with 98 days left until the election, it’s not out of the question that Kweisi Mfume, Carl Stokes, Andre Bundley or some other dark horse candidate could throw his or her hat in the ring. Like 99% of the city, we haven’t even pretended to pay much attention at this point, but any one of those names is a huge step up from one of the most hated people in Baltimore, Sheila Dixon.

Being mayor of Baltimore is a really hard fucking job and honestly, we’re surprised that even that many people would want to do it. With more than one candidate that we’d actually consider voting for already in the race, we feel like we’ve already won.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: More Sex Scandals Edition

Well, the forecast for this week has not been good. It may not be Joplin-esque, and we may be a whiny pussy of a blogger for complaining about it, but we’re getting sick of rain. To hell with rain. Seriously. We want to do outdoorsy things, like go to festivals and swing golf clubs and most especially, enjoy the outdoor seating at Joe Squared tonight during the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Hell, we might even like to walk there, you know? At any rate, we want to stay dry long enough to gossip about political sexytime. As you know, these things come in threes, and so there must be one more shoe soon to drop.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

The news recently has been dominated by the sex scandals of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The GOP primary field is as boring as can be, and the Rapture was never a real story anyway, so sex and storms and sexstorms are all we’ve been getting lately. It’s all sort of boring, really. Most natural disasters all look similarly horrible on the news, and we’ve had so many sex scandals in recent years that you’ve got to try pretty damn hard to top Eliot ‘Raw Dog’ Spitzer, Mark ‘Appalachian Trail’ Sanford or Ted ‘I-only-tried-meth-once-and-just-asked-him-to-jerk-me-off’ Haggard.

As far as Schwarzenegger goes, we LOL all day long. Arnie oversaw the bankrupting of California, and now Maria Shriver is going to oversee the bankrupting of Arnold. Fair Enough. Most politicians leave office to ‘spend more time with their families,’ and we guess Arnie is no exception.

DSK, on the other hand, deserves not just jail, but a few good jailhouse soap-drops of his own.

Here is a man who claims to be a Socialist, but was more or less in charge of all the money in the world. We don’t know of many true Socialists who favor $3000 per night hotels, although the hotel itself is just the tip of the iceberg. You can believe that real Socialists aren’t staying in such luxury when they gather by the hundreds of thousands to protest the IMF and WorldBank meetings. They aren’t arriving at those meetings in limousines either. They’re marching together, as Brothers and Sisters should.

The thing about Socialism though, the thing that its detractors can’t quite wrap their fat heads around is that at the end of the day Socialism is about Equality. It’s not about tax rates or countries of origin or business regulations. It’s about respecting the rights of Workers, and respecting the Workers as human beings. Socialism is about protecting and elevating those among us in the lowest station, not dragging down anyone else.

Strauss-Kahn has made a habit of preying on precisely those in the lowest station. Time after time, and in this case especially, he has shown a plutocratic hubris and a sense of entitlement which would be disgusting in any man. As far as we’re concerned this is not a sex scandal of any sort, but is in fact a case of sexual assault and attempted rape. These are violent and serious crimes, and are unforgivable no matter who the assailant or the victim may be.

We expect that American justice will be served in this case, and we’re glad of it. This crime was not just a brutal and personal attack against an innocent woman, an American, and a Worker, it was an act of class warfare, and we regard it as such.

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Drinking Liberally meetings are held on the second and fourth Wednesdays of each month. They’re free to attend and open to anyone interested in progressive politics or causes. The opinions expressed above are those of the Baltimore Chop blog, and are not sanctioned by Living Liberally, Drinking Liberally, or its Baltimore Chapter.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Bin Laden’s Still Dead Edition

Is it just us, or have the last two weeks gone by really, really quickly? What’s today? April 27th? The 28th maybe?

Fuck! It’s May 11! How is that even possible??? We sort of regret that the last two weeks of life elapsed in what felt like 2 days, but the good news is that if it really must be the 11th of may, that means it’s once again time for the regular meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally. And thank God and everything that is holy, we’re finally returning to Joe Squared, home of a hundred rums, delicious pizza, and one of the best outdoor seating arrangements around. If you’re driving across North Avenue tonight, see if you can spot the big red, white and blue bottle on the table, and if you do, feel free to sit down and have a drink.

Baltimore's Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm.

One of the major reasons that time has flown so quickly recently is that the only thing on the news has been the death of Osama bin Laden. We’re cool with that. It’s been fully a week and a half now, and we’re still not even close to being tired of hearing about the bin Laden raid. It was awesome. There is not one single thing about that story that is not awesome. Whether it’s photos from inside the Situation Room, parachuting superhero special ops dogs, Pakistan left with its mouth hanging open dumbly, or the president on 60 Minutes being basically the biggest badass of all time.

This is the space where we usually discuss a couple of current political stories, but there’s nothing else to discuss this week, really. Osama’s still dead, it’s still awesome, and no amount of phony-ass quotes on Facebook is going to change that. If you posted one, you can go ahead and de-friend us any time. For the rest of you, here’s a real quote for your wall…

“Justice was done. And I think that anyone who would question that the perpetrator of mass murder on American soil didn’t deserve what he got needs to have their head examined.”

-Barack Obama, winner of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize.

Speaking of people who need to have their heads examined, one of the many, many stories that slipped through the media cracks these last 10 days was the first GOP Debate. It was the most clownish of clowny clowning, and only the snarkiest of blogs could even be bothered to make fun of it. Seriously GOP? Herman Cain? Ron Paul? Santorum? The debate was sponsored by and covered exclusively by Fox News. Every other news outlet in the world was too busy showing how awesome our president is. If the GOP had seen any of it, they’d understand that his re-election is an absolute lock.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of each month. Joe Squared is at 133 W. North Ave in Station North.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Government Shutdown Averted Edition

We’re heading down to Midtown Yacht Club tonight to drink beer and talk politics in the regular bi-weekly meeting of the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally.

Midtown has been a nice spot for us all winter, but we couldn’t be happier to hear that the group will soon be moving back to Joe Squared, with their awesome outdoor seating patio and rum selection, for our summer session. If you’re as excited about outdoor drinking as we are, feel free to drop by and say hello. The group’s table is open to all.

Drinking Liberally meets at Midtown Yacht Club tonight. 7 pm.

Since the last time we met, we came “this close” to having a government shutdown. Of course, a government shutdown isn’t like a rainstorm or a lunar eclipse… it’s not something that just happens. Someone is to blame, and in this case that someone is House Republicans.

This fight we just watched was not about the budget. No one really knows how to fix the budget, although the grown ups in the room do know that there is no magic bullet and you can’t cut your way to prosperity. No, this fight and the disaster it nearly caused was entirely about Planned Parenthood’s right to exist. It shocked us that not one single media personality was smart enough or brave enough to identify what was happening and say it in plain English. Some came close, but no one came right out and elucidated the Republicans’ strategy.

Right wingers and Evangelicals in this country hate Planned Parenthood. It’s not just that they hate abortions, and it doesn’t matter to them that not a nickel of federal money goes to fund abortions… they hate PP, and view the entire organization as an enemy to be destroyed by any means necessary.

The GOP doesn’t have any problem with cancer screenings or birth control or pap smears as some on the left have suggested. But if you cut out the funding that PP receives for those services, the organization will at best be reduced to a shell of what it is now, and may even be forced to fold as ACORN was when they lost federal funding.

If women’s health services and women’s actual lives have to be sacrificed to meet those ends, then so be it… the Right doesn’t give a fuck.

Of course, the past is prologue and now that this fight is over, the next one is going to be even worse. The debt ceiling fight will have people going through the roof.

And on top of that, we won’t have Glenn Beck to kick around anymore.

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Midtown yacht Club is at 15 E Center Street in Mount Vernon. Look for the table with the red, white, and blue bottle.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: SRB Edition

Well, Baltimore, it’s been a long two weeks in America. A lot has happened since the last meeting of Drinking Liberally’s Baltimore Chapter, and heaven knows it’s made us thirsty, so we’ll be taking ourselves down to Midtown Yacht Club for pints and politics tonight.

Drinking Liberally Baltimore meets tonight at Miidtown Yacht Club. 7 pm.

Heavy Seas on draft is just about the best thing there is for washing that “shellac” taste out of your mouth, but in our estimation, these elections really weren’t all that bad. We’re not at all pleased with the prospect of a Speaker Boehner and so many ineffectual GOP chairmen mucking things up in committees, but all this talk of “tidal waves” and the president “not getting it” are a lot of nonsense if you ask us. Half of those house seats the Democrats lost were in GOP districts that were kind of a coup to hold in the first place. The other half will be back in blue soon enough.

But that’s neither here nor there. We had a great time on election night drinking free beer and hobnobbing with elected officials. And we’re counting on a good time tonight as well, since one of those officials, Mayor Rawlings-Blake, is going to be hanging out and drinking beer at DL.

Yes. You read that right. Tonight’s special guest is the Mayor. She’s going to stop by for an informal visit to gladhand and talk politics. If you want to meet her, or catch her ear about the Vacants to Values Program, Wal-Mart, bulk trash pickup or anything else, this is your chance. Drinking Liberally meetings are, as always, free and open to the public.

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If drinking with the mayor isn’t worth a Mobbies vote, then we just don’t know what is. There are only a couple of days left in the contest, so click over there right now, and vote for the Chop in the Music/Nightlife, Misfits, and Personal categories.

Bi-Weekly Political Roundup: Democrats We Hate Edition

It’s about to get interesting folks. The midterm elections are a mere three weeks away, and with the gross injustice of the Citizens United decision in full effect, the RNC and Karl Rove along with his secret billionaire friends are about to start slinging mud faster and more furiously than any of us have ever seen mud slung. Believe it.

So what’s a good old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool Baltimore progressive to do? Show up and sling a little mud of your own. Or better yet, sling a few pitchers of Dogfish Head with the Baltimore Chapter of Drinking Liberally at Joe Squared tonight.

Baltimore Drinking Liberally meets at Joe Squared tonight. 7 pm - ???

To a regular reader of these roundups, it may appear that the Chop is little more than a hopeless cheerleader for the Democrats. This is not so. At the end of the day, we’re really only lukewarm on the Dems. It’s our true, white-hot, pure unvarnished hatred for the Republican party which keeps us riding the Donkey. After all, way back when we voted in our first presidential election, even then we weren’t stupid enough to waste a vote on Nader.

In any year, there are going to be some Dems we love, and some we don’t. This year though, there seems to be quite a few we don’t love. In fact, there are some races out there in which we’d go so far as to outright endorse the Republican. This may seem an extraordinary measure, but the candidates mentioned below are extraordinarily terrible.

Richard Blumenthal has been running around Connecticut using the phrase “when I served in Vietnam”. Problem is, he never did serve in Vietnam, but was in a cushy stateside reserve post instead. He has yet to admit that he’s a bald-faced liar, and his apologies for ‘misspeaking’ fall flat and ring hollow. As tired as we are of the politics of Vietnam, this is beyond the pale and unforgivable, and Blumenthal has no place in the US senate or in any other position of public trust.

Alvin Greene is retarded. He’s literally retarded. We’re only surprised that no one has yet exposed Greene as the practical joke that his candidacy is. It’s still a mystery where the hell he came from, and how in the world he managed to secure the Democratic nomination. Better choices than Greene for senator include; a golden retriever, a man in a banana suit, a magic 8-ball, and of course, a Republican. As much as we hate Jim DeMint, we’ll breathe a little sigh of relief when he’s reelected with 99.9% of the vote.

Blanche Lincoln made us very angry on healthcare. Blanche Lincoln is making us very angry on EFCA. Blanche Lincoln pretty much makes us angry every time we hear her name. We’re getting really sick and tired of the Democratic leadership trying to whip 60 votes by kissing these conservative blue dog asses. We’d rather lose that seat all together than try to plan legislative strategy based on what a few hicks in Arkansas are likely to approve of in an opinion poll. To hell with Blanche Lincoln.

There’s a few more with whom we’re really not impressed who don’t merit mention here. If the Democrats are going to be losing seats anyway, we say now is the perfect time for a little house cleaning. Take Minnesota as an example: sometimes you’ve got to lose a seat to a sniveling shit like Norm Coleman in order to ultimately fill it with a true-blue progressive like Senator Al Franken.

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Drinking Liberally meets the second and fourth Wednesday of every month at 7 pm. Joe Squared is located at 133 w. North Ave. All the above opinions are that of the Baltimore Chop Blog, and not of Drinking Liberally, it’s Baltimore Chapter, Chapter members or Joe Squared.