I’m Angry

Let me tell you who makes me angry. It is not so much the Republicans. I have already reconciled myself to the fact that they are scumbags who will take no responsibility for governing this country and will use any tactic to try to get a competitive advantage regardless of how much harm that does to this country. What really has me steaming is the wimpy response to those tactics. Yes, I know politics is the art of making friends even with people who disagree with you. I know it is the art of cutting deals and reaching compromises. That is all fine and dandy if the other side is doing the same thing, but the other side has absolutely no interest in doing that. The Democrats are still acting as though the Marques of Queensbury rules apply when the Republicans are trying to kick the Democrats in the groin. It is high time for the Democrats to punish those tactics.

The first step is to make the blue dogs act like Democrats on the most important issues. The House should bring the extension of tax cuts for the middle class to the floor for a vote. I doubt that many blue dogs would like to have to explain why they did not prevent an increase in the taxes paid by their constituents. Any politician worth his salt could easily answer accusations that he was actually voting to raise taxes by simply saying: No, I’m voting to keep your taxes low unless you’re a small business like the Koch brothers who are worth twenty-five billion dollars or you’re part of the Wall Street crowd who got us into this mess or you’re one of the companies exporting our jobs. Forget the excuse of being afraid of thirty secant ads sponsored by the special interests. The bottom line is that the blue dogs represent those interests and are afraid not too. But again, any politician worth his salt would say to those interests: “I didn’t have a choice. They forced vote me to vote and if I voted no I’d no longer be in Congress to represent you.”

The next step is to make the price to high for BP if the Republicans keep the committee investigating the oil spill from getting subpoena power. President Obama should call Harry Reid and say: “Now you can tell Mitch or I can tell Mitch, but here’s what’s going to happen. If that committee does not get subpoena power within four days the Justice Department is going to file lawsuits against BP, Halliburton, et al, because they’re going to testify under oath one way or another. And let me tell you that once those suits are filed they aren’t going away!”

The third and perhaps most important step is defeat the tactics of not even letting bills come up for debate. Harry Reid has to pull Senator McConnell aside and say: “Remember how you threatened to go nuclear and declare the filibuster unconstitutional when we were using it to oppose the appointment of extreme judges. Well, its payback time. If you keep those bills for coming up for debate we're going to get rid of the rules that allow you to do that. If you are going to filibuster those bills, you’re to have to do it the way it’s always been done. You’re going to have to stand up on the senate floor and show the world what asses you are!” Let’s face it folks, the senate rules are in drastic need of reform anyhow.

In spite of my anger I am still going to vote a Democratic ticket. Wimps or not, they are the only ones who will get us out of this mess.

Toxic Tea

Not even the person who knows Christine O’Donnell best will touch her intimately. This is not because she is physically unattractive; it is because she passes noxious gas disguised as thought. All right, I am being snippy. Doing so is a bit immature, but I cannot help myself. She is the sort of religious right-winger who believes the earth is an evil place, and she is doing her best to make everyone else in the world miserable enough to believe her. How did she get the Republican Party to nominate her as a senatorial candidate? Was it witchcraft? She did dabble in witchcraft. She admitted that in an interview with Bill Maher. The right wing bloggers are now in full attack mode. They are accusing Bill Maher of being a black mailer, an extortionist, and even worse as far as they are concerned, a liberal! I do not have the stomach to read those idiots, but I am sure they pointed out that the interview from which the excerpts were taken occurred nine years ago and that she has repented for her walk to the dark side. Maybe, but Mr. Maher did the right thing by posting those excerpts because her “dabble” in witchcraft reveals something very disturbing about her personality. The extreme opinions she holds today also indicate that she still embraces the dark side. The only difference between what she was doing when she dabbled in witchcraft and what she is doing now is that she now uses Christianity justify her destructive view of the world.

If Ms. O’Donnell was the only Republican nominee espousing extreme and paranoid views we could dismiss her as an aberration. Unfortunately there are at least eight Republican nominees who are members of the crowd dumping toxic tea into the political waters. Furthermore, the nomination of those candidates is just the latest and scariest manifestation of the Republican Party’s hard shift to the right. Most Republican politicians are opposed to any government regulation of the companies exporting our jobs. Leaders of the Republican Party also say they would repeal the regulations designed to prevent another economic melt down and regulations designed to protect consumers from the predatory behavior of giant corporations. The Republicans are also threatening to hold tax cuts for the middle class hostage in an effort to extort an extension of the deficit creating tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the nation. Make no mistake about it, the Republican Party’s cynical efforts to obstruct all reasonable attempts to deal with this recession attracts and encourages the extremists. If the tea party candidates are elected in November they will join the other Republicans who want to forbid abortions even in the case of rape and incest. They will also join the Republicans who are already attacking all social programs including social security, medicare, and unemployment insurance. The religious right does not want the government to regulate anything except what you do in your bedroom. They are not following the examples of our founding fathers; instead they are following the examples of Joe McCarthy and the John Birch society.

The Republican Party wanted to tap into the energy of the extreme right wing. They succeeded but at a horrible price. Rational Republicans who once acted responsibly are now afraid to oppose the lunatics who are determined to take this country into a very dark and dangerous place. Positions that were once considered too extreme are now being accepted. As the moderate Republicans who were defeated in the primaries will tell you, any and all compromise is anathema to the extreme right wing. In the religious right wing’s warped view of the world there is only good and evil. They believe the world is evil, and they are opposed to anyone who tries to make it better. The Republicans think this sour view of the world fits their partisan agenda of making our current government fail. They will soon discover that this negative energy is not a tool easily discarded. The religious right has been empowered. They are the Republican attack dogs, and they are determined to assert their authority over rest of the pack.

If you think things are bad now just wait until the Republicans shut our government down. Believe me, they will do it. The only thing that can prevent it is your vote. We are at the crossroads. Rational people must make rational decisions and they must act on those decisions. We can take the path to recovery or we can turn the other direction and slide into the abyss of self-destruction. The choice is yours. If you do not turn out at the polls to reject the nihilistic tactics of the Republican Party you will have no one but yourself to blame for the consequences of letting the religious right set the agenda.

Your Fate Is In Your Vote

You may have noticed that I stopped giving political IQ scores after the June primaries. The problem is that too few people voted in the primaries. The Republicans had a higher turn out than the Democrats, but even the percentage of Republicans who voted was low. This in itself indicates a very low political IQ. It means that a majority of the people left the decisions to others rather than taking some responsibility for selecting our leaders. This gave the people at the far end of the political spectrum a greater voice because it was the extremists who were passionate enough to get to the polls. This resulted in the Tea Party candidates scoring upset victories over their more moderate Republican opponents. The elections in November are no longer a political IQ test; instead they are a mental health test. Mad is a word that is defined as anger or insane rage. I keep hearing that the voters are mad at all politicians over the sorry state of our economy. The question that will be answered in November is whether the people of this country are insanely angry or whether their anger and frustration will make them pay enough attention to determine who is to blame and what needs to be done to get us back on track.

Shortly after the election of President Obama the Republicans cynically threw out the honored tradition of compromise in an effort to make his administration fail. To this day they continue to oppose things they once favored; things such as making loans available to small businesses, tax breaks for people making less than a quarter of million dollars per year, and an extension of unemployment benefits. They are doing this at the expense of the middle class, which is still suffering from the steady erosion of real wages and decreased employment opportunities brought about by the policies of George W. Bush. The fact the Democratic Party has still managed to make some meaningful changes can only be attributed to the fact that the voters gave them a large enough majority do it. The fact that the Democrats have not accomplished more is because even this majority is not sufficient to totally overcome the procedural obstructions the Republicans in the Senate are using to create gridlock.

Thanks to the rise of the Tea Party, the contrast between the Democrats and the Republicans has become even sharper. In an earlier post I said there is a real danger that the Republicans will shut down the government as they did when Newt Gingrich was speaker of the house and that they will use the Congressional Subpoena to trump up charges they can use to impeach the President as they did when Bill Clinton was President. The chances that the Republicans will do both of those things if they gain control of the Senate or the House of Representatives have greatly increased with the nomination of so many extremist candidates. If you think the government has failed to respond to the recession thus far just consider what will happen if the government is shut down and becomes completely dysfunctional. One look at Rand Paul, Susan Angle, and the other extreme Republican candidates will tell you I am not sounding a false alarm!

The premise behind this democracy or any democracy is that an informed electorate will make wise choices. This means that you must listen and you must vote! If you are foolish enough to let the lunatics elect extreme anti-government candidates who will run this country over a cliff do not blame the politicians; the responsibility is yours. You are either sane enough to accept the responsibility for selecting our leaders or you are not. You are either bright enough to realize that our government must take resolute action to deal with this economic crises or you are not. It is your decision to make. It is up to you to prevent the nightmare scenario I have presented!