Hosed For Christmas

The Republicans and the Democrats who appeased the Republicans gave lavish Christmas presents to just about everyone who can afford to buy elected office holders. The lavish gifts the oligopoly received were neatly wrapped in the CRomnibus and were purchased at your expense; which means Congress hosed you for Christmas!  Some of you ( particularly poor children) always get hosed worse than the rest of us do.  A partial list of who is getting reamed the hardest includes Truck Drivers, College Students, Anyone Who Has Blue Shield or Blue Cross Health Insurance, And Children Who Eat In School Cafeterias or Depend On Food Aid.

To see a list of the Democrats who allowed the Greedy Old Plutocrats to hose you for Christmas   Click Here!

Losers

The poison pills the Republicans embedded in the, so called, CRomnibus budget will make the American people the biggest losers for all the reasons I gave in my previous post. The individual politicians who are going to lose the most because of this bill are Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton.

When the big banks crash our economy again and we have to bail them out again historians will point out that Mr. Obama lacked the courage to prevent the big banks from engaging in the risky behavior that caused the crash. I do not know what Mr. Obama thinks he got in the budget bill that could possibly be worth the damage it is doing to his reputation. This does not bode well for the future! I hate to think about what President Milquetoast will allow the Greedy Old Plutocrats to do to the American people over the next two years.

If I were Hillary Clinton I would be fighting mad at President Obama and the other Democrats who voted for CRomnibus, because the poison pills embedded in that bill, particularly the one gutting Dodd-Frank, greatly magnify the danger of her ties to Wall Street and the big financial institutions. Believe me, it is not just liberal Democrats who are leery of Hillary because of those ties! Now she will have to anger her largest contributors by saying she will restore the provision of Dodd-Frank that prohibited the FDIC from insuring derivatives or she will have to acquiesce to the FDIC insuring the risky behavior of the big banks and thereby anger everyone who is smart enough to understand the causes of George W. Bush's recession. The CRomnibus has really put her in a difficult position!

The only bright side to this abomination (I am so angry I almost wrote Obamanation) is the courage of Elizabeth Warren and the others who risked incurring the wrath of the leaders of their party by opposing CRomnibus.

Fight Back!

I am so angry I want to give all but 139 members of congress the finger and piss in their eyes. The Republicans buried in the budget bill passed by the house enough poison pills to place our economy in grave peril. One poison pill allows corporations to avoid still more taxes through overseas investments; another increases the power of money by raising the limits on how much a person or company can contribute to a political candidate's campaign. By far the most dangerous and egregious of the poison pills, however, is the one written by Citibank. This poison pill threatens our economy by forcing the FDIC to insure derivatives. What this means is that the same banks that crashed our economy under Bush can reap all the benefits of taking the same risks they took back then, and when those investments go sour, as they did under Bush, we will have to bail them out again! This is the Republican Party's recycling plan; we are forced to eat shit while the oligopoly feasts on anything and everything of any value. The only reason why I cannot call those poison pills class warfare is because no one is fighting back. President Obama and the other Democratic appeasers simply do not have the will or courage to defend a middle-class (mainly white) that is too stupid to recognize and oppose its enemy. This does not portend well for the future.  Is there anyone who can and will prevent the middle-class from going the way of the Dodo Bird?

Thus far, I have viewed Elizabeth Warren as a wonderful and valuable gadfly. But the weakness of the Democrats and the unconscionable efforts of the Republicans to satiate an oligopoly that is insatiably greedy have made me change my view of Ms Warren.  The middle ground has become quick sand.  I am now on the Warren for President band wagon.

WE DESPERATELY NEED AN ECONOMIC WARRIOR WHO WILL DO WHATEVER IT TAKES TO PROTECT US FROM THE INSATIABLE GREED OF THE OLIGOPOLY! GO ELIZABETH!

Well, Excuse You!

“BEFORE President George W. Bush left office, a group of conservatives lobbied the White House to grant pardons to the officials who had planned and authorized the United States torture program. My organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, found the proposal repugnant. Along with eight other human rights groups, we sent a letter to Mr. Bush arguing that granting pardons would undermine the rule of law and prevent Americans from learning what had been done in their names.

But with the impending release of the report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I have come to think that President Obama should issue pardons, after all — because it may be the only way to establish, once and for all, that torture is illegal.”

The forgoing quotation is from a brilliant Op Ed in the New York times by Anthony D. Romero in which Mr. Romero argues that President Obama should issue explicit pardons to George W. Bush and those who tortured rather than letting what amounts to tacit pardons stand . What Mr. Romero is advocating is a bit like saying “Well, excuse you!” to a quest who farted at the dinner table, only the offenses committed by Bush and the torturers rise to the level of crimes, and the pardons recognize the criminality of those acts (click here).

Cops And Race

Thus far I have avoided commenting on the shooting of Michael Brown and the subsequent events in Ferguson Missouri because so many people were saying so much about it that I did not see where I had anything to add. Obviously the shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer is going to raise questions about the racial attitudes of that officer, and the almost military response to protests are going to raise questions about the racial attitude of the entire police department. The recent rash of incidents in which police officers have killed unarmed black men is a rude awakening; it says we have not made as much progress as we thought we had in regard to racism.

I should like to point out, however, that the use of excessive force by police officers is not strictly a racial issue. I will grant you that black men are far more likely to be beaten or shot by police officers than are white men, but I can think of at least three fairly recent instances where police officers have used excessive force against white men. One of those instances happened close to home when sheriff's deputies sadistically beat and tased a man to death for running a stop sign and being frighteningly large. In fact, anyone who has studied it will tell you that law enforcement officers are macho guys who live in a dangerous physical world. They have to use force far too often, and they will get out of hand if you do not keep an eye on them. While I certainly do not want to unreasonably increase the risks they face every day, I do think that we often give them too much leeway in regard to not holding them accountable when they go too far! Policies, procedures, and behavior should be reviewed frequently, and in the case of departments where there are too many instances of questionable behavior on the part of its officers some outside agency should be called in investigate and make changes.

In Search Of Giants

While watching the “In Search Of Giants” show, I found something disturbing. The show accuses scientists of sweeping the evidence that giants existed under the rug because it “refutes the theory of evolution.” What part of random do these lunkheads not understand? Proving that giants, even ones with double rows of teeth, roamed the earth at the same time as our ancestors does not harm the theory of evolution any more than the evidence showing that humanoids and Neanderthals roamed the earth at the same time our ancestors did. What would be far more damaging to the theory of evolution would be proof of a nice neat linear progression leading directly to God's most magnificent creature, us.

I will submit to you that if someone was trying to hide evidence of the existence of giants, it was not done by anyone trying to protect a scientific theory; not unless that person was incredibly ignorant of the very theory he was trying to protect. One of the most difficult tasks for any historian is the task of ascribing a motive for any given action. I would be as irresponsible as the people on that show if I said that a person who believes in creationism is far more likely to have hidden the evidence.

It is much better stick to the what and where. Leave the conjecture to someone else,  Content yourself with finding the evidence to prove the existence of the giants! Doing that should be dramatic enough to draw  the viewers.

Idiot's Delight:

How are the Republicans celebrating their mid-term victory? Apparently they are celebrating by playing the political equivalent of idiots delight. The rules are quite simple: first you defund President Obama's executive order regarding immigration, regardless of the fact that nothing in the order requires any funding. This, I guess, pleases the idiots who make up the Republican base without causing harm to others; not a bad deal when you think about it. The other thing you do is file an expensive and frivolous law suit against President Obama regarding the Affordable Care Act. Given the fact that we now have the most politicized and worst Supreme Court in our history, this suit does have the potential to be harmful! I am, however, trying to demonstrate some optimism about this suit by saying that even the five injustices of our Supreme Court would not stoop to ruling illegal the sort of executive order that has been issued by every President since WWII.

I might add here that there is no fact the Republicans will not ignore or lie about. Ronald Reagan was the President who granted undocumented immigrants amnesty, and both Reagan and G. H. W. Bush used executive orders to prevent the deportation of undocumented immigrants. So did Reagan and G. H. W. Bush violate the Constitution? And what the hell is it about the executive order regarding immigrants that would prevent Republicans from passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill, other than the fact that they feel so insulted by the order that they are going to pick up their toys and go home? Picking up their toys and going home seems to be what Republicans do best.  I wish I had a job that required so little time in the work place.

No Saber-Tooth Tigers!

What makes more sense: passing a law that prohibits anyone from keeping a saber-tooth tiger as a pet or passing a law that prohibits the replacement of our current laws with sharia law? Strictly form a legal standpoint keeping a saber-tooth tiger as a pet is viable whereas replacing our current laws with sharia law is not. Keeping a saber-tooth tiger as a pet does not violate the first amendment or any of the other amendments to our constitution. Replacing our laws with sharia law, on the other hand, violates the first amendment and several other amendments to our constitution. In other words, sharia law could not survive the scrutiny of any appellate court. It poses no more of a threat than saber-tooth tigers do. Yet here we have Newt Gingrich advocating the passage of a law to prohibit replacing our current laws with sharia law. If Mr. Gingrich succeeded in passing such a law, he could wait several years and claim that it worked because no one replaced our laws with sharia law. If I succeeded in passing a law prohibiting anyone from keeping a saber-tooth tiger as a pet, I could also wait several years and say the prohibition worked because no one resurrected one of those creatures to keep as a pet.

I know this is not a political blog, but I cannot ignore Mr. Gingrich’s inadvertent satire. This man was once the Speaker of the House of Representatives. He was considered the leader of the Republican Party and its leading intellectual. Is he really that ignorant about our constitution and judicial review? I hope so. If that is not the reason he is advocating such an absurd law, I will have to conclude that he is arrogant enough to think he can sell the American people legislative snake oil. This means he is insulting our educational system and/or the retention level of anyone who successfully completed a seventh grade civics course. Is he so bereft of any thoughts about how we might deal with our real problems that he has to drum up such an obviously phony issue? Is he cynical enough to think we are so ignorant and gullible that we will thank him for saving us from such an imaginary threat?

Maybe he is trying to appeal to low information voters, but what he is advocating is so ludicrous that it falls well below the lowest common denominator. It is almost as if he is mocking irrational fears. Could that be what he is doing? Is he trying to compete with Stephen Colbert or John Stewart? Is he doing a parody of a right wing demagogue? Frankly, I do not think he is that bright or that funny. Better leave the comedy to the professionals, Newt. Believe me, you are no Pat Paulsen!

This was first published in macsbackporch.foxtail-farms on Sept. 22, 2010.  The reason why I am posting again is to remind people of how absurd the Republicans are and how vicious they became under Gingrich's leadership.  I want to remind people of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. I want to remind the voters of when partisan interests became more important to Republicans than the interests of this nation.  Elections have consequences and the consequences of the last election could be dire!

Who?

Who is more idiotic the person who is stupid enough to believe that Fox News actually reports news or the person who is stupid enough to stay home and let the Fox dolts decide the outcome of important elections?

Beyond Stupid

I knew the most crucial of the mid-term elections were being held in places that are politically challenged to say the least, but I must admit that I am absolutely shocked by how incredibly absurd the results were. I am really amused by the pundits now twisting themselves into pretzels in an effort to find some message in those results. Here is a news flash: there is no message. There simply is no rational reason for what the voters just did. Understanding how stupid the voters were requires a look in the rear view mirror to see the behavior they just rewarded.

The Injustices Republican Presidents have appointed to the Supreme Court have given us the most politicized and worst court in the history of our nation. It truly is the court of the rich and powerful, by the rich and powerful, and for the rich and powerful. It is little wonder that the people of this nation think our justice system is stacked against them. Furthermore, George W. Bush started an unnecessary war that has now destabilized a large and important part of the world. He also turned a federal surplus into a huge deficit and crashed our economy. The voters quite understandably reacted to this by electing Barack Obama President and giving the Democratic Party control of both houses of Congress.

The Republicans responded this huge political defeat by misusing the filibuster in the Senate to make the government is dysfunctional as possible. Their goal was to make President Obama fail regardless how much that might hurt the country. In spite this, the Democrats still managed to pass a few bills that helped the economy grow. The pace of recovery, however, was painfully slow, in large part because of the road blocks set up by the Republican Party. And how did the voters react to this? Well, in five states they actually took their frustration out on the Democrats by electing extreme right wing Republican governors. The voters also rewarded the Republican tactics of obstruction in congress by giving the Republicans control of the House of Representatives.

The right wing governors then slashed taxes for the rich, cut funding for public education and other vital services, and deprived thousands of people medical care by turning down federal money to expand Medicaid. Drunk with power, the Republicans in the House of Representatives soon turned their congress into the least productive in the history of our nation. I would argue that it is also the most destructive because the Republicans actually shut down our government and damaged the full faith and credit of the United States by threatening to default on the payment of our debts.

In spite of the fact that most of the states with extreme right wing Republican governors are less well off than the people of neighboring states, the voters have now rewarded those incompetent governors by reelecting them.  They have also made our economic recovery less likely by giving the Republicans control of the Senate.  In every recent mid-term election the voters have rewarded bad behavior and failed policies by increasing the power of the Republican Party.  The guy who said voters are not stupid, they are just too preoccupied with their daily struggles to follow politics is dead wrong.  Saying that is like saying that the guy who wants to repeal social security so he can buy more lottery tickets to provide for his retirement is not stupid, he is just too preoccupied with his daily struggles to find out how social security works.   What the voters did in this election is as stupid as giving your dog a treat for shitting on your couch!

If I sound like I am panicking it is because I am. I am scared to death that Ron White is correct when he says “you can't fix stupid!” I am also afraid that our democracy might be too fragile to survive such stupidity. I want to yell at the top of my lungs:

“WAKE THE FUCK UP! THE BILLIONAIRES, THE SUPREME COURT, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY ARE WAGING A WAR AGAINST TO MIDDLE CLASS! CLOSING YOUR EYES TO THAT WAR IS ALLOWING THEM TO TURN THE AMERICAN DREAM INTO A MERE FANTASY!"

Reputation Maintenance

I suppose it is only natural for a politician to want to maintain the reputation of his party. Apparently this holds true for Republicans even though their party is reputed to be the party of stupid! In this regard the senatorial candidate in North Carolina, Tom Tillis, is setting a fine example for his fellow Republicans. He has chosen to run against President Obama rather than the Democratic nominee Kay Hagan. Furthermore, he has chosen to run against a very successful program. Of course Mr. Tillis will not call the Affordable Care Act the Affordable Care Act because if he does that the ignoramuses might be curious enough to see what that act entails and they will like what they see. So Mr. Tillis calls it Obama Care. He does his because he knows that he and his party have buried that title in so much bull shit that the ignoramuses now dismiss it out of hand.

While that strategy is risky, it does not seem that stupid. What is stupid is who Mr. Tillis is using as his segregate to attack the Affordable Care Act. It is none other than Nit‑Mitt Romney! That is right, it is that Nit-Mitt Romney. It is the former governor of Massachusetts, who passed Romney Care in that state. Yes, I mean that Romney Care, the very model for the Affordable Care Act. Those of you who are old enough and do not suffer from Alzheimer's might recall with some amusement how Presidential Candidate Romney tied himself into a pretzel trying to Attack the Affordable Care Act while Defending Romney Care!

So here is to you, Mr. Tillis! By attacking an achievement and reminding us of Mr. Romney's dishonesty, you are doing Reince Priebus proud. I am sure he would tell tell you that you are doing a good job of maintaining the reputation of the party of stupid

Castrator

Joni Ernst, castrator, wants to cut just about everything that is productive, including the government she is aspiring to become a part of. You do become a part of the government when you get elected to the senate, you know. But not to worry, she has a gun and promises to use it if the government does something she does not like. I guess those are the views you have when you cut off the circulation to your brain by sitting on it.

Judicial Infamy

Congratulations to Supreme injustices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito. In the case of Veasey v. Perry you have cemented the place of your court in judicial infamy. No court has ever been more politicized, unethical, or damaging to our democracy. In ruling that the Texas voter ID law was unconstitutional, Federal Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos said the voter ID requirement could disenfranchise as many as 600,000 citizens. It is really distressing that the court would even review this decision, and lifting the stay on enforcing such an outrageous law is unconscionable! It is quite obvious that by letting this draconian voter ID law in Texas remain in effect during the upcoming mid-term elections the Supreme Court is permitting the Republican Party to suppress the vote in order to gain an unfair, partisan advantage. Trying to justify voter ID laws by saying they prevent voter fraud is ridiculous. In none of the relevant court cases have the proponents of strict voter ID laws been able to point to any significant voter fraud. Furthermore, saying that changing the Texas law before the election would cause confusion is utter nonsense. Getting rid of the stricter requirements has absolutely no effect on people who meet those stricter requirements. Eliminating the stricter requirements simply allows more citizens to vote. Isn't the right to vote what democracy is all about?

Sadly, democracy is not what concerns Injustices Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas, Scalia, and Alito. Those five injustices want to dampen any progressive movement that might challenge the power of the oligarchy. After all, if the oligarchy is challenged the oligopoly is threatened. This despicable ruling was all about money and power. The majority of our present Supreme Court seems to believe that only the super wealthy have earned the right to govern this nation!

Your vote is precious, do not let it wither or misuse it! Use it to give the party of the Greedy Old Plutocrats and the five supreme injustices a well deserved middle finger. Stand up for democracy and all of the high values this country proudly proclaims

Death With Dignity

Death with dignity does not mean silently waiting for death to arrive and relieve you of the suffering that is robbing you of your cognitive ability and the basic functions we all take for granted. Brittany Maynard is a young lady who has terminal brain cancer. She has gone to Oregon to choose when she will end her life. This is something I really understand. I was taking care of my brother when his lung cancer metastasized to his brain. In spite of all the drugs used to ease his pain, this was the most heart wrenching thing I have ever witnessed. My brother was being tortured by his cancer. No one should ever be forced to endure that torture!

I want to thank Brittany for having the courage to make her decision public. In doing so, she has made us focus on the question of whether a terminally ill patient should be able to put an end to the suffering. As Brittany said, this is a decision no one wants to make. She would rather live, but a few more days, weeks or months of agony or not knowing who or where you are is not really living. My heart goes out to you and your family Brittany. I hope you know you are making a positive difference by bringing attention to your struggle and the difficult decision you have made!

Straw Dogs And Bogeymen

With the increasingly apparent lies about Obama-care still ringing in the ears of skeptical voters, the party that has failed dismally in foreign affairs, has crashed our economy, and is still denying millions of people affordable health care is desperate. The Republicans would like to make the economy the issue but it is improving in spite of their obstruction. There is, however, another issue Republicans love, and it is an issue that takes no thought at all. They point at President Obama and squeal, “WEAK! WEAK! WEAK!” They want you to believe that merely calling President Obama weak makes it so, and that he is incapable of protecting America.  Of course they cannot tell you what they would do differently to protect America. They are certainly not going to provide the State Department with the funds Hillary Clinton requested to protect our diplomats before the attack at Benghazi, nor are they going to restore the funds they cut from the CDC. I guess the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are not important unless you run into problems with diseases such as Ebola and the Adenovirus. The same thing could be said for confirming a Surgeon General or providing medicare so that preventive care is available to everyone. This begs the question; what have Republicans carried out in the last two years? Well they got the hell out of Washington, thereby avoiding their duty to deal with the war on ISIS.

 

So bereft of any positive programs are the Republicans that they now have to count on their new and improved straw dogs and bogeymen to carry them through the mid-terms. “WEAK! WEAK! WEAK!”  That is their cry.  That is it folks! Fear and loathing is all the GOP has to offer you. Unfortunately, the news media is unwittingly helping the Republicans sell that fear and loathing. Do not misunderstand what I am saying, the media is responsible enough to point out that Ebola is not easy to transmit from one person to another. What the media emphasizes, however, is that the mortality rate of those who catch it is high, and that is scary enough to make people want to hear more. The utter brutality of ISIS is also frightening enough to attract an audience, but the immediate danger ISIS poses to this country is not that great because it is not on our border. That, of course, does not keep the news media from constantly reporting the brutality or the Republicans from lying about terrorists or people infected with Ebola crossing our southern border. What is amazing to me is that the Republicans continue to tell those lies even after they repeatedly fail to meet challenges to name a single documented case in which a terrorist or a person with Ebola has crossed our border with Mexico. As Richard Wolfe said on MSNBC: can you imagine someone infected with Ebola being healthy enough to work his way from Mexico City to the northern border, then sneak past the US border patrols and hike through the hot, dry desert to a city! As unlikely as that scenario is the Republican base wants to believe it badly enough to embrace it

One of the most vexing problems we have in trying to give the public a realistic assessment of the danger we face is that the incessant news coverage in and of itself serves to greatly exaggerate the threats, thereby putting a certain luster on the straw dogs and bogeymen the Republicans are selling. We can only hope that the people will say no sale, that they will reject the straw dogs and bogeymen, and that they will vote for candidates who present a realistic approach to dealing with ISIS, Ebola and the other challenges we face.

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Define Your Terms

I am so damn sick of pundits referring to the five injustices on our current Supreme Court as judicial activists. Merely overturning a precedent is not judicial activism.  As I pointed out in a previous post, “judicial activism" is a pejorative term reactionaries use to describe the practice of overturning unjust but well established precedents; which makes "judicial activist" a badge of honor that must be earned!  Laws that protect the right to vote and make it easier to exercise that right are not unjust. Laws that allow legal remedies for injuries caused by medical malpractice or the negligence of companies are not unjust. Laws that protect us from the risky and bad behavior of financial institutions are not unjust. Laws that protect the right of employees to collectively bargain with employers are not unjust. Laws that prevent the oligopoly from buying politicians and elections are not unjust. Calling the five supreme injustices “judicial activists” is therefore a bastardization of a term used to describe the very justices who have done the most to make our laws and our society fairer and more equitable.

What is obviously called for now is a term to describe the injustices who are casting us back into a time before either of the Roosevelts, when there were no labor unions and the robber barons pretty much did as they pleased no matter how harmful that was. The definition of a reactionary is: someone who is resistant or opposed to a force, influence or movement; “especially: [a] tendency toward a former and usually outmoded political or social order or policy.” I therefore propose that we describe overturning just and well established precedents as acts of “judicial re-activism,” and that we describe the five injustices who are overturning those just precedents as “judicial reactionaries.” 

Given the fact that Messrs. Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy have made this the most politicized and retrogressive court ever, calling them "Judicial Reactionaries" seems almost too polite to me.  I mean, how do you describe men who have and are causing so much damage to our country and the reputation of its highest court without becoming profane?  If you have a better suggestion than "judicial reactionaries" or "supreme injustices," please let me know.

A Profile In Cowardice

This is a profile in hypocrisy and cowardice. It is a black mark and a stain on the legislative branch of our federal government. The do nothing Republicans shirked their duty to this country again by literally running away from Washington rather than remaining in session to vote on authorizing and funding the war on ISIS. In the Senate this neglect of duty was bipartisan, with Democrats cowering because of the false charges their Republican opponents are using to poison well. What is particularly galling about the cowardice of the Republicans are those false charges and the other outright lies they are telling. Frankly the people of this country should be outraged over the disdain the right wing shitbags have for the knowledge and intelligence of the voters. I know he has been getting most of the attention, but Scot Brown is not the only disingenuous Republican candidate running blatantly false advertisements designed to scare the hell out of the gullible Republican base and perhaps some undiscerning independents as well.

I find it hard to believe that the cowardly, do nothing, Republican congressman who are literally running away from the fight on terrorists actually have the nerve to say that the man who killed Osama Bin Ladin and is now attacking ISIS is not doing enough to protect this country. And what would those Republican morons do differently? They seem to think putting a border agent on every square foot of our southern border is a good idea. Never mind the fact that that would be prohibitively expensive. Gotta prevent Lucy from bringing toxic tamales into the garment factory, don't you know. All right, so maybe I should not have made the tamale comment, but I want to show you just how hypocritical and absurdly racist the Republicans have become. There is absolutely no evidence of terrorists entering this country from Mexico. The Republican claims to the contrary are merely an attempt to tie the immigration issue to a debate over how best to protect ourselves from terrorists. Incidentally, the only President who granted amnesty to illegal immigrants was Ronald Reagan. So I guess Saint Ronny isn't infallible after all. I guess maybe if he had provided some very stiff penalties to companies who hired illegals we would not have had such of flood of illegal immigration. Holding employers accountable for providing jobs to illegal immigrants, however, would stifle the exploitive advantages those businesses have, and it would raise the price of the goods they produce. Gotta protect the exorbitant salaries the oligopoly hands out to its CEO s, you know. And, of course, Republicans want us to believe that deporting millions of people is better than giving them a legal status that would allow them to make a greater economic contribution to this country.

I am sorry but what we have seen over the last six years is a Republican Party that is incapable of protecting us from any real threat. So while the President is doing his best to confront a threat to everything that is decent, the Republicans are still trying win elections by selling us straw dogs and bogey men. The people should demand that the politically impotent Speaker of the house, John Boehner, call the House back in session to deal with a real threat for a change. The bottom line here is that it is congress that has the power to declare war, and congress should grow enough of a back bone to do its duty.

Get Real:

Enough with the damn distortions! General Dempsey said if the current strategy against ISIS does not work he would recommend the introduction of American ground troops. Now everyone is blowing his testimony way out of proportion. “General Dempsey is skeptical about the effectiveness of Obama's Plan,” some hand wringers scream. Andrea Mitchell, along with many other drama casters, said President Obama seems to be out of sync with his generals. As much as I hate to disappoint people who are trying to add a bit of excitement to attract an audience, I have to say that General Dempsey's testimony was not a Truman v. MacArthur moment; nor was it an indication of what is likely to happen. Here is a news flash for you: no general is ever happy unless he is rolling into a situation with overwhelming force, is able to quickly roll up the enemy's flank, win the war and become the great hero everyone hails as a military genius. Ain't likely to happen in the modern world folks!

There really are no good options. This is going to be a protracted struggle with no clear bench marks or end game. Until the countries in that region rise at least to the level of the last half of the twentieth century, there will be medieval religious conflicts fought with modern weapons. The misfits and sociopaths will gravitate to the worst scum in the sewer, and the rest of the world will try to keep that scum from destroying civilization. This is not the fault of Islam any more than the crusades were the fault of Christianity. There will always be people who will misuse religion. All military action is a holding action until diplomacy, education, and economic development make the extremists unattractive to the people in that region. This struggle has been going on for decades and will continue for decades.

I know what I have said is not very appealing. People want quick resolutions, and that is what politicians, particularly demagogs, promise them. I think Bush's war should have taught us the folly of that. I also think that the cold war should have taught us the virtue of persistence and patience. We should risk as little as possible to do what must be done to protect ourselves and to provide the help others need to make things better!

At The Water's Edge

Yesterday I looked up the Logan Act in Legal-Dictionary. The act was passed during the Adams Administration in 1799. In short, the act prohibits any citizen from negotiating with another nation on behalf of the United States without the authorization of the United States. As Legal Dictionary points out, however, the language is so broad that it “... appears to encompass almost every communication" between a U.S. Citizen and a foreign government that could be considered an “attempt to influence negotiations” between the two countries. Perhaps it is because of the first amendment concerns caused by the broad language, but no one has actually been charged with violating the act (although the act has been used as a threat on a few occasions). Furthermore, two former Presidents, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, could have been charged under the Logan Act before either of them became President. In fact in his book, Chasing Shadows, Ken Hughes asserts that Richard Nixon's involvement in trying to cover up the Watergate burglary was motivated by his fear that an investigation of the crime would turn up evidence that Mr. Nixon had violated the Logan Act by interfering with Lyndon Johnson's negotiations to end the Vietnam War!  

If Mr. Hughes is correct, and he does present a compelling argument, the fear that the act would be enforced has had quite an impact on our history. Mr. Nixon, the cold warier, frequently talked about the moral and patriotic imperative of a bipartisan effort to contain the Soviet Union and the spread of communism; add to this Mr. Nixon's fear of the condemnation he would face because of the thousands of lives lost as a result of prolonging the Vietnam war and you can easily see why he might fear prosecution under the Logan Act. Indeed it is the loss of those lives that makes something like the Logan Act desirable. The question, of course, is how much opposition to an administration's foreign policy is healthy and what actions in opposition to those policies do we deem to be too harmful to our nation's interests.

During the cold war foreign policy was hotly debated but the consensus in regard to the policy containment and the patriotism of both parties placed limits on how far either party would go. The point being that both parties recognized the necessity of presenting a united front to the countries that threatened us. Thus we embraced the concept that partisanship ended at the shoreline. The hyper-partisanship of the Republican Party now seems to defy that wise concept of national unity. The Republicans scream that President Obama is to blame for every thing going wrong in the entire world, but when penned down they offer no viable alternatives for dealing with any of the situations they complain about. I think what President Obama is going to say about how he intends to deal ISIS is fairly predictable to anyone who has been paying attention. How the Republicans will react to the course of action he intends pursue is also predictable, I would say sadly predictable. I will be pleasantly surprised if I am wrong. It would be nice to know that the Republicans are capable of placing some bounds on the partisanship.

Octopi

What do you do when an octopus takes over the company you work for as well as all of its competition in the area and then lays you off. I'm screwed! At my age trying to find a job in a new field is really difficult, but that is the world we live in. The jobs in so many industries and fields have been eliminated or moved out of the country, and the good people who have spent most of their adult lives working in those industries and fields have been discarded faster than cold sufferers discard used facial tissues. This is social Darwinism rather than capitalism, and we must curtail it.

Numb and Dumb

This morning on CBS there was a poll of sorts, wherein a room full of people expressed their hopelessness over the decline of the middle class and the disparity in wealth caused by the greed of the wealthiest members of our society. When asked who they blamed they said they blamed both Wall Street and Washington. The person taking this poll was appalled when they said their children would not have it as good as they did and that they would gladly leave this country for good if another country offered more opportunity. I can understand their frustration but there is someone else these people should also blame. They should also blame themselves for becoming so numb and inattentive that they no longer have anything intelligent to say about what we should do. They complain about Washington being dysfunctional, yet they refuse to punish the Republican Party for creating the gridlock.

There is no middle ground here. It is not both parties behaving irresponsibly. It is not the Democratic Party that shut down our government and threatened to cause us to default on our debts; nor is it the Democratic Party that is threatening to do it again. It is not the Democratic Party opposing the policies and measures both parties have traditionally used to get a sluggish economy moving again. It is not the Democratic Party that is trying to destroy the minimum wage, all assistance for low income workers, public education, medicare, social security, and the Affordable Care Act. It is not the Democratic Party that opposes changing the tax code to prevent large corporations from avoiding taxes by moving their headquarters overseas and to prevent corporations from seeking the absurd tax advantages they now receive for exporting our jobs. It is the Republican Party that is is doing those terrible things to this country, and they are quite open about it. All you have to do is listen to what they are really saying.

Where are the tough American people I thought I knew. Where are the brave workers who organized and fought to provide labor with a fair share of the wealth of this nation and thereby created the greatest market economy the world has ever known. Those Americans would not fall for this bullshit about there being no hope. Instead, they would stand up and fight like hell. Look, there is no doubt that the power of money is too pervasive and has too great of an influence on both political parties, but there is still a huge difference between those parties. You do not win wars by giving up or by being unrealistic, but you have to pick your battles. The Republican party is hurting you and this country far more than the Democrats are. So the first step in getting our country moving again is to kick the Republicans in the groin and throw them out in the snow. Hand them the worst defeat in their history. Make them beg to be let back into the house. Send a message to the fat cats that votes still count and that they cannot buy large enough wings to keep the bullshit flying.

These mid-term elections are vitally important. We, the People, must take back the states given to Republican extremists during the last mid-terms, not just for the sake of the people in those states but for the sake of this nation. If the Democrats regain control of those states they can undo the Gerrymandering that has given so many destructive tea party twits their seats in congress. We must also vote for Democrats to keep the Republicans from regaining control of the U.S. Senate. If the Republicans gain control of the Senate, they will set the terrible precedent of impeaching and removing from office a sitting President on grounds so spurious that no election will ever be considered final again. The Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, has already said he would shut down the government again to prevent President Obama doing anything President Obama thinks we need to do.

So stop crying and get to the polls. Kick some butt with your vote. You have to get involved. Reform will not happen without your support. Use these elections as the first shot in a war to get this country moving in the right direction again. We need to overturn Citizens United and impeach the blatantly unethical Supreme Injustices, Thomas and Scalia. Believe me the charges that should be brought against those injustices are far from spurious. We also need to press for a progressive agenda that will reward initiative and hard work. The choice is yours! Sitting at home and wringing your hands is almost as bad as voting for the toadies who have no conscience about what they do to further the interests of the people reaming you! Only the little people pay taxes, you know.

Blogging:

On October 6, 2011 my brother, Randy Smiley, reacted strongly to the idea that social media now rules and blogging is dead. Tell that to “Huffington Post, Dailykos, Think Progress, and Fact Check,” he wrote. I would go a bit farther and say that many newspapers, magazines, reporters, and news services also have blogs. In many ways blogs are like magazines or newspapers. The communication is primarily in one direction; it goes from the author to whatever audience the author is able to draw.  It is difficult and annoying for the reader to leave a comment on a Google Blog. It is much easier to leave a comment on a Word Press Blog, but there is a trade off. Google blocks most of the spam, whereas Word Press merely marks it and leaves it to the blogger to throw it out.

Obviously, blogs were not really meant to be interactive. That is why so many people are finding Face Book, and G+ more attractive, which is as it should be. Far too many people were trying to interact with family members on blogs. Doing so was awkward and far too public. I suppose that twitter also has a place in this fast pace world, but the number of characters it allows makes it far too restrictive for any in depth discussions.

I like the idea that a private individual can become influential by creating a blog like Digby's Hullabaloo. Granted that the odds are greatly stacked against your blog ever becoming that influential, but displaying your rants, opinions or stories where they are available to the public still offers something in the way of catharsis. It still allowed my brother to yell “TAKE THAT, ASSHOLE!” I am afraid that I also display that kind of anger far too often in this blog, but that is, at least to some extent, what this blog is for. It is why I have a blog rather than face book. It allows friends and family to ignore the political opinions they do not like without having to ignore me. I might add that some of them also find my fiction that objectionable, but that is their problem. If they do not like it, they can join the vast majority of the people in this world by not reading it.

United We Must Stand

The election of President Obama was a sign of how far this country has come in regard to racism; the reaction to his election is a sure sign of how far we have to go. The open and blatant racism displayed at tea party rally's and other right wing gatherings are a serious step backwards, as are the voter suppression efforts by the GOP and the Shelby County v. Holder decision that makes voter suppression easier to achieve. Add to this the disparity between the income of white and black people, along with the thinly disguised racism used to justify cuts in all assistance to low income people and you have provided all the evidence needed for minorities to feel oppressed. Furthermore when so many young, unarmed, black men are being killed by police officers and other armed white men we should all ask some very serious questions about our justice system!

Obviously, we are still dealing with racial issues that I wanted very much to believe we had put behind us. It would be foolish, however, to believe that the behavior of the Police in Ferguson is strictly a racial issue. Regardless of your race or ethnicity the concentration of wealth and political power into so few hands combined with the militarization of our police forces should be alarming. In Ferguson police officers were wearing gas masks, helmets, and body armor. What they were not wearing were badges or identification of any kind. So here you had anonymous, unrecognizable men pointing assault rifles and machine guns at demonstrating citizens while other officers were firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd. I hate to sound like a libertarian, but this scares the hell out me! Will such force be used to suppress anyone objecting to the greed of what has become an oligarchy. To those of you who think I am over-reacting, let me remind you of what happened at Kent State during the Vietnam war!

The people of this country have to wake up. You cannot suppress the rights of one group of people without endangering the rights of everyone. We are all in this together, and we must make a stand.  Everyone deserves freedom from the fear of violence and oppression!  Furthermore, everyone deserves a decent job and a fair wage.  Get involved.  Flex your political muscle. Administer a political beating to the right wing bigots, and to the Republican Party for pandering to those bigots! Fight the greed of the oligopoly and the divisiveness that helps the oligarchs hold on to their power. Work to restore to our system the concept of one person one vote by letting all politicians know you will oppose anyone who will not support a constitutional amendment to overturn the horrible Supreme Court decisions that have greatly increased the influence of money on our government. If we are ever to get our country moving in the right direction again, we must fight those who divide us.

Wealth Gap

Standard & Poor's says wealth gap is hurting economic growth .

Click Here

Malpractice

The Republicans have been fishing for votes in the shallow end of the IQ pool for over a decade now. I suppose the inevitable question is whether they have hooked stupid or stupid has hooked them. Either way, they now own it. What is amazing to me is how eager they are to display this stupidity. Anyone who advises the majority party in the House of Representatives to file a frivolous law suit against the President of the United States is guilty of political malpractice, and any attorney who advises the majority party in the House of Representatives to file such a suit is guilty of legal malpractice. But here we are; the party of stupid is actually going to file such a suit! From a legal standpoint, it is doubtful that the House of Representatives has the standing to file such a suit. From a political standpoint, the worst thing that could happen to the Republicans would be if a judge rules that they do have standing and the case is allowed to move forward.

The real problem for the Republicans is that their justifications for filing this suit are based on lies. Without the lies the Republicans have no grievance, and if they try to present those lies in court the truth will come out. Come on folks, the delay in implementing the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act is the sort of administrative decision many Presidents have made in order to work out the kinks before a program takes full effect. It is also well established that President Obama did not ruin Medicare in order to pay for the Affordable Care Act, nor did he eliminate the work requirement from welfare. Furthermore, if the court rules that a President who issues an executive order is exceeding his authority, it will mean that most of our Presidents since WWII have exceeded their authority. In fact some Republican Presidents, such as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, have issued more executive orders than has President Obama. But none on that means anything to the Republicans, because they are too intellectually bankrupt to acknowledge any history or to think about what any given precedent could mean to them in the future.

The one thing you can bet on is that when the results of this suit prove to be unsatisfactory to the Republican base, there will be a great wailing and rending of all reason as those sanctimonious idiots accuse the judge or judges of having a liberal bias. There will also be a demand to relitigate the case in a different forum, meaning impeachment in the House of Representative and then a trial in the Senate. We all know how well it worked out for the Republicans when they impeached Bill Clinton!  Suicide anyone?  The self destruction of the Republican Party could be amusing if they do not take the political structure down with them. Therein lies the danger. If the GOP succeeds in removing President Obama from office, no Presidential election results will ever be considered final again. The Democrats have to have control of the Senate to prevent that!  Even then the Republicans will squander valuable resources on the frivolous law suit and outrageous impeachment precedings, while our economy will continue to suffer from the neglect and obstructionist tactics of the Republican Party.

Hold The Drama Please

Once more the media has cranked the drama up to absurd levels. No less than Andrea Mitchell was expressing her bewilderment and horror over President Obama’s refusal to visit the border where all those children were crossing into Texas from Mexico. She made it sound as though the President was fiddling while Washington was burning. Other supposedly objective reporters and pundits were also shaking their heads as they talked about the “optics.” What they meant by optics is nothing more than political eyewash. It did not look good for President Obama to stay away, they said. It made him look like he did not care. Some Republicans actually said this was Obama’s Katrina. But, of course, those Republicans simply do not get it and never will. What made President Bush’s fly over seem so callus was “You’re doing a heck of a job, Browny,” Barbara Bush’s comment about those poor people camped out in the Superdome being better off than they were in their homes before the storm, and the obvious neglect leading up to the storm!

I do not think we can call anyone on television a news reporter today. At best they are news casters and at worst they are salespersons. I am sure President Obama wishes his crystal ball had told him all those kids were coming. If he had known, he could have prepared for the crises by asking congress for the same funds they say he does not need in order to deal with the problem today. The fact that Republican Congressmen refuse to do what needs to be done about this and other immigration problems is a lot more important than political eyewash. So why is the news media calling President Obama’s refusal to provide them with the sight bites they demand a failure of leadership? Could it be that real neglect and intransigence are not as dramatic as the crap the demagogues can make up and the news casters can stir up? Got to draw the marks to the pitchmen, you know! It is all about selling the products.

Damn The Facts, Full Speed Astern!

The Republican Party is the party of extremes. It is the party that contains the most exploitive members of our society and the most exploitable members of our society. Not surprisingly, the exploitable members are mercilessly exploited and used as tools by the exploitive members. Amazingly, this relationship is symbiotic in its own fashion; which is to say that the exploited are willing victims, who feel grateful for anything that feeds their paranoia and their dark view of this world. Trying to reason with those masochists, or trying to present any facts that will make them realize they are being abused is a fool’s errand. They honestly believe that being the victim is a virtue, and it takes a very evil person to attack their virtue with inconvenient facts.

To those exploited people on the far right everything is a matter of faith; they rarely let a thought interfere with an established opinion, and they never let a fact change a belief. They are quick to brand as a heretical RINO anyone who would object to the excommunication of Galileo, Darwin, climatologists, gynecologists, psychiatrists, physicists, and/or instructors who dare to teach the empirical method or sex education. This is why the Republican Party has been dubbed the stupid party, and that is not good for the exploitive Republicans who need a viable national party to do their bidding. Unfortunately for the exploiters, reigning in the idiots they have been using as their attack dogs is a difficult thing to do. The bottom line is that the people who are so easily exploited are also so nihilistic and vicious that they are threatening to cause a catastrophic implosion of the Republican Party. At this point I am inclined to say good riddance. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a new party will emerge.

Impeachment

Last week I received an e-mail from some well intentioned people asking me to support their effort to impeach the five reactionary injustices comprising the majority on what is arguably the worst Supreme Court ever. I am certainly sympathetic to their grievances. There is no doubt that the decisions which have given the oligopoly the power of an oligarchy, have blurred the separation of church and state, and have eliminated the protection of some of our most basic civil rights are egregious decisions that are threatening to throw us back into an era so many people worked so hard and sacrificed so much to leave behind. That concerned citizens should seek a remedy for the damages being caused by those unjust decisions is perfectly understandable, but I object to the efforts to impeach Injustices Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy for the same reason that I objected to the impeachment of Bill Clinton and would have objected to the impeachment of George W. Bush. I cannot bear the thought of reasonable people thinking that I am acting like a liberal version of the dumb asses who are calling for the impeachment of President Obama.

Impeaching and removing anyone from his or her office or position is an extreme remedy. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying here. I do not think there is an equivalency between the Judicial reaction-ism of the Robert’s Court and the judicial activism of the Warren Court, but there was a large percentage of people who objected so strongly to the judicial activism of the Warren Court that they called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Warren. If it had been left to the public to decide, it is quite possible that Chief Justice Warren and other liberal justices would have been impeached. The point I am trying to make is that our founding fathers were correct in seeing the danger of a court that is too easily swayed by public opinion and/or political concerns.

So when is impeachment justified? You may have noticed that when I stated my objection to impeaching the Injustices on our present Supreme Court I did not include the names of Injustices Thomas and Scalia. There is a very significant difference between a Justice who makes horrible and harmful decisions because that Justice is a mindless ideologue and a Justice who makes horrible and harmful decisions because that justice has a conflict of interest. Injustices Thomas and Scalia fall onto the latter category. The fact that they refuse to recues themselves from cases in which they have a clear conflict of interest is a violation of judicial ethics. Furthermore, the decisions they have consistently made in those cases are precisely the decisions that confirm the biases you would expect to see as a result of those conflicts of interest. This smacks of corruption on their part, and it fully justifies the remedy of impeachment and removal from the court. My advice to the group that sent me the e-mail is to narrow your goal.

Still The Supreme Injustices

Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., et al v. Kathleen Sebelius. The majority opinion in this case speaks for itself. The five supreme injustices have once more demonstrated why historians will judge this court to be the worst ever! Freedom for them means freeing up businesses to exploit us and intrude in our lives. Please do not call this retrogressive court “conservative” because that is highly insulting to real conservatives. I am not going to mince words here. The five supreme injustices that form the majority of this court are the reactionary tools of the oligopoly!

Please support the people in your state who are trying to pass a constitutional amendment overturning the absurd ruling that corporations are people. Corporations have profit margins rather than souls.

More Equal Citizens

Some citizens are more equal than others. This complaint is not really about wealth, at least not on my part. I do not begrudge a person his or her wealth. Hillary Clinton can charge as much as the market will bear. Sage though she may be, what she has to say is not a vital service or commodity like food, shelter, energy, or health care. It causes no harm at all if people and institutions book another speaker because they are not willing to pay what Hillary demands. If Hillary were a white, male, Republican, Republicans would be praising her business acumen. Furthermore, they would tell the complaining students at UNLV to blame the person who agreed to Hillary’s fee rather than blaming Hillary. Knowing Republicans, they would also call those students freeloaders for wanting the things they say the college could pay for were it not for Hillary’s exorbitant speaking fee.

When I say some people are more equal than others what I am complaining about is the concentration of wealth and power the oligopoly is achieving by taking unfair advantage of the rest of us, thereby making it increasingly difficult for the average person to obtain vital services and commodities such as food, shelter, energy, and a quality education for their children. The oligopoly’s averous and lust for power knows no bounds. It is not just the wealth and resources of this country that are being concentrated into fewer and fewer hands; it is also the political and legal power. The Supreme Injustices of our highest court are aiding and abetting this unconscionable grab for economic, political, and legal power, and are depriving us of our influence over our government and our right to seek legal remedies for damages that may be caused by corporations. Steven Rosenfeld @ AtlerNet.org presents some of the recent decisions that show just how willing this court is to destroy our legal protections from corporate neglegence and corporate missdeeds.  Click here!  This is scary!

Overheard At The ER

My bowels are acting like Republican Congressmen.  I have to fight like hell to get them to pass anything, and then what they pass is shit!

Cantor Canned

Eric Cantor was canned.  He was fired.  He was sent packing.  Or to put it in political terms, he was turned out of office.  His election was supposed to be a no doubter.  Eric Cantor was supposed to be a shoe in.  The few voters who bothered to show up gave him the boot instead.  I am still laughing.  He really had this coming!  He is a demagogue whose ambitions made him all too eager to use the ignorance and paranoia of the extreme right wing to obstruct any constructive effort to get things done; thereby making John Boehner the most ineffective Speaker of the House ever.  Now the table was turned on Mr. Cantor.  He was attacked from the right.  He depended on the support of people who have such a dark view of the world that they can never be satisfied, and the ones that voted rejected him for not being destructive enough to suit their apocalyptic fantasies.  As frightening as that thought may be, I still enjoy the irony.

I am also laughing over the antics of the news media.  It loves Eric Cantor’s political pratfall.  Drama draws the rubes to the pitchmen, and it is really dramatic when a leader in Congress, with all the power his seniority gives him, is upset by a virtual unknown in a primary election.  So crank up the drama!  Gotta sell that soap, don’t you know?  Yell at the top of your lungs: “BE AFRAID!  Be very, very afraid!  The voters are mad as hell, and they aren’t going to take it anymore.  It is only the angry people who vote, and nothing makes the right wingers angrier than ‘amnesty for illegal immigrants.’  Ergo, Eric Cantor must have made the mistake of supporting something reasonable in regard to immigration.”  There is, however, no conclusive evidence to support that explanation.  The operative word is “conclusive,” because the number of issues and other variables make it difficult to determine the relative importance of the factors influencing the results of this election.

What we can prove is that the turnout for the election was very light, and that Eric Cantor kept his distance, depending on advertisements rather than getting out there and pressing the flesh.  We also know that he was downwind from the right wing flatulence infesting the air waves, and that his opponent bashed him on economic issues as well as immigration.  As far as I am concerned, Mr. Cantor’s opponent, David Brat, did the impossible.  By comparison, he made Mr. Cantor’s positions on immigration and the economic issues seem almost reasonable.  If Professor Brat succeeds Mr. Cantor in Congress, the only winners will be the kids who escaped the alleged economics classes presided over by a delusional twit who thinks congress should have tanked the economy of the world by preventing the United States from honoring its debts!

Muck It Out!

If you are too lazy to muck out the barn, don’t complain about the shit!  Most of the states in which Roe v. Wade, birth control, labor unions, Medicaid, the minimum wage, public education and the jobs of middle class workers are facing the greatest peril are controlled by right wing Republicans who gained power during mid-term elections.  It was also during the last mid-term elections that the lunatic right gained control of the House of Representatives.  The result was a government shutdown, a blow to the full faith and credit of the United States, and grid lock.  Now, instead of doing anything constructive, the Republican Representatives in the House while away their time in dangerous but futile attempts to destroy to the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, Unemployment Insurance, Roe v. Wade, and the graduated income tax.  For some reason the Republicans cannot seem to find the funds to repair or improve our infrastructure, or to increase the number of doctors at VA hospitals, or to provide the security for our embassies and consulates; yet they are squandering vast sums of money on witch hunts designed to justify their cries for the impeachment of President Obama.  If Democrats and independents do not turnout for the upcoming mid-term elections, the Republicans will gain control of the Senate, thereby making it possible for them to impeach and convict a duly elected President on grounds that are spurious at best.  This is no idle threat!  The right wing is too vicious and stupid to think about the precedent they would set or how it might bite them in the future.

In almost all respects, the Republicans are proving to be far too dangerous and destructive.  They are out of touch with this century and the needs of the majority of our citizens.  The only way they can win is if their efforts to suppress the vote and your laziness keep you from voting.  Jump through whatever hoops you have to jump through to get registered.  Fight for your rights as a citizen.  November 4, 2014 is the date of the election.  Mark that date on your calendar, and vote to remove the toxic, right wing crap that threatens that great engine of prosperity we call the “middle class.”

Cash Kashkari

In his advertisement, Neel Kashkari brags about not being a politician. He wants us to believe he will make a better Governor than a politician would because “politicians don’t know how to earn money.” What?  Does this lunkhead think the government should be a profit making organization or that politicians should use their elected offices to make as much money for themselves as they can? Are you sure this guy’s name is not really Cashcarry?

The rest of the ad seems like a non-sequitur after that nonsense. He indulges in the usual demagoguery by saying he will cut taxes. But only a Republican would think that will put the government in the black. Democrats know those cuts will not stimulate the economy because Republicans always give the largest tax cuts to people who can already afford to buy whatever they want. Ah but not to worry. If elected, Governor Kashkari will also slash government programs to reduce spending. So whatever revenue the government takes in after that will not be earned; thereby proving that even former businessmen turned politicians no longer know how to “earn” money.

Kashkari also says he will take an ax to Governor Brown’s crazy train! I think he better explain what train he is talking about, because it sounds like the one he is on.

Herr No-No

Almost all references to Adolph Hitler and the NAZIS are considered out of bounds unless you are teaching the history of WWII and/or the holocaust. This is true regardless of whether you are an idiot, like Rush Limbaugh, saying Obama is acting like Hitler or you are Hillary Clinton saying that Putin’s seizure of another sovereign nation’s territory was like something Hitler did. The latest person to get in trouble for saying Putin is acting like Hitler is Prince Charles. The comparison of Putin’s behavior and Hitler’s behavior is understandable given Putin’s usage of the alleged threat to ethnic Russians as a pretext for taking over the Crimea and threatening eastern Ukraine, but there is another comparison that is as valid and less loaded. During the years leading up to WWI there was the Pan Germanic movement and the Pan Slavic movement. There were also extreme nationalistic movements caused by smaller ethnic groups wanting to break away from empires that had dominated the European continent for so long. Hitler’s contentions about racial and ethnic superiority were not formed in a vacuum; they were shaped by events during this turbulent period when culture and language were used to unify and expand nations and when all of the major powers felt so superior to each other. The bottom line is that the jingoism of the large nations combined with the aspirations of ethnic groups that felt oppressed created a powder keg which was set off when a Serbian nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The fact that 17 million people died as a direct result of WWI should be enough to tell us how dangerous it is to use ethnic concerns as an excuse for armed aggression. I will grant you that Herr No-No is the most infamous example of that danger, but the unspeakable evil of the holocaust makes that example too horrible to cite.

Death By State

Now that the drugs used for lethal injections have become so difficult to obtain several states are considering other, “humane,” ways to execute criminals. Unfortunately, I have learned far more about death than I ever wanted to know. In less than a year my brother and my mother have died while on home hospice care (one from cancer and the other from congestive heart failure). I also had to have the vet euthanize my old dog. The one thing I learned from all of this is that although some ways of dying are worse than others, there is no good way to die. In spite of our best pharmaceuticals, death  always involves some pain and suffering! Even euthanasia is a matter of temporarily inflicting pain to end prolonged pain. My point is that there is no such thing as a humane execution! I suppose the question of whether there is such a thing as a just execution is debatable.

Benghazi Again! Must You?

The Republican Party’s credo seems to be, if it is worth doing at all it is worth doing over and over and over, even when everyone who is too smart to be a Republican will tell you that doing it in the first place turned out to be an exercise in futility. So here we go again. The Obama administration recently produced more documents on Benghazi. Those documents did not add any information we did not already know, nor did they implicate anyone in a cover-up or an act of gross negligence. But Republicans are using the production of those documents to advance once more their absurd accusations and conspiracy theories. The lame stream media is too busy hocking the wares of their sponsors to trouble themselves with any facts; journalistic integrity to them means merely reporting what was said and by whom. So the lame stream media dutifully repeats the ridiculous accusations of the Republican shills and their babbling buffoons to an audience that greets those accusations with a collective yawn.

If you are looking for people who care about this phony issue of Benghazi you can find them among the viewers of MSNBC or Fox News. Viewers of MSNBC care about this trumped up issue because MSNBC uses the GOP’S wild accusations to show just how vicious and absurd the Republicans have become. The viewers of Fox News care about this trumped up issue because they are stupid enough to believe that Fox News is actually a news organization and a “news organization” that supports conspiracy theories validates their paranoia. In regard to Benghazi being an election issue, I would like to say it is a wash, but I am afraid that liberals are more inclined to laugh at it than vote on it, and right wingers are more inclined to vote on it. In other words, the Republicans can use it to stir up the dumb asses and bring out their base. There are, however, some very important issues that should still make reasonable people vote.

Some Hero!

Clive Bundy is a lying, hypocritical, freeloader who says he does not recognize the federal government. The fact that he is in a dispute with the federal government and there are right wing militia types who are threatening violence on his behalf is enough to make shameless demagogues such as Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh hail Bundy as a hero. Far too many of the Republican politicians who follow Hannity and Limbaugh also hail Bundy as a hero. Strangely, the militia types and the Republican politicians defending Bundy claim to follow a strict adherence to the Constitution of the United States. How could they be so oblivious to the apparent contradiction? Have they ever thought about why our founding fathers held the Constitutional Convention or what they created there? Here is a hint: it was the federal government. I would strongly suggest that they read the constitution or at least a high school history book, assuming they can understand anything more complex than the tattoos on the rumps of their girlfriends or the brands on the rumps of Bundy’s cattle.

I am amused by how surprised the Republicans say they are over the racism Bundy publicly expressed in terms that are too repugnant for any elected official to ignore. This might be ungenerous, but I think it was the utter stupidity of Bundy making those statements publicly rather than the racism itself that surprised those Republicans. Although most of them have repudiated Bundy’s racist statements, some of them still insist that Bundy and the militia types are right in opposing the federal government by force of arms. What those politicians do not seem to understand are the dangerous ramifications of endorsing that behavior. In fact, the Republicans are acting as though they believe that the Timothy Mc Veigh’s of this world only kill Democrats. If those Republican Congressman and Senators ever pull their heads out of where it is dark and smelly, they will realize that they are a part of the federal government, even if they refuse to do anything to help govern, and that those armed and very dangerous militia types think all politicians are evil!

Bleeding Hearts

My brother, Randy Smiley, took this picture of the bleeding hearts and posted it on his political blog.  He and I were amused by the thought that some crabgrass conservative would probably refer to them as “damn liberal weeds.”  The bleeding hearts seem like a fitting tribute to Randy.  He would have been the first to tell you that criticizing someone for caring about others does not speak well of the critic.  Randy was a much kinder and better man than I am.  I could not help thinking about him as I celebrated this season of compassion and redemption. 

Consider this a tribute, my brother.  Though you are gone our struggle for a kinder, fairer society continues!

Supreme Court, Inc.

Just in case anyone doubted it, the five Supreme Injustices have made it absolutely clear. With the Shelby County v. Holder, Citizens United, and McCutcheon v. FEC decisions the worst Supreme Court in modern history has established the legality of the rule of money; you cannot suppress the rule of money but you can suppress the vote. The oligopoly has been given the political power of an oligarchy.

The National Debt

Let us all panic over the national debt and what we owe to China!  If you click on www.factcheck.org/2013/11/who-holds-our-debt, you will see that the largest holders of the national debt are:

Social Security (16%)

Federal Reserve Banks (12%)

China (8%)

Japan (7%)

Mutual funds, including money market funds (6%)

So look out!  It is Granny and the Federal Reserve banks that are going to repossess your country.  The Republican Party’s unpopular solution is to renege on the debt owed to the old folks and promise to repay everyone else.  Social Security won’t be there when you are old enough to collect it, they say.  That ought to fix the debt problem, don’t you think?  Well, maybe it will – if you keep paying the payroll tax as well as income tax, and they do not give any more tax breaks and subsidies to the so called job producers or get us into any more wars!

The alternative to the Republican solution is to raise the earning cap which is subject to the payroll tax, then raise the minimum wage, improve our infrastructure, protect our industries, and do the other things we have traditionally done to create jobs, raise wages and stimulate the economy.  The problem is that the Democrats would have to take control of Congress and get rid of the filibuster in the Senate in order for us to do those things.

MF Blog by Mitchell Freedman

I rarely recommend bogs, but I am doing so now.  What makes MF blog so noteworthy is Mr. Freedman’s diligence.  Unless you report for a living, the chances are that your blog is merely an expression of your opinions.  This is particularly true if you are discussing politics.  Hence, we (and I have to include myself) inadvertently provide our critics with the evidence they use to advance the argument that the blogging community is merely a pooling of ignorance and is not to be taken seriously.  The links and documentation Mr. Freedman provides help to refute that contention.  You may not agree with Mr. Freedman’s conclusions, but he makes it easy for you to verify his sources.  I might add here that Mr. Freedman’s blog is not confined to political subjects.

I was at work when I discovered MF Blog and my time was very limited.  A post discussing Professor Drew Galpin Faust’s review of David Brion Davis’ book, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation drew my attention.  How historians have treated the subject of the Reconstruction of the South following the Civil War is a fascinating and very instructive subject because it tells us a lot about our racial attitudes, how they have changed, and how they are changing.  I noticed that in his discussion of Professor Faust’s review Mr. Freedman did not mention Kenneth Stampp as one of the historians who changed our view of that era.  I hastily left a comment saying that the only thing I would have added to the discussion would have been a reference to Professor Stampp’s work.  Mr. Freedman patiently explained that he would have included such a reference if Professor Faust had not mentioned Professor Stampp “as the ground breaker in modern scholarship” regarding this subject.  Now I was embarrassed about my negligence, and since I had some time on my hands I used the link Mr. Freedman provided to Professor Faust’s review.  I want to thank Mr. Freedman for his discussion and for that link; the review was well worth reading.

I have since read several of Mr. Freedman’s earlier posts.  He writes well about a variety of subjects.  That is why I have included a link to his blog.  It can be found under the heading of favorite blogs.  Hopefully, I will find some other blogs I like enough to include under that heading.