No Mitt

There is good news and bad news for the few Republicans who know something about what it takes to win a presidential election. Mitt Romney, the worst Presidential Candidate I have ever seen, is not going to run this time around. The bad news for those knowledgeable Republicans is that the Republican Congress is demonstrating just how toxic it is to this country. By inviting Prime Minister Netanyahu to address Congress John Boehner is hindering our negotiations with Iran. Furthermore, the invitation is seen by many Israelis as an attempt to influence the upcoming Israeli elections. This invitation is as ill-conceived from a political standpoint as it is harmful from a diplomatic standpoint. But that is not the worst thing this Republican Congress is doing; it is actually opening up this country for a terrorist attack by not funding Homeland Security! Not funding Homeland Security is part of a temper tantrum over the fact that President Obama's executive order regarding immigration requires no funding and cannot be threatened by the Republicans using the purse strings. So the Republican have decided to play chicken with our security! This will be a major issue which will not go well for the Republicans! There will be consequences for needlessly putting our country in danger and for making Hispanic voters angry over what they consider to be an attack on them.

I do not think the upcoming Republican primaries can match the clown show they put on last time, but there is no doubt that the destructive Republican clowns in congress are already wielding the slap sticks! Whether a Republican Presidential candidate can walk away from the destructive acts of those clowns remains to be seen. I think it is unlikely!  

Oh, Happy Days!

I am told this is a time for rejoicing. Sing Hallelujah! A new and brighter day for Dish subscribers has dawned. No longer do we have to suffer the mind pap the lame-stream media calls news or the pesky alternative that wants to inflict on us those terrible things called facts. Cooler heads have prevailed, and although it has chilled some bottoms, a deal has been struck. The mind rot of Fox news is once more within the reach of our televisions' remote controls.

I think I will light a cigar and sing “Happy Days Are Here Again.” That was, of course, the theme song of Franklin Roosevelt, which is not the sort of thing that pleases a Fox viewer. But H. L. Mencken's definition of a Puritan not withstanding, the pursuit of happiness is a right enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. So let me sing while Sean Hannity and his ilk join J.P. Morgan in damning all Roosevelts. History is not the strong suit of the right wing, nor are facts. I do not begrudge them the unstated right to be stupid if it makes them happy. The only thing I object to is their insistence on inflicting their stupidity on the rest of us; the consequences of the them doing that legislatively are really grim!

State Of The Union

President Obama's State of the Union Address was shown, the text was published, and the address was analyzed and re-analyzed until little if anything has been left unsaid. I shall therefore confine myself to my impressions of the reactions to his address. I was disappointed by what passed for Joni Ernst's rebuttal. I was expecting her to repeat some of the insane things she said during her senatorial campaign or to squeal like one of her pigs because President Obama tortured her with reason and logic.  Instead she plastered a smile on her face and soldiered on, whining about what she considered to be President Obama's misguided policies. I guess she favors the failed trickle down theory that crashed with the stock market in 1929 and crashed with the economy again in 2008. She also seems to prefer stand alone war to diplomacy and coalition building. Notice that I had to use words like “I guess” and “she seems.” This is because the only thing she discussed with any specificity was the Keystone Pipeline. In this respect she was little Joni one note, and even that note was not truly struck. Fortunately for her, the bar had been set so low that some people were making her sound like a genius for not falling on her butt. I understand that Ted, the Texas turd, Cruze was not so lucky. I heard something about him imploding; that must have been messy!

The lowlight of the evening came about when little Congressman Twit tweeted that a family could not live on a minimum wage of $10.10 an hour. Inexplicably, this caused MSNBC to invite him to appear on their show; where he promptly demonstrated how incredibly ignorant, illogical, and combative he is. I am sure that the people who were stupid enough to vote for this minor shill of the oligopoly thought “he done good,” which will undoubtedly make this his proudest moment.  All I can say to MSNBC is that when you hello up the elephant's ass you should not be terribly surprised by what comes out of it!

Alright I went Mencken! I could not help it. I have spent at least a decade wondering where H.L. Mencken was when we really needed him. If the Republicans can inflict on us the worst of the past, we should be able to inflict on them some of the best of the past!

Voting Rights Act

Now that the Republicans have proven how important it is to have the Voting Rights Act by suppressing the vote in a number of the states they control, they are denying that we need such an act. Imagine my surprise! As I stated in an earlier post discussing Chief Injustice Roberts' opinion in the case of Shelby County v. Holder, “...the Republican Party has become the party of angry, often racist, old white men, and voter suppression is the desperate tactic of a minority party that has painted itself into a corner by selling a dark and paranoid prophesy to people who are already afraid of a democracy in which they no longer constitute the majority!” There is no way a party that is so intellectually and morally bankrupt is going to willingly surrender the weapon of voter suppression.  See “Judicial Sham[e]” under the label of “Supreme Court.”

Je suis Charlie

I am Charlie.  All decent people who care about liberty and reason are Charlie.  We must not let primitive, vicious, fanatics rob us of the freedom and tolerance so many civilized people sacrificed so much to establish.  Vive la France.  We are with you!

Dish This!

It is not Bill Oh'Really or Insanity Hannity that Fox News is putting forward to try to browbeat Dish into giving Fox what it wants. No sir, Fox is going for the indignation of women. That's right, they want momma to be pissed off because Dish is depriving her of her daily dose of paranoid drivel. So do we have a war on the sanity of women? Hell, no! Fox is merely protecting the right of women to be as paranoid and stupid as grumpy, racist, old white men. And liberal objections to calling Fox's mind rot “news” are like Michelle Obama criticizing labels touting the health benefits of artery clogging foods. In fact, the women on Fox are saying this is about the freedom to eat whatever you can afford to buy, and to believe whatever you want to believe regardless of how absurd or harmful that belief may be! Well all right, I may have misstated what the women on Fox are actually saying: according to Fox you are free to believe anything that fits into the right wing paradigm; any other belief is considered toxic to the oligopoly and therefore unpatriotic.

I would like to think that taking Fox off the air is an effort on the part of Dish to defend journalistic integrity by getting rid of the network that has no integrity (journalistic or otherwise). Unfortunately, that is not the case. Dish is not doing it to increase the IQ of its average viewer by getting rid of the dullards either. In spite of what Fox or Dish might want you to think, this is not about the rights of either of the parties or their viewers. This dispute is about MONEY!  Frankly, I am enjoying the show, but then I'm not jonesing for a fix of paranoid absurdity.  If you are jonesing for such a fix, try watching the lame stream media.  I know it is not the same, but they do quote politicians of both parties without pointing out the errors or lies of those politicians, and you are still free to believe whatever you want to believe.

Farewell Mario

In 1984 I was watching the Democratic Party's convention and was captivated by the Governor of New York. What made Mario Cuomo so captivating was not just his rhetorical eloquence it was also his compassion and the hope he displayed.  As the son of Italian emigrants, he did not forget how his parents struggled to build a new life in this country or the generosity that has made this country so great. In his speech Mario Cuomo made his rise to prominence sound like a metaphor for the rise of the middle class, and he reminded us that the rise of the middle class was made possible by the New Deal, labor unions, and the G.I. Bill. This was as remarkable as it was wonderful. At a time when Ronald Reagan had abandoned the New Deal for a philosophy of me, Mario Cuomo was still talking about we. Mario Cuomo was still talking about caring communities where neighbors looked out for each other and lent a hand in times of need; he was still talking about a generous country that embraced those neighborly values, and he was doing it at a time when Ronald Reagan, with his defense of selfishness, had reached the peak of his popularity.

Thank you, Mario. You were right about what makes this country great. It is at its best when it offers opportunities to all and struggles to right its historical wrongs. It is at its best when it rewards the hard work of the many rather than trying to satiate the greed of the few. It is at its best when we all accept the responsibility of serving our country and our fellow citizens as well as serving ourselves.