The Blind Pigs' Acorns

The Republican circus is coming to town. The barkers and clowns are still in the process of assembling the pachyderms for the parade, but they are eager to pitch their tent along with the same, lame economic theories they were pitching before the Great Depression. I know that does not sound very appealing, but fear not - be of good cheer!  Even blind pigs find acorns once in a while, and it is fun to watch them bump into the absurdities and step in the right wing crap as they search:

“We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share,” Reagan said in a speech to high school students. The loopholes “sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing,” he said, “while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped.”  Class Warrior?

I am sure the lunatic right wingers would think so if they were not too busy trying to deny that Ronald Reagan ever said it. The rest of us know better. This was one of Mr. Reagan's rare acorns. It was a time when his ideology slipped, and he had a moment of clarity that allowed him to see what was reasonable.  Below is a sage warning from an equally unlikely source:

"Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.” Barry Goldwater

How prophetic!   And this warning was from the guy who also said: "Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."  Do I need to tell you which quotation was one of Mr. Goldwater's rare acorns?

In this post I have done what people do when they quote what they hope other people will accept as authorities.  Which is to say I was very selective in what I was quoting.  The problem with using quotations in this manner is that your opponents will find and use statements by the same people you quoted to support their contention that you are full of it (and most people, no matter how ideological they are, are inconsistent enough to permit that).  If your opponents are members of the Christian right they will also quote the bible to support their denial of all inconvenient facts, and they will threaten to pray for you.

A Seat At The Table, Please!

If we opponents to the TPP trade agreement seem to be making an all or nothing argument it is because that is how globalization and trade agreements were sold to us. Think back a minute: remember all the Friedmanesque assurances that free trade would not hurt us, that we could give up our manufacturing and become the nation of inventors. I did not have a blog back then, but I was telling anyone who would listen that this was a horribly destructive fairy tale and that if globalization became an all or nothing proposition we would be left with nothing!

With all due respect to President Obama, Elizabeth Warren is right. All of the major corporations that would be effected by trade agreements are invited to the table to discuss the terms of those agreements, but labor has no chair at that table! Why? Why is labor not consulted? The large labor unions hire some of the best economists in the world. Unions know that the more prosperous the nation is the more prosperous their members will be, assuming their members are allowed to collectively bargain for a fair share of the wealth. It does not take a genius to figure out that our workers cannot compete with a guy who makes less than a dollar an hour, and that our businesses salivate over the prospect of hiring people who will work for starvation wages. Given the number of jobs we have already lost to bad trade agreements the secrecy about the terms of TPP and the exclusion of labor union participation in the process seem particularly egregious.

I have to say that the proponents of TPP are also presenting an all or nothing argument because they are making it sound like there can be no trade without the agreement. The truth is that a high volume of trade takes place every day without such agreements and that such agreements are only desirable when they offer us some advantage or protect us from unfair trade practices. Go to the principles for trade agreements set forth by the Progressive Caucus. We should use whatever tools we have to negotiate agreements that conform to those principles, and the terms of the agreements should be disclosed and debated before the agreements are ratified.

Loom of Gloom

As Hunter Thompson demonstrated, fear and loathing can be a commercial venture as well as the propaganda tool of dictators, demagogues, and other ambitious people who have nothing positive to offer. So here we have the right wing weavers spinning away on the Loom of Gloom in an effort to create enough fear and loathing to cover up the fact that the Republican Party is too morally and intellectually bankrupt to offer any real solutions or any positive programs that will benefit the people of this great nation. Those right wing weavers are aided and abetted in doing this by the drama casters and writers who know that lurid accusations and descriptions designed to create and promote fear and loathing will draw the rubes to pitchmen who pay handsomely for the audience. Most news outlets (the ones owned by Rupert Murdock being the most notable exceptions) demonstrate a shred of journalistic integrity by not printing or presenting obviously spurious accusations or stories by known liars such as Andrew Breitbart and the character assassins who continue perpetuate his scummy blog (or is it bog). The problem is that the news organizations are quickly given the cover they need to present questionable  stories and accusations when the lies are repeated by politicians such as Rand Paul or, even less excusable, when the lies are repeated by the Fox disinformation factory.

I might add here that books carry more weight than blogs or news stories even though the sources of information in the books are often as questionable as the sources of erroneous news stories. The reason I am bringing this up is because of a new book entitled Clinton Cash... by Peter Schweizer, and published by HarperCollins, which is owned by the king of right wing prevaricators, Rupert Murdoch.  As Media Matters warns:

“Media should be cautious with Republican activist and strategist Peter Schweizer's new book Clinton Cash. Schweizer has a disreputable history of reporting marked by errors and retractions, with numerous reporters excoriating him for facts that "do not check out," sources that "do not exist," and a basic failure to practice "Journalism 101."”

In spite of the shady reputation of the author, the known sensational falsehoods presented as facts by so many of the so called news outlets owned by Murdoch, and the warning issued by Media Matters and others a quick Google search will bring up the following, and this is just a partial list:

Fox News-Apr 20, 2015

Laura Ingraham told viewers Monday on “Special Report with Bret Baier” that the latest scandal to plague the presidential candidacy of Hillary ...

The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy: Hillary Clinton's Scandals Finally ...
Breitbart News-20 hours ago

New Book, 'Clinton Cash,' Questions Foreign Donations to Foundation
Highly Cited-New York Times-Apr 19, 2015

Revealed! The Scandal Rand Paul Promises Will Derail The Clinton ...
In-Depth-Forbes-Apr 20, 2015

Only one presidential candidate voted for war with Iraq: Hillary Clinton
Opinion-Baltimore Sun-Apr 20, 2015

Getting back to basic facts in the next Hillary 'scandal'

Blog-Washington Post (blog)-Apr 21, 2015

So far even though the Republicans have been throwing shovels full of crap at Hillary Clinton none of it has stuck.  It looks to me like they have just launched another swift boat full of crap.  I say this while having to admit that I have not put on my waders to slop through the muck that is too likely to infest Schweizer's tale.  I must also admit that I am not inclined to pay for privilege of finding out how smelly that muck is.  If I am going to pay for fear and loathing I would rather have Hunter Thompson's heirs profit from it than Rupert Murdoch and some disreputable political hack who apparently has no conscience.

Thoroughly Modern Marco

Like most Republicans, Marco Rubio thinks the past is whatever he wants it to have been. I suppose it is this type of ignorance that allows him to portray Hillary Clinton as the candidate of yesterday, espousing the policies of yesterday. What makes his contention so delusional are the policies of undoing that he and his party offer as an alternative. Rather than merely going back a few decades to the silly sop served up by Saint Ronnie; the Republicans are trying to undo an entire century of progress. That is right, they want to undo all of the progressive legislation that was passed after the philosophy of laissez faire economics and lazy faire government failed in the colossal crash of 1929. Anyone who has really studied what it was like back then will tell you that the good old days before labor unions and the New Deal were terrible!

Sorry Marco, but there is way too much pain in the detritus of Laissez faire economics and lazy faire government.  No knowledgeable, thinking person with more of a conscience than Ayn Rand would ever consider returning to a time when so many hard working men and women needlessly suffered from poverty caused by starvation wages and other circumstances they could not control.  

Go Left My Lady!

The video Hillary Clinton produced to announce that she is running for President was a fluff piece. It was warm and fuzzy and totally devoid of any substantive policy statements. I am familiar with the old saw that unsolicited advice is worth what you pay for it. I also know that the probability of Hillary Clinton ever seeing or even hearing about this post is almost nil. But if I were inclined let those things deter me I would not have created this blog in the first place. So here goes, here is what I have to say to Hillary.

Forget about the Bill scandals. The only people who are still carrying them around like a bad rash are Wayne La Peebreath, the right wing dumb asses, and the GOP demagogues who exploit the right wing dumb asses. Fortunately that rash is rarely contagious, and the people who have it are never going to vote for you anyhow. I do not think you have to worry about Benghazi either. The Republicans will continue to beat that drum, but all you have to do is remind people of who deprived you of the funds you requested to provide more security for our embassies and consulates. Whether those funds would have made a difference in the case of Benghazi does not matter. What matters are the optics of the Republican Party's hypocrisy and the shameful way the Republicans are using for political purposes the deaths of patriots who bravely risked their lives by serving this country in places they knew were dangerous.

Now that I have talked about the baggage you do not have to worry about, let me tell you about the baggage you should worry about. You are perceived by many people as being a corporate Democrat. Furthermore, the Clinton name is associated with Globalization and Gramm-Leach-Bliley. That perception and that association make a heavy load, and you cannot lighten it with fluff pieces.

Even the people who do not pay much attention to politics know they are getting screwed! They know about the exportation of good paying jobs, and they feel the pain this has caused. If you are smart you will back away from fast tracking and the TPP just as fast as you can peddle. The trade imbalances and jobs lost because of prior trade agreements make fast tracking and TPP issues that both the left and the right can and will use against you!

In regard to Gramm-Leach-Bliley, let me say that toxic loans and the bailouts still resonate as issues. Getting rid of Glass Steagall was a huge mistake that we paid for with the crash of 2008. You can appeal to both left and right by saying that we must prevent future bailouts with regulations that will prevent the greedy behavior that caused the crash. Pledge to reinstate the ban on the FDIC insuring derivatives, and let it be known that you favor strengthening Dodd-Frank rather than weakening it. I know your Wall Street and Bank connections will make that difficult, but reinstating Glass-Steagall and breaking up the mega-banks and financial firms would be a lot more objectionable to your contributers. And neither of those things is an idle threat. If the mega-banks and financial institutions cause another crash, which is very likely, the clamor for anti-trust suits and the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall will become irresistible!

Embrace a progressive agenda. The popularity of Elizabeth Warren is not simply a left wing phenomenon. A progressive agenda is what is clearly called for now, and there are things in that agenda that appeal to a wide range of voters. In fact, the Democrats who ran away from a progressive agenda are the ones who lost during both mid-terms, and it was not just because those Democrats were running in red states. Running as Republican Lite does not work. Give the voters a clear choice. Promising more of the same is also a non-starter. The people of this country want a fair shake, and you need to tell them they are not going to get it from the Greedy Old Plutocrats and their lackeys.

Drawing a distinction between yourself and Republicans by talking about the need for an increase in the minimum wage, and the need to protect and in some cases expand earned benefit programs such as Unemployment Insurance, Social Security, and Medicare is good. Those programs and the ACA are meat and potato issues, as is equal pay for equal work. But we need more. The decrease in real wages has become intolerable. We need a President who will follow the principles the progressive caucus set forth for trade agreements and one who will fight for labor unions and the right to collectively bargain. We also need a President who will figuratively give the five Supreme Injustices the finger by fighting for a Constitutional Amendment that will overturn Citizens United and decrease the role money plays in our political system.

Tactically, it is also time to employ a little Republican style jiu jitsu. Up until Ronald Reagan it was Democrats who talked about the undo influence “special interests” had on the Republican Party. What the Democrats meant by special interests were large corporations, the Chamber of Commerce, and the large financial institutions (you know, the people who crashed the economy in 2008). Reagan turned that issue on its head by re-defining “special interests” to mean labor unions, environmental groups, etc. (you know, the people who fought for living wages, safe work places, and the preservation of a beautiful place to live, work and play). I think it is time for us to turn the table on Republicans by re-defining the bogey man Republicans call “Big Government.”

It is the Republicans who want a big, intrusive government that will tell women what they can or cannot do in regard to planning their families and careers, and what kind of health care they can get. It is the Republicans who want a big government that restricts our democracy by putting up impediments that deprive groups of citizens of the right to vote. It is the Republicans who want a big government that will stop providing the public schools our taxes pay for and will force us to pay more to have our kids educated by private companies the government will use our tax dollars to subsidize with no restrictions on how much those private companies can charge us directly. It is the Republicans who want a big government that wrings from the middle class the price of all the subsides and services the government provides to our wealthiest corporations and our wealthiest citizens while reneging on the benefits of earned benefits programs such as Social Security and Medicare by turning those programs over to private companies that will make a whopping profit at our expense.

I think most people would rather have a Democratic government that will go into board rooms to protect our jobs and our safety rather than a Republican government that will go into our bedrooms and our doctors' offices to prevent us from using our own good judgement to make choices religious fanatics might find objectionable?

Snippy Snippets

The unending repetition of the Republican accusations about Benghazi and the Affordable Care Act are enough to send into a political coma anyone who is bright enough to have fact checked those accusations years ago. So today, because there are few topics that are actually timely, I am not going to burden you with my opinion about timely topics. Instead, I am going to burden you with my opinion about what is not new and about the snippets I have lifted from what passed for news during the last week.

Nothing new and nothing learned: The Republicans are trying to sell us the same wooden nickels they were selling at the time of the robber barons and well into the nineteen thirties, and they are still pitching the same bitch they pitched back then: “Big Government and Socialism are taking this country to hell in a hand basket,” they bark. If that were true I am sure the indignity of being carted off to hell in a hand basket rather than an Armani Bag would be particularly odious to them! Of course it is not true, but that does not prevent Republicans from trying to convince us that taxing businesses or regulating them to protect the free market by preventing monopolies is class warfare; as are laws protecting collective bargaining and laws designed to protect consumers from unsafe products and unfair trade practices. The Republicans honestly expect us to believe that the known dangers of plutocrats ripping us off at every opportunity are more desirable than the dangers posed by a government that would try to prevent that. “And anyone who tells you starvation is starvation no matter who is depriving you of food is a lier and probably a socialist.”

All right, maybe the quotation marks were not justified, but that is the essence of what they are saying. Stripped of all the bull, they are arguing that the people who are starving because the plutocrats are exploiting them deserve to starve because those victims did not have the talent to become powerful enough to exploit the plutocrats. And as their high priestess, Ayn Rand, would have us believe it is outrageous for the government to interfere with this natural order of things. The only evolution the Republicans believe in is social evolution, and they believe social evolution is God's will. That must seem odd, but random be damned, the social order created by survival of the fittest has to be ordained by God because the dumb asses demand that kind of divine will to justify the suffering caused by allowing themselves to be so brutally exploited.

On the election front: We eagerly wait to see who will climb onto the Republican carousel of candidates for the 2016 Presidential race. The anticipation builds with each passing day. Will we be treated to a carousel of clowns as we were in 2012? I certainly hope so. I could use a good laugh, but it appears we will be minus at least one of the more infamous clowns. Louie Gohmert (AKA Gomert's Pile) has announced that he is opting out. His reason for opting out is the only comedy he is willing to provide at this time. The follicly challenged Mr. Gohmert says television makes a candidate's appearance all important. He believes the voters would reject him because of what is not on his head rather than because of what is not in his head. While I have to admit that Mr. Gohmert proved me wrong when I said anyone stupider than Michelle Bachmann could not walk and talk at the same time, Mr. Gohmert has, more often than not, demonstrated his inability to think and talk at the same time; so I hereby amend my contention. I shall miss Mr. Gohmert's inadvertent drollery during whatever debates the Republicans decide to have. Maybe the Trumpster can fill the void.

Every now and then Abby Huntsman of MSNBC discards the mantle of reasonableness to remind us that she is still a modern Republican. The other night she defended Ted, the Texas turd, Cruz, and praised him for his sincerity. She embraced Cruz and his nihilistic followers as valuable members of the Republican Party. And that was going way too far. My parent's generation did this country a big favor by condemning Senator Joseph McCarthy, and my generation did this country a big favor by laughing the John Birch Society into irrelevance. Senator McCarthy's witch hunts destroyed lives, and the Birchers fully endorsed what Tail Gunner Joe McCarthy was doing. The Birch Society even accused President Eisenhower of being a Communist, which was synonymous with traitor back then. The problem is that relevant or not the right wing lunatics are always with us, and now, as it has done in the past from time to time, the Republican Party is providing those lunatics with a cloak of legitimacy that empowers them.

What Ted Cruz and the lunatic right are accusing President Obama of doing is no more accurate or ethical than calling President Eisenhower a communist, and the fear mongering of Ted Cruz and his ilk is downright dangerous! What bothers me the most is that the nihilistic right wing has so much influence now that even Republicans who behaved responsibly in the past are joining in with the absurd accusations, the name calling, and the outrageous efforts to prevent Democrats from doing anything that might be beneficial to this country and its citizens. Something has to change. We cannot have Senators undermining the President's efforts to negotiate with foreign governments, and we must not tolerate a Republican Congress demanding the payment of a ransom to the wealthiest members of our society in order to get the government funded or our debts paid.

My advise to Abby Huntsman is to treat Ted Cruz and the lunatic right wing of your party the same way you would treat an insane uncle or cousin: accept him because he is a part of your family, but do not encourage his destructive behavior by saying it is all right or by praising the sincerity of the feelings that prompted his destructive behavior.

Scary, Scary

Here is a hint for people who (often wrongly) describe themselves as conservatives. Socialism may be the bogeyman under your bed, but it is not the bogeyman under my bed. It does not matter how much dread or fear you are able express, shrieking the word “socialism” will not send a chill down my spine. I think most people would agree that the interstate highway system and the transcontinental railway are good things. Telephones, running water, gas, and electricity are also good things. We would not have the interstate highway system, the transcontinental railway, or the utilities we now take for granted if the government had not played an active role in providing them. Public education, Social Security, Medicare and Unemployment Insurance are also socialistic, but the last time I looked there was still more than enough capitalism and free enterprise to go around. Therein lies the absurdity of what the fear mongers do and the knee jerk reaction they get when they invoke the name of their favorite bogeyman, socialism.

Although right wingers can see colors, shades of colors are lost on them; for the so called conservatives everything has to be all this or all that. They view every government regulation or service as toxic socialism that imperils the free enterprise system; is that anything like the monopolies destroying the free market by eliminating competition? Trust Bustng, anyone? The conservatives would answer that question with a hell no that clearly demonstrates just how oblivious they are to the contradictions built into their paradigm. There are some things, such as building the interstate highway system or making other improvements to our infrastructure, that the government must do because no one else can or will do them. Believe it or not, there are also some things the government does better than free enterprise does.

Although the Republicans who are trying to destroy public education may be doing it because middle class people with college educations are less likely to vote for Republicans, I think money is the stronger motivation for those destructive demagogues! There are a lot of people who will make a ton of money if we replace our public schools with private schools. Think about that for a moment. This is a for profit venture! If you believe that privatizing our schools will provide your kids with a better education at a lower price you are mistaken! Ask yourself a very simple question: Who can charge less, the guy who has to make a profit or the guy who does not have to make a profit?

Making money is every private company's raison d'etra. The insurance companies provide us with a good example of what this means. They do not have an incentive to provide you with the best medical care because the medical care they pay for is called overhead, and like all businesses they want to maximize their profits. The incentive, therefore, is to deny coverage whenever possible and pay out as little as possible! This is why we desperately needed medical care reform, and it is why we must not let the Republicans destroy the Affordable Care Act (aka the ACA). And yes, I do see their efforts to repeal the ACA as an all or nothing proposition because they have not come up with any desirable replacement for the ACA. Right now they seem to be trying to convince us that repealing the ACA will please the God of free enterprise so much that he will zap us with a cure for the profit motive that caused the insurance companies to hose us all those years. News flash for the Republicans: no one who can talk and think at the same time is going to buy that fairy tale!

Trust But Verify

The idiot Republicans are oblivious to history as usual. They keep squealing “You Can't Trust Iran!” We could not trust the Soviet Union either, which is why we verified their compliance with the terms of the agreements we negotiated with them. Come to think of it, Republicans are also oblivious to the present because we are now verifying Iran's compliance with the terms they agreed to when we started negotiating with them. You would think this would make Republicans heed the advice of their patron saint, Ronald Reagan, who said, “Trust but Verify.” Unfortunately, saints, like the Bible and the Constitution, are usually quoted to justify actions rather than guide them!

It is a very sad thing to have to say, but the Republicans are acting as though the present administration is a greater enemy of this nation than are the entities that actually threaten us.  So to all those Republicans who are so eager to fight President Obama and start a war with Iran I say, "join the Israeli army."  Put your own sorry asses on the line, and let the rest of us continue to act like real Americans by supporting rather than undermining the President's reasonable efforts to find a peaceful solution.