Chris Christie

Chirs Christie announced his candidacy for President of the United States today.  He talked a lot about the inability of the political parties to compromise and the gridlock in Washington.  I seem to recall something about a bridge.  I think that bridge tells us a lot about how he handles compromise and gridlock.  He also tried to tell us how great he was at creating jobs and managing the economy. He did this with a straight face, knowing that his state lags behind its neighbors in creating jobs and providing the infrastructure and services a modern economy requires.  He hasn't exactly balanced New Jersey's budget either.

He is obviously playing to low information voters.  In that regard he is well advised to keep "telling it like it ain't!"  See Chris Christie is a liar.

Plague Flag

Hoist the black flag! The ship of state is a plague ship overwhelmed by job killing greed. In 2008 President Obama ran against the trade agreements that are creating huge and unfavorable trade imbalances, are destroying our labor unions, are devastating our middle class, and are shifting all of the wealth up to the top two or three percent of our citizens. The TPP trade agreement is a betrayal of the middle class that will tarnish the President's legacy. Even its proponents have to admit that it was done in secret, damages labor, and violates Obama's own rules by not providing any compensation for the workers who will be displaced by cheap labor overseas. It is yet another example of the government enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else!

Et tu Obama!  We expect such things from Republicans, but not from you!  Have you given up?  Have you resigned yourself to the fate of the oligopoly becoming an all powerful oligarchy?  Have you decided to end your term as just another minion of the plutocracy?  Are you going to serve those greedy masters by reneging on the promise we, your supporters, so eagerly embraced?

Click to see which Democratic Senators shafted American workers by allowing Fast Track to come up for a vote.

Impolite Topics

People today talk about how contentious our politics have become, but it is not just politics! Beliefs have always been challenged by our quest for knowledge, and the facts uncovered by that quest have always threatened orthodoxy. To a great extent the topics people deem to be the most impolite are the ones that challenge not just what they believe but what they want to believe. Over the last two centuries our knowledge has grown exponentially. To say that many people find this confusing and disconcerting would be an understatement. Thus we find more demagogues pandering to people who fear the threat knowledge poses to their beliefs. Ah, sweet validation!

If you listen, you can hear the braying of the wild dumb asses now: “Hey, I like the stuff that runs on fossil fuel. I don't care what the Pope says about global warming; if I do not consider that topic a matter of faith I can and will ignore his opinion. Furthermore, the fossil fuel industry and the Republican Party tell me global warming is not real. They ought to know, don't you think? Who are you going to believe? Are you going to believe the Koch brothers or Pope Francis? Are you going believe Senator snowball Inhofe or the Scientists?”

In the realm of history, which is a place very few Republicans have visited, there are not many events that involve more persistent myths than our Civil War. You have no idea how many Southerners have told me that the Civil War was not about Black people. The remarkable thing is that so many of them used a very impolite term for Afro-Americans while trying to convince me that their ancestors did not fight to keep those people enslaved. White Southerners have a real problem with that. They also have a problem with the fact that slavery, more than anything else, delegitimized their great rebellion. Admitting that so many of their ancestors gave their lives in an effort to preserve something so morally repugnant is more than most Southerners can bear. So here we have the white people of South Carolina denying historical facts while defending their display of a flag that symbolizes slavery, rebellion, and the racist groups that terrorized and suppressed the descendants of slaves freed by that war. Is this really the heritage they want to celebrate! White Southerners will say no. They will try to tell you that displaying that flag is merely their way of honoring the men who fought for state's rights. But “state's rights” was code for state laws permitting slavery, and after reconstruction it became code for permitting Jim crow laws, and now it has become code for the Republican Party's revival of voter suppression.

Now that the South is solidly Republican we also have prominent Republicans tying them selves into pretzels in an effort to avoid mentioning the racist motivations of the killer who slaughtered nine people as they worshiped at the Emanuel AME Church in South Carolina. People want to believe we have put racism behind us. And Republicans want us to believe we have put racism behind us. “It was the horrendous act of a lone lunatic,” they say, hoping that this will keep us from raising a fuss about the Confederate flag, voter suppression, the disparity in wealth and such. Those same Republicans also want us to ignore the fact that the killer was able to slay so many so quickly because guns are so readily available to criminals and lunatics. Them good ol' boys got to keep their guns to protect state's rights, don't you know?

Forced Ignorance

Mexico and Canada have now provided the answer to those of you who question whether the opponents of TPP are expressing a reasonable concern when they warn of the danger of our trading partners using the international court to subvert our laws. In response to a complaint by Mexico and Canada against the United States the World Trade Organization has ruled that “requiring retailers to label meat with the country where the animal was born, raised and slaughtered” is illegal.  Furthermore, the World Trade Organization threatens to enforce this ignorance with trade sanctions!

The only intelligent people who think ignorance is bliss are the people who blissfully exploit the ignorant!

Bewail The Loss Of Manhood!

Hark! The hue and cry has begun. And it is coming from the right:

“Hey, Damn it! Pay Attention! This is not just breaking the glass ceiling, or demanding equal pay for equal work, or telling us that women will make their own decisions about reproduction and reproductive health even if it means defying us. Those things are about power. This is far more important. This is about our masculinity, our manhood! There is nothing more masculine than a jock strap, and we point to the guys who wear them as examples what a man should be. How dare Bruce (Kaitlyn) Jenner destroy the image of manly athletes! How can I tell my son to be a man like Bruce Jenner when Bruce Jenner does not want to be a man like Bruce Jenner? How can I explain why any man would turn in his jock strap for a g-string?”

All I can say to that is: “buck up lads! It is not your loss. What Kaitlyn Jenner is doing has nothing to do with your genitalia or gender identity. And gay marriage has nothing to do with your heterosexual marriage. And the choices women make regarding reproduction and reproductive health do not destroy your religious beliefs. We must all make our own decisions, and we must be afforded the freedom to do that.”

Unfortunately what I just wrote was an exercise in futility. Asking a person to cast aside his fear when his whole world view revolves around fear is useless. So let me address the demagogues rather than the true believers. Ginning up that fear might win over the evangelicals, but it is wiser to avoid expressing an opinion about such social issues if your base will let you.

Damn it! I am writing to myself again. All of the Republicans who are reasonable enough to heed my advice have been purged from the party or mouth the party line out of fear. And that is something we really should lament.

Manure Pitching-Texas Style

Oh Whoopee!  Ted, the Texas Turd, Cruz and Rick, the Texas Twit, Perry are running for the office of President of the United States.  That is it Folks, as sad as it is to say, that is what Texas has to offer!  It is now official, I have just watched the Texas Twit announce his candidacy.  The announcement was far worse than I imagined it would be, and I honestly thought I had prepared myself for the worst.  I struggled mightily to suppress a gag reflex triggered by Mr. Perry's cloying sentimentality and the copious heaps of  bullshit he was slinging at anyone within earshot.  I hereby extend my sympathy to all the fact checkers who are bound to suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of trying to document all the lies.

The Problem for Republicans is that reality is beginning to assert itself.   The majority of the people in this nation are not happy about the great disparity in wealth caused by enriching the rich at the expense of everyone else.  Because the people of this country are finally objecting to being had, it has become almost mandatory for a politician to tell them that he or she is going to do something to help them.  This is why Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, and now Rick Perry are trying to blame President Obama for the wealth gap.  And just what did Rick Perry say he would do to address this wealth gap?  He promised to "fix entitlement programs, unshackle free enterprise, and speed up free trade agreements."  In other words, he is going to severely cut earned benefits programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Insurance, as well as cutting any program that will help the people who are suffering the most from the disparity in wealth.  He is also going to do away with regulations so the corporations will be free to ream us harder and deeper and act even more irresponsibly than they did prior to 2008.  Furthermore, he is going to reward our industrialists with trade agreements that will make it easier to export our jobs.  Sounds a bit like what an arsonist would do to free your house of termites, doesn't it?

To show you just how absurd Mr. Perry is, he actually said he would void any agreement that allowed Iran to get a nuclear weapon.  Since the whole purpose of negotiating an agreement with Iran is to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon it means Mr. Perry will not be required to do anything, which, judging by his policies,  seems to be the only thing he is capable of doing without causing harm.  The strategy of Rick Perry and all the other Republicans can be summed up with:  lie, defy, and deny.  Lie by blaming everything on President Obama and the Democrats, defy the voters with voter suppression and by ignoring what the polls tell us the voters want, and deny that you are lying and defying.

For some reason all the Republicans, including Rick Perry, seem to think we are suffering from some sort of dementia that will make us forget the last administration and the mess it created.  It was George W. Bush's wars that destabilized the mid-east, and it was George W. Bush's policies that are responsible for the crash of 2008.  Furthermore, it is the obstructionist tactics of the Republicans that have slowed the recovery!  There is no denying that we have a crumbling infrastructure because the Republican Party refuses to fund the work that needs to be done.  See my May 20, 2015 post, entitled "In Pursuit Of Selfishness."

If you want to know more about how Wall Street is hosing us I highly recommend "Yves Smith On The Art Of Class War" posted by Undercover Blue on Digby's Hullabaloo and the post by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism.