Impossibly Worse

I know, I was with you when you said Congress cannot possibly get worse than it has been since the 2014 elections.  In fact I have been saying that this congress under John Boehner's speakership is the most dysfunctional congress since the Civil War! Now John Boehner is resigning. I know many of you are tempted to cheer his departure, but before you do that take a minute to think about what has caused this congress to become so dysfunction.

Thanks to the low voter turn out in two mid-term elections and the Republicans' gerrymandering of Congressional districts, the right wing lunatics were given enough power in the House of Representatives to all but force the resignation of Speaker John Boehner. What this means is that even though they are in the minority, the nihilistic extremists have gained control of the House and are close to seizing complete control of the Republican Party. That is what happens when the Republican Party panders to the fears and prejudices of the right wing extremists; the McCarthyites, the John Birchers and the Tea Partiers all attest to that!

As sad as it is to say: the anti-government insanity of the Republican Party combined with the defeat and departure of Mr. Boehner will probably make him seem like the poster boy for reason and compromise. Believe me things can and will get worse if we do not do something about it!

Plop! Splat! PU!

My title describes the sound of the Koch Bros. colostomy bag dropping out. I do not know whether to laugh or lament the fact that the Democratic Presidential Candidate will not have Scott Walker to run against. His dismal record as the Governor of Wisconsin would have made him a weak opponent in the general election. I hate to say that Wisconsin deserves him, but that is what happens when people are too lazy to vote in mid-term elections!

I wrote the preceding paragraph before Walker made his announcement. Technically he is suspending his campaign; which is a bit like a marathon runner stopping after the first four miles to rest his legs. He also said other candidates running against Trump should drop out so the best candidate can take the nomination from Trump? And who should stay in? Walker did not say. I guess he still wants to keep his stink in the national game by teasing the pundits into conjecturing about who he might endorse. That is about as close as he can come to being relevant on the national stage!

Gagging!

Last night I prepared for the Republican debates by turning off the television and eating a very early dinner. The expected food fight at the kiddie table would have been bad for my digestion, and if I had tried to eat anything while watching the so called adults at their table I would have probably thrown food at my television!

Thanks to CNN's moderator, Jack Tapper, the first part of the “debate” at the adults table was a food fight of sorts. I suppose there was some justice in CNN's approach. I mean it did give candidates a very public stage on which to reply to Trump's insults, and it gave Trump the same stage to address the criticisms leveled at him. The only winners in that regard, however, were the candidates who refused to answer the Jerry Springeresque questions. I say that because in spite of the praise Ronald Reagan received for his broken record recitations of “[t]here he goes again,” even a fairly large number of Republicans eventually tire of “I know you are but what am I” arguments!

Okay, I have to admit it. Some of the bickering was good theater. I was amused by Carly Fiorina's lame attempts to explain laying off 30,000 workers at Hewlett Packard and her explanation for why she was forced to resign from her position as CEO of HP. Trumps attempts to defend his four bankruptcies were less amusing because he has said it all before, during the first debate. 

Speaking of Carly Fiorina, I have to say the pundits are doing it again; they are lauding her performance. I suppose if you are a factually challenged Republican you might be impressed with her. For the rest of us she merely confirmed the image we Californians formed of her as a vicious, privileged, Ayn Rand liar who does not care about anything but her self. The vicious lies she told about Planned Parenthood during this debate were beyond the pale even for the paranoid ignoramuses she is trying to exploit! But the religio-ramuses will still buy Carly's lies, and the ignoramus, Mike Huckabee, will still be there to reinforce those lies!

The rest of the Republican field is not much better. The only candidates who did not seem to be competing for the title of Jingoistic idiot of the night were Dr. Rand Paul and John Kasich; although I do have to add the caveat that the good doctor's misdiagnoses makes him mistakenly opposed to the treaty with Iran.  I suppose that is to be expected.  If he is to remain in the party of no to government, science and reason he has to oppose everything Obama does.  Unlike John Kasich or Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul is more concerned about winning the primary than he is about winning the general election.  I might add here that Ben Carson's performance inspired yawns, while Jeb Bush's spirited defense of his brother's failed foreign policy inspired laughter. Yeah Jeb - run on that; I dare you!  The rest of the candidates were a bit like the backdrop -  they were noticeably there but not very memorable.

The one thing all the Republican Candidates have in common is this absurd proclivity for pissing off women and Hispanics. Yes I know Jeb and some of the others have nice words for women and Hispanics, but the policies those candidates offer are still far too harmful and offensive to appeal to the majority of women or the majority of Hispanics.

Fortunately the gagging induced by Republican duplicity and absurdity has subsided now. I have my voice back, and you will hear from me again soon.

Robert Borosage On The Bern

I am sure it will not come as any surprise to my readers that I am miffed at the lazy slugs of the lame stream media who insist on comparing Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump. People who respond favorably to the bellicose Trump- eting of the faux elephant- have only this vague notion that they should be fighting mad at something or someone; they are not bright enough to figure out what or who they should be fighting or why! They (Trump's followers) have always been so anti government that embracing the truculent braggadocio of a demagogue like Trump is the norm for them rather than the exception. Bernie Sanders' followers, on the other hand, have New Dealer expectations; they are actually demanding a government that will work for them again.

Rather than trying to explain the appeal of two candidates that are not comparable, Robert Borosage wisely avoids Trump/Sanders comparisons and likens Bernie Sanders' appeal to that of Britain's Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Borosage's article in Campaign For America's Future is entitled “Sanders and Corbyn: There Is An Alternative.” And “There Is An Alternative” is a refutation of Margaret Thatcher's statement that “there is no alternative” to the conservative agenda.

“Beneath the Corbyn victory and the Sanders surge is a revolt against politics as usual. What the chattering gaggles of 'political strategists' find it difficult to absorb is how much people are fed up with an establishment politics that has utterly failed them,” Mr. Borosage wrote.

What particularly seems to have alluded the pundits and political strategists is the fact that a very large segment of the public has figured out that the results of the policies Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush followed, as they echoed Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Regan heralding an “end of the big government era,” were devastating. As Mr. Borosage wrote:

There were “[f]inancial bubbles followed by financial collapse. Gilded Age inequality and a declining middle class. Mass incarceration. Public squalor. Unending trade deficits that savaged American manufacturing and American workers. Millions in America surviving on less than two dollars a day. And, the final insult, a “recovery” – strangled by a bipartisan embrace of austerity – that saved the banks and served the few, while most Americans struggle with stagnant wages and less security. People are increasingly convinced that the rules are rigged against them.”

Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders offer an alternative to economic policies that should have crashed with the economy and George W. Bush in 2008 but continue to impoverish the middle class to this day! Both Mr. Corbyn and Mr. Sanders have built up a large and growing following, but Mr. Borosage has a sage warning about expectations:

“Corbyn will have a hard time reviving a badly divided and demoralized Labour Party. Sanders remains a long shot in the Democratic primaries. But one thing is already clear: The center will not hold. The old consensus is collapsing in the wake of its failures. People are casting about for a new course.”

Pardon me while I scream: WE'VE WAITED TOO DAMN LONG ALREADY! FEEL THE BERN!

Daddy's GOP

Yesterday I was searching the inter net for a long forgotten quote that went something like this: when honest people abandon politics and government the dishonest people rule. I am still a bit frustrated because I could not find what I thought was a famous quote. But a new topic sprang to mind when my search turned up this quotation of President Eisenhower:

“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” wikiquote

Oh sweet reason and light! I cannot say that both of my parents were Republicans but they sure liked Ike, and with good reason. As David Oshinsky wrote:

“Eisenhower was known as a harmonizer, a man who could get diverse factions to work toward a common goal... Leadership, he explained, meant patienceand conciliation, not "hitting people over the head." – David M. Oshinsky, in A Conspiracy So Immense : The World of Joe McCarthy‎, (2005), p. 259

It is really tempting to compare what passes for leadership in the Republican Party today with the leadership provided by President Eisenhower, and to despair over how far into the paranoid – right wing – obyss that once great party has fallen.

Hark! I hear a huckster spouting campaign rhetoric that sounds like it was written by someone in the WWE, and he is the leading aspirant seeking to become the GOP's Presidential candidate. Also vying for the Republican nomination is candidate Huckabee who wants to discard Marbury v. Madison, two hundred years of judicial review, and the part of our constitution that provides for the separation of church and state. For those of you who prefer more traditional corporate lackeys we have candidate Jeb Bush. Jeb wants to re-institute the failed policies of his brother, George, who gave us at least one ill-advised war, crashed our economy, and ignored Eisenhower's warning by trying to destroy social security! But, as the pitchmen would say, wait! That's not all! There are sixteen people seeking the Republican nomination. And none of them have the courage to stand up to the mindless and vicious Republican reactionaries who now control congress. Those congressional reactionaries are constantly attacking unemployment insurance, labor laws, farm programs, the graduated income tax, and every other piece of progressive legislation passed during and since the Great Depression. They have gone so far as to threaten to make us default on our debts and have shut down the government in an effort to extort a repeal of the sort of progressive programs the people of this nation favor. Having failed in those efforts has not deterred them. They are threatening once more to shut down the government in order to defund Planned Parenthood, which is an organization so many people depend on for health care.

The problem with trying to compare Eisenhower Republicans with the Republicans of today is the dichotomy that existed in the Republican Party during the Eisenhower years. From 1952 to 1954 Senator McCarthy was so influential that even Eisenhower was afraid to oppose McCarthy's rein of terror. It was the Army - McCarthy hearings of 1954 that finally changed that! After the fall of McCarthy liking Ike and voting for Republicans became a reasonable thing to do. As I said in a March 4, 2009 post entitled “Obama v. The Dixiecans,” President Eisenhower saved the Republican Party by pulling it, kicking and screaming, to the political center. The problem is that this victory over the lunatic right was not complete. Like the Herpes Zoster virus that causes chicken pox and shingles, right wing paranoia and stupidity can never be purged from the body politic. And there are always Republican demagogues who are eager to stir up the fear and loathing that allows those right wing lunatics to re-emerge. This was true even during Eisenhower's time and in spite of his best efforts to arrest the influence of those demagogues!

Trying to rest control of the Republican Party from the lunatic right is not going to be an easy thing to do. The first thing it is going to take is for the American voters to wake up and kick the Republicans so hard they will be wearing their butt cheeks as ear muffs. Hopefully, it will not take another great depression to motivate the voters to deliver such a kick and to keep kicking during off year elections as well as during Presidential elections. If that happens the brighter Republicans will look for a leader who is capable of convincing the mentally challenged that the reason they cannot get anywhere is because they cannot walk with their butt cheeks hugging their ears and that the ass kicking causing that will not stop until they become reasonable.

I hope that happens soon. 2016 would be a good time to deliver the first kick. I am really looking forward to pointing a champagne cork at the unenlightened dullards as I celebrate a major Party's return to sanity! It would be so nice to have a functioning government that can get some meaningful legislation passed and reasonable agreements and treaties approved? Those are things we used to be able to take for granted!

Let Us Prey

Religious fanatics have gone from “let us pray for the souls of the sinners” to “let us prey on the rights of the sinners.” And they define as a sinner anyone who does not agree with them on all things. Citing God as a reason for depriving people of their legal rights is an exercise of religious despotism rather than religious freedom. Our founding fathers had some very good reasons for not permitting a theocracy, and we cannot allow anyone acting in an official government capacity to undermine that wise decision by inflicting their religious views on others! It is that simple.

Resignation is the remedy for any office holder who cannot perform the duties of that office, and it does not matter whether the duties of that office have changed or not. Can you imagine what would have happened if cops refused comply with the Miranda decision because that decision was made after they joined the police force and they had strong moral objections to telling a perpetrator to lawyer up? I might add here that the supreme court decision regarding gay marriage was foreseeable even to people who are challenged by blind faith.

The fact that Republicans running for President are demagoguing this issue speaks volumes about what is wrong with the Republican Party. By pandering to the fear and loathing of the religious right the Republican Party is trampling on the rights of others, and in many cases they are trampling on the rights of the majority.  Here is a news flash: the religious right is not victimized by people who use birth control, avail themselves of the services provided by planned parenthood, or get married to someone of the same sex!  The Republican's are free to damn Darwin, the religious tolerance we have struggled so hard to obtain, and the personal freedoms we have rested from the grip of the sanctimonious, but they defund and legislate against these things at their peril!  We have come way too far to return to a past we gratefully left behind!  Welcome to the twenty-first century or not as you choose.  We will know where you are if you ever want to join us.