GOP War On Poverty

The Republicans hate poverty so much that they are trying to kill everyone who is impoverished. They particularly want to kill the impoverished who are female and/or a racial or ethnic minority (meaning not a white Anglo-Saxon male). Those privileged, white Anglo-Saxon male, Republicans implore members of their party to deny science, refuse to get vaccinated, and refuse to take any other reasonable precautions to prevent the spread of Covid. “It's a matter of personal freedom,” the Republican demagogues howl. It is very likely that they who are foolish enough exercise their “freedom” as defined by the Republican Party will be rewarded with Darwins. And how does this fit into the GOP war on poverty?  Well, the people most likely to die from this stupidity are the ones with modest incomes who live in red states that have turned down the medicaid expansion in the ACA. A group of Senate Republicans even threatened to delay action on a spending bill needed to avert a lapse in federal funding unless that bill also bars enforcement of the Biden administration’s vaccine-and-testing mandate for large employers. Those Republicans will choose profits over lives anytime as long as the lives being sacrificed are not the lives of the privileged few.

And now we come to the Republican Party's war on poor women. I know, Roe v. Wade protects all women, but in regard to overturning Roe v. Wade the women who are not poor are just collateral damage as far as the Republicans are concerned. A very blunt interpretation of what the reactionary supreme court injustices said during the oral arguments in the Mississippi abortion case (Dobbs v. Jackson) is that the damage to women who are well off is rarely fatal anyway! After all, women of means can afford to go to states that do not believe that the GOP's big, intrusive government should try to control a woman's body and/or her reproductive system. Those injustices are promoting a pre civil war view of the union. They are arguing that at least in this instance the primacy of federal law as established by the fourteenth amendment is no longer needed because the ability to travel means people can always opt to go to enlightened states that still protect the rights of individuals (assuming that the people who want to exercise that option have the means to do so). From the comments and questions of the reactionary injustices, it is apparent that they are about to render a decision that will overturn Roe v Wade regardless of the fact that many of those injustices told the senate confirmation committee that the right to an abortion is ”settled law.” Overturning Roe v. Wade and destroying the right to choose should be the final straw for everyone, but there is more, so much more.

Our democratic form of government is at grave risk, and that is no exaggeration. As if the attempted coup de'tat of January 6 and all the voter suppression laws were not enough, we have a plethora of other dangers arising from the Republican Party -- most of which are personified by Moscow Mitch McConnell, who has broken the senate and made it necessary to do away with the filibuster if we want to preserve the right to vote or pass any meaningful legislation. It was also Moscow Mitch who packed, politicized, and delegitimized the supreme court, making it vital to expand the court in order to restore its balance and its integrity and thereby prevent the reactionaries from taking us back to a dreadful past idealized by the privileged few. Now is the time for everyone to declare an all out election war on the misogynistic and fascist Republican party! As we used to say in the nineteen sixties, “if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem!” We must defend ourselves from the Republican Party's attacks on science, on democracy, on women, on the impoverished, and on immigrants. We cannot save our democracy and restore that great engine of prosperity (the middle class) unless Democrats are given large majorities in both houses of congress.

So You Want To Be Texas

If you are running for Governor or the state legislature and want to nationalize the election, you should bear in mind that independents do not pay much attention to politics or they would not be independents. Furthermore, most voters have a difficult time understanding and connecting the dots in regard to how the federal government works and how it impacts their lives. Although Trump is a toxic bag of crap to anyone with a triple digit IQ, his connection to a local candidate has to be patently obvious before an independent will acknowledge it and/or react to it. By not kissing Trump's vertical smile in public, Mr. Youngkin was able to avoid carrying the Trump albatross into Virginia's gubernatorial election, and all of Mr. McAuliffe's efforts to make the voters aware of Youngkin's support of Trump were for naught.

I think a much better way to nationalize the race would have been for Mr. McAuliffe to simply ask his fellow Virginians whether they “want to make Virginia another Texas, where voter suppression keeps the 'right people' in power, and sanctimonious fascists use the courts to terrorize women who dare to exercise the right guaranteed to them by the constitution as affirmed by Roe v. Wade.” Democratic candidates for state offices should make all Republicans run on Roe v. Wade and a woman's right to choose. They should also counteract the Republican lies designed to foster fear and loathing with true statements that will make people aware of the dangers posed by fascist Republicans such as Youngkin! Democrats should draw a contrast between protecting our children from the very real threat of Republicans who want to ban books children should be allowed to read and the imagined threat of critical race theory, which is not even taught to children in our schools. Let the voters know that a politician saying he will protect the children from the critical race theory is like a politician saying he will protect the children from saber toothed tigers!

In regard to the election next year, I was really struck by something someone on MSNBC (probably Claire McCaskill) said about Moscow Mitch McConnell being the most unpopular man in America. I think senatorial candidates and congressional candidates should all run against the body politic's malignant bowel obstruction, Moscow Mitch McConnell, and Trumpism. Make it personal for the voters: here is what the obstructionists are cheating you out of – the right to vote, child tax credit refunds, affordable medications, affordable child care so women can work again, expanded Medicare coverage, etc. Not a single Republican voted for those things, so do not blame Biden or the Democratic Party for not passing that legislation. Granted, that the Koch Bros' Manchin and big pharma's Kyrsten Synema are a problem, but if the Democrats had a larger majority, Manchin, Synema, and the Republicans could not deprive you of the legislation you need and deserve.

All right, I cannot resist throwing in this caveat: Manchin and Synema are coming close to being as obstructive and destructive as Moscow Mitch, and if they cross that line, we will have absolutely nothing to lose by shedding them like a snake's dead skin! The punditry is wrong; all of the things in the build back better plan are very popular, and it is the corporate Democrats who are refusing to compromise on any bill that will deliver what the people want and need! The angst is real! The obscene disparity in wealth is real! People have not been this angry or desperate since the great depression! This is no time for half measures. It will take something like the build back better plan (AKA the reconciliation bill) to restore the faith of the people in the promise of this country and its political system!

Ladies Of Uncommon Courage

To say that abortion is a divisive issue would be a gross understatement. Abortion clinics have been bombed, doctors performing abortions have been killed, and women seeking abortions have been threatened. So it is not just the embarrassment of revealing an intimate detail of their lives or the possible political consequences of doing so that congress members Cori Bush, Barbara Lee, and Pramila Jayapal risked when they bared their souls to tell us about the abortions they had. And yet those courageous women willingly suffered that embarrassment and took those risks because they quite correctly believe that a woman should have control over her body and her reproductive system.

I like to think that I am compassionate and empathetic, but I know that there is no way I or any other man can really understand what a woman who chooses to terminate a pregnancy is going through. What I do know is that it is something a woman never forgets. To state the obvious, the physical, mental, and emotional health of women is important. So while I may not be able to fully understand what women feel, I do listen. I also try to be supportive, particularly when they are making decisions that only they can or should make.

Now is the time to listen to those courageous congresswomen! Now is the time to support the cause that they and their sisters champion! Celebrate the courage of those congresswomen by writing your member of congress and your senators to tell them that the protections of Roe v. Wade must be guaranteed by legislation. While it is her body and her choice, the right to an abortion is a health issue and a quality life issue that has an impact on males as well as females. This is too important to stand on the side lines, gentlemen!

They're Stark Raving Mad!

Last weekend, after Gavin Newsom defeated the attempted Republican recall, I was back at the Democratic club's booth at the farmers market. During the weeks leading up to the recall election the magalomaniacs were bellicose, obnoxious, and often in my face. So I expected magalomaniacs, dyspeptic from an over indulgence of sour grapes, to come spew their bile at me. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that they came nowhere near me. I was also pleased by the number of people congratulating us and expressing their pleasure over the failure of the recall. But the celebration was short lived as reality set in. An agitated lady came up to us. She was pointing in the general direction of the Republicans, and she said: “They're insane, those people down there are insane. They're stark raving mad!” She told us that she had been accosted by a harpy who was screaming inane conspiracy theories and insisting that Trump had actually won the presidential election. The assessment of the those Republicans being insane was spot on. Unfortunately, it is evident to me that the entire Republican Party has gone stark raving mad!

I am sorry but insanity is the only plausible explanation for the self destructive actions of the Republican Party. How else do you explain why they are encouraging their followers to die of stupid by not getting vaccinated and by opposing the wearing of masks. I am not being hyperbolic here. Taking the vaccines and other measures to get the pandemic under control is literally a matter of life and death. Not being content with this deadly idiocy, the Republicans are also threatening to destroy our economy, and that is not an exaggeration either.

It is bad enough that the Republicans are threatening to shut down the government by filibustering the budget bill, but they are going way beyond that. Moscow Mitch is saying that he and other Republicans will prevent us from raising then debt ceiling again. Lets take a look at the debt ceiling.  At best it was and is a sop to the dumb asses. The debt ceiling dates back to WWI and was supposed to make it easier to finance the war through the sale of bonds by removing the requirement for congress to approve each issuance of the bonds to be sold. The problem with the debt ceiling, however, is that it does not serve its intended purpose. Rather than preventing us from incurring the “dreaded” debts it gives the economic terrorists, who falsely claim to be conservatives, a convenient way to repudiate our debts and thereby blow up the world's economy! The last time the Republicans used the debt ceiling as a weapon against the Democrats the credit rating agency, Standard & Poor's, downgraded the credit rating of the United States, stripping the world's largest economy of its prized AAA status.  This was a wake up call. The consequences of destroying the full faith and credit of the United States are so dire that even the Koch brothers told Ted Cruz we had to raise the debt ceiling the last time he threatened to oppose raising it.

Does Mitch McConnell have dementia? Has he forgotten that the financial backers of the Republican Party stand to lose billions of dollars if Moscow Mitch carries through on his insane threat? I know I keep saying this regardless of the fact that the Republicans have been ignoring the will of the majority for decades with no consequences, but there has to come a time when the people say enough. The Republicans are literally killing people, and they are taking away the right to vote. They are a real and very grave threat to our democracy and our economy. They are opposing the will of the majority by trying once more to overturn Roe v. Wade. They are opposing all measures to deal with climate change, and they oppose economic policies that more than 60% of the voters favor. How much further can the Republicans go before the voters grant them their death wish? Clearly it is essential for us to get rid of the damn filibuster so that we can protect the economy and the democracy of this nation. If the corporate Democrats, such as Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, refuse to do what needs to be done, then they must pay a high price for not protecting this country from the lunatics!

Babbling At Planet Earth

More than ever we poor earthlings are being bombarded with the irrational, hateful, and fearful babbling of the right wing. No place or person is spared from this onslaught. Even in deep blue California there are little dumb assistans that serve as sound boxes shouting out the disinformation with all the fanatical fervor one expects of deranged, true believers. To be a Republican today you must slavishly repeat the absurdities promoting and/or reflecting the fear and loathing base Republicans so desperately crave. “All your problems are caused by those other people, those brown or black people, those foreign people,” the Republican demagogues say. “Furthermore, getting vaccinated against the Covid virus will do terrible things to you, and mandating the vaccinations and/or masks will destroy your freedom and our democracy” (even though some vaccines, such as the one for small pox, have been around since the seventeen hundreds). Those demagogues falsely claim that compulsory vaccinations are unconstitutional, but the legal precedents could not be clearer.  As early as 1905, in the case of Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11, the United States Supreme Court ruled that laws mandating compulsory vaccinations are constitutional, and this decision has been upheld in numerous cases over the decades. Ah, but in the right wing alternate universe laws and logic do not matter. It would never dawn on someone afflicted with the right wing mental disability to ask why the Covid vaccine would be so dangerously different than all the vaccines that have been required by schools and other institutions for decades.

Unfortunately, it is not just the rejection of science that makes the Republicans so dangerously, and viciously stupid. What makes them so dangerously stupid is their rejection of any fact or reality that contradicts what they want to believe. One of the factors that allows the right wingers to shut out all inconvenient truth is the fact that they tend to live in clusters we rational beings refer to as dumb assistans. This clustering is important because one of the most prominent features of the right wing mental disability is the inability to process information or evidence that seems abstract or remote. For instance, right wingers will believe that any election they lose in California cannot be a legitimate election even though 46.5% of registered voters in California are Democrats, 24.1% are Republicans, and 24.1% state no part preference,. They will believe the election is fraudulent even though surveys show that 52% of voters stating no party preference lean Democratic, and the last time a Republican was elected governor was in 2006. The right wing Republicans refuse to believe that California is a deep blue state because all of their friends and probably their family members are Republicans, and if you have the right wing mental disability your anecdotal evidence always beats any empirical data.

One of the more remarkable consequences of these Republican delusions is the inability to understand that merely smearing Gavin Newsom in their effort to recall him is not enough. Rather than offering a viable alternative to Newsom, the Republicans are voting for an extreme right wing idiot who denies climate change, is an anti-vaxxer, dumps on immigrants, and thinks white people should be compensated for losing their slaves after the civil war. As an old white guy, it is not my place to tell anyone how to be black, but I do not think anyone, and particularly a person of color, should advocate compensating former slave owners for losing the “property” taken from them. Gavin Newsom could not be given a greater advantage than the one that now allows him to run against Elder.

Voter Fraud! The Republican demagogues obviously know how unlikely it is that Californians will recall their Democratic governor. I say this because several days before the election the Republicans began their assault on democracy by screaming voter fraud! Everyone who has a triple digit IQ and is not suffering from the Right Wing Stupid disability is saying no, it is the Republicans who are trying to commit the fraud! Their unconscionable cry of voter fraud is an incitement evoking images of the attempted coup de'tat of January 6. It is a tactic right out of the fascist playbook, and it is as un-American as you can get. The Republicans are dying of stupid, and they are trying to take democracy and Democrats with them!  They would rather meet us all in hell than to share power with the emerging minorities!

I watched the election returns with great anticipation last night. California is a blue state, and I was sure that it would do the right thing. I was not disappointed. Congratulations California! Kudos to my fellow citizens! The shrieking and babbling from the alternate universe still assault our ears and the danger posed by irrational and paranoid people is still too real, but our feet are firmly grounded on planet earth as we chart a course based on reality.

MAGA-LAMANIA!

The democratic club I belong to has had a voter registration booth at the local farmer's market for years. We see that as a public service and the duty of an organization committed to our democratic form of government. We do not try to hide the fact that we are partisan.  Our sign clearly states that we are a Democratic club. We also display the signs of local Democratic candidates, but, for the most part, we try to be inviting to people of all views. We also help people register regardless of their party preference - not just in compliance with the law, but also in the spirit of the law. In compliance of the law is easy, in the spirit of the law can be a challenge.

As I am sure most Californians know, the Republicans are now abusing California's recall provision by using it to unseat Governor Newsom for committing the unpardonable sin of being a legitimately elected Democratic Governor in a blue state. Last week we displayed a sign at our booth asking people to defeat the “Republican Recall!” This sign soon became a powerful magnet drawing to us a plethora of outraged Magalamaniacs who were intent on inflicting their insanity on us! I made the mistake of asking one of the Magalamaniacs why he wanted to recall the Governor.

The magalamaniac said he blamed Governor Newsom for the forest fires because Newsom did not heed President Trump's advise to clean and rake the [33 million acres] of California forest land. I almost asked him how he would like to pay the taxes needed to finance such an enormous task, but I knew he was not bright enough to grasp how expensive and time consuming that task would be. I usually avoid arguing with such dullards. I probably should have done so in this instance, but I could not resist the temptation to rub his nose in the hypocrisy by saying: “You know many of the large fires during the last ten years have been in the National Forest, and that's on Trump!”

The delusional twit responded by saying that the state was responsible for the National Forest! I was tempted to ask him if the many green trucks sporting the logo of the National Forest Service were just a figment of the imagination of we poor earthlings, but I knew it would not have any impact on him. Let's face it, there is no trebuchet of logic nor cannon of facts powerful enough to breech the vast, dense wall of willful ignorance and self deception guarding the alternate universe of the right wing. Unfortunately this dullard is not the exception; he is now the Republican norm. No election is final if the Republicans lose it, and they define liberal as being anyone with a triple digit IQ!

We [On] The People

 Everywhere you look in this country democracy is in peril. First of all, we no longer have a legitimate supreme court. What we have is Moscow Mitch's politicized abomination. And the only way you can believe that Chief Injustice Roberts is an institutionalist is if you believe that voter suppression and corporate acquisitiveness are regulative pillars rather than shameful, historical practices. Far from protecting the right to vote, Roberts and the other right wing injustices are defending voter suppression with decisions such as Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee. Those two decisions completely gutted the voting rights act of 1965, leaving the states free to suppress the vote of any race or group at will, and making Chief Injustice Roberts the Roger B. Taney of our times. Furthermore the opinion Roberts wrote in Citizens United makes it much easier for the wealthy and the corporations to secretly buy our politicians. This corporate, Jim Crow court has obviously changed “we the people” to “wee on the people! 

Okay, so our courts are now even more dangerous than useless. As Injustice Roberts said in Shelby County, it is up to congress to defend the right to vote, and to save our democracy [from the feckless, fascist fools kissing Trump's vertical smile]. It sounds reasonable, but don't hold your breath! It is great that the Democratic Party is a big tent, but moderate no longer means a liberal or conservative without a backbone. What moderate now means is a politician who represents rich corporate donors. If those moderates really represented the people of their districts instead of the big donors to their campaigns, they would support the disclosure act provisions in the For The People Act rather than opposing those provisions! I know, money is the mother's milk of politics, and all politicians want to win the next election. But there comes a time when what is right becomes more important than what is political! Our system depends on an informed electorate making wise decisions, and they cannot make informed decisions if they are being kept in the dark. Furthermore, fair elections, free of voter suppression are the heart and soul of any democracy! Democracy for the select few is not a democracy; it is an oligarchy! And if the oligarchy surrenders its power to someone like Trump, it is an autocracy!