Political ADD

For decades now a very large percentage of our citizens have been suffering from a mental disorder. The disorder I am referring to is PADD, Political Attention Deficit Disorder. Sadly, the people who are afflicted with PADD are the very ones who can least afford to deal with the consequences of this disorder. For twenty years now at least eighty per cent of our citizens have seen their incomes remain flat while the price of energy, food and housing rose. During that same time the top ten percent have seen their incomes grow and the top one percent have seen their incomes soar to unprecedented heights. This degeneration of the wealth of the middle class did not happen all at once. It took place over a period of time. The people noticed it as they struggled to make ends meet, but they did not think beyond their personal finances. This is understandable. Unless there is a national crises to draw their attention people will ignore the larger picture and concentrate on what they can do to provide for their families.

The crash of 2007 was such a crises, and the reaction to it was predictable. Even a majority of the people suffering from PADD voted for change by electing President Obama and the other Democrats running for office. Unfortunately, this vote for change was not an informed decision; rather it was an instinctive, emotional reaction. During the mid-term elections of 2010 the voters reacted emotionally again. The economy had improved by then, but unemployment was still at an unacceptable level. Furthermore, far too many people were still losing their homes, and the wages of the people who were fortunate enough to be employed were not increasing. So the voters blindly punished all incumbents, a very large percentage of which were Democrats. This incredibly stupid act on the part of the voters actually rewarded the Republican Party for its failed economic policies and its unconscionable obstruction of all reasonable attempts to relieve the suffering and get us out of the recession. So what accounts for such stupidity?

It has been said that they who do not know history are condemned to repeating it. What the people of this nation have forgotten is the very struggle that created the middle class in the first place. At the start of the twentieth century it was becoming obvious that unregulated capitalism was degenerating into the sort Social Darwinism that makes a few people unbelievably wealthy while everyone else is left with very little or nothing. Furthermore, Frederick Jackson Turner’s safety valve, the frontier, no longer existed. President Theodore Roosevelt reacted to the emerging oligopoly that was concentrating our resources, our means of production, and our wealth into fewer and fewer hands by breaking up the trusts in order to bring about the sort of competition that stimulates innovation and opportunity. As beneficial as the trust busting was it did not go far enough. The people soon realized that the greed of the few was insatiable. It was that greed that brought about the labor movement and the unions. By the time of the great depression the people of this nation had accepted the fact that they needed unions to collectively bargain with their employers. The depression also made them realize how much they needed a proactive government that would pass and enforce the regulations needed to keep the unscrupulous few from putting our entire economy at risk by taking unfair advantage of the many. The oligopoly and the Republican Party fought the reforms of President Theodore Roosevelt, even though he was a Republican. They also fought the labor unions, and they fought Franklin Roosevelt during the depression. They accused the labor unions and both Roosevelts of class warfare and of creating a big, oppressive government. If those charges sound familiar it is because the new oligopoly and the Republican Party are falsely using those same accusations against the Democrats today.

The difference between then and now is that the generation that suffered through the depression and the generation that fought in World War II were paying attention to what was really happening. They realized how hypocritical and false those accusations were. They knew which political party and which politicians where representing the people and which ones were selling out to the special interests. They had labor unions and other groups that helped to keep them informed and active. What changed this was an adjustment made by the Republican Party. With the election of Dwight Eisenhower the Republicans finally acknowledged that the political center had moved. Most people identified themselves as moderates, but even moderates were embracing the changes brought about by Franklin Roosevelt and by the labor unions that fought for fair wages and safer work places. What Eisenhower taught the Republican Party was that it had no choice. If it was to remain a viable political party it had to accept the regulation of Wall Street and the banks, it had to accept the anti-trust laws that prevented monopolies, and it had to accept Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and the other safety nets. With both parties now trying to occupy the middle ground a nap was sounding pretty good to the voters. Neither party seemed inclined to do anything too damn radical, and the voters felt free to concentrate on their daily lives without worrying too much about what their government might be doing.

The Republicans, however, had accepted the changes of the New Deal grudgingly. In the early nineteen sixties they decided to test the political waters by nominating Barry Goldwater as their Presidential candidate. This hard turn to the right was a wake up call, and the voters handed the Republicans a stinging rebuke. The Republicans reacted to this by returning to the center. Vietnam and the civil rights movement then provided a jolt no one could sleep through. The combination was devastating in many ways. It was an era in which much needed changes took place, but the war and the effort it took to accomplish those needed changes left the people of this nation totally exhausted. As Harding said before the great depression, the people wanted “a return to normalcy.” The general attitude was “enough with the social movements and the politics. Let me get on with my life.” The people then stopped paying attention. They accepted as a fact the notion that each generation would be better off than the preceding generation. They saw no need to pay that much attention to the larger picture. They believed that if they worked hard and made the right decisions everything else would take care of itself. This is how we got Political Attention Deficit Disorder, another Harding in the form of George W. Bush, and another economic crises.

Because of PADD we became too lethargic to see how the need to raise enough money to cover the increasing costs of political campaigns was perverting our political system. Now that our politicians are so dependent on the support of the special interests, the strategy of those interests has become quite simple: “Keep the public in the dark and the political wheels well greased.” The Republicans are more than happy to serve their wealthy masters by keeping us in the dark. They do this by eagerly quoting Ronald Reagan: “Government is not the solution it is the problem,” they say. The Republicans want us to believe that it is the power of the government to govern rather than the power of money that corrupts our politicians. The reasoning, if you can call it that, is that a government that does not govern, tax, or regulate cannot be corrupt because it has nothing to sell. If you do not breath you will not get lung cancer either. The result of accepting this nihilistic crap is already apparent. Not since the gilded age following the Civil War has there been a time when so many politicians have done so much for so few at the expense of so many.

The generations before us knew better. They knew that the solution must be political because it is only by exerting our collective strength in the form of our government that we can curb the greed of the few and maintain a system that provides opportunities for all. The first step in doing this is to deal with the corrupting influence of money. In talking about political corruption and graft the old political boss, Plunkett of Tamanny Hall, once said, “it is the pigs that do not know when to back away from the trough who get caught.” Invariably those pigs will use the excuse that everyone does it, thereby demonstrating the need to prevent anyone from doing it. The first step in preventing anyone from doing it is to make an example of the pigs that are greedy enough to draw attention to it by getting caught. In this case the pigs are the Republicans and the blue dog Democrats. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that oppose the regulations needed to keep Wall Street and the banks from crashing our economy again. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that oppose making the corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of the taxes. It is the Republicans and the blue dogs that are blocking all reasonable efforts to create jobs, and it is the Republicans and the blue dogs that are fighting our efforts decrease the influence money has on our politicians by opposing our efforts to reform the way we finance political campaigns. The first step then is to vote the Republicans and the blue dogs out of office.

In order to do this we must jar the hell out of the people suffering from Political Attention Deficit Disorder. This will require a movement they cannot ignore. The first phase of any movement is the expression of dissatisfaction. But the anger must be well directed and the goal must be positive reform. In that regard the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations are useful. As unfocused as the demonstrators are they are drawing attention to what is happening to us. We must let them know they are not alone. We are all feeling the pain that makes them demonstrate. The next phase is to take some positive political action. Holding accountable the worst politicians who are so shameless in the way they serve Wall Street and the other special interests to the detriment of the rest of us will be the first sign that the movement is taking the action it needs to take in order to gain the necessary political power to fight those interests. This should be done as an in your face demonstration of political power that cannot be ignored. The Demonstrators should get behind the American Jobs Act as well. This will show the low information voters and the Democratic Party that the movement has positive goals and is not simply looking for scapegoats. This is the way to gain credibility and momentum. The power to help pass legislation and the willingness to punish opponents will make a major political party pay attention to us. Just look at what the tea party has done to the Republican Party. The difference between the tea party and us, however, is that the tea party has a negative agenda whereas we must have a positive agenda. I will submit to you that returning the control of our government back to the people and rebuilding an equitable economy is a positive agenda.

I believe that the goals of the Occupy Wall Street Demonstrators are our goals. Those goals will not be easy to accomplish. Rebuilding our economy and restoring an equitable distribution of the wealth will require sweeping reforms that will not take place until we greatly decrease the influence money has on our political system. As I said in my previous post, we need a constitutional amendment to change the way campaigns are financed. Passing such an amendment will take time, a tremendous effort, and a strong belief that we, the people, have the power to make it happen. We have to start building the political momentum now. To the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators I say keep demonstrating, but do not lose sight of the larger goals. Realize that the political power we must gain to accomplish those goals will require us to achieve a pattern of success. Taking this country back will depend on our ability to win more than one battle. Few wars are won or lost in a single battle, and this is a class war in the same sense that the labor movement was a class war! Among the things labor unions won for us are the eight hour work day, safer work places, and reasonable wages. In order for labor unions to accomplish those goals they had to break the hold the business tycoons had on our politicians. It was a very difficult, sometimes violent, struggle, but the middle class the labor movement created gave us the most prosperous market economy in the world. That is what we must now fight to restore!

The Protests Are Real

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators who say they represent ninety-nine percent of the population are mainly young, middle class, and white. Many of them are deeply in debt because of the student loans they took out in order to get the education they needed to start their chosen careers. Now they cannot find jobs that will pay them much more than the minimum wage. They feel betrayed and rightly so. The great disparity in wealth between the top one percent and the rest of us is not lost on those young people. The only thing the people the Republicans called “job producers” seem to be producing is a great increase in their personal wealth. No ideological group or political party had to tell the demonstrators to object to the greed that is enriching the rich at the expense of the rest of us. The facts are self evident, and the demonstrators are reacting to those facts. They are not being transported to the locations of the demonstrations in buses provided by the Koch brothers; nor are they carrying signs with slogans provided to them by some political stink tank. The demonstrations are a genuine expression of the pain the majority of the people of this nation are feeling. Racial and ethnic minorities are suffering the most from the outrageous inequities in wealth. I fully expect those minorities to join the demonstrations soon. What we are seeing here is the beginning of a social and political movement.

The Washington Times has printed a list of demands from the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators. Actually it is two lists. There was the original post and then an update that added to those demands. The additional demands are reasonable, and I agree with most of them. I was amused by a comment from one reader that called the first demands a fine example of communistic proposals. I agree that some of the demands are not practical, but this does not mean that we can or should dismiss the entire list. For instance, I do not think we can do away with free trade, but we do have to modify the all or nothing globalization or we will be left with nothing. Caterpillar and Whirlpool are just the latest examples of companies who have exported factories and jobs. I also agree that we need a single payer health care system. I do not think we can get a stimulus package that is as large as the one the demonstrators are proposing, but I do not think the American Jobs Act will be final solution either. I might add here that even the demands that appear to be too radical might be desirable if modified or scaled back a bit. The main thing is that all of the demands are addressing real problems that need to be addressed.

What we must bear in mind is that all real grass roots movements will over-reach at times. The opponents of those movements will always use what could be called the radical demands of the demonstrators to try to discredit the entire movement. There is a real danger in doing this because it escalates the attacks coming from both sides. The greater the opposition to needed reforms and the longer it takes to implement those reforms the greater the suffering will be. This has a strong tendency to radicalize the movement. The sooner we bring about meaningful reforms the better. There is absolutely no doubt that we cannot keep going the way we are going now! The key here is to prioritize and get the reforms started. If there is not an escalating improvement in our current situation there will be an escalating reaction to the injustices we perceive. That is not a threat it is merely an observation based on historical facts.

Please see my previous posts “In the Streets” and “Political ADD.”

GOP First Or Country First

Bary Goldwater famously or infamously said “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in defense of liberty is no virtue.” But liberty does not mean anarchy even to Barry Goldwater who also said: "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.”

We often see the lunatic right and the religious right as the same because of evangelicals supporting people like Roy Moore. While it is true that a large percentage of the right wing nut cases are religious fanatics, however, there is a significant percentage of those nut cases who are not that religious or are only religious when it is convenient to be so. There are also a large enough number of very religious people who are not right wingers. In other words, the religious divide is probably not as much of a problem as tribalism and an ideology demagogues market and sell in absolute terms and with a religious fervor that leaves no room for questioning or examining the underlying assumptions regardless of how obviously spurious those assumptions may be.

With nothing to sell but the bogus economic hypothesis of “trickle down” the Republicans have resorted to pandering to the tribalism of less educated white people who think their tribal values are under attack from those other, lesser people. And the federal government actually has the nerve to tax those white people in order to help those lesser people have a better life they do not deserve the Republicans say. That is the Republican cocktail – add one part xenophobia and one part anti government phobia, then shake vigorously. Ah, but fear not, the Donald will greatly diminish the state to create a new birth of freedom and liberty (read anarchy) where the virtuous majority can crush the undeserving minority to set things right again! Bleach those sheets and white hoods because the klan will ride again. It sounds a bit like communism with a peculiarly odious American twist? The dictator of the proletariat will destroy the government to free us! From what? From reason and a sense of social responsibility perhaps? Never in our history have we had a President as nihilistic and destructive as Trump, nor a political party as nihilistic and destructive as the Republican Party has now become! I would go so far as to say that with the help of his party Donald Trump is trying to install in this country the same sort of kleptocracy that the Russian oligarchs have installed in Russia. And yes, there is solid evidence of collusion and/or a conspiracy between Russia and the Trump Campaign to defeat Hillery Clinton.

Now that Special Counsel Mueller's investigation is coming ever closer to the White House, Trump and the diapers trying to cover Trump's butt are using the old fascist tactic of discrediting and smearing an impartial investigator they see as a threat. In this case they fear that the truth Mr. Mueller is likely to uncover will set them free of their political offices, and it damn well should! The right wing disinformation machine has been cranking out vile accusations against Mueller, the Department of Justice, and the FBI only to watch most of it slide down the wall into a putrefied heap. Ah but then! Then, much to the surprise and delight of people with an IQ of less than eighty, solid evidence emerged proving that FBI agents and investigators actually have political opinions and that some of those agents and investigators are not even mindless reactionaries. Oh, happy days!

Over the summer Mueller fired one of his investigators, Peter Strzok, who was on loan from the FBI. Mr. Strzok was fired because he sent and received text messages in 2015 and 2016 calling Trump an idiot and saying that the prospect of Trump's election is “fucking Terrifying.” News of the firing of Strzok and the text messages describing Trump in accurate but disparaging terms had the Republicans all a twitter and they pounced with both feet. During the hearing in which Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein testified the Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee assailed Mueller and his investigation regardless of the fact that Mueller had fired Strzok and that in one of his earliest messages Strzok had also called Bernie Sanders “an idiot like Trump...” As Mr. Rosenstein pointed out it would be unrealistic to think that investigators or agents have no political opinions. The real test is whether they can set those opinions aside to conduct a fair and impartial investigation. I might add here that if you say agents and investigators cannot set those political opinions aside you would be hard pressed to find anyone who could investigate any Democrat because an overwhelming percentage of law enforcement officers and investigators are Republicans.

But facts and/or the truth are not what Republicans on the house Judiciary Committee want. What they want is to cover Trumps ass and end the investigation, and they are more than willing to lie and dissemble in order to protect Trump. Hey guys, how about a renewed witch hunt? That is what the Chairman of the judicial committee, Bob Goodlatte called for when he told Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate a host of Clinton-related matters.  Now that will fix Trump's problem won't it.  Just yell “and so's your old lady” and all of Trump's culpability in the Russian hacking and interference in our election will go away.  Gee, I bet Trump will even stop acting like Putin's man ho!

When it comes to absurdly assailing Mr. Mueller and the FBI in total disregard for the safety of this country, however, it would be hard to beat Rep. Jim Jordan. While performing a very credible imitation of the late Joseph McCarthy Tail Gunner Jim Jordan (R-OH) used the Strzok's texts

“...'to assert, without any evidence, that the FBI both paid for the Fusion GPS dossier on Trump and used it as the basis for a foreign-intelligence surveillance warrant. Jordan portrayed Strzok as a rogue “James Bond” and revived a failed congressional GOP effort to fire Mueller – with the twist of assembling a new probe to go after Mueller’s team.

'You can disband the Mueller [probe], and appoint a special counsel to look into this,' said Jordan, his voice raising.”

You would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and stupid not to see where the Republican Party is taking us. It is far away from anything resembling truth, reason, or patriotism. Our country and its political system came under attack from a foreign adversary that is still using those tactics against us. We must have the truth about the culpability of a president who appears to do the bidding of Vladimir Putin and appears to have conspired with Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton. We need that and other information to protect ourselves!

The shell game the Republicans are playing in regard to investigating the Russian matter is indicative of the way they approach everything because what they are doing cannot stand the light of day. Just look at the way the Republicans are trying to rush through their tax cuts and hose jobs bill without allowing time for debate or a proper examination that would reveal just how badly the middle class is getting screwed. It is not unlike like the FCC removing the consumer protections of net neutrality without any proper hearings or the approval of congress. If 2018 does not see the voters expel from the body politic the debilitating and life threatening cancer that has become the Republican Party than American democracy will deserve to die from the terminal stupidity of the voters and/or the people who did not bother to vote!

Mocking Stupid:

Several bloggers are now talking about how popular it has become to laugh at the errors of right wing politicians and to mock the intelligence of conservatives.  Frank Furedi, www.spiked-online.com, complained about several studies and observations that stated that the less intelligent you are the more likely you are to be a conservative.  Mr. Furedi said that the “manipulation of science to discredit political opponents … was strongly criticized by the intellectual community” when such tactics were used by Stalin and the Nazis.  Now, he said, it is the “… self-styled intellectuals, especially the ones who refer to themselves as ‘liberal,’ who use such pseudo-scientific tactics to pathologise their opponents as a mentally and intellectually inferior political species.”

I think Mr. Furedi and many of the people who have made the observations he is complaining about are making the same error.  It is not the traditional conservatives who exhibit the intellectual deficiencies observed; rather it is the reactionaries, wrongfully characterized as conservatives, who display those deficiencies.  We correctly dismiss those reactionaries because their paranoia, gullibility, and ignorance make their political views ludicrous at best and dangerous at worst.  They have the same mind set as the Birchers we laughed into irrelevancy way back when.  I might add here that it is not the ignorance displayed by the likes of Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman, and Louis Gohmert that inspires our scornful laughter as much as it is the smug self-righteousness with which they display that ignorance as if it were a virtue.  Their general attitude is “Up yours, Buster!  I don’t need no stinkin’ facts; I got common sense!”   The amazing thing is that there are so many people who seem to think you do not need to know anything if you have common sense.  Anyone with any brains will tell you that common sense requires you to gather the facts you need to make informed decisions.

I still stand by my statement that the Republican Party is intellectually bankrupt. If you think I am being too harsh just take a look at what they are doing in North Carolina.  The Republican dullards there actually buried an anti-choice provision into a bill prohibiting the establishment of Sharia law.  What, did they think the pro-choice people would be laughing so hard over the absurdity of outlawing something already prohibited by the Constitution that they would not notice the anti-choice provision?  This was piling stupidity on top of ignorance on top of paranoia.  And North Carolina is not the only state in which the Republicans are showing such a blatant disregard for the knowledge and intelligence of the voters.  But judging by the Republicans in Louisiana, under-estimating the intelligence of what has now become the GOP base would not be an easy thing to do.  29% of the Republicans polled there blame then Senator Obama for the poor response to Katrina and 44% of the Republicans polled there said they did not know who to blame. Do you really need to ask why I have no respect for the political opinions of the ignorant reactionaries and even less respect for the demagogues who so shamefully exploit such ignorance and paranoia?

Even though millions of people tune into the Fox disinformation factory and/or Rush, how low can you go, Limbo, those audiences only comprise a small percentage of the population.  The problem is that it is the right wing media blowhards, such as Rush Limbaugh, who are defining the Republican Party and what it stands for.  Because of this, Republican candidates are being pulled so far to the right that few of them can win a general election outside of the bible belt.  The reason why the Republicans are now resorting to voter suppression is because even the people who do not pay attention to politics or government are finding the lies about the dangers of Sharia law and Obama care to be overblown and far too shop worn to have any appeal.  In other words, the Republicans are running short of gullible idiots they can exploit.

The bottom line is that anyone, on either side of the political spectrum, who chooses ideology over reality is not very bright.  Facts matter and bright people insist on the facts.  Right now the right wing zealots are exerting so much power over the Republican Party that their brand of idiocy is on full display.  We should mock them.  We should laugh them into irrelevance, just as we laughed the Birchers into irrelevance, and we should do it before they cause any more damage

Hillary's Categorical Politics

1. Gender.
Hillary Clinton is a woman ergo women should vote for her if she is not acting like Michele Bachmann, right? That is what Hillary thinks. She has gone out of her way to talk about anti-choice Republicans, pay inequality etc. It is a good thing to discuss those issues, but gender is not determinative if your male opponent is also on the right side of those issues. Younger women in particular were offended by Madeleine Abright's comment that there is a special place in hell for women who do not support other women. They thought Ms. Albright's comment was condescending. I agree with them. I also agree with them when they say the ground breaking precedent we would set by electing Hillary as the first women President should not be determinative. Younger women refuse to base their vote on gender because there are too many other issues they care about. Older women who still bear the scars from their battles for gender equality feel differently. Those older women consider the precedent of electing a female President important enough to make it the deciding factor in regard to who they vote for.

I think the issue of gender, and I am not taking about what many people call gender issues, is a mixed bag for Hillary. While her gender will undoubtedly sway many older women in Hillary's favor, there will also be a backlash. I have to agree with women who say the backlash will come mainly from men frequently called “male chauvinist pigs” that tend to be Republicans anyhow, but we cannot rule out a backlash from independent male chauvinist pigs that are predominately blue collar workers. And, although I do not think we should pander in any way to male chauvinist pigs, I have to point out that blue collar workers in general are a group the Democratic Party is trying to woo. So in a general election, and probably in the primaries as well, some of the advantages Hillary might derive from her gender will be negated by an adverse reaction to her using gender as a political issue. I might add here that Republican women also detest Hillary Clinton. I don't know why, but it will hurt her in the general election if that election is close.

2. Race. 
The next categorical issue is race. Hillary and Bill Clinton have always been popular with African Americans and Hillary is playing that for all it is worth. The problem for her is that Bernie Sanders has a stellar civil rights record, and he is as committed as Hillary is to ending institutional racism. Many African Americans (particularly younger ones) are likely to swing over to Bernie's side as they get to know him better. Hillary is trying to counter that with the Obama card. Hillary Clinton has tied herself so closely to Barack Obama that one would think she took his mantle and had it form fitted to her. She has obviously appointed herself the militant guardian of his legacy, and she will use sharp barbs and hyperboles to defend his record from what she perceives to be the grave threat posed by any and all criticism. Indeed, she accused Bernie Sanders of trying to undo President Obama's accomplishments and thereby destroy his legacy. In this regard she is treating Obama's legacy with all the fervor of an orthodox fanatic!

The election of President Barack Obama set a very important precedent, and he has been one of our better presidents. I do not blame African Americans for taking pride in his accomplishments, but I am sure many of them agree that we should not canonize him. Many people, I am among them, were frustrated by the slow pace of the changes he was able to bring about, and there is still a lot of work that remains to be done. I do not claim to speak for African Americans but I am sure that many of them will see Hillary's idolatry of Obama as politically inspired pandering and therefore condescending.

3. Establishment. 
The last category is one Hillary has seized upon while trying to run away form it. It is “establishment,” and she is like the monkey who will not let go of the shiny object even though she cannot remove her hand from the bottle unless she does let of that object. The shiny object in the bottle is the package of things the establishment bestows on its chosen one. Some of the things in that package are endorsements from prominent citizens, Super Delegate Votes, and Money - lots and lots of money with which to buy an election. The money comes from Wall Street and Plutocrats who are hoping to buy what they want from Hillary. And thanks to the Democratic National Committee Wall Street and the Plutocrats can now spend a lot more money on getting Hillary Clinton elected. As the Washington Post reported:

 “The Democratic National Committee has rolled back restrictions introduced by presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 that banned donations from federal lobbyists and political action committees...

.

Reformers complain that the new rules have already changed Washington ethics. They provide opportunities for “influence-buying by Washington lobbyists with six-figure contributions to the Hillary Victory Fund,” said Wertheimer...”

Okay so it is easy to see why Hillary Clinton wants to discard the establishment label while hanging on to the establishment. The problem is that Citizens United, the corrupting influence of money and a Political Establishment that depends on that money are some of the things Bernie Sanders is running against! In that regard, Hillary cannot deny being a part of the establishment while she has that clearly labeled bottle with all of its goodies on her hand! Observant voters deeply recent the unfair advantage the establishment is trying to provide to Hillary. All reformers know our economic system is rigged to our disadvantage and so is our political system. Is it any wonder that we think it will take a political revolution to get this country moving in the right direction again?

Ho-hum.

Ho-hum. No exclamation mark there. I yawn. I stretch. I pry open the lids covering my political eyeballs in order to see the foibles of our politicians and the pressing issues of our times.

There is Rand Paul. He starts out by saying that we need to take our nation back from the special interests. And how does he propose to do that? His answer is to remove all regulations governing those interests. Huh? Such a non sequitur should get the old political juices flowing, but it does not.

There is Arizona threatening to boycott anyone who is boycotting it over its absurd immigration law. It should be amusing watching John McCain trying to do the breast stroke in the muck thus created, but the humor elicits the faintest smile.

Ah but I live in California. Here we have Steve Poizner and Meg Whitman. If you listen to an attack add, you might think the one being attacked actually has something to offer. The problem is that the rebuttal to the add makes you realize they are both pushing each other so far to the right that they are both running out of shoulder. This means that they are both in danger of going over the cliff. This is a blue state, you know. Normally, I would be amused by them, but I am not.

Then we have congressional candidate Vaughn Ward running against the Obama administration while plagiarizing one of Mr. Obama’s speeches. All right, that brought a smile.

Last but not least is the idiot right wing, clueless about the facts as usual. They are accusing Obama of being the only President not presenting the customary wreath at Arlington to honor our fallen heroes. I suppose he is the only one if you are not counting Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Normally, any one of those things would have required a spirited response from me. Have the absurdities of the right wing become so common that they no longer have any impact? Yes, they are that common. No, they still require a response. I cannot really explain my blasé attitude at this time. The California primary is next month. Regardless of whether I am still in a funk at that time, I will vote, and I expect to be in fighting form by the time we receive the results of those elections. I am part of the Democratic base that needs a bit of energizing right now, but the motivation will be there. If we want a government that will deal with the pressing problems facing this nation, we must elect people who will act on our behalf rather than acting on behalf of the special interests. I have had enough of spill baby spill, among other things.

United We Must Stand

The election of President Obama was a sign of how far this country has come in regard to racism; the reaction to his election is a sure sign of how far we have to go. The open and blatant racism displayed at tea party rally's and other right wing gatherings are a serious step backwards, as are the voter suppression efforts by the GOP and the Shelby County v. Holder decision that makes voter suppression easier to achieve. Add to this the disparity between the income of white and black people, along with the thinly disguised racism used to justify cuts in all assistance to low income people and you have provided all the evidence needed for minorities to feel oppressed. Furthermore when so many young, unarmed, black men are being killed by police officers and other armed white men we should all ask some very serious questions about our justice system!

Obviously, we are still dealing with racial issues that I wanted very much to believe we had put behind us. It would be foolish, however, to believe that the behavior of the Police in Ferguson is strictly a racial issue. Regardless of your race or ethnicity the concentration of wealth and political power into so few hands combined with the militarization of our police forces should be alarming. In Ferguson police officers were wearing gas masks, helmets, and body armor. What they were not wearing were badges or identification of any kind. So here you had anonymous, unrecognizable men pointing assault rifles and machine guns at demonstrating citizens while other officers were firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd. I hate to sound like a libertarian, but this scares the hell out me! Will such force be used to suppress anyone objecting to the greed of what has become an oligarchy. To those of you who think I am over-reacting, let me remind you of what happened at Kent State during the Vietnam war!

The people of this country have to wake up. You cannot suppress the rights of one group of people without endangering the rights of everyone. We are all in this together, and we must make a stand.  Everyone deserves freedom from the fear of violence and oppression!  Furthermore, everyone deserves a decent job and a fair wage.  Get involved.  Flex your political muscle. Administer a political beating to the right wing bigots, and to the Republican Party for pandering to those bigots! Fight the greed of the oligopoly and the divisiveness that helps the oligarchs hold on to their power. Work to restore to our system the concept of one person one vote by letting all politicians know you will oppose anyone who will not support a constitutional amendment to overturn the horrible Supreme Court decisions that have greatly increased the influence of money on our government. If we are ever to get our country moving in the right direction again, we must fight those who divide us.

The Etch-a-lie Candidate

There are lies, damn lies, statistics and Romney lies. A businessman who will say or do anything to make a profit is not unusual, nor is a politician who will say or do anything to get elected. Legally we even have a category of permitted lies called puffing. Romney’s lies about starting Bain Capital and Staples are examples of political puffing or exaggeration. The problem with Romney is that he does not content himself with puffing or even spinning. What puts him in a rare category of liars is his apparent ability to convince himself that whatever he wants people to believe must be true no matter how absurd it may be. A perfect example of this is the credit he is trying to take for the survival of the U.S. Auto industry. Everyone who has studied the reemergence of the Auto industry agrees that the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler would have failed without the funds President Obama provided for that purpose. Instead of supporting those loans, Mitt Romney wrote an op-ed in which he railed against what he called the bail outs and said, in essence, that we should let Detroit go bankrupt. What is so delusional about Romney’s contention that the policies he advocated saved the auto industry is the fact that anyone can look up the op-ed in which he advocated a laissez faire government policy that would have let GM and Chrysler die.

The more outrageous the policy or action is the more outrageous is the lie Romney uses to defend it. The Republican Party’s war on women is an example of this. Everyone who has fact checked it has labeled as a lie Mr. Romney’s statement that 92% of the jobs lost during President Obama’s term have been lost by women. The truth is that women hold a disproportionate number of the teaching, nursing, and government jobs. It is the Republican controlled House of Representatives that has and is preventing President Obama from providing the states with funds to keep teachers and other government workers on the job, and it is the Republican governors and state legislators that are making the most drastic cuts to education and local government. So in addition to the Republican Party’s attacks on Planned Parenthood, birth control, and any woman who seeks an abortion, we can also add the Republican Party’s attacks on jobs held by women. Gee, I wonder why women think the Republican Party is waging a war on them.

Trying to list all of Romney’s lies is nearly impossible. I cannot think of a single thing Romney has said about the economy or President Obama’s handling of the economy that is true, Not One Thing! President Obama did not cause the deficit. George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich and two wars turned a surplus into a deficit and continue to add to the deficit to this very day. The stimulus did create jobs and the American jobs act would create even more jobs while greatly improving our roads and bridges if the Republicans would pass it. Mr. Romney obviously wants us to forget that the economy crashed under Republican rule. The job growth rate under George W. Bush was the lowest it had been since WWII, and that was before the crash. Contrary to Romney’s untruthful contention, private sector jobs have been added to the economy during each of the last 26 months. That the recovery from Bush’s recession is not progressing as quickly as it should be is due to Republican filibusters and other obstructions the Republicans in the House have been using in an effort to make President Obama fail. Mitt Romney's lies about the economy are an attempt to get the voters to blame Mr. Obama for the Republican Party's failed policies.

Pardon me for putting this in the vernacular, but Mitt Romney is a walking bag of bullshit! You need to carefully examine everything from him for the economic equivalent of E. Coli. Bear in mind that he openly supports the Ryan plan, which would further enrich the rich, add to the deficit, and prove deadly to many of our most vulnerable citizens.

Repub-Speak

Alright, boys and girls, I know you have a dictionary or consult one online occasionally, but many words do not mean what you think they mean -- at least not as used by Republicans. An obvious example of this is, “Democrat Party.” There is no such thing as a Democrat Party; it is the Democratic Party. The list of words and terms below is partial and is meant to help you follow the impeachment hearings, the trial in the senate, and what could be called debates if you are inclined to dignify the arguments of the side that has no valid facts or evidence.

Coup, also known as a coup d'etat, is defined as: "[t]he sudden overthrow of a government, differing from a revolution by being carried out by a small group of people who replace only the leading figures.”

In Repub-Speak coup is defined as the impeachment and attempted removal from office of a POTUS who is also the leader of the Republican Party, regardless of how lawless, incompetent, compromised, and/or dangerous to this country and its laws that POTUS may be!

Impeachment: Is set forth in the constitution.  It is similar to a grand jury in that the House of Representatives prepares articles (one could say the charges) that are presented in a trial with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court serving as the presiding judge and all of the Senators serving as the jury.

In Repub-Speak impeachment is a coup d'etat unless it is the impeachment of a Democratic President – preferably over some sexual transgression because descriptions of salacious behavior are so much fun.

Deep State: Apologists for Donald Trump like to babble about the deep state as part of their drain the swamp scenario and as part of the false claim that Trump is being persecuted by the triple digit IQ crowd. According to Wikipedia:

Deep State "... [c]onspiracy theorists believe that there is 'a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process',[11] or consider the deep state to encompass corruption prevalent among career politicians and civil servants.[12]” (Emphases added)

The deep state theory is particularly helpful to Donald Trump at this time because it is non-elected, career civil servants who are now showing their commitment to the rule of law and the Constitution of the United States by obeying the lawful subpoenas from Congress and honestly testifying about what has been described as Trump's dirt for aid scheme in regard to the Ukraine. Unfortunately for Trump and the apologists trying the use the deep state conspiracy theory to discredit all witnesses in the impeachment hearings, the Civil Servants who have testified, at no small risk to themselves and their careers, have also displayed a dedication and an ethical code that tells us the Civil Service Act is serving us well. I might add here that Trump's Romneyesque approach to draining the swamp seems to assume that the swamp will drain itself in disgust if he keeps crapping in it. How many of the people close to Trump have been indicted, and/or pled guilty to committing crimes, or have been convicted of committing crimes? A corrupt president will appoint corrupt people to important positions, thereby creating the swampy conditions the right wing dumb asses say they object too and the Civil Service Act was designed to prevent to the extent that it can be prevented without forbidding presidents from appointing their cabinets and other members of their administrations.


Wisteblower is defined by Wikipedia as “... a person who exposes secretive information or activity that is deemed illegal, unethical, or not correct within a private or public organization.”

The person who blew the whistle on Trump linking a visit to the white house and military aid to the Ukraine with a publicly announced investigation of Burisma and the Bidens did so anonymously but in full accordance with the whistleblower protection acts. The Republicans said the Whistleblower's allegations were not based on direct evidence, that they were unreliable hearsay, and should not even be considered. But in defiance of Trump's repeated denials, Gordon Sondland, the ambassador to the European Union and what could be called the President's special envoy to the Ukraine, has described that linkage as a quid pro quo. Furthermore, Mr. Holmes testified that he heard Trump asking if President Zelensky agreed to investigate Biden.

Investigations: We all know what investigation means in normal usage, but as used in furtherance of political objectives (usually with the goal of digging up dirt that can be used against your opponent) investigation does not necessarily mean an attempt to uncover hidden or unknown facts. As Fiona Hill testified and our intelligence agencies have confirmed, Vladimir Putin and Russia have put out a false conspiracy theory that contends that it was the Ukraine that interfered with our 2016 election on behalf of Hillary Clinton. And a lousy job they did of it. So lousy, in fact, that no one with an IQ above eighty can believe that they even tried because the did not. This whole theory about Ukrainian interference in our election is utter nonsense propagated by Russia to deflect and draw attention away from the fact that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election on behalf of Putin's man ho, Donald Trump, and they are at this very moment trying to interfere with the election of 2020. Yet here we have Reublicans such as Diaper Devin Nunez screaming for the investigation of Ukrainian interferance in the 2016 election!

Burisma Holdings Limited is a holding company for a group of energy exploration and production companies based in Kyiv, Ukraine. It is a company with an unsavory reputation for corruption. But when Republicans talk about Burisma and corruption they are inferring that Joe Biden is part of the corruption because his son Hunter took a position on the board of Burisma after the corruption of that company was exposed. No one is arguing that Hunter Biden did not show bad judgment in taking that position. We all agree that, as the son of Vice President Biden, Hunter should have avoided even the appearance of creating a conflict of interest for his father. There is, however, absolutely no evidence that Hunter's position at Burisma had any influence on Joe Biden's actions let along any corrupt influence. Furthermore the falsity of the equivalencey the Republicans are implying between this and Trump trying to extort the aid of the Ukraine in furtherance of Trump's personal political goals is patently obvious.

Missing witnesses: The Republicans falsely claim they have not been allowed to call any witnesses. This is untrue; Messrs Morrison and Volker were witnesses the Republicans requested. Witnesses the Republicans claim they want to call are Hunter Biden and the whistleblower. They want to call Hunter Biden so they can send the hearings down a rabbit hole of false equivilancies and irrelevant distractions, and they want the whistleblower (who according to Republicans has nothing but hearsay to offer) in order to draw attention away from the real evidence by challenging what they insist is the source of the information that started the impeachment process. In lodging their complaints about not being able to call Hunter Biden and the whistleblower the Republicans are demonstrating the hypocrisy that has become a trademark of the twenty-first century Republican Party. Why won't Trump allow Mulvaney, Bolton, Pompeo, et al to testify, and why is the Trump administration fighting all requests and subpoenas for relevant documents, emails, etc.?

Duped Again

When Andrew Breitbart posted the highly edited and deceptive videos of Acorn employees allegedly helping a pimp commit crimes Fox News jumped at the opportunity to air them. Those videos were not just a sensational story they also fit the Fox disinformation factory’s agenda. How dare anyone help the poor! How dare anyone help progressive candidates get out the vote! The evidence against Acorn, if you can call it evidence, appeared to be damning. I was skeptical. Something did not add up. What was missing was motive. Why would Acorn employees help a pimp commit crimes?

The problem was that the mainstream media picked up the story and congress actually withdrew the funding for Acorn. I am afraid that I, like everyone else, placed too much faith in the news media and congress. I thought some real news organization would have checked the integrity of the videos and would have done a little investigating. I thought that congress would have looked into the matter before reacting to the videos. By the time someone finally did investigate it was too late save Acorn’s funding. I do not know everyone who behaved responsibly enough to unravel the real story. What I do know is that California’s Attorney General, Jerry Brown, subpoenaed the full videos. The unedited videos and the other evidence he gathered revealed that the videos shown on Fox were a vicious hoax perpetrated by an unethical punk with a right wing agenda.

Congress and the mainstream media had rushed to judgment. They had assumed that a real news organization would have checked its sources and would have some journalistic integrity. Breitbart and Fox denied all knowledge of the videos being altered. They denied all knowledge of the fact the Acorn’s employees actually notified the police of the illegal activities of the self-described pimp. They offered no apologies for their sorry role in this matter. Instead they acted like innocent victims. Worse yet, Fox has now helped to perpetrate another hoax to further its right wing agenda.

Breitbart posted another altered video, and Fox eagerly aired it with their so called news people adding their own right wing invective as editorial comments. Once more the main stream media picked up on the story and aired it without first checking the sources or investigating, and once more the government over-reacted to the story. As a result, Shirley Sherrod was forced to resign from her position with the Agriculture Department. Now, of course, the full version of her speech to the NAACP has come to light, and it reveals that another vicious right wing hoax has been perpetrated. Fox News offers no apologies for its role in this, nor is it retracting the story. Instead, it is blaming the Obama Administration for rushing to judgment!

While I agree that the Obama administration over-reacted, this in no way exonerates Fox News for its irresponsible behavior. Andrew Breitbart is not a newsman; he is a political operative with absolutely no regard for the facts. Fox News knew or should have known that Breitbart is not a credible source of information. Furthermore, these two instances are not the only times that Fox has presented blatant falsehoods as news stories. I will not go into all of those instances because I think Rachel Maddow and others have already done it better than I can. What I am saying is that Fox indulges in selective ignorance, and selective ignorance is a deception rather than an excuse. A news organization is supposed to perform a public service. It is supposed to keep the public informed. It has a duty to check the voracity of its sources and confirm the accuracy of the stories it presents. It has a duty to be as factual as it can be. It is called journalistic integrity. What is all too evident is that journalistic integrity is a concept that is foreign to Fox News. Fox is not a news organization; it is a disinformation factory with a political agenda. It is high time to hold Fox News accountable!

Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. I am a champion of the first amendment. I would never think of depriving anyone of the right to express an opinion. Fox has every right to broadcast Glen Beck throwing up all over his black board. Anyone with an IQ above ninety knows he is stating opinions. There is a real difference between that and characterizing falsehoods as news. Even real news reporters will occasionally make a mistake. When they realize they have made an error they will retract the inaccurate story and apologize to their audience or readers. The will do this because they know there is a public trust involved in reporting the news. People and organizations that continually violate this trust have no right to characterize their verbal garbage as news. We must insist that anyone who is reporting news has enough journalistic integrity to make the stories they present as factual as possible, and we must insist that opinions are clearly characterized as editorial comments. Slander and libel laws are supposed to protect people and organizations from specious stories purported to be true. Those laws should be enforced.

Even when we insist on accurate news reporting we are not insuring balanced reporting. People who have a bias will still be able to select the stories they choose to report. They will still have the ability to emphasize the stories that further their agenda. I do not have a problem with that if what they omit is not deceptive. In the case of Fox what was omitted were not stories but facts that were vital to the accuracy of those stories. Fox must not be allowed to hide behind selective ignorance. Fox has done that far too often. Fox must be forced to retract the story, and it must face some stiff penalties if it continues perpetrate outright falsehoods on a public that is depending on Fox News for information. The only other option is for the main stream media and our government to acknowledge the fact that Fox News is a disinformation factory and to stop acting as if Fox ever presents anything resembling factual reporting!

Witch Hunts and Inquisitions

When a political party has no viable policies or proposals all it has left to sell is fear and loathing. And how do you stir up fear and loathing? You do it with witch hunts and inquisitions!

Can You Benghazi?

In his Sept 30, 2015 article, “Kevin McCarthy's Truthful Gaffe About Benghazi” E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote:

“Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the likely successor to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), told Fox News’s Sean Hannity explicitly on Tuesday night that the Clinton investigation was part of a 'strategy to fight and win.'

He explained:'Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.'”

In Making this stunning admission Representative Kevin McCarty added to the infamy a Senator named Joe attached to the McCarthy surname. I say “stunning admission” only in that it was unbelievably foolish for a high ranking Republican to actually say this out loud and in public! It is rather fitting, however, for a guy named McCarthy to confirm what everyone who was paying the slightest attention already knew about the Benghazi inquisition. Grand inquisitor Issa ruined his credibility during Benghazi hearings, and grand inquisitor Gowdy (or is that gougey) is well on his way to doing the same thing.

Can You Say Planned Parenthood Hearings? 

Alright, lets take a deceptively edited film that was surreptitiously shot (or is that shat) by an unscrupulous anti-abortion group, add some outrageous accusations and lies to it, and start another grand inquisition based on the deceptions. Go ahead, Carly Failurina and her ilk will praise it; they will never question it - at least not in public. And make sure that the witnesses you call find it almost impossible to answer what are supposed to be questions about it because you are constantly interrupting them, usually with absurd accusations. Here are just a few examples of how the alleged planned parenthood hearings are being conducted by the Republican inquisitors.

As Kimberly Truong wrote in Mashable:

During the testimony of Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, Representative Chaffetz (R. Utah) “...presented a slide claiming that Planned Parenthood's money spent on breast exams has been reduced, while money spent on abortions increased.

Though he claimed that the slide came straight from Planned Parenthood's annual reports, Richards' lawyers told her otherwise, after she said she'd never seen the slide.

'My lawyers just informed me that the source of this information is Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group. I would check your source,' she said.”

I might add here that the chart was as deceptive as one would expect given its source.

In the following exchange between Ms Richards and grand inquisitor Gowdy, Esq., Mr. Gowdy makes us all wonder what the hell he was taught in law school!

"'I appreciate the way you like to frame the issue — that you're the reasonable one and those of us who have a contrary position are not reasonable,' Gowdy said. 'That's exactly the last answer you gave.'

When Richards argued that he was twisting her words, Gowdy interjected: 'It's not always what you say, just sometimes what you mean,' seeming to wink his right eye at her."

If someone had said that to a witness Mr. Gowdy was representing and he did not start hurling objection such as “badgering the witness, misrepresenting the evidence, and assuming facts not in evidence,” he would be guilty of legal incompetence or malpractice. How the hell did he know what she meant? Is he the Amazing Kreskin?

*Update: Discussion and Correction of Chaffetz Chart.

All Out War

There is an all out war between the two major political parties. The Republicans are determined to make the President fail and to destroy the Democratic Party at all costs. The battle ground is both social and economic. There is an old saying that when the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. In this case it is the country and its people who are suffering. The greatest threat right now is the Republican Party’s attack on our economy. In order to enrich the rich the Republicans want to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Furthermore, they are willing to cause a world wide depression in order to accomplish those goals. They are holding the debt ceiling hostage until their demands a met. This has never been done before because the consequences of this country defaulting on its debts are too destructive for anyone with a conscience to play such foolish games. Interest rates will soar and the value of the dollar will plummet if we allow the Republicans to cause us to default on our debts. Now is the time for extraordinary measures. We simply cannot allow the Republicans to destroy our economy.

Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, has said that not honoring our debts would be unconstitutional. Article 4 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution states in relevant part, “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law… shall not be questioned.” What this means is that we cannot default on our debts regardless of the debt ceiling! No president has used the 14th Amendment to bypass congress before, but no party has been irresponsible enough to hold payment of our debts hostage before. Forget the Republican crap about the deficit. As the deficit soared under George W. Bush the Republicans raised the debt ceiling seven times without so much as a whimper. I might add that if the Republicans were really concerned about our national debt they would raise revenues by letting Bush’s tax cuts for the rich expire and by getting rid of the loopholes that allow the most prosperous corporations on earth to avoid paying any taxes. Even Republicans raise revenue when they are serious about reducing the deficit. If the President acts in accordance with Article 4 of the 14th Amendment and provides for the continuing payment of the national debt without Congress first raising the debt ceiling, it will diminish the role of Congress somewhat. That is probably not a good thing, but the precedent the Republicans are setting by holding payment of the debt hostage to their destructive agenda is far more dangerous than the precedent that would be set by bypassing Congress in order to meet our obligations.

The Republicans obviously have no qualms about changing the rules or about setting bad precedents in an effort to win their war against the Democrats. They shut down the government when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and they threatened to shut it down again if Bush’s outrageous tax breaks for the rich were not extended. The Democrats under Clinton’s leadership held firm. The Democrats under Obama’s leadership caved in, and the tax cuts for the rich were extended. When the Democrats tried to block Bush’s appointments of right wing Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court the Republicans threatened to do away with the filibuster in the Senate. The Democrats then caved in, and we now have the worst Supreme Court ever. Although the Republicans confirmed the one Supreme Court Justice appointed by Obama, they have used the threat of the filibuster to block over 200 hundred appointments to other positions. They have also used the filibuster a record number of times to block bills that would help us recover from this recession. The Democrats are cautious about changing rules and setting precedents, but like it or not, they are going to have to resort to Republican tactics in order to break through the gridlock the Republicans have created. Harry Reid must modify the filibuster rules in the Senate in order to get this country on the right track again, and President Obama must invoke Article 4 of the 14th Amendment if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling without the Democrats caving in to the outrageous demands of the Republicans.

There is little doubt in my mind that if the Democrats do what is right for this nation and thwart the Republican Party’s attacks on our economy and our middle class the Republican Party will have to start acting responsibly again or face extinction. This should be the lesson of the mid-term elections. The people did not see those elections as an ideological choice. Quite frankly, the voters never seem to be able to understand what those ideologies mean. What the voters know is what they are personally experiencing. They know the hardships caused by stagnating incomes as the costs of energy and food continue to increase. They know what will happen if Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are privatized. They know what will happen if the interest rates on their mortgages, credit cards, etc. go through the roof. They know they are getting the short end of the stick and are making all of the sacrifices while the wealth of this nation becomes more and more concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. The people of this country are frustrated by the high unemployment and deceasing opportunities. They want results they can see and feel. They want a political party that will fight to break up the gridlock and speed up the recovery. The Republican Party is unwilling to offer anything positive. It is up to the Democratic Party to demonstrate through its deeds and its words that it is the party carrying out to will of the people.

Campaign For The Public Option!

All right, this blog has become political. I cannot help it. We are in a hell of a mess. It is about jobs and health care. The greatest obstacles to correcting our economy are the knee jerk reactions, and the outrageous exploitation of those reactions by a party that is now intellectually and morally bankrupt. Their policies have failed, and they simply cannot make the adjustments necessary to deal with the crises. They had the same problem during the Great Depression. People are understandably afraid and angry. But rather than dealing with the real problems the Republicans are exploiting the fears and the anger. They who say the leaders of our present government are behaving like Nazis are indulging in what psychologists call projection. The Nazis blamed all of Germany’s problems on the Jews, the Gypsies, and every other ethnic or religious minority. They also blamed the democratic government set up by the treaty of Versailles, and they talked about restoring the Germany they knew. We all know where that led. Do not overreact to what I am saying here. I am not accusing the Republicans of being Nazis; nor am I suggesting that they would ever set up a fascist state. What I am saying is that they are encouraging such vilifications. They are doing this to avoid the real issues, and their behavior is both hypocritical and dangerous!

This is where the knee jerk reactions kick in. “Socialism” is a word the Republicans frequently use to trigger such responses. Socialism is seen as being the opposite of capitalism. Since capitalism is good socialism must be evil. Many will even mistakenly say that there is no difference between socialism and communism. What those people are looking at are the extremes. They are thinking of socialism as an all or nothing proposition, and they are portraying every regulation and government program as evil socialism. When the government broke up the trusts and monopolies that had a stranglehold on our economy John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan and others screamed “Socialism!” When Franklin Roosevelt took office the opponents of his New Deal did not confine themselves to calling the work programs and Social Security socialism; they also called the regulation of the stock market and the banks socialism. When some of those bank and stock market regulations were repealed and others were no longer enforced we wound up with the AIG debacle, banks failing, brokerage firms failing, and companies that depended on credit failing. All of which created the worst economic situation since the Great Depression. Another example of the failure of deregulation can be found in California. When that state deregulated the electrical utilities the result was Enron and extreme hardships for the citizens of that state. What this tells us is that there is a reason for the regulations. They are not there because the government has this great desire to take over everything. They are there to prevent the abuses and problems that have become all too apparent.

Mr. Obama’s health care reforms call for some strict regulation of the health insurance industry. I agree that those regulations are needed, but they are not enough. We can never be sure that those regulations will not be repealed or that another George W. Bush will simply fail to enforce them. Furthermore, what is being proposed does not include any caps on the premiums the insurance companies can charge their customers. This is why we need a strong public insurance option. We have to provide a competing system that will keep the insurance companies from gouging us. This Republican nonsense about creating competition by allowing consumers to shop for insurance in other states is utterly ridiculous. The insurance companies will do the same thing large corporations did when they incorporated in New Jersey; they will all migrate to the state with the fewest regulations and consumer protections. The Republicans can scream “socialism” until they are blue in the face, but the word has lost much of its sting. The majority of Americans realize we must have reasonable regulations and that programs such as Social Security and Medicare are desirable even if they are socialistic. Perhaps that is why the Republicans are pandering to the nut cases who attend tea parties and disrupt community meetings. Those nut cases are the ones that are the most gullible.

Unfortunately, it is not just the nut cases we have to deal with. There is a sizeable minority that is not convinced that we need a public option. That minority actually comprises a majority in the states of blue dog senators. Unlike the nut cases, this minority is comprised of honest conservatives who can be convinced. To do so we need to get the young people who supported Obama to actively campaign for it. We need them to help sell the public option and to write their senators. To get those young, healthy people to take action means that we have to show them why the health care issues have an immediate impact on them. They need to know that the reforms are an important part of the economic program. This comes down to jobs. People with jobs pay taxes and buy things. The reason why John F. Kennedy’s tax breaks for the middle class did not increase the deficit as his critics had predicted is because the people receiving those tax breaks used the additional money to buy more goods and services. This increased demand. Businesses responded to the increased demand by increasing production. This resulted in the creation of more jobs. The increase in the number of people who were employed then increased the tax revenues and the demand for goods and services. This in turn added even more jobs. If the average person can save a significant amount of money on their health insurance premiums because of the public option, it will increase the amount of goods and services they can purchase. This will increase the demand for goods and services and add the jobs those young people need in order to enter the job market. In other words, the young people do not have to wait until they need health care to benefit from the reform.

The public option is a win, win proposition. Believe me, the insurance companies will not go broke. They will still have all those people who keep their present coverage, and they might add many people who buy coverage to supplement their public insurance policies. Best of all everyone will finally be able to pay for the medical treatments they need.

Portrait Of Deplorable

When Hillary Clinton said  "You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," the news media and Trump jumped all over it. As most politicians know stating percentages as a figure of speech rather than an accurate quantification is usually going to leave you open to charges of mis-characterizing the evidence, and the reaction to Hillary Clinton's statement was predictably critical: “how dare she disparage millions of voters!”

As reported by David Corn of Mother Jones, Trump said “that [claiming] half of his supporters were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and Islamophobic and belonged in a "basket of deplorables..." disqualifies Hillary Clinton because "you can't lead this nation if you have such a low opinion of its citizens."

Fortunately in this same article David Corn reveals Trump's hypocrisy by telling us that during a June 2015 interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News Trump disparaged millions of voters by railing against what he characterized as “so many people who don't want to work...” Trump went on to say that “we have a society that sits back and says we don't have to do anything. Eventually, the 50 percent cannot carry—and it's unfair to them—but cannot carry the other 50 percent.”

Trump, of course, is trying to make Hillary Clinton's “basket of deplorables” comment an issue by saying that it is comparable to Romney's 47% comment. I find that laughable. Is there really anyone who can look at Hillary's statement and the Donald's and not see how much closer Trump's statement is to what Mr. Romney said? Hillary thinks Trump is actually doing her a favor. She is so sure of this will not fly as an issue that she has walked back the quantification but not the characterization! The result is that the question of what and/or who is deplorable is rapidly becoming the issue, and that is much to Hillary Clinton's advantage.

As the Huffington Post reported in its article about Trumps racial comments: 

In addition to the endorsement and support of David Duke, Donald Trump's “...white supremacist fan club includes the Daily Stormer, a leading neo-Nazi news site; Richard Spencer, director of the National Policy Institute, which aims to promote the “heritage, identity, and future of European people”; Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, a Virginia-based white nationalist magazine; Michael Hill, head of the League of the South, an Alabama-based white supremacist secessionist group; and Brad Griffin, a member of Hill’s League of the South and author of the popular white supremacist blog Hunter Wallace.”

Now that is certainly a something full of deplorables, but it gets much worse because of who Trump has brought into his inner circle, his campaign staff. In an article in Mother Jones entitled, “How Donald Trump's New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists” Sarah Posner wrote:

"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told me proudly when I interviewed him at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July. Though disavowed by every other major conservative news outlet, the alt-right has been Bannon's target audience ever since he took over Breitbart News from its late founder, Andrew Breitbart, four years ago. Under Bannon's leadership, the site has plunged into the fever swamps of conservatism, cheering white nationalist groups as an "eclectic mix of renegades," accusing President Barack Obama of importing "more hating Muslims," and waging an incessant war against the purveyors of "political correctness."

Not being content with the deplorable Mr. Bannon Trump added as his deputy campaign manager the deplorable David N. Bossie who, The Washington Post tells us, “...rose to prominence as a relentless Republican congressional staffer, hell-bent on tearing down the Clintons at all costs. After Bossie was caught engaging in unethical behavior, House GOP leader forced his ouster.”

It does not matter how much Kellyanne Conwoman tries to spin it, Trump's own well publicized statements about Muslims, Mexicans, women, etc. make it clear that his appointment of such a deplorable campaign staff is no accident, nor is it an accident that he has the support of white supremacists.

Apparently good things come in bunches as do deplorable things if you are Trump. At long last Donald Trump is drawing some very overdo scrutiny. Kurt Eichenwald in a News Week article entitled “How The Trump Organization's Foreign Business Ties Could Upend U.S National Security” writes in part that:

“...A close examination by Newsweek of the Trump Organization, including confidential interviews with business executives and some of its international partners, reveals an enterprise with deep ties to global financiers, foreign politicians and even criminals, although there is no evidence the Trump Organization has engaged in any illegal activities. It also reveals a web of contractual entanglements that could not be just canceled. If Trump moves into the White House and his family continues to receive any benefit from the company, during or even after his presidency, almost every foreign policy decision he makes will raise serious conflicts of interest and ethical quagmires.”

And that makes the refusal of Trump to produce his tax returns deplorable! What else is he hiding? We might find out some of it because according to Reuters “New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said on Tuesday he had opened an inquiry into the Donald J. Trump Foundation to ensure the Republican presidential nominee's charity was complying with state laws governing nonprofits.”

Gee I wonder why. Could it be because of what appears to be a bribe the Trump foundation paid to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. As Media Matters Reports the broadcast news media has chosen to concentrate on the very flimsy accusations about the Clinton Foundation rather than the very real scandal of the Trump Foundation. According to Media Matters:

“In 2013, the Donald J. Trump Foundation donated $25,000 to a PAC supporting Bondi’s re-election. As The Washington Post explained, “At the time, Attorney General Pam Bondi was considering whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University. She decided not to pursue the case.”

In addition to the bribery scandal there is what The Washington Post described as purchases by the Trump Foundation of a football helmet and a six foot Portrait of Donald Trump, both of which were then given to Donald Trump. I might add here that unlike the stellar contributions made by the Clinton Foundation the contributions of the Trump foundation are paltry and largely Trump serving.

So add Donald Trump to your list of deplorables!

 Where are your tax returns Mr. Trump? And where is the IRS letter informing you of the audit you allege?

Don't Shame Our Ancestors

A Gallup Poll shows that only 39% of the respondents have a favorable opinion of the Democratic Party and only 37% of the respondents have a favorable opinion of the Republican Party. All right, So what the hell are you going to do about it?

They who say “I can't” never will! They who say “what is the use” are useless! The brave men and women who were attacked and beaten by police officers during the voting rights march in Selma Alabama in 1965 did not throw up their hands in despair. They did not say I can't; instead they moved forward, and the violence they faced only strengthened their resolve to overcome. They bled for you and they prevailed. Similarly, the brave men and women who fought for collective bargaining, fair wages, and safe workplaces did not give in to despair; they continued to fight and they bled. To give you just a few examples of what it cost: 19 coal miners were killed in the Lattimer Massacre in Hazleton, Pennsylvania in 1897 and 17 miners were killed in the Anaconda Road Massacre in Butte, Montana in 1920. It was not until the National Labor Relations Act was passed int 1935 that the blood and suffering of many Union Members in many places over the years finally paid off.

What would those brave civil rights leaders who were beaten, shot or hanged for demanding their basic human rights say to those of you who sat at home during the mid-term elections, thereby meekly submitting to the unconscionable laws Republican Legislators and Republican Governors passed in an effort to keep you from voting. What would the brave union members who were beaten and/or killed when they stood up to the plutocrats say to those of you who sat at home during the mid term elections and let the greedy and/or the stupid re-elect Republican Legislators and Republican Governors such as Scott Walker, who actually boasts about suppressing the vote and union busting? If you are willing to give up your right to vote or refuse to exercise that right there really is no hope! And if you think unions do not matter anymore Click Here.

The reason why people are becoming so disillusioned is because we are moving backwards. Real wages are slipping, college educations are once more becoming something only wealthy kids can afford, and everyone is afraid of being laid off of work. Believe me, I can understand the angst. It does not help when one of our major political parties (the Republican Party) is pandering to lunatics and putting its own interests ahead of the interests of this country. If you think that statement is hyperbole let me remind you of just a few of things the Republican Party has done:

1. Shut down the government.
2. Damaged the full faith and credit of the United States by holding the debt ceiling hostage thereby threatening to make the United States default on it its debts.
3. Threatened to shut down the Department of Homeland Security.
4. Threatened to shut down the Federal Aviation Administration and thereby extorted the busting of the aviation labor unions.
5. Tried to privatize Medicare with the Ryan voucher plan.
6. Have consistently opposed all plans to reform the tax code if those plans eliminate the incentives to export our jobs or remove overseas tax havens for companies and wealthy individuals.
7. Interfered with crucial nuclear energy negotiations with Iran by sending the “Dear Ayatollah” letter. This is a clear violation of the separation of powers stated in the Constitution and a violation of the Logan Act.
8. I might add that Republican Presidents have also inflicted on us the worst Supreme Court ever!

Although the Republican Party is far worse than the Democratic party, it easy for me to understand why people are unhappy with both parties. The problem is that bad trade agreements and radical Republicans passing anti-labor laws have decimated the labor unions thus making both parties more dependent on the plutocrats for campaign contributions. Citizens Untied greatly exacerbated the problem. MONEY RULES! There is no doubt about money ruling. But you still have a voice and a vote. Generally speaking the smaller the election (or the fewer the number of voters) the easier it is to buy the election, but that does not hold true if a large number of people opposing the money interests engage with their neighbors and get them to the voting booths. When people get involved Mr. Got-bucks will often spend a ton of money to no avail. So the first rule if you want to change things is to get involved on a local level. Support worthy local candidates who will not gerrymander all the lunatics into safe congressional districts, and who will represent labor unions. Labor Unions protect jobs, even none union jobs. Believe me, the last thing a labor union wants is a bad trade agreement. Unions depend on companies making things here, whereas businesses chasing cheep labor have a strong incentive to export your job. The next thing to do is e-mail politicians about issues and sign petitions regarding crucial issues. People who write and sign petitions are usually activists and that makes politicians pay attention. Congressmen are particularly vulnerable because the smaller the district is the more important the activists become.

As the next election approaches ask yourself a very simple question: In this day when corporate profits are higher than ever and the disparity between what the top two or three percent is paid and what the average person is paid is greater than ever, what the hell is trickling down? The answer to that question should tell you to vote against trickle down Republicans who want to cut taxes for the rich and cut all earned benefits programs such as Social Security and Medicare!*  And I do mean it should tell you to get off your butt and vote! If you do not think your vote counts just look at the dismal results of the last mid-term elections. The low voter turn out during those mid-term elections allowed the most militant right wing lunatics to create a congress in their own image!

Hey, no one is asking you to go out there like your ancestors did and bleed for the cause. We concerned citizens are simply asking you not to waste the economic miracle your ancestors struggled so hard to achieve just because you are too damn lazy to pay attention and vote! Do not ignore the primary either. Elections do not just decide which party runs the government they also decide the direction that party will go. The lunatics have taken over the Republican Party because they are the activists and largest block voting in the primaries. I now say it its time for the progressives to become the activists and once again make the Democratic Party the party of working men and women!

*Just take a look at the latest budget proposed by the Greedy Old Plutocrats.  This topsy turvy (Republican) budget actually presumes that the poor in this country have too much money and the billionaires have too little.  This budget also makes it perfectly clear that the proposed tax cuts for the rich will come out of your hide!