The House of Republicans

There comes a time when you either laugh or cry at the insanity, which we call the House of Republicans. For the past 6 years, the Republicans in the House have been screaming that the ACA, aka Obamacare, must be repealed and replaced or the sky will fall. They are now threatening to sue the President over the employer mandate as a means of stealing healthcare from millions of Americans. True to their word these House Republicans do nothing to make life better for average Americans except act like Henny Penny and squeal about the end of civilization as we know it.

That last statement is not completely true. The House of Republicans has taken many votes and held elaborate committee meetings trying to prove one scandal after another to show the American people how despicable the Democrats are and in particular the current President. The IRS is in trouble for looking at Republican organizations that are claiming tax exemption while playing partisan politics, oh the audacity to question the ethical standards of the House of Republicans.

In particular our friend, Ted Cruz has taken his lies to a new level in that he blames the Democrats for all the obstruction that is taking place in the House of Republicans, which is to say that the Democrats won’t do whatever the Republicans desire in the House of Republicans. It is a shame that Democrats want to think for themselves, and will not knuckle under the bullying tactics of the House of Republicans be it on the mall or the airways or in print.

Of course in the House of Republicans, if you don’t vote to take away insurance from the American people, then, you are obstructing congress. If you don’t want to give tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans and corporations, then, you are obstruction congress. If you want to end the hostilities in Gaza, then, you are not only obstructing congress, but you are aiding Hamas and an anti-Semite. You sad little libertine, you need to be taught proper decorum and deference to the House of Republican’s moral superiority.

Really, what all this means is that if you think of yourself and don’t listen to Rush Limbaugh or watch Sean Hannity, then, you are an obstructionist that is out to destroy all that is good about America. It gets better than this for progressives when you listen to Mark Levin who wants to destroy all who oppose his way of thinking. The irony for me with all these House or Republican ideologues is that they represent the book burning fascists that they claim the progressives embody. It is only ironic in that they are unable to understand how they exemplify that ideology. Sad but true.

In their world view, all liberals are extremists and all they want to do is create a dictatorship, but more to the point the Democrats have a king in the making in Washington DC because he uses planes, helicopters and cars to travel around the country and the world. Why do they always confuse the idea of a Monarchy with a Dictatorship?  I find their missed up metaphors so confusing. Anyway, you have to remember that no Republican President has ever used any of these modern gadgets during their Presidencies, or traveled on vacations or played golf or any of the other things that President Obama has done while living in the White House.

Let’s compare Presidential vacation days. President Bush took over 350 vacation days while in office; President Obama has taken just under 100 days, which means that President Obama must take a little over 250 vacation days in the next 2 years to tie President Bush. Interesting, so, on a yearly basis, President Bush averaged approximately 44 vacation days a year or about 6 weeks. On the other hand, President Obama has taken on average 17 vacation days a year or 2 weeks. Who seems to have been on the job more? It is easy to see if you live in the House of Republicans: President Bush.

As you can see, in The House of Republicans both inside and outside of Washington, history has a strange way of fading away like the fact that President Ronald Reagan in 1982 presided over the largest tax increase in American history, but that fact seems to have been eliminated from the House of Republican History books, or the fact that he used executive orders to circumvent congress. No, he was carrying out the will of the people with those signing orders not acting as a Monarch/Dictator above the law. Only a Democratic President could be acting so recklessly.

If I recall, Ronald Reagan ordered the funding of a secret war in Nicaragua. That little adventure was not against the law and it in no way circumvented the congress. I forget that as a Republican you are allowed to act as a Monarch/Dictator and make your own rules or lie to the American people.

A few years back I remember a president that lied to congress, lied to America and lied to the world about weapons of mass destruction. Those lies have wounded or killed 50,000 Americans. Why wasn’t that President brought up on Articles of Impeachment for lying. Of course, he was a card carrying member of the House of Republicans so he was immune from any such prosecution.

The House of Republicans has a very different set of rules and judgments for likeminded people who carry out immoral actions. They are given honors and held up as examples of how a statesman operates in the modern world: roar loudly and carry a big stick to bludgeon anyone that would dare to question your moral authority. So, we progressives are in for more of the same when it comes to actions against President Obama be it from the House of Republicans or their cronies in the media. Their persecution of President Obama only serves to cover up their unpatriotic deference to their base and not to America as a whole.

Right-wing Talk Radio Throws it Against the Wall to See if it Sticks

The crisis in the Border States is a conspiracy for Russian spies and Middle Eastern terrorists who are secretly crossing the border as American border agents’ attention is focused on Central American children. More tails from the crypt. This is the latest bizarre idea that has been flung out by the right-wing wackadoodles on the Steve Deace show Tuesday evening, June 15, 2014. The guest host didn’t in anyway question the idea; he let it fly across the airways unchallenged.

Whatever is said on right-wing talk radio does not stay on right-wing talk radio. It infects more than who listen, and these heinous lies spread like a virus through their listeners and contaminate all the people those listeners contact. Right-wing talkers are more toxic, then, the bubonic plague because you can kill the rats that carry the infected fleas, but these talking rats are paid millions to spew their disease and spread it unrestrained through their mindless minions and beyond.

The more outrageous their idea the longer the shelf life, e.g. Obama was born in Kenya (still living). This is happening from the local to the national level. Here in Washington State we have a member of the Tea Party who professes to believe that it is the environmentalists that have caused global warming. He blames our current energy crisis on the fact that we are not running multiple nuclear power plants in the state. Based on his logic if those darn environmentalist hadn’t stopped the nuclear revolution greenhouse gases would not be what they are today.  It is good to see that Mr. Cicotte recognizes that there is greenhouse gas pollution.

Unlike Mr. Cicotte, right-wing talkers have been so ostracized by the rest of the world that they are never allowed to speak their peace, yet somehow, they seem to be doing a great job of it on the radio. Living in Seattle the only talkers outside of sports talk shows are right-wingers spinning all kinds of crazy-talk.  My favorite in their latest anti-Obama chorus: President Obama is the reason that the Malaysian airliner was shot down in Crimea.  Of course he was.

This invariably leads to the idea that Iraq is falling apart because we are not still acting as an occupier. It is not the fact that Bush and his minions destroyed the political infrastructure as bad as it was, and replaced it with warring factions that want to kill each other to retain or regain power. No one on the right seems to remember that all occupiers end up being run off by the occupied. Being an occupier is a zero sum game and that is why empires crumble, e.g. The Soviet Union in the 1990’s or maybe Iran in the 1980’s.

In the eyes of the right-wing talkers, there is no need to look at history because none of that matters since we are the greatest country ever, so we will not fall prey to historical precedence. From their point of view, the present problems in Iraq were never caused by our invasion. The present quagmire that is Iraq was brought about due to the fact there is not enough military hardware being used by American men and women.

These right-wingers have learned nothing from our past behaviors, so they want to act as if our military might will be able to solve any and all problems that arise. These right-wing talkers want us all to remember that the use of military action is doing so well in all corners of the globe such as Egypt, Syria, Chechnya, Crimea, Southern Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan to name a few.

While these right-wingers scream about how the world is falling apart and that President Obama is sitting on his hands, they have no alternative plans. They offer no policy ideas except, “Send in more troops”. Well, it is an election year, so you don’t want to put yourself out there with ideas; it is always better to scream and shout about of the evil that is in the world and how the president is taking no action, then, to actually have a plan to put on the table.

Darrell Issa has the right idea: make up a phony crisis, spend hundreds of millions of tax payers’ dollars, then, vote against unemployment benefits for hard working Americans that have fallen on tough times. Maybe his diversionary tactics will work, and the American people will vote against their own best interests, thus, sending the Republicans on to victory in November. Go right-wing talkers may your contrived crises be heard around the country and bring prosperity to all. 

Right-Wing Political Evangelicals Find Their Jihad In 2014

What I find so interesting about right-wing, Republican, Christian conservatives is how they like to throw out the term dogma when talking about progressives. When one talks about dogma, you must remember that the idea behind this word is that it is a set of beliefs that religions hold to be true. In America today, the only religion that is trying to trump changing social conventions is Evangelical Christianity with its need for all to genuflect and bow down to their values and vision of the world be it hawking a new war, attacking people’s sexual orientation or demanding that women give up the right to determine what happens to their bodies.

As a society, this idea (dogma) is contradictory to what progressives believe in that they are looking to break away from a religious doctrine in dealing with the present social and political problems. Whereas, our conservative, right-wing Republicans want to use religious dogma to govern modern culture in that they scream that their religious beliefs must supersede all other thoughts as to what should be considered as true and decent.

Take the Hobby Lobby ruling by SCOTUS; in this instance, the religious right is celebrating the fact that they won and are able to impose their values on people that do not hold those tenets to be true. This situation is dogma at its most fundamental, and in no way, defeats a progressive ideology in so much as it imposes religious principles above the established civil and social code of our country. The irony in this situation is that the intolerance associated with sharia laws is being actualized by the Supreme Court and imposed on an unwilling society with this religious based ruling.

Of course there is nothing new in this type of behavior by the Supreme Court or the religious right as they have over the years used their brand of dogma to attack progressives, liberals or anyone that will not kowtow to their belief systems. As a child, I witnessed the use of religion to justify the separate but equal doctrine that was based on the Plessy v. Ferguson case in that the court’s majority “…contended that the law separated the two races as a matter of public policy.” Of course this was overturned in 1954 with the Brown v. Board of Education ruling, but the damage was done and is still being felt all over America.

As Americans we are facing renewed attacks on our freedom in the name of religious intolerance and being called out by the right-wing, conservative Evangelical Christians who see it as their duty to try and impose retroactive beliefs that are no longer seen as mainstream, but represent age old bigoted tactics used to bludgeon your enemy. These are all signs of a religious revival set in motion by men and women bent on proving their morality and righteousness by denying others the same.

For them this is a holy war, and there can be only one victor and that victor must not be anyone that could be labeled a liberal, progressive or a Republican that does not validate their ideology and principles by following their strict moral compass. Jack Schwartz writes eloquently on this exact point in his piece for the Daily Beast, “The Tea Party Isn’t A Political Movement It’s A Religious One”.

For these religious fanatics, blood must be spilled both metaphorically and literally for them to see victory. The sad news in all of this is that politicians that hold no deep religious belief system, but want to gain power through this process have attached themselves to this movement and have formed groups that want to use violence as a means of political pressure and change. This is what is most disturbing about this religious movement in that it can and has morphed into violent responses as in forcing women to be probed by a doctor prior to an abortion..

Helping to foment hate and distrust are right-wing radio talkers who casually add fuel to the fire by attacking any and everyone that refuses to follow their political and religious positions as stated on air. They beat the drum of suspicion, xenophobia, and intolerance. While they act like the victims, they attack calling for liberals and progressives to be disemboweled, thus, trying to turn our democracy into a theocracy in which they control political ideas through religious intimidation.

They base their positions on their misguided interpretations of the Constitution in that they say, “What would the founders do in this situation?" They have decided that they and only they have the correct insight into the way the founders (in other words white, Anglo-Saxon men) of this country thought and would interpret moral, religious and legal issues facing America today, therefore, these conservative Christians like to throw out words like dogma when explaining any idea that does not fit neatly into their rigid view of conformity.

That is the rub for America.  Will the minority determine what is to happen to the majority? It is a woeful fact that too many Americans are disengaged in the political process, thus, giving rise to a small but vocal group that has set out to reverse America's course. They see the acceptance of homosexuality through marriage equality and abortion as personal and religious affronts, and they are ready to fight their own jihad in the name of their god to stop the madness no matter what it takes, just ask Bruce Bradly in Iowa or Mary Lundergan Grimes in Kentucky they each have a story to tell.