Tag Archives: GOP

Political Rants

Hair on fire.

Leave a comment

Good lord almighty, Fox news must be in pig-heaven right now. Three running Obama administration scandals, each one ten times bigger than Watergate and Iran-Contra combined. This should be a solid excuse for Congress not to do anything about (1) creating jobs and infrastructure, (2) getting our national security state under control, and (3) doing something to fight global warming.

Let’s just examine these, one at a time:

Benghazi. This is bullshit. Quite frankly, the only reason why we are hearing anything about this incident eight months after the fact is because the Republican nominee decided to politicize it on the very day it occurred. Does anyone remember this? Romney jumped all over Obama’s shit because he claimed that the administration’s expressions of regret over that bogus pseudo-porn movie denigrating Muslims amounted to apologizing to the terrorists who blew up the consulate. That prompted the White House to get out in front of the investigation into what had happened … probably too far out in front, frankly. At the time, protests were occurring all over the Muslim world related to that video. They chose initially to come down on that side of what was then a cloudy issue.

Where are the jobs, Mr. Boehner? IRS Targeting of Tea Party groups. Indefensible action on the part of the IRS. Though for all of those whose hair is on fire over this, it should be noted that all of the groups who applied, I believe, were ultimately given tax exempt status. Recall, too, that the IRS harassed anti war groups during W. Bush’s administration, but that wasn’t the end of it. There was domestic surveillance and infiltration of political organizations on the left. There were mass arrests and beatings. For chrissake, they even had the Defense Intelligence Agency spy on the Thomas Merton Center! Given the degree of governmental dysfunction that’s attributable to the tea party, it is a bit hard for me to get overly worked up. Wrong, yes … but on the scale of wrongs, this is kind of puny.

Justice Spying on the AP. Welcome to the national security state! We’ve only been living in it my entire life through. The last administration began the open practice of sweeping up all phone calls and email (not that the NSA wasn’t doing that before W). Bradley Manning is still in jail for telling the truth. This is a major problem, but not surprising, and basically the product of national security policies that have gone largely unchallenged by the now outraged corporate press.

Short answer: Don’t use this as an excuse for continued dysfunction. Mr. Boehner: never mind repealing Obamacare for the 27th time. Where the hell are the jobs?

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Chain gang.

Leave a comment

The thing that keeps popping into my mind as more details of the president’s budget emerge is the notion of how small-bore our political leaders are about everything. We face enormous problems – climate changes, massive unemployment, deindustrialization, economic inequality, rampant militarism, an out-of-control justice and penal system, rampant gun violence, and so on – and yet our politicians behave like the wizened, stingy little men they are and fail again and again to recognize the scale of what’s confronting us. Obama is no exception, his desire to reach a “Grand Bargain” with the Republicans so overriding that he appears to have forgotten who stood out in the sun, rain, whatever, for hours and voted for him last November.

Think bigger.
Think bigger.

Honestly, it’s hard to imagine that a Democratic president, serving in the wake of two decades of steady decline for the poor and working class, would opt for a plan that would cut the meager supplemental retirement checks of elderly people in order to preserve preferential treatment for the nation’s wealthy, who have been doing just fine since the Reagan years, thank you very much. He talks about balanced approaches and shared sacrifice, but what he seems to forget is that the vast majority of us have already carried more than our share of sacrifice. Many have paid with their jobs/careers, others with their homes, their retirement funds. And they are supposed to give up more on top of that? Ludicrous.

This is not a new formula, nor is it a surprise. Obama has been signalling this decision for a few years. He is just following the example of previous Democratic party presidents, particularly that of Bill Clinton, who was a master triangulator and who ruled in a way that assumed the poor, the workers, people on the left, and people of color had no where else to go politically. The only remedy for this cynicism is push back. Politicians respond to public pressure – it there is any “law of gravity” in politics, that is it. Look at how quickly the Occupy Wall Street movement changed the conversation over a year ago. It has since drifted back to austerity and small-mindedness, but that can be overcome. Look at the gun debate, at immigration, at gay rights. There is movement because politicians are looking at the masses of people moving these issues forward.

So… if anyone is going to save the poor, the disabled, the elderly, from a greater level of penury (imposed to service the interests of the rich), it will be us. Make a ruckus…. or they’ll fuck us. That is all.

luv u,

jp

 

Political Rants

Samesville.

Leave a comment

Back again, right? Every couple of months or so we are faced with a manufactured fiscal crisis. Again, this is by design, not by necessity. The Republican party – particularly the hard core of yargle-bargle types known as the “tea party” – has long pursued the practice of enormous deficit spending while they hold the White House and austerity when they are in the opposition. This time around, it’s austerity with a vengeance. Sure, the president signed on to this sequester deal, but it was in response to another manufactured fiscal crisis, brought on by the newly-installed G.O.P. Congress in 2011. In other words, if it wasn’t the sequester, it would be the debt ceiling, or the budget, or some key appropriations bill – anything to jam up the works.

Patron saint of the whiners. There is nothing surprising about this. Grover Norquist, patron saint of the cheapskates (and clearly someone who did not like eating his peas when he was 4), articulated it quite clearly when he said, in effect, when Democrats are in power, force them to rule like Republicans. Parse out the irony (as mentioned earlier, Republicans are much more generous with presidents of their own party) and you can see the sense in what they’re doing. Of course, it goes beyond that. I think most Republicans are smart enough to know that the kinds of cuts they’re advocating will result in a second recession. That works to their political benefit. Winning is paramount to them, even (and perhaps especially) when they lose. If they can discredit a Democratic president, so much the better.

The Democrats are enablers of this continuing train wreck. They were handed the reins in 2009, and instead of meeting the financial crisis with a response of an appropriate magnitude, they allowed conservatives to talk them down to a small-bore strategy that simply was not sufficient to pull us out. The stimulus worked to the extent that it was designed to work; when the money ran out, so did the steam. Now we are in what Krugman rightly calls a depression – an economy that is not shrinking, but not really gaining ground either – and all Washington can talk about is cutting the freaking deficit. The problem is unemployment, not short-term debt. Fix one, and the other will take care of itself. Want to solve long-term debt? Stop maintaining health insurance as the province of private profit-making industry; expand Medicare and you will make it solvent.

How do you get these people to do the right thing? To borrow a phrase from V.S. Naipaul, a million mutinies now. Tell your representative and your senators that you want them to invest in the economy, not starve it.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The way we are.

Leave a comment

The sequester deadline is getting closer, but – unsurprisingly – we are no closer to cutting a deal to avoid draconian cuts to a full range of programs. In all honesty, if it weren’t for the domestic and veteran-support programs that would fall under that senseless cleaver, it might not be such a bad thing in that the Defense budget would finally see some reductions. Of course, as every close observer of national politics knows all too well, cuts to the DOD turn normally conservative – even Randian – Republicans into hysterical Keynesians, warning of the dire employment consequences if the Pentagon budget were slashed. There’s some truth to that … which is why it sounds so strange coming out of Republicans’ mouths. But anyway…

Hey, nitz!
Shout out to "the man".

It’s worth repeating Robert Pollin’s observation here that Pentagon spending is not the best way to create jobs. $1 million spent on defense creates roughly a dozen jobs. Spend that same money on education and you’re up into the mid twenties. So if the Republicans are simply looking for ways to generate employment through public spending, there are plenty of ways to accomplish that. Personally, I think their only concern – aside from winning elections – is for the welfare of the well-off. It’s really all they ever talk about, if you listen carefully to what they say.

It shows in what they do, too. Since 2010, they have raised my income taxes in a major way twice – twice! In 2011 they scotched the “Making Work Pay” tax credit, which was worth about $800 to couples. This past year, they ended the payroll tax holiday; refused to budge on that, too, in favor of extended breaks for people making $250,000 to $400,000 a year. W.T.F., Boehner, McConnell – what happened to your Norquistian anti-tax pledges? Oh, that’s right – I’m not rich, so it doesn’t apply to me.

Hey, nitz! Boehner! You want to fuel job growth through increased consumption? Here’s an easy way to do it. Raise taxes on the freaking rich, cut them on the poor and working class, and raise the minimum wage to at least $9 with indexing, as Obama proposed. When working people get money, it goes right back into the economy. We spend it like water … not because we’re profligate, but because we have to. Give more money to the rich, they’ll just sit on it, like they’re doing now.

Little piece of advice for you, Jack. No charge. Happy freaking Valentine’s day.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Over the edge.

Leave a comment

The fiscal cliff is just ahead. Be afraid, be afraid! Are you afraid yet? Well, you’re supposed to be. Going over the “fiscal cliff” is the worst thing that can possibly happen – worse even than … I don’t know … losing your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

Friends, this is the oldest trick in the book. Our leaders have done their best to bankrupt the government over the last decade and a half, coupling undeclared wars with massive tax cuts, crashing the economy through their vaunted hands-off approach to the financial sector, etc. Now when it comes time to pay the tab, guess who’s picking it up? Not a big surprise that they’re running out on the check. They only do it every freaking time.

Listening to the series of Republican interviews that is NPR the other day, I heard some talk of raising the Medicare eligibility age as one means of covering their failed fiscal policy decisions. That has to take the prize as the stupidest idea ever proposed. Sure, take the youngest people out of the Medicare system – the people who need the least care! That’s a surefire way to bankrupt the program, which I’m sure is their ultimate aim. The G.O.P. has always hated Medicare, almost as much as they hate Social Security, despite their claims to the contrary. If they were truly serious about saving money, they would be expanding Medicare to include younger, healthier people, not the other way around.

The thing we have to watch like the proverbial hawk is our election year friends, the Democratic Party. We need to remind them who gave them victory a few weeks ago. We need to encourage them to challenge the Republicans on their fealty to the same failed policies Milton Friedman advocated decades ago, on their determination to protect the private tyranny that is the health insurance industry. We need to encourage them to do the right thing, no less.

That is what we should be focusing on, not irrational fear.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

The admiral.

Leave a comment

A little more than a week after the election, and McCain is at it again. God, I wish he would stick to making frozen sweet potato french fries! (That’s not him? My bad.) He is vowing to get to the bottom of this … my word … bigger than average scandal surrounding the attack on the Benghazi consulate and the killing of ambassador Chris Stevens and his security detail. The Senator is so determined that he held a press conference while the committee he chairs was receiving testimony from the CIA in closed session. That’s right … he skipped the session where details of the attack were being disclosed to complain that the administration has refused to disclose details of the attack.

Seemingly freakish and perhaps the product of a superannuated brain, McCain is simply clinging to the mast of the ship he’s been commanding since his arrival in the Senate. The Benghazi controversy was cooked up during the campaign to try to drive a wedge into Obama’s national security advantage. The biggest mistake the administration made was likely one of too much disclosure as opposed to too little – while Romney was railing against them for “apologizing” to the killers of Chris Stevens, the administration attempted to quell the issue by releasing more details than anyone could have confidently claimed were reliable at the time. Now that Romney has lost, McCain is left with the issue, defending his ground to the last.

Of course, Obama’s pushback during his news conference got McCain’s famous temper going, and he’s been yelling at Obama to get off of his lawn ever since. This is kind of pathetic, frankly. The man is clinging to his tattered reputation as a foreign policy hawk, throwing bombs wildly and somewhat inaccurately. (My guess is that his bombing runs over North Vietnam were a bit scattershot as well.) The admiral needs to calm down, take his pill, and think about his constituents for five minutes.

Both of Obama’s presidential election opponents were heard from this week. But even with Romney’s doubling-down on his 47% sentiment to his donors, he sounded like less of a crank than his predecessor from four years earlier. We dodged a bullet both times, but particularly in 2008.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Bite back the bad news.

Leave a comment

I’m not going to say much about politics this week. Just bracketed with work, school, more work, etc. A few quick comments and I’m out – sorry for the lameness.

Watched the Biden / Ryan matchup. My thought about presidential and vice presidential debates is that you tend to feel the person you agree with was the winner. Only makes sense, right? This was a much easier contest to watch than the last one, I must say, but it retained one of the central themes of the presidential debate: Romney/Ryan does not want to talk specifics about anything, and are now in full flight from their own positions.

The purported “numbers guy” seems very reluctant to use any when it comes to talking about their tax plan. They are planning to cut marginal tax rates to 20% across the board, while increasing military spending something like a trillion dollars or more above current spending levels. Ryan was claiming that this can be balanced by closing loopholes on upper income earners. Horseshit. Where’s the proof? They don’t have any numbers. They can’t name deductions that they would suggest in any negotiations with Congress. They’re talking about an enormous gap that their plan would greatly expand, they claim they can close it, but they offer no details. They’ve got a secret plan to cut taxes and balance the budget while raising military spending: it’s called “Just trust us.”

The laser focus on the Benghazi terror attack is instructive about how efficient the right-wing echo chamber is. Fox News blows this story to its many millions of viewers, along with Rush and the gang; the more mainstream outlets pick it up out of nervousness. What the hell – they are blowing this thing up as if it were a bigger failure than 9/11. They certainly talk about it more than Afghanistan, where Americans are killed every week, for chrissake.

That’s all for now. More later.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Soothsaying.

Leave a comment

The trouble with writing blog posts at the end of a week is that, more often than not, you find yourself on the wrong end of the news cycle, when every blogger and talking head has had more than his/her say. So what the hell – I’m going to comment ever so briefly on a few things and then be quiet for a stretch of days. You’re welcome.

Embassy attacks. Been watching the awful scenes from overseas. Trouble is, it’s always that way for ordinary people in many of those countries. Think of what life is like in Iraq still, with the economy and infrastructure still in a shambles and bombs going off regularly, killing people at random in large numbers. We almost don’t even give it any notice unless the death toll reaches north of fifty or so. And yet, I tune in to Talk of the Nation and get to hear Fouad Ajami, formerly known as George W. Bush’s favorite Arab and a strong advocate of the Iraq invasion, talking about what Arab peoples need to do to join the community of civilized nations.  Doctor, cure thyself. (Again… how wrong do people have to be before they stop being trotted out as “experts”?)

Forty-seven fifty-three and fight. Like practically anyone with a television, I’ve seen excerpts of the Romney fundraising video captured in Boca Raton last May. There’s been a lot of talk about the errors Romney has made, but it seems like his most egregious ones are when he tells the truth. I’m sure that’s exactly how he and his advisers see half of the American people – a bunch of layabouts who want everything handed to them. Think about the picture that paints in your mind – who are they talking about? Are they talking about your mother on Social Security, or your father in the nursing home?

I’ve got news for Mitt Romney – and obviously there’s no way he would know this without being told – but when it comes to nursing home care, practically everyone in this country is poor enough for Medicaid. Here’s some more news: old people used to suffer badly before Medicare, Medicaid, and yes, Social Security. My grandfather had a heart condition for ten years before they passed Medicare. Try that sometime, richy, rich.

If there are a lot of working age people getting government checks or food coupons, it’s because Romney’s party skull-fucked the economy over the last decade… not because they want to be there. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that they’re now trying to shift the blame for that onto those who suffer the most.

luv u,

jp

Uncategorized

After party.

Leave a comment

Just some random thoughts on the major party conventions, now that they’re over. Don’t have a lot of time to write this, so it’s going to be… well, random.

Tale of Two Crackers. Bill Clinton’s big speech on Wednesday night capped what seems to me like a political rehabilitation of monumental proportions. At some point, everybody started loving Bill Clinton, and he has become a major statesman … or as close to that as you can come in this age. It wasn’t terribly surprising to see this process happen with Ronald Reagan, who – despite having a spotty popularity rating during his presidency – the media always portrayed as wildly popular, and around whom an image-enhancement industry of sorts has been at work since his departure. But Clinton? Does anyone remember how denigrated he was throughout his presidency? I suppose people have gradually come to the realization that things weren’t so bad in the 1990s … since everything since then has pretty generally sucked.

That brings me to the second cracker – W. Bush. During Clinton’s long speech, while people were hanging on every word, it was hard not to think of W’s total absence from his own party’s convention, both in person and in rhetoric. If this election is truly about a competition between two distinct approaches to government, this contrast speaks volumes about the degree to which each vision (1) has a record of success and (2) is something its proponents can advance with confidence.

Turnaround. Is America ready for a turnaround, Romney-style? I think we’ve already gotten a piece of that. Matt Taibbi’s recent reporting on Mitt Romney’s history at Bain Capital illustrates a bit of what we can expect from a Romney administration. The short story is this: Like the corporate raiders of the 1980s, Bain would do leveraged buy-outs of companies – basically buy them on credit with relatively little money down. The resulting debt would then be held by the company. Then they would compel the company to monetize its assets for dividend payments to its new shareholders – the people at Bain and its partners. What is left is the husk of a company that had already been under stress before Bain’s arrival and is now buried under a crushing debt burden, its assets sold off to enrich others.

That’s the Romney plan for America, in a nutshell. The G.O.P., if elected, will do what it always does – borrow massively (i.e. leverage), cut taxes for the rich (i.e. dividend payment to investors), privatize (i.e. monetize assets), and deregulate. You don’t need an MBA to figure out where that’s headed.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

American taliban.

Leave a comment

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Rep. Todd Aiken is some kind of outlier or “knuckle dragger,” as Boehner might put it. He represents the core of where the Republican party is on women’s reproductive rights today. The tea party-fueled G.O.P. has been on a mission about abortion since they took power in January of last year, advancing radical anti-abortion legislation on both on the federal and the state level. The 2011 “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion” act – HR3 on the docket, meaning this is literally the third bill they got to since taking power – included in its original form a redefinition of rape that established the somewhat dubiously defined category of “forcible rape”. The final version would ban federal funding of abortions in cases of “statutory rape”, meaning that rape victims would have to undergo some kind of audit to avoid bringing the child of their rapist to term.

The motivation behind this is pretty obvious. Attempts to ban abortion have always run into three exceptions that block an outright ban – rape, incest, and saving the life of the mother. Of these three categories, anti-abortion fanatics see rape as the least problematic to game. They keep trying to find ways around that exception, resorting to narrowing the definition of “legitimate” rape, junk science theories about female reproductive biology, and so on. Aiken got his theory from a crackpot preacher that served as a surrogate for Romney during the last election.  This same guy has met with both Romney and Ryan this year.

The Republicans do not want to have this conversation. But the simple truth is that they are committed to this notion of no abortion, no exceptions. They are becoming the American / Christian version of the taliban, adding a “no exceptions for rape or incest” anti-abortion plank to their national party platform just this past week. They are running away from it, but it is not going anywhere, and if you dig deep enough, you will find plenty of true believers like Aiken who will say what they believe, no matter how extreme. And this is an extreme position by any measure – the most extreme advocated by a national party on the subject of abortion since it became a national issue in the 1970s.

Extremism has gone mainstream. This should be an interesting convention, if it doesn’t get washed out by that hurricane.

luv u,

jp