Know what I hate? Well, I’m going to tell you. It’s when people intrude upon your deepest personal life, and then when you object, they accuse you of denying their right to – I don’t know – have everything exactly their way, I guess. That’s how I see the hyper-religious crowd who have been complaining about the mandate in the Affordable Care Act requiring employer-provided health insurance to cover contraception. Obama carved out an exception that should satisfy anyone – one that goes way beyond any necessary relief from what’s required, in my view. And still they are crowing about it, comparing it to religious persecution, even Nazi-ism in the more extreme cases.
The latest round has been in state legislatures from Georgia to New Hampshire, where the crackpot tea-party majority has proposed a “conscience” exception so broad it practically guarantees legal challenge. (These are the freaks who insisted, bizarrely, that all legislation be rooted in the Magna Carta, even though few of them have ever read the document in its entirety. Next, they’ll demand all proposed laws draw on neolithic cave paintings.) Then there are the fetal “personhood” statute and vaginal ultrasound bill in Virginia, scaled back in the face of massive protests by women in that divided state. This … from the party that was all about jobs, jobs, jobs during the 2010 election. See what happens when you trust them?
It should surprise no one that Republicans used the economy as a trojan horse to conceal their deeply unpopular, highly regressive right-wing social agenda. It was, after all, GOP-driven policies (aided, of course, by watery Democrats) that blew a massive hole in the federal budget back in 2001, expanding it in subsequent years with undeclared wars and unwarranted tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country. Those tax cuts were supposed to have expired by now, but as every politician knows, that ain’t gonna’ happen … because no one has the spine to allow it. Meanwhile, we all pay the price. My city in upstate New York is starved for funds largely because the Feds are starving the States, and the States are passing the cuts along to municipalities. That and inaction on health and retirement reform (not privatization, but the kind that would work) is resulting in massive tax hikes at the local level – close to 20% for the coming fiscal year. This just to spare the Romneys of the world a return to the favorable income tax rates of the 1990s, when they gained plenty enough wealth, thank you very much.
The Republicans have nothing to offer on the economy. And unless we push them, neither will the Democrats.
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jp
Mind you, I’m not a total agnostic on this. There is a difference between the parties. I wish it were a bigger difference, but there’s no point in denying that it’s there. Obama hasn’t done anywhere near what he would need to do to restart this economy and get it going in a more sustainable direction. I don’t know that he’s particularly inclined towards making any bold steps forward on that front – he’s Captain Cautious in that respect. I have a lot of problems with his policies pretty much across the board, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Romney, Gingrich, and Santorum represent a boatload more trouble for all of us than another four years of Obama would.
Gingrich’s grandiosity is wasted on these polite debates, though, and he knows it. That’s why he’s complaining so bitterly. When he gets a good shot in – “puts Juan Williams in his place”, as some in South Carolina have described it – and the crowd starts to cheer, you can see him begin to inflate like the Michelin Man. It is a wondrous sight to behold. This business of tamping down the audience’s enthusiasm is just, well… deflating for a veteran bomb-thrower like Gingrich. Perhaps this will give the GOP’s favored candidate, Romney, the boost he needs to edge out his corpulent rival. Damned liberal media! Newt told us it was all their fault!! Ah, the favored narrative… always a winner.
Gingrich, who led the nation to a constitutional crisis over a presidential blow job, is now appalled that his pseudo-romantic foibles are considered a matter of national concern. Welcome to the world you helped invent, big guy.
This, my friends, is the power of the fossil-fuel industry. Through their marketing and their political surrogates, they have taken a nation on the brink of consensus regarding climate change back in 2007 and turned it 180 degrees into deep denial. The great recession has helped in this regard, of course – jobs versus environment has always been an effective diversion. It has particular resonance now that the Democrats are effectively missing in action on this issue, running scared on the threat of nastiness from the other side. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland election year.
American military might. They mark the beginning of the recession in the Obama administration, not the Bush administration. They see the national debt as the cause of unemployment. On their planet, the only problem with our electoral system is fraudulent voting – i.e. people (perhaps “illegal” immigrants) breaking federal law to usurp a franchise very few Americans are inclined to exercise legitimately. All domestically produced fossil fuel, in their tiny minds, is somehow reserved for use by Americans alone, not simply dumped into the global market and snapped up by whoever pays for it (i.e. how it actually works).
pizza box? He is running for the G.O.P. nomination and apparently has no concept of what the pro-life and pro-choice positions actually mean.
Mean Little S.O.B. Gingrich has never been a favorite of mine – nor of practically anyone’s, I suspect – but his current campaign for president is remarkably nasty even by his low standard. The only flicker of humanity I’ve seen in him thus far has been his call to implement a bracero-like program for undocumented immigrants who have been here for many years. That will likely cost him with Republican voters, just as it did cousin Rick Perry, who voiced support for education benefits for undocumented youngsters. You could see the stifled glee on Romney’s face when Gingrich rolled out that position during one of the recent debates. No need to worry, though. Gingrich has kept to his standard of dickishness, intoning an almost Nixonian contempt of the Occupy Wall Street movement, exhorting them to take a bath and find a job, etc. Earth to Newt: it’s no longer 1971, man. That dog won’t hunt.
That’s why the hue and cry over Obama’s Israel policy, initially aimed at procuring a Republican victory in Anthony Weiner’s old Brooklyn district, seems so unmoored from reality. Where did they get this idea that Obama is somehow “soft” on support for Israel? I think I can guess – from somebody’s racist best friend. This appears to be an effort to crack Obama’s support amongst Jewish voters via yet another attempt to dog-whistle his “otherness” – in essence, his black identity – in a part of the country with a history of tension between black and Jewish residents. Republican candidates see an opportunity here – that’s why they’re more expulsionist than Avigdor Lieberman. That’s why we were treated to the spectacle of Rick Perry dancing with Rabbis.
Texan was in the White House – the headline went something like “Bush to U.S. Businesses: Create Millions of Shitty Jobs.” I think it’s kind of a Texas thing, because many of those great Texas jobs that are not either in government or in the extractive industries are of the low-wage, no benefits, no security type. Anyway, here is what the governor had to say: