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The Bogeymen

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It Costs a Ton of Money to Fight These Bogeymen

It Costs a Ton of Money to Fight These Bogeymen

Under no circumstances am I a follower of the infamous Koch brothers and their right-wing causes. On the other hand, I feel the Democratic fund raisers are too busy targeting these misguided nut jobs rather than changing the voters’ minds with a good political program and real accomplishments. The following is an e-mail I received this morning from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC), virtually identical to about eight hundred other e-mails I’ve received over the last year:

James — With just 72 hours until the FEC deadline, we’d usually write to tell you how incredibly close we are to hitting our goal. Bad news: That simply isn’t the case.

Because of the Koch brothers’ UNPRECEDENTED early spending, we just dramatically boosted our fundraising targets for 2014. Right now, we still have a $300,000 hole in our January budget. If you can’t fill it, the Republicans can open a massive lead in the neck-and-neck battle for the Senate.

If we fall short this early — when MSNBC already projects the Republicans are favored to take the Senate — we simply won’t be able to respond to the Kochs and karl Rove, which will doom our chances to protect Democrats who are under attack. Will you step up and renew your DSCC membership for 2014 before the deadline on Friday?

So unless I personally go head to head with a couple of multi-millionaires in the political contribution department, Karl Rove and the Koch brothers will prevail because—as we all know—what it takes to win an election is money for otiose advertisements on television. Of course, everybody votes based on the candidate’s advertising budget alone. I’m supposed to step up and take it on the chin for the team. The Spineless Team. The Circular Firing Squad Team.

To be sure, I want Democratic candidates to win; but I will not be contributing hundreds of dollars for an off-year Congressional race. I have better uses for my money than making a bunch of big corporations that own television stations even richer. And all because Karl Rove and the Koch brothers don’t think the way I do.

 

Has the Khmer Rouge Taken Over Congress?

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Pol Pot, Tea Party Darling

Pol Pot, Tea Party Darling

The news from Congress is so very strange these days that I am beginning to think that they have been taken over by some extreme guerrilla faction such as the Khmer Rouge or the Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). The Senate is about to host a three- or four-day pajama party—all night long!—just so they the GOP can express their snit about Harry Reid invoking the “nuclear option” on their right to filibuster Obama’s nominees. As for the House of Representatives, Speaker John Boehner is now aiming daggers at special interest groups that want him to oppose the budget deal put together by Paul Ryan in the House and Senator Patty Murray … even before the details have been released.

Why does it seem that the news from Congress is always bad? The legislative branch of government seems to be permanently broken.

But how does one fix it? Get Mitch McConnell a new burnished turtle shell? Get Boehner a better grade of liquor? Or more handsome and complaisant pages for the Southern senators? What about changing the cooking oil used to make Freedom Fries? (It’s been the same old stuff since Ike was President.) Softer toilet paper for the Congressional stalls? Something’s just gotta give.

One cannot run a government in which two of the three branches of government (yes, I’m including the Supreme Court) are dysfunctional. As Lincoln said:

A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

We don’t have slavery any more, just a lot of snarky behind-the-scenes racism. Maybe Lincoln was right: One way or the other, Congress will cease to be so divided. But before that happens, we’ll all need some industrial-strength antacids,

A Do-Nothing Congress, Circa 1890

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House Speaker Thomas B. Reed (R-Me)

House Speaker Thomas B. Reed (R-Me)

Ours is not the only do-nothing Congress. Things were even worse around 1890 when Thomas B. Reed of Maine was Speaker of the House for the Republican majority. He had a lot more to contend with than semi-illiterate white senior citizens with teabags dangling from their tricorn hats: Back then, members of the House would loll around in their seats reading newspapers or filling their spittoons.

To avoid having to do anything, they had their own equivalent of the filibuster, which, as you know, is a Senate thing. They would ask for a quorum call. According to the Constitution, a predetermined minimum number of representatives had to be present for the business of the House to be conducted. But what if, when his name was called, a Representative didn’t answer. At the time, the Speaker just marked him absent, even though he was clearly visible fifty feet away doing a crossword puzzle. This practice was referred to as the “disappearing quorum.” Then, as now, a minority could stop the House cold.

What Reed did to break the quorum was very simple. According to National Public Radio, which interviewed James Grant on the publication of his biography of Reed (cover illustrated above):

Reed decided to take action. He was a master parliamentarian, Grant says, able to play the rulebook almost like an instrument. And he changed history with just 17 words: “The Chair directs the Clerk to record the following names of members present and refusing to vote.”

“That was it,” Grant says. “Those seventeen words were the invitation to perfect pandemonium,” as the minority Democrats realized their disappearing quorum tactic wouldn’t work anymore — and that the majority party would now be able to start expanding the size and scope of government. The changes meant business could be done more efficiently, so more and more business began to be done.

Back then, to be a Republican was a good thing. Why? Because the “Solid South” was 100% Democrat. After Reagan’s presidency in the 1980s, the Confederate states switched their allegiance to the Republican party and decided to apply a wrecking ball to it, which they proceeded to do.

Heisenberg at Dealey Plaza

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The Elusive Umbrella Man

The Elusive Umbrella Man

After the rain of the day before, November 22, 1963 dawned bright with nary a cloud in the sky. It was a fateful day for America, as John F. Kennedy was about to take a bullet in the neck from a known or perhaps an unknown assassin. In the footage of the event, not only from Zapruder but from a whole pack of bystanders, there is a single man in the crowd holding aloft an umbrella. The so-called “Umbrella Man” has become one of the mysteries of that day. So mysterious that documentary filmmaker Errol Morris made a fascinating six-minute film on the subject which you can see by clicking below:

It is worth seeing this video, because, in my opinion, it is about one of the great mysteries of life. Author John Updike foresaw this when the wrote the following lines in The New Yorker in December 1967:

We wonder whether a genuine mystery is being concealed here or whether any similar scrutiny of a minute section of time and space would yield similar strangenesses—gaps, inconsistencies, warps, and bubbles in the surface of circumstance. Perhaps, as with the elements of matter, investigation passes a threshold of common sense and enters a sub-atomic realm where laws are mocked, where persons have the life-span of beta particles and the transparency of neutrinos, and where a rough kind of averaging out must substitute for absolute truth. The truth about those seconds in Dallas is especially elusive; the search for it seems to demonstrate how perilously empiricism verges on magic.

Errol Morris and his interviewee, Josiah “Tink” Thompson, understood this implicitly when they made the film. They even found the mysterious umbrella man and talked to him. It turns out his umbrella was a silent protest against John F. Kennedy’s father, Joseph, who was U.S. Ambassador at the Court of St. James in England. It seems the umbrella man thought him a Nazi appeaser. But that didn’t keep the rumor mills from spinning on.

Today there are a number of assertions believed by a great number of people that Barack Obama was a Muslim born in Kenya and who attended a madrassa in Indonesia, that the Second Amendment allows Americans to carry high powered military rifles, that Jesus taught us that people of the LGBT persuasion should be persecuted, and that abortion-mad Chinese feast on human fetuses.

Even when proofs and evidence are produced, people will still hold on to their beliefs. They have been told these things by people whom they trust, and who are you to shake their world?

Pundits for the Feeble-Minded

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“Ditto-Head”—Another Term for the Brainless?

“Ditto-Head”—Another Term for the Brainless?

I am weary of expending my energy reacting to people who say stupid things in public for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, either in the form of fame or money. This has become an age of talking heads who flood the media in order to appeal to the feeble-minded, the left behind, the village idiots. Here, in alphabetical order by last name, are sixteen chronic offenders:

  • Michele Bachmann, Congressman (R-Minnesota). If you can stand to look at her gorgon eyes without turning to stone, you are a better man than I am, Gunga Din.
  • Glenn Beck, Pundit. The rodeo clown of the right wing.
  • Patrick Buchanan, Pundit. Occasionally lucid, usually not.
  • Dick Cheney, Former Vice President. Mean and scary. One of the Beasts of the Apocalypse.
  • Ann Coulter, Pundit. So vicious that she gets in the way of her own message. May be a transsexual.
  • Ted Cruz (and his father Rafael Cruz), Senator (R-Texas). Deceptively smooth rightist ideologue.
  • Newt Gingrich, Former Speaker of the House (R-Georgia). Smart enough to know better, but wants the right wing to win to protect his own shaky legacy.
  • Louis Gohmert, Congressman (R-Texas). His crazy quotes liven many press stories.
  • Sean Hannity, Fox News Pundit. Smarmy and fascistic.
  • Wayne La Pierre, NRA Spokesman. Wants to arm everybody. A shill for the arms industry.
  • Rush Limbaugh, Pundit. If you do the opposite of what he advocates, you’ll probably be okay.
  • Bill O’Reilly, Fox News Pundit. Showers with falafel.
  • Sarah Palin, Ex-Governor (R-Alaska) and Pundit. The only pundit I know who may be more stupid than her followers.
  • Rand Paul, Senator (R-Kentucky). What happens when you mate a libertarian with a Brillo Pad ®?
  • Pat Robertson, Televangelist. Probably can be forgiven for his advanced age, during which he has surprisingly not been struck by lightning once for his pronouncements.
  • Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice U.S. Supreme Court. If there’s something evil that a judge can say, it’ll be Scalia saying it.

Let me quote Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Let the doors be shut upon him that he may play the fool nowhere but in’s own house.”

“Power Without Wisdom Collapses Beneath Its Own Weight”

Jan Amos Komensky

Jan Amos Komensky

Almost three hundred and fifty years ago, one of the greatest minds of the Renaissance and the founder of modern pedagogy, Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius) wrote in a letter to the Prefects of the Dutch Navy:

“Your homeland has entrusted you with its bounty, that you protect it against all foreign foes, but you must not be ignorant of the art of defending it from foes within, to wit, the obscuring of the mind, loosening of morals and desecration of life. And not only protect it for the present time but also to take wise care how in the future the generations that will rise after you, your sons, may successfully protect the happy state you have prepared for them and then pass it on to their offspring until the end of time. It is therefore necessary that you bequeath to them not only the strength and determination to maintain it themselves but also wise counsel, otherwise power without wisdom collapses beneath its own weight.”

How is wise counsel being passed on within the family, the school, the mass media or the other institutions concerned with it in some way?—Ivan Klíma, Between Security and Insecurity

We Have Nothing to Fear But …

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Someone Needs to Tell This to the Tea Party

Someone Needs to Tell This to the Tea Party

Conservatives are people who are addicted to fear. They fear for the “sanctity” of marriage. They fear what else homosexuals might be planning to discomfit them and their way of life. They fear that liberals are coming to take away their guns. They fear their children will grow up hating their values. They fear that poor people will vote in large numbers to bump them out of office. They fear America will be inundated by immigrants from Third World countries. They fear for the Purity of Essence of their Precious Bodily Fluids.

I take my cue from a great Republican President by the name of Calvin Coolidge. At one point, he said, “If you see ten troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you.” I often think of that saying when I am twisting and turning in bed at night because I fear that something will happen.

If you should ever find yourself in Plymouth, Vermont, as I did on one day in 2005. You should visit the Coolidge homestead, which is run by the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. You will find the former President buried in the local cemetery without an ostentatious monument slathered with grandiose sentiments. You will see the humble home in which he was born and the village where he grew to maturity. And finally, you will see a Republican who could be admired by future generations—as the present crop of Republicans will most certainly not be.

A subsequent President, FDR, told us during his first inaugural address that we had nothing to fear but fear itself:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

Is the United States going to be paralyzed by the fear of elderly white people who think they are the last generation that supports the values that made this country great? Or will change continue to take place—as it always has and always will—leading to a world that is different, better in some ways and worse in others?

Umm, Texas …

Rep Blake Farenthold (R-TX)

Rep Blake Farenthold (R-TX)

It is a well established fact that America only tolerates Texas because it has oil and Austin and probably something else of value that I can’t think of off the top of my head. Let’s see …. nope … I got nothin’. But there are times when Texas gets on our last nerve (to be fair, that is usually reserved for Florida) and we just shake our heads and start to wonder if maybe Mexico would be willing to take Texas back if we can find the receipt in a drawer somewhere , and even if we  have to pay a 15% restocking fee.

I know I’d chip in.

Which brings us to  Texas’s own Blake Farenthold (R-Golden Corral), who barely squeaked into office in his first go-around, but then his district was redrawn (moar whitez, less brownz) and now he will hold his seat until the End Times, who is here to explain that America’s disabled vets need to suck it up and take one for the team and that they should rub some dirt on it and put whatever skin they didn’t leave behind on the battlefield into the game when it comes to “sacrifice”.—TBogg

The War Against the Borg

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I Think I’m Finally Beginning to Understand This Phenomenon

I Think I’m Finally Beginning to Understand This Phenomenon

My thinking on the whole issue of America’s rightist wingnuts is finally beginning to jell. First of all, they have no real expectation of winning elections, or even of winning most congressional spats such as the recent one over the Shutdown and Obamacare. They really do not care what the majority of Americans think. They know or at least suspect that theirs is a losing fight. When you can’t win battles any more, all that’s left is sheer obstructionism. I am sure that they all think of themselves as if they were General Nathan Bedford Forrest in the last days of the Civil War, going up against the Union knowing they would be outnumbered in every encounter: Their sole hope is to win a few anyhow. Then they can go to their eternal rest (most of them are white and pretty old) knowing they’ve done their best to stem the tide, at least for a while.

There are about fifty so-called bullet-proof seats in Congress occupied by Tea Party types and their running dogs. The voters who elected these intransigent representatives must be made to change their minds, even if it means having other Congressmen gang up on them to vote down laws that would benefit their constituents. That is the only thing that would change their minds, knowing that their man in Congress is not helping their districts. No amount of petitions or snarky attacks on talk shows will have any effect on these people. They don’t care. They have their Tin Pot Jesus who is a great comfort to them in a bewildering world.

Disruptor, Dementor, Borg—They All Amount to the Same Thing

Disruptor, Dementor, Borg—They All Amount to the Same Thing

You may recall the Borg, Captain Picard’s fearful adversary on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Borg essentially fought without caring whether they won or lost (though they mostly won): It was just in their programming that they would overcome and assimilate all the Non-Borg. As a registered Non-Borg, I do not want to be assimilated. Hence, I will resist—even if they think it is futile.

An Iowa Republican Congressman named Steve King made what I consider to be an interesting comment about the shutdown:

“I want what’s best for the long-term best interest of this country,” the Iowa Republican explained. “I want it to be on Constitutional underpinnings.”

“And I want to continue to unleash human nature,” he added. “And I’m afraid we’re going the other direction here. And that is troubling to me.”

Why is it important to “unleash human nature”? And, more important, whose “human nature” does he want to unleash? If he unleashes mine, he may find himself being slugged in the head with a baseball bat.

Another interesting contributor to my thinking on this is that the Rightists are willing to go up against women and the young, which constitute more than half the voters. An interesting article on Salon.Com interviews political consultant Theda Skocpol about the recent fracas. At one point, she says:

We actually did the research, both by pulling together national [data] and by doing observations in groups in three regions. There’s no question that at the grass roots, approximately half of all Republican-identifiers who think of themselves as Tea Partyers are a very conservative-minded old group of white people, some of whom do go all the way back to Goldwater and the Birch Society. They are skeptical of the Republican Party as it has been run in recent years. But they both hate and fear the Democratic Party and Obama. We argued in many ways that anger comes from alarm on the part of these older conservatives that they’re losing their country — that’s what they say. That they’re the true Americans, and they’re losing control of American politics. So that’s the grass-roots component.

All this time, I have been attacking the Republican Party. They have merely been assimilated by the Borg and, in the process, lost their souls, such as they were. Boehner, Cantor, and the other GOP House leaders are dancing to Borg tunes and drawing upon themselves a horrible vengeance from the voters. That is, if the voters remember what happened this time next year.

A Final Solution for the House

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They Should Try It with a Drano Chaser

They Should Try It with a Drano Chaser

I have made several suggestions for dealing with the House of Representatives in these postings. Among my past suggestions:

  • Fire them and replace them with scabs
  • Arrest them for violation of their oath of office, and—why not?—for treason

Now, as we come down to the wire on the self-imposed destruction of the country I love, I can only suggest a liberal application of rat poison. After the bodies have been removed, the House should be fumigated to get rid of that verminous Tea Party smell.

If you think that is too extreme, perhaps you haven’t been aware of what has been happening lately. It’s high time to rid this country of a baneful influence using the most draconian means possible.

And don’t try to argue with me on this! I am convinced.