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Cruz (Unguided) Missile

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Why Do I Suddenly Feel This Is the Weimar Republic?

Why Do I Suddenly Feel This Is the Weimar Republic?

Who is this man and where did he come from? Oh, yeah. Texas. Well, I should have known.

One interesting phenomenon about all these Tea Party darlings, from Michele Bachmann to Sarah Palin to Rand Paul to (now) Ted Cruz, is that they rise up suddenly from the backwoods and hit the news media with a sudden and glittering éclat before they sink into the malodorous miasma of bad reputations.

I suppose there are people who subscribe to the Tea Party principles of “That government governs best which doesn’t exist.” If you’ve read anything I’ve written over the last year or so, you know I don’t hold with that brand of anarchism. The sad thing is that many adherents of those beliefs are dependent on the same government programs that they oppose on quasi-ideological grounds. It wouldn’t be the first time that large masses of people shot themselves in the foot.

In the end, I think that Ted Cruz will be one of the people responsible for the latest demolition of the Republican Party. In the past, the GOP has come back Phoenix-like from its previous devastations—only to blunder into even more destructive ones. What can one do with a party that is paid for by uncaring CEOs for the sole purpose of lightening their own personal tax loads and that of their business enterprises? The Tea Partyers are merely low speed bumps on the road to where the 1% wants to go.

 

There Is No Bully Pulpit

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It’s a Different World Now

It’s a Different World Now

I remember when H. Ross Perot was running for President on an independent ticket in 1992 and 1996, he used a phrase that was new to me: He said the Presidency was a “Bully Pulpit,” meaning it was a superior platform for advocating a political agenda. Perhaps, as late as the 1990s, that might have been true. But it is, alas, true no longer.

What has happened since then is the creation of the Great Republican Noise Machine, with its Faux News adjunct. The President can now be shouted down. He has been called a liar in a session of Congress—by a Congressman from South Carolina, no less; and he has been heckled at a press conference by a gay marriage advocate. Perhaps the podium at which the President stands is more useful these days for ducking brickbats than as a symbol of presidential power.

There is one slight problem with all this disrespect. It is not merely Barack Obama who is being treated contemptuously, but also the office of the President of the United States. Whoever inherits his mantle—be it Republican or Democrat—will now have to face the same barrage. What’s next? Will U.S. Senators start throwing shoes?

Just remember: What goes around, comes around. In spades!

Nothing But Short-Term Solutions

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Eric Cantor and John Boehner

Eric Cantor and John Boehner

It now looks as if the House GOP leadership will allow the debt ceiling to be raised—but only temporarily. In the meantime, they will hope that the Democrats will undergo some type of old-religion conversion, allowing them to see the light and cut back on spending. And the spending they want to cut back on are for the most part social programs that benefit people.

Is there any plan to cut back on military spending? Well, no! Between guns and butter, it’s butter that’s going to have to go. In the meantime, we will be facing the same discussion in a few months’ time, with hundreds of hours of the legislators’ time being wasted because no Republican is interested in yielding a millimeter on their [anti-]social agenda.

I have a suggestion. Perhaps this is the right time to cut down on our spending on Congress. Cut their stipend by 80%, rent out the Capitol Building for weddings and funerals, and make Congress meet in a hangar at Dulles Airport—a hangar that is neither heated nor air-conditioned. My prediction is that Congress would move faster, and there would even be a modicum of cooperation, especially inasmuch as the Democrats would be in the same boat.

 

Fighting for Their Rats

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Are We Still Fighting the Civil War?

Are We Still Fighting the Civil War?

I cannot help but think that, in a way, the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court House never really happened. The South has decided, instead of surrendering, to fight to the death for a set of beliefs that are irreconcilable to those of most Americans. And they are becoming increasingly more irreconcilable. Now, although “irreconcilable differences” is frequently used as grounds for divorce, in this case I think something else will happen in this course of time.

The biggest enemy that Republican Conservatives from the South will face in the decades to come is demographic change. The Bible-thumping old white people will gradually die out, to be replaced by some fewer young people with the same values, but still more African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. This is a trend that is happening in most parts of the country, but I expect that its results will be most strongly felt in the South.

I think Faux News pundit Bill O’Reilly had it right when he said: “Obama wins because it’s not a traditional America anymore. The white establishment is the minority.” He concluded by adding that “people want things.” Of course they do. We all do. And what Tea Party Southerners (“the white establishment”) want is very different from what the new emerging demographic majorities want.

There is something pathetic about these old Confederates still acting as if they were the only game in town, when in fact they are not. And they will grow even fewer, but not before fighting to the last man for their principles.

In Ted Turner’s film Gettysburg, there is a scene in which a Union officer interrogates three Southern prisoners captured during the early fighting skirmishes. The Yankee asks the prisoners why they are fighting. The answer comes back, “for their rights.” Except, the young officer mishears them because of their drawl and thinks they said, “for their rats.” Even when this misunderstanding is cleared up, it is clear that that was not the answer their captors expected. The North thought that the South was fighting for slavery, whereas the South was fighting for the right to do what they believed in, irrespective of what those beliefs were. If those beliefs included slavery, then so be it!

It is somewhat unnerving to think that issues we thought had been decided back in 1865 are still affecting the American political scene. They are, and will continue to do so until a whole lot more water has flown under the bridge.

 

 

The NRA Is a Terrorist Organization

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Logo for America’s Newest Terrorist Organization

Logo for America’s Newest Terrorist Organization

I think it’s time to face the fact that—under the guise of allowing pudgy old white men to play with guns—the real intent of the National Rifle Association (NRA) is to facilitate the slaughter of innocents by confirmed lunatics.

The number of slaughtered innocents just went up today when a “shooter” (such a neutral term for such a hideous type of person) killed more than two dozen kids and teachers at a Connecticut school today.

Still, whatever happens, the Republican party will try to bury any negative response because so many of their supporters are pudgy old white men who like to play with guns. It doesn’t matter whether thousands of little boys and girls die under a hail of bullets, that’s just the price we pay for allowing pudgy old white men who like to play with guns to have a disproportionate say in the political process.

Perhaps what we need here is some computer matching: Camouflage clothing + body armor + assault weapons and, in general, multiple guns + young male + psychological problems + lack of education = possible “shooter.” It would take quite a bit of doing to link all that information together, but there does seem to be a pattern.

It’s a tough pattern to break. We look at ourselves as a nation of Marlboro Cowboys, whereas actually we’re a nation of psychopaths.

Eating Crow

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Eat That Crow Now! It’ll Only Smell Worse Later.

Eat That Crow Now! It’ll Only Smell and Taste Worse Later.

The New Yorker does it again in this hilarious cartoon by Peter de Séve in the November 26, 2012 issue.

Instead, what does the GOP do? They discount the results of the November 6 election and pretend they won it in a landslide. They not only lost it, but they are just-this-close to losing their reason for existence altogether.

The Tea Partiers will die off (remember they don’t like ObamaCare); the Libertarians will never amount to anything but a small, noisy minority; and the remaining wing nuts will gravitate elsewhere when the circus train rides out of town.

 

Unregenerate

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Speaker of the House Boehner

Speaker of the House Boehner

Excuse me, but didn’t the Republicans just lose a major election because they were as out of touch with their people as Louis XVI, the Tsar Nicholas II, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak ever were? Doesn’t that imply a period of self-examination, of wondering what they could have done wrong?

But no! The Republican house leadership is pretending they won the election. Speaker of the House John Boehner is pretending that Americans want billionaires and millionaires to pay less taxes because—by golly, by gosh!—most Americans want to be millionaires and billionaires. And where should the money come from that fuels the government? Just take it away from the poor and the Middle Class! Oh, you know, those 47-percenters who are such a drag on the rest of us.

I would urge President Obama to take Boehner out to the woodshed and liberally apply a two-by-four to his orange face. Nothing else seems to be getting through to him.

Look, if the Republican Party has a massive suicidal urge, that’s all fine and good. But don’t let them be like those inarticulate bastards who take an arsenal to their workplace and blow everyone in sight away before pointing a gun to their own empty heads. I think it’s time for an intervention.

“Legitimate Rape”

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Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo) tells us all about women’s bodies.

Why does the U.S. House of Representatives increasingly look like a monkey house in the zoo, with ignorant congressmen swinging from the branches and shocking us civilized people with their bestiality? My parents tell me that, when I was a little tyke, we visited the Bronx Zoo in New York and were assailed by dung thrown at the visitors by the gorillas. It was an early instance, I guess, of gorilla warfare.

What Representative Todd Akin did that upset so many people in both political parties is to hint, by his choice of language, that (1) there is such a thing called “legitimate rape,” which sounds in his words as if it were a good thing and (2) women can, when being raped, shut down their baby-making factory at will. Therefore there is no valid justification for abortion in the event of rape.

Women have tried for so hard and so long to win the equality that they deserve that it has become shocking when a troglodyte like Akin steps forward and makes chattering sounds that betray his ignorance. And he wants to join that Gentleman’s Club known as the U.S. Senate! I don’t think he’ll make it.

It’s back to the bananas for monkey boy.