Observations from the Abyss 10.16

Two weeks into the government shutdown, hours away from the debt ceiling, and there is possibly a deal in the U.S. Senate that would open the government and fund it until January 15, 2014 as well as raise the debt ceiling until February 7, 2014. We shall see what happens because a lot depends on whether Texas Senator Ted Cruz wants to read more Dr. Seuss books from the Senate floor and how bad John Boehner wants to keep his House Speakership. Honestly I think it will get done because in the end the powers that matter know it has to be. I mean seriously, this isn't Argentina. I apologize if you are Argentina.

I've talked and tweeted about this debacle until people are tired of listening to me. I haven't written much about it because my thoughts change faster than I can write them down but there is one thing I wanted to say. It's in the same line of thought as the Bible quote I posted yesterday.

Let me start by saying this is totally a Republican shutdown and I'm not even willing to debate that fact. If you change House rules to make it harder to end the shutdown the day before it begins you own it, saying there is plenty of blame to go around politically just isn't true and helps no one. Try and imagine the Democrats shutting down the government to pass gun control. You can't imagine it because they wouldn't do it.

But there is plenty of blame to go around in a larger sense and that blame is all ours. It's ours for allowing those around us to say things like get rid of all the bums, I don't vote because they're all the same, or they're just crazy but they won't really do it. The Tea Party Republicans said they would do it, they were elected to do it, and they did it. Why is everybody so shocked and surprised this happened? We shake our heads and laugh at Sarah Palin and her like but there are people out there who hang on her every word as if it were handed down from some temple mount in Alaska. These people claim to be 'patriots' but they care about themselves, their bank accounts, and their ideology, nothing more. I'm not even going to bring up the total crazies who think this is the beginning of the end of days and are ecstatic.

It's not funny, it's not a game, and it's not a joke. It's our country and they are trying to destroy it for their own pathetic reasons.

One thing I can't get out of my head is the sight of the House Republican Caucus singing "Amazing Grace" yesterday. When I first saw it all I could think of is the band playing as the Titanic sank.

Observations from the Window 12.5

Did you ever wonder why when Bill O'Reilly is talking the words type next to him on a split screen? I never thought about it before but I think the answer came to me last night watching The Last Word. They showed a clip from O'Reilly's show and two reasons hit me. One reason could be that his viewers, and Fox News viewers in general, are so old they can't hear what he is saying. More likely is that those viewers are just so thick they need to see the words just to understand what they are hearing.

Wingnutism reached a new low yesterday when the United Nations disabilities treaty fell five votes short of ratification in the Senate. The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, based largely on the Americans with Disabilities Act, was negotiated by the Bush administration and signed by President Obama in 2009. It has been signed by 155 countries and ratified by 126 including Britain, France, Russia and China. Eight Republicans voted for the treaty but a two thirds majority was needed and it fell five votes short. The reason the wingnuts used for voting against it, home schooling. I have this vision of a wingnut fantasy, blue U.N. helicopters flying over America dropping wheelchairs.

John Kerry called the vote one of the saddest in his 28 years in the Senate, "a wake-up call about a broken institution that’s letting down the American people." I repeat, The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is almost a copy of the Americans with Disabilities Act, something that has been law in the United States for twenty two years. These people really are just pathetic and stand for absolutely nothing positive, nothing at all.

After that embarrassing display a petition currently on the White House website looks even better than it did when I first saw it. It says, "Cease paychecks and health benefits to ALL members of Congress and the President until the fiscal cliff is avoided."

Maybe it should say stop paychecks until the Congress of the United States of America starts acting a little more mature than a typical junior high school student council.

Observations from the Coffee Shop 10.7

At times I 'm just so disgusted with the conservative holier than thou tea party politics in this country that I sometimes wonder if any of them care about anything other than money. Than something comes along that snaps me back from the edge and makes me realize that it's not them all, it's just that far right lunatic fringe that somehow has come to dominate politics in this country, that applauds executions, and cheers allowing a cancer patient to die because he doesn't have health insurance. They don't all want to do away with Social Security and cut first responder funding to pay for hurricane relief.

While I probably don't believe some of what I just wrote it was good to think it for a moment and it is nice to see that some of the right do have a mind of their own and didn't drink the tea. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is far from my favorite politician but it was nice to see him decide not run for the GOP nomination for President not because he thinks it isn't his time, it probably is, but because he doesn't want to drink the tea. Even he is too moderate for the current version of the Republican Party.

Than there is this which prompted this post. David Frum is a former economic speechwriter for George W. Bush and in his column for the National Post yesterday he wrote that the Republican Party is seriously flawed in its plans for recovering from our current mess.

"It is wrong in its call for monetary tightening.

It is wrong to demand immediate debt reduction rather than wait until after the economy recovers.

It is wrong to deny that “we have a revenue problem.”

It is wrong in worrying too much about (non-existent) inflation and disregarding the (very real) threat of a second slump into recession and deflation.

It is wrong to blame government regulation and (as yet unimposed) tax increases for the severity of the recession.

It is wrong to oppose job-creating infrastructure programs.

It is wrong to hesitate to provide unemployment insurance, food stamps, and other forms of income maintenance to the unemployed.

It is wrong to fetishize the exchange value of the dollar against other currencies.

It is wrong to believe that cuts in marginal tax rates will suffice to generate job growth in today’s circumstance.

It is wrong to blame minor and marginal government policies like the Community Reinvestment Act for the financial crisis while ignoring the much more important role of government inaction to police overall levels of leverage within the financial system.

It is wrong to dismiss the Euro crisis as something remote from American concerns.

It is wrong to resist US cooperation with European authorities in organizing a work-out of the debt problems of the Eurozone countries.

It is wrong above all in its dangerous combination of apocalyptic pessimism about the long-term future of the country with aloof indifference to unemployment."

That about covers it.

Observations on Politics 9.15

A quick look inside the Tea Party's America.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said “When you look at people in the bottom 5th of the economic ladder — those at the bottom — only 5 percent are there after 16 years. People move up, the American dream does exist…The rich are getting richer, but the poor are getting richer even faster.” Maybe only 5 percent are still there because the other 95 percent died off.

At Republican Presidential debate Monday night people actually cheered the idea of letting people die because they don't have health insurance. This after executions in Texas got a standing ovation at the first GOP debate. In 2007, the last year I could find the data for, 52 people were executed in the United States. That's enough to put us 5th in the world behind only China, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. Good company all.

After Hurricane Irene House Majority Leader Eric Cantor announced “The House has passed $1 billion in disaster relief funds that is fully offset, which we will look to move as quickly as possible.” Where do the offsetting cuts come from? It slashes founding to train and equip first responders by 40 percent. The Homeland Security Appropriations bill now contains just $2 billion for first responders in the US while the House defense appropriations bill provides $12.8 billion to train and equip troops and police in Afghanistan.

ThinkProgress used data from the CIA to chart how income income inequality in the United States is greater than in the Ivory Coast, Pakistan, or Ethiopia. We seem to be on the level of Uganda. In education the United States ranks 33rd in reading, 27th in math, and 22nd in science worldwide.

“We humans have the brains and the means to reach real planetary sustainability. The problem is with us and our focus on short-term growth and profits, which is likely to cause suffering on a vast scale. With foresight and thoughtful planning, this suffering is completely avoidable.” Jeremy Grantham, the so called Wall Street environmentalist, in the August 14th issue of The New York Times Magazine.

In Republican controlled Pennsylvania a GOP plan would change the way electoral votes are allocated in presidential elections and there is no legal way to stop it. Instead of winner take all it would give each congressional district its own vote and due to redistricting guess which party controls the most districts. A candidate could easily win the state's popular vote yet lose the electoral vote. Seems your vote counts less every day.

'Legally' speaking more and more the Republican party operates less like the party that gave us Abraham Lincoln and more like the one that gave us Adolf Hitler.

What the hell is going on in this country ?

update - I really hate that Hitler analogy but all the voting rule crap just reminds me of the NSDAP (ok, Nazi) rise to power in Germany. All perfectly legal and all perfectly immoral.