NEON GODS

It's time for liberals to tell Washington "NO!"

It's Sunday afternoon and the media is saying Washington is "close to a deal" to raise the debt ceiling - in return for a bunch of capitulations to the Republican party.  Fine.  The federal government and the shit-for-brains Republicans and the cowering Democrats can go suck persimmons. 

I agree with Hunter, who wrote this on Daily Kos yesterday:

Just a reminder on why we're even in this mess ...: it's self-inflicted. Entirely. It's entirely political, entirely partisan, entirely hard-right ideological, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with the "debt ceiling," or even the deficit, except as proxy for the one and only thing that does matter to Republicans: cutting social programs. Fixing the tax structure? Forget it. Deficits? Hell, Republicans have voted for deficits for a fine long time now. Didn't bother them. They even said it "didn't matter"—remember that one?

So why are we talking about "catastrophe" all of a sudden? Because they want to talk about it, and because they have found in the debt ceiling a fine hostage that the crazier among them aren't afraid to shoot.

• We're at this point because of the Bush tax cuts. That's the one biggest contributor to the deficit, and it was the sole reason for the last of these hostage-taking sessions by Republicans. They demanded that we not let them expire. Didn't give a crap about the deficit then.
• We're at this point because Republicans insist that the rich pay not one penny more in taxes, despite enjoying the lowest effective tax rates in modern U.S. history. Instead, Republicans demand cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Straight-up class warfare, though they will send for the fainting couch if you point that out.
• We're at this point because no matter what proposal McConnell or another Republican comes forward with, within the same week they've walked away from the talks again, demanding still more, and insisting that their own proposal isn't enough.
• We're at this point tonight because McConnell is currently filibustering a bill that, in large part, is his own damn right-wing proposal (see above). But he's not done taking hostages yet.
• We're at this point because our own news media is too goddamn stupid to recognize when one side is doing something truly extremist in nature—never done before, and something both sides did without much bluster—and insists that no, both parties must somehow be at fault.

I would make a terrible president, because if I were president right now I would kick McConnell out on his smug little ass, let the government shut down, and tell him to f---ing get back to me when he felt like being a damn American again. No, I suppose, I'm sure the entire Village can tell us that what we need now is compromise with economic terrorism (and really, if you insist on collapsing the entire U.S. economy unless you get your way, and every shred of your way, "terrorist" seems an appropriate word) all because some small subset of especially pea-brained Americans wet their collective pants the moment a non-lily-white American assumed the office of the presidency. Not a one of those "tea partiers" knew what the damn "debt ceiling" was before Obama came to office, but suddenly now it's a goddamn apocalypse.

All we have to do is do the same thing we've done every other time: make a few blustering speeches and then pass the damn bill, just like always. Should we talk about cuts? Sure, what the hell. Knock yourself out with this "austerity" crap. But maybe we ought to be passing "austerity" crap one-by-one, each proposal on its own merits, rather than simply insisting on blowing up the entire American government and markets unless we cut this month's fantasy list of programs that the most extreme of conservative Republicans just don't like. During, you know, the worst freaking recession since the Great Depression. And don't give me any of that "recession is over" garbage. Oh, sure—for the wealthy, it's been over for some time. On the street, it's not over until the jobs come back, and the money comes back, and all the shuttered storefronts in town find new owners to take them on.

This has been the worst display of governmental incompetence for a very, very long time, and that is saying something. If ever we needed an example of partisanship clearly and unambiguously taking precedence over the economic needs of the country, this would be the textbook example. Let's hope we still even have textbooks a year from now, though, because the one thing have been Republicans are being most unyielding on is the demand that we do all of this all over again within six months or a year or so, in order to let them extract even deeper cuts and even more asinine demands.

Crooks, the lot of them.

How do you win a class war when your leaders loath to fight?

--Trakker

Gun owners shooting and killing innocent Americans

To add to my post below about rising gun violence in the U.S., here are two more stories that just appeared on the AP feed -

Auburn, Washington:

A man went to the Muckleshoot Casino early Sunday looking for a woman, found her on a crowded dance floor with another man, shot them both and continued firing, wounding five others before being tackled by a security guard, authorities said.

All seven victims were hospitalized, at least two with critical injuries, Auburn Police Commander Jamie Sidell said. Two others received minor injuries while trying to flee the scene.

Ossian, Indiana:

An Indiana sheriff says a 4-year-old boy who was fatally shot while out fishing with his father was struck in the head.

Wells County Sheriff Monte Fisher told The Associated Press on Sunday that Jacob Michuda was shot in the head late Friday night while he and his father were fishing from a pier at a pond outside Ossian.

Forty-six-year-old neighbor Bruce Pond is being held on a preliminary charge of reckless homicide and is due to appear in court Monday.

Family friend Trisha Ulmer tells The Journal Gazette of Fort Wayne the shooting was a "freak accident."

Fisher tells the Bluffton News-Banner alcohol was involved and that Pond apparently shot at a light on the pier where the father and son were fishing.

By the way, this was the "fourth fatal shooting of an Indiana child in less than a month" according to the AP. 

A 4-year-old Cedar Lake boy died Thursday after accidentally shooting himself, a 2-year-old Connersville boy died July 14 after accidentally being shot by his 5-year-old brother, and a 6-year-old Martinsville boy died June 30 after being shot by his 11-year-old brother.

Remember, these are gun owners who are responsible for killing innocent victims.  The NRA always describes gun owners as law-abiding, super-citizens who own guns for sport and to protect America from criminals and the government.  If you believe that I've got some WMDs in Iraq I'd love to sell you.

--Trakker

Starve the beast, gun violence, and hot, hot weather

Usually July and August are slow and quiet when it come to politics.  Whew, not this year!  We are seeing just how rabid the right has become, willing to crash our economy to make a point: no new taxes, not now, not ever!  Starve the beast.  Never mind that the "beast" they want to starve created the middle class, and made us no.1 in the world in almost every measurable category.

Fortunately we've been too busy here to pay much attention to the debt ceiling show.  We spent the past week getting the West Virgina cabin in order for family and friends who will be visiting soon.  We had to move the kayaks to the lake, and once there we couldn't resist an afternoon paddle on a very hot day.  Thursday it hit 88 degrees here on the mountain.  I've never seen it hotter than 83 here before.  No one out here has air conditioning so we sweated along with the rest of the east coast, except 88 was far more tolerable than the 104 back home!

I'm beginning to wonder when the American people are going to realize that gun violence in America is out of control?  I get select Associated Press feeds on my Kindle, updated hourly, and it seems like every day now there are stories of mass shootings. Just from this morning's feed, here is the story of a gun owner at a family outing in Texas who killed 5 and wounded 4, before shooting himself.  Here is the story of a gun owner who shot 12 people at a car show near Seattle.  Also, the number of cops who have been shot and killed has been escalating for the past year.

Ever since the conservatives took over the country with the election of Ronald Reagan our country has been regressing in so many ways.  And this is just the beginning, If the right gets it's way.  Our infrastructure will crumble, we will be sponsoring less and less research, and fewer of our kids will ever get a college education.  This is our future unless the American people rebel and push the loonies back under their rocks.

--Trakker

Damn right this is a class war.

Ever since Ronald Reagan was elected President, there has been a class war in America.  Why is that?  Because in a democracy like ours, the government represents the power of the people to make their lives safer and better.  Reagan spent a good part of his eight years telling the people that our government is what is holding corporations and the wealthy back from making America richer and more powerful.  Since the 80s the right has tried to get rid of everything the government does that benefits the average American at the expense of the rich and powerful, and after 30 years they are on the verge of succeeding.  Want to see the America they are putting in place?  Look at America in the 1870s for a start.  There wasn't much of a middle class back then.  The rich made the rules, but at least the poor back then were demonstrably better off than their parents.  Today's young people are facing the prospect of never achieving a standard of living that their parents enjoyed.

Chris Bowers:

As you read this, rich and powerful people in Washington, DC are trying to determine not whether they should cut programs designed to help low and middle-income Americans, but by how much they should cut those programs. The rich and powerful people in DC are making these cuts in order to pay for tax breaks they recently gave to rich people and large corporations. Additionally, the cuts are being made at the behest of the lobby organizations and media operations owned by rich people and large corporations.

If that isn't a class war, I don't know what is.

Yeah, it's really pretty blatant by now, but don't expect anyone in Washington to acknowledge this. The rich are insulated from the suffering, and when politicians are confronted they wring their hands and whine they have no choice but to cut the programs for the poor because the rich are busy creating jobs and we mustn't discourage them.

Bowers again,

Democrats are fighting a class war in Wisconsin, and they're winning...There is [also] a class war being fought in Washington, DC right now, but it's extremely one-sided and so the outcome is obvious. By contrast, in Wisconsin the class war is being fully engaged from both sides, and the outcome there is balanced on the edge of a knife. That shouldn't come as a surprise, since there is no way to win a class war unless you fight one.

We're in a death spiral now.  The government spending cuts will further reduce demand and put government workers out of work.  This will decrease revenues while increasing government safety-net outlays, worsening the deficit, so there will be more spending cuts and more government and private sector workers will be laid off, decreasing demand, decreasing revenue and causing more government spending, worsening the deficit, etc., ect. 

Try to envision America 10 years from now with over 20% of Americans out of a job or working for minimum wage, and over a decade of almost no infrastructure spending.   When do you think the people will finally catch on that we've been screwed?  What do you think they will do?  If we are a nation worthy of surviving we will rebel, but I suspect most people will just get more religious and believe that poverty is all part of God's plan for them.

--Trakker

The adventures of MiddleMan

To read the rest of MiddleMan's adventure, click here.  I suspect this isn't the last we'll see of MiddleMan...

Republicans don't accept Democrats as legitimate Americans

Paul Krugman is right,

...the modern G.O.P. fundamentally does not accept the legitimacy of a Democratic presidency — any Democratic presidency. We saw that under Bill Clinton, and we saw it again as soon as Mr. Obama took office.

We assume much of the right's opposition to President Obama is due to his race, but I think it goes much deeper than that.  Today's Republicans have convinced themselves the a) Democrats hate America and want to change it into a socialist, multi-cultural, hell-hole where hard working white people are taxed heavily to support the lazy parasites in the inner cities and the illegals who have taken all our jobs, and thus b) Democrats are dangerous enemies that must be defeated - vanquished completely.  Only Republicans, specifically Tea-Party Republicans, have the right answers so they must be elected to every office.

These Republicans have also convinced themselves that the federal government is largely a waste of money - except for security and the military, and that state and local government workers are overpaid and coddled.  Their ultimate goal is to keep cutting the federal government until there is nothing left but the military and national security.  Anything governmental, like licensing or policing, will be the state's responsibility and it will be done by low paid minions who can be easily fired if they piss someone off.  Some even go so far as to want to eliminate public schools and provide vouchers to help parents afford private schools where just about anything can be taught, including intelligent design and right wing propaganda.

These people have always been around.  My parents back in the 1960s would have been ardent tea partiers.  The difference today is Fox News, RW talk radio, a corporate media, and newsmen and newswomen who are scared to death of the maniacal right.  In years past, the tea partiers would have been ridiculed and labelled dangerous loonies.  Now we have people like Limbaugh, Coulter, and Beck who get filthy rich spouting hate and anti-government lies, a cable network that is a propaganda arm of the far right, and politicians that tell the voters crazy things that the politicians must surely know are untrue, just to get elected.

Democracy only works if the voters are smart, open-minded, attentive, and inclusive.  We are in trouble today because a significant portion of our population is not paying attention, are no longer smart enough or open-minded enough to evaluate both sides of the argument, and now we have a Republican party that does not accept Democrats as legitimate Americans.

Maybe we're just going through a phase, and over time sane leadership on both sides will bring us back together as a nation.  Or maybe this is the beginning of the end of the U.S. as a democracy, as the wealthy gain more and more power and the people become powerless, demoralized, and impoverished.

I'm betting the direction we take in the future will depend largely on leadership.  Right now there is a leadership vacuum and eventually someone is going to emerge with "all the answers" and a frightened, demoralized public will follow.  Will it be an FDR or will it be a Rush Limbaugh?  I have no idea.

--Trakker

Republicans: "I will never take another raise in pay. Ever."

When a government spends more than it's income (aka Taxes), it must either cut spending or increase taxes (or both).  Given that our taxes today are lower than they've been for decades it would seem logical that some taxes must be raised.  But the Republicans say no, we must reduce our deficit through spending cuts alone, in fact most Republican politicians have taken a pledge to never, ever raise taxes again. Ever.

Because Republicans love to liken our government's budget to their own personal budget, I assume Republicans would refuse to ask for a raise in their pay, or refuse a raise if it were offered.  After all, that extra money would come out of the pockets of "the jobs creators." 

So, all you Republicans, take the pledge, now, to never, ever take another raise.  Ever.

--Trakker

Eric Cantor pushes the Speaker aside and says NO! while Obama grins and grins.

We're back in hot, sticky Maryland, but only for a week.  We always come home to high grass that needs cutting and a stack of bills.  Ugh!

Have you been followng the budget ceiling dance going on in Washington?  What a show it's been.  I have no idea what's going on, but it sure looks like Prez  Obama has painted the Republicans into a corner (by doing just what we've been saying all along, "Draw a line in the sand").  Still, I'm pretty sure any final agreement will favor the GOP and the wealthy and come down heavily on the middle class, but to be fair we should wait until we know for sure.  Maybe Obama has finally seen the light (and maybe pigs have just grown propellers).

All last week I was aflutter about this whole debt ceiling fight, but somehow over the weekend I realized there is nothing I can do about it, so why not sit back and enjoy the show?  And it's working!  This is fascinating! 

This weekend we saw Barack Obama tell John Boehner that if the Republicans are so all-fire concerned about the deficit, let's double the amount in our agreement, from a measly $2 trillion to $4 trillion, but it must include some revenue increases. 

Boehner pumped his fist and went running back to his Republican Housemates and told then the good news, but mean ol' Eric Cantor said NO!!!  He and his Tea Party thugs will ONLY accept deficit reduction through spending cuts, or no deal.  Johnny B. said, "But, guys, Barack and I have a deal.  I can't go back and say No," and burst into tears.  Eric grabbed him by the arm and said, "Then I'll go with you and tell that socialist pig, no deal!"  And that's what they did.  Barack just smiled.  And smiled. And that's where we're at.

Isn't this fun?  Sure, they're going to almost certainly screw the poor and middle class, but we knew that going in. At least now we can sit back and watch Eric Cantor push the Speaker of the House around.  We also get to watch the wealthy financiers begin to sweat as it finally dawns on them that the Tea Party that they have weaned and nurtured as a tool to make them richer is turning into an uncontrollable monster that is gleefully intent on cutting government spending by almost 50'% all at once, which will almost certainly crash our economy for years to come.  But it will show those bastards in Washington that stupid spiteful people will happily cut their own throats to make a point.

Seriously though, Greg Sargent has a pretty good roundup of what is going on behind the scenes and what it could mean.

--Trakker

"The moneyed elite...dragging a bag filled with your future..."

One of the reasons I loved watching Keith Olbermann was because he expressed the same outrage I felt about George Bush and the rest of the wealthy and privileged who run Washington.  It felt good, but sometimes it hit overload with me...too much anger, too much fury.  The best antidote, I found was Bill Maher. Bill expressed the same outrage, but he couched it in humor and it is much easier on the stomach.

Therefore I highly recommend this clip from Maher.  This Daily Kos post also includes the transcript, which I just might frame!  Sample:

The facts about what the Republicans have done to the middle class are beyond reasonable doubt.  And yet their base refuses to see it.  The moneyed elite in America are dragging a bag filled with your future down the steps, and your reaction is, "Hold on there, that looks heavy.  Let me give you a hand getting it into your trunk."

-Trakker

Obama: how to cave and still get Dems to support it.

I think President Obama managed to find a way to totally cave to the Republicans (reducing the deficit by $4 Trillion entirely through spending cuts, with no increase in tax revenue) and yet get the Democrats to vote for it. 

He did this by leaking to the press that he is willing to add cuts to Social Security and Medicare to the debt-ceiling negotiations. 

Democrats in Congress reacted predictably, by speaking out forcibly and warning the President that they won't accept ANY cuts to Social Security or Medicare benefits!

Obama will then "reluctantly" back off any entitlement benefit cuts, and present the Democrats with a debt reduction plan that they normally wouldn't have accepted (all cuts, no revenue increases), but now, relieved that they protected Social Security and Medicare, they will vote for the agreement, an agreement that will probably insure high unemployment for years to come, falling wages, and a very weak economy for the foreseeable future.

--Trakker