You want to know how to get at least one Democrat who loathes Donald Trump and everything he represents to cast a futile protest vote in November 2020?
Nominate Kamala Harris.
In the last debate, she vowed to outdo Trump in the executive order, abuse-of-power department -- right before she vowed to treat states that pass abortion restrictions just like Southern states with a history of voting-rights abuses (Justice Department preclearance of election laws).
Of course, she failed to mention that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down that particular section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Now, her campaign has taken to Twitter to combine an unhinged social-justice warrior level of hypersensitivity with a Trumpian degree of pettiness.
If the Democrats don't get their heads out of their ideological asses, the election -- and the United States -- will be lost. If Democrats are insane enough to nominate Harris (for just one), it probably will be lost even in the extremely unlikely event she beats Trump and the Russians.
For what it's worth, I am older than Harris, and if Joe Biden called me "kid," I'd consider it a term of endearment and respond with a sincere smile. Then again, I thanked the last person who ever carded me at a bar.
That reminds me . . . I need a drink.
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Democrats. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 31, 2019
Friday, June 28, 2019
Thursday, June 20, 2019
And lead us not into tempta . . . oh, screw it
The Democratic Party has become so woke . . . and so puritanical . . . and so alien to the spiritual concepts of grace and forgiveness . . . and so beholden to its most extreme voices . . . and so intent on demonizing its own peculiar versions of The Other -- so solipsisticly intent upon becoming a funhouse-mirror reflection of Trumpism -- that there's really no more point, actually.
Joe Biden |
Normally, I would counsel seeking refuge in one's religion. Then again, I am Roman Catholic, and I know from the bitter experience of the past two decades that, institutionally, my church will be worse than useless as shelter from the storm. As for the evangelicals, Southern Baptists and the like . . . their institutional feet are on fire, and their asses are catching.
Really, when the woker-than-thou are stooping to Trumpian tactics to smear Democratic presidential frontrunner Joe Biden as some sort of cryptoracist enabler of Jim Crowism, what the hell chance do the rest of us stand?
THAT "joke about calling black men 'boys'" came as Biden spoke off the cuff at a New York fundraiser, lamenting the loss of the sort of political comity that allowed him to work with even the likes of the notorious longtime senator from Mississippi, James O. Eastland.
Here, from a pool report by The Wall Street Journal, is what Biden actually said:
Mr. Biden then recalled his time serving in the Senate. “I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,” Mr. Biden said, briefly channeling the late Mississippi senator’s Southern drawl. Mr. Biden said of Mr. Eastland, “He never called me boy, he always called me son.”THE DISINGENUOUSNESS with which Biden's remarks are being characterized by presidential rivals Sen. Cory Booker, Sen. Kamala Harris and any number of other party Jacobins is staggering, even by contemporary Americal political standards, which have been influenced by Donald Trump -- and not for the better. Obviously.
Mr. Biden then brought up a deceased Georgia senator, “a guy like Herman Talmadge, one of the meanest guys I ever knew, you go down the list of all these guys. Well guess what? At least there was some civility. We got things done. We didn’t agree on much of anything. We got things done. We got it finished. But today, you look at the other side and you’re the enemy. Not the opposition, the enemy. We don’t talk to each other anymore.”
Let me add that I choose to characterize the criticism of Biden as cynical because I find it difficult to believe that reasonably accomplished politicians -- or journalists -- can be that goddamned stupid. But Donald J. Trump is president of the United States, so I totally could be wrong on that account.
And the cynicism (and perhaps abject numbskullery), it runs as deep to the left as it does to the right -- leaving sanity stuck in the middle and shit out of luck.
For a taste of that, let's listen to a segment from today's edition of All Things Considered on NPR:
LET'S JUST get something straight. And as a born-and-raised son of the Deep South -- a son of a certain age even -- I am well-positioned to set something straight:
"Boy" is not always and everywhere a racialized term of derision.
Eastland, the onetime Mississippi segregationist, was old enough to be Joe Biden's father. In the South -- and I have no damned idea how Yankees addressed men young enough to be their offspring in familiar settings -- it would not be uncommon for someone of Eastland's age and generation to informally address a whippersnapper as "boy." It had nothing to do with race.
If the addressee were African-American, it could have something to do with malignant racialist intent. Or not. It merely could have been a case of cluelessness, or momentarily forgetting that it was fraught to address a young black man the same way you might familiarly speak to a young white man.
I am 58 years old, Southern and male. If I had a dollar for every time I have been called "boy," by my parents, older relatives, acquaintances and even buddies, I could say "screw it all" right now and move to an island paradise far, far away from this insane, imploding country.
Ditto for "son," which is used in a gentler context than "boy." This is not brain surgery; what Joe Biden was saying isn't particularly opaque, and it shouldn't be controversial in the slightest.
Then we get to the unspoken implications of "woke" Democrats' condemnation of Biden for even attempting to work with (or even associate with) past segregationists in the United States Senate.
One implication is that grace does not exist. Another is that people's views cannot moderate or change over decades. Yet another is that those we deeply disagree with cannot be engaged with, only targeted and destroyed. And if someone is -- or was -- a racist. . . .
In the moral universe of what is emerging as today's Democratic Party, there is no redemption, only condemnation. We know where this road ends -- where the internal logic of this worldview dictates that it must end.
In the universe of woke Democrats, my Southern self was obligated to condemn and hate my racist Southern parents, along with every last one of my racist Southern kinfolk. In this moral universe, if I had failed to denounce them -- to expose their thought crime -- I would have been as guilty as they.
In this universe, one is nothing more than the worst thing one believes or the worst thing one ever has done, for which there is no forgiveness or redemption. Ever.
But if you want to write an article comparing and contrasting your various abortions -- abortions, plural -- then declare one, which came at age 41, the best ever . . . well, that's something not only to be tolerated but, indeed, celebrated. On the New York magazine website, no less.
AND AMERICA, such as it is, is supposed to think Joe Biden is guilty of some sort of fucking moral outrage here? Or that Donald Trump is the real problem here?
Donald Trump is a problem -- a massive problem. But he is not the problem.
That large swaths of the Democratic Party have a problem with what Biden said -- or at least want their own "low-information voters" to think folks should have a problem with it -- bodes well for the re-election of a massive problem.
But even if we somehow do manage to rid ourselves of this turbulent president, that just leaves us with the Democrats. If our only choice ends up being between the devil and the deep blue sea, we might find that a decisive contingent of voters might loathe Trump but also figure he'd put us out of our national misery a hell of a lot faster.
Monday, June 10, 2019
I may not be woke, but I got common sense!
My father has been dead for 18 years, now, and his words keep coming back to haunt me . . . and mock the insane times in which I now live.
During one memorable kitchen-table argument -- where the young, college-educated me was sneering at some then-self-evidently incredible thing he was throwing at me -- the retired pipefitter's resentment of the degree he'd paid for was as subtle as an acetylene torch.
"You might have book learnin', but I got common sense!" my old man thundered.
About 35 years later, I get it. I really get it.
I may not be on CNN, but I got common sense. And any political party that is questioning whether "electability" is important in a system where candidates run for office, and the one with the most votes wins . . . has a big damn problem.
And the mental, cultural and philosophical rot in the Democratic Party is such that -- God help us all -- Donald Trump is going to win in 2020, just so long as he doesn't spark a depression or cause us to lose a war.
No, I may not be writing stories for The Atlantic like Jemele Hill, but I got common sense. Which leads me to not even consider writing a couple of paragraphs like this:
Nevertheless, Biden’s elevation to front-runner is a testament to how much President Donald Trump has shaken the faith of those who believe the White House could better reflect what America looked like.HOLY SHIT on a $7.99 shingle, Batman! Alas, 1968 repeats itself . . . this time as parody.
This is perhaps Trump’s most crucial victory yet: successfully persuading Democrats—especially African American voters—not just to lower the bar, but to abandon the idea that inclusion and bold ideas matter more than appeasing the patriarchy.
Well, yeah, Donald Trump might be the end of American democracy, if not America itself . . . but . . . but . . . if we run someone who can beat him . . . does that mean we're giving in to The Man?
The bat-shit, it burns! Doctor, my eyes!
Meanwhile, this is the cover story in the current edition of The Atlantic.
I'M SORRY, Daddy. I'm sorry for everything.
I hope the last laugh you're having, free of this vale of tears, is a long and satisfying one.
Friday, April 26, 2019
It's one of those flat states in the middle. . . .
I've lived in Omaha for 31 years now, and I have to tell you that it's news to me that Heidi Heitkamp is my former U.S. senator.
Oh . . . wait. She's not. She was a North Dakota senator until January.
Nebraska . . . North Dakota . . . seed caps, John Deere tractors, unbearable winters, old white rustics who wouldn't know a frappuccino from a woke meme. What's the difference?
Am I right?
I mean, if you've seen one part of Flyover Country -- And, really, why would you want to? -- you've seen it all. And now back to our breaking news . . . a gay Black Lives Matters activist is condemning some shit on one coast or the other.
Am I right, Time mag, mag?
Sorry, but as a proud rube out here on the flown-over Great Plains, my "inclusive" media betters out there in D.C. got me on the rag, rag.
And while they're at it, they can take their insults about the queen and shove them up their royal Timese machine.
News flash! Some of us prairie pigf***ers are familiar with Joan Baez.
YOU HAVE to be a lifelong resident of Flyover Country to get how grating it is to be so insignificant that you can have a story actually get onto the effing Time magazine website, and then onto effing Apple News without anyone effing noticing that Heidi Heitkamp is from effing North Dakota and not effing Nebraska. After all the news coverage about how the red-state Democrat would vote on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court after the Me Too furor over his high-school and college "boofing" (and how her no vote likely cost her re-election), how could you not effing know?
One could let it slide as a simple brain fart if it weren't for a lifetime of observing Coastal America being shocked that, for example, Omaha has goddamn paved streets, decent restaurants and broadband Internet connectivity. And that there are no cattle herds wandering down Dodge Street in search of forage.
This actually is an improvement over New Yorkers -- again, for example -- who've been here and point out what a relative backwater it is. Perhaps, but our house payment here might rent a cardboard box over a steam grate there.
What's sad is that folks in these parts actually are, on some level, desperate for the approval of our cosmopolitan "betters" and always have been. We seek validation from those who scarcely know we exist and, with vanishingly few exceptions, we ain't gonna get it.
But that's not the half of the flyover equation. I grew up in Louisiana. No, there were no alligators in my back yard. Yes, we did have indoor plumbing. Many folks can read, write and cipher some.
And you are one Category 5 hurricane in the wrong place from freezing in the dark, America.
LET'S BE honest here. The only damned reason Time magazine gives a good goddamn about former U.S. Sen Heidi Heitkamp of Nebraska . . . North Dakota . . . whatever . . . is that Donald Trump is president of the United States, lots of Forgotten America like Nebraska and Louisiana voted for him, and he's turned out to be a fascist nightmare.
There's nothing like the political equivalent of a global thermonuclear exchange to finally get your attention. Am I right?
Maybe, ultimately, that was the point of his election. After all, the alt-right may be on the upswing, but it's not an Electoral College majority. Plenty of reasonable, decent Americans in Flyover Country were content to throw a bomb into America's entire rigged, classist political and social infrastructure. Oops.
I'm just spitballin' here, but perhaps there was an element of "You can ignore us, but we can kill you" in there as well. Just like the "yellow vests" in France, who largely hail from the forgotten périphérique of the country, flyover folk know who couldn't care less about them -- and they have less and less to lose by blowing the whole damned thing the hell up.
And they also well know the limits of Woke America's inclusivity.
Saturday, July 14, 2018
This is a thing on Facebook. Probably Russian.
This is called "How We Lose Sure-Thing Elections." And November hardly is a sure thing.
This also is called "How We Start a Civil War." South of the Mason-Dixon Line, it's called "What Got Us to Fight to the Death . . . and Finally Win."
I despise Trump and what he stands for with every fiber of my being, but I'd join the fascists and fight to the death with 'em if this was the sort of revenge his removal would visit upon whole swaths of the country, entire religious denominations and entire demographic groups . . . including the region I live in and the religious demographic I belong to.
It wouldn't be a matter of me being a fascist; it would be a matter of simple, calculated self-preservation for myself and on behalf of people I know and love.
THIS IS stereotyping and demonization worthy of Donald Trump himself . . . and of his idiot followers. It is goddamned madness, and this sort of thinking will lead to a bloodbath like this country never has seen once it gets out of hand.
Which I expect it to do.
Madness is upon us, and we're all eating it up like a hog does slop.
Come to think of it, how much do you want to bet "Renee Torres" is really Renata Torchinovich, hard at work in a cubicle at the Troll Factory in St. Petersburg. As psy-ops, this stuff is golden -- the dog whistle is blowing, and "progressives" are howling at the moon.
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Friday, June 29, 2018
Oh, for f***'s sake
We know the right has lost its mind. It's been happening for years, and the EEG finally flat-lined with the dawning of the Age of Trumpquerulous.
With all the ugliness and stupidity -- and, frankly, Nazification -- of the Republican Party, it has been all too easy to give the Loony Left a pass. Until, of course, Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Now the culture wars have gone nuclear (so far just figuratively), and the prospect that somehow, at some time, Roe v. Wade might be overturned has led to widespread hysteria among those who care. Who really care. Who. Really. Really. Care.
Those who care about some women's bodies, just not those in utero. It seems the only shared belief across America's great cultural divide is that everything is a zero-sum proposition. For every winner, there must be a loser, and for every survivor, there must be a corpse in her wake.
For social liberals, dogma says "Kill your kid now. In the womb."
For social conservatives who've given themselves over to the worst devils of the GOP's nature, dogma says "What's your hurry? We can always kill 'em at our leisure after birth. And then we can blame someone else."
BUT I'M NOT HERE to talk about abortion. Or same-sex marriage. Or Obamacare.
I'm not even here to talk about the chipping-away at the Voting Rights Act and the further mischief a conservative court could inflict upon it.
I am here to stare dumbstruck at Item No. 3 on this "progressive" Democrat's Twitter laundry list of "OHMYGAW! OHMYGAW! OHMYGAW" -- Brown v. Board of Education . . . gone? The court-sanctioned return of "separate but equal"? Jim Crow?
Really?
What the actual f***?
Do you people even listen to yourselves? Don't answer that.
And now, a message from our sponsor.
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Nazis to the right of me, Jacobins to the left . . . .
GOP TV ad . . . fresh from the propagandist's
Kara Eastman isn't going to know what hit her.
Kara Eastman |
Now, the state and national party couldn't even get Heath Mello elected running against Mean Jean Stothert in just the city of Omaha, which is a lot more Democratic than the 2nd Congressional District as a whole. And Mello was a hell of a lot more attractive candidate -- one with plenty of political bona fides and a lot more in tune with average Nebraskans than Eastman.
And, yes, Eastman really is to the left of Nancy Pelosi. Bacon has been mentioning that early . . . and often.
To Nebraska voters.
Who are not to the left of Nancy Pelosi.
Or Brad Ashford, who got cashiered by the "progressive" Democratic activist base in a low-turnout primary.
Kara Eastman ain't gonna know what hit her.
BEFORE THE PRIMARY, one of Eastman's canvassers actually tried to convince me that Ashford was corrupt. I was born, raised and educated in Louisiana. I think I know a thing or three about political corruption. Brad Ashford ain't a crook.
The kid canvasser also told me -- as ominously as a 20-something can conjure -- that Ashford (adopt low, menacing voice here) "used to be a Republican."
My simple, yet brutally effective, response?
"So did I."
Game over. And also in November, most likely.
Despite everything, right now I intend to vote for Eastman. Maybe.I think.
Probably.
We'll see.
It is a massive ask of me to do that -- vote for the "progressive" true believer. At 57, I've been around long enough to distrust most true believers and under ordinary circumstances, I'd just write in my customary protest vote. And I still may not be able to make myself do it, despite Oberpeein'führer Donald Trump and despite the GOP having gone full Nazi.
Why? Because, to paraphrase Gustave Flaubert, "Heath Mello, c'est moi."
And what the Democrats did to him, they'd do quadruple to me.
Why? Because I ain't running for squat as a Democrat and therefore do not have to fudge a damned bit of what I believe as a practicing Catholic. I know what the Kara Eastmans of the "progressive" world think of folks like myself, and I'm reasonably sure of how badly they'd love to shove us right out of civil society.
Why? Because many have been really open about that.
THIS JACOBIN IMPULSE on their part absolutely would negate my agreement with about half of Eastman's platform -- and possibly being to the left of her on a few items. Pro-life? To the guillotine!
In saner times, when you agreed with someone on half of the issues, politicians like Ronald Reagan would count you as an ally. Hell, he'd also kick back with Tip O'Neill, the Democratic speaker of the House, for a few stiff ones after a hard day's political brawling.
Unfortunately, these are not saner times. Now, it's "purity or death."
Oh . . . and now Anthony Kennedy is retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court, and the future of Roe v. Wade and legalized abortion is back on the national table. And how. 2018 has just asked 1968 to hold its beer. We will be lucky to survive it.
So, turning back to "Will he or won't he vote for Kara Eastman in what's likely her lost cause of a congressional race?" . . . I'm still at probably. Well, definitely maybe. Or not. Basically, what I'm being expected to do is vote for my own figurative death in order to stop Trumpism, otherwise known as not-so-creeping fascism. Or perhaps I'm being asked to vote for my own literal death.
Who knows? We're not near done with the crazy in this country yet.
Not near done.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
No, there is no bottom for right-wingers to hit
Let's just call this staggeringly odious and misleading Internet ad what it is.
It's the right-wing crazy machine's "Where the white women at!?" moment. There's no other explanation for using that artwork of Barack Obama, and using it in the manner of Cleavon Little meets Snidely Whiplash.
Particularly when Obama hasn't been president for a year and a half now.
Boris Badenov . . . president's FSB handler |
The spectacle of Republicans resorting to Obama-baiting -- still -- to thwart an effort to continue regulating a utility like, well, a utility just beggars belief. Or it would have beggared belief a decade ago. You know, before the Great "The President's a What???" Freakout.
And now that Donald Trump is president, I'll believe anything. Except, of course, a single word that comes out of his mouth.
IN AN AMERICA lost somewhere on the wrong side of a pee-colored looking glass, the old Jim Crow political tactic of n***** baiting has become the postmodern coin of the realm for Republicans. That's fair enough. After all, they've been looking more like Klansmen every God-forsaken day in this deviant and dysfunctional Age of Trump.
Thus, we have the right resorting to this "Where the white women at!?" demonizing of a man who's no longer running things -- all in the name of letting Corporate America screw consumers and potential economic rivals as much as possible.
No doubt, this is another GOP "freedom" moment.
And, as Janis Joplin told us all 47 years ago, "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Moonlight and magnolias . . . with a side of crystal meth
What would we Louisiana expatriates do without our hometown newspapers . . . to remind us why the hell we left in the first place?
I am from Baton Rouge. My hometown newspaper is The Advocate, which isn't the gay publication of the same name but is rather queer, come to think of it.
Anyway, The Advocate has, in the past, printed some pretty insane things. Those were a warm-up for this dog whistle.
DAN FAGAN (whatever a Dan Fagan is) accuses Mitch Landrieu of being a race-baiter and then -- somehow -- brings the whole argument about Confederate monuments to "Because abortion."
I am pro-life. And I am here to tell you this is, to quote George W. Bush, "some weird shit." It's also why I have become, as a pro-lifer, allergic to so much of the "pro-life movement," which has devolved to a bunch of pro-birth political hacks who are fine with merely delaying the execution of society's most vulnerable members to a later date.
In light of that, Fagan's argument comes down to this:
SO . . . society should be in the business of honoring things that aren't moral, ethical or right? Fagan is saying that Landrieu is a race-baiting scoundrel because he tore down New Orleans' monuments to the Confederacy and white supremacy.
And refusing future honors to Democrats, because abortion, will somehow be a cosmically just payback for tearing down monuments to those who fought for slavery? Which, of course, was somehow both horribly wrong yet worthy of honor via public monuments to the men and states dedicated to the perpetuation of institutionalized human bondage.
Actually, the non-disingenuous analogy here would be removing a statue of a Mitch Landrieu who went on to commit treason against the United States in the name of legal abortion -- and then to fight a bloody civil war against it. Because abortion.
The Democrats may be on the wrong side of history regarding abortion, but they're no traitors and, thus far, have refrained from firing upon Fort Sumter. Today's Republican Party, on the other hand, is placing itself on the wrong side of history on virtually every other issue -- some of them just as morally fraught and morally non-negotiable as abortion.
And, by the way, any number of the GOP's members in this Age of Trump are this close to being demonstrably treasonous.
Now, what does this son of the South, who now lives in the Gret White Nawth, have to say about Fagan's philosophical treatise, one he obviously penned for the benefit of Confederacy-loving mouth-breathers who can't use "treatise" in a sentence? Well, I'm thinking of a certain bumper sticker we used to see a lot in the South in the 1960s and '70s -- often affixed to pickup trucks.
Friday, December 28, 2012
Congressional cliff diving
This country, at least on a national level, has really, truly become ungovernable.
And we are Thelma and Louise, putting the pedal to the metal as we steer straight for the edge. Here's some of the story of Congress' fascination with the abyss from CBS News:
"[W]e'll see what the President has to propose," McConnell said in a statement. "Members on both sides of the aisle will review it, and then we'll decide how best to proceed. Hopefully there is still time for an agreement of some kind that saves the taxpayers from a wholly preventable economic crisis."ON ONE LEVEL, one sees the outraged secessionist petition-signers' reasoning, such as it is, in wanting out of a country that no longer can organize a one-car cortege, much less manage the decline of a morally, intellectually, militarily and economically spent empire.
Meantime, on a conference call with the House GOP Conference this afternoon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., told Republican lawmakers to be prepared for votes on Sunday night.
All of this action is not indicative that progress is being made on the tax hikes and dramatic budget cuts set to go into effect next Tuesday, however.
On the same conference call, Boehner reiterated to his conference that the ball is in the Senate's court. He called on Senate Democrats to pass legislation the Republican-led House passed earlier this year that would extend tax rates for all wage earners and another measure that would replace the across-the-board spending cuts to domestic and defense programs with targeted cuts.
"The House will take this action on whatever the Senate can pass - but the Senate must act," Boehner said.
But Reid had a similar message for Boehner earlier in the day: "Take the escape hatch we left you."
Reid called on Boehner to take up a bill the Senate passed weeks ago that would extend current tax rates for all wage earners making less than $250,000. "The way to avoid the 'fiscal cliff' has been right in the face of Republican leaders for days and days and days...," he said.
On the floor of the Senate this morning, Reid said Boehner "seems to care more about keeping his speakership" than avoiding the tax hikes and federal spending cuts set to go into place in just five days.
On a more realistic level, do you really think a country whose leaders can't control the urge to jump off a "fiscal cliff" -- despite all that would mean for a shaky economy and future unemployment -- could manage letting various states go their own uncertain ways without a river of blood and a sea of ruin?
Even if such a thing were constitutionally possible, that is?
In such a country, I suppose it's also pointless to think that we the people might consider for a second, as we behold this pathetic spectacle staged by politicians we put into high office, that we have exactly the kind of self-destructive, chaotic and silly governance we so richly deserve.
Of course it is. We're Americans. Pointless is what we do these days.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
American idol
“A firm rule must be imposed upon our nation before it destroys itself. The United States needs some theology and geometry, some taste and decency. I suspect that we are teetering on the edge of the abyss."-- Ignatius J. Reilly
Thursday, February 09, 2012
Take this party and shove it
I used to be a Democrat.
More precisely, as soon as my change-of-registration form reaches the Douglas County Election Commission, I will be a former Democrat. Since there's no provision to register as "Catholic and the Lot of You Can Go to Hell," I will have to make do with being "non-partisan," which is what they call independent in Nebraska.
And what was my last straw, the one that drove me from disaffected Democrat to political independent and all the electoral exile that implies? Oh, just the outrage of the day from my former political party.
IT'S ALL on the ABC News website:
President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.I CAN THINK of one thing. And the Democrats are doing it right now.
The retreat was closed to media.
Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.
Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.
“It is our clear understanding from the administration that the president believes as we do, and the vast majority of the American women should have access to birth control,” Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said pointing out that 15 percent of women use birth control for medical issues. “It’s medicine, and women deserve their medicine.”
Democrats today called on Republicans to stop using women as a “political football,” and stop defining this debate, as Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., did earlier in the day, as a religious issue.
“It’s time to tell Republicans ‘mind your own business,’” said Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. ”Ideology should never be used to block women from getting the care they need to lead healthier lives.
“The power to decide whether or not to use contraception lies with a woman – not her boss,” said Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y. “What is more intrusive than trying to allow an employer to make medical decisions for someone who works for them?”
And I want to be in the same party as such people about as much as I would have wanted to be in the National Socialist party in 1933 Germany.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
'From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!'
It would appear that the inmates who run Congress, that magical asylum where spite meets stupidity, are at it again.
Thus, we see on MSNBC that we're again facing the prospect of a government shutdown -- just in time for Christmas. Or, as I was telling my wife earlier today, "The Democrats and the Republicans are going to fight to our death."
The holiday spirit seems nowhere near the Capitol Hill this Wednesday evening, with Democrats and Republicans far apart on a deal to fund the government, and extend an expiring payroll tax cut and lapsed unemployment benefits.ALL DAY, I've been thinking of that original Star Trek episode where these two aliens -- mirror images of one another -- from the same war-torn planet carried on a personal, and mutual, vendetta that mirrored the fatal conflict on their home world.
Lawmakers were no closer to a deal by the end of the day following a meeting between President Obama and Senate Democratic Leaders at the White House to discuss their strategy going forward. And there was no comment after an early evening meeting between House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Capitol.
Separately, Boehner huddled with his members for more than two hours to plot their options. House Republicans are awaiting action in the Senate on the payroll tax cut bill they passed last night. According to GOP aides, House Republicans weighed whether to move ahead without Democrats on their own, different bill to fund the government after it runs out of money on Friday.
Boehner asserted that the White House and Senate Democrats had made an agreement to fund the government until Democrats reneged.
The White House had decided to link the payroll tax cut to the extension of government funding so as to maintain leverage over Republicans, who could theoretically adjourn the House, and force the Senate, along with the Obama administration, to accept or reject the House-passed legislation.
"It's pretty clear to all of us that President Obama and Senator Reid want to threaten a government shutdown so that they can get leverage on a jobs bill," Boehner told reporters early this evening, accusing Democrats of playing politics on the issue.
Back in the mid-1960s, this was a science-fiction allegory to earthly racism and hatred of the Other. Now, to me at least, it looks like a nice summation of the political fix we Americans are in.
We hate us . . . we really hate us.
All the Republicans and all the Democrats, and all the tea partiers and all the "progressive" true believers are hell-bent on fighting to the political death. Hell, maybe the literal one, too.
Unfortunately, it will be our death in a faltering empire lurching from conflict to disaster to catastrophe to ruin.
"To the last, I will grapple with thee... from Hell's heart, I stab at thee! For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee!"THAT'S from Star Trek, too -- Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Khan was quoting from Moby Dick. Somehow, it seems appropriate.
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