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Mr. Cruz Goes To Washington (To Burn it Down)

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“Yes, I am a snotty bastard. Glad you noticed.”

There are many ways to become well-known as a U.S. Senator.  You can be a grinder, a workhorse who shuns soundbites on Sunday morning talk shows to busy yourself doing the dirty work of writing legislation.   You can wrap yourself up in the business of providing support for the folks back in your home state.   You can learn the rules of the Senate and take the time to build working relationships with both sides of the political aisle.

Or you can say, “screw that,” and become well-known for being a jerk.   That’s where Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) comes in.   With sharpened elbows and a nasty disposition guaranteed to annoy your allies and outrage your enemies.   There is a reason freshman Senators are often treated like children underfoot. They either don’t know or don’t care what the protocols are of the Senate. Guys like Cruz prefer throwing a sharp elbow and being a royal pain in the ass.

Cruz is a Princeton debating champion, Harvard Law School graduate, law clerk to the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and the former solicitor general of Texas.   He’s not dumb.  Just nasty.  He just goes about things in dumb ways such as his slimy attack on Chuck Hagel during his confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Defense.  “We do not know, for example, if he received compensation for giving paid speeches at extreme or radical groups,” Cruz told the Senate Armed Services Committee before it voted to approve Hagel’s nomination. “It is at a minimum relevant to know if that $200,000 that he deposited in his bank account came directly from Saudi Arabia, came directly from North Korea.”

That unsubstantiated slam against Hagel’s character earned Cruz a rebuke from John McCain.  McCain ended up voting against his former Republican colleague, but shot down the junior senator from Texas when he said of Hagel, “no one on this committee should at any time impugn his character or his integrity.”

Cruz’s bare-knuckles approach  doesn’t do much more than  calling attention to how much of a jack-ass he is.   We saw how much of mule’s patootie Cruz really is when he used a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting as an opportunity to lecture Diane Feinstein about the Constitution.   What followed was a very public display of irritation with the upstart freshman.

“Would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?” Cruz said, speaking to Feinstein.

“Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against searches and seizures, could properly apply only to the following specified individuals, and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the law?”

Pointing her finger and glaring at Cruz, Feinstein shot back.

“One, I’m not a sixth grader,” Feinstein said. “Senator, I’ve been on this Committee for 20 years. I was a mayor for nine years. I walked in and I saw people shot with these weapons.

“I’m not a lawyer,” she added, “but after 20 years, I’ve been up close and personal with the Constitution. I have great respect for it. … So I, you know, it’s fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time.”

“I thank you for the lecture. Incidentally, this does not prohibit — you used the word ‘prohibit’ – it exempts 2,271 weapons. Isn’t that enough for the people of the United States? Do they need a bazooka? Do they need other high-powered weapons that other people use in close combat? I don’t think so.”

What a snot-nosed, swaggering rookie like Cruz probably doesn’t know is while he’s trying to score rhetorical points with the Fox and Friends crowd, Feinstein wasn’t just blowing smoke when it comes to having first-hand familiarity with gun violence. She could have lectured her caustic colleague of the bloody events that led to her becoming the mayor of San Francisco. Namely, the murders of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk.

Feinstein doesn’t suffers fools or Ted Cruz.

Feinstein went on CNN and to explain her angry reaction to Cruz’s condescending remarks.

“Well, I just felt patronized,” Feinstein told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “I felt he was somewhat arrogant about it. When you come from where I’ve come from and what you’ve seen, when you found a dead body and put your finger in bullet holes, you really realize the impact of weapons. And then as you go up the technical ladder with these weapons, and they become more sophisticated, and more the product of a battlefield, and you’ve got these huge clips, or drums of 100 bullets out there that people can buy, when you see these weapons becoming attractive to grievance killers, people who take them into schools, into theaters, into malls, you wonder, does America really need these weapons? My answer to that is no. And so it’s based on my experience.”

None of this phases Cruz who seems to revel in starting new fires as soon as the previous ones are put out.   There’s no chance a nervy punk like Cruz learns anything remotely resembling humility or even simple manners from Feinstein setting him straight. That would take a degree of class Cruz shows no signs of possessing.

That’s okay. There have always been terrible Senators like him and they usually find themselves isolated by their own rudeness, offensive ways and arrogant attitudes. Cruz isn’t even the biggest asshole from Texas serving in Congress. Not as long as Louie “Terror Babies” Gohmert is gibbering like a drunken hyena in the House.

As a senator, Cruz has six years to make a complete fool of himself. He should pace himself.

Ted hangs out with the Palins. Now you know why he’s such as ass.

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DeMint Takes His Hardball and Cashes Out

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Whatever it is you're for, I'm probably against.

Whatever it is your for, I’m probably against.

 ”If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
~ Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) on opposing the president’s health care reforms.

I wanted to find a picture of Jim DeMint and Barack Obama.  You know, just a standard pic of the two politicians smiling for the cameras even while they’re thinking,  “Damn but I can’t stand this guy.”  The thing is  there are no pictures of the two together.    Jim DeMint does not like a lot of people and he would probably cut his right hand off before he would ever shake Barack Obama’s hand.   It’s  personal for DeMint.  It’s not just business.

Then again, the list of who the conservative kingmaker dislikes is a long one and doubtlessly has as many Republicans as it does Democrats.   DeMint is resigning to head up the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank and will likely see a substantial six-fold pay boost in his salary.

DeMint didn’t create the incivility, the gridlock and overall dysfunction of the Senate, but he sure didn’t mind helping it along either.   As the Tea Party’s man in the upper chamber of the legislative branch, DeMint saw his job not to make Congress work better, but for it to not work at all.

Giving credit where credit is due: DeMint understood the arcane rules of the Senate and realized he could accomplish through procedure what the Republicans lacked in numerical advantage.

However, DeMint sneered at the idea of compromise and stressed absolute ideological purity even when it meant taking out his fellow Republicans such as Robert Bennett, Richard Lugar and nearly Orrin Hatch. Their crime? Being willing to work with Democrats.

The members of the Senate that will miss DeMint the least aren’t the Democrats but Mitch McConnell and the Republican caucus.

DeMint has been silent on how public of a role he’ll play in electoral politics over the next two years, and its unclear whether his new position at Heritage, a not-for-profit organization that is barred from playing in politics, will limit his ability to openly push for candidates.

Nevertheless, DeMint’s departure means he could play a pivotal role in the 2014 mid-term elections — either as a conservative kingmaker or as a spoiler who backs ideological pure but fundamentally unelectable candidates, as he did in 2010 with Christine O’Donnell.

And unlike the last two cycles, when DeMint’s activities were constrained by his promise not to target colleagues in primary races, he will be free in the coming months to pick and groom primary opponents to incumbents in the Senate.

"Need a replacement Senator? I'm your boy!"

“Need a replacement Senator? I’m your boy!”

Remember, this is the guy who said he would prefer the GOP stay in the minority with “30 Marco Rubios than 60 Arlen Specters,” a moderate Republican that DeMint lined up in his crosshairs. As it turns out, Specter went rogue and switched over to becoming a Democrat rather than take on a Tea Party primary challenger DeMint was supporting, but the message was clear:   to create a GOP caucus that was faithful to his brand of ultra-conservatism, DeMint would not hesitate to go after other Republicans he felt were too soft and accommodating the Democrats.

Once again in 2014, the Democrats have more of their incumbents trying to defend their seats, but an unleashed DeMint may be more worrisome to Republican senators who he considers insufficiently conservative.   DeMint has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2016, but hasn’t said if he’s considering it.  If the GOP selects someone too moderate for his taste, you can expect DeMint or a surrogate to mount a challenge from the Right.

As far as his replacement goes, DeMint is supposedly bullish on Rep. Tim Scott, the other African-American elected as a Republican to the House in 2010 along with the just defeated Allen West. Another Tea Party type, Scott is just as far to the Right as West, but not nearly as prone to put his foot in his mouth.

If chosen by Governor Nikki Haley to finish DeMint’s unexpired term,  Scott would be the first Black Republican from the South in the upper chamber since Reconstruction.   Big deal.  Scott is just another Tea Bagger right-winger.   When he won the election to the House in 2010, he declined an invitation to join the Congressional Black Caucus.   “While I recognize the efforts of the CBC and appreciate their invitation for me to caucus with them, I will not be joining at this time,” Scott said.  “My campaign was never about race.”

Even a tool like West joined the CBC.   During the 2011 clash over raising the debt ceiling, Scott warned the president might face impeachment if he invoked a clause in the 14th Amendment to by pass Congress.   “This president is looking to usurp congressional oversight to find a way to get it done without us. My position is that is an impeachable act from my perspective.”

If chosen to replace DeMint, much will be made of the historical nature of Scott’s appointment.   Much less attention will be paid to how he is little more than DeMint in blackface.

That’s a prospect that remains to be seen if it become reality.   I can respect DeMint’s unshakable commitment to conservative principles, but I despise his legacy of obstructionism and contempt for the beliefs of others.

"How big of a pay raise am I getting? THIS big!"

“How big of a pay raise am I getting? THIS big!”

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Barack Obama: The Winner and STILL President

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President Obama

Whoa.  Guess I had a little too much to drink last night.  I thought I woke up the morning after President Obama was reelected and found one of my Obama/Biden signs gone and replaced with a Romney/Ryan sign.

Oh wait.  Somebody did rip off my sign.   That’s pretty ballsy.

Ha. Ha.  Very funny.  We got jokes.   Here’s another joke for the sign swiper.   Four more years.  How’s that taste?

There were a lot of boxing metaphors flying around during the debates.   Here’s one last one:  The winner, and STILL the President of the United States!  Barack Hussein Obama!

A lesson was served up to the GOP on Election Day.  Whether or not they recognize it is their problem.  The Republicans have pretty much exhausted race politics as a winning tactic.  It can still work now and then, but for the most part it’s been exposed as a strategy with no future.

Republicans can point to their control of the House of Representatives and have most of the nation’s governors.   Any power base is a good one and those are strong ones.    Their choice to  ignore voters of color to appeal exclusively to White voters has left the GOP locked out of the White House and denied Mitch McConnell the opportunity to control the Senate.

But, they had better get used to it. The line of the night that resonates with me is when George Will said if the 2020 Republican presidential candidate got ALL the White, Black, Latino and Asian votes John McCain got in 2008, they would lose by 14 million votes!

This country is becoming more diverse whether the GOP and Romney supporters want to admit it. Some sources are saying Obama got 75 percent of the Latino vote. Republicans CAN’T WIN a presidential election by only appealing to White, older voters.

I celebrate the president’s victory.  He got it the old-fashioned way.  He earned it.     On the matter of Mr. Romney and the ass kicking he just took, I savor it like a fine wine.  I delight and revel in it.  Call it  Schadenfreude, but it’s a thing a joy to see a rich man not get what he wants.

What winners look like.

Poor Mittens.  After all that time and money spent and all he has left is a adoring wife,  multiple homes and millions of dollars.   It must really suck to be him today.

Mitt Romney was a lousy candidate for President.  Uninspiring.  Inept.  Unprincipled.  He’s been running for the office for nearly eight years and nobody knows what his core beliefs are or if he even has any.   He’s the quintessential empty suit.   When he was the governor of Massachusetts he was a moderate Republican who favored a woman’s right to choose and gay rights.  Then he decided rather than chill in the Cayman Islands counting his money, he wanted to run for the presidency and all those previously held beliefs swirled down the toilet.

How could anyone say they are “proud” of the campaign Romney ran and the things he stood for?   The man was the Etch-A-Sketch Candidate.  Mitt believes in nothing except money and his divine right to rule.

Romney had no interest in making life better for his fellow Americans.  The only thing Romney’s has ever been good at is making money for stockholders and putting people out of work as their companies go bankrupt or move overseas.    Mitt’s overriding concern is protecting the interests of the One Percent he’s so happy to be a part of and if that means shafting students of loans or Granny of her Medicare, that’s just hard cheese.

Any man caught saying he doesn’t give a damn about half of the people he would propose to lead is totally unfit for the job.   Mitt Romney lost the election the day the American people heard what he really thought about them.

Romney said corporations were people and proceeded to act like one.  He’s a cold, bloodless automaton mouthing phrases he could barely say with a straight face and his own party could barely muster much tolerance for him.  Enthusiasm was almost nil as anyone who saw that sad little wiener roast in Tampa the Republicans called a convention and the only storyline anyone will remember from it is an old actor babbling to a chair.

In the end Romney was such a shockingly unaccomplished challenger he couldn’t be a weakened incumbent whose party had been curb stomped in 2010 with a stalled economy and unemployment near eight percent.  The turnaround specialist lost to an empty chair.

The Republicans are in terrible shape.  Their core demographic is too old, too far to the Right and looks too much like cocktail hour at a country club.   They’ve alienated young voters, Black voters, Latino voters and even Asian voters.   There is a limit to how much can be gained by allowing the extremists of a party dominate the message.   As presently constituted the Republican Party doesn’t look much like America.  It looks like Happy Days.

To quote that great philosopher Tony Stark, “Not a great plan.”

We…we LOST? But that’s unpossible!

Someone on Twitter remarked,  “Most Republicans I know are high-integrity, thoughtful, patriotic, moderate Americans. I hope they get to take their party back.”

Damn straight.  Instead of allowing the Tea Party types to scream, “We want our country back” the rank and file, REAL Republicans should be screaming, “We want our party back!”

They won’t get it as long as they think everything is fine and it’s the fault of those nasty liberals demonizing that nice Mr. Romney.    That’s  just delusional self-denial talking.  The Republican brand was rejected yesterday.    Look at the results and prove otherwise.

When Team Romney refused to hang it up after Ohio was announced for Obama I posted on Facebook,  “Romney doesn’t have to concede Ohio. Screw him. You don’t have to believe in gravity when you jump off a building. Not until you hit the ground.”

Yesterday the GOP went SPLAT!   When Obama finishes his term Democrats will have occupied the White House 16 of the last 24 years.  Explain to me how that bodes well for the Republicans went they are increasingly becoming isolated to the South and a few Western states?    California?  Off the board.   Virginia?  Looking kind of purple these days.   The Midwest?  Be happy for Indiana even if they just elected a Democrat to the Senate instead of a Tea Party whackjob who was yet another right-winger with weird ideas about rape.

Barack Obama’s win was no accident.  He has assembled an awesome team of political experts and a ground game that is second to none.   Obama waxed the ass of the most unscrupulous Republican presidential candidate since Richard Nixon and  like Nixon, Romney has secured his role in history as one of it’s biggest losers.

Don’t cry for the rich guy.

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Mitt’s Pick: The Radical Mr. Ryan

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“Paul Ryan? So not impressed, Mitt.”

Mitt Romney sure must be sick of talking about his tax returns.  Why else would you pick the Saturday morning  of the last full day of the Olympics you were picking Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, a conservative wonder boy and a Tea Party pin-up as your running mate?

This sure makes it clear Romney is now endorsing Ryan’s meat cleaver approach to the budget. That’s going to be a tough sell to seniors and independents, two blocs the Republicans must have to win in November.

Romney has tried to walk the walk as a mushy moderate who will say anything to placate the right-wing of his party. Tying himself to Paul Ryan and his Draconian budget plans means he’s “all in” for placating the Right even if he drives seniors and Independents right into Obama’s open arms.

Within minutes–not hours–of  the announcement Ryan would be Mitt’s attack dog,  my e-mail Inbox was flooded with messages (and requests for money,  naturally) from the Obama campaign,  Act Blue, Emily’s List, Bold Progressives, and Rob Zerban.   Who the hell is Rob Zerban?   He’s Ryan Democratic challenger in Wisconsin and he’s got his hand out too though he will never spend a single minute boning up to debate Ryan.

Emily’s List: A President Romney would be devastating for women and families, so it’s no surprise he’d pick Paul Ryan. Ryan rammed his radical budget plan to decimate vital programs for seniors through Congress — and did it on the backs of the women and families, like our grandmothers, who need these programs the most. And that’s just the beginning.

Ohio Democratic Party: …one story you likely won’t hear is about Ryan’s start in politics, as a young staffer just out of college, working for then-Congressman John Kasich’s Budget Committee. Ryan cut his teeth working long, tireless hours for Kasich, helping him slash programs for working families, grinding progress to a halt, and laying the groundwork to shut down the federal government.   Kasich made a big mark on Ryan, which became entirely clear last year when Congressman Paul Ryan followed in the footsteps of his mentor, proposing a radical, ideological budget that would end Medicare as we know it. These men are truly cut from the same cloth.

No more cheese? Me am unhappy.

Obama for America: Congressman Paul Ryan is best known as the author of a budget so radical The New York Times called it “the most extreme budget plan passed by a House of Congress in modern times.” With Mitt Romney’s support, Ryan would end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing — all while cutting taxes for those at the very top.

Act Blue: By choosing Paul Ryan as his running mate, Mitt just made the most radical choice possible.   Paul Ryan is the Tea Party’s darling and architect of the GOP’s plan to destroy Medicare. And while dismantling the nation’s social safety net, he will give even more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires like Mitt Romney.

Okay, okay.  I get the message.  Paul Ryan is a wrong number if you’re a Democrat.   Message received.  I whipped out my Master Card and  made two campaign contributions.  Happy now?

What I find most interesting about Romney’s pick of Ryan is this might be the first time a vice-presidential choice supplied the vision that will guide the nominee and not the other way around.

Naturally most Americans have never heard of Ryan.   That’s about to change.  My junk mail folder filled up this afternoon with the opening salvo of  Democratic opposition research on the Ayn Rand acolyte.

When will the press get over their swooning over Mitt’s dreamy new policy wonk?      Patience, please. First comes the inevitable servile fawning of the lap dog Washington insiders laughingly portrayed as “the liberal media” as they crush on Ryan as a brilliant leading light of fiscal responsibility who is willing to make the tough calls and difficult decisions.

Awww…they’re so cute at that age.

Later comes the vivisection. That is when in a sudden burst of journalistic principles, the lap-dogs of the press do the heavy lifting of actually looking into the details of how Beady-Eyes Ryan plans to euthanize granny so she won’t be such a bother in her sunset years.

If you don’t want to wait for the flaying of Paul Ryan, I suggest you read some Charles F. Pierce of Esquire who has already begun to carve Beady-Eyes from his ass to his appetite.

One day, some years from now, I’m going to figure out how Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from Wisconsin, managed to fool so many people for so long. He’s a garden-variety supply-side faker. His alleged economic “wonkery” consists of a B.A. in economics from Miami of Ohio — which he would not have been able to achieve without my generosity in helping him out with the Social Security survivor’s benefits that got him through high school after his father kicked. (You’re welcome, zombie-eyed granny-starver. Think nothing of it. Really.)

Whereupon he went to work in Washington for a variety of conservative congresscritters and think-tanks, thinking unremarkable thoughts for fairly unremarkable people. Once in Congress, however, he has been transformed into an intellectual giant despite the fact that, every time he comes up with another “budget,” actual economists get a look at it and determine, yet again, that between “What We Should Do” and “Great Things That Will Happen When We Do” is a wilderness of dreamy nonsense, wishful thinking, and an asterisk the size of Lake Huron. At which point, Republicans who’d like to have careers in five years take to hiding behind the drapes when he comes down the hall. Then, a few months later, he’s at it again. And even some putatively liberal commentators shrug and tell themselves that, at least, Paul Ryan is a Serious Person.

He gets credit for sincerely wanting to “reform” entitlements, when his entire career makes it quite plain that he doesn’t believe in the concept of entitlements, let alone the ones we actually have. He gets a pass on obvious mendacity that none of us would buy from, say, Herman Cain. (In a way, it’s not dissimilar to all those valentines to the mighty intellect of Newt Gingrich that we read back in the early 1990′s, until everybody figured out that Newt’s default position on almost everything was being a thoroughgoing creep.) Outside of the very real possibility that it’s all being done to give Paul Krugman a stroke, I don’t get it.

Ryan is no Palin. He’s way smarter and far savvier. He won’t make dumb gaffes (study up, Joe!).   He’s a Maverick, but a disciplined one. But selecting him makes it clear his radical vision is the one Republicans will begin trying to sell America at their convention and Ryan will either be Romney’s life preserver or anchor.     Mitt picked a radical like Palin, but this one’s got a brain.

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The Choice: Go Forward or Turn Back the Clock

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Four more years. Because the job’s not done

Here’s a question without an easy answer.  If Mitt Romney beats Barack Obama in November, who will be the next President of the United States?

Logically, it should be Romney, but as beholden as he will be to Karl Rove, Sheldon Adelson, the Koch Brothers and all the other rich men and special interests with one hand on his shoulder and the other up his ass, who will really be president if Romney wins?

There are trade-offs you have to accept with Obama.  Steady and mature decision-making instead of boldly ambitious plans.  The Republicans are not going to give the president a dime to do anything remotely grandiose.   If Obama achieves anything of significance in a second term, it will be in spite of the GOP, not because of them.

How do you govern when the legislative branch refuses to work with the executive?  There is a natural friction between the two that the Founding Fathers not only anticipated, they designed the Constitution to promote, but open hostilities wasn’t what they had in mind.   It is what it is, and even if Obama wins in a squeaker or a landslide, he can expect nothing more from a Republican-controlled Congress (if the GOP holds the House and takes the Senate) than the coldest of cold shoulders for the next four years.   If a second term emboldens Obama to pursue loftier goals than his first, it will also motivate Congress to give him absolutely zip.

Cornel West might say otherwise, but with Obama it’s a little harder to know who it is exactly who has the tightest grip on his balls.  With Romney you have to count all the hands stuffed in his pants.

Mitt’s other biggest problem is he doesn’t seem to like people very much or at least people not like him.  Wealthy.  White.  Conservative.  Mormon.   In a story at Salon a psychologist put Mittens on the couch and concluded:

He is anxious about revealing who he is and about interacting with people he doesn’t know. He appears to have much less experience than Obama in interacting with people from all walks of life. Basically, he is uncomfortable except within his own family and in the presence of those who share his wealthy background and Mormon faith.

Romney wouldn’t be the first rich guy who was painfully awkward and awfully comfortable rubbing elbows with the people he purports to want to lead.   It is not required that the president relate to  the citizens, but the prospect of a Chief Executive that has no empathy for the middle and working classes is a worrisome prospect.

In 1965, Romney was attending a private high school he was outraged by the appearance of one John Lauber, a quiet fellow student who had bleached d his hair blonde with one long lock falling over his eyes.  Lauber was not simply a nonconformist, but gay as well.  An incensed Romney told classmates, “He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”

Not perfect, but perfect for the job.

Romney led his gang of bullies in assaulting and pinning Lauber down as Romney cut off his hair.  When asked about the incident Romney shrugged it off saying,  “I participated in a lot of hijinks and pranks in high school and some of them might have gone too far, and I apologize.”

Romney claims Lauber being gay had nothing to do with hassling him.  “I certainly don’t believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual,” Romney told a Fox News radio host. “That was the furthest thing from our minds back in the 1960s.”

As “hijinks and pranks” go, giving crap to the kid who didn’t fit in is a harsh rite of passage in high school.  But it says something about Romney that he didn’t recall Lauber and how he had abused a fellow student who was only minding his business. To Romney, Lauber was a weirdo who didn’t fit in.   How someone forgets their part in humiliating another kid in such a demeaning way says to me if Mitt doesn’t have a dark side, he’s cursed by a sadistic, mean streak.

Forbes contributor Josh Brasso wondered where is Mitt’s empathy?  “…There is a difference between learning to treat others respectfully and having empathy for them. It seems like teenage Mitt Romney fell down on both of those counts, and I’m confident that adult Mitt Romney has figured the respect thing out. But does Romney have empathy for people who are different from him?

No.   Not really.  When Romney appeared at the NAACP convention in July, much was made of the raucous booing he received for saying he would repeal Obamacare.   What was overlooked was his later claim he had met with Black leaders who supported him, but were afraid to do so publicly.

The NAACP’s Hillary Shelton told Ed Schultz,  “Quite frankly, the campaign actually gave me a list of African-American VIPs that they brought into the NAACP meeting.  So we were aware that they had people brought in specifically for the campaign. So I’m sure those were the ones they sat down with, because quite frankly none of the rank-and-file NAACPers met with him.”

“They’re bringing people in that they know will support his agenda from other places, that aren’t active with the NAACP. These are people who are brought in to actually provide the cheering for him, so there will be some support along those lines,” Shelton said.

Romney was praised for being willing to go before a hostile audience and not pander to the NAACP, but he tried to stack the deck by busing in his own Black cheerleaders.  This illustrates not only how uncomfortable Romney is around people he doesn’t relate to, but how he will to shape and manipulate events to make himself comfortable.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. If Mittens gets five percent of the Black vote it would be a minor miracle.  Anyone duplicitous enough to bus in ringers to applaud for him like trained monkeys (and I do mean that insult in the most racial sense of the word) has already disrespected the intelligence of African-Americans.

I’m quite aware of President Obama’s shortcomings.  I don’t need a 30-second attack ad to tell me his flaws.  There are things about Obama that make me mad and/or drive me crazy.   I wish he fought harder for what he believes is best for America.  Often it seems he won’t if it might interfere with his natural inclination to reach out to the other side.

Some very intelligent people say Romney, once elected, will be free to govern from more moderate positions than the Tea Party-dominated GOP presently holds.   But what if he doesn’t?   What if he is simply a rubber stamp in the Oval Office?   That’s a chance not worth taking.

The likelihood Romney being captured by the right-wing of his party increased  this week in Texas when Ted Cruz, a Tea Party endorsed challenger defeated the favorite of the party, David Dewhurst for the U.S. Senate  vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchinson’s retirement.  Cruz’s win  wasn’t bad news for Obama because Democrats had no chance of picking up Hutchinson’s seat, but it was awful news for Romney because the GOP just got dragged a little further away from the political center.

“If we can elect a really conservative House and Senate that will force Romney to go along with our bold conservative agenda,” a spokesperson for Freedom Works said. “He’s going to have to really, really go to the right. He’ll be working with guys in the House and Senate. He won’t be able to get away with too many middle of the road policies, especially on things like the deficit.”

Would Mitt be in charge of a Romney presidency?

That dear reader, is the final reason a Romney presidency would be a disaster.  He would be an impotent figurehead.  A sock puppet for the wealthy elites that poured millions into the presidential campaign on his behalf and unable to lead from the center with the G.O.Tea Party dragging him far on the fringes to the Right.

Obama earns the contempt of Republicans but Romney would be expected to kneel and grovel before the yahoos of the party.  Is there any reason to expect Mitt would tell the Tea Party  “Screw off.  I’m the president?”

We need four more years for President Obama because four years of a figurehead on the  job  would be a catastrophe and stakes are too high to leave the future of the nation to Mitt Romney…and John Boehner…and Eric Cantor…and Paul Ryan…and Mitch McConnell…and Jim De Mint…and Sheldon Adelson…and David Koch….and Karl Rove…

America can’t afford a president who takes orders from a shadow Cabinet and that’s what we will have with Romney in the White House and someone else in charge.

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Burning Down the House (and the Senate Too)

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“Wanna go steady and hunt commies together?”

One of my favorite war flicks is Patton and as portrayed by George C. Scott in an Oscar-winning performance, the old “blood n’ guts” general was tough, ruthless, focused like a laser beam on crushing his enemies and showing up his rivals.   The fact that he was egotistical, vain, and maybe a borderline sociopath doesn’t deflect from George S. Patton’s brilliance as a military leader.

I can’t imagine Patton being effective in anything less than wartime conditions.  What works on the battlefield would be disastrous anywhere else and particularly the “no retreat, no surrender” hardline stance.  This is why the Republican Party’s “take no prisoners and make no compromises” view of how politics should be played seems to be no Republican son-of-a-bitch can win by treating the Democratic son-of-a-bitch as an enemy to be obliterated.   Even though politics is said to be war without bloodshed, without the possibility of compromise it becomes every bit as brutal as war.

Two intellectuals, Thomas Mann and Norman J. Orenstein penned a very popular column for The Washington Post (which you might want to read before proceeding) and their central premise is our government is broken and if Republicans didn’t break it, they are vested in keeping it broken.

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization.

Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

An endangered species meets the president

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The essay (which has been “liked” and shared over 100,000 times on Facebook, tweeted more than 2,400 times and received up to 5000 replies before the WaPo website stopped counting) is taken from the authors book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism. The popularity of the piece probably will sell a few more copies than a book with a clunky title normally would.

The idea that Washington has become a place where not much get done isn’t a new one. Post columnist Dana Milbank points out the House of Representatives has been in session only 41 out of 127 days in 2012 and will be on vacation for 17 of the remaining 34 weeks. On the rare occasions the House members are in town it’s only for three days.

Nice work if you want to call that work (to be fair, Milbank notes that over in the Democratic-run Senate…of the 87 votes, the majority were on just three bills: 25 on the highway bill, 16 on the postal bill and 13 on an insider-trading bill. Sixteen others were on confirmations.

What’s the problem with a Congress where nothing much gets done because one party considers “compromise” a dirty word (I see you over there Don)? If the GOP is successful in taking back the Senate and holding on to the House this fall you can bet you’ll see a lot more legislation than the 106 passed so far by the 112th Congress.

Even if President Obama wins reelection, if he finds he’s going to have to send congratulations to Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell he’s going to go through a lot of veto pens and Rolaids.

Even if you think a dysfunctional Congress that can’t pass anything but the most inoffensive and menial bills where its members regard the other side not simply as wrong on issues, but un-American isn’t a bad thing, there is no reason for anyone but the most blindly partisan to even run for office.

Why bother if you are a Democrat, you can’t reach across the aisle to your Republican colleague when he or she believes they were sent to Congress to spit in that hand. Allen West, whom Mann and Ornstein name-check has called his own Congressional representative, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, “vile” and “not a lady.” What the hell could they ever work together on to mutually benefit the people of Florida?

Let’s take the Republicans at their word the government really is the enemy. Is it really surprising they seemingly have no interest in assisting in the smooth functioning of an institution they don’t believe in? If a house divided against itself must fall how long before a bitterly rancorous House falls apart and brings the Senate tumbling down with it?

Lying liars telling lies.

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There’s No Holiday For the Obama Haters

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See any monkeys in this picture? Nah, me neither.

Here’s a story that hasn’t received much mainstream media coverage, but Black oriented blogs have picked up the slack:

A rabid Tea Party wannabe politician in California called for the assassination of President Obama and his “monkey children” in a recent Facebook rant – and then defended his right to do so Monday.

Jules Manson, who failed miserably in his 2011 bid for a City Council seat in Carson, Calif., urged the sickening reprisal, saying Obama’s support of a revised military authorization bill last week was an act of “treason” that “eroded” constitutional protections.

“It must be countered with assassinations onto them and their children,” he wrote in the original posting that has since been scrubbed from his Facebook profile.

“Assassinate the fucken nigger and his monkey children,” he prodded, according to a screen grab obtained by YourBlackWorld.com.

An angry backlash quickly ensued, and Manson, 48, toned down the vile rhetoric Monday while defending his right to spew hate.

“Once you have taken the position that anyone should be imprisoned for careless emotionally driven remarks that had no real substance, you deserve what your government has become,” he wrote in the new Facebook post.

“All I can really say is to be careful what you wish for because setting such a precedence can come back to bite you,” he warned.

“I have felt deeply regretful and apologized for my past mistakes. Can you do the same?” he asked his followers.

No one answered a telephone number listed for Manson’s residence in a Carson trailer park Monday.

I’m sure Mr. Manson has a visit from the Secret Service somewhere in his immediate future.

The Tea Party apologists may now begin with distancing themselves from one racist wannabee and shrugging off his threat against the president and his children as an isolated incident that has no reflection upon their goals.

Just wondering how many isolated incidents it takes before it starts become a worrisome trend?

Predictably, some apologists for the Tea Party have claimed Manson isn’t really a member.  It’s not clear he isn’t connected in any way to the Tea Party either. A search of “Jules Manson, Tea Party” sure yields a ton of results.

The dilemma for a movement without any clearly defined leadership, organizational structure or principles is any asshole can hitch a ride and claim to be part of the club.

The same lack of a coherent form and purpose that supposedly makes the Tea Party so formidable also makes it easy to tie them to racists and other fringe mentalities.

Sucks to be them.

Nothing new about racist rantings against the president and his family.  The Internet is full of hateful creeps hang out pouring their venom all over whatever it is they despise.

Manson got a visit from a pair of Secret Service agents about his death wish for President Obama.  He wasn’t arrested, but he can be sure his name goes on some government database watch list as being naughty, not nice.

There should be a special section in hell for punks who single out children for death.  You really have to be a total piece of shit excuse for a human being to have that kind of hatred in your heart for anyone.

It must be a terrible thing for a miserable little piece of trailer trash like Manson to wake up knowing there’s a Black man in the White House and I sincerely hope he’s got four more years of gnashing his teeth, face-palming his head and staying a pissed off, angry White man.

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“The Help” Black Conservatives Provide to the Right

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Allen West: Rising high on the "I Hate Barack Obama" Hit List.

If I wanted to waste the time, I could fill up my blog with posts of nothing but updates of the Stupid Stuff Black Conservatives Say.

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla):  “You have this 21st-century plantation that has been out there, where the Democrat Party has forever taken the black vote for granted. And you have established certain black leaders, who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation. And now the people on that plantation are upset, because they have been disregarded, disrespected, and their concerns are not cared about.”

“So I’m here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad, away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility.”

Star Parker:  Our black president is a traitor to his race. Our struggles put him in power and now he’s not taking care of his folks.

Herman Cain:  “I am an American Black Conservative, an ABC and proud of it!  I won’t stay on the Democratic plantation like I’m supposed to.”


Jesse Lee Peterson:  The NAACP is no different than the KKK in that the KKK harmed black Americans by their physical bodies, but the NAACP steals their hearts and minds and souls. And they kill black Americans by making black Americans or causing black Americans to hate their country, to hate what’s right, to depend on the government rather than depending on themselves.

I would be amused by a sellout like Allen West comparing himself to Harriet Tubman if I wasn’t so sickened by his fawning smooching of any White conservative ass in reach.   West is the kind of happy house Negro whom if Harriet Tubman tried to show him the way to freedom he would go running in the other direction back to Massa’s loving arms and stinging whip.

But this is what ABC’s as Cain described his pathetic little clique of Negroes Behaving Foolishly specialize in.  They make White conservatives feel good about themselves.  They blame Black people for their sorry lot in lives and they love to talk about plantations and slavery.  If any of them had been slaves they would have been up in the Big House hoping for Mister Charlie or Miss Ann to brush off some table scraps they could fight the dogs for.

Star Parker gets all the hot dudes

Have you ever heard of “a beard” used as a slang term? It’s typically used by someone concealing their same-sex orientation by dating or even marrying someone of the opposite gender. Rock Hudson, Elton John and other gay men who were pretending they weren’t used women as their “beard.”

There are Black sellouts like Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain who proclaims, “To all of those people who say that the Tea Party is a racist organization, eat your words” who serve as “beards” to the White Far Right.  The predominantly White and conservative types who make up the Tea Party eagerly seize upon the presence of the paltry few Blacks who agree with them to proclaim, “See, we can’t be racists. Herman Cain says we aren’t!”

This is essentially defending yourself from accusations of race-based bigotry by grasping for the thinnest of straws. You’re okay because a member of the minority your offending says you are. Opportunistic hustlers like Cain are happy to be bussed in, given a prominent speaking spot and paraded about as conspicuously as possible. Black folks at Tea Party protests are like the lone brother hangin’ out with his three or four White buddies in beer commercials.

American Black Conservatives love to thump their chests and boast how they are freed from “the Democratic planation.”  Seems to me though all they’ve done is trade one Massa for another.  They never question or challenge conservative orthodoxy.   They simply parrot the same rhetoric as any other right-winger.  Issues of race, poverty, unemployment or any other issue of concern to many African-Americans, never concerns them.  So when someome like Star Parker calls President Obama a “traitor to his race” how can anyone take her seriously.  All she does is sell-out and betray Black people as she panders to White conservatives.

Cain, West,  Parker, Peterson and the rest of the Negro right-wingers rushing to give cover to the contemporary conservatives of the Tea Party are as important to them as the Black maids were to the White women of the segregated South. They are modern versions of ”The Help.”

West felt strangely relaxed and at home.