April 23, 2019: Disloyal Opposition, Deeply Malignant Force, Too Far Gone

Elijah Cummings, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, appeared on MSNBC last Friday night telling the nation that not only is the White House refusing to comply with his committee's request for information and that there has been no response whatever from the White House, but that the ReSCUMlickan minority members have written to the White House asking that the administration not reply. Similar reports of noncompliance from other committee's are also emerging though it is unclear if the minority is similarly acting to sabotage the legitimate functions of the House.

There is nothing new to this. The 'Disloyal Opposition', one may recall, similarly worked to undermine the Obama administration's foreign policy back in 2015 when they invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress without first discussing, much less clearing, the event with the White House. A harbinger of a future drift toward partisanship in Middle Eastern policy with Likkud and ReSCUMlickans walking hand in hand. But even more destabiling was the action taken by 47 ReSCUMlickan senators, in an unprecedented act of political mendacity, signing an open letter to the Iranian government stating that any subsequent president could nullify the agreement “with a stroke of the pen”, suggesting that bargaining with Obama would result in, at best, a transient agreement that would be quickly nullified by the succeeding Administration.(1) The ReSCUMlickan's, of course, made good on the threat destroying at once continuity in American foreign affairs and further destabilizing the region in the bargain.

The rogue elephant that is the ReSCUMlickan Party is not of Donald tRUMP's making. Our Caesar Disgustus isn't making the party over in his own image, he is simply the face on an already deeply malignant political force. So it should come as little surprise to find them enabling his increasingly paranoiac, aberrant and deeply troubling behaviors.

It would be of minor interest if the questions about which the House seeks answers were not so serious. What are his ties to Russia? What obligations does he have? What is motivating this lick-spittle, sycophantic, even juvenile behavior when it comes to Russia? What is motivating our Middle Eastern policies? Could it be that there are real estate transactions behind the moving of our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and tRUMP's recognition of Israeli claims to the Golan Heights and the West Bank? How much of our policy toward Qatar and Saudi Arabia are determined by the financial interests of the tRUMP's and the Kushner's? About these and scores of other questions the country demands answers.

But it gets more serious. Reports have surfaced that the clown in charge of White House security clearances waived objections to over two dozen top White House officials including the daughter and son-in-law. Ivanka, who has yet to be called before the House to explain the trademark grants given her by the Chinese government, and Jared who has yet not been called to account for the pressuring of the government of Qatar to provide loans to shore up his teetering real estate empire. Instead, the ReSCUMlickans in congress are encouraging this 'president' to obstruct any inquiry over anything relating to either his finances or his behaviors.

As the Mueller reports sinks in, this administration is coming under greater scrutiny. The nation can look for no help from the disloyal opposition. The rotting ReSCUMlickan Party is too far gone. It is up to the Democrats and the independents to bring political pressure to bear.

Disgustus is stinking up the forum. Disgustus is daring us to impeach him. Disgustus is a clear and present danger, and major voices within the Democratic Party recoil at what stands before us.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus' laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison.

_______________

1. See post of March 11, 2015: Generation of Swine, Mendacity of the Swine, Deeply Offensive Performances.

February 2, 2018: Wall of Obstruction, Material Accomplices, Flush This Toilet.

Professor Robert Reich, concerned about the Rescumlican campaign to undermine if not end the Mueller investigation into Donald J. Trump and his lackeys, had this to say yesterday on his Facebook posting:

“In December, just before he was to testify before the House Judiciary Committee, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein – who has authority over special counsel Rob Mueller’s Russia investigation -- sought Trump’s help in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. 
 
No such luck. Instead,Trump used the meeting to ask Rosenstein where the Mueller’s investigation was heading, and whether Rosenstein was "on my team."

 
Friends, we have a man occupying the Oval Office who has no qualms about interfering in an FBI investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign. 

 
This will be another piece of evidence in the obstruction of justice count of the Trump impeachment, next year. Your thoughts?”

 

Devin Nunes is, of course, the same Devin Nunes who last summer engaged in a White House plot to divert criticism over the tRUMP administrations accusations that somehow President Obama had violated the law and illegally wiretapped tRUMP Tower,  One will recall that the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee was seen jumping out of his car, after receiving a call, and running off only to report later that he had uncovered independently obtained information that he needed to rush to the White House which would exonerate Disgustus' and validate his outrageous claims. The charade was quickly revealed for what it was, for Nunes had run to the White House to get information from Bannon staffers at the White House, to deliver back to the White House. In sum, the White House ginning up 'documents', purportedly from 'independent' sources that weren't 'independent' at all. As a result of this brazen attempt to obfuscate Nunes 'recused' himself as chairman of the committee as it went about investigating the Russian mess.

It seems, however, that Nunes has done nothing of the sort. He has instead been 'cherry-picking' information that he demanded from the FBI to make it appear that the FBI and Robert Mueller have been 'conspiring' to bring the government down. He has summarized this fiction in a classified memo that the Rescumlicans, by party-line vote, decided to release to the public, over the strenuous objections of both the FBI and the tRUMP led Department of Justice. Not only did the committee refuse to allow the Director of the FBI or anyone at Justice testify as to the veracity of the interpretation or the wisdom, given that it could reveal sources, of releasing this screed but the committee voted along party lines to quash the Democratic line-by-line critique. Indeed Nunes refused to answer a question by a Democratic member of the Committee if he had consulted the White House when drawing up this fraud.  

 

The Ghost of Joe McCarthy is roaming the Rescumlican cloakrooms once again.

This in the context of the same House committee that accused two FBI agents of anti-tRUMP bias, characterizing the FBI as a 'witch hunt'. It was later revealed that not only had Mueller immediately removed the investigators upon discovery of the messages but that the emails also contained disparaging remarks about the Clintons, including daughter Chelsea, Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Jill Stein, Paul Ryan, Ted Cruz and a host of others.

It is becoming increasingly and painfully clear that the Rescumlican Party will do nothing to see that justice is done. The Rescumlican Party, now bereft of any sense of justice or decency, is now in the thralls of the ultimate degenerate, the penultimate authoritarian, and the Russian Agent. There is no known depth to which they will not now stoop. No gutter, no cesspool is too repugnant for them.

By selectively reporting the committee has instead demonstrated it's own bias, becoming—along with its 'recused' chairman, material accessories in the obstruction of justice. The public forum reeks from the stench and there will be no relief unless and until we flush this toilet.

Impeach and Imprison.

December 4, 2017: Those That Sent Us, Triple Whamy, Enabling the Swine

“We must deliver something to those that sent us here”

----Senator Mitch McConnell, (R-Kentucky)

In this simple, declarative statement, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid out the justification for the worst tax legislation ever produced by the United States Senate.

Fearing the loss of their ill-gotten majority, Senate Rescumlicans, running roughshod and leapfrogging over all normal procedures rushed to produce something, anything, that they could take back to the people in order to justify their wretched existence. The 'people' in this case is not their constituencies, for McConnell was here referring not to the good people of Kentucky but to the real people who 'sent' him to the Senate—the billionaires, the Walton's, the Koch's, the Adelman's and Mercers as well as the giant national and multi-national corporations that fuel their campaigns and their policy stink-tanks. Here in one steaming pile of shit, the Senate presents the American people with the biggest transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest in the history of this country.

The details are, of course, sketchy. Having rushed this through without committee hearings, without informed debate—for the details of the bill were being altered up to the very last minute in order to fashion the 50 votes needed to gain passage. Finally, in the end, every Rescumlican save Bob Corker voted in favor. Gone were the 'principled' protests of John McCain, Susan Collins, and Jeff Flake. Gone were the so-called 'principles' of fiscal conservatism. Gone were the protests of the 'deficit-hawks' with the lone exception of the soon to retire Corker. All those 'principled' protests over the years, all those howls and screams over deficit spending, all the Rescumlican 'virtue' vanished in a flash as greed once again got the best of them.

This bill, of course, must be reconciled with the House version; and it is debatable at this point which steaming pile of shit stinks the most. The final bill sent to that great plutocrat posturing as populist, will nevertheless follow the general outline of transferring wealth through taxation from the working people of this country to the idle rich, societies parasites.

It will be presented, by the Liar-in-Chief, as a great Christmas present to the middle class. Of course, like anything else coming from this administration, this is a boldface lie. It will also be presented as a 'stimulus' bill benefiting everyone.

In fact it is neither. In fact the poor, the working poor, and the middle classes will experience a 'triple whammy' under the lash of this outrageous piece of legislation.

First, there will be a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest and the working classes to the idle rich, especially in the outlying years. By the middle of the next decade it has been estimated that over half the middle class will suffer significant tax increases, and those making less than ten thousand dollars a year could face up to a fifteen hundred dollar tax increase, while over 60 percent of the the tax relief goes to the top one per cent and corporations.

Secondly, no sooner will our very own Caesar Disgustus sign this bill and the Scums will be taking to the floors of the House and Senate demanding spending cuts in order to bring down the looming deficits. Programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Head Start, farm subsidies and scores of others will suffer repeated assaults as the Scums use the mess they've made as a rationale for draconian cuts hurting the lower and middle classes, the very people who create—through their labor—our wealth in the first place.

Lastly, the Scums are presenting a 'stimulus' bill at a time when no need for such action can be demonstrated. With unemployment at a 17 year low, you can expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates much more steeply than would otherwise be the case, making the cost of consumer loans (a staple of middle class existence) more expensive and raising unemployment in an effort to 'cool' the economy and keep inflation low. Let us make no mistake about this. The Fed will view the increase in deficits as inflationary, regardless of the lack of any recent empirical connection, and will raise rates accordingly visiting hardship not upon the stock-jobbing vulchers, whose investments they are openly protecting, but upon the middle class upon whom the value of these stocks and bonds depend.

What is clear is that the middle class and the working poor are once again going to receive a beating by the Rescumlicans posturing as 'populist' tribunes of the working class. They are no such thing and neither is the head of their party. Disgustus will sign the bill into law. Disgustus, knowing nothing, will sign anything.

“Something is better than nothing” chant the troglodytes that inhabit the Rescumlican Party. This is not always true, especially upon close examination of these tax bills. In this case nothing is better than this, nothing at all, for by doing nothing no further harm to the middle class would come. But the Scums are in need of a 'victory' any victory will do, especially if it pays off their corporate and billionaire paymasters. So, like common prostitutes, they will perform the service however enthusiastically, but they will be destroying the middle class and enabling Disgustus in the bargain; once again giving to little lord Fauntleroy something he doesn't deserve.

Impeach and Imprison.

November 10, 2015: Weeper of the House, True Believers, The Price of Power.

“There is something dangerous about orthodoxy in the hands of a true believer”

                        ----From “The Quotations of Chairman Joe”

John Boehner has resigned from the House of Representatives and in so doing relinquishing his post as ‘Weeper of the House”.  In his place the scum have elevated Congressman Paul Ryan, otherwise known as little Eddie Munster, to the position of presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives and 3^rd in line to the Presidency. 

Boehner (pronounced boner) by all accounts had a miserable time of it, trying as he did to weave a line between the forces of responsible governance and the newly-minted base of the Rescumlican party for which political responsibility and good governance are anathema.  It proved a treacherous path indeed, a Faustian bargain, reducing a once promising leader to a mere weeping caricature. 

The crazies, it would appear, are emerging from the woodwork. This is not, however, a recent phenomenon, nor should we understand it as a product of purely Republican malignancy.  The movement that has masticated into what we now refer to as the ‘teabagger’ movement began a long time ago, traceable originally to the disciples of Ayn Rand and the followers of Barry Goldwater.  But they, alas, were few and full of labor.  What gave the movement real impetus was the Supreme Court Decision in Roe v Wade

In which the court for the first time declared a zone of personal privacy extending to reproductive rights.  This mobilized the religious fundamentalists who, seeing abortion as an abomination, mobilized in large enough numbers to become the foot soldiers of an emerging political movement.

The principle culprit, the man who led them unto the national stage, was none other than Jimmy Carter.  It was Carter who, through the albeit temporary alliance of the Black and White southern Baptist conventions, found in these ‘foot soldiers’ a ready army of campaign workers ready to do the tedious and mundane tasks necessary to launch and win a national political campaign.  Winning the presidential election of 1976 with their support, Carter gave legitimacy to what was heretofore a largely marginalized and silent segment of the electorate. 

But, alas, what was to become known as the ‘Religious Right’ could find no home in the party of Ted Kennedy, Bela Abzug, and Eleanor Smeal. (1)  By 1980 American religious ‘fundamentalism’ had transformed itself from a mere adjunct in support of a single issue, and of a particular presidential candidate, into a ‘movement’.  In the hands of Jerry Falwell, and dubbing itself the ‘Moral Majority’, Christian Fundamentalism emerged as a national political ‘movement’, moving as it did beyond not only single-issue politics but to the conservative political ‘right’, embracing Ronald Reagan and the politics of unfettered capitalist exploitation.  In the hands of these practitioners it was held, with a straight face, that it was the will of the Lord that not only should the social safety net be shredded but that personal and capital gains taxes be cut in half.

Over the ensuing decades it only got worse.  As the Republican party of our forefathers transformed itself into the Rescumlican party of today it opened its doors and embraced with wholesale enthusiasm the likes of the heretofore banned John Birch Society, crypto-fascists, not a few remnants of the Ku Klux Klan and Southern racists, but more recently the corporate-sponsored Teabaggers, libertarians, and other eternal malcontents.  It has become, by degrees, a reincarnation of the old 19^th century ‘Know-Nothing’ Party, denying science and climate change, evolution, and universally observable fact.  

The problem is that, given the religious veneer over which this caldron of intolerance and ignorance is presently covered, the “Political Right” or, as I prefer, the “
Idiot Wrong” has not only gone over to the ‘dark side’, but in so doing has exhibited such a marked degree of belligerence and intolerance as to threaten the very concept of republican governance.

There is something about conducting oneself in the public square with the firm conviction that one has god on one’s side.  If one is convinced that through political action one is working god’s will then compromise becomes damn near impossible.  If one assumes that good, however ill-defined must rest in one’s own hands and must, in the end, prevail then all other centers of political power are either suspect, evil, or illegitimate.  A certain self-righteousness emerged on the political wrong manifesting itself as a continuous stream of righteous proclamations, political obstructions and, when the electorate had the temerity to turn them out of office, temper tantrums.  Consider the record in recent years of conservative behavior:

* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.

* July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.

* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”

* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.

* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.

* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.

* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.

* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.

* September 2015: Republicans threaten another shutdown [over Planned Parenthood]. (2)

 There is something dangerous about orthodoxy, be it religious, political or economic, in the hands of a “True Believer” (3).  When they are not wreaking havoc upon the national political consensus, undoing the work of centuries, and shredding the social safety net, they are, when voted out of power, about the business of obstruction and nullification. 

Make no mistake about it.  When one is guided by the ‘light’; when one sees ones actions in the political arena to be a manifestation of the ‘will of god’, then there is small room for political debate and no tolerance for political opposition.  Accordingly, one sets about the business of restricting the franchise (voter ID, Gerrymandering, restricting access to polling places), overturning elections (Bush v. Gore, the mess in Ohio in 2004), and vilifying the political opposition (Faux News, Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter et. al.)  By these means the ‘light of the world’ has been, by degrees, transformed into a political abyss, a cauldron of darkness.  Christ, it is now earnestly held, was a confirmed Capitalist, nearly two millennium before the advent of Capitalism.  Facts?  What are mere facts in the hands of a ‘true believer’?

The Faustian bargain that Boehner forged with the forces of darkness has, at last come undone.  It remains to be seen, now that he is free of the constraints of power, what his commentaries will be on the state of our union but others, former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke among them, have vented their frustration at the intolerance and ignorance boiling on the political surface of the political cauldron.  A veritable witch’s brew, balking at the elevation of little Eddie Munster, protesting that even he was not ‘conservative enough’ to lead this rabble.  Ideological purity has its limitations, and its price.

____

1.  Ted Kennedy is well known.  Bella Abzug was a renowned liberal congresswoman from New York City and avid supporter of reproductive rights.  Eleanor Smeal was chair of the National Organization of Women, also a strong supporter of Roe V. Wade.

 2.http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/26/1425070/-The-Dark-Truth-Of-John-Boehner-s-Resignation?

3. See Hoffer, Eric. “The True Believer” Perennial Library, Harper and Row Publishers, New York. 1951. 160 pages.

February 27, 2014: What a Corker, Race to the Bottom, Voodoo That You Do

“And now go do that voodoo that you do so well”

                     ---Harvey Korman as Headly Lamar in “Blazing Saddles”

 

Senator Bob Corker (Rescumlican Tennessee) is caught in a firestorm over attempts by workers at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga to organize under the auspices of the United Auto Workers.  It seems that prior to the vote by the workers over union certification, the swine from Tennessee was caught dutifully doing the bidding of his corporate paymasters by telling the workers that if they vote against unionization that Volkswagen would build more auto plants in Tennessee and the American Southeast.  Conversely, calling the UAW the greatest job killing organization in the world, he told the workers that if they joined the union it would threaten their already existing employment and jeopardize any further expansion by Volkswagen in the American South.  Using these fear tactics, the kind of voodoo the Scums do so well, the auto workers in Chattanooga dutifully rejected the union. 

 

This is the same United States Senator who stood in the well of the Senate and called for American auto workers, as a price for the industry bail-out in 2009, to be forced to give up their wages and benefits and join the ‘race to the bottom’ by working for the world industry wage.  The Senator, you see, stood outraged that American workers should have the temerity not only to demand by to compel a higher standard of living than the prevailing world rate.  No matter that the Unions had already given back many of their gains, particularly fringe benefits, the man from Tennessee was not satisfied and stood ready, willing and eager to use the financial crisis to wring landmark concessions from the working class.  This, it seems, is the recurring pattern.  Use a crisis, any crisis to give the screws one more turn on the working people of this country; and, if a crisis doesn’t exist, simply create one such as in using the debt ceiling to periodically exact more concessions from the workers and to further shred the safety net beneath them.   

 

This is not your father’s Republican party.  I cannot imagine that in my youth even the most recondite reactionary would stand in the Congress of the United States and boldly calling for radical reductions in income for middle Americans.  A few may have held those views, but none would have stood upon the national stage and so brazenly expressed them.  It is a mark of the times that a United States Senator can openly conduct war on the middle class of this country and not feel a sense of political insecurity.  This particular scum won his seat back in 06 by running in the tradition of Karl Rove and Lee Atwater airing disgusting and racially tainted television commercials against his opponent Harold Ford.  In a campaign reminiscent of another scumbag, Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss, Corker savaged Ford with television commercials that violated every standard of decency, eking out a narrow victory.  Within months, knowing that his corporate paymasters would rapidly come to his defense he was calling for an end to hard won gains by the largely northern auto workers.  Now he feels safe to wage war on his own constituents.  I never thought I’d live long enough to see a United States Senator Stick pins into the hearts of his own people by openly celebrating their emerging poverty; but then it is a voodoo that they do so well.

December 9, 2011: Herman Cained, Splendid Diversions, Ultimate Uncle Tom.

It was announced over the weekend that presidential wanabee Hermann Cain, he of Godfather’s Pizza, has announced the suspension of his presidential campaign amidst the increasing number of revelations concerning untoward sexual conduct. The latest being a long affair with a woman ending as he was announcing his bid for the White House.

All of this is interesting, if not amusing, but hardly new to presidential politics. From the campaign against Thomas Jefferson in which it was alleged, correctly late twentieth century science would reveal, that Jefferson had fathered several children with his slave Sally Hemmings to the famous campaign against Grover Cleveland, where the opposition slogan ran “Ma, Ma, where’s my pa? He’s gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha”, to Nan Britton’s famous affair with Warren G. Harding in the white house, to Gary Hart and the “Monkey Business” revelations, to the many Clinton peccadilloes, Hermann Cain is only the last in a long list of public figures caught in such scandal.

While certainly entertaining, and sometimes a bit unseemly, these behaviors have served to derail several recent presidential bids and brought disrepute or resignation on several congressional leaders, but at some level have served as only splendid diversions. What’s lost in the ongoing revelations in this case is that most, if not all, of these “affairs” occurred while Mr. Cain was head of the National Restaurant Association. That is while he was functioning in his capacity as a lobbyist on Capitol Hill.

The internal contradiction implicit the spectre of an emerging spokesman for the “tea baggers” and the idiot wrong being nothing more than a lobbyist seeking direct rather than indirect political access has been lost not only on the conservative base of the Rescumlican Party but on the larger nation as a whole.

So now Hermann Cain, perhaps the ultimate “uncle Tom” takes his place as a minor footnote in the dustbin of history. No matter, for he will be well taken care of for waiting in the weeds is “Baby Huey” otherwise known as Newt Gingrich who now emerges as all other alternatives have self-destructed as the chief rival of Mitt Romney for the nomination by the Party of Greed. Cain represents precisely the kind of man to which Baby Huey will sell this country upon his elevation to the presidential chair.

Take heart Hermann, you may still have a future.