Have Leaders on the Right gone totally nuts?

Have Republican leaders like Mitch McConnell gone totally nuts?

McConnell Accuses Obama of Internet takeover

In this crazy speech, McConnell actually had the mendacity to accuse Obama of already nationalizing health care, the auto industry, banks (any regulation on them means takeovers) and I forget what else.

First of all the Obama plan for health care doesn't have a public option, no single payer, no government insurance companies. Medicare and the VA were in place before Obama got there. All Obama did is try to guarantee coverage for all citizens and require everyone who can afford it to buy insurance (from private companies) with the others receiving government help to pay for that private insurance. Nationalizing? Does McConnell understand what nationalizing means? If he does, he assumes those who follow him (there must be somebody as he's Minority Leader in the Senate) do not.

Second-- the auto industry got loans which they are ready to pay back or already have. It saved those jobs and kept a vital industry manufacturing. Do Republicans really want all those jobs shipped overseas? It would seem they do. Do they understand security on a loan? Maybe not.

Mostly, do they assume their followers don't know anything? Scratch that question. The answer is obvious.

Now as for NET NEUTRALITY-- is it really in our best interests to have corporations take over the Internet by making pay sites come in fast and slowing down those that don't pay to the point that having a high speed computer would do one no good. I am no expert on this but as it stands, we already can choose to pay for faster speeds and pay more (we do that) but isn't this about the programs we can access as much as our server?

While it is about limiting freedom-- the freedom of corporations and advertising to control the effectiveness of the Internet through speed-- isn't it also about keeping access open to many different kinds of things. Oh you'd be able to get all that you do now... if you don't mind slow as molasses.

How does the user gain when what comes in extra fast is from ATT, Verizon or Comcast and those who paid extra money? We pay and should for internet coverage through our servers and sometimes through special programs we decide to add. From what I can understand (and it's not easy to understand) this would be something new that would slow down some of what we got even through a server we had paid to get.

It's difficult enough right now that when I want to do a search on Google, I get the corporate interests first, even if they barely relate to my search. This isn't enough for the powerful. So the Republican fear once again is that the government would block rich people from controlling our country.

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Wild talk by McConnell wasn't the only sign of mental derangement from old guard Republicans. Have you read the latest spiels from McCain and Graham over the Start Treaty and DADT? Listening to them for awhile makes it sound like sanity is a rare quality in right wing leaders. And perspective? What is that?! David Corn does a good job analyzing their perspectives.

John McCain and Lindsey Graham the mean girls of the US Senate

How do these guys live with themselves? Graham hasn't had long enough to read the treaty? It's only been there since April. Both of them won't vote for it because of DADT being passed? How do the two relate exactly? And these guys represent the patriotic branch of their party?

To even suggest McCain isn't patriotic is to be instantly reminded ad nauseum of his time as a POW and his years of a handicap due to torture. For how long does that mean people must ignore what this guy's personality is like today? Does that give him a free pass on patriotism for the rest of his life? All I have to do is remember how he gave us Palin and I think his patriotism today is a farce. For John McCain, it's all about John McCain. He's a spoiled old man with no clue about the real world due to his wealthy wife and years in a cloistered environment known as the Senate.

That wasn't all the nuttiness... There was the whining over not a long enough Christmas break for the Congress, not having it be a full two weeks. How on earth can you get to Fiji for a fact finding mission if you don't have two weeks to do it? Sacrilege, I tell you, sacrilege to these Christian... senators.

Harry Reid gave them a little perspective on that one about what Christmas break means for most Americans (hint: if they are even allowed to take two weeks off it's either out of their vacation time or they aren't paid).

Here's some more perspective on the Christmas holiday that goes back a bit farther than the one these guys created for themselves.

Is the Senate disrespecting Christmas

Perspective is something that is in short supply with these old time Republican leaders. We'll see how this goes when the new guys come in to join the party...

DADT Repeal

Wow, now this is some good Christmas news for us all-- Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal. It is like an early Christmas present. It's not all that is required to recognize the civil rights for all citizens but it's a big start. It's also about using commonsense and not religious bigotry to make policy.

Maybe Obama will yet redeem himself in the eyes of progressives and the left. The next year will tell a lot about that but this is a good start. :)

caretaker or destroyer

Years ago,, I came to believe the best way to divide people into groups was -- caretakers or destroyers. It isn't about religion. It's not about political parties. It's not about pretty or exciting speeches. It's not about what someone looks like. It's what does that person really want to do for and to other people. You see the two types in all races, ethnic groups, sexes, cultures, ages, religions, etc etc.

The hard part of this is understanding what a caretaker is. I think we all pretty well get it where it comes to destroyers; but a caretaker isn't an enabler. Enablers do what they do to keep their own power. A caretaker looks to the long range, has plans for what would really help, calls it for what it is, and is willing to pay the price for doing so.

Naturally with this concept in my own head, I liked this article: John Avlon on a new group called-- No Labels

He and Mark McKinnon, one of his co-founders, have infuriated Rush Limbaugh with this idea and equally earned Keith Olbermann's world's worst award. This sounds promising if you can irk two extreme partisans at the same time. I admit that isn't exactly a peace loving satisfaction for sure (caretakers wouldn't be after peace at any price) but this new group is definitely on the right path with the understanding that independents don't fit labels. You can be a social liberal and a conservative fiscal. You can think for yourself and support one party on one issue and another on something else.

Now I don't have any hope for how the Republicans currently in power, and those coming into the majority in January, will govern given what they say. If Boehner's first goal is to get through school vouchers, which will decimate the funding for public schools, while doing nothing to fix them, it's pretty easy to see how it's going to go; but Boehner isn't all Republicans.

If we can stop defending our guys no matter what they do and figure out our own core principles, then defend those who stand for them, work for them ourselves, that's a good start-- and No Labels would be part of that! It's not what we call ourselves. It's what we do that counts.

The tax bill...

Another great article from Matt Taibi:

Bernie Sanders puts Barack Obama to Shame

For those who will find an excuse for Obama no matter what he does, let me say this sounds a lot like those who did the same for GW Bush. We get the government we deserve-- unfortunately.

Reconciliation

I have a question for anybody who reads this blog and understands more about the political scene than I do. Why can't the Democrats use Reconciliation to pass the limited tax measure that keeps the tax rate what it is on income up to $250,000 and raises it to the level it was under Clinton for those in the upper income tax brackets? That is how this unfunded tax measure was passed to begin-- why not use it now?

Robert Reich gave his opinion on the measure and you can find it in his blog bookmarked alongside here. I am sure most already read Krugman's take. Those who favor it, like AARP, have other motives like their own profits or Clinton's desire to back a Democratic president. I haven't changed my mind that it's a mistake and would be better to let it all collapse than do this. I do not think it will permanently help anything and it will add to a deficit that is already out of control. The Democrats have the majority for now and come January they won't be able to do anything. They are acting like the Republicans already have control.

Social Security

For those who don't quite understand what Obama's tax holiday for Social Security taxes means, here's as cogent an explanation as I have found of the immediate and looking toward the long range.

Social Security and the future

I am not among those who trusts anybody absolutely. I try to look at what they do and the motives behind it. I can see what Obama is claiming he is trying to do-- immediate stimulus to income earners who pay Social Security's full tax rate. You can see in the article what that might mean to them if it passes.

But what will it do to the Social Security pension system if even less money is in the funds to cover it? If they had also upped income levels for those who pay into it, this would have made sense. As it stands, it is an attack on Social Security albeit by the backdoor.

I understand that many feel this country has a huge immediate problem and who cares about the old. Many younger people feel they will never get it anyway. They feel that way because they see a government that constantly wheedles and manipulates without standing behind any of its promises.

Some have always wanted Social Security to be an option, to let those payroll taxes go to the stock market with the hopes that they will be safer there. Those some haven't paid a lot of attention to what has happened to the stock market and many investments recently.

There was a time when people had pensions but now they have two things either investment accounts or Social Security. The ones who think they may never get Social Security and rely totally on their investments or inheritances may want to look at the lack of real regulation on the financial sector, the many banks still at risk of failing and finally a government going deeper and deeper into debt. The government borrows from other countries but also that retirement trust fund for Social Security. Will they really repay it? Can they? And now they are increasing the deficit of it also. For the short term gain of workers getting more money immediately and maybe spending it as a hoped stimulus.

So it was a trade off between the young and the old with the old being the ones of no economic value to the system, I guess. I mean who cares if the elderly can spend money? And I am NOT saying this means an immediate cut in Social Security checks. This is about where this heads and what it means to a system that supposedly (according to Bowles-Simpson report-- Obama's own deficit committee) is already heading to big trouble and a need for reduced benefits and means testing.

Don't forget, this isn't just about the elderly but also children who lost a parent and the disabled. Social Security has been a statement to our culture about valuing the elderly who worked all their lives and no longer can physically do it. It is about one generation covering those needs for another with the knowledge someday it'll be their turn. It is about families who lost the main breadwinner and it's about an insurance system for those who through no fault of their own became disabled. Is that all to be past tense?

I suspect the Democrats will roll over on this one too as the Republicans did so many times to stay loyal to Bush. For some, their leader is who they must follow. That's too bad as it'd be better if we looked at the facts of what was happening and voted our consciences... Not likely in this partisan culture.

A Trojan Horse

I didn't plan to write here for awhile as I have been writing something I find far more rewarding in the other blog with a series about science and religion. BUT I cannot stand this. I absolutely cannot stand it and have to rant somewhere. I can feel my blood pressure going up by the moment.

Obama, to me, is like a Trojan Horse. Yes, I admitted it! We elected him, those of us who did, because he promised certain things and we believed him. He came with pretty words and nice wrapping paper. We wanted things like health care for all-- what we got was a Trojan Horse which appears about to destroy what is left of our country.

Health care for all became a requirement everybody has to buy private insurance at whatever price they dictate with enough loopholes put into it to guarantee they can raise it whenever they want. Financial regulation allowed the CEOs of these corporations that got us into this mess to profit once again with loopholes. That regulation was a joke leaving alone things like derivatives which led to a lot of our original problems. They have not reinstated Glass-Steagall which might've prevented what happened. The Wall Streeters are ready to pluck the goose again and it looks like Obama doesn't give a damn. This could take out whatever is left of the rest of our investments while they once again rake it in and where is Obama on this... AWOL or worse.

Democrats wanted Guantanamo gone with a prison system for those who have committed real crimes where the rest of the country can see that it is being done-- in other words with real trials and oversight. We wanted no more torture (he just ships them elsewhere for that), no more rendition (see above), more attention to citizen rights and we end up with more spying, more invasion of our space, and continuing two wars to prop up corrupt dictators. We have given up so much and what exactly did we get for it? Certainly not a country with less fear of serious illness wiping out a family's whole life.

What is causing my rise in blood pressure today though is the last straw. He is not only evidently going along with the extension of tax cuts that requires borrowing from the Chinese and the Arab nations, that puts us deeper in debt, but he's piling more onto it when he suggests cutting the payroll tax on SS supposedly for a year when Social Security is already in financial shortfall.

Obama began a fiscal panel where it was to look at ways to cut the cost of government and make our system balance out. One of their big suggestions was means testing for Social Security benefits which means if you saved any money during your working years, you will get reduced or no benefits until that's gone down to whatever level they decide based on their definition of sufficient means, I guess. Basically it's turning Social Security then into another welfare program... at the best if it doesn't get destroyed totally by the Republicans putting it into the stock market (see above about regulations there-- not).

I know my blood pressure is going up but the only hope now is Democrats find backbone and vote him down on these tax cut proposals. Who cares if he looks bad. Vote him down and let all the tax cuts expire. Call the bluff of the Republicans because it is better than the alternative. Then we can wait out the two years left where we have to bear with this man in the White House with the foolish hope that the Republicans will nominate someone competent to run against him next time. Who might that be... One name does keep coming up.

For you lovers of the Sarah Palin, who think she is the real deal for being a hunter-- what kind of responsible hunter goes out with a gun they haven't tested on a firing range? Does it seem reasonable to you to use a gun with less velocity to protect yourself from the kick and not worry about having enough fire power to kill the animal mercifully? Especially if you haven't spent time with that gun to be sure you can hit with deadly accuracy? What kind of person does that and in front of a TV camera to boot? I would suggest at the least a borderline sociopath...

If you don't know what happened, check out a synopsis on Immoral Minority (Palin's least favorite site). Sure it's not a site without bias. I suggest you try to find such a thing in our divided world.

I don't watch her show for obvious reasons (only partly because I watch absolutely none of the so-called reality TV which I find to be abominations and part of the dumbing down of America); but I have been reading about her show. This one has to show people she's a fraud... if they have a brain in their own heads. Am I a dreamer?

Won't the fact that Caribou Barbie has shown herself to be a fraud about hunting lessen her chances of being selected as the Republican candidate or even give her any voice in who does get selected? Am I kidding myself about Republican voters after Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle?

Here comes Santa Claus... Here comes Santa Claus...

I got distracted on Palin, who is more a joke if it wasn't for how seriously some take her, but might I suggest that anybody, who thinks as I do about this tax bill monstrosity, write and call their Democratic representatives and Senators and tell them if they vote for it, we'll never vote for them again. Somebody needs to put a foot down and say it's time we grew up. No tax cuts are better than this!