What’s more appalling — the clown-college contest for the GOP pestilential nomination or the U.S. House of Representatives, which represents … what, exactly? What the authors of the Constitution intended to be “the popular branch of the national government, directly responsible to the people*,” today seems directly responsible to no one, not even its own speaker.
Punkinhead Boehner keeps striving for street cred’ by saying his old man used to run a bar. I’d like to see him try to run one. He’s certainly incapable of running the House. A freshman Tea Bagger with his snoot up a Koch brother’s tailpipe shouts “Shit!” and the speaker instantly replies, “What color, sir?”
This guy? Speaker of the fuckin’ House? He couldn’t carry Tip O’Neill’s jock. Hell, he couldn’t even pick it up.
* “American Government: Theory, Structure and Process,” by Dye, Greene and Parthemos.
Mad Blog Media 
Patrick, you just keep making me happier we’re not in the US of A at present. The Repuglicans were in Sioux City recently holding one of their “clown college” sessions…I can’t even imagine how awful it was to have the place more full than usual of right-wing non-thinkers. Whatever makes the pages of the International Herald Tribune is pretty much all we’re forced to know about the current level of stupidity in American politics. That’s fine by me.
The old saying “you only get what you deserve” sure holds true these days. The morons that lemminged up to elect the Teabaggers are going to find very hard rocky ground at the bottom of the cliff that they have marched off of. I have a feeling that this current crop will have the most one termers ever. They have set the Reps up for a massacre the next election cycle. They have met the enemy and it is them!
I believe they will be re-elected because they will blame Obama and the Dems and insist that all will be okay if only the Republican candidate is elected president. Those who voted for them will have lost too much ground to not back them in a typical paradox of human nature.
I’m less optimistic about a House-cleaning than you, Boz. As Larry’s wife likes to say…and what that means is a lot of people are voting with their hearts and not their minds, swallowing the propaganda fed them via the Koch Brothers’ billions of dollars and spooned out by FAUX News, Rush Windbag, et al.
I don’t think the worst has hit yet. That’s scary. I used to opine that the Twin Towers were our Reichstag burning, leading to the PATRIOT Act, indefinite detention sans Habeus Corpus, and a host of other insults to the Founders such as Barry sitting at a computer with a joystick and croaking bona fide U.S. citizens stupid enough to go off and fight for Al Fido. But that won’t be rock bottom. Probably the economy tanking in Great Depression II will lead to rock bottom, i.e., even worse excesses of government here in the States. I don’t predict elections as we know them in a decade or so. Hope I am fulla shit, as usual.
Ever the optimist, eh?
Every time I think the GOP can’t get any dumber, or more dysfunctional, they go out of their way to prove me wrong.
Gents, it all makes me want to screech like a banshee. As I recall from college poli-sci classes, the Founding Fathers intended to make legislating difficult, not impossible.
But what’s possible when one side insists on negotiating in bad faith? Anyone who watched the Daffy-Fudd debacle knows damn’ well that Repuglicans never gave a runny shit about the deficit, or actually paying for anything, in particular their tax cuts for the rich and a couple of wars the nation could’ve done without. They flat-out said as much.
And now they want to paint themselves as proud fiscal conservatives, guardians of the national bank balance, protector of our grandchildren? Puh-leeze.
I’ve never been happier that we don’t have grandkids, or kids, for that matter.
I too am glad we didn’t have kids. It would be a rude joke to tell them what they are probably in for.
Oh, yes: Because you know what it is …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fRJ0T-y-pw
Christ on a Crutch. I remember seeing that in Honolulu. We had to fight our way past a bunch of Catholics and fellow born-agains who were picketing the theatre, with me offering my insights on the quality of their genetic material.
Just sad. Khal is, unfortunately, right. The ‘Larry’s Wife’s Rule’ will mean most of the idiots put in the House by idiots will get returned because they’ve held true to the idiot’s view of the world.
Normally yelling at the radio is not a behavior I indulge in, but NPR had some California Rep House chairman (Rules) who explained “that in school as kids we all learned that when that a bill passed in one chamber goes to conference…” Yes, but if the Repugs were so for this what the hell is the problem with a 2 month extension of the current or even the Senate compromise to carry us over the conference period?
Nothing like having road rage on an empty road, parked in front of my house.
Maybe some of the teabaggers will not be returned in the next round, but even if control of the House shifts the party of relative rationality the GOP will just double down on the misrepresentation and outright lies that keep their idiots motivated to do stupid things like vote.
My state house rep is running for state senator. Rational, progressive guy. I’m getting off my butt to work for him. Maybe it will lead to one more rational player at the national level in a few years. Can’t afford to buy one off the shelf like the Koch bros. Have to grow my own.
Ben’s onto something here. Identify good candidates and work for them. It’s a bitch, especially in places like Bibleburg, where the knuckle-draggers still hold sway, but getting down in the trenches is really the only way.
That said, I’ve been involved peripherally in a couple of campaigns and it nearly always makes me insane. It’s very much like working retail — as Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” — and I couldn’t sell smack to junkies. Agitprop is my métier. Light ’em up and piss ’em out.
Even in a nominally sane and intelligent place like BombTown, politics, whether local or national, can drive a sane person to look for the nearest tall building to jump from. But truer words were never spoken: Getting down in the trenches is the only way out. Of course, when down in the trenches, you get pretty dirty. Kinda like that old joke about wrestling with a pig. That’s the price of admission. I think I’ll have to get off my lazy, cynical ass in 2012 and work this one.
Maybe I’m past the cynic stage, but I think about all the folks who busted their butts to get Obama in the White House. When he authorizes the murder of a US citizen or throws one in the can with no trial what do they think? All that work just to have the guy (or gal) turn out to be marginally better than the other scumbag seems like a huge waste of time to me. It seems no matter how honest or nice they are, once they get their hands on the levers of power, they’re no longer that person. The USA has the greatest gap between rich and poor of any developed nation. How can anything change with the rich folks holding all the cards in the deck? Maybe a huge OCCUPY nationwide general strike would get DeeCee’s attention? But for how long? Long enough to change anything? In the past we started (or joined) big wars to get our economic engine cranked up again – but W started two of them for us and the economy has only gotten worse…what do we do next? I’m really not looking forward to going back “home” at the end of next summer.
The general public is barely literate and we hit the 40% mark in participation in off-year elections. Recipe for disaster because our elected officials do in fact represent us. Or, at least, they do to the extent that you have to have a screw loose to run for office in the first place, so we’re talking best looking horse at the glue factory, on a good day.
Except that they don’t really represent US as in everyone in their district, state, etc. They represent the folks who pony up the cash to get ’em re-elected, they don’t pay much (if any) attention to the others. Case in point for me: Steve King does NOT represent anyone not in the rabid, right-wing demographic in his district, he ignores me completely, when I try to voice an opinion I’m cut off as soon as he knows it’s not what he wants to hear. Tom Harkin pays attention to me, the guy even remembered my name when we were introduced at a political event. WHY? I support Harkin financially while I support ANYONE with a pulse who’ll run against King. Neither one of these guys is so great, they just represent the folks who finance their campaigns. Money buys influence, pure and simple – and THAT’s what’s wrong (and getting wrong’er every day) with our so-called democracy. It’s been around so long that the system has been gamed to the point it no longer works as intended by the guys who thought it up. How and with what do we replace it, is the interesting question…right now the idea that it’s terrible, but better than the other systems is questionable in my mind.
I don’t think these scumbags represent us–at least the 99%, which I assume includes all of us here (we are not part of Los Alamos’ famed millionaire’s club–my acumen picking investments is only a tad better than the Italian Army’s ability to win battles in WW II). These candidates from the right market themselves, with the help of some very wealthy backers, to make Stupid People think they represent same. But the slicked up red tie folks on Capitol Hill don’t represent us. They represent their own interests and those of the backers. ts a bait and switch game at its finest.
The religious claptrap is window dressing to the real corporate back room shit. Religious restrictions would primarily hammer the poor and whats left of the middle class. Rich folks have always found a way around the rules.
We really need an OCCUPY movement for the 2012 House elections. Couple that with a few folks like Colin Powell taking back the Repug Party from these unrelenting carpetbaggers who take their oath to money, not nation..
Khal, do you really think if the left-wingers put a bunch of reverse-Tea Party types in DeeCee things would change much? Things would simply swing the other direction but with the same gridlock as a result. My long-time suggestion, while it could work, would never work – because the money-men won’t let it.. I say ban ALL types of political advertising and set up a board like the FTC or FCC to monitor things, tossing out of the contest anyone who cheats.Then put all the folks who want to run for office on public TV for debates, speeches, etc. All get equal time with the stuff running on a loop so at any time someone cared to watch they could tune in. This way it costs nothing to get your ideas out there and doesn’t matter if any big money-men do or don’t like you – short of having you killed there’s nothing they can do, for or against you. Only people who actually care would tune in to see these things while the great sea of morons can keep watching “Biggest Loser”. When it came time to actually vote those uninformed folks would likely not even show up, leaving the decision to those who cared enough to be informed. Until the money is taken out of the game, I can’t see how much will change, Obama’s pretty much proven it – again.
Larry, that would be an excellent system. Unfortunately, with the Supreme Court ruling that corporations are people, that’s not likely to be in the works. So I agree with you insofar as the left wingnuts would gridlock the right wingnuts. But not sure I have a better answer. Eventually, the adults have to return to the room. That is not likely as long as corporate cash buys elections.
In other news, I see the Colorado Supreme Court will hear the Black Hawk, CO bike ban case. Woo-hoo….
http://bicyclecolo.org/articles/black-hawk-bike-ban-pg1118.htm
They said right from the start that their mission was to take down Obama,
to hell with with the country.
Like I said, the Repugnants have no loyalty to country. Or to God, for that matter. Except the greenback god.
What I have a tough time understanding (assuming I don’t just take the wife’s three-word explanation) is how they money-men who control the Repuglican Party have been able to get so many people to do so much work and hand over so much money to help this party work against their own self-interest? Few of the Tea Party bozos are plutocrats, yet they willingly and actively do the bidding of the Koch Bros and their moneyed friends. I guess that three-word, universal phrase is the only thing that can explain it?
I wonder if these bozos are looking for bigshots to worship as heros. Someone who they can entrust their lives to since they are so powerless. Kinda like a secular religion.
I believe they are convinced that if they vote the way of the rich, they will become rich themselves. Or it just the final manifestaion of Nixion’s “southern strategy” from 1972. I work with a lot of working class union folks who routinely vote R becuase the Democrates are gonna “take away our guns and give money to blacks”.
Brian, are there enough racist gun nuts out there to support the Repuglicans to this extent? If so it’s pretty scary to think about. I laugh (instead of crying which would probably be more apt) thinking about the folks who work at Sprawl-Mart and live in a house trailer worrying about their tax money being handed out to unworthy folks while they vote for the plutocrats who take advantage of them at every turn. In the end my wife’s explanation is the only one that makes sense. The USA certainly seems to have reached its peak and is rapidly heading down, or more accurately, backwards.
Let’s not forget that the Democratic Party has a long history of racism in some parts. It was the Dixiecrats who walked out of the Dem convention in 1948 and nominated Strom Thurmond. Chicago was historically Democratic, but had no problem with virulent racism in the sixties.
Heather has it nailed.
There are where i live, Larry. The hate is thick, and it is just stupid hate because they dont know why they are hurting. Dont know who to blame. Certainly not themselves. That leaves hate radio. Blame t he black guy in the WHite HOuse. Very sad.
I know the hate radio deal, it’s pretty much poisoned my father who falls asleep to these radio hatemongers every night. I wondered where he was getting these screwball ideas and finally figured it out one time while visiting when I heard the “Rush Windbags” spewing their BS thick and fast. You just wonder if people will ever get un-stupid? How many thousands of years have we been on earth, supposedly learning and discovering more every day? Yet we’re destroying the environment, the economic systems, human rights, etc. all while the 1% laughs all the way to to their hedge-funds. Will the rubes ever figure it out? And when/if they do, what will they do about it? I still think the Occupy folks need to get a 1 day general strike going in the USA. If EVERYONE but the 1% were to take a day off…those 1%’rs might have to endure just a bit of hardship and begin to understand without the rest of us, all their riches won’t do them much good. Who will grow their food? Refine the dead dinosaurs to fuel their jets? Man the airport so their jet can fly? Supply their caviar? Things could get ugly for them if the rest of us were to stick together….but as you point out, hate radio will make sure the old “divide and conquer” mentality prevents any united action. Happy Holidays!
On that joyous note, happy holidays to all!