Get Thee Behind Me Billionaire

The very idea that one group or one man with a lot of money can bring elected officials of any party scurrying anywhere to kiss ass and placate is utterly offensive.  Sheldon Adelson has two major policy issues that he wants addressed and protected.  First, online gambling which could become one of his major competitors is to be abolished.  So much for the sacred cow of the Capitalist the bloody Free Market.  Second, by his lights anyone who does not support Israel in all she does and all she says is not fit to be president for billions of reasons, all of them his.  In other words, the needs, will and best interests of the American people are subordinate to the needs, will and best interests of the Israeli people.  I say this because no two countries enjoy complete and perpetual symbiosis.  Such an assertion is idiotic on its face.

It doesn't get any clearer.  These politicians, these acolytes worshiping prostrate at the feet of Mr. Adelson are on the take pure and simple.  They can be bought by anybody with the prices of a political hand job and a promise of unlimited campaign funds in the next presidential elections. 

Of course this kind of politician is like a baby bird - everyday is the first day of the world.  They have no history.  Thus, they have forgotten that Adelson and other bloated billionaires pissed hundreds of millions of dollars down the toilet in '12.  The American people turning out to vote will trump the money of a thousand billionaires.  Let us vote in November and put Adelson and his ilk back their box.

Republican Governors Vie for Adelson Support

Something Very Dangerous

When did Christianity become the fourth branch of our government?  When did it become okay to accuse others of persecution when they don’t accept the tenets of the Christian faith as the law and moral conscious of this land?  Who gave our elected public servants, not to mention what is laughingly referred to as our free press, the right to discredit and disregard through fear and self promotion all other spiritual paths and those of us who hold them dear and follow them closely?  Something very dangerous this way comes.  Something that if not opposed will lead to genuine persecution as it always has.

Religion or No Religion That is the Question

When truth cannot be told before the United States Supreme Court all is lost for justice and American jurisprudence.  The thesis propagated by the Religious Right that contraception is abortion is nonsense.  The IUD limits the motility of sperm.  Failing that, it inflames the uterine wall so that implantation isn’t possible. Hormonal birth control pills prevent ovulation, failing that they alter the composition of the uterine wall so that implantation isn’t possible.  The Plan B drugs, or morning after pills, prevent fertilization from occurring and are contraceptive not abortive.  RU486 is the abortion pill and works very differently than any of the above.  It is also not covered by the ACA (Affordable Care Act) and never was intended to be covered.   This is the science as near as I can ascertain it from The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  I prefer to accept them as my authority rather than the Southern Baptist Church or a for profit organization that seems to me to want to undermine the ACA and promote insurance on the cheap.  That Donald B. Verrilli Jr., our Solicitor General, did not assert the science before the Supremes, but instead accepted on a good faith basis that Hobby Lobby truly believes that contraception is abortion is stunning.  We continue in this country to allow the knowledge and proven wisdom of the scientific community to be supplanted by the ideology and theology of the various politico-religious sects. 

Do I question the commitment of Hobby Lobby to their faith?  You’re damn right I do.  I reserve the right to question the faith of any organization that presumes to insinuate itself into the private lives of its female employees.  You had better be an impeccable Christian, living in the sure, certain and empirically provable knowledge of the rightness of your theology before you presume to worm your way into the legislative process in this country or set yourself up to judge and dispense a woman’s right to control her own reproductive functions on the basis of some bloody book of questionable historic merit and dubious authorship.   

It is a failing of the Democrats and this administration to be trapped in the political correctness that the Left accepted so long.  Thus, too few ever challenge these religious zealots on the application of their faith.  For instance, what do they plan to do about all the pregnant women who could possibly be in their employee, given that it is far more expensive to cover a pregnancy then it is to cover contraception?  Will Hobby Lobby pay their insurance, their maternity leave and keep their jobs open; or will this Christian corporation follow the lead of so many other corporations and discharge them, slithering out from under COBRA and leaving them with no income or insurance?  In other words, will Hobby Lobby follow the God of the Christians or the God of the Free Market when embryo comes to baby?

No one ever asks these questions, and no one ever will.  Certainly not on the Right leaning end of the Court ridden hard and put away wet by the likes of Chief Justice Roberts.  It will be interesting to see if Scalia that monstrous mountain of moralizing muck who once denied the Native American people the right to use peyote as an expression of religious freedom, extends to Hobby Lobby the right to sacrifice the reproductive rights of women in the name of theirs.  Finally, it will be doubly interesting to see if the United States Supreme Court confirms its utter uselessness, even dangerousness, to the American people and our Republic that it so unabashedly displayed in Citizens United.

Fighting the Good Fight

Justice is bound and determined to prove racial discrimination in new voter registration laws.  They are right of course, and that is the tip of the iceberg.  Women, the elderly, the disabled and students are all on the hit list – anyone who might be inclined to vote Democratic in fact.

I think there are two reasons for all of this.  First, the Right is working overtime to establish the illegitimacy of Mr. Obama's elections.  They couldn't beat him, so it is their hope to insinuate and cement a shadow of doubt about his right to be president.  Thus, they all stand like a choir, bellyaching in multipart harmony about voter fraud that does not exist.

Secondly, the Republican Party has gashed both of its wrists by allowing fanatics and extremists - first the Religious Right and then the Tea Party - to gain control of its primaries, state houses and governor's mansions.  They are hemorrhaging credibility and fear that they cannot stand as a national party in a fair election process.  Some of them are even admitting it now.  They are also right. 

The GOP relies on gerrymandered districts, and believes that they are hedging their bets by preventing those who don't share their ideology from getting to the polls unfettered.  This absolute belief, shared by the media, that gerrymandered districts are carved in stone flies in the face of changing demographics and the fact that pissed off women undoubtedly live in those districts. It is a fact that no one can accuse either the Republicans or the squawking heads on the radio or TV of having an overly firm grasp on reality.

The subtle effect of all these Republican machinations and the media’s insistence upon believing that what is today, will be tomorrow and always is to depress the impulse for Democrats and disenfranchised Independents to vote at all.  We have to actively work against this in writing and by word of mouth.  We must repeatedly remind people that the only way these lunatics can win is if we sit out the race.  

DOJ plans expansion of voting rights enforcement

Cycle of Disrespect

President Obama’s approval rating is 41% today.  The myopic, misguided and manipulated media seems to think that every day is the same day.  Therefore, the president’s approval rating, the composition and group think of gerrymandered districts, the influence of the Tea Party and big money on the American psyche can never change. They are written in stone and were handed down to Moses with the tablets.  Thus, the twelve year olds on The Cycle (MSNBC) just pronounced the GOP the likely winner in November to spite pissing off every group in the country save rich WASPS.  Accordingly it is a given that because people have for the moment fallen out of love with President Obama, the Democrats stand well within the arc of defeat.

It is unlikely in my estimation that the influence of outraged women, people of color, the LGBT community, the elderly and veterans will dissipate like a bad odor in the open air simply because Mr. Obama’s approval rating is 41% today.  Still in a nation that has accepted the perverse idea that brat knows best and that the younger the lip the more important the mouth, I suppose it is not unreasonable to see a group of children who play experts on T.V. attempting to shove this garbage down the nation’s throat.  The arrogance, the mendacity, the raw absurdity that is required to discount a goodly number of Americans who feel, and rightly, dangerous aggrieved is an assault on the intellect.  It is worth noting at this point that the president may owe his low approval rating in part to the persistent and consistent regurgitation of Rightwing distortions, propaganda and outright lies by so-called journalists on all three cable networks.  

Most of us have no doubt that with only a few exceptions we are held in something reminiscent of contempt by our government.  We are inconvenient, revenue draining, lazy and stupid creatures that need only show our faces on tax day and Election Day - the latter becoming more and more restricted.  However, we should not, indeed must not accept this level of disrespect from the media.  Most of you know that I have little use for the open sewer that was once the Fourth Estate.  To the extent that it has become corporatized it has become irrelevant, immaterial and at its worst threatening to the people it was designed to serve.  I think that we should use blogs, Twitter, social networking and word of mouth to call crap, crap.  To my way of thinking today on The Cycle they produced enough crap to fertilize the Sinai Peninsula.  

What Intelligence?

So, many of the people on the Senate Intelligence Committee who indicted Snowden as a traitor for telling the American people that the NSA was spying on us, are now screaming foul because the CIA might be spying on them.  After decades of helping various executive branches feed this two-headed intelligence Hydra they are now SHOCKED that it has bitten them in the ass.  These idiots lead the world in shock.  However, not on behalf of the people who put them in office apparently. 

Bridget Kelly and William Stepien, the two Chris Christie apparatchiks were in court this morning. Farcically their learned lawyers were asserting their Fifth Amendment right against self in crimination as an excuse not to surrender emails created during Bridgegate to a legislative committee investigating the damned mess allegedly stemming from some kind of warped political retribution.  The court is actually considering their claim.  I wonder if the court will consider the fact that these emails were created on the people of New Jersey’s computers, on their time and on their dollar. The upshot of which was to delay, inconvenience and potently endanger the people of New Jersey.

Does anyone else have a problem with this crap?  Does anyone else wonder when our public servants became dangerous public nuisances?  Does anyone else wonder when our elected officials stopped governing and started ruling undercover of cloak and dagger, national security and all too flagrant self interest? 

As Bridget Kelly strolled past the cameras this morning looking like nothing so much as the haggard and discarded concubine of a minor potentate, I had to wonder who the hell puts people like this sour-face caricature in a position of power.  Why didn’t the New Jersey electorate know about the bridge closure, the influence of Kelly and Stepien and the many other questionable practices of Chris Christie before his reelection?  Is anybody looking out for our interests?  Clearly, we are not being given enough timely information to look out for them ourselves.

Come to that, why is spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee so much worse than spying on the American people?  After eight-years with the Bush Administration lying, obfuscating, dissembling and prevaricating without being made to answer a single question as to their motives or methods, how intelligent can these overpaid, blustering buffoons be?  More likely evidence of the slavishness with which both parties, not to mention the media, followed a dimwitted president and his narcissistic vice president into the hell of ten years of war, torture, rendition and international criminal behavior is at risk.  Begs the question: what infamy and treachery against the people of these United States are they covering up now?

Karma is a Bitch

The definition of Karma simply stated is, what goes around comes around or what you put out in the world comes home to bite you in the ass sooner or later.  Pagans believe that the return flight carries three times the wallop on impact.

Anyone who doesn't believe in Karma might want to take a look at the modern day Republican Party.  In 2009 they invested their time, energy and hope in something called the Tea Party.  The object was to use these people to defeat the Affordable Care Act.  Were they worried about the American people losing access to a high standard of care?  No.  Were they worried about the American people losing their jobs?  No. They were worried about the impact the ACA would have on their mega buck donors from big insurance.

In the end the ACA became the law of the land without compromising care as we know it, jobs or the position of insurance companies in the health care delivery industry.  However, the Tea Party has persistently eroded the Republican brand, wrenching control of the primary process out of the hands of the establishment and handing it over to a loud, vicious band of marauding extremists who wish to destroy the very institution that gives the Republican Party or any other political party a reason to exist – government.

Currently it is necessary for anyone who wishes to survive in GOP politics beyond the primary season to sound as crazy and destructive as the Tea Party itself.  Thus, we have Grandpa Get-It-Up McCain and the Viagra Boys Band, lead singer Lindsey Graham, smearing President Obama at every opportunity.  Their comments get more and more outrageous as the days leading up to primary season fade into yesterdays.  I am sure most of them realize that if the nut-jobs stand for general election, in many cases, the seat goes to the Democrats.  The persistent chants, Benghazi, Benghazi, IRS, IRS, he’s weak, he’s weak ring through the Beltway and the media at large with the desperation of people who know that what they are saying is wrong, has been disproven and in time of war may even be treasonous. Certainly they would have asserted treason if Bush were still in office.  Indeed they did, if memory serves, for anyone who dared opposed the war in Iraqi.

The media’s failure here is that they never counter the Rightwing mantras with solid facts.  To wit; a month or so before Benghazi the Republican House cut millions in funding from State’s budget which was destined in part for defense of our missions.  The constant carping on the IRS investigations of Right leaning organizations overlooks the fact that they investigated as many if not more Left leaning groups.  The charge that Obama is weak is particularly egregious in that the GOP had no such problem with Bush’s handling of Putin moving into Georgia in 2008.  Many of the Right’s suggestions for Obama today – pulling out of the G8, sanctioning of high level Russian officials, etc. – are already under consideration by the Administration.

Without question the party of Lincoln, what is left of it is trapped by its own stupidly, greed and corruption which led to acceptance of the Tea Party in the first place.  It is an appalling thing to see elected officials ripping and tearing at someone wholly unrelated to their problems just to avoid solving those problems.  The Republican establishment’s dilemma is the Tea Party and attaching Obama won’t solve that dilemma it just exacerbates the destruction of the brand.  For the same reason that infection in one person can’t be cleared by giving someone else an antibiotic – this will only exacerbate the infection into sepsis.

Another Issue

President Obama has given the Republicans something to chew on with his new budget.  More importantly, he has given the Democrats something to run on.  It is worth investigating this document and spreading the information around via Facebook, Blogs, etc.  It seems to me that the line is clearly drawn.  Do you support the workers and the Middle Class, the creation of jobs through repairing our crumbling infrastructure and closing tax loopholes for the big rich; or do you prefer the status quo that promotes income inequality and the socioeconomic exploitation of the vast majority of the American people?  In addition to promoting voting rights by helping people get registered to vote in whatever way we can, disseminating information about the rights of rapists to apply for custody and visitation rights when their criminal behavior results in pregnancy, we now have a new fulcrum with which to turn voters toward the defense of their own economic interests. 

The last resort of the Republican Party is to hide behind cultural issue.  God, guns and gays - as Obama once put it - will blind some people to what is being done to them by an army of shabby souls, two-for-a-nickel-Elmer Gantries thumping the Bible with one hand, peddling influence with the other and more than happy to have their heads up corporate America’s ass to such an extent that they are talking through someone else’s vocal chords.   Those myopic voters need to be written off as lost in the wilderness.  That should not stop us from soliciting the ear of those who teeter on the verge of consciousness.

Obama's Budget Sets Up Election-Year Debate with Republicans

You Have Got to be Kidding

It may come as a surprise to some women in this country, however, in 31 states rapists are able to sue for custody and visitation rights when their victim carries the child of their assault to term.  It seems that in many cases this is not a matter of "father's" rights being legislated so much as it is a matter of there being no law against a rapist insinuating himself into the lives of his victim and offspring in perpetuity.  

What women choose to do about a pregnancy that stems from rape is an absolutely individual and personal decision that no one, least of all the bloody state, should have a right to comment on. When she decides to keep the child there should be no question of her assailant having the right to use the courts to violate her again. 

Many legislators, cowards that they are, seem to have determined that it is best to leave this issue in the hands of the judicial branch. Nonetheless, ideological bias, religious intolerance and frightful misogyny are not unknown to the bench.  Therefore, it is imperative that state governments take a clear stand on the side of the victim and her child, refusing to allow a violent offender to force his way into another area of her life. 

What follows is a link that will give you an idea of where your state and others stand in this matter.

31 States Allow Rapist to Sue for Custody and Visitation Rights

Going Down the Rabbit Hole

In the theory of American Jurisprudence there is a concept that holds the U.S. to be a nation of laws not men.  Other than being toxic on its face, two things are wrong with this.  First, the law in this country is the oldest whore on the block.  Second, some legislators would seem to have taken the exclusion of women literally.  

Question: how do you subvert a people to the status of serf in service to a small, ruling plutocracy?  Answer: you empower a disempowering religious interpretation with the force of law, claiming that it has always been that way; then you force people to have more children then they can feed.  Women in this country post feminist awakening and Roe v. Wade must first be stripped of their dignity in order to force them back into a box.  Thus, they are either crime scenes or incubators for the children of violent criminals.

The result of all of this is a population that will serve silently and for  nothing because they see no way out.  This is known in some circles as the long con.

The article that follows should be a matter of concern for all Americans, female and male.  Read it, share it and remember it all the way to the polls.  Any Republican who does not denounce this colludes in it and should be held accountable in November.

31 States Allow Rapist to Sue for Custody and Visitation Rights