Tag Archives: Teapublicans

The GOP Clown Car Has Turned Into A Clown Caravan.

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With John Kasich’s recent announcement, there are now officially 16 – count ’em – 16 Teapublicans running for president. That’s certainly an impressive number. Now let’s talk about how many are actually qualified to be president.

Zero. None. Nada.

Certainly, some have led their respective states as governors. Others have been elected to Congress. Still others have been successful in business. Those credentials would certainly make them appear to be qualified. Yet their actual accomplishments – or lack of them – tell another story. For example, the leading clown is Donald Trump who inherited his wealth. After nearly gambling away his inheritance, he managed to rebuild his fortune through a combination of bullying tactics and his irrepressible loud mouth – neither of which are traits that would qualify him for public office. In fact, since declaring his intentions to run for office, he has already managed to offend US veterans, most of Mexico, and the majority of those not already eligible for mental health counseling.

Next in the polls is Scott Walker, the Koch-financed governor of Wisconsin who has led the gerrymandering of legislative districts, cut taxes for the wealthy, destroyed collective bargaining in Wisconsin and overseen the most sluggish economic recovery in the Midwest. A US economy based on Walker’s Wisconsin model would be disastrous.

Close behind, his clown shoe toes tripping on the heels of Walker’s, is Jeb Bush the man, who as governor of Florida, disenfranchised more than 10,000 eligible voters in order to hand the 2000 election to his brother. Do you really want to see yet another Bush in the White House? More to the point, do you really want to reward Jeb for subverting the democratic process?

Farther back in the clown caravan are Mike “Uncle Sugar” Huckabee who believes that we should let God run the country. Of course, that presumes that he has a direct connection to the supreme being. If that’s what you believe, why not just skip Huckabee and initiate a write-in campaign for Pope Francis or the Dali Lama? Certainly, they have more verifiable connections to higher beings.

Next, we have Marco Rubio who has long claimed to be a refugee of Castro’s Cuba, only the records show that his family left more than two years before the Cuban Revolution. In the polls, he’s followed by Tea Party favorite Dr. Ben Carson who has equated gay marriage to bestiality, Rand Paul, Ted “The Filibusterer” Cruz, Rick “Oops” Perry, Chris “Bridgegate” Christie, the aforementioned Kasich, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina and Lindsey “I’ve never seen a war I didn’t like” Graham who, despite pedaling as fast as they can, are going in circles.

Nothing could better illustrate the dismal state of the Republican Party than its presidential candidates. If this is the best the Party can offer, then the Party is on life-support. And if – gasp – one of them is actually elected, our nation will likely soon be in a similar state of despair.

Everything You Need To Know About Today’s GOP In One Button.

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In case anyone could confuse Teapublicans for reasonable people, it should be noted that the following button was offered for sale at the California GOP convention: “KFC Hillary Special – 2 Fat Thighs, 2 Small Breasts, Left Wing.”

Wow! Just wow!

This is from the party that claims to respect women all the while they try to invade their bodies, restrict their access to contraceptives and take away their access to health care. Imagine if Democrats put out a button that pondered whether or not Mitch McConnell can look past his gut to see his penis. Or a button that pondered the size of John Boehner’s testicles. Or a button that pondered whether Michele Bachmann’s brain is bigger than her mouth. Oh, wait, I think Michele has already answered that question.

But don’t get the idea that the GOP is merely offensive to women. They seem to delight in nasty attacks on all groups. They have created equally offensive materials against minorities, gays and anyone else who opposes their narrow-minded agenda. For example the same GOP convention that displayed the Hillary button offered buttons that read: “I still hate Commies even after they changed their name to Liberals.”

This is the sort of stuff that makes political compromise virtually impossible. You can’t seriously negotiate with someone who openly disrespects you. And those in today’s GOP have made it abundantly clear that they have absolutely no respect for anyone who opposes them. They compare gay marriage with bestiality and incest. They call the working poor “freeloaders.” They attack minorities who demand equality for “playing the race card.” They dismiss environmentalists as “tree huggers.” They call President Obama a “socialist Kenyan Muslim” and worse. They call scientific evidence a “hoax.” They even call public education “socialism.”

At the same time, they portray themselves  as the “real patriots.” They wrap themselves in the American flag and wave their pocket copies of the Constitution. And they threaten to “use their 2nd Amendment rights” to enforce their narrow-minded point of view.

Now imagine trying to negotiate important issues with these people. Do you really think Democrats and Progressives can have an adult conversation with them over the future of our nation? It would take a far better person than me.

Repealing Obamacare…Again.

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In case you haven’t heard by now, Teapublicans don’t like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Since taking control of the House in 2011, Teapublicans have voted to repeal Obamacare 37 times.

The latest vote came yesterday.

Of course, there is absolutely no chance that the law will actually be repealed. Not only do Democrats control the Senate, President Obama would be certain to veto any bill calling for the law’s repeal. The Teapublicans know this. So why do they continue to vote for repeal?

According to Speaker Boehner, it’s because the freshmen congressmen have not yet had a chance to vote for repeal. Without such a vote, how would they ever be able to face their conservative supporters back home? Failing to vote for repeal might result in them being labeled RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) and being “primaried” by some nitwits who are even more hateful toward Obama and his landmark legislation.

Meanwhile, the other issues these Teapublicans claimed to support during their campaigns for election have languished. There have been no bills to create jobs, to reform taxes, to rebuild infrastructure, or to replace sequestration with a real budget designed to cut the federal debt without forcing departments to make mindless across-the-board cuts. And they most certainly have not reached across the aisle!

But they have held more kangaroo court-style hearings on Benghazi and they’ve threatened to start a couple more wars.

The Austerity Fraud.

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For more than 30 years, conservatives have pushed for smaller government. Their battle cry is to “Starve the Beast,” the beast being our federal government. They have demanded more and more tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, and they finally got them under President George W. Bush. Yet, when the tax cuts led to large deficits, Richard “The Dick” Cheney and other conservatives famously stated that “deficits don’t matter.”

Of course, when President Obama took office, their attitude suddenly changed.

Despite having driven our economy off a cliff, conservatives demanded that the new administration cut spending in order to bring the deficit and debt under control. To prove their point that these were the biggest challenges facing our nation (bigger than rampant unemployment, the housing crisis, losses by pension funds and the depressed stock markets), conservatives cited a Harvard University study by Reinhart and Rogoff which stated that economies suffer whenever a nation’s debt surpasses 90 percent of GDP.

This study was cited over and over by conservative politicians and conservative media.

Unfortunately for conservatives, it was recently debunked by a graduate student who found numerous statistical and computational inaccuracies which completely altered the study’s conclusions. Turns out, there were numerous exceptions to the Reinhart-Rogoff rule.

As for the effects of austerity measures, one need only look to Europe to see what happens when concern over deficits and debt trump job creation. Following strict austerity measures in both Greece and Spain, unemployment among young people now exceeds 60 and 50 percent, respectively. Both countries are facing major upheaval as the unemployed have taken to the streets to riot. In England, France and Italy, the effects of austerity have been less dramatic. Nevertheless, austerity has pushed their economies back into recession.

Had President Obama followed the advice of conservatives, we, too, could be struggling through another deep recession. Despite conservative claims to the contrary, the economic stimulus worked. For the past 3 years, we have not only recovered the jobs lost as the result of the Bush recession. We have added 1.5 additional jobs, and we would have added many more if not for layoffs in the public sector forced by Republican-controlled state houses.

We might well be back on the road to full recovery had the Teapublicans not taken  control of the House in 2011.

Virtually every economist has stated that the budget restraints imposed by our Teapublican Congress have hampered our economic recovery. Indeed, a recent article in The New York Times states that deficit reduction has already cost our economy at least 2 percent growth and 1 percent employment. And the budget cuts forced by sequestration have yet to fully take hold!

But don’t look for conservatives to give up on austerity any time soon. Despite our fragile recovery, they’re still demanding severe cuts to federal programs. They have proposed cuts to “entitlements” such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They want to eliminate or severely reduce unemployment insurance, SNAP (food stamps), Pell grants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They even want to cut or eliminate the United States Postal Service!

During the last election, Teapublican candidates said they would target entire departments for elimination, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department, the Commerce Department and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. Some want to get rid of the Federal Reserve and return to the gold standard.

Given a limited (and false) understanding of history and our Constitution, today’s conservatives believe that the only constitutionally-allowed functions of the federal government are defense, homeland security, border security and highway construction. For everything else, you’re on your own.

It’s easy to see what these policies would do to our nation. Just look at Somalia.

All The Way To Crazytown, AKA Benghazi.

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According to Teapublicans, it’s the “scandal” that’s “worse than Watergate.” Except for voting to repeal Obamacare 37 times, nothing has taken up more of their time since they took back the House in 2010. Not job creation. Not national security. Not terrorism. Not even tax reform.

For Teapublicans, this is the event that keeps on giving. At least, that’s their hope.

As mentioned before, they’re determined to find something that will expose both President Obama and former Secretary of State in a cover-up. They won’t. But that doesn’t matter to Rep. Issa and his pals. After all, they’ve already had numerous hearings, including testimony from Clinton. They also have a report from an independent investigation. None of those have shown any indications of malfeasance or a cover-up.

Now we have testimony from some long-time State Dept. staffers who are visibly upset by the events that led to the deaths of their colleagues. These people question decisions made by superiors and military commanders. That’s their right, and we should be concerned if they weren’t upset by the loss of their colleagues.

But, while they may question the decisions, they don’t have any more evidence of a scandal than Issa. Yes, a regional commander ordered a special forces response team to stand down. But he explains that he made the decision because he thought the response would be inadequate and too late. He also explained that sending fighter jets would require a tanker for in-air refueling, and no tanker was available.

Issa and his committee should accept that explanation and move on. According to testimony, the night of the attack was chaotic and confusing. There were demonstrations at US embassies throughout the region. No one knew for sure where the terrorists would attack, or even if they would. It would be far more productive for Teapublicans to restore the funding they cut from the State Dept. to better protect our diplomats. It would be more productive to streamline the chain of command.

But that wouldn’t achieve the Teapublicans ultimate goal…to gin up a scandal that doesn’t appear to exist.