Political Blog—February 2009

February 17—I'm glad we have somebody mature in office.

*sigh* WHY must the Republicans be so childish? Somebody on Craigslist once said of Republicans, "They are self-dealing crooks with no sense of honor or patriotism to their fellow citizens. If you must be a Republican, don't be a 'conservative.' They are whining, bitching, complaining, simple-minded self-righteous idiots who think they're perpetual victims. Listen to talk radio for a while, you'll see what I mean."

You don't have to listen to talk radio anymore to know that. All you have to do is watch the way the Republicans have handled the stimulus package. It was fine to begin with, but they just had to nitpick and add more and more tax cuts, defeating the purpose and its effectiveness. Now they will claim it was all the Democrats' fault should it fail because there wasn't enough spending involved. As Obama said, spending is the whole point of a stimulus package. Fucking DUH.

As if that weren't bad enough, Judd Gregg backed out of the post of Secretary of Commerce, citing "irresolvable conflicts." But he knew going in that there would be differences. It really looks like he stepped forward and then back purely to inconvenience Obama. Like I said, MUST the Republicans be such petulant children? But I suppose it can't be helped.

February 18—Are you sure "Michele Bachmann" doesn't anagram to "Joe McCarthy"?

The good old New York Post has topped itself this time with a ridiculously racist cartoon that appears almost to promote the assassination of President Obama. As I do not consider this real news, I will not comment on it further aside from noting that I will be rolling my eyes at its continued hysterical coverage in the coming weeks.

Michele Bachmann has embarrassed herself again. Just when I thought her train wreck, McCarthyistic interview with Chris Matthews had inflicted all the damage to her already-dubious reputation possible, she opened her yap to spray forth yet more nonsensical, hateful garbage. She said that the stimulus package would pay off Obama supporters, hijack health care, wipe out rich people (serves them right), and pay off ACORN (which is not named in the bill, and besides, they are not under indictment; in fact, they were defrauded). She also said entire Congressional districts would be paid off by the stim and that Obama was taking over the census to redraw districts. Not only do the package and the census have absolutely nothing to do with redrawing districts, redrawing is done at the state level anyway. Gerrymandering, by the way, is something for which Republicans are notorious, like Tom Delay, who redrew Texas. Besides, census data is public, and the Democrats already control Congress, so what the hell was her point?

So this is what the Republican party has been reduced to—ignorant extremists who don't bother with facts.

. . . Case in point, Roland Burris, whose resignation has already been called for over his quid pro quo with Blagojevich. The entirety of his defense has been reduced to "You know me; I have nothing to hide." Always a bad sign.

The Republicans seem to think that saying no to everything will somehow help, not realizing that this only exacerbates the problem of them coming across as insolvent, with toxic assets, and adrift from the American people. The more they fight the popular President Obama, the further their approval ratings sink. They're even fighting themselves; the California GOP is not supporting its own governor, who has many times stated the importance of being a public servant, not a party servant.

Now they've got that idiot Cantor spouting more rubbish. He's always on about the importance of family values, yet he's released two ads of questionable integrity: The anti-union ad that consisted mostly of [expletive deleted] and the anti-Democrat ad featuring an Aerosmith song about a hooker.

Meanwhile (just to move on from the Republican bashing, fun as that is), Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Advisor under Carter) had something interesting to say about our overseas conflicts. He observed that the Soviets wasted ten years in Afghanistan, much like we are at risk of doing now. General Boris Gromov, the last person to leave Afghanistan, told reporters at the time that increasing forces would only lead to a negative result and that "it has been and always will be impossible to solve political problems using force." Brzezinski said essentially the same thing. He said that we had to be more realistic, with a limited military undertaking and a reasonable amount of help to stabilize the country. We need to offer something constructive so that they see a tangible benefit. We cannot patronize them if we want them to work with us.

I hope Obama listens.

February 19—Hip Hop Elephant Stomp

Today Rick Santelli said we shouldn't bail out "losers" whose homes were being foreclosed; he said we should help those who can prosper. Never mind how that is to be determined. He went on to say we shouldn't be bailing out banks, to great cheers of the stockbrokers behind him, who will probably stop cheering once they realize that that would mean they would not be getting bailed out.

In other news, Pelosi said she thought that we would be prosecuting Bush officials. People like Harriet Myers, John Bolton, and of course Karl Rove are being charged with contempt of Congress, which is a start. I'm more interested in what will happen to Rumsfeld, etc.

Then, in a tidbit we have not heard the last of, Michael Steele made a total fool of himself when talking about he wanted the Republican party to be more hip hop. WTF! Good luck with that. It's going to fail, but it is going to be so. Funny. I can't wait.

February 20—Nobody ever talks about Siberia.

As if the Republicans hadn't already done enough to cut off their noses to spite their faces, they're now denying that the label "neocon" means anything, that it was invented by Bush critics instead of actually originally being used as a label for liberals who had moved to the right. Good job making shit up as usual, GOP.

Anyway. In other news, there was some mockery of Blagojevich and Burris as political zombies who just wouldn't quit, though I'm really more concerned with the Middle East than the Midwest. With every peace negotiation we sign in Pakistan, violence increases in Afghanistan. I don't see how we can ever fix it. I don't think we should be involved at all. We went through this with Siberia at the end of World War I, Vietnam, and now this.

February 23—More of the Same

The Republicans are still being immature idiots regarding the stimulus package, saying no to everything and cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Meanwhile, Obama and Bush (!) seem to be converging on issues of national security, but I hope with vastly different results. Bush's bad policies, whatever the reasons were, made us less safe and provoked attacks. I hope Obama's policies, with different reasons behind them, will produce dramatically different outcomes.

In other news, Eric Cantor is a slimy git. Well, that's not news. But he's still an obnoxious brat who can't say anything constructive or conclusive. I notice that the Republican party is becoming increasingly Southern and white (*cringe*—Is Houston really Southern? Is part Native American really white? Please help me escape being a stereotype.), and even Schwarzenegger is distancing himself from the current leaders of the GOP. I suspect he, like many others (myself included), is tired of hearing endless whining about the stimulus package because he knows that it needs to be passed to help the economy. I agree it doesn't have enough infrastructure in it, but doesn't something beat nothing? They're not even trying to negotiate; they're just mindlessly saying no to everything.

At least something good might come of this. Bobby Jindal thought he was an up and coming leader of the Republican party, but he's making such an ass of himself that it's not looking likely.

February 24—A Pessimistic Day

Today marked what would be Obama's first State of the Union address if that were what it was called in a president's rookie year. I don't have much to say about it except that it was probably too somber and needed more of his trademarked hope in it. I suppose that he, like Kennedy before him, has found that surprisingly enough, things really are as bad as we've been saying they are.

Oh, and I really didn't like that he extended his sixteen-month withdrawal from Iraq to nineteen months. I think this is a big deal because I'm afraid nineteen months will turn into twenty-two, which will turn into twenty-five, etc., and so we will be incremented into another Vietnam. And there will be a residual force remaining, so people will still be fighting and dying. I don't like it.

February 26—I should read more Al Franken.

The GOP has no ideas and no identity, and they have reduced their platform to fear and opposition to any and all taxes. For instance, John Bolton recently joked about a hypothetical bomb falling on President Obama's hometown of Chicago. And they tried to call Obama a terrorist.

In other news, the debate over Franken and Coleman is still ongoing. I noticed that Coleman didn't want a recount when he thought he'd won but is now bitching about even taking it to court. Idiot. Every day, the Republicans are losing respect and votes. Thank God.