Republicans Must Not Hold America Hostage Any Longer

According to the Stockholm Syndrome if one is held hostage by an evil person or group long enough the person may start to exhibit protective tendencies of one's captors.  In fact after a while a strange sort of irrational love may even develop.
Once set free the hostage must seek or be afforded psychiatric help to return to a normal productive life.
For the past 6 years America has been held hostage by the Republican Party and too many voters are exhibiting the same mental defect described above.  They are answering polls showing how much they would vote for the same Republican party that blocked any and all progress in America all the while blaming President Obama.
And just like a kidnapper who brainwashes a child into believing his real parents deserted him and do not love him anymore they have convinced their base that the President is not only at fault but not even an America citizen or worse!!
Polls show that Congress has a favor-ability rating less than that of gonorrhea or root canals so why would any sane, rational human being listen to them let alone vote for them again.
Perhaps the answer lies in the question itself and the words sane and rational.
Is it possible that the majority of the Republican base is so consumed with hatred and sublimated racism that they are willing to believe anything bad said about the President to the point of voting against their own best interests?
The answer to that is a resounding yes!
We have seen this happen over and over again and even read about it in a now famous (or should be famous) book by Thomas Frank.
In Florida, that wonderful State that gave us the hanging chads, Kat Harris and appointed a President that did not win the majority of votes we are now witness to a Governor with a terribly low approval rating leading in the polls due to $26 million worth of negative ads about his far better and more deserving opponent.
Generally when a candidate ONLY runs negative ads it's because he has nothing positive to say about himself. That could not be more true than in this race between a generally hated awful Governor Rick Scott and his 'for the people' foe Charlie Crist.
Neither man is a saint but then they are both politicians.
However when push comes to shove Mr. Scott is awful and deserves to be shown the door as soon as possible!
And speaking of awful, in Kentucky it is quite possible that another member of the hostage takers may hold his seat in Congress even though he has said publicly and in private that his entire agenda is to hurt the President and keep America down.
He will stop us from doing anything for at least the next two years and affirmed his affections for the anti-social Koch brothers and their bribe money with a treatise of love and promises to help them increase their massive fortune! (If you can sit through the recording of his promises to the Koch billionaires click the link above.)
He aims to block any regulations aimed at reining in business at the expense of the environment and human lives!
And this creature is leading in the polls?
As for the President's foreign policy is it so terrible to think about all the consequences of bombing other countries and starting or entering a war before actually doing so?  Haven't we been there done that already?  And aren't we and the World still paying for the rash ill-advised behavior of the previous war mongering administration?
Who died and made the United States the sheriff at the O K Coral?
If the President can make his case to World leaders and have them join us thus spreading the responsibilities as well as the costs are we not all better off?  Do we wish to send our young men and women into another far off battleground?
We have already been through two World Wars.  If the World cannot come together to squash small factions hell bent on global destruction in the name of some absurd religious belief then shall never have World peace.
Think of what a united Planet Earth could accomplish if testosterone driven machismo, personal greed and religious zealotry could be relegated to an embarrassing footnote in the annals of history.
It may be naive to think this could happen but at least I am not giving in and falling for my abductors!

Corporate Baggage

Airlines will make around $3B more this year charging for bags. This is a revenue stream that did not exist before deregulation of the industry and another example of a ‘BWC’ fee. That stands for my ‘Because We Can’ invention that covers every raise or surcharge or rate increase the public is forced to endure while the raisers of those costs reap ever increasing profits for ever decreasing services merely, well because they can.  Who's going to stop them?

Gold Mine for Airlines

I don’t have the exact figure on how much the airlines pay baggage handlers whose numbers have dwindled due to corporate cost analyses but I am willing to bet they don’t share in the windfall.
The airlines will say that the increase in fuel costs caused their increase in fees but the numbers don’t completely add up and even if they did why hide the fare increase?

Telling a traveler that he has to pay extra to carry some luggage is like selling a car and then asking the buyer if he’d like a steering wheel with his purchase.

But airlines are not the only culprit in this corporate scheme to milk humans out of every remaining penny they have.

Anyone alive on Long Island is well aware of the inept Long Island Rail Road and it's ever increasing fares to complement their ever decreasing level of service or competence.

Note that the railroad considers its trains to be on time if they are only 5.9 minutes late!
Most riders would not 5.9 minutes late as on-time but rather a miracle!

But I digress.

A quick check into the business world reveals that most corporations have amassed unprecedented and record profits; cash cushions of nearly unimaginable amounts all while claiming that the current administration in DC has left them with a terrible feeling of uncertainty that is causing them to NOT hire new workers.

Does not knowing if you will triple your profits rather than merely doubling them next year constitute an uncertainty?

This absurd rationalization pervades every corner of every industry and threatens to eradicate the middle class completely.

But while I and many others write about the path we’re on nobody seems to have a solution.

One reason is that a major political party doesn't see the above AS a problem to be fixed.

The Republicans feel that the business world and the banks in particular should not be regulated at all, or if so we should allow them to self regulate.

Millions of potholes nationwide

Sounds like Mr. Romney’s call for illegal aliens to self-deport and equally as naive.

One possible solution to the job loss in America is right under our noses or rather under our feet.

Suddenly not an uncommon thing

Our nation’s infrastructure (a word former President Bush had trouble even saying) is crumbling. A no-brainer (The fix, not him although...) would be to start hiring workers nation-wide to save our streets, and highways, and bridges, and on and on.

Disaster on the clock!

The amount of architects and planners alone would take a chunk out of the unemployment numbers and therein is the problem.

Allowing anything to help the economy while the right wing controls the purse strings of the House and President Obama is still in office is anathema.

To paraphrase Senator McJowls, aka Mitch McConnell, an elected official sworn to help America in return for a huge undeserved salary; free health care; retirement funds for himself and family and exceptional perks far beyond his worth, “We simply cannot give this pretender a win.”

So there goes infrastructure repair!

And with it any hope of fixing America.

But I am not just talking about the roads anymore.  Now I speak of the entire experiment that is America.

One political party gets their marching orders only from the wealthiest of the country. They have now brazenly taken to fixing elections so even when the masses rise up against their terroristic-like tactics it will not be enough since their votes will not be counted.

And many on the right feel that is as it should be.  "The poor made their own beds and chose to be poor so their votes should not count!"

Never happen till Congress
finds out how to give
Exxon the profits

It is the ruling class that will decide when and where workers will be hired and what those workers should do.

There are many public works programs and ideas such as alternative energy as a way to ensure that the world as we know it will still exist in 50 years that are being blocked by the ruling class and their puppets in Congress.

They will not give in unless and until we bow to their superior intellect and allow them to reap any profits from any new industry.
We are now used to paying for luggage when we fly but until we divest ourselves of the evil and brain-dead, dead weight baggage in Congress we will never get anywhere!

I hope this is not just a
Pie in the Sky.

Politics is The Same Everywhere

Nasty evil men used to stand in the shadows to do their dastardly deeds. They’d hide from the light of day and when caught they’d slither away. But it seems they all slithered to government.

They say all politics is local. That is true, but it’s also national and International and all of it is in dire need of fixing!

First local:

In Nassau on Long Island we are facing a $45M year end deficit that all sides claim is due to infighting. Republican county comptroller Mr. Maragos blames the shortfall on the minority Democrats failing to work with the current administration!

Does anyone sense a theme here?

Republican majority comptroller blames the Democratic minority for our woes on Long Island while in DC the Republican overall minority blames the Democratic majority for all the woes in the country!

So which is it gentlemen?

Clearly the Republican Party from local and all the way up to Federal levels wants it both ways and they want it at the expense of those who can least afford to pay.

At least on LI we must stop the finger pointing and start the handshaking! Get it done or get gone!

On Long Island they are in command but continue to give away the store to the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

At state level we see so many examples of new laws that border on draconian evil as to make us wonder what century we are living in, let alone year.

Women are just going to
line up for this procedure!

Rulings such as mandatory vaginal probes and ultrasounds if women of Virginia wish to avail themselves of a LEGAL abortion or even seek out medical advice are proof of a scary trend.

In Florida, Pennsylvania and many other states we see legitimate citizens being denied their Constitutional right to vote mainly because they are registered Democrats.

Of course the Republican governors of those medieval States claim possible voter fraud as the reason to target so many voters who coincidentally just happen to be Democrats.

But the fact that the instance of that type of fraud has been negligible for decades, unless you count their actions does not seem to enter into any argument.

And finally we come to the center of the web of evil, DC.

The minority Republicans continue to filibuster anything that might help the middle class while allowing the wealthy to continue their exorbitant and obscene existence.

On any given day you can witness one or more Republican Senator or Congressman trot himself out to a microphone and bemoan how President Barack Hussein Obama is handing the country over to one or another group that is out to kill us all and eat our babies.

Of course one Senator at least had the decency to proclaim that he would not do the job for which his constituents elected him. In January 2009 and continually since then he promised to do only one thing for four years, work his enormous tail and set of jowls off to see to it that President Obama would not get a second term.

It did not matter to this hypocrite whether or not Mr. Obama could be the best President the country ever had, he just wanted him out!

And the height of hypocrisy is the current Republican candidate for President, or as the media must call him until the convention, the Presumptive Nominee.

Presumptive is a great word for Willard Mitt Romney since he presumes to know what’s good for America all the while doing the opposite.

Textiles, my old industry is now a
mainstay everywhere
but in America

Would it be good to send American jobs to China?

Would it be good to take away affordable healthcare for Americans?

Would it be good for America to turn what’s left of our middle class into poverty level unemployed welfare cases?

And then would it be good to take away what rights the former middle class citizens still have so that they cannot vote anymore?

Would it be good for America to have you and your friends continue sending your vast wealth offshore so that you pay next to nothing in taxes to the country you claim to love so much?

Would it be good for America to turn over the keys to the United States of America to corporations in exchange for even more personal wealth?

Well the answer to that last question is one of the driving forces behind Mitt’s desire to be America’s first king!

The microcosm of government that is Long Island can show us a great deal about how politics works or does not but you have to view the large stage, the show that is Congress and the people who control it to get a real feel for how broken our system is.

And when I say the people who control Congress I am of course NOT speaking about the actual Congressmen and women we elected but rather the billionaires and special interest lobbies behind the curtain.

The unelected overlords who don’t even bother to whisper their demands in the ears of our elected leaders anymore are in full control of the country.

And with every bill, every decree, every law that is passed by DC we see the inequity of their choices.

When farm subsidies are altered so that only the wealthiest of corporate farms can benefit or when food stamp programs are cut and the savings handed over to those wealthy concerns we see the ugly underbelly that is Washington politics.

Or when big oil dumps millions of life killing barrels of Black Death into the Gulf of Mexico and gets nary a slap on the hand we see the long arm of special interest and the lack of power the individual has in his own life or livelihood.

They say in order to defeat corruption you must start by shining a light on it! We’re gonna need a bigger light!

Follies for the Middle Class (Thanks Mr. Sondheim)

Fox News & Small Pox, all kinds of plagues

And I'm here, I'm still here.

Radical Repubs; SCOTUS gone wild but I'm here
I'm still here.

Kill all the unions,

Screw healthcare

A conscience in DC?
That’s quite rare

Lived through trickle down economics

And I'm here!

Cheney & Palin; Chads and the radical right

And I'm here

Bailouts and blowouts;

Money's incredibly tight

And I'm here

Taxes are killing the middle class

Repubs have their heads up their ass

Wealthiest few get a damn free pass

And I'm here

I sold all my silver, gold and brass

And I’m here

I've lived through Rove and his brain trying to lead us

Who the hell is that prick?

Or better yet

Let's give the vote to a fetus

What's the matter with Rick?

Long dong; Scalia; Roberts; Alito and such

And I'm here

Boehner and Grassley; Ryan and Cohen's out of touch

And I'm here

I've lived through Limbaugh, Bill-O too

Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter all screw you

I survived Nixon & Reagan and I'm here!
Mission accomplished wasn't
And I'm here!

The President's Kenyan; a Muslim; Illegal

And he must be removed

The right has all of the brains of a beagle

And no claims can be proved

Tea Party madness

Funded by sick brothers Koch

And I’m here

Watching Repub debates

Damn what a sad bunch; a joke

And I’m here

Please tell me that it will all soon end

The Democratic Party won’t break we’ll bend

I’m looking forward to November
And my friend

Four more fruitful years for Obama
To be here

And I’m here

Yes I’m here

I’m still heeeeeeere!

Reality DC

It's ironic that many pundits have been dropping hints that our country was heading into a disaster similar to what recently happened in Greece.  The analogy is hard to miss but their timing is a bit off.  They should be comparing us not to the Greece of today but rather to the days of Aeschylus and the Greek Tragedies.

Next year's commentators on Fox News

This week one of the financial ratings agencies decided to chime in on what the rest of the world has been watching for years, America's dysfunctional political theater.  It is reality TV at its best, or rather worst.
With so-called Reality TV the viewer should understand that much of what they are seeing is absurdly phony.  The situations are contrived at best and staged at worst.
People who spend more time watching reality shows than living reality lives are missing out on life!
But this is not about them, this is about our elected officials and their counterproductive childish behavior.
When Standard & Poors lowered America's rating from AAA to AA+ it was the first time in the history of ratings that our country was not considered at the top of the financial ladder.
I will let those more well versed in all the ramifications of a lowered financial rating for America discuss what happens now.  I am more interested in the cause and the continued derisive tone that preceded it.
In order to know when it's hot you must also know what cold is.  Without an opposite against which to measure definitions are useless.  If the temperature was always 95 degrees day and night then that would be normal!  We wouldn't even comment on it or have thermometers to tell us it was in fact 95 degrees!
Using that simple bit of logic let's describe the Washington DC of today.
Is it working well?
Seriously??
How does it compare to governments of our past?
Seriously???
Does our future look bright with wonderful possibilities for our children?
The answer to this last question is incredibly subjective as the 2% of Americans at the top of the food chain will say yes, our children will have it great!
But for the rest of us not so much.
They say that politics is the 'art of the possible.'  But I ask how is it possible that our leaders care so little about those of us here on the ground?

Mr. Dickinson knew how
to keep the Riff Raff out!

Well that question is also simple - We voted them in and allowed them to continue the policies that harm us.
I have often used a line from the Broadway play "1776" to describe the mentality of our current electorate and their propensity of voting for people who will hurt them the most.
The words are attributed to Mr. Dickinson, a delegate to the first Constitutional Congress in Philadelphia in the 1770s. In the play he says, "Don't forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich rather than face the reality of being poor."
Unfortunately it still fits and now more than ever I wish the voters would face THE REAL TRUE reality.
Because it is this mentality that is being played on by the representatives of the wealthiest 2% in America and their corporate allies.
Why else would one side of the aisle in Congress demand that we not remove oil subsidies from companies who are making more money than any other company has ever made in the history of the world?  And this at the same time they are demanding we lower benefits to the poor, the elderly, minorities, real housewives of every city and the vast but slowly vanishing middle class!
The answer stares us all in the face every day and every night - The groups being hurt do not have a voice in our current Reality DC theater.  And too many of the members of those groups continue to dream about joining the 2% at the top.

McConnell,
Cheney & Boehner?

Our founding fathers, even Mr. Dickinson would be appalled at the actions of Congress over the last few years.  They were civilized in their dissent and argued for what they believed to be the best course for the most people of America.
The Continental Congress did not have anyone telling another member to "F--k Yourself" (Vice President Cheney) or stand at the podium of Congress and in front of the TV cameras while Congress was in session and shout "Hell no you can't" (John Boehner) because the President had the audacity to try and make our lives better.  (Okay, forget the camera part for the Continental Congress.)
And who can forget Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stating that his one job until 2012 will not be to help the American people live better lives but rather to get rid of President Obama.  His quote, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one term president."
Lowering our nation's horrendous unemployment number or fixing our failing infrastructure does not even appear on the radar screens of this elected official as long as Mr. Obama inhabits the Oval Office!

At least these guys
were entertaining!

And he said this before Mr. Obama had done anything as President other than becoming the first Black man to inhabit the White House!
No elected official had ever been quoted using the same vow against any previous President but then we've only had 44 of them so far.
If this is reality I cannot blame people for wanting fairy tales.  Sadly the ones we are getting are Grimm.


So when S&P dropped America from the ranks of the most trustworthy they were not actually rating our ability to pay back any debt.  We can still print money as needed.
What they were doing was what Nielsen has been doing for years, rating a show.

And this reality show ain't no comedy!