Another Sunday morning, the last one of February, and the next few days will lead up to a new month but the same-old shit.
On Friday, a legislative trigger will automatically snap back, force the hammer down and pop a cap at who/whatever’s in the vicinity –Â unfortunately, just about all regular Americans will catch at least a bit of shell fragment, a ricochet maybe, pieces striking mostly in the neck area.
(Illustration found here).
In DC, finger pointing has become so hideous, elected representatives are all packing various forms of finger guns — quick to draw at the slightest provocation, slinging blame at each other.
President Obama slapped at Republicans yesterday in his weekly address, House Speaker John ‘The Boner‘ Boehner heaped responsibility on the White House in a Wall Street Journal op/ed last week — Republican Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota, blubbered in the GOP’s version of a weekly address: “It’s time to do things differently, Mr. President.”
How different? And what direction would be the different direction?
Yesterday, Mary Kate Cary, apparently a GOP speechwriter who worked for George Jr.’s daddy, H.W., penned an op/ed in US News and World Report to the sensible senseless theory it’s the fringe Tea Party and not real Republicans who have screwed up:
Standing in the security line at Reagan National airport, a black-and-camo tee shirt in a souvenir stand caught my eye: “I love my country, it’s the government I hate.”
It was ugly on a number of levels.
Lately too many Republicans sound like that tee shirt, angry at the government all the time.
We don’t need a de facto Libertarian Party that wants to stop government at all costs—although that is understandable, given the exponential growth of federal spending and the massive debt our nation is incurring—but the GOP would be better off becoming the party of smart, efficient, compassionate, and limited government.
Right now, the phrase that best defines the Republican brand is “mad as hell.”
The question, though, is why are these assholes so fire-and-brimstone mad?
Mary Kate touts a current right-sided agenda proposed by Michael Gerson and Peter Wehner for recognition of basic human needs, and spotlights social/intellect midgets like Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan — MSM GOP SOS.
And she blames the fringe freaks: Polls show less than one third of Republicans identify themselves as Tea Partyers; it’s time for the other two thirds to support sensible reforms, and most importantly, vote in primary elections.
Of course, and it’s a huge course, GOPers don’t ever, never mention what occurred prior to the full-blown arrival of the Tea Party pop-fest.
Nary a word, nor even a syllable, on the near-decade of pure incompetent bullshit which drained off great national blood and treasure, presided over the biggest financial calamity ever, aided-and-abated the creation of a more-bloodthirsty world, and the last GOPer to sit in the White House now sits in a bath tub noodling on a sketch pad.
Republicans are bygone. The party is really nothing more now than a group of aging white guys, who are thin-skinned and really useless.
And mean spirited, like this recent spew-forth from John McCain: “To be honest with you, Neil, it goes back to – there’s a lot of ill will towards Senator Hagel because when he was a Republican, he attacked President Bush mercilessly, at one point said he was the worst president since Herbert Hoover, said the surge was the worst blunder since the Vietnam War, which is nonsense, and was anti his own party and people,” McCain said. “People don’t forget that,” McCain continued. “You can disagree, but if you’re disagreeable, people don’t forget that.”
So horribly ironic, clueless and hardcase these ‘sensible‘ Republicans.
Most Americans can sometimes see through shit. A new Pew Research poll indicates so — via UPI: The nationwide poll of 1,504 adults — conducted Feb. 13-18 — found if is no deal is reached by March 1 to avoid scheduled across-the-board federal spending, 49 percent would hold congressional Republicans responsible and 31 percent would blame President Barack Obama.
A lot of US peoples, however, are near-clueless: About 1-in-4 of those surveyed said they had heard about the spending — about the same percentage as those who said they knew nothing about it.
What? ‘Heard‘ about it?
Divorce lawyers, psychologists, trauma professionals and scholars look at the looming Friday deadline as a worse-case scenario of eighth-grade drama, peaked to absurd levels:
“We’re seeing middle school behavior here,” says Barbara Coloroso, who crusades against childhood bullying.
Psychologist Piers Steel, an expert on procrastination, says Congress has the worst case of it he’s seen.
Divorce attorney Sanford Ain’s assessment is blunter: “It’s nuts!”
…
Historian Altina Waller is reminded of the Hatfields and McCoys. Of course, she would be: Waller’s an authority on the deadly 19th century feud.
Despite the myth, the Hatfield-McCoy conflict wasn’t primarily about clan hatred, Waller said, and she doesn’t think today’s acrimony between Republicans and Democrats is fully explained by partisanship or ideology.
The Appalachian feud grew out of economic anxiety as farming declined and logging and coal moved in, she said. These days, Democrats and Republicans worry about the economy and the loss of American jobs and influence to foreign competition, and blame each other.
“Like the Hatfields and McCoys,” Waller said, “they are personalizing a problem brought about by larger economic forces.”
…
Coloroso, author of “The Bully, the Bullied and the Bystander,” sees too many politicians acting like the mean girl who taunts unpopular classmates in the cafeteria.
“Bullying is about contempt for the other person,” Coloroso said.
“Do you see how that fits with some of the people in Congress?
Utter contempt, bullying, wanting to bring somebody down. You cannot resolve a major issue like a budget with name-calling, with disdain for the person you’re supposed to be working with.”
Ain says the political fight illustrates something he’s learned in 40 years of striving to keep family law cases amicable: “If you have extreme views and won’t compromise, you can’t get anything done.
It’s going to go to war.”
And is war what we’re looking at come this Friday?
Blame is not a good game. Obama has his faults, and he sure ain’t the worse president since Herbert Hoover (Chuck Hagel thought so of George Jr. — he was wrong, GW is the worse ever).
Obama, though, is indeed the way-most disappointing president in US history — he campaigned on change, but turned out to be MSM all the way.
And Democrats are spineless — Harry Reid is a cry-baby nit-twit.
But they ain’t nothing like the current strand of Republican DNA. Just for an updated, for instance, look no further then the GOP’s gutting of the Violence Against Women Act, allowing this to spew forth: In his protest against the Native American protections included in the Senate bill, Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) said that Native American juries are incapable of trying a white person fairly.
Bill Press with Tribune Media Services explained it better than I (via the Orlando Sentinel):
If aliens came to earth from outer space in search of intelligent life, Congress is the last place they would look for it.
The Republican-led 112th Congress — in a good week, in session no more than two and a half days –let the Standard & Poor’s credit rating of the United States decline for the first time since 1917, failed to pass a farm bill, and refused to do anything about assault weapons, global warming or other important issues, as well as voting to repeal Obamacare 33 times.
…
Nobody except the most-extreme tea partiers wants that to happen.
President Obama doesn’t want it.
John Boehner doesn’t want it.
In fact, Boehner describes the sequester as a policy “that threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more.”
Here’s the difference.
President Obama has put forth a balanced plan of additional spending cuts and tax reform to avoid the sequester.
Boehner and fellow Republicans are determined to let the sequester happen.
Why? As conservative columnist Byron York asks in the Washington Examiner: “Why would Republicans support a measure that threatens national security and thousands of jobs?”
Indeed, for Republicans to allow the sequester is not only bad public policy, it’s pure political lunacy.
But here’s what’s even more idiotic: They think they can get away with it, and escape voter wrath, by blaming the sequester on President Obama.
That’s why Boehner calls it “the president’s sequester.”
Who’s he kidding?
Undoubtedly, himself.
Americans should separate these guys.