Post 299: Again? I’m watching you, Adrian. I’m watching.

Guess what time it is, again! Yes, time for Congress to vote to raise the debt ceiling!

Remember last time? An element in Congress forced the entire Federal Government to shut down at a cost of an estimated $24,000,000,000 hit to the economy. The country came so close to a notch down in its credit rating that you wondered which foe, foreign or domestic, paid off these clowns in the US House of Representatives and US Senate to bring America to her knees.

Remember what the whole business was about, what the hang-up was on voting to pay for US bills already authorized by Congress? No? Well, it kept changing because one variety of clowns in Congress continued not to understand that the President wasn’t backing down, he wouldn’t negotiate on the debt ceiling vote, that “no means no”.

Well, they are loading up the clown car again, just in case. You know, that tiny car that rolls into the chambers of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate, the doors open, and out pop a sufficient number of clowns to gum up the works. Yes, it is debt ceiling time again, and there is talk again by one party of holding the nation hostage for something in exchange.

“They think they should get something out of it,” I heard the television guy say. I was half asleep in my glider, but that woke me up!

“Yeah,” I thought to myself, “a swift kick in the butt and another one to remove them from office for any Congressman or Senator who puts us through last Fall again!”

The television guy used an analogy: “If you pay off your credit card (that is, pay for what you’ve already spent), you shouldn’t expect to be rewarded (that is, get handed some political deal you seek for doing your Constitutional job, which is to authorize money to pay for what you’ve already spent!)”

US Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew says the window to vote to raise the debt ceiling or risk national default is narrower than last time. Will our dysfunctional Congress step up and pay for what they’ve already spent, or will there be another round of clowns popping out of the clown car? I’m not sure. All I know is there are only three potential clowns from Nebraska that I have any control over.

It’s time again to keep my eyes on how they handle this round, maybe remind them even Republicans in a scarlet state can make the mistake of popping out of the Congressional clown car, that they can’t run fast enough in clown shoes to avoid a swift kick in the butt if they play last Fall’s debt ceiling game again.

One is running again in 2014. I always vote. That isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. I’m watching you, Adrian. I’m watching…. Don’t be a clown!

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I must admit, this was my favorite clown from last Fall, the most clueless of the most clueless:

>honk! honk!<

Post 291: “You lie!”

Following President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech tonight there’ll be the spectacle of three rebuttal speeches delivered by elements of the Republican Party.

The actual Republican response will come from Cathy McMorris Rodgers. She serves from Oregon in the US House of Representatives. Had the other two “speechifiers” held back, Representative McMorris Rodgers’ response could have served as visual “evidence” that Republicans actually think women can handle responsibilities without a man behind them. The Congresswoman is known to be competent and conservative.

The Tea Party response comes from Utah Senator Mike Lee. You remember him for his part in the Federal Government shutdown in October 2013, as an ally of Texas Senator Ted Cruz. I presume he didn’t cause the shutdown either since Senator Cruz recently made the claim he had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Tennessee Senator Rand Paul will offer up a third response from his Libertarian point of view. Of the three responses, Senator Paul’s seems more an opportunity to promote the Senator’s personal ambitions to be President than a necessity.

I’m trying to find the horns. He doesn’t seem to have any horns. Is the Right lying about the horns? Where are the horns???

Three responses. Doesn’t say “one party” to me, though the reality of the Republican Party these days is that it isn’t one diverse party working toward a common goal. It’s three parties within one, all trying to beat out the others, a dysfunctional marriage verging on a divorce.

If the leadership of the Republican Party were capable, they’d work to consolidate these three responses into one. My probably simplistic point of view is one consolidated message would come across as equivalent, just different from that of the Democratic Party’s as delivered by the President. Three individual responses just shows how divided that party is.

Of course, I’m not sympathetic to any of the three, so let them fall on their faces for all I care. I’ll listen, try to hear the messages tonight, but can they top the infamous outburst of Republican Congressman Addison Graves “Joe” Wilson, Sr. of South Carolina, who, in a fit of passion, called President Obama a liar twice during the 2009 State of the Union Address!?

Joe Wilson’s outburst is the most outrageous behavior I’ve every seen during one of these speeches, though the way clapping always follows party lines is a clown joke, grade school posturing.

For that matter, having Republicans sit on one side and Democrats on the other reminds me of how grade schoolers tend to self-segregate into boys on one side and girls on the other of a classroom unless the teacher assigns seats alphabetically. Would America have better government if we arranged the House and the Senate alphabetically? LOL! Couldn’t be worse than what we have.

Civility isn’t that hard. Nor is it too hypocritical to give the President a little polite applause even though you intend to obstruct every damn thing he tries to get done during his term of office: applaud politely but put on a “whiney-face”! Watch Speaker of the House John Boehner if you think that can’t be done.

Post 290: Send in the clowns!

Tomorrow is the wonkiest, wackiest day of the year, the day the President of the United States of America gives his State of the Union speech. I look forward to this exercise to inform the people of the day’s issues and policies proposed by the various elements of our political process to turn America into a Utopian wonder.

…as viewed by Democrats

Oh come on! I’m sorry! I tried to write that without irony, but I pride myself on readers who know “snarky” when they come across it! But I do look forward to the four speeches – yes, FOUR!!! – three of which it takes these days to tell us the President is a Nazi-Socialist-Communist-Muslim-Kenyan-big government-bankrupting mistake and not worth our respect but not because he’s black… oh, no!

Regardless, the opposition will continue to obstruct any progress whatsoever in America until they take over the reins of government, which I hope is no time soon if I have my way.

…as viewed by the Republicans

Well, I’ll allow them one term so I can find absolutely everything the Republican President does to be totally wrong and destructive to the American way of life. If his name is Jesus, he still will have no credibility, I guarantee! After five years of Republicans working to subvert the current US President’s efforts, I’ll enjoy watching one of theirs enjoy karmic return on their investment in the success of the Obama presidency!

…as viewed by the TPers

Seriously, I pray something better comes about: The real Republicans reclaim their party, and the Tea Party-ites and Libertarians break away to form their own unelectable political stump parties.

…as viewed by Libertarians.

There will be few, if any surprises tomorrow, though there is the circus of four speeches where one can rail, rant, revolt against any combination of three points of view one selects from the four available.

Ain’t America great? I’m drooling, going into a cross-eyed coma of anticipation at what’s coming! Set up the circus and…

SEND IN THE CLOWNS!

a proposition; some issues

Yesterday, my day at the military museum, a board member asked if I’d be interested in taking on responsibility for the museum, a part-time job. There hasn’t been anyone in charge since the person who held the job moved in August from the museum to another city job.

Though the idea sounds fun, I have no particular qualifications for the job other than being a veteran and having an interest in the museum. I also know my health issues make the job’s physical aspects difficult to impossible to do. I declined.

I enjoy my Thursdays at the museum, though. I catch up on my reading, for example. Or talk with other veterans, some of whom flew bombers in WWII among other things too fantastic to pin on seemingly ordinary human beings. It reminds me of the burdens of war. I recalibrate and temper my patriotism to the realities, the cost of freedom at the museum. It’s a decent return for three hours of my time!

I have some nagging issues with some things I find there, however. If I ran the place, these items wouldn’t have prominent display. If displayed, they’d have detailed explanations of their history, including current uses that make them provocative symbols that promote an extreme right-wing element of one political party.

I’m not speaking of Nazi and Japanese flags behind uniforms of those two nations or other symbols of those failed, vile political movements the Allied Forces defeated in WWII.

I am speaking of these:

And this:

Here’s a better view of the Gadsden flag:

Gadsden flag

Freedom of speech is a guaranteed right, but wanton promotion of a nihilistic agenda – bring the Federal government to its knees, then kill it – is sedition bordering on treason when it results in actual temporary shutdown of the Federal government.

These two flags represent that movement to many people who love the United States of America and worry that extremists will spoil 237 years of progress toward those ideals set down in the founding documents. The museum memorializes and celebrates those people who fought to promote those freedoms, who loved the country and that government they fought to save. “E pluribus unum” not “My way or else, and you better be white.”

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NOTE: The Gadsden flag used to be displayed hanging loosely from its staff. There was an American flag next to it. At some point, the American flag was moved into the main room, and the Gadsden flag was wrapped around the pillar, as shown in the photo. It is next to a display case featuring two US Army uniforms donated by someone I know (a retired US Army Colonel) who supports the Tea Party. That’s what makes me think of it as inappropriate without presentation of the flag’s historic use prior to its 2009 adoption by the Tea Party for its purposes.

On the other side of the Civil War cannon (barely seen in the photo) is another display featuring a replica Revolutionary War army uniform with a historic US flag behind it. It appears to be a 15-star flag. In this context, the Gadsden flag on display makes more sense.

You’ll note the rattlesnake on the display flag varies from the historic depiction, with its 18th Century quirkiness.

The Confederate flag bumper stickers represent a complex and troubling symbol of a rebellion that cost more than 620,000 lives (more than all other US war losses combined) and still colors American life 150 years later: It is a symbol of treason against the United States of America to many people, of simple rebellion against any authority to others, a racist symbol, a symbol of the Southern way of life that ended with the Civil War – “The War of Yankee Aggression”, as a Southern member of the current US Congress recently characterized it…!

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Some links to history:

Gadsden flag history
history of Confederate flags
American flag
Civil War

Why I disrespect the Tea Party: Quote of the Week

While Rome burns, the Tea Party reveals its great goal, the raison d’etre for this situation America must endure till the firemen put out the fire:

>HONK! HONK!<

The firemen, of course, won’t be paid if the Tea Party faction has its way. Why should they be paid for doing their job? Wasn’t the White House and US Capitol built with slave labor? (Whether in part or whole, if the slaves weren’t paid, you know their overseers got something for their part. They probably felt that was only “fair”.)

I’d call the Tea Party the Clown Party, but they are just scary, not funny.

anarchy and revolution

I turned off the television news and went to bed early last night. My headed pounded. My anger at what a handful of congressmen and one senator were doing to our country was just too much. There are ways to get your way in our system of government. Forty-three votes proved now is not the time; win the hearts and minds of the voters in 2014, and try again.

I slept well. Exhausted by the hate and anger building, poisoning my system, I slept the sleep of the dead.

Then I woke up, a smile on my face and with a memory of a dream I’d just had. I dream, I know, but I rarely remember them. This one was different. This one was in response to characterizations of the behavior of the Tea Party faction as being a revolution, of the participants being anarchists, not legislators, let alone statesmen! (I steamed up and bubbled over at the time, and knew it was bed time or a heart attack!)

The best way to handle revolutionaries and anarchists is to put them in front of a wall, and shoot them! Well, guillotines work, too.

WHAT! I know I’m upset when I start thinking in extreme ways. Remember my “radioactive glass” post? This is not the person I am, nor is it the person I want to be.

I sat on the edge of my bed. Andy and Dougy watched me, anxious for breakfast. Dougy jumped on my bed: “Get up, human! I’m hungry!” Andy sat in the next room, grooming and washing the sleep out of his eyes. Domesticity! Cute fuzzy cats! Aw! Dougy purred in anticipation of yummy catfood.,

The image of Ted Cruz and the errant congressmen standing in front of a wall faded, and this came back to mind:

anger

Thank you, pastor. This isn’t the only time this quote got me through all-consuming hate and anger. It isn’t the first time it helped me feel whole again.

the August recess

I apologize to you for living in a red – no, scarlet! – state. I didn’t vote for anyone representing the state in the House of Representatives or Senate, these people- all conservative Republicans- who contributed to the deadlock in Congress.

Thanks to the August recess, the Congressmen and Senators from my state can’t hurt you for a few weeks, but they will be recharging their batteries in a state where Congressmen and Senators tend to stay in office till they die or retire.

Nebraskans are good people. Don’t let me give you any other impression. Pay their taxes. Go to church regularly. Raise good kids. Are polite. Love their country, though it is a very white one. Put their flags out on holidays. But, man, do they send some extremists to Washington!

Just don’t blame me. I only vote once per election.