Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Cowardice

Cowardice.  It is the primary and defining value of the Repub Party.  The motive in everything they do comes down to a quavering fear of something.  They like to think that they are 'tough guys' (even the few women they allow into the club).  But real tough people don't lash out mindlessly and violently.  Strength lies in self-control, and there's none of that coming from this abomination.


That's not something that is understood by the Current American Executive (CAE).  While he shares their fears and usually one-up's their cowardice, he didn't seem to see Paul Ryan's collapse on health care coming. 


Ryan - somehow Speaker of the House and shockingly a former VP candidate - is a long-established liar on policy and, well, everything,  He even lied about his marathon time.  Who does that? 


I'm certainly not the first (but let me be the latest) to point out that Ryan has never actually accomplished anything in his political career.  He's known for a series or cartoonishly harsh budget proposals that rip the social contract into confetti by cutting virtually all the money from human beings and lavishing it on recipients who need it the absolute least.  He wants the nation to go into massive debt for the military and to gift the most fortunate, but won't buy a starving kid a Happy Meal.


Charles Pierce got it exactly right years ago when he called Ryan a "zombie-eyed granny starver."


But what was really comical was his cave on health care.  The most 'conservative' (read: barbaric) group in Congress - the "Fascist Freedom Caucus" - wanted a health care bill with no health care in it.  The ACA replacement that guaranteed a health insurance death spiral wasn't deadly enough for them, so they wouldn't vote for it. 


That was all well and good - but then the CAE decided to force a vote.  Uh oh.  The CAE's a coward, but he has the guts of a gambler.  He's willing to push all the chips in and see what happens.  That's why he's been bankrupt so many times - but also why he's won a few.  This, I thought, might work.


The ultra-crazies might talk a good game about not supporting the ACA cancellation, but what would they do when forced to actually vote?  Their 'no' vote would be a 'yes' for the ACA.  Could they really go home for re-election having voted to keep the program that they'd run against and promised to destroy for seven years?


But Ryan came to the rescue.  The CAE might have the guts of a gambler, but Paul Ryan's got the cojones of a flea.  A particularly small flea.  A flea that other fleas make fun of for being extra small.  And for for being an abject flea coward. 


Ryan cancelled the vote.  No brinksmanship for Ryan.  He has to protect his phony-baloney job at any cost. 


Whew!  Glad we can count on the Speaker to be as craven as we always thought he was.  He's on to do taxes and impoverish as many people as he can.  The Republican Clown Car rolls on...

Thursday, March 23, 2017

First Current American Executive (CAE) Post

Like a lot of people, I've been stunned to near silence by the emergence of this existential threat to the American experiment in democracy.  In less than three months, the new administration has made a real mess of what used to be a pretty decent country.  And it's not just the administration.  As I've said countless times - modern Republican politicians are all this bad.  The Paul Ryan Congress and Mitch McConnell Senate are filled with delusional whackjobs who are every bit as bad as the psycho in the White House.  Their schemes work because they cheat.  Congress as a whole is Gerrymandered so that Republicans lose by millions of votes and still have control of both houses.  And the executive Leader lost by 3 million votes and was appointed anyway - by an Electoral College that was put in place to preserve the institution of slavery.

So. 

Here are a couple of things that have been rattling around my skull for the past few weeks. 

1.  He's Gay

Not that there's anything wrong with that.  I say that not as any form of insult, but as a conjecture about his sexuality.  I'm reminded of South Park:

Kyle:  I'm sorry I called you a fat fuck.
Cartman:  I'm sorry I called you a Jew.
Kyle:  I am a Jew you fat fuck!

There are a number of reasons that I think the Current American Executive (CAE) is a closeted homosexual.  And I think it must be a terrible thing to live a lie and not be able to express who you are - I really feel for anyone in the closet.


First, he's been married to a series of models.  What better beard could there be?  Everyone agrees they're beautiful.  They're paid money for their looks.  And they've borne him children - he must be attracted to them, right?  But I think the massive ego of the fat man wants to have a legacy and push his execrable gene pool forward - I don't think he has any interest in them.  He's shown no actual affection for any woman other than his model daughter. 


Second - the "grab 'em by the pussy" remark.  No guy says that.  Heterosexual men don't ever talk like that.  How many men have said that since the remark was first heard?  We all say it:  guys just don't talk like that, ever.  But.  A homosexual man who does not understand the attraction of men for women may well say that.  Just as I don't know what gay men say to and about one another, the CAE is similarly befuddled about straight men.


Third - he's thin-skinned and defensive because I think he's conditioned himself to constant vigilance against discovery.  At 70 years old, he's of a generation that could not come out of the closet.  His belief system (such as it is) comes from a being raised in the 1950's.  That was not today's world of legal marriage and increased social justice.  That was a time when the man who won WWII for England - Alan Turing - was convicted of the crime of homosexuality and chemically castrated which led to his tragic suicide.  They should have been building statues of the man and naming universities after him.  Instead they killed him for being gay. 


The CAE cannot be who he is, and the repression has unhinged him.  Or, more accurately, added to the base derangement that guides him.


Which leads me to the last bit:  what does Putin have on him?  If Putin secretly made men available to him when he was in Moscow and has recordings of the acts that they engaged in, it would be ironclad blackmail material.  And if the golden shower story is true - it doesn't say he had sex with the women involved.  In that situation - why else wouldn't he?
The CAE would do anything to keep the gay videos secret.


2.  Russia


Speaking of Putin's Russia, it occurred to me that the Republican Party is really working hard for them.  Collectively, they're Russia's Employee of the Month pretty much every month.  Why?  Because they're doing what they always want to do.


What I mean is that for many years - since Reagan and maybe even Goldwater - Repubs have been running on a platform that says:  government is always the problem, never the solution.  Government needs to be tiny and not work at all.  When they've been in power, they've striven to make government bumbling and useless so nobody wants it and they can cut it.  Their aim is to run it into the ground so they can discredit and destroy it (for a number of reasons starting with giving money to rich people). 


So if you're, say, Russia and you want to, say, destroy America (or cripple its ability to act in the world) - what's the best way to go about it?  Easy!  Get the Repubs elected and they'll do it for you. 


If you hated Finland, for example, and the Finns had a Responsible Party and a Lets Tear This Shit Down Party (LTTSD Party)  wouldn't you just help the LTTSD's?  And since the LTTSD's were a bunch of dopey racist know-nothing rich guys, they wouldn't need your money.  You could help them Gerrymander with great ideas on cheating democracy.  You could also hack the Responsible Party for them and give the info to an increasingly unhinged truther (thanks Julian Assange!). 


And then just sit back and watch the JTTSD Party do exactly what they promised to do.  In the chaos, your country could pretty well do anything they wanted without any fear of a coordinated response to your perfidy.  Watching the CAE and the evil brainless henchmen he's assembled, plus the circus that passes for governance in Congress, it seems a bit like the end of a 1970's scare movie about nuclear war. The worst humans in America are in complete charge and they're tearing this shit down. 


They don't need Russia or anyone else to help them.  It's an assisted suicide of the American Dream.

P.S.  Just sayin. 

They Don't Sleep Together.
.