Bits & Pieces #67

The President has submitted a budget that will get no votes from a Republican congress. They accuse him of playing to the progressive agenda and they are right. Of course the progressive agenda is the best one for the country and if the Republicans listened to their own voters they would realize this. Trump and Sanders aren’t leading in their respective primary races because people want a conservative agenda.

The conservatives want the billionaire agenda and don’t give a damn about regular people. Paul Ryan whines that the new budget will add to the deficit but what he doesn’t tell you, is we will just be adding back what Obama has subtracted since he took over from Bush.

The budget addresses badly needed infrastructure. Rebuilding that will add the kinds of jobs that the new electronic industries aren’t providing. Will taxes have to rise to help provide this? Sure, but the rich have been benefitting from paying almost no taxes for years. It’s about time they contributed something to the country that has made them rich.

The fact is, this budget is based on a model that both Republicans and Democrats already agreed upon. Spending rises, dollar for dollar, on defense and entitlements. Now, as usual, the Right pulls out.

With oil prices so low, Obama wants to impose a ten- dollar per barrel tax on foreign oil. This would raise gas prices about 18 cents a gallon, not very much when you consider that the price of gas is now under $2 per gallon and had been almost $5 when Obama took office. That tax would go to fix roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects that have to do with transportation. With oil prices so low it’s a great idea.

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Heard the greatest description of Trump followers the other night. It came from Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant, who labeled this group, “a bunch of single, childless, white males who masturbate to anime.”

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Watched a discussion worthy of Fox News today but it was on MSNBC. Of course it was on Morning Joe, which actually belongs on Fox News. They were engaged in what they thought was a serious discussion of Ted Cruz eligibility to be president. Cruz’s problem isn’t that he’s a Canadian, it’s that he’s a snake. The fact is, he should have renounced his Canadian citizenship years ago, when he first thought about running for congress. But being a snake, Cruz never wanted to pass on any opportunity to bite someone. So, should the USA somehow fall into disrepair, he’d be able to move to Canada and run for office up there.

The reality is, it’s farcical that Cruz should be involved in something like this when one considers that the Right has been beating the drum of Obama’s birth since they first heard his foreign sounding name. The pigeons really do come home to roost… and shit on the heads of everyone they left behind.

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Al Jazerra, Huffington Post and the New Republic have all had setbacks lately. These are all left leaning print media. This has allowed the Right, to rise up in triumph, proclaiming that liberal sentiments have no place in the American media, pointing out how successful right wing radio is. Really? All this really says is that the Right Wing consumer can’t read and needs his news brought to him by the spoken word.

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We all know that Trump is a blowhard and a clown but when Cruz attacks him for his New York values he is making a huge mistake. I know it will surprise Cruz but Trump isn’t popular in NYC. We have been living with his noise and bullying for too long to want any part of him. But yes, he does have NY values and they are what have made him successful. Let’s face it; New York is to the United States, what the United States is to the rest of the world. Immigrants come to the U.S. for a new and better life just like people from around the country come to New York for success and acclaim. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere, is more than a song lyric, it’s the anthem of Manhattan. And it’s true. If you’re smart, entrepreneurial and hardworking, New York is where you want to be. That’s New York values. Shit kickers can’t make it here. So they settle for wherever they have parked their double-wide.

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After watching the Republican and Democratic debates there is one inarguable fact that cannot be denied. The Democrats differences on issues are mostly about variations of the same theme. The Republicans have differences on the concept of truth and spend their time on personal insults and character assassination.

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Watched a fairly long interview between Trump and George Stephanopoulos and was not surprised by anything. Trump is now in full-blown, bully mode against Cruz who has dared to stand up to him. The beauty of these things is that they both look awful. Trump has nothing to say about the various Iran negotiations and results, mainly because they fly in the face of everything he has previously said about Obama and his team who look intelligent, prescient, tremendously functional and presidential, all of which Trump said they weren’t. This deal was made, not by pushing people around or bribing them, which is Trump’s style but by careful, thoughtful negotiation, which , it turns out, is Obama & Kerry’s style.

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Just watched Marco Rubio spend an interview being 100% wrong about everything he said. First we watched a segment where he attacked Cruz for changing his POV on various subjects, but when asked about changes he had made in his POV, his answer was that people change their positions as they learn new facts. Okay Marco, but doesn’t Cruz get that same right. Then he accused Cruz of being for helping people who were here illegally. But Marco had the same position himself. Before his handlers decided that there were more votes on the far right than in the middle.

He was asked if he thought the American sailors who were taken prisoner would be home if it wasn’t for the Iran nuclear deal. His answer was that he thought they should never have been taken prisoners. Gee, Marco, really? But they were prisoners and someone had to do something about that. So what would you have done about it that Obama didn’t do successfully? Well, it turns out that he complains about Obama trading them for Iranians who violated sanctions and he’s not happy about that. Sanction violators! Really? Marco is just a petulant child who hates everything everybody else accomplished and expects everyone to understand his juvenile inability to get what’s going on in the world around him

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One of the reasons the congress is so ineffectual is the kind of appointments they make. This is illustrated by that of recent Tea Party stalwart and national embarrassment Sylvia Allen of Arizona, who was appointed to the Senate Education Committee despite the fact that she has come out for mandatory church attendance. Maybe she should start by educating her own son, an Arizona detention officer who is accused of molesting female inmates. Why do so many national embarrassments come from Arizona?

Allen is also infamous for racist remarks and her brilliant theory that the earth is 6,000 years old. Despite this she has been named to lead a committee that acts as gatekeeper for education related legislation! This hack has pushed for uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, backed state funding for a militia run by neo-Nazi, J.T. Ready, to guard the Mexican border and opposed Medicare expansion. This nutcase has done and said enough psychotic stuff to get her committed in a sane state, but in Arizona, home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a staunch Trump supporter, she is a foirce to be reckoned with.

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 Let’s face it, Trump’s constituency is made up of the largest group of losers ever accumulated behind any cause in the history of the nation. These are the fools who voted in the Tea Party hacks who have been clogging the drains of the House for the last six years. They are more interested in stopping Obama and getting their own small desires fulfilled than in governing the nation. Now, realizing that the turkeys they voted into office have betrayed them and have not helped them reach the petty goals they had set, these voters are putting all their eggs into another rotten basket and seeming to think that they will get cheese omelets instead of rotten eggs.

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Anyone who reads this column knows that I am no friend of organized religion. So it may come as a surprise to some that the curmudgeon is coming out in support of Pope Francis and his comments about Donald Trump’s behavior in regard to the Wall across Mexico. It has always been a stupid and wasteful idea but that’s not the point.

The point is that despite the pundits led by Morning Joe Scarborough and his gaggle of witless sycophants, Francis had every right and even an obligation to attack what he considered morally wrong. That’s what Popes are for. Most of my readers are far too young to remember it, but during and immediately after WWII Pope Pius XII was roundly criticized for not coming out against Adolph Hitler for his treatment of the Jews. That was his job as Pope; to protect the innocent, but Pius didn’t do that. The excuse was that he held his peace so that he could maneuver behind the scenes to rescue those same Jews. Maybe that’s true, maybe not. Maybe he was just trying to keep Hitler out of Vatican City. Many, this blog included, felt that he should have excommunicated Hitler and any Germans that followed him. Unfortunately he never had the stones.

Francis does, and it seems that he will continue to comment on immoral and inhuman behavior wherever he finds it. If Adolph Trump wants to act like a Nazi toward Mexican immigrants or Muslim refugees the Pope should be applauded for displaying the moral leadership, for which the Cardinals elected him.

This column still stands firmly against organized religion but if we’re forced to put up with it, then it’s better that it spends its time standing up for the moral good, than in creating terrorists or abusing kids.

Trump’s desires in these areas are fascist and immoral. They oppose everything this country stands for. Despite Trump’s failure to see it, we are already a great country because the majority of our citizens, those who have not fallen for Trump’s crap, understand our responsibility to those around us, especially those less fortunate. We are a great country because we understand, as a group, the importance of loving our neighbors as opposed to that golden minority, who like Trump, think only of themselves and are willing to let their fellow citizens drown in a tidal wave of greed.

Trump, like the Koch’s, is a rich kid who managed to drag himself up from the paltry millions his old man bestowed on him to be a success in the business, in which, his old man set him up. It was a tough fight, way more difficult to hear him tell it, than those of pathetic immigrants, who only have to walk a few miles to work, to support their starving kids.

So go Pope! Bury this punk.