It seems quite clear that the Democrats lost this election because the Republicans ran a better campaign. On issue after issue, in poll after poll the American people agreed with the Democrats but still voted Republican. That tells you two big things. The Democrats didn’t have the guts to back up their convictions and Americans don’t pay attention. The voters didn’t pay attention to what candidate backed what issue and the candidates, at least the Democratic ones, didn’t pay attention to what the voters cared about.
Mark Udall is the perfect example. He listened to his campaign managers instead of the voters. This is a man with a wide record of pushing the right issues and yet he mentioned none of them except women’s reproductive rights and after a while even the women got tired of hearing this one trick pony. The other problem he had was that his opponent didn’t look or sound like Claude Akins and didn’t say anything dumb like many former Republican candidates. This is because, this time around, the GOP selected it’s candidates more carefully and probably did a little politically correct schooling for them.
What happened was that Udall ultimately bored the women and angered the men, who wanted to hear about other problems like job loss and low wages. The campaign managers for the Democrats were lazy, because instead of studying the public’s wants they just took the 2012’s playbook off the shelf and doubled down on it.
That was just an outmoded strategy.
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Since it was passed into law, the Republican party has been vehemently against the ACA. It has been obvious from the start that this antipathy was caused by their hatred for Obama and it was engendered without any care for what was good for the American people. It was, after all, basically a Romney policy. They tried to dump it fifty times, wasting their all but useless time but also a great deal of money that was being paid them as members of congress.
But now the ACA, Obamacare, has succeeded, yes, beyond the wildest dreams of it creators. Millions of Americans who would not have healthcare today are safe from the disastrous effects of unplanned illness. So why are the Republicans still going after it? Why do regular people still want to get rid of it? Don’t they understand what a good thing it is? And why is it going to the Supreme Court on an issue that is more a clerical error than an important point of law?
There it is, before the Supreme Court, and what we citizens have to worry about is, will the court put its right wing attitude on full display by attacking a clerical error, as an excuse to destroy one of the most important pieces of legislation in our nation’s history. thereby causing millions to lose health care. Or will they do what they’re supposed to do, act like grownups, understand the intent of the law, and make some ruling that allows for the continuance of said law, while requiring adjustments to cover the error they are discussing?
They haven’t shown that kind of intelligence and maturity lately. Let’s hope that despite their prejudices they have matured more than they have shown.
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How to stop the flood of businesses that are moving plants overseas to avoid U.S. taxation or to take advantage of cheap labor.
It’s very simple. All goods that are manufactured overseas must be treated as imports and subject to an import tax. If the company moves its headquarters overseas it should be treated as a foreign companyfor corporate tax purposes. If they build plant overseas to take advantage of lower labor costs than all goods manufactured there and sent back to this country should be considered foreign manufactured goods and be subject to import tax. Sure all the free traders will shout bloody murder but it’s time we balanced our trade and one of the ways is to slow the imports of goods and services manufactured outside of the U.S. and sent here.
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The immigration bill standoff is the most upsetting situation imaginable. The victorious Republicans who all spoke about bipartisan function have already abandoned that stance to push through the Keystone Pipeline. The President after giving the Right over a year to at least vote on the Senate bill has finally seen the handwriting on the wall and realizes that each time he gives them some space the Republicans use it to stall. Let’s hope he moves on the issue with some action that makes the GOP choke on its dinner.
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The President and the President of China have just finished setting up an agreement to cut carbon in the atmosphere. The agreement has no teeth but it is kind of a forerunner of next year’s UN summit on the climate. It’s not binding in any way but it’s a good sign when the two most powerful nations on the planet, the two biggest polluters can actually sit down and talk about the dangers we are creating for the world. It should be a model for our own government.
Of course, even as that is happening, the Right is still trying to put down another pipeline, one that will carry poison to gulf refineries that will be sent to China.
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An interesting discussion on UP recently in which Katherine Mangu-Ward who is the editor in chief of Reason magazine makes one wonder what reasoning, Reason magazine is based on. She thinks that the proliferation of big money in campaigns is good because it promotes more versions of different expression. By what reasoning she arrives at this conclusion is not clear.
Actually, the exact opposite is true. There are really only two messages during any one campaign; the point of view of each side. For every billionaire that spends a couple of million in ads for a candidate it takes thousands of backers of the other candidate, who can’t afford to create these ads to balance that billionaire at the polls. So much for one man one vote. This woman calls herself a Libertarian as do the Rand’s and a number of other political types, all of whom seem to be without any concept of either reality or common sense.
Mangu-Ward also thinks that anonymous speech is a good part of the political dialog. From where? If you haven’t got the guts to stand behind what you say you should keep your mouth shut, mainly because it shows that you don’t believe in what you have to say enough, to put whatever you have on the line for it.
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After the latest beheading on TV, Bibi Netanyahu was on the tube saying that Israel supports us in our battle with ISIS. Hey, wait a minute; he supports us in our fight? This is his fight. It’s a direct result of our support of Israel in their fight with all the Arab nations. We are losing American kids because we believe that Israel should have the right to be what they are, a nation. This column has said this many times before. But this is not our fight. We have no dog in this fight. This is Israel’s fight, this is Saudi Arabia’s fight, this is Turkey’s fight. It is really time that we leave these nations to their own resources.
Then Mitt the Mormon Moron comes on the tube and raves about how we should have armed the Muslim rebels in Syria to prevent ISIS from forming. Can he possibly be so dumb that he doesn’t understand that ISIS is the Muslim rebels in Syria and it is them that we would have been arming if Obama had gone along with what the neocons wanted.
Romney goes on to say that it’s Obama’s fault that we are seeing beheadings on TV because he has told them our strategy of not using troops on the ground. What the Mitt man doesn’t understand is that if we don’t say that we aren’t going to use our kids on the ground to fight another Middle East war then the lazy, cowardly nations that make up most of the Middle East won’t send in their kids, they’ll just let us do all the dirty work, the way they always have.
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They were talking about the ACA on Meet the Press recently. Bobby Jindal who has just about bankrupted the state of Louisiana was trying to talk finances and how the finances of the ACA were wrong. This is a guy who can’t even figure out how to keep his own state solvent. Jindal talks about improving health care delivery in his state. He makes the point that it used to take ten days to get a prescription filled in his state and that now it takes ten minutes.
Yeah Bobby but all the time it was taking ten days in Louisiana it only took ten minutes in the rest of the world. This is not really a big accomplishment. What’s next on your agenda, learning to cross the street? His point seems to be that the big problem with the ACA is that it increases the size of government. I love guys who make their living in government and think that government is bad and should be smaller. Okay Bobby, lets get rid of you first.
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Okay it’s time to look at who’s fighting for the people of this country and who’s fighting for themselves and their rich benefactors. This week Obama came out with an opinion that the Internet should be regulated like a public utility so that the big companies like Comcast couldn’t charge small customers exorbitant fees for the same fast delivery that big companies get for nothing. Ted Cruz called it Obamacare for the Internet and raved about big government regulation. He did that so he could protect his big corporate backers and the hell with the American public, who only pay his governmental weekly paycheck.
Then Obama went to China and worked out the start of a deal for China to join us in cutting back carbon in the stratosphere so that maybe the children of this planet will be able to breathe long enough to have children of their own. The President asked, “Why would anyone be against that?” Who knows, but Republicans certainly were. Mitch McConnell came out ranting that he hoped the President would come to the political center but that it didn’t look like he was. Where does McConnell think the political center is, someplace to the right of Ted Cruz?
Next week Obama will try to get help for over 5 million illegal aliens who have lived here for decades. John Boehner’s response, “we’re gonna fight the President tooth and nail.” McConnell’s, “It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”
What the hell are they fighting against? Why do they think it’s a good thing to attack proposals that are good for the health of the American people? Don’t get me wrong, those reactions are no surprise. They didn’t lie to the country. These have been their stances all along. The question is why? Why are the Republican leaders so dead set to cripple the health of the very people who vote for them?
Sure, I know that attacking carbon is bad for the oil, gas and coal lobbies and we all know that those lobbies are big paychecks for the Republican leadership. Sure we know that the redneck Republican base is dead set against having to fight immigrants for jobs, but this is a nation of immigrants. Immigration has made us a strong, progressive country. Those rednecks are the children of immigrants. Does anyone not see that? Apparently the Republican leadership is trying awfully hard not to. How else can they stay on the money train from the Koch’s and the Appleton’s?
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It’s really fascinating how the Republican Party, the blustering Tea party members in particular, the guys who have screamed and fought for us to be the warmongers who are all for more and more border security, now want to pass a government funding bill that will not fund Homeland Security, will in fact close it down in a couple of months, just because they don’t like Obama moving ahead on the immigration issue, a move that is approved by more than 70% of the American public. It’s obvious that Ted Cruz and his idiotic followers have been smoking too much of the devil weed that they are also trying so hard to keep illegal.