Panic in the GOP

Mitch McConnell appeared before the cameras recently and stated that the Republicans wouldn’t come up with a bill on keeping the government open until he knew what the President wanted to sign. Did he mean that the GOP, which is in charge of the entire government, really doesn’t know what the President wants in a bill they have been talking about non-stop for months? Did that mean that Mitch is stupid or just too lazy to find out— or both? What it really means is, Mitch is full of crap because anyone who has been watching this President for any amount of time knows he will sign anything if you give him a pen and sit him in front of a camera.

Trump doesn’t know or care what’s in any of the papers put in front of him. All he wants is a signed bill to go on his side of the score sheet; just something to brag about when he invents all the good stuff his twisted mind thinks he’s done. So despite the fantasies of various GOP leaders, lets grab hold of reality with both hands and understand that the GOP is in charge of everything in this failing government and everything that goes wrong is definitely their fault.

There is one enormously important fact that the media has been overlooking and that the Democratic Party appears to be too incompetent take advantage of. It is that since the end of the first two years of Barak Obama’s Presidency, the Republicans have been in charge of congress. That meant after those two years, nothing got done. That is still true. During those first two years, we got National healthcare and legislation that helped save the nation’s manufacturing base from the destruction of the Bush economic policies that crashed the economy in the worst depression since 1929. Nothing except the election of a demented sociopath has changed since 2008, which is why, for the last 8 years the GOP has buried us in incompetence. We have a chance to change that in 2018. We will still be suffering for the bad decisions we made in 2016 but at least we have a shot at wresting power away from the blundering stupidity of the Trump administration ad the GOP.

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So the government shut down and it became evident that everyone was very good at blaming the other guy. I watched as pundits and lobbyists for different positions came on the tube and lied like a Trump to make their points. One thing seems very clear; our President is not in charge of his own ability to make a decision. He changes his mind with even more frequency than he lies. Seeing as he is supposed to be the dealmaker in charge, this creates an impossible situation.

So let’s ignore all the bullshit and try to get a grip on the reality of what is going on. The Republican’s biggest gripe is that the Democrats have injected the DACA problem into the process of keeping the government open. On its face this is true but the problem has come to the fore and demanded settlement only because Trump crashed the DACA legislation last month and now those young people are at risk.

If Trump hadn’t made that unmitigatedly stupid move there would be no urgency to deal with DACA. All we would have to consider is funding for the government. But as usual, Trump did something about something he didn’t understand and about which he was too lazy to find out and the result is the government now has to fix the Trump created problem of 800,000 American’s who are working and paying taxes that help their adopted nation function but are still in danger of being kicked out.

I watched in dismay as Mark Meadows, Chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a nice name for the Senatorial bigots and right wing extremists, tried to explain what’s wrong with chain migration and the lottery. Up until I heard Meadows speak I figured that there were problems with both and that maybe we should be looking to change both significantly. After hearing Meadows speak against both, it becomes obvious that while we should possibly look into adjusting them, the GOP is gearing up to eliminate all legal immigration, not to fix what we have. Why would they do that? Why, when it’s so obvious that this nation, like all aging nations, desperately needs immigration, would they want to cut it off? You look at all the possible answers and you can only come up with one, impossible conclusion. Racism! Sure, it sounds absurd to me too but just step back and look at what’s going on.

First there is no logical argument against continuing immigration. This is a country built on immigration, which now suffers from a shrinking birth rate. We need young people coming to these shores to work, to procreate, to pay taxes. Immigrants are an economic and, very possibly, a social necessity. They bring not only a work force, but social diversity necessary to keep this country from turning into old staid Europe.

But directly from the mouth of the President comes the desire of the Right to have that migration be white. So right from the git-go we have established a bigoted, racist ethic to guide our immigration policy and one that will never work anyway. Trump wants lots of Norwegians coming to the US. They’re nice people but they just don’t come here in any significant numbers. Why? Well in the first place people don’t immigrate down. They look to immigrate to a place that is better for them and their family. So why would anyone from northern Europe want to immigrate to the US? They all have better healthcare, better education possibilities, just as much social justice, better social programs and most have just as good job opportunities. That’s not a formula for immigration. Like my grandparents, people still immigrate here because they are starving where they came from or because they are persecuted. Right now that means, Africa, parts of the Middle East, Central and South America, India or Pakistan; places like that. The only reason why a Brit or an Australian comes here is because they already speak the language and they want to become a movie star.

As far as chain migration goes; the wish to bring ones family to live with one is a natural human desire. Our immigration people should not thwart it! The moronic Meadows was quick to point out that a single recent terrorist incident was penetrated by an individual that came here through that process. Yes, one in how many hundred thousand? That’s not a scientific example, that’s a sociopathic one. Meadows needs to be committed. Maybe we would be better off adjusting our immigration system from lottery to skill based but I think there would always have to be allowances for other situations. That’s just the way a sane world works.

So it turns out that immigration, despite the fact that he has come out on both side of the question, isn’t really what drives our nutcase President. What floats his boat is really “The Wall.” This irrational egomaniac is driven to build a useless eyesore that will accomplish nothing and cost a fortune. His mindless lies about Mexico paying for it have, long ago, been relegated to the trashcan of his penchant for lying about everything and anything.

So when Chuck Schumer agreed to give Trump the $20 billion to finance The Wall over seven years, Trump agreed to back the DACA proposal and to dump the other immigration proposals and keep the government working. That’s the deal that Schumer walked out of the White House with. Then two hours later after the vampires like Miller, Cotton and Goodlatte got his ear, and because he doesn’t really have a grasp on what he wants or how to make it work, the President, who only listens to the last man in the room, changed his mind and called it all off. Of course that’s when he had to accuse Schumer and the Democrats of closing down the government. He couldn’t admit that he didn’t know his own loosely constructed mind.

So here we sit. Mitch McConnell and the GOP want only the immigration laws that will keep America white and Republican. Trump wants only his useless wall, and the Democrats want only protection for the Dreamers and to pass the CHIP legislation protecting child health. No one, it seems, really gives a shit about keeping he government open and keeping the paychecks flowing to those poor slobs that work for our country.

It’s interesting to note that none of those poor slobs that are currently getting stiffed are in Congress. The clowns responsible for allowing the government to shut down still got paid. That’s the first thing that should change, but the last thing that will ever happen. But all you people out there have no complaint. You elected them!

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So the government shut down again and quickly reopened. So whose fault was that? Well, if you listen to the Democrats it’s the Republicans and if you listen to the GOP and the President it’s the Democrats. So normally it would come down to whom you believe and considering how truthful Trump, McConnell and Ryan have been up to this point, the answer should be obvious. But there’s even more to it. Schumer had a deal with Trump on Friday but after he left, Trump’s staff pushed him off his position and the deal collapsed. How come? Maybe because the President can’t be bothered to study what he’s negotiating about and leaves the details to Steve Miller, a far Right bigot who is the very worst example of the fascist branch of Trumpism.

The real problem, the serious problem, is that the Republicans don’t want to have to deal over many of the disputed issues so they are just yelling “foul” and taking a pass on all negotiation. The place to look for this is in the pile of bills that are sitting on McConnell’s desk that have never been introduced to the floor to be voted on. There are bills dealing individually with almost all of the issues that are being negotiated with the budget. There is a bill to insure that the military gets paid even if there is a government shut down. There is a bill guaranteeing the continuance of childcare. There is a bill dealing with DACA. There is a huge pile of these kinds of bills buried under McConnell’s lunch bag when they should all be debated on the floor. And none of them ever will be, because none of them are things that the Right wants to see in law and none of them are things, the failure of which, the Right wants t be blamed for. That’s why the bill that actually looks like it will be signed to continue financing the government says nothing about DACA or immigration in any form.

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This time the Republican’s have really screwed the pooch. Wisconsin’s Senatorial jackass, Ron Johnson was all over the tube this week proclaiming the existence of secret Left Wing societies within the FBI; cabals that were banding together to get the President. He was aided and abetted in this nonsense by Trey Gowdy the same clown who has already lost all credibility with his unproved and untrue accusations against Hillary Clinton in the Benghazi affair. First Johnson was on the tube angrily denouncing the FBI as a hotbed of Leftist conspiracy against the White House and then attacking Robert Mueller as a former head of the FBI who Johnson blabbers is now involved in another conspiracy against the President. He was immediately backed up by that unassailable source of truth and integrity, Gowdy.

Johnson claimed that he had an informant that was telling them about these secret societies, which were engaging in clandestine meetings, the goal of which was to undercut the President. But it didn’t take long to get Johnson back on the tube walking back most of what he had said earlier. Those hard sources that had been reporting to him didn’t really exist or were laughable. His own personal knowledge of what he had claimed earlier was non-existent or obtained from some nebulous rumors. He wasn’t taking anything back because like our truth challenged President he wasn’t intellectually up to that, but the reality was that he didn’t know diddley-squat and was just running his fetid mouth.

The fact is, anyone with any knowledge of the history or makeup of the FBI is, very much aware that the Bureau has always been strongly connservative not liberal. It has, since the McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover eras, been favored by the Right and not the Left and recruits traditionally from more conservative sources like Catholic Colleges. That they would suddenly make a 180-degree turn is highly unlikely and only two men as intellectually challenged, as Johnson and Gowdy would be unaware of that.

One would have thought the actions taken during the election by the FBI and James Comey regarding the investigations of Hillary’s emails, and the timing of Comey’s announcements would put the lie to all these accusations.

This whole noise is a setup to distract from Mueller’s investigation of the White House on the grounds of complicity with Russia and Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice in that investigation. To achieve their dubious ends, many in the GOP have been complicit in this phony and baseless attack on the Bureau. The only things one has to know to keep this entire attack in perspective are that none of these claims has any truth, any veracity or any basis in fact. They are all inventions of various GOP shills, created for he sole purpose of distracting attention from the Mueller investigation into Russian intervention in our elections and even more to the point Trump’s complicity with the Russians and his blatantly obvious obstruction of justice.

All one has to do to understand he final act of this drama is to obseve Trump’s lawyers kneeling in circles, sharpening heir ceremonial swords in preparation for the mass suicide that will occur as Mueller swoops down on the Trump administration.