Tag Archives: GOP

No Sir, I Will Not Yield!

Bernie Sanders Confronts GOP Senators Limiting Aid During ...

Bernie Sanders, a man who wants to be president, gave what may be the greatest political speech in his years on the Senate. Perhaps in his life.

It’s wasn’t a Four Score or Ask Not speech. It was more a Screw You speech. It was a blistering condemnation, linked here, of his Republican counterparts, who hesitated on the $2.2 trillion coronavirus aid package because some feared that, by increasing unemployment for four months, some Americans would be tempted to stay home instead.

I highly recommend watching it. It’s less than three  minutes long, but is as powerful an argument for the working class as Mr. Chips ever made in Washington. It’s a prima facie argument for why Sanders should be president.Missed The Nominated Film: Mr. Smith Goes To Washington

And why he cannot.

If Donald Trump has proven anything to Americans (besides how much bronzer a human being can slather on), it’s that the real power in American politics resides in the Senate. Consider: Donny Dimwit would have been impeached and jailed had two GOP senators found a spine and/or conscious.

Bernie has both. He simply is too good to lose from the team.

Think of it in football terms. Bernie makes a great quarterback, more so than Chuck Schumer. He captures the frustration of Democratic Americans in a way that most in southpaw politics can only envy. He’s the blue state Trump, just with a working front lobe.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, has been out of the game for four years. He won’t alter the precarious ledge on which the ruling party in the Senate teeters.

And, let’s face it: A president has no real position on either political team other than mascot, an animated booster who agrees with decisions made on the field. Worse still: The position of president has become that of a high-paid free agent. Again, let’s use the Trumpster: Do you believe he represents the values of the Republican Party? He’s taken the GOP and made it his own cult. Republicans will regret hitching their wagon to a retarded mule, braying at a tree for getting in his way.

Besides, Sanders is so far behind in the delegate count for the nomination, the race may already be over.  He’s already conceded his candidacy is in review. And watching him carve up the Senate — which ultimately sided with him — it’s clear congressional debate floors are his wheelhouse.

Give ’em hell, Bernie!

 

Your Test Results Came Back

 

Well, that round of radiation therapy went pretty well. Turns out that not only is the body an amazing self-righting mechanism, but the body politic is an efficient self-lefting one.

Sure, the GOP picked up seats in the Senate, but that was inevitable. We have gerrymandered ourselves into participation trophies in the most antiquated branch of the U.S. government.

The House, however, typically is more responsive to electorate desires because its members represent neighborhoods, not states. And it would be hard to deny the country’s (and, in the long haul, the planet’s) left-leaning tendencies:

  • The House turned blue (as did its investigatory authority) for the first time in eight years.
  • Women took their seat at the table. As of early Wednesday, 96 women won House races, with 31 women newly elected to the House and 65 female incumbents. That bests the previous record of 85 representatives, according to the Congressional Research Service. And votes are still being counted.Image result for democratic women midterm
  • Colorado Democratic Rep. Jared Polis became elected the nation’s first gay governor.Image result for Jared Polis
  • Democrats Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland will become the first Native American women elected to Congress.Image result for Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland
  • Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party will become the first Muslim women in Congress.Image result for Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar

Of course, none of this will change course for the GOP, which is now more bound than ever to Trump — including his firing today of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. And do we really expect the president not to shut down the government for capricious reasons — now with empowered Democrats in office to blame?

But those are worries for another day. Yes, we still have cancer, and may still succumb if we’re insistent on smoking (a Trump re-election, for instance). Yes, we’ve suffered hair loss and the nausea remains. And we still have to own the fact that we brought this illness on ourselves (with a little help from Donnie’s comrades). We’re not nearly done with our medicinal regimens. We will have wretched recovery moments. Some days, it won’t feel like remission.

But the medical definition of remission is that the cancer has stopped spreading, not that it’s gone. There’s still a fight to be had, punches to be thrown. So let’s go with partial remissions.

And that’s a fine doctor visit.  The beauty of a bad health day is you gain the insight to recognize a good one.

 

 

When the Moon Hits Your Eye

 

What a golden-egged goose Donald Trump has been to late night. In many ways, he is King Midas, imploring Dionysus for the golden touch, only to learn to be careful what you ask for.

And he has asked for a lot — to the delight of the comically-inclined left. A magic wall. Witch-hunt recognition. Media that fawns upon the mighty.

And last month,  Space Force. Trump has been so excited in the sloganeering potential that he seems to get plumper and oranger each time he whips his base into rally froths, like a Jamba Juice on crack. Forget a purpose, let alone a reasoning or development plan; it’s chant-friendly. “Space Force!” is easy to remember and isn’t trademark-infringing (not to mention the fewer letters for your hats, on sale today!).

Comedians had their expected field day with the idea. And who could blame them? Trump’s tweets alone have turned a literal profit for comics: Comedy Central has the 15th most popular book on Amazon with its The Donald J. Trump Presidential Twitter Library hardbound collection of Trump’s furious, grammar-challenged missives.Space Force is just as tantalizing. As a viral video points out, Trump speaks of a sixth branch of the military like he’s auditioning for Shatner Shakespeare in the park.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dj_gEfbysI

It’s a silly idea, yes. It will surely feature all the efficiency of Trump healthcare and all the malice of Trump tax cuts. Is it a stretch to picture him wanting to turn the moon into an investment venture?

Regardless, we should enact Space Force before he gets distracted by something else shiny.

The reason? Any state-mandated scientific research should be welcomed by the left as a rarity on the level of a gay Supreme Court nominee.

Don’t believe it? Look no further than Mike Pence, who has become the ironic poster boy for Space Force. Regardless of your politics, this is indisputable: The second most-powerful man in the free world does not believe in evolution, nor that the Earth is a day older than the Bible deigns. You could nearly see the discomfort in his face as he played dutiful wingman and praised Space Force, a higher power that wasn’t evangelicalism. 

Pence has good reason to be concerned. Science, like life and spam, finds a way. If the GOP opens the Pandora’s Box of scientific research, it will find itself facing some seriously conflicted questions.

The administration has shown its hostility toward science and education in its treatment of global warming, the gutting of the EPA and the paltry funding of groups from NASA to the Center for Disease Control. And now Trump is offering to marry military spending with science research?

The left should recognize the errant gift its been dealt. It’s one thing to wage war over a book. It’s another to get into space with it. Even at its bureaucratic worst, a cosmology-based government branch would pose something truly terrifying to the right: empirical science. What Republican wants to be the politician who officially tells Christian conservatives that the Earth is billions of years old, not thousands?

All aboard the U.S.S. Midas!