Interview with Kamikaze Tea Party Congressman

I was fortunate to schedule some time to interview one of the forty kamikaze Tea Party members who are currently holding the economic future of the United States hostage.  For reasons known only to him, he refused to allow me to reveal his identity.  I have excerpted a few of his responses for sake of brevity:

The actions of you and about forty other members of Congress have placed the economic status of the United States in jeopardy. Why don’t you negotiate with your own party members to deal with this problem?

It isn’t us that refuses to negotiate.  It is Barack Obama.

Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California said, “It’s moronic to shut down the government over this.”  I will repeat my previous question in light of his statement;  Why don’t you negotiate with your own party members to accomplish something worthwhile?

We are accomplishing something worthwhile.

And just what is that?

We are proving that the people of America can act for themselves, government be damned.

Excuse me, but I thought you were a member of Congress.

Yes I am, but I was elected by the people.

Speaking of elections, do you receive political donations money from the Koch brothers?

Next question.   But last time I checked the Koch brothers were citizens of the United States and have the same first amendment rights that all citizens do.

You refuse to answer that?

What part of next question don’t you understand?

Another Republican, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah calls your actions a “stupid dumb-ass thing.”  What is your response to that?

It sounds to me that it was a stupid dumb-ass thing to say.  I can’t imagine an elected official using such terrible language.  And that Hatch is from Utah.  The son of a bitch is dumber than I thought he was.

Why don’t you want to identify yourself for this interview?

Because it doesn’t matter who I am.  I speak for the people.

Why are you doing this to the people of the United States?

Because we can.

Just saying . . .

Blackmail!

Republicans in Congress have their panties bunched up in a wad over the President’s characterization of their current efforts to eliminate the Affordable Health Care Act.  Quite simply put, he called it blackmail. “No Congress before this one has ever, ever, in history been irresponsible enough to threaten default, to threaten an economic shutdown, to suggest America not pay its bills, just to try to blackmail a president into giving them some concessions on issues that have nothing to do with a budget,” Mr. Obama said before an audience in suburban Washington.  The Republican reaction to this statement has been extreme.  I watched Sean Hannity on Fox TV last night as he interviewed Senator Cruz, the first term know-it-all Senator from Texas as he tried lamely to defend his shutdown threats by saying that one or two million Americans are completely behind his actions.  As I watched I found myself wondering if I had accidentally stumbled onto an old SNL skit.  I thought Cruz was going to keep on going to explain that the one or two million people in the state of North Dakota were behind him or the entire population of prison inmates.  I thought he was going to say that 48% of the people in the country voted for Romney for president so he should be president.  But he didn’t.  He made no mention of the fact that the AFHCA passed both house of Congress, was signed by the President and it’s constitutionality was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court; i.e., exactly what our democratic process requires in order to function properly. It is not always easy to find the right words to express oneself.  Even expert writers can spend days getting it just right. There is a translation process going on. The ideas may be crystal clear. Getting the ideas into words so they can be communicated takes work and is far from 100% accurate. The writer may have to express a concept in several different ways before he is satisfied, to work at it to make a point that is clear and understandable.  But these constraints are not necessary here.  The actions of Cruz and his ilk in trying to set aside the democratic process to get their own way are not only damaging to our system, but, in fact, constitute blackmail.

Just saying . . .

A Hypothetical Interview

Question and answer session with Ted Cruz, Senator from Texas about the cutting of food stamps for millions of children who go to bed hungry. 

Q.  Is there any logic to cutting these food stamps?

1. Good question.  I am happy that y0u asked it.  We need that money for other things.  We just committed to buying 70 new F-35s at a cost of 10 million dollars each.  As you surely understand, we must maintain our military might and the definition of that might is the acquisition of military equipment well beyond the need and resources of the military.   Also we remain an income source for farmers.  As an example, we continue to fund farmers and other owners of farms who have been dead for years to the tune of millions of dollars.  We have found that there are hundreds of people throughout the U.S. who receive food stamps illegally and we must be diligent about keeping these  people from stealing taxpayer money.  Also, did I mention that we continue to fund millions of dollars to the families and business partner of farmers who have been dead for years.  Eventually, these poor souls will get around to telling us that their farmer is dead, but until they do we must demonstrate compassion.  

Q.  What kind of money are we talking about?

A.  Another good question.  The Natural Resources Conservation Service, which oversees the            Agriculture Department’s conservation programs, sent out $10.6 million in payments between 2008 and 2012 to more than 1,000 people who had been dead for more than a year, according to the report.

The Risk Management Agency, which administers the crop insurance program, paid $22 million to more than 3,400 policyholders who had been dead for at least two years. The G.A.O. said that some of those payments might have been made while the farmer was still alive, but that there was no way to know for sure.

Also we must keep in mind that the defunding of the sponges in our society receiving food stamps will increase business for doctors and hospitals and the drug industry.  The lack of food will lead to increases in illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure among adults.  In children, the cuts will lead to higher rates of asthma and depression. Diabetes alone will provide income to the health and pharmaceutical industries by nearly $15 billion over the next 10 years. 

Q.  Are you serious?

A.  As you can tell by these statistics, I am deadly serious.

So Many Issues, So Little Time

My head buzzes with things, issues, important issues, that I want to write about;  Routine surveillance of U.S. citizens by our government, Supreme Court decisions that have, in effect, granted immunity from civil liability to the pharmaceutical industry, guns and the pursuit of happiness set forth in the Declaration of Independence, corporations as “people” in the eyes of the Supreme Court, the questionable distinction between bribery and campaign contributions by the right wing branch of SCOTUS, the dismal state of affairs in Detroit, the dismal state of affairs in Detroit public schools, the craziness of Florida’s stand your ground law, my golf game, etc., etc.  The buzzing central issue in these various topics (aside from my incompetent golf game) is the fearful knowledge our government and various factions within our society are wreaking havoc on the very foundation of our society.  Our constitutional rights, using questionable and self-serving pretexts, are being sacrificed in the name of fake government security, entitlements of big business, racial politics and single issue zealots (think NRA and pro-lifers).

When I start to write on a topic, I like to think about the humor element; e.g. there is something inherently funny about an elderly male congressman implying publicly that a pregnancy induced as a result of an act of rape is not, in fact, a rape because the human body prevents it if, in fact, it is an actual rape.  The topic started to become a lot less funny, however, when the pregnancy is viewed as “God’s will.”  What I am trying to say is that my sense of humor about all of these issues is being sorely tested when, for example,  people die daily (28,000 per year in Michigan) from prescription drugs and their families are left without a remedy to redress their grievances (despite the 7th Amendment to our U.S. Constitution which guarantees the right to civil trial by jury). 

The seriousness of these issues is no laughing matter.  

I write today because I know that by sending my various rants to you, I am taking up your time and, in a very real way, imposing my thought processes on you.  I know that some of you disagree with most of what I have to say.  Others are members of the choir, so to speak.  My intent, however, is pure.  It is to get all of us on the same page of at least thinking about these things, these things that matter so much to each of us.

Just saying . . .

Am I Stupid?

As I have oft-mentioned I play golf with a group of guys who are Republicans.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like Republicans.  Talking with them, listening to what they have to say, gives me an opportunity to try to understand how, what, and why they think as they do.  After a round of golf yesterday, I sat and talked with George.   To him, Obamacare is wrong because it interferes with the natural operation of the marketplace.   That was his response after I pointed out that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted thirty seven (maybe thirty eight) times to repeal Obamacare.   It is not the role of government, they say, to interfere with the natural process of things.  Government should stay out of the business of trying to control peoples’ lives because that is socialist thinking that has no place in the democratic process. They vote to repeal Obamacare because it will distort the natural operation of the markets. 

However, Republican thinking says that there are exceptions to this rule.  One exception is that government should involve itself intimately in the private sex lives of women with regard to their pregnancies.  Apparently, because women are too stupid to make decisions involving their own lives, the elderly white male-dominated governments (state and federal, around our country) try to impose invasive, costly and burdensome measures on women who find themselves pregnant at a time in their lives when to continue these pregnancies will cause undue hardship.  I try hard to understand Republican thinking about this, but I am at a loss as to how and why they think on this subject.

Another exception to the rule of “natural selection’ is governmental support to farmers for growing and not growing various crops.  However, this support is by and large limited to Republican-controlled states and fat cat farmers who, even without such support, earn greater than $750,000 per year.  For those Republicans whose major mantra for the past umpteen years has been it is wrong to take taxpayer money and give it to someone else, I found it extremely difficult to understand this giant governmental giveaway to farmers, particularly when the incidence of fraud and corruption in this program is so great.  The total money given to farmers, directly and indirectly, since 1995 approaches four billion dollars!

These are the same guys who will spend 31 billion dollars of our hard-earned money to hire additional federal employees (shrinking the size of the federal government is part of their mantra) to stand side-by-side guarding the Mexican-U.S. border.

Examples like these illustrate why I have so much trouble understanding Republicans?  Am I stupid or what?

Just saying . . . 

Follow the President

The United States has just endured two of its longest and certainly fruitless wars in its history.
 Iraq is moving in the direction of civil war, and when we leave Afghanistan the previous status quo will certainly be restored; schools closed for girls, and a nation under the Taliban and billions of taxpayer dollars wasted. 
 Likewise, there are no good options for success in Syria.  Let McCain, Clinton and Brzezinski spout intervention, but other than their obvious intent to bully Obama or cater to the fundamentalist right wing fringe of the Republican party, their proclamations have no force of power.  Obama's prudent resistance to the undue pressures from this trio should be applauded, not ridiculed or condemned. His reticence is a virtue and a strength,  not a defect or weakness.  President Obama is the president, and we should follow his lead.

Just saying . . .

Another Mid-East War?

 Why should we involve ourselves in the latest Mideast fiasco, an ongoing ‘war’ between Syrian rebels and the government?  Thousands upon thousands of people are dying over there as a decision as to whether the U.S. should intervene is parsed.  Let’s take a quick look at what we know as background information for this decision.  First, in Iraq our involvement in the tricked-up and immoral decision by Bush-Cheney to attack a country on shifting pretexts (weapons of mass destruction, etc) resulted in the deaths of several hundred thousand Iraqis.  I don’t know the exact figure, but approximately 5,000 Americans lost their lives fighting that stupid, illegal and immoral war.  Then we shifted attention to Afghanistan where thousands of Afghans and thousands more of American soldiers have died or suffered permanent paralyzing injuries.   What are the present rewards for these two involvements?  Two countries that still have constant ‘warring’ among various ethnic groups with deadly bombings and suicide bombers being a daily occurrence.  Where is the evidence that a potential Syrian involvement will do anything other than fan the flames of hatred and contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands more souls, including our own soldiers?  The answer is short and simple; there is none.    

Oh wait.  There are some ‘interests’ in the U.S. that would like nothing more than to jump into the Syrian fray; a substantial portion of the industrial-military community.  It is claimed that we need to help these poor people 
(by contracting for and supplying them food, medicines and weapons). 
We need to send weapons to protect our vital interests (in selling more weapons).
 We need to take responsibility for rebuilding the country (so military contractors can make billions).  

But wait another second -- We don’t have enough money for health care, for providing our poverty-stricken and unemployed with food stamps so children don’t go hungry, to repair our disintegrating infrastructure;  we know the drill.  How many lives must we disrupt and destroy because our military-industrial complex has a continuing financial interest in fanning the flames of war in far-off countries while we ignore our own declining country?

Just saying . . .