Republican Anarchists

When you get right down to the core beliefs of the Tea Party and Ron Paul, and even Rush/Glenn/Sean, the essential element is not just anti government but anti social.

They are the evolved "Off the grid" people. They hate the idea the idea no man is an island. They hate the idea anything has been given to them. They insist they are completely self made, sprung forth in adult form having never had any nurturing from a greater society.

Maybe they had trouble with their mothers.

Sartre said, "L'enver est les autres,"--Hell, is other people. And Rand and Ron Paul, Sarah Palin, Rush/Glenn/Sean, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, the whole lot of them, much as they may deny it, really do, on some level, believe this. They are the acolytes of that lyric, "The Lord above made man to help his neighbors, no matter where on land or sea or foam, but, with a little bit o' luck, when he comes around, you won't be home."

They are not at all worried about one percent of the nation's people owning 70% of the entire wealth of the nation. Those rich owners, after all, deserve their success. They earned it. They played the game by the rules and got rich, because they were brave enough to take risks and smart enough to see opportunities and nimble enough to act. And those other 80%, well, they just haven't worked hard enough. Those non owners are undeserving, just like all those free loading types who depend on Medicare and Social Security and other government hand outs.

You can hear these deep thoughts expressed as they ride down the roads built by government (of course, those roads could have been built better by private companies) in their tax deductible company Mercedes, on their way to their offices at the oil company, or the towers they inherited from their fathers.

Their saint is Ronald Reagan, who thought the only legitimate business of government is the national defense, and while he busily tripled our national deficit with his trickle down economics, he sowed the seeds of out sourcing much of the national defense to McDonald's and Halburton, in the great tradition of war profit erring dating back to at least the Civil War.

So Donald Trump worked hard for all he got, and so did all the other rich.

And why should we build roads for the undeserving public, or run an air traffic control system for the paying but ungrateful public, or have a Coast Guard to rescue idiotic fishermen who do not work for conglomerates but own their own boats and really do live by the work of their own hands, or pay for health care for the elderly--what do we need elderly for anyway?

And really, what about veterans? I mean if they were more industrious, those former soldiers, sailors and airmen could have been working for big companies, but no, it was "Join the Army if you fail," and they got blown to pieces, so they deserve it. Why should I be taxed to help those losers?

Why should we help anybody who won't pay us to help them?

What do we need a government for, anyway?

All we need is our family, our church and our chosen friends (at the country club.)

As Sonny Corleone said in one of those Godfather films: "Why would you want to fight for strangers?"

That's what we Republicans believe: There's just us and everyone else is a stranger.

When you think about it, it really is unfathomable, this idea of patriotism, of sacrificing yourself, or more difficult, your children for an idea--the idea of country. And none of these Republicans really like other people. They hold most other people in contempt.

Contempt. That's what is dripping from the lips of Rush Limbaugh every day. Contempt for his fellow citizens. And contempt is really just one form of hate.

Sad to say, Republicans have become the party of hate. Comp tempt and hate.

President Obama doesn't want to admit this to himself. He wants to think we have decent human beings in the opposition party with whom you can reason.

He is wrong.

How long would the Republican party, any of them, Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Mitch McConnell last in a British parliamentary system, where they had to answer questions, debate in a back and forth. What the Republicans depend upon is being able to rant and rave uninterrupted with nobody questioning their premises. That's Rush in a nutshell--nobody is allowed to question him.

Because if you start asking them questions, if you start challenging them--e.g., well you say we must live within our means; then why not improve our means with taxes?--when you do that, they are exposed for the frauds they are. And they cannot take that chance.

Republicans are not about all of us. They are about only some of us.

That's where the Republicans would take us: Back to the 13th century and a world of tribalism.

The Guinta and Ayotte Show: Let Them Eat Cake

Congressman Guinta, representing the First District of New Hampshire got out of Washington yesterday. So did Senator Ayotte.

They left town without voting money to fund the FAA, and that means the Federal Treasury is losing more every three days than it would take to fund the FAA for an entire year.

Their failure to vote FAA funding will cost, literally, billions, before September. The airlines, bless them, will pocket the cash, which, given the hard times the airlines have add, may not be such a bad thing, but if you are worried about the federal budget or the deficit or the jobs of all those construction workers who would have ha d work building control towers and what not, you would want to do your job and vote for the FAA funding.

But for Mr. Guinta and Ms. Ayotte, well, they get paid whether or not they do their jobs.

Or maybe they just refuse to vote for any bill which has taxes (even airplane ticket taxes) in it, even if that tax not being collected simply means the money goes into a different account (the airline companies' account) but it certainly does not save the individual flier or the greater public on cent.

So have a nice summer, Mr. Guinta and Ms. Ayotte. We'll look forward to reading your how I spent my summer essay in September.

Republicans: The Big Scare

Looking at Frank Guinta, I have this creepy feeling he reminds me of someone, and then the black and white photos from the early 1950's crystallize and I realize it's Tailgunner Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who scared all those nice Midwestern ladies in their print dresses and their bow tie wearing husbands right out of their wits, talking about the horrible disaster percolating up from right inside our own country, the creeping menace which would steal our children's prosperity and freedom if we didn't purge the nation of all the bad actors, RIGHT NOW.

McCarthy was the master of the bogey man. He saw Communists and subversives everywhere he looked.

Our very own Congressman Frank Guinta is McCarthy's spiritual grandson, and his fraternal twin, Kelly Ayotte.

They warn of that looming disaster, that approaching tsunami which will crush us all and will sweep away everything we've worked for since this great nation was founded, doncha know.

And what is that horror, sweeping our way? THE DEFICIT.

And all the little spawn of the deficit, taxes, out of control spending, all the work of BIG GOVERNMENT, which spends and spends our money and money we haven't even made yet.

This made Senator Ayotte vote against the recent budget bill, because it hadn't cut enough--it left Medicare on life support, and she wanted to pull the plug RIGHT NOW, and expressed dread at the idea of leaving that decision until another day, because as she pointed out, if you put things off in Washington, they often don't get done.

And Medicare is one of those things Senator Ayotte wants to kill right away. Of course, she says she loves Medicare and only wants to save it. She wants to save it the way those American generals wanted to save Vietnamese villages, which, as they said, you had to destroy to save. She wants Medicare to become Couponcare. That'll save it.

As for Congressman Guinta, he has made a big show of rejecting his own Congressional healthcare package, which is very brave and unselfish of him, setting such a good example for the rest of us and for our parents, who he wants to be just as brave as he is, giving up a great health insurance program for the program of Congressman Guinta's wife.

The really cool thing is how very deeply Mr. Guinta and Ms. Ayotte feel about not spending money we don't have.

Of course, we don't have the money because the twins Frank and Kelly will not allow us to tax their rich friends who write the checks for their campaigns--you got to give it to Republicans, you right them a check and you can count on them to vote your way. Frank and Kelly will not allow President Obama or any of those tax and spend Democrats to tax corporate jet owners or the owners of three and four homes or people who make a billion dollars because that would be WRONG.

It would be wrong because: A/ It's not fair to ask people who earned their money fair and square to give some of it to the undeserving middle class slackers B/ If we get those rich people who own things like companies angry they won't spend their money and the economy will suffer and worse yet, they won't hire anyone to work in their factories, which of course they haven't done for years because all their factories are now in China.

So we are spending money we don't have because Frank and Kelly won't let us have any money, if that means TAXES.

There, I said the word. Can't say it in polite company in New Hampshire. It's "balance," or "revenue enhancement." Heaven forbid we have TAXES in New Hampshire--the state where people pay fewer taxes than any other state than Idaho and Montana, and because of this we are able to attract lots of rich people to live here among us and pay no taxes. And having those rich people right next door helps all of us, somehow, I forget how exactly.

Certainly doesn't help us pay for our schools, so our kids can go anywhere in the country or world after they graduate. Doesn't pay for paving the roads or for healthcare in the state having all these rich people who will pull up stakes the moment we mention TAXES.

We are spending more than we have in New Hampshire for the same reason we are spending more than we have in Washington--because we choose, or rather the Tea Party and the Republican Party and Frank and Kelly choose for us to not have more money, that is, taxes to support all the things BIG GOVERNMENT wants to do--like sending kids to college, sending veterans to college, taking care of wounded veterans, sending the Coast Guard out to rescue our kids off shore, paving roads, fixing bridges, creating little innovative things like the internet, paying for medical care for our parents (so they don't go broke paying medical bills and move in with us), defending us against the next homicidal terrorist, (and finally finding Osama), providing a safety net (Social Security) for us when we get old, keeping airplanes from flying into each other.

Oh, and while we're talking about money we don't have: The Republicans, Frank and Kelly, went on vacation and refused to vote money for the FAA so the federal government loses more in a week in FAA airplane ticket taxes than it would cost to fund the FAA for a year, and in the process puts constructions worker all around the country out of work, because, don't you know, the FAA is GOVERNMENT, BIG GOVERNMENT.

So what Frank and Kelly got us was no BIG GOVERNMENT. In its place they gave us BAD GOVERNMENT.

Farewell, Democrats

Writing in the Sunday New York Times (7/31/11), Stanley Greenberg, a pollster, noted "There is popular support for the policies of the Democratic Party, but little trust in its ability to execute them."

This brings to mind a conversation I had with a patient the other day, a man who is a roofer, who has a health insurance policy which costs him $100 a month and it has a $6,000 deductible. He had resisted getting some lab work I wanted because his prior lab bill was $490, all of which he had to pay. And this guy is a roofer; that was big money to him.

I asked if he was going to benefit from the recent health care legislation the Democrats had passed.

He said, without hesitation, "No. I will probably be even worse."

I cannot say for sure, but I'd be surprised if he had read through that massive law, all 2,000 pages. I know I haven't. But his prejudice was no law borne of government would help him.

Had I pressed him, I suspect he would have said what I hear all the time in New Hampshire: Government is good for nothing. Nothing good comes out of the government. Government is not the solution; it is the problem.

When you press people about, well what about Medicare, Social Security, the roads, the bridges, the internet, the armed forces, the air traffic control system, the FBI, the CIA, the fire fighters, the police, the rescue squad, the public school system, they have complaints about all of them.

If they have been steady listeners to Rush and Glenn and Sean, they will tell you all these things would be better run and would work if only they were private companies.

Personally, I don't buy that sentiment. I think government is for what we cannot do better for ourselves and what is done worse if there is a profit motive driving it--like health care.

People will tell you if government ran the healthcare system, you'd have doctors and nurses sitting around, unwilling to see patients because they get paid whether or not they see patients, so they fight adding patients to their schedules and the waiting lists grow into year long affairs and nothing happens. If you want customer service, you need the fire in the belly only private enterprise gets you.

But consider this: Somewhere in the range of 88% of all practicing physicians in the USA have become employees. This is a slippery number but it sure fits with what I've seen. Doctors are voting with their feet in a huge stampede away from hanging up a shingle and doing private practice and they are looking for a W-2 form, not a series of 1099's.

Ask them why and they'll tell you they are sick to death of thinking about money all the time, about money before patient care. They may have hustlted to get out to see that patient in the waiting room a bit faster when they first started practice, but once they got established, got busy, they were running away from patients, the old incentive of an extra few bucks for an extra few patients disappeared.

As for private insurance, ask any 50 year old whether or not he'd rather have Medicare or Aetna or Blue Cross, and you'll see a flood of people who would prefer the government poison to the private sector poison any day.

But, have the Democrats managed to sell this proposition?: "The problem is not government; the problem is not even Big Government; the problem is bad governement. And bad government, or no government (in the case of the Tea Party) is what Republicans are all about."

Nope.

President Obama accepted a budget without forcing the Republicans to cave on taxing the rich, closing loop holes for corporate jets, for second and third homes, for yachts and for corporate luxury boxes at stadiums

Paul Ryan handed Obama and the Democrats a loaded gun with which they could have blown away the Republican bandits. They passed a law which would have killed Medicare and put in its place Coupon Care.

And what did the Democrats do? I can't remember. All I can remember is seeing Harry Reid, with that whispery little voice of his and that stooped shoulder Casper Milquetoast look, saying the Republicans are not playing nice.

That is the really disturbing part of this. The world will always have bullies and people who try to suck in every bit of wealth and largess they can-- the rest of the world be damned. The disgusting part is when the champions of the people just let these Orwellian pigs win.

If you have a dragon, you need a knight to slay it.

Clearly, sadly, Obama ain't that.

Hope is Not Enough

In our hallway is suspended that iconic poster of Obama and the word "Hope."

I may have to take it down.

I love the man, his intelligence, his sympathies, his willingness to suffer for his people, but I'm not sure he ought to be President.

Here is the perfect oppurtunity handed an incumbent Democratic president: The Republican party, in control of the House of Representatives finally unmasks itself, refusing to lower taxes for corporate jets, second and third vacation homes, refuses to raise taxes on millionaires, refuses to even talk about raising taxes on anything the rich enjoy, and the President quietly, patiently walks into meeting rooms and tries to reason with them.

Well, what else do I expect him to do?

He should be on television every day, on the radio, on talk shows, out in the country at huge rallies and small towns, with pie charts and with soaring rhetoric, with allies like the suddenly absent Barney Frank, and he should be pilloring the Republicans by individual names and by party name.

All barrels should be blazing.

And not just about budget negotiations, but about Elizabeth Warren. The one thing that came out of the financial crisis was a law which might have punished and frightened the bankers into good behaviour and Obama found a sharp tongued chamion who could have lacerated those fat cats Republican bankers and all those who sail with them, but when he faces opposition, does he react with fury? Does he take to the airwaves or to the town halls to champion his ally? No, he wilts and accomodates.

Qui Tacet Consentit. He who remains silent consents.

He looks only a shade warmer than that Casper Milquetoast who for some reason known only to God and to the Democratic senators is the "leader" of the Senate, Harry Reid. Neither of these Democrats show any sign of having hot blood in their arteries, not even warm blood. They are stooped, weak voiced, old in spirit and simply not leaders.

With such leaders, the Republican rich have nothing to fear. They cannot lose.

And perhaps, that is as it should be. The strong take all the meat and the runt of the litter simply starves and withers.

Call it Darwinism.

Call it politics.

But politics is a blood sport and Democrats need a leader.

What we've got is a kind old uncle who should have retired a few years ago.

GUINTA VOTES TO KILL MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY

Frank Guinta, of New Hampshire, voted with fellow House of Representatives Republicans to kill Medicare and Social Security, a bill called Cut Cap Balance. As Chris Hollen, Representative of Maryland, explained, what the Republicans say they have done is to pass a law to cut the deficit and to lock this into the Constitution with a balanced budget amendment, all of which sounds lovely, but what they have actually done, when you look at the actual details, where the devil so often lies, is to fix the level of spending on Medicare and Social Security to a percentage of the budget which is below anything these programs have ever cost since their inception.

So what they really did was to vote to kill these programs under the guise of "reforming" the budget process.

Even the Republicans are smart enough to know the people love Medicare and Social Security, so the Republicans are afraid to say, "We are killing Medicare and Social Security," they simply slip through a law which cuts the funding so drastically it has the effect of eliminating (defunding) the programs.

When Paul Ryan was foolish enough to speak plainly and say he wanted to convert Medicare to Coupon care, to a voucher program for an annual payment of $6000 which would cover about the first 5 minutes of your ordinary bypass surgery, the Republicans were inundated with phone calls from angry constituents and they ran for cover.

Now, they've figured out a way to kill the program by strangling off its oxygen--money, and call it a reform.

Oh, we have to do this, the Republicans say, because of this horrible deficit, a deficit which will bring the government down.

But when the Democrats say, "Well, if it's the deficit you're worried about why not just tax millionaires, raise their taxes back to where they were before the Bush tax cuts?" The Republicans look over their shoulders at the Tea Party and they say, "Oh, we can't do that. We cannot raise anyone's taxes."

Now they are talking about "Revenue Enhancements," which is what, exactly?

Are "Revenue Enhancements" not taxes?

Do the Republicans really think they are fooling anyone?

They cannot even bring themselves to say the word, "Taxes."

That's how sick they are.

But, fortunately, they can rely on the citizens of New Hampshire. When I did an informal survey in my own office, right here in New Hampshire, not a single one of my coworkers knew who John Boehner, Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan were. Only one had ever heard tell of the deficit. "Which deficit?" one asked.

Our citizens are out of touch, disconnected, uninterested, apathetic.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty one of our founding fathers said.

Even temporary vigilance is nowhere to be seen in New Hampshire.

Should we really be the voters choosing our next President in the first primary in the nation?

Sex, Lies and The American Way of War

     "Doesn't matter who did what to who, at this point.  Fact is, we went to war.  And now, there ain't no going back.  I mean, shit, that's what war is, you know?  Once you in it, you in it.
        If it's a lie, then we fight on that lie. But we got to fight."
                                    --Slim Charles, The Wire


Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was considered a relative liberal, for his time. He had impeccable credentials of manhood, having fought with distinction in the Civil War, wounded a Ball's Bluff, just upriver from Washington, DC, where Holmes would ultimately reign over the Supreme Court for decades.  But it was Holmes who sent Eugene Debs to prison for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, for the crime of having spoken and written against the United States' involvement in World War One, and Deb's had spoken against the draft initiated for that war. Holmes noted both these opinions were made illegal by the Act, which forbid opposition to the war or to any government act which supported this war.  

Holmes evoked the most colorful and oft quoted analogy about the limits of free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution: "You cannot cry 'Fire,' in a crowded theater," Holmes said, when the "Clear and Present Danger," of panic and injury resulting from this false alarm would harm people in the theater.

The problem was, and still is, the analogy could hardly have been less apt. A better analogy, one which would have actually fit the circumstances, would have been the man who stands outside the theater and shouts, "There is a fire about to happen inside the theater. And once you are inside, there are no fire exits!" 

Now, that would have very possibly hurt business, just as not having a good war would hurt business, but what we are talking about is a warning to people before they leap into a room afire, a warning against war and against conscription. 


But the times were against Debs. Theodore Roosevelt called those who opposed war eunuchs, emasculated cowards who did not love their country and did not  have the fortitude to defend it. As if fighting in a war fought among monarchs for the murkiest of reasons had anything with defending the United States. As if the Spanish American War of 1898--in which Teddy Roosevelt got his bone fides for brass balls had anything to do with defending the United States. 


But oh, what rousing fun war can be; how we love it so, this peace loving country of ours.


Hearst made a pretty penny off Teddy's war and unnamed millionaires made a pretty penny from WWI. 


But, as the man says, once you in it, you in it. And pretty soon everyone is buying $2 stickers in the shape of ribbons for their bumpers, or in the time of WWI, war bonds. 

So Debs went off to jail for years, for having voiced opposition to the war. Holmes dealt a deep blow to freedom of speech, from which, over time, the nation seems to have, mostly, recovered.
Holmes became the Antonin Scalia of his day, with the just the pithy phrase to project his point of view, the Constitution notwithstanding. 



Imagine, if Holmes or Scalia had still been on the court when the draft resistance of the 1960's and 1970's flowered, in opposition to the war in Vietnam. We might still be there.


Once again, we have evidence that a "Nation of Laws" is an empty notion, if we do not have a Supreme Court of men who can look beyond their own opinions and convictions, conscious or unconscious, toward a clear headed conclusion.


Now, we have Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires, still sucking dry our nation. One might ask our own Democratic President, "What is the mission?" 


As wonderful and thoughtful as President Obama is, he looks only marginally better than Lyndon Johnson when it comes to fighting this war in a distant land, in an effort to remake a very foreign country and culture to our liking. 


Yes, there is a difference between Vietnam, which we were fighting to resist "Communism," and Afghanistan, where we are fight to resist "terrorism."  Wait a minute, it will come to me. Communism was one of those things you couldn't really see all that easily, but you knew they were out there trying to get you. Terrorism, well, pretty much the same. We did have 9/11, so we know there are some people in the world who hate the US of A. 


But a war? As Carver tells Griggs, the war on drugs is not a war. Why not? Because wars end.

That's the problem with the "War" on terrorism and the war on drugs. There's no flag to capture, no check mate, no end game. 

Endless war, we I love it so.


As Bob Dylan once said, "Join the Army if you fail."  And with the all volunteer army, that has sadly been all too true for at least a portion of the troops. They are in the Army because they have no where else to go.  They may justify their decision with words about patriotism, defending their country, but how many would make the choice that National Football League player who quit the NFL to join the Army? (And was then shot dead by his own comrades, by mistake.) One reason his story got so much play was because it struck so many people as so unusual. People who are making huge salaries, who have attractive options do not, ordinarily, join the Army nowadays.  This is a politically incorrect statement.  It is sad, perhaps, but true.

I'm not saying American men and women have never joined the Army out of a sense of the urgency to defend their nation. An individual signs up to go to war for all sorts of reasons, but there may be one over riding reason-- and that may be to defend your nation. But today, in 2011, with this type of unending "War" against unseen enemies, not the same. 


Today, with a paid army of professionals, people are engaging in Freakenomics--they are motivated to help their country, but there are many ways to do this--George W did not urge mass enlistment, he told the nation to go out to the shopping mall. No, today, we are doing calculations before we enlist.


Now we have Afghanistan, from which, maybe, the 9/11 terrorists may have set forth. Hard to know that, actually, since Al Qaeda, which means "The Base," actually does not need a geographically defined "base." It can train and organize in an apartment in Berlin and a motel in Florida.  So how much sense does it make to attack a country to clear it of "training bases?"


As if.


As if any nation could ever "clear" a nation the size of Texas and Colorado combined, of some off the grid maniacs hiding out and playing war games.


If President Obama loses the next election, it will be cause of the economy, stupid. But he may lose the election, and he may not be able to even claim to have been a losing President who had pointed the right way. Had Lincoln lost his mid Civil War election, he would have, at least been able to leave office with his head held high, and he could have looked his countrymen in the eye and said, "I did what I knew was right."

President Obama ought to have looked his countrymen in the television eye and said, "This war is being fought on a lie. The lie is the proposition we can remake Afghanistan into a happy little democracy filled with people who love America and will not tolerate the presence of anyone who might wish to harm America.  Clearly, even if we could do that in Afghanistan,  we cannot do that also in Pakistan and Iraq, as our finding Osma Bin Laden has revealed. Now, we are out."


My father clung to the notion LBJ was, overall, a good President. He passed Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act.. He launched a war on poverty and he did a slew of good things. But, for my money, all that was crushed by Viet Nam.  LBJ kept voicing the lie that we had to win there, when Walter Cronkite and the CBS news made it patently clearly every night we could not  win in Viet Nam; we could not win the hearts and minds of the Vietnamese. Nor did we have to. We could just walk away. Which, ultimately, we did. Now we trade with them.


So for me, even if President Obama manages to save the economy, if he does not get us out of Afghanistan and quickly, it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for his candidacy.


The only thing which could do that, of course, would be a Newt, a Sarah, a Michele or even maybe a MItt, as the alternative. 

The problem is, when you look at the Republicans, their Tea Party faction, their candidates, every last one of them, and worst of all, the yowling snipes who are their faithful--Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck--it's enough to turn your stomach. 


What is that called?  A Hobbsian  choice?