The Unpatriotic Right

Mitch McConnell  stood on the Senate floor answering a question about his resistance to The American Jobs Act.  "Why would I vote for that? It might help re elect the President. And my first priority is making sure the President is not re elected."  

Here you have a United States Senator, the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate, saying he would rather see the country flounder than see Mr. Obama re elected. Put another way, he would burn the house down, if it meant Mr. Obama would burn with it.

And, at the time, he saw nothing wrong with that sentiment. Had you asked Mitch McConnell,  just then, if he considered himself a patriot, he would have looked at you bewildered.  

He could see nothing unpatriotic about wishing the nation ill. He would have likely said, "Well, short term pain for long term gain." 

But we all know what he meant, when he said it the first time. He was so focused on getting one man, he did not care about collateral damage. 

Thoreau made the important point: a man serves his country best with his mind. The man who is willing to serve in Congress or to serve as a "wooden soldier, " marching to the orders of others is not a good citizen or a patriot.   Democracy demands thought and critical thinking. The citizen who simply echos catchy one liners, like,  "He's had his chance: Next man up," is not thinking. He's emoting.  A patriot has to stop and analyze what is contained in that sentence. To extend the football analogy contained in that phrase, you have a quarterback who is brought in during the 4th quarter, with his team behind 63 to 0, and he manages to bring his team back to tie the game. You say, "But that is only recovery, not winning.  He's not a winner. Next man up."  

It doesn't take 4 years of college, or even high school, to see the flaw in that analysis. And yet, many people who claimed to be patriots could not think that through. 

Fortunately, just enough people could do it. We had 3 million more patriots, 3 million more solid citizens than the 50 million who were not.

Here is a citizen from Colorado, who saw the problem clearly:

During the campaign, Romney has accused Obama of being responsible for partisan gridlock in Washington. However, in 2010, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell stated: “Our top political priority over the next two years should be to deny President Obama a second term.” Not create jobs. Not balance the budget. Not end the wars. But to make Obama a one-term president.

And Congressional Republicans have been extremely unified in this endeavor.

Take, for instance, the American Jobs Act that President Obama proposed. A majority of the law is tax cuts and support for small business, issues that Republicans normally would strongly support.

But Republicans in both houses filibustered it. They didn’t allow the bill to even come up for debate, let alone come up for a vote.

Even when Obama split the bill into 16 parts, giving Republicans the opportunity to vote for favorable parts and stop parts that were only tax cuts, they still refused to allow a conversation on the bill, passing only the part to help veterans.

Obama urged the Republicans to allow a discussion over “genuine ideas and policies,” convinced that eventually “we will have a vote to decide the issue.” However, the Republicans didn’t allow a debate or a vote on the bill. Even during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Republicans have not been willing to put country over party...

Bill Johnson,

Fort Collins

(From The Phantom Speaks blog)

Jolting the Job Creators

Mad Dog admits to being mystified:  The Republicans keep citing a Congressional Budget Office "study" which estimates we will lose 700,000 jobs ( out of 4 million expected to be created over the next 10 years) if taxes on people making over $250, 000 are raised from 35 to 39%. 

What Mad Dog cannot figure out is why this should happen.

Mad Dog ran his own small business with 2 employees for over two decades and never once did his calculations about how many more employees to hire have anything to do with what his income tax rates were going to be.  

The calculations had to do, primarily, with how much business we could expect to come through the door, projections of income based on insurance company payment levels,  and most importantly, on how we could make the employees we had more efficient.  My partner and I invested $10,000 in a computer system which made hiring another employee unnecessary.  What made employees expensive was: 1. Salary  2. Health Insurance  3. Pension plan payments 4. Unemployment and disability insurance required by the state government 5. Training. 

During years when personal income tax rates were high Mad Dog did not fire employees and when the Bush tax rates cut tax rates, we did not hire employees.  The fact is, we always paid employees far more than Mad Dog's change in tax rates. The difference between the two rates amounted to $10,000, and we typically paid our employees $40,000.  If I hired a new employee it was with the projection she'd bring in an additional net $60,000--if the tax rate was higher then it would be $50,000, still worth it.

And, the fact is, some years, Mad Dog made less than $250,000 and so Mr. Obama's changes this time around would not have affected anything, which is said to be true for over 90% of employers.

What made a significant difference was deductions:  When Mad Dog could deduct the cost of health insurance for his employees, that made a huge difference.

So Mad Dog fails to see why any tax increase on people making over $250,000 would turn them from "job creators" to abstainers. 

Can someone explain this to me? I mean, how does the CBO know what the 4% higher tax rate on income above $250,000 would do to thinking of these taxpaying job creators? How did they do this study? What were the questions asked?  I mean, if you had asked me, "If we made you pay more tax, would you hire fewer employees?"  Would I not say, "Oh, of course. If you do that, I'm firing everyone," knowing what effect that might have on your decision?  I mean, how do you factor out the effect of gaming the system when you ask questions like that?

Just asking.

The President I'd Like to See: Press Conference Blues

Here's the press conference I'd like to see today:

Reporter:  Mr. President what does the Petraeus affair tell us about the culture at the national security institutions of this country?

Mr. Obama: Culture is defined by values, what we hold out as ideal behavior. Behavior often deviates from this, where individuals are concerned. If you mean by that question do we have a culture which allows for powerful men in high positions to trade on that power to intimidate women into sexual relationships, nothing in what I've learned thus far about this particular affair would suggest anything of the sort occurred here or exists as a background in general.  There is no issue of "sexual harassment"  in this case, as far as we know now.  As for values, they are embodied in the military legal code, which forbids married officers from having extra marital affairs and which forbids any officer, married or unmarried from engaging in a sexual relationship with an officer of lower rank.  The fact General Petraeus resigned speaks to his own assessment of his own behavior, that he betrayed a trust, and having done that in his previous job, he apparently concluded he could not command trust in his present job. All of us in highly visible jobs, jobs which command some power are exposed to temptation daily: Power is attractive to many people. Some of us are better than others at resisting temptation. 

Reporter: But are you saying Ms. Broadwell was attracted to General Petraeus because of his power? 

Mr. Obama:  I am saying I feel like the school m'arm who has an important math class to teach and I am confronted by a bunch of giddy teenagers who want to talk about nothing but sex. Now I can dismiss this class if you refuse to talk about the important concerns of this country of 300 million people, who face a fiscal cliff, or we can talk about matters which affect the average citizen.

Reporter: Are you willing for us to go over the cliff?

Mr. Obama:  The Republican Party insisted on this cliff.  And now, because so many Republican Congressmen and Senators have been foolish enough to take some pledge, like a bunch of college sophomores, eager to get into some fraternity, they are steering the country over a cliff.  It's as if we are all in a boat headed toward a waterfall on our right. To the left is a clear and safe line, but the Republican leaders, who are at the stern, with the steering paddle have refused ever to steer the boat left; right is the only direction they will steer us. So they'd rather send us all over the waterfall than ever admit they have taken a foolish pledge.

And Miles To Go, Before We Sleep

Mad Dog awakens smiling. The virtuous have triumphed and the vacuous and mendacious have been vanquished.

But Mad Dog is aware of history.  Lincoln won re election in 1864  and two nights after Lee's surrender, he stepped out on a White House balcony and spoke to a celebrating crowd and said he would leave the question of Negro voting to the states, but he hoped that "very intelligent" colored men who had served the Union as soldiers would be permitted to vote. In the crowd below, John Wilkes Booth said to his companions, "That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I'll put him through."

So Mad Dog is wary, especially at the moment of joy and victory, and remembers there is work yet to be done.

Mitch McConnell is still the leader of the Republicans in the Senate and still insists there will be no tax hikes for billionaires. John Boehner is still the Speaker of the House and he still says the deficit has to be cut by cutting spending, not by increasing revenue.

The Republicans still control the House and slightly less than half of the country voted for Mitt Romney.

What is joyful is the knowledge there really was a silent majority this time--and it was a liberal, thoughtful majority, not fooled by the prevaricating Republican money machine of super PACs. 

We can hope for a more resolute, less accommodating President, one who has learned from this campaign, and from the first debate: you get nowhere by politeness in Washington. You have to go on the attack. You have to demonize, diminish and throttle McConnell and Boehner, by name and personally, if you want to move forward.  

Mr. Obama has won the election. He now needs to lead.

The First Debate: Maybe A Good Thing

Mad Dog luxuriates in the afterglow of an election rightly won, and well fought.

And one of the many good things to come out of it, Mad Dog dearly hopes is a new, more combative President Obama. 

Many's the time Mad Dog, being a froth at the mouth type himself, howled at the timidity of Mr. Obama when faced with intransigence from Mr. McConnell and Mr. Boehner.  No, we will not raise taxes on the rich.  Oh, okay, well, if you don't like that, maybe we could just let the tax cuts we have expire and then we won't have to call it a tax hike. Would that be all right, Mr. McConnell?  Would that offend you, Mr. Boehner?

Hopefully, Mr. Obama heard from enough of his supporters, after the first debate to drive that point home, not just for the next two debates, when he finally, came out swinging and landed combinations, and showed no fear of appearing like an angry Black man.  

"Well, Mr. Romney, yes we do have fewer ships on the water now, but we also have fewer horses and bayonets because we've got these things called aircraft carriers and  these ships that go under the water."

Mr. President, if you feel the need, come up here to New Hampshire and Mad Dog will give you growling lessons.

Obama Wins: Reaction from the Right

Mad Dog has just returned from a holiday victory tour through New York City and Washington, DC. 
What delights Democrats is, beyond genuinely liking Obama, watching those odious sleaze ball Republicans trying to spin this election.

Karl Rove stayed in form by looking at what the Republicans are most guilty of and attributing that to Democrats: Thus, he says, Democrats won by suppressing the vote,  which is to say, Democrats thwarted the will of the American people, who really loved and preferred Mr. Romney, but Democrats would not allow these real Americans to have what they wanted. 

One thing you can say for Rove, he keeps the most important thing in his sights. Of course, it is Republicans who realize they cannot win if people are simply counted. As Lincoln, a Republican observed, "The Good Lord must have loved the common folk--he made so many of them."  To win, the Republicans have tried poll taxes, restrictions on voting times and days (Florida), reducing the number of polling machines in Democratic strongholds to lengthen lines and waiting times (as Republicans did in the Democratic strong holds in Northern Virginia), all the dirty tricks, to simply deny a voice to the underclass or to urban centers where Democrats live.

Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh got together and decided, actually, even they could not sell that to their audiences, not after that blond bimbo on Fox News asked Karl Rove if he had a different set of math rules than what everyone else uses, a set of rules which is forged by his own desires.  
So what the unholy trinity  is now saying is, yes the people have spoken, but it's the new demographics of our country, all those immigrants the Democrats let in, and you know so many of them wind up on welfare, and so the country has shifted from people with pride, who want to earn their way and work hard to a country comprised of people who don't want to work hard, who want the government to take care of them--Mitt Romney's 47%.  

That 47% remark "resonated" with the true believers of the Republican party. People like Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, who work hard, don't you know? They look at people who want to be given hand outs, the welfare Queens who drive Cadillacs and live on welfare, while Ann and Rush and Sean and Glenn slave away in their TV studios eating brown bag lunches they made at home. 

It's more of the Tea Party, Republican, the undeserving poor vs the rich-who-earned-it. 

This is a very old story, of course. When the grimy peasants looked at Marie Antoinette and the king ride by in their sumptuous carriages and asked, "Why do they have so much and we have so little?" The reply was:  Because it is God's will.  God chose those rich to be rich and He wants you to be poor.

Ayn Rand had much the same answer: The Superman is gifted, driven, superior and will naturally rise to the top. 

Nowhere in any of what you hear from Sean, Rush, Ann or Glenn is there any room for a consideration of the details by which certain citizens among us are placed on third base, and given only fat pitches down the middle to hit when they come up to bat. 

So nowhere in the right wing world view are the Romney bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, the myriad of government provided tax breaks, outright grants and contracts which make whatever welfare remains look like pigeon droppings compared to the tsunami of government benefits given those in power, those in the money.

What we got here is trouble in River City, folks, because the good white folks who have, until now, controlled the game, reworked the rules of the game, fixed the game so they would be sure to win, they can't control it any more, at least not this time around. 

Oh, Happy Day!

Mad Dog has spent days preparing for the worst, a vile outcome with dishonesty enshrined.

But America turned out to be better, smarter than that.

At least on one day.

Feels good to be an American tonight.

Goodnight Maud.  Goodnight Mr. President.  Goodnight Patty McKenzie and all those who sailed with you.  Goodnight moon.