The People Who Really Run this Country

The Koch Brothers

Ed Meese

Mad Dog's grandfather, on his mother's side, was a devout Communist, it must be admitted 
It affected his grandfather's perceptions.
But that does not mean he was unable to see certain things with a certain clarity. 
He loved to say this country has the best Congress money can buy. 
He really loved that joke.  

But, the fact is, he likely missed the point, in that, it is not really Congress, or even the Presidency which is all that important in this country. The people who really control things are not widely known, don't want to be. We focus on John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, the stooges who are out in front of the cameras ever day, but they are not pulling the strings.  The men who make the puppets on stage dance and twitch are the Koch brothers, Ed Meese (Ronald Reagan's old attorney general) who can spend the money on the advertisements which mold public opinion, slowly, inexorably, even as we do not realize our opinions are being molded. 

It is these men who have turned the statement:  "Obamacare is unpopular:The nation hates Obamacare," into an article of faith. 
Of course the public has no clear idea what Obama care is, what it will mean, but they know they don't like it because the Koch brothers have spent the money to convince the public they don't like it.

It's the men with the money who wield the power, who pull the strings. We hold elections, and we elect a smart man to be President, but that doesn't matter. The rich boys are still rich and they make sure their money buys them what they want.
Mario Puzo put that idea front and center in The Godfather, the mob bosses spoke of having judges and politicians "in their pocket," because it was money in the pocket which allowed you to own politicians and judges. This is fiction based on real life perceptions and experience.
Read the New York Times today, Sunday, October 6, the lead article about how Ed Meese and the Koch brothers conspired to bring about the government shut down, how red state gerrymandering and money spent paid off to allow a few men, got control of a few politicians--likely as few as 50 Congressmen--to control the fate of 300 million American souls. 

It's the story of a revolution undone. We had an American revolution, in part at least, because people living on this continent resented being under the thumb of rich aristocrats across the sea, in England. It has been said it was a revolution of rich American aristocrats against rich English aristocrats, and that may have been true, in the South, but in New England, it was peasant farmers, humble country lawyers and shope keepers who revolted against  arrogant moneyed gentry and royalty.  But now, in America, we have our own, new aristocracy of big money.  It's Animal Farm for our current age.
And you look from pig to man, and from man to pig, and you cannot tell one from another. 

Oh, Jefferson, Adams and Madison would just groan to see what we've done to their idea.

Being Fair to Republicans: Or How Dancer's Image Taught the GOP to Whine Effectively

Have you noticed how the "liberal media, "e.g. Judy Woodruff on the "News Hour," and others who Fox News consider hopelessly biased against conservative causes, have questioned Republican Congressmen and Democratic leaders during this current Government Shutdown and  approaching default storm? 

Judy Woodruff has been falling all over herself  trying to appear fair minded.  She actually asked a White House spokesman the other night why the Democrats cannot be more accommodating to the Republican demands--why not concede a little something, like the medical device tax--just to throw a bone and gets things moving?

Of course, the Democrats sputter and do not have the smarts to say something like:  "Hey, Judy, I love dogs and little children, but if a man passes a note to a teller saying he's going to blow up the bank unless she stuffs his suitcase full of cash, so he can give money to dogs and little children, I'm not going to negotiate with him." 

Or words to that effect.

Jon Stewart, at least,  has been clear headed enough to say there is no way we can be balanced and even handed in this case,  when one party is so clearly out of its frigging mind.  

It's the problem of the Big Lie. Where do you begin, when the whole premise of the Republican party is so wildly absurd?  

He was reduced to dealing in analogies.  Okay, the Giants lost Sunday. They did not then turn around and demand the NFL suspend the rest of the season unless the Giants can be given a little something, say 21 more points so they win the game they have already lost. After all, it's a fairness to the American people thing.

You see, what the Republicans are doing: They lost the vote on Obamacare; they lost the Supreme Court case on Obamacare. They played their hand. And now they want to have a post loss victory handed to them.

Actually, this is not unprecedented in American history:  In 1968 a New Hampshire horse, Dancer's Image, won the Kentucky Derby, fair and square. But the owner of that horse was a friend and admirer of Martin Luther King, and when he gave the purse to Martin Luther King's widow, to continue the great man's work, the folks at the Kentucky (you remember, Kentucky?  Where Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul are from) Derby went back and "found" a urine sample from the winning horse and found an illegal anti inflammatory drug there and stripped the horse of the title. 

Loser's justice. 

So now, the Republicans are saying the words: "Constitution," and "fairness," "American people," and  "free market." They are throwing them all together in every sentence to show how reasonable they are being, shutting down the government, wrecking the economy, because, well, any reasonable, patriotic person would do the same. It's those rigid Democrats, who cannot accept what the game provides, who are the bad guys here.

It reminds Mad Dog of when he was a medical student on the psych wards, and someone would come in saying the Communists were controlling his brain with radio waves and if we could just help him, he would cleanse the world of Satan and all his works if we would just blow up the Brooklyn Bridge and decapitate all the fish at the Futon Fish Market. And we would say, "Just come into the room and sit down, so we can talk about it." 

Now, Judy Woodruff would ask President Obama why he didn't at least offer to decapitate some of the fish at the Fulton Fish market, just to be reasonable and to meet at least some of the demands.

Luckily, for the Republicans, the "liberal media" they so revile, cannot find the balls to nail the Republicans to the wall for what they are saying and doing.  And the spokesmen for the Democrats, with the possible exception of President Obama himself, are too toothless, inarticulate and unimaginative to respond effectively.

Tea Party Makes Shocking Discovery!

These Guys are Crazy, Ted! They Just Won't Negotiate!

Obamacare Websites in New York City Stagger  As 2 million Hits Flood Website at 9 AM Monday, October 1: NY Times


All the polls indicate overwhelming public disapproval of Obamacare--now all those disgruntled customers are breaking down the doors to buy into the insurance programs they are supposed to hate, like some Black Friday sale.
                  --CNN

Must be all those  2 million deathly ill citizens with pre existing conditions who are so desperate for health insurance. Obama is forcing the insurers to cover these deadbeats.
                  --Fox News 

They're all the takers, trying to sign up.
                    --Mitt Romney

Health Insurance is the opiate of the masses.  They'll be sorry.
                     --Ted Cruz

This is the next worse thing to Medicare. Americans will grow to love it and they'll grow soft.
                     --Rand Paul

I know nobody in the state of Virginia will be foolish enough to want health insurance, when they can pick cotton.
                   --Eric Cantor

This is an abomination forced down the throats of those two million people.
                  --John Boehner

This is the end of the free market society, which reached its purest form in late 20th century America. All gone now. We're a second rate civilization.
                 --Newt Gingrich

New Yorkers aren't real Americans, anyway.
                 --Mitch McConnell

Ain't nobody dumb enough to call no health insurance exchange down here in South Carolina.
                --Lindsay Graham 

Maybe we're on to something...
                    --President Obama

American Anarchists: The Tea Party Brings the Nation Down

It's not like there are so many of them.  With the exception of the one from Minnesota, a few from California, they are from the South and the sparsely populated parts of the country, where men love their big guns and big trucks and where the off the grid crowd has found places to hunker down.  They constitute a sort of bathtub ring across the country, that scummy smear of nastiness which reminds you that after a soak, there really was grime which had worked its way into the creases.

The T party Republicans, just shy of 50 of them, say they are being reasonable; they are the people who are really listening to the American public. They are hearing that people are outraged over Obamacare and they are responding to those voices.

These voices are accompanying those vibrations coming through the motel walls which have seized control of these Republican members of the House of Representatives.  So roughly 380 members of the House, who are also supposed to be hearing voices have been controlled by the most vocal 50. 

Mad Dog does earnestly wish Mr. Obama would go to the mountaintop--Camp David--just hang out there and maybe invite Tom Harkin and Steny Hoyer and Chris Hollins and Nancy Pellosi and talk about prices for hog bellies or who might get to the World Series, and let the government grind to a halt. Let America feel the pain. Allow Americans to understand why we need a government.

And if Mad Dog is wrong--if we do just fine without a government, well Mr. Obama and his friends will still get their paychecks for a few more years and let the Republicans figure out how to live in a country which has emulated Somalia in its governing philosophy. 

Ted Cruz, Family Man

Other People's Children

Commandant at Home with wife, child and dog

Auschwitz Guards' Families Enjoying Their Time at the Camp

Commandant's children

He's nice to his dog. Not so much to people. 

Oh, how I love Green Eggs and Ham And I'm Nice to My Dog

Watching the Ted Cruz show on CNN last night Mad Dog was struck by how much time Mr. Cruz spent establishing his Family Man credentials, the long homilies about how much he loves his little daughters, right down to reading Green Eggs and Ham to them from the podium, because, in the interests of serving his nation, he could not be home with his daughters to read them their bedtime story.

It pulled at the heart strings, really did.

What a nice man. He loves his little daughters.
Of course, he doesn't care a whit for the daughters who will be denied health insurance, or for their parents, across the land, if he gets his way.

It reminds me of the book by Piotr Setkiewicz, Private Life of the SS in Auschwitz, in which he related story after story about the split between what the commandants and guards at the concentration camps did at work and how they became doting, engaged parents once they walked across their own thresholds at home.
Typical was the commandant who would beat prisoners to death and then go home, in a fresh uniform, and play hide and seek with his children.

Others were very indulgent with their dogs, and yet they murdered human beings at work mercilessly.

It is almost the "protest too much" aspect of the proclamation of paternal love. Somewhere, deep down in the dark recesses of his heart and brain, the man knows he is sinning against his fellow man, but if he loves his children, if he is kind to his dog, it makes up for everything else. 

So, somehow, Mr. Cruz, Mad Dog is not convinced. He is not convinced you are the loving, cuddly man you say you are. Others have trod that loving father path before you, down the lane to a horror at the other end.

Senator Ted Cruz : The Joseph McCarthy of Our Age: He Fights the Trojan Horse of Obama Care--Thug Republicans Steer the Ship of State

"The reason why we find ourselves in a position of impotency is not because our only powerful potential enemy has sent men to invade our shores . . . but rather because of the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this Nation. It has not been the less fortunate, or members of minority groups who have been traitorous to this Nation, but rather those who have had all the benefits that the wealthiest Nation on earth has had to offer . . . the finest homes, the finest college education and the finest jobs in government we can give"

--Some Tea Party Thug Republican

 "In my judgment, we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation, quite literally the battle over whether we remain a free market nation."
--Some other Republican thug.


Rand Paul, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Lindsay Graham, Newt Gingrich and Ted Cruz.  Wow! What a cavalcade of luminaries!  What a Grand Old Party.

There's patriotism in paranoia.

Here's the recipe for Tea Party biscuits:  One large cup of Armageddon lard, a tablespoon of paranoia, a twist of self righteousness, a dollop of grandiosity, and a full ladle of hysteria. 

So now, the Republicans in Congress are bent on shutting down the government and blaming it on Obamacare.  They can't help it. Vibrations are being sent through the walls of their offices and seizing them. They have to strike now, or explode.

This should be no surprise: The Tea Party Republicans, are in the driver's seat. And do not try to console yourself that it's only a few drunk drivers-- every Republican from Susan Collins to John Boehner is complicit.  You may have your private misgivings, but once you give the straight arm salute and start goose stepping, there is not moral or practical difference between you and the true believers.

The irony is the right wing Republicans of yore were all about cooking up American Paranoid Pie by suggesting their enemies were other so-called Americans who were trying to destroy the American government from within, but now, it is the Republican Tea Party which has got enough Republicans elected to destroy the government from within, by simply voting to shut it down.  

A brilliant maneuver really. You run on your Tea Party platform of no government and you get elected, and then you vote to kill the government, just as you promised you would.  Nothing deceptive or underhanded there.

Of course, the folks who voted for these protest figures never really thought they would actually do what they said they would. The voters in Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin, Mississippi and Texas who sent these frothing-at-the-mouth types to Congress figured they were "sending a message to Washington" but they never believed  these Tea Party loonies would succeed in threatening social security checks, federally funded defense plant jobs,  federally funded highway and infrastructure jobs.

Voters in Alaska hate the federal government, and they get more federal dollars per capita than any state in the union.

Within the next few weeks, unless President Obama saves them from themselves, Tea Party Republican thugs will find out what default and anarchy feels like.

Memo the the President:  Take a vacation. Get thee to Camp David. Sit up there in the Maryland mountains and let the government come tumbling down around Senator Cruz's ears.
 Let Mr. Cruz explain to everyone back in Texas and across this great land of ours how what he has done is good for them.

And you, Mr. Obama, can sit up on the mountaintop at Camp David, like Zeus, and you can say, "Hey, let me know when you want a functioning federal government again. I'm right here. Until then, good luck. I'll get my paycheck. You guys give it a whirl. See how it works for you and yours."

Second Amendment Certainty

"A well regulated Militia,
Being necessary to the security of a Free State,
The Right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
Shall Not be infringed."
 --Second Amendment, United States Constitution (one sentence, four clauses)


I heard a man say, on the radio, "The Constitution guarantees my right to a gun."

Mad Dog is humble before the Constitution.
But Mad Dog has read through the Constitution, which is not a very long document, although it is quite a dense document.

And nowhere,  but in the Second Amendment,  do the authors of this document bother to explain why a particular right is granted, or why a particular right is denied. Even the 18th amendment (prohibition) is not explained. The amendment simply forbids the manufacture, importation or sale of "intoxicating liquors." It doesn't explain why this has been done, simply gives the law.  

But in the 2nd amendment, fully one half of the four clauses are devoted to explaining why the government wishes to protect the right to bear arms. We don't have a standing army, see--so we need guys with guns who volunteer to defend us against Indians and Redcoats, see?

Only in the 2nd Amendment, is there an explanatory clause, unique in the document, to explain the reason the framers want citizens to be able to keep and bear arms--for the purpose of using those arms to defend the security of a free state, as a well regulated militia.

The idea that those arms would be regulated is stated right there, as a part of the description of who would be allowed to use (i.e. to keep and bear) those arms--as part of a  militia. Do you see it? Tom Jefferson and Ben Franklin and George Washington, we are speaking to you, and we all want a group of men, acting together, until the direction of the officers of the militia to bear arms to defend us from forces which would impair the freedom of all of us. 

We're not talking about defending yourself in some bar room brawl, or even in some dark alley. We're not talking personal freedom here. We are talking about defending a free state.

Until relatively recently in our nation's history the lack of ambiguity in this sentence was understood as self evident: We want guns to be available to those who organize to defend the free state.

Those bewigged 18th century gentlemen who voted in 1791 to ratify the first ten amendments could hardly have imagined gun shops selling assault rifles, bazookas, fifty caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, to wandering psychopaths, schizophrenics who hear voices and feel vibrations taking control of their bodies, sociopaths, resentful men and women who can only feel whole and worthy when they hold an AK-47 in their hands. 

But they damn well could imagine a well regulated militia.

What sort of mind does it take to leap from the militiaman to the gun in every home--to my God Given Constitutional Right to an attack rifle-- imperative?

Mad Dog thinks we need Chris Rock to explain this distinction to the president of the NRA.  You see, there is a difference between you and your home howitzer and the minute man in his three pointed hat with his flintlock. For one thing, he's a lot thinner. And I don't see any tatoos on the minuteman. It's true, you are both white and you both like shooting animals.  But he has friends, unlike you. And he makes his own bullets and it takes about ten of him to kill five Redcoats in half an hour.  You, on the other hand, are not what Tom and Ben and George had in mind.