Susan Karpatkin: Let the Hoi Polloi Speak

All Mad Dog knows about Susan Karpatkin of Bethesda, Maryland is what he could find by googling her, but her letter to the New York Times came as breath of fresh air amid all the hot air and flatus emanting from the Washington, DC area:

Susan Karpatkin, Chair, Math Dept, National Cathedral School

"I am one Democrat who would be happy to negotiate with the Republicans in Congress. The Republicans have stated their opening position for negotiation. They are ready to reopen the government if we defund the Affordable Care Act. Here is mine.
  I am ready to reopen the government if we add a public option to the Affordable Care Act. And while we are negotiating, I also demand a raise in the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a law that restricts chief executives and other managers to no more than 100 times the wage of the lowest-paid person in their company receives, public financing of campaigns and longer hours at polling places. "

Mad Dog would like Ms. Karpatkin negotiating for him. She may be the daughter of a famous ACLU lawyer, or maybe not. She is a product of Oberlin, and she teaches math at the National Cathedral School, a very exclusive private school in Washington, D.C. She is married to an Arnold and Porter lawyer. So she has been admitted to the upper reaches of privilege, sees the upper 1% and their offspring daily, but she has not been seduced by it.   Whatever her background, she can see the truth and state it boldly.

Other fine letters from Joshua Hill of New London, Connecticut, Michael Kraft of Silver Spring, Maryland, David Maynard of Portland, Oregon appear, all from unsung citizens, living their un-famous lives across the country, all of whom make far more sense than a single Republican Congressman.

Cowards Cut and Run. Real leaders never do. That is what you said, isn't it, Dick?

But good sense has rarely prevailed in our public life.  Mad Dog remembers the days when George W. Bush decided to put American boots on the ground in Iraq. Mad Dog thought, "All he is doing is providing a more accessible target for those mad dogs in Baghdad, so they won't have to come over here and blow up targets in New York City."  That sentiment was reflected in the un-famous cartoon of the time (above.)

These truths are evident to the viewers at home.  Just as we could once see for ourselves the truth about our war against Communist aggression in Vietnam, every night when we watched Walter Cronkite, we can now see the truth about the Tea Party Rats' Nest in Washington.

Not that it seems to affect those in power in Washington, but it is a comfort.

Government Shut Down: No Pain, No Gain

Mad Dog was interviewed as a man on the street by somebody with a camera recently, and he was asked how the government shut down was affecting him. Mad Dog had to admit:  Not at all. No personal pain. But what about the shipyard workers, what about the NIH medical researchers, what about the FDA inspectors not screening food?

Mad Dog had to admit--none of it touched him personally. Mad Dog tried to say he was outraged about the government sort of shutting down, as a matter of principle. 
But the interviewer kept pressing--how does it affect you personally?

Like so many TV reporters, he was looking for the answers he wanted to hear, not the answers Mad Dog wanted to give. 

The fact is, President Obama and the Democrats have a big problem here: By trying to protect vital government functions, by being responsible leaders, they insulate the American public from having to face the question: What if there were no functioning federal government?

By protecting the public from the more dire consequences, by keeping "essential" government employees at work, the Democrats are helping the Tea Party make its wacko point: We don't need no friggin guv'ment.

Mad Dog would like to see President Obama send home the FAA tower controllers: Ground the entire US air fleet, all 3000 flights a day. That'll get the attention of an indifferent public.

Mad Dog invites his vast legions of readers to append their own suggestions for government functions which would, if stopped tomorrow, grab the attention of the narcotized American public.

 

Who Pulls the Strings Now?

We Are All About Free Will Here At The Tea Party

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.