The Sinking Republican Ship

You have to feel slightly sorry for Republicans recently. They’re like a collective version of Elliot Roosevelt. Useless. Unable to admit just how useless they have been, and still are. A terrible role model for their youthful counterparts. Unable to accept responsibility for anything. And seemingly attempting to commit suicide. Looking on at their much more loveable brother with jealousy and rage. Whilst that much more loveable brother, the Democrats act as the pragmatic force behind the reinvention of America. Or, Theodore Roosevelt, if you will.

Surely someone in the Republican Party must be thinking to themselves “Please Cheney, just let it go. The damage is done!“. If they aren’t crossing their fingers that Bush doesn’t turn up with an equally insignificant opinion aired across the media, then they should be.

Whilst the GOP attempts to deal with the fact that Republican of 29 years Senator Arlen Specter has lost complete faith in a Party slipping further to the Right every day, choosing instead to move to the Democrat benches, Democrats look set to start work on complete (Oh MY GOD SOCIALISM ARGH!) healthcare reform after their $3.4tn Budget passed through the House beautifully by 233 to 193, marking Obama’s 100th day in spectacular fashion.
Specter’s move means the Democrat Senate Majority is taken to 59. When Minnesota’s Supreme Court finally votes in favour of Democratic Senator Al Franken, that takes the Democrats in the Senate up to a lovely round 60. And if that lovely round 60 is reached (which it will be), that means the Democratic controlled Senate becomes filibuster-free. Which is fantastic.

Specter leaving the GOP is two fold in the damage it’s likely to cause. Firstly, it makes the GOP look weak, disunited, out of touch and relatively pointless. Secondly, it seems to have sparked off a fight between Republicans themselves. Utah Senator Orrin Hatch blamed Chris Chocola (who ran a campaign based on the slogan “Fuck the environment” – or words to that affect, when he voted to allow oil companies to drill in the protected Arctic National Wildlife Reserve)and the rest of the rather comically named “Club for Growth” for imposing strict right wing rules over the party. Chocola himself, a big fan of President Bush, which suggests that “Club for Growth” must be an ironic term. The equivilant to calling a tall man “shorty”. “The Club For Growth” themselves blamed Specter for ruining the GOP and then leaving. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham blamed Michael Steele and the RNC for pushing moderates out the way. And Michael Steele himself, decided to take on the role of a new WWE superstar named “The Black Republican” (again, another ironic name) and said …
“If Sen. Specter survives in the fall — get ready to go to the mat, baby, because we’re coming after you and taking you out“
I’m not joking, he actually did say that, to CNN. Look.
So obviously, this was also a chance for that perfectly round headed orange ignorant idiot Rush Limbaugh to have his say. Limbaugh on his radio show, is quoted as saying:
“Well, Specter, take McCain with you. And his daughter. Take McCain and his daughter with you if you’re gonna…”
Good idea! Take all the moderates to the Democrats. Meghan McCain is far too intelligent to be a Republican anyway. Take the few popular Republicans, and hand them to the Democrats. For once I agree with the fat prick. If that were to happen, the Republicans wouldn’t see Government for a very long time. You’d essentially have a popularly elected Democrat Dictatorship for decades. It’s perfect. Perhaps Rush could go live in the soon to be New Republic of Texabillies. Republicans in this new Republican are free to be as “Conservative” as they please. They can be as racist, homophobic, small government, guns to every man, woman, child and pet as they could possibly imagine.
It amuses me greatly, that the GOP has now taken to discrediting Specter by releasing a video, that shows how Specter was close to George Bush. It’s almost poetic that the only way the Republicans can discredit an ex-Republican, is by aligning him with a failed Republican President. You really couldn’t make this shit up.

Not only that but Republicans are finding themselves in a tough position when it comes to Democrat plans for new regulations placed on Wall Street. On the one hand, they could follow their out of date principles, keep yelling Socialism, and decide to ignore the problems that 25 years of Reaganomics has created deciding instead to obstruct any form of recovery. Or, they could put aside their wasted ideology, tell Glenn Beck that if he’s trying to be the Right Wing’s version of John Stewart… it’s never going to happen, and accept the need for regulatory rules as soon as humanly possible. That would of course risk hurting the feelings of apparent Republican Leader Rush Limbaugh, and be forced to apologise from the heart at a later date. So it’s a tough situation for Republicans.

We all knew torture is wrong, but we needed something to confirm our belief. Enter Dick Cheney and Karl Rove. It’s like meeting someone who thinks they might be gay, and then pushing them over the edge. Did Cheney and Rove really think anyone would take their side in this? The moment he showed his murderous little face, we all squirmed. Obviously there are those like Beck, Hannity, and Limbaugh “Conservatives” who think the way to defeat terrorism, is by being a terrorist, but in the real World there is no way a human being with any moral compass would ever consider using the phrase “You know, I think Karl Rove and Dick Cheney are right.”

The only way to cope, is to have an insignificant “Tea Party” (nothing strikes fear into the enemy more than words “Tea Party“) to complain how Obama is both, paradoxically, a Socialist (3% tax increase on the rich, bringing it still beneath that of the first six years of Reagan……… Barack Stalin, obviously!) and a Fascist by announcing the biggest middle class tax cut in history. Or, just continue to fight amongst themselves until they push everyone other than the actual Right Wing Extremists (Rush, Hannity, O’Reilly, Beck) out of the GOP for good. Either way, it’s so incredibly entertaining, i’m just as happy as ever. Whilst the majority of Americans significantly approve of President Obama’s running of domestic policy, foreign policy, economic policy and now with the outbreak of Swine flu, 66% approve of how the Administration is dealing with the outbreak – you have to come to the conclusion that in a Nation finally embracing Liberal principles, the GOP moving further to the Right and edging out moderates is going to be the ultimate death of the Party. (I literally had a smile on my face as I typed that, weird).

The GOP Ship is sinking more and more every day. It’s crew are now fighting each other and appear to have decided that only the most extreme Republicans, the most racist, anti-environment, homophobic, fox news worshipping crew members are good enough. Fine by me. It means those ignorant shits go down with the ship.

At the start of this entry, I mentioned feeling sorry for Republicans. I take it back. Bask in the entertainment of a dying breed of ignorance, is what I meant to say.

A new World

Here’s to Warren Buffet, the Richest man on the Planet, who once said, when asked about the inequalities of the tax system….
“It’s class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be.“

The World has entered a new chapter, full of blank pages. What used to be market truth, has become greedy nonsense. The noise made by the laissez faire wealth jamboree embraced by the rich as “true freedom” is slowly dying down. There are still those who insist that tax hikes and Social transfers kill productivity (despite that fact that Sweden spends around 30% of it’s GDP on Social projects compared to 13% in the USA – and the growth rate of GDP per person in Sweden was as high through the mid-2000s as that of the USA – according to Jonas Pontusson) and insist on screaming about how big Government is part of the problem rather than the driving force behind emancipation, civil rights and other aspects of life that the market has literally no control over. Between 1948 and 1970 social spending shot through the roof – Medicaid, the war on poverty, added investment in schools etc. In fact, it rose from 16.5% to 27.5% and with that, GDP and Productivity grew more than any other time (even during Reagan’s years…. although he cut income tax and shifted the burden to payroll tax like an increase in Social Security and Medicare taxes), the next time huge advances in productivity appeared, was in 1996….. after the Clinton tax increases. Big government isn’t the problem at all. Selfishness is the problem. Lack of compassion is the problem.

Big government in the USA, extended social security to ten million more workers during President Eisenhower’s term. It spread to farmers, teachers and dentists among others. Under Eisenhower, the government financed the National highways system. Before that, under Truman, the government passed the G.I Bill of Rights, to provide aid to War veterans for homes and college. It benefited 8 million returning Soldiers, who now went to college and had their mortgages guaranteed; and America benefited economically over the next sixty five years. Anti-polio vaccines, National Institutes of Health and it’s Research and Development, National Defence Education Act, the Internet with it’s origins in the Defence Department, Medicare, integrated school system, Civil rights, and food Administration – none of that is the result of a wondrous market system. Government provides the framework for a market to run successfully; Government works to cope with the change in the mentality of the people and nothing Obama does, is going to kill the superiority of the American market system. Even Churchill, the most famous Tory in British History, supported a strong Welfare system, having remarked years before his eventually primacy “It seems clumsy to let people starve…” he then went on to support the Beveridge report on much needed Welfare action.

I appear to have digressed. Back to Sweden for a second. As suggested earlier, Sweden spends around 30% of it’s GDP on Social products. Significantly higher than the USA (Whose Conservatives seem to believe any public spending, is a big evil). Not only that, but Sweden is listed as sixth in the Human Development Index whereas the USA, is a measly fifteenth. For all the attacks on Europe I hear from Conservative Americans, when it comes to the Human Development Index, ten European countries rank above the USA. This of course, is without mentioning that Sweden ranks top of the Economist Democracy Index whilst the USA ranks at 17th, below thirteen European Nations. All this from a Nation that has been run by Social Democrats from 1994 to 2007. Much closer to Socialists than President Obama could ever be. Don’t seem to be doing too badly for themselves. Big Government is not the problem. Small government is not the problem. Inefficient government whether large or small, is the problem.

A study by Sven Steinmo met up with a Swedish Volvo Executive, who was asked…
“Why don’t you leave (Sweden)? Certainly, you would pay a lot lower taxes and probably also have a higher salary in the U.S.”
His response……..
“Yes, of course, I would have a lot more money in my pocket. But I would also almost never get home before 7 o’clock and I certainly would not have the vacations everyone has a right to here… and you know what else, I would have to spend a lot more money on insurance, college for my kids, and travel back home to my family. In the end, I’m not really sure I would be any better off.“

That way of thinking, is the way those of us who do not have a deep fetish for money, and who do not have a deep resentment for those less fortunate think. Unfortunately, the Thatcher years over here in England provided us with a new breed of young Conservatives who take the opposite view, coupled with the Republicans in America who profess to be strongly “Pro-life” unless that life needs urgent healthcare and can’t afford it; the Swedish state of mind was slowly losing ground since the Thatcher/Reagan days. Now however, it’s finding itself again.

For decades we’ve been told that the Government cannot afford the extra million pounds to give our public servants, like the Police force, the pay rise they were promised. Or that we could only afford to pay our fire fighters an extra 11% pay, to protect us from burning to death. Or that the coal mines needed closing because they weren’t profitable, meaning thousands of people lost their jobs and weren’t retrained; whilst the UK now imports more coal than we have in years. Cuts to the NHS, because it was “wasteful spending” and produced a “dependency culture” emerged. We were all told that smaller government is better. We were all told that we didn’t have the money to pay the firemen, the NHS, the police, to fund better public education and make sure the poverty rate fell rapidly. For years we’ve been told that buying your house is the best investment you’ll ever make. When did a house cease being a home and become a money making venture?

But then, all of a sudden, we have £400bn to bail out the rich. Not only do they take that £400bn of public money, the bosses take six figure pensions whilst their employees lose their jobs and face losing their houses, the same houses that Conservatives get touchy about saving with tax payers money. I cannot help but echo John Stewart’s sentiments to the Conservative brigade who have no problem funding an illegal war, who have no problem funding the plight of the rich, who have no problem with corporate tax loopholes but who have severe issues with helping those less fortunate – “fuck you“.

Here’s to Warren Buffett, the richest man on the planet, who once said when asked about inequality in society…….
“If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.“