Does the GOP really want to return to the White House?

At Balloon Juice, commenter JustRuss posted a few words of note, which have elicited further thoughtful comments — check it out.

Losing three presidential races in a row would be a big fucking deal,

To a party that cared about governing, sure. But “the party” is mostly the money, and they just want the government to stay the hell out of their way. And with the IRS and EPA being starved, TPP and other trade deals in the hopper, Citizen’s United, fracking bans being overturned left and right, they’re doing fine. Sure, it would be nice to have a Bush in the White House, but they’re getting most of what they want regardless. Having a Democrat in the White House gives them someone to blame when things go sideways and is a great focus for the rage their constituents are addicted to.

Read more at “Wake up Sheeple!”

Having “someone to blame” has certainly been the GOPers modus operandi during the entire time Barack Hussein Obama has owned the Oval Office. When he advocates for a program the right once believed in, said program suddenly is transformed into a socialistic, freedom-stealing tenet of the secret Muslim jihadis now living in the White House. If the end results of an operation instituted by his predecessor turns out to be a failure, it is the O’s fault.

One could examine rationally, something seldom done in the American media these days – think in a rational manner – the behaviour of Republicans since November 2008 and perhaps begin to think the GOP prefers playing the outsider to actually attempting to better the lives of Americans.

Ted Cruz is a politician (and a hypocrite)

Republican senator and presidential candidate, Ted Cruz, leapt immediately to the podium in order to command the President to get off his butt and send the Cruz man’s home state, Texas, some disaster relief following devastating floods.

Hypocrite Ted Cruz Begs For Federal Relief Money For Houston Flooding

Ted Cruz, the same Tea Party Senator that voted against aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy because it was “wasteful“, shows off his astonishing hypocrisy by announcing that he will work with Democrats to “stand as one in support of the federal government meeting its statutory obligations.

As noted in the linked piece, when Congress was appropriating funds for FEMA following the Sandy disaster, Cruz demanded cuts in other federal funding must come before spending money on those Yankees.

An article in the NYTimes, noted that the extent of damage due to the Texas flooding could have been mitigated if Texas had followed standard building practices found in other states.

“The main challenge to rational planning for flood risk in the country is that private property rights trump even modest limitations on floodplain development,” said Nicholas Pinter, an expert on floods, people and politics at Southern Illinois University, in an email today. “And that sentiment runs deep in Texas. The result is unchecked construction on flood-prone land, up to the present day and in some places even accelerating.”

And now Texans are suffering the consequences of their political choices. I am not gloating over their tragedy but we must understand that hating on governmental regulations does not always provide for a better future.

As Andrew Rivkin writes:

It’s important to get these studies done, but I doubt they’ll have much impact as long as politicians and communities in the region stick with the go-go development mentality that has been so vividly on display.

I see little evidence that leaders in the region have paid attention to the vast volumes of information they already paid for. The websites of Texas agencies responsible for managing water and limiting disaster losses are already full of valuable information clearly laying out the deep hydrological vulnerability in the state.

It is very likely that some of the Texans who were recently ranting about the military’s Jade Helm exercise being little more than a prelude to the secret Muslim Marxist declaring a new socialist kingdom in America, are now among those begging for federal assistance.

Paranoia runs deep in the minds of GOP creeps

A blog post by Jason Easley at politicususa.com, with links to a Boston Globe column, nicely illuminates the craziness level upon which too many Americans now reside.

As the rest of the nation looks on in disbelief at the level of crazy among some Republicans in Texas, it needs to be understood that the insanity over Jade Helm is not unique to Texas. The Republican Party has been gripped by paranoia. Republicans are paranoid, and they elect candidates who legitimize and indulge their taste for conspiracies.

This dynamic is why House Republicans investigated the IRS. It is also why the nation is suffering its eighth investigation into Benghazi. Republicans benefit by playing to the paranoia.

What Jade Helm teaches us all is that Republican fear of the nation’s first black president is getting stronger even though his time in office is winding down.

The question I have: How much of this paranoia, this increased crazification, is a result of propaganda? Lies emanating from right-wing think tanks and various media outlets – I’m thinking of you Roger Ailes

White Fragility

Reading thru my usual morning list of blogs and news sites, I came upon an interesting piece at Talking Points Memo which focused on the increasing number of Americans who refuse to acknowledge the racism which still exists in our society.

Biker Gangs, Tamir Rice, And The Rise Of White Fragility

Recently released records show that Cleveland Police would have wanted to charge 12-year-old Tamir Rice with inducing panic and being an “aggravated menace.” He was shot and killed by an officer in less than two seconds while playing in the park with a toy gun. This development is juxtaposed with the news that a violent biker gang in Waco, Texas shot up a restaurant parking lot. Nine biker gang members were killed. Police arrested 170 gang members, and confiscated countless weapons. Apparently those 170 weren’t an aggravated menace worthy of immediate death.
(. . .)
The most dangerous uprising that’s threatening America’s stability isn’t black protests in places like Ferguson or Baltimore. It’s taking place among an aging white majority that is losing its bearing on reality and destroying the gears of government, media and public welfare. At its center is an inexplicable, illogical and dangerous fear that some sociologists are now defining as white fragility.

White fragility is a term coined by Robin DiAngelo, an associate professor of education at Westfield State University in Massachusetts. In her 2011 academic pedagogical analysis titled “White Fragility,” DiAngelo goes into a detailed explanation of how white people in North America live in insulated social and media spaces that protect them from any race-based stress. This privileged fragility leaves them unable to tolerate any schism or challenge to a universally accepted belief system. Any shift away from that (like a biracial African-American president) triggers a deep and sustaining panic.

One might just begin to ask why “older, white folks” are so afraid of those ‘others’, that they create conspiracy theories and gather together with those who think as they do – actually, rational thinking is not involved. I mean, if there is no longer racism in America, if the ‘others’ are actually enjoying privileges which white folks can’t receive, why are the whities acting in such irrational manner?

Free speech for some but not for teachers in NC

The North Carolina senate has a bill before it which would punish teachers if they wear red clothes in their classrooms. Say WHAA!!??!!

Though not explicitly banning red clothes, a teacher wearing red to school might be seen as engaging in a “political activity”… There is a campaign in North Carolina, Wear Red 4 Ed (public education)

What has created “the notion that promoting public education has become a political statement.”?

What else but a well-funded campaign from the right. There is some justification for vouchers which allow public school students to attend private schools but there is also the reality that some folks see vouchers as a money-making proposition — and screw the kids.

h/t to Crooks&Liars

Charles P Pierce has a way with words

Writing about Marco Rubio’s efforts to justify the type of domestic spying exposed by some guy named Edward Snowden and the attempts by America’s intelligence community to cover its failures in 2001, Mr Pierce says the following:

It is now customary for ambitious politicians to presume the American electorate has the attention span of a sand flea. However, there never has been a more important time for that not to be the case.

I really wish I could write as well as Mr Pierce

More can be read at Old Spy’s Tale: A 9/11 Fable Lives Again

Kasich’s Ohio ain’t done so well

Kasich, like many GOPers has been an advocate for charter schools during his time as governor.  The original idea behind the charter school movement was to provide institutions focusing on specific fields of study, such as: theatre arts, science, music and broadcasting. Then the “free market” types saw an opportunity; the charter schools in most cases didn’t have to comply with the standards demanded of those “union-dominated” public schools.  ‘Teachers’ weren’t required to hold the same certification as public school teachers, the charter schools funding wasn’t monitored as closely as that of public schools and so we have ended up with a situation in which most, not all but most, charter schools in Ohio provide much poorer education than the denigrated public schools.

Ohio is the home of three of the worst owners of charter schools: K12 Inc.  White Hat Management and  The Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow (ECOT) — all owned by major donors to the GOP.

More on the story may be read at Ohio’s charter schools ridiculed at national conference, even by national charter supporters

The problem for taxpayers is exemplified by a quote from the chairman of the Ohio House Education Committee Public access to charter school spending is “just not going to happen”

The problem of Ohio’s charter schools along with advocating for the expansion of Medicaid show the likelihood of a failed Presidential campaign for Mr Kasich. Of course the fact he has pissed off both left and right means he’s a centrist and everybody just loves them centrist types.

Time flies when interests change

Three years since the last post on this blog – for no good reason.

I think I need to return simply to practice my writing skills (weak as they may be)

From this date, I will attempt at least one post a day, some will be wordy and some less verbose.  The ones with fewer words will be mostly links and quotes from other sites I find interesting.

Blake

Is John Kasich a “Manchurian Candidate”?

Kasich turns down federal disaster aid

Is Republican Governor Kasich actually a Democratic “Manchurian Candidate“?

Kasich turns down federal disaster aid

Ohio Gov. John Kasich said thanks but no thanks to immediate federal disaster relief Saturday, even as governors in Indiana and Kentucky welcomed the help.

Kasich did not rule out asking for assistance later, but his decision means tornado-ravaged towns in Ohio will not get federal aid now and are not eligible at this time for potentially millions of dollars in payments and loans.

The governor said Ohio can respond to the crisis without federal help and he would not ask federal authorities to declare the region a disaster area.

“I believe that we can handle this,” Kasich said while visiting a shelter for storm victims at New Richmond High School. “We’ll have down here all the assets of the state.”

“We’ll have down here all the assets of the state.” Just what “assets” would those be, Governor? Ohio is so short of “assets” that it can’t fund basic services, how is it going to fund disaster relief?

The Manchurian Candidate thing I mentioned:

Obama leads all GOP rivals in Ohio

So who is going to get blamed for failures in the disaster relief efforts? The President and FEMA or the one (a Republican governor) who refused federal assistance? One could argue that making the Republican mantra of states controlling their own internal matters more important than humanitarian aid at a time of crisis, just might cause more independent voters to turn away from Republican candidates in the 2012 elections.

Santorum: I Don’t Believe In Separation Of Church And State

Everyday Mr Santorum opens his mouth and shows us all, yet once again, his desire for a theocracy in America

Santorum: I Don’t Believe In Absolute Separation Of Church And State

Rick Santorum on Sunday took on separation of church and state.

“I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state are absolute,” he told ‘This Week’ host George Stephanopoulos. “The idea that the church can have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical to the objectives and vision of our country…to say that people of faith have no role in the public square? You bet that makes me want to throw up.”

The GOP candidate was responding to comments he made last October. He had said that he “almost threw up” after reading JFK’s 1960 speech in which he declared his commitment to the separation of church and state.

Santorum also on Sunday told Meet The Press host David Gregory that separation of church and state was “not the founders’ vision.”

The GOP candidate has been doubling down on religious rhetoric in an effort to court evangelical voters ahead of Super Tuesday. Last week, he questioned Obama’s spiritual beliefs.

“[Obama believes in] some phony ideal, some phony theology … not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology,” he said.

We also have evidence of some of his other ‘thoughts’ in various speeches he has made and in the book that was published in 2005, It Takes a Family. Rick’s beliefs about a woman’s place in society are outlined in an op-ed piece on CNN.com, titled Santorum’s stone-age view of women and then there was the speech at Florida’s own Ave Maria College in 2008 in which Santorum said “Protestants Are ‘Gone From The World Of Christianity’”

Yet once again, a True Believer(tm) lays down the “No True Scotsman” argument. Simply another fine example of the mindset found in the modern conservative (‘conservative’, as defined by the modern American right – not the classic definition). The more they ‘know’, the less likely they are to accept new knowledge.

Chris Mooney writing at Alternet, pointed out the problem we face as rational beings with those who ‘know’ they are correct – also right in the political sense of ‘right’

Indeed, the rapidly growing social scientific literature on the resistance to global warming (see for examples here and here) says so pretty unequivocally. Again and again, Republicans or conservatives who say they know more about the topic, or are more educated, are shown to be more in denial, and often more sure of themselves as well—and are confident they don’t need any more information on the issue.

Although he was writing about the denial of the science that supports the theory of mankind being behind climate change, the studies referenced also reveal the seemingly innate tendency of the conservative mind to reject facts which don’t fit the ‘reality’ it has created.  So we have individuals with university degrees denying the science behind global warming, asserting that evolution is some kind of atheist plot and creating their own history of America.

Way back in the “good ol’ days”, some clueless, God-hater wrote the following:

Religion & Govt. will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.
James Madison (1822)

I wonder what Santorum would say to that guy.