The Peasantville Blog

Tea Party Downgrade set to become the Tea Party Recession?

Over a year ago extremists of the Tea Party held the middle class tax cuts hostage to their agenda of furthering the same policies put in place by George W. Bush that helped bring about the Great Recession.  The destabilizing effect, the lack of certainty, the damage to American economic stature and the global perception of a weaker United States caused by Tea Party intransigence, resulted in a downgrade of America's credit rating for the first time in our history.

Today another threat of economic crisis, the Fiscal Cliff - another result of right wing extremism and intransigence.  The result? Higher unemployment; $600 billion removed from the economy; a tax increase not only for the 2% but for everyone, including the middle class; the repeal of the payroll tax holiday resulting in another 2% increase for both business and wage earners; and the across the board mindless cuts to spending that will leave no one unscathed.  Grover Norquist's goal to destroy America? If it's up to the Tea Party then "Mission Accomplished." 

At least Thelma and Louise only drove themselves over that cliff - the Tea Party is quite content to drive over the cliff and take us with them. 

The GOP's Own Approaching Cliff: The Extreme Right/Tea Party Cliff

It's bitterly amusing to watch the GOP's convulsions these days in the wake of Obama's landslide victory over Romney.  Finger pointing and blame, head scratching and remorse.  Karl Rove's epic 'are you lying to yourself or Fox viewers' moment - priceless.  Five out of six contested gubernatorial races go to Democrats, Allen West, Joe Walsh, Mourdock in Indiana and Akin in Missouri and so many other right wing/Tea Party types go down in defeat as Democrats pick up House and Senate seats.  But now- now we have Bobby Jindal multitasking in his attempts 1) to talk the GOP off the Cliff of extremism and away from the drag of the Tea Party; while 2) discussing and planning in broad daylight how the Republican Party is going to con working people, Hispanics and the 47% into voting for Republicans - in other words, how to con the many to vote in the interests of the very wealthy few. 

Health care, education, the economy, national security, immigration -- these are face cards in politics and if played correctly the player wins.  But for a lesson in how not to play those cards, Mitt Romney did it best and the Tea Party just sat in the corner playing a whole different game with blunt scissors and paste. 

Health care -- a major problem ignored by the right, the same old failed 'free market' solutions floated yet again, myth to repair reality. 

Education -- a student loan crisis in the form of student loan debt now in excess of national credit card debt while college costs are exploding making higher education more and more inaccessible.

The economy -- this is special.  The Republicans, the Tea Party and Romney all went back to the George W. Bush playbook and trickle down cum Job Creation. Bad strategy as it comes only 4 years after the epic fail of those policies in the form of September 2008 and the Great Recession.  But this is capped by insult - "don't look at that man behind the curtain" exposed.  The DISDAIN with which the right looks upon the rubes in continuing to portray failed fiscal policy as solution and expect the rubes to beleive something different would happen.  (Of course, there are those who seek comfort in believing such fallacy - they attend Tea Party meetings)

National security -- bin Laden is dead, Al Qaeda on the run, the Taliban in disarray and the GOP in tatters.  Terrorist organizations -0; Obama 332.  But there's always Benghazi -- Benghazi played by Rep. Peter "Chicken Little' King for whom sky fall is not a movie but a cry of alarm and Benghazi played by Sen. John McCain for whom integrity today is just a word without substance.  These two and so many right wing columnists pushed by Fox News have been playing Benghazi Clue for weeks now - 'it was Colonel Mustard with complicit Obama and Hillary in the kitchen with a candlestick made by Al Qaeda at Langley while Petraeus was sleeping with both Broadwell and Kelley."   Here's the rub - in doing these contortions of logic and fantasy, Fox and King and MCain and all those who engage in such drivel are ENHANCING any advantage our enemies might enjoy from the sad events in Benghazi.  The myth that the GOP is superior in national security, exploded and exposed by the Blunder in Iraq and the Poochscrewing in Afghanistan (as well as the snatching of defeat from the Jaws of Victory in 1991), is not to be resurrected from any ashes because it was, is and will always be known as myth.

Immigration -- Marco Rubio is to the GOP what black shoe polish was Al Jolson.  Joe Arpaio playing Bull Connor, Arizona playing Montgomery, Alabama circa 1963 and along comes Mitt Romney to play multiple roles depending on what day it was and what he thought the audience wanted to hear consistency and principle be damned -- and immigrants should vote for Republicans?  This subject is special -- 50% of doctoral candidates are foreign students and when they finish their studies they go back home and that's a brain drain (but one wonders why more Americans aren't given the opportunity to excel as doctoral candidates).  But then there's the contradiction of so many who use immigrant labor and want to ease visas for that purpose (and those are the same people who don't want to pay taxes but demand the deficit/debt be paid off quickly).  Now, place this issue in the context of Storm Front supported/militia threatening/secession advocating extremism -- and, please, explain to me why Hispanics would ever vote Republican/Tea Party.

To Bobby Jindal -- thinking Americans aren't buying what you're selling.  And the Tea Party, that bloc of unthinking Americans, can't sell it either. 

 

Mitt Romney - Tea Partier Extremist and the Danger Within

The Tea Party, the right wing extremists, are now claiming Mitt Romney was 'too moderate' to win as an excuse for Barack Obama's landslide victory 332-206 electoral votes. Contrary to the tinfoil tricorner hat fantasy, if anything, Romney was too extreme.  Evidenced by his 47% remarks he subsequently denied and now exposed by his latest phone call to donors, Mitt Romney is the quintessential Tea Partier extremist.  That extremism was soundly rejected by the nation on November 6. 

Mitt Romney is a relic of the past and so is the Tea Party.  They ripped a page from Joe McCarthy to redbait the president and his supporters - Tailgunner Joe wants that page back.  The Tea Party applies 1812 principles to 2012 realities and the result is Hector Heathcote parodies portrayed as principle and ideal.  Hector wants to take the country back - but back to a time/place/circumstance that exists only in that wasteland between a Tea Partier's ears and in cartoon form.

The real problem is a group of extremists, too many, who look back with longing to their fantasy of the 1800s and imagine what it would be like to cross the prairie with a Kentucky rifle living off the land. Sadly, the delusional right wing extremists want to do the same thing today - with an AK 47 while living off the remains of a ruined society.    The extremists are doomsday preppers and survivalists who think Armageddon is a good idea, let's get on with it.  They think they'll watch it in their bunker on ESPN and the popcorn supply will be endless. They'll do anything to make it happen - destroy the economy, prioritize making the president a one termer (how'd that work out?), lay off workers - one even killed himself because Obama won (some might call that a good start).  Now they're suicidal fanatics.  That makes them the danger within.

Einstein's Definition of Insanity Illustrated

Albert Einstein - "Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results."    

The Republicans in this new Congress elected, yet again, Mitch McConnell as Minority Leader.  Just in time to deal with the Fiscal Cliff.  Not good.

 

Unfinished Business

The War in Iraq was the Blunder to End All Blunders (one would hope).  It's the inappropriate gift given to your toddler by some crazy aunt and you try to be polite as you accept it then try to hide it.  From Day One in March 2003 this nation skidded into an abyss, into a condition that can be likened to mental illness - 'bi-polarization' if you will.  Attempts to rationalize away the error, promote it as an asset or as progress or even as a "Good War" of liberation were used as bludgeons against those who didn't 'support the troops.' Those attempts are symptoms of that illness.

But the one constant in war is casualties, and casualties as a result of a Blunder like Iraq are seen (and should be) as a higher cost, one too high to pay.  That's why this story  about Sgt. Jacob Butler is offensive.  It's a step beyond accusing those who opposed the War in Iraq on various grounds, some because they are pacifists, others, like me, who recognized the mistake that Iraq is/was, of not 'supporting the troops' as a way to quiet the discussion.  It's a betrayal of those who served by those who lead them into that abyss.  It's using someone like Butler as a pawn and a prop to promote the lie. 

From Propublica:

"The day after Jim Butler learned his son had died in Iraq in 2003, a U.S. Army casualty officer showed up at the family's small ranch to explain what happened....

Part One

Lost to History: Missing War Records Complicate Benefit Claims by Iraq, Afghanistan Veterans

by Peter Sleeth, Special to ProPublica, and Hal Bernton, The Seattle Times, Nov. 9

So Butler made a simple request to the Army — for Jake's casualty report. Rules require one when soldiers are killed in a war zone. Unit commanders are supposed to create and maintain them, along with numerous other field records.

"They said, 'We'll have to see,'" Butler recalled, "because one should have been made."

Nine years later, Butler is still waiting for a report he may never get."

False Narrative Against a Right Wing Fantasy That Frontier Principles Apply in 21st Century America

In all the protests from the right that they've lost individual freedoms, that they can no longer experience liberty because of government regulations, hard reality is ignored by those of the right.  It's 2012, not 1812.  No one is blazing trails across unexplored plains or wildnerness - the land is settled, not laying vacant and unclaimed, there are cities and roads and systems and laws. That includes a system called the economy. 

What we really have here is fantasy run amok, Texas wants to secede (well, at least those 27,000 or so signors to a petition making that claim); there are Freemen in Idaho and Minutemen in Arizona and Texas (though they occasionally massacre families under the pretext of stopping illegal immigration); and there're still those who would impose poll taxes and prevent minorities from voting (with the unfunny humor of calling themselves 'True the Vote').  This is the price imposed by the Right Wing Infotainment Complex, the spread of ignorance like the Exxon Valdez oil slick spread on the ocean and beaches.  But far more damaging.  Ignorance is a plague and the right is consumed by it.  Kind of reminds one of all those zombie movies, the right wingers are mindless with only one goal - satisfy the hunger for stupid.

Resurrection of Peasantville.com!!!

This blog has been inactive for sometime as the blogger has been involved in a congressional campaign - his own.  That effort having not been successful, it's time to re-enter the fray and the best way is to resurrect Peasantville from the rubble.  First, let me say how absolutely pleased I am that Barack Obama was re-elected on 11/6/2012 -- he saved America from Romney/Ryan and the certain Great Depression II they would have wrapped in a pretty bow and delivered to the globe.  Second, the 332-206 Electoral College results should firmly push the right wingers back and it's only going to get better over the next few years. That Kentucky hasn't caught up with the rest of the nation is not truly a surprise, but despite Mark Twain's assessment, I think it will take only a few years for the Commonwealth to catch up to the 21st Century. 

I'm baaa-aaackk!

First the Arab Spring -- Could This Be the Russian Spring? Can China Be Far Behind?

Vladimir Putin has suffered electoral losses, his party has been accused of election fraud, voter intimidation and ballot stuffing - and tens of thousands are hitting the streets in what might be a Russian Spring or even Occupying the Kremlin movement.  Will Gnewt Gingrich accuse the demonstrators there of being unwashed and advise them to get a job?

The Guardian:  "Dmitry Finikov, a 31-year-old small-business owner who volunteered as an election monitor, uploaded his tale to LiveJournal on Tuesday morning and it was viewed more than 150,000 times by Wednesday.

His photographs and video show how election officials at his polling site in central Moscow threw away the official result of the vote, which showed United Russia coming in third with 128 votes, behind the Communists (202) and liberal Yabloko (134). In the final tally, United Russia won the vote at the site."

Gnewt's Serial Hypocrisy - brought to you by Ron Paul

 

Tea Party Downgrade has spread to the GOP.

The Tea Party is poison to everything it touches - and now the Tea Party Downgrade has spread to the GOP. 

From the FrumForum by David Frum:  "Republican favorability has dropped 7 points with the general public since September 2010, with the steepest portion of the drop occuring during the debt-ceiling debate last summer.

But in congressional districts where the tea party is strong, Republican support has dropped further, by 10 points.

And while overall GOP numbers are stronger in those tea party districts, even there, the unfavorables are higher than the favorables, 48 unfavorable to 41 favorable."