Margaret, I am beginning to wonder if there are any grown ups left in the Republican party .
I ‘ve been asking myself that question since 2004 when George Bush got 35 more electoral votes and 4.1 million more popular votes than John Kerry. The next day he announced that he had political capital and he “intended to spend it ‘cause that’s the kind a guy I am.” I swear that man was the biggest jackass ever to live in the White House.
It was so good to see an adult take office in 2008 when Barack Obama won 192 more electoral votes and almost 10 million more popular votes than John McCain. But then the Republicans obstructionism in the Senate started and eventually, thanks to the dumb asses in the Tea Party, the complete collapse of any type of governing ramped up 2 years later in the House. They vowed Obama would be a one term President, and everything we learned in kindergarten went right out the window.
This year, Obama won by 126 electoral votes and more than 4 million popular votes. Always changing the rules of the game, the Republicans are demanding that Democrats need to compromise. I hear that McConnell and Boehner actually bragged to the press that they laughed at the President’s plan. Just who the hell are these guys? Even Fox News eventually had to call the election for Obama. You know what, Margaret? If Obama were to leave a flaming bag of shit outside Boehner and McConnell’s office doors, I’d cheer him on. Higher taxes for the wealthy was pretty much the central theme of the election. Mitt was against it. Obama was for it. Mitt lost. End of story.
How about the Republicans finally tell Grover Norquist and the other wackos in their party to sit down and shut the hell up? I know if we leave it up to those Tea Party nut jobs, they’ll be digging up Ronald Reagan’s dead body and running him in 2016.
The Republicans want compromise? How’s this:
- In exchange for Republicans agreeing to once and for all get out of our vaginas and our bedrooms, we Democrats will let you start another war just as soon as you get another Bush in the White House.
- In exchange for Republicans agreeing to fully fund the social safety net for this nation’s poor and elderly, we Democrats will do everything in our power to starve camels and make the eye of the needle wider.
- And here’s the really big one - If Republicans will agree to take Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove and make them simply “disappear”, we Democrats will not let Bill Clinton speak at the 2016 Democratic Convention.
In truth, I am pretty disgusted with all politicians right now. They’ve all gotten a little too predictable for my taste. Republicans want more money for the wealthy and more war. Democrats want to take care of the poor, the elderly and want more money for education programs… On second thought, I’m really just disgusted with Republican politicians.
If this is the best we can expect from Republican leadership, we have a bigger problem than going over some cliff. How about we just pass the President’s plan? If it fails, the Republicans might actually stand a chance in the next election. If it succeeds, the Republicans might finally have to move into the 21st Century.
Show me a fiscal cliff and I will gladly push McConnell and Boehner over the edge. Maybe then the grown ups can roll up their sleeves and get something done. Because how the hell is any deep thinking going to happen if those two insist on spending the whole day pissing in the baby pool? I mean it. Really.
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By: Sue J on December 17, 2012
at 1:30 AM
Oh yes Ter, there is ALWAYS hope. Some talk of bigger counties flipping in the next general election: let us pray! And I really like Gilberto Hinojosa and those fine (!) young men the Castro brothers. Yes, there is always hope!
By: JC on December 16, 2012
at 10:49 PM
JC, I know Texas is ornery- my pastor daughter lives there. When she first went there to get to know her later to be Texan husband I warned her about it being “a whole other country” and needing a passport in a poem I wrote.
Talks about seceding weren’t a surprise. She, however, lives in El Paso and tells me her congregation wishes they were part of New Mexico and that her county is one of the few Democrat counties in the state. So there is hope deep in the heart of Texas/Dixie. – Terry
By: Terry Waggle on December 16, 2012
at 8:44 PM
Sorry for the multiposts, don’t know why my phone kept sending, guess it thinks I talk too much too!
By: JC on December 16, 2012
at 7:46 PM
Adhi, no democrats or republicans lost here: the whole COUNTRY lost this time! There are no winners here at all!
Gato, and Terry and Terri and all: I am sure I sound like a defeatist (no such thing, I’m an optimist married to a defeatist whom I love very dearly!) but what I AM is a realist. We have capital this minute, but it won’t last, it will be eclipsed, so we don’t have the luxury of time-but Gato, you come nearest when you remind us that these freedoms are a privilege! We have just spent 6 months screaming that everyone has the right to vote, and they will be screaming that everyone has a right to beat arms! Those rights can be limited by the state, but I am telling you, Texas is onery! They will fight any limitation tooth and nail. It’s all very well to talk about funding this and funding that, too, but this edition of Congress is about impossible! You may get your individual states to climb on board, and I’m all for it-but Texaa? Montana? Wyoming? Be glad to hear from some of you folks if you think I am wrong but I am telling you, the Texaa lege makes the US Congress look like a bunch of Nobel prize for cooperation geniuses! And our delegation to the fed house and senate lower the IQ of each! So I don’t see much progress from these parts, but I will cheer and encourage and VOTE! Also, I am a gun-owner: we have a .22 rifle registered in my name. It is bolt action with a six-bullet clip. We live in the country and shoot marauding varmints and dogs (dog lovers need not lecture, I’ve been attacked and so has my husband, not to mention our livestock! And I called the sheriffs dept first!) and have always kept gun bolt open, clip out, and ammunition separate. Now that the kids are gone (23 and 25
) there are usually stray bullets in the kitchen that one can grab to dispatch a raccoon when necessary.
By: JC on December 16, 2012
at 7:44 PM
Where do I enlist for this “fight”? I’ve signed petitions and I’ve sent emails to the powers that be. What’s next? We’re getting ready to celebrate the birthday of the Prince of Peace and when will we listen to what he taught us about caring for the marginalized, the children, the “least of these”? I have a bumper sticker that reads “When the power of love overcomes the love of power The world will know peace”. Real peace is not the absence of war; it’s the reality of justice for all people. – Terry
By: Terry Waggle on December 16, 2012
at 7:18 PM
Adhi, no democrats or republicans lost here: the whole COUNTRY lost this time! There are no winners here at all!
Gato, and Terry and Terri and all: I am sure I sound like a defeatist (no such thing, I’m an optimist married to a defeatist whom I love very dearly!) but what I AM is a realist. We have capital this minute, but it won’t last, it will be eclipsed, so we don’t have the luxury of time-but Gato, you come nearest when you remind us that these freedoms are a privilege! We have just spent 6 months screaming that everyone has the right to vote, and they will be screaming that everyone has a right to beat arms! Those rights can be limited by the state, but I am telling you, Texas is onery! They will fight any limitation tooth and nail. It’s all very well to talk about funding this and funding that, as well
By: JC on December 16, 2012
at 7:12 PM
When detmarcos lost When detmarcos lost any point They star with personal attacks, or just being nasty, instead of saying Maybe we should change and being more like the other side , so all you ball of liberals star with your nasty comments, I now your hate has to come out
By: Adhi on December 16, 2012
at 6:22 PM
Gato, thank you. When you call something ‘complex problem’ and start arguing, is it the person, or is it the access to guns, there IS no solution ever to this problem. The arguments go left, then right then stop. This is how we continue to be in the SAME condition we have been since 1989 (first mass killing in Sacramento). What is the answer: hit both fronts. It’s simple! Reduce the access to handguns, to machine guns, to bullets that work with these guns.
Start funding mental health again for people that fall into the cracks of no medical coverage, fund schools to have properly trained school counselors, increase program requirements in counseling for higher training especially in areas where counselors tend to fall out of their licensing: ethics, burn out, and support. Increase counseling support towards insurance which is higher than most doctor’s malpractice insurance, have more drop-in clinics, more stress relieving classes available FREE such as meditation, biofeedback, etc. This is radical, but in the end, if we start to limit access, increase support towards mental heath care, plus better outreach for gang control, we may actually get somewhere: but we have to DO something, not just jaw jack about it.
By: ctctarot on December 16, 2012
at 8:59 AM
Thank you for putting this process into plain English, Gato! I know it will go against the grain for the people who want little or no government but we do need someone to be in control on certain issues just as we need regulations to control anyone who would take advantage of us in other areas of our daily lives. – Terry W.
By: Terry Waggle on December 16, 2012
at 8:33 AM
HI, JC – I am still going through all the posts here, so others may have already said this… But what moral issue is not a “complicated” one? Slavery was “complicated”; civil rights is (sadly) still “complicated”; allowing women to vote was “complicated”…
As you say, after the grieving, it is resolve that must take hold. Change happens only when the majority of a citizenry concludes that the alleged complexity really doesn’t matter in all these issues. What matters is what is good for the populace as a whole, and for the safety, liberty, and responsibility of every citizen. Individual gun ownership is no longer necessary to “protect” the country; many seem to overlook that fact. And the “motivations”, or mental condition of the murderer, really don’t matter, either. The issue is the too-easy availability of powerful firearms, period.
And that is the one thing about which we, as a people, can do anything. Yes; these laws can, and must, be changed, and strictly enforced. Saying they cannot is no different than saying, “We have to keep our slaves, because we can’t get along without them.” Of course, eventually, people had to figure out a way to live without slavery – and they did. And the country did not fall into ruin when blacks and whites were able to drink from the same water fountain, or when women could walk into a voting booth.
And it will not fall into ruin when gun ownership is a highly-restricted, and carefully and regularly monitored PRIVILEGE, granted only to those who are continually able to demonstrate their responsibility and ability to own such instruments of death.
And I imagine that any thoughtful and sane gun owner would agree with me on this.
Gato
By: gatodicima on December 16, 2012
at 8:23 AM
Our wonderful congress, the House of Representatives, does all funding. Not a dollar can be spent without the House ordering/denying it. We can kill everyone in this world multiple times but we dont have the money to take care of our children with sufficient school psychologists and ways to (enforce the) care for our babies needs. The Congress can work only three out of every four weeks but we don’t have the money for small classes because we’d have to hire more teachers. Disgusting. Absolutely immoral. And that moron, Huckabee, says it’s because we took God out of the schools? Is he serious? What about the shooting in a Temple? O, wait, it wasn’t ‘his’ God. God is missing from the Congress, for sure.
By: penny abrams on December 15, 2012
at 11:04 AM
In the UK, even police don’t carry weapons and the crime rate there is very low. OK, we can’t take everyone’s guns away, and I wouldn’t want to. Both my sons hunted, in season; both take the firing pins out of their hunting rifles when not in use; neither would own a hand gun. They are both good men. I understand the jeweler who wants a handgun to protect himself. Not an automatic. The point is that there must be a very thorough background check even if it takes six months to do. It should include a check on anyone living with the gun owner, the gun owner’s history…what other weapons does the gun owner have, school, jobs, marriage status, number of children, illnesses, doctor’s name and address, and at least one recommendation from someone whose backgrund would also be checked. Why would anyone object to that? Unless they had something to hide. I repeat, what was an elementary school teacher doing w/all those weapons in her home where her disturbed son also lived?
By: penny abrams on December 15, 2012
at 10:58 AM
Banning guns isn’t going to happen. There are too many people in this secular plural nation of ours that don’t want to see that happen, for whatever reason. And if you want another permanent wedge issue, just like abortion, all I can say is I do not! The right wingers already trot out glib lies to get everyone in a froth at every election cycle with predictable results. I am seriously mulling what we COULD do, realistically, to reduce these episodes of madness. I think Bo is on the right track; I think the sheer complexity of this problem makes it hard to get a handle on any real part of it. Furthermore, I think we need a little distance and perspective; we are reeling from shock and decisions and policies that spring from the morass of emotional stress are frequently not good decisions! I offer the Patriot Act as exhibit A: reams of bad policy that reduce our civil liberties and make us not one whit safer! Let us boil our anger down to a steely resolve and go forth from there!
A good cry might help too.
By: JC on December 14, 2012
at 11:22 PM
Hey, Terry – Thanks for the clarification… And please forgive me. I’m just jumping all over everything this evening; the insanity is driving ME to craziness, evidently! Had to turn off the TV with all its endless coverage of the “mystery” of how all this could happen…
As I said to my husband, any time anyone is trying to figure out why things happen, they look for common denominators among events. In these mass slaughters, there are at least three: young men in their twenties, mental illness, and guns. (The last time we heard of a woman, armed with a knife or a crowbar, killing more than a dozen people, was… When…?)
I do believe in the power of intention. If we, as a nation – or even a species – could really DECIDE that we will not abide this kind of thing, we could seriously begin to make it diminish, and eventually disappear. Killing others of our kind cannot be the plan the Universe had in mind for us. Destroying our environment is probably not, either. We continue to be slackers, and irresponsible, and fail to use the good sense our creator gave us.
Fortunately, many of us on the porch are thinking about this!
God bless…
Gato
By: gatodicima on December 14, 2012
at 9:27 PM
Gato, I think I misrepresented my son’s comment. What he meant is that the bad guys, the evil people, will always be able to find a way to get guns or any other means of hurting us. The criminals don’t need to go to a gun show or a gun shop to arm themselves. What we do need to do is figure out how to track the guns out there and put in place strict regulations (oops there’s that dirty word that some can’t stand to hear!) about who can get guns and how they’re used. Just recently here in St. Louis a 12 year old boy found his grandpa’s gun which wasn’t secured and accidentally shot and killed his 12 year old friend. There are too many stories like that to justify anyone and everyone being allowed to have guns because it’s our God given right! Oh, wait, it’s our Constitutional right which some relate to God and interpret it to their own way of thinking!
By: Terry Waggle on December 14, 2012
at 9:01 PM
Not having a tv…has this been playing over and over on every channel? Was the last one at the mall in Portland? Or other ones? Is some of the problem that these shootings make the “news” and are played and talked about to the point it stirs up the anger in a unstable person to consider doing the same. Or someone who wishes to be in the spotlight without realizing the end result? A copycat, death by cop or whatever.
By: Cynthia on December 14, 2012
at 8:19 PM
Hey Gato, the thing is, these horrible events always seem to happen in idyllic small towns–Aurora, Littleton, Newtown. They happen, we pay attention for a short time, and then we move on. These were little kids, this morning they were looking forward to Christmas, and now they are dead. It’s almost too much to bear.
By: Terri in NY on December 14, 2012
at 7:35 PM
Hi, Terry W – I respectfully disagree with your son on his contention that “we can’t take everyone’s guns away.” OF COURSE WE COULD, if we,o as a nation, chose to do so.
I think we sell ourselves short if we continue to operate on that premise. Good god; we allowed all kinds of our civil rights to be taken away after 9/11, and very few of us even made a fuss about that – because it was all to “protect” us. Why are we even entertaining the idea that we should do less to protect our own children?
What are we willing to do to protect all of us from some of us who will kill our own? Is this not the most insidious form of “terrorism”?
Gato
By: gatodicima on December 14, 2012
at 7:32 PM
Terri – You absolutely said it all: “We can’t control mental illness, but we can ban guns.”
I wish F****** Fox (my husband watches, and I stand in the kitchen and kvetch while I’m making dinner) would stop talking about how this could happen in this “idyllic small town only sixty miles from” their studios in NY… Like Bret Baier is personally worried…
One thing this really brings home to me: We in CT are no different from our fellow humans living in Colorado, or Wisconsin, or Darfur, or the Sudan… No matter how sheltered and special we may feel here in the generally serene Nirvana of Fairfield County, CT.
Arming the world threatens all of us; we must never forget that.
Gato
By: gatodicima on December 14, 2012
at 6:44 PM
I too am sick over this. I keep thinking of my grandchildren at their schools here in St. Louis and in El Paso. I imagine that the shooter whose mother taught at the Conn. school was innocently allowed in even if there was a locked door. So many children are not protected from people they know, people they consider safe to be with.
My grown son pointed out that we can’t take everyone’s guns away but I have to wonder why buying a bullet proof vest wasn’t a red flag. Who needs one of those other than law enforcement or military personnel? Who needs assault rifles which I see in a flyer from a local “sporting goods” dealer? I guess until one of the right wing NRA nut jobs loses a family member or close friend in this senseless tragedy they’ll stand their ground on their “right to bear arms”. What was originally drafted to enable us to protect ourselves from the British in case of a war has escalated to a group of grown up little boys and tom-boys who can’t see the irony of their stand! – Terry
p.s. I’m just now hearing that the shooter had mental issues so how did he get guns in the first place?
By: Terry Waggle on December 14, 2012
at 6:38 PM
Hi, JC – I’m touched by your concern. Truth is, some of us who post here probably live in Colorado, or Wisconsin, or anywhere else this kind of insanity has taken place…
Now I’m watching some idiot “pundit” talk about how we need to find out about the shooter’s “motivation,” his “background,” his “instability”… As if any of that really MATTERS! WHAT MATTERS IS THAT CRAZIES CAN GET GUNS!!! I don’t give a s*** about his “motivations.” I give a s*** about the fact that he got his hands on so many firearms, so easily. THAT we could do something about, if we had the national will to do so.
All twenty-year-olds are “unstable” to some degree. But WE are crazy to let them get their hands on lethal weapons…
And, of course, we need to remember that the slaughter of children goes on all over the world, every day, many of them killed with weapons we’ve sold to their murderers…
Gato
By: gatodicima on December 14, 2012
at 6:19 PM
We can’t control mental illness, but we can ban guns. Please don’t tell me it can’t be done, there are too many, all that crap that feeds into the inertia that has led to this. This is just too much, we have to start somewhere. These were five-year olds–kindergartners. The rest of the world must look at us and think we are mad.
By: Terri in NY on December 14, 2012
at 6:15 PM
(((Gato))) I was afraid it would be near you but not SO close as that!! And oh yes, there is a great deal of money in all this, and the legal storefront with backround checks and taxes collected is the tippy top of the iceberg! The problem is huge and unwieldly: think about the Iran-Contra swaps. We are arming the mexican drug cartels!
Back to Conn, I just can’t see anyone spraying a bunch of third graders with bullets. it’s bad enough he killed his poor mother (mind you, I have known some lousy ones, but still!) AND in front of her class, but what brand of hate makes you see a bunch of hysterical kids as targets??? It’s making me ill to think of it, but how can you hide??
By: JC on December 14, 2012
at 5:49 PM