Tag: John Boehner

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Onward to the Past

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,

The blackbird whistling

Or just after. — Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

While many of you were at Beale Street Music Fest or at the movies or drinking yourselves silly with craft beer last Saturday night, I spent the evening watching “Nerd Prom,” otherwise known as the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Yes, I know, I need to get out more.

The WHCD is an incestuous affair, one in which the Beltway elite dress up and endure polite jabs from the president, and then, after the the leader of the free world’s remarks, get skewered more forcefully by a comedian. This year’s dinner went pretty much true to form, except that comedian Larry Wilmore of The Nightly Show had the bad fortune to follow a president who had funnier material and a better stage presence.

Obama took shots at Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Reince Priebus, Ted Cruz, and, of course, Donald Trump. He was in rare form, obviously feeling some relief that this would be the last such dinner he would ever have to attend. “Next year at this time,” he said, “someone else will be standing here in this very spot, and it’s anyone’s guess who she will be.” Ow.

The president even poked fun at himself in a video in which he received “advice” on retirement from former Speaker John Boehner, who offered Obama a cigarette and suggested that having a beer in the morning wasn’t the worst idea ever. Which is true.

At the end of his speech, when Obama literally dropped the mic, I thought about how much I’ll miss having a president with a sense of humor and an ability to be self-deferential, a national leader who can be joyful and use Snapchat and charm children and shoot hoops with Stephen Curry — and bear with grace and humor the most vitriolic and coordinated attacks on a president’s character in my memory.

I can’t imagine Donald Trump, for instance, ever making fun of himself. To do so requires genuine self-confidence, not the insecure macho bluster that is Trump’s stock in trade. As we trundle toward what now appears inevitable — a presidential contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton — I cannot help but feel the country is taking a step backward, with two candidates in their late 60s, neither of whom seems in touch with the nation’s current zeitgeist.

Even so, the choice between Trump and Clinton will be not a difficult one for me, nor will it be for the majority of Americans, if current polling is to be believed. In 2012, Obama beat Mitt Romney in an Electoral College landslide, and it’s unlikely many Democratic voters will switch to Trump in 2016. There simply aren’t enough angry, xenophobic white people to swing a national election to the GOP. Nor are there enough Democratic voters who “feel the Bern” of Sanders’ efforts to tackle the country’s increasingly troubling income disparity.

But there is an overlap there between Trump’s frustrated blue-collar followers and Sanders’ underpaid and over-leveraged young folks. The candidate who can reach both groups and show them their common interests — and their common enemies — will have a shot at creating genuine change. It’s not happening this year, but I get the sense that we are only waiting for this moment to arrive.

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Editorial Opinion

It’s Paul Ryan for Speaker — for better or worse

Want to hear a good one? For much of the last month, the House speakership being vacated by Representative John Boehner (R-Ohio) was going unfilled because the sizeable super-right minority of Republican House members who call themselves the “Freedom Caucus” were finding Boehner’s most likely replacement, Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) too “moderate” to hold the job.

Having basically run off Boehner and another possible successor to the leadership post — Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-California) — on grounds of being too soft toward President Obama or Planned Parenthood or congressional Democrats or whomever, the Freedom Caucus gang was surely choking on a gnat if they were gagging on Ryan, whose reason for entering politics had been his self-confessed youthful swoon for the writings of objectivist icon Ayn Rand.

Somehow, though, the far-right House members have apparently found themselves out of any other acceptable options, because the word is that, on Thursday of this week, the votes are on hand for Ryan to be elected as Speaker of the House, when Boehner formally steps down.

So Paul Ryan, who not too long ago was nominated by his party to be vice president, will have now slipped down a notch to become third-in-line for the presidency, no matter who gets elected president next year. That’s what the Constitution provides.

Never mind that Ryan has never forsworn the philosophy of Rand, whose guiding ethical principle was to trust in human selfishness as the only motive needed to guide the government of mankind. The speaker-to-be is still, so far as we know, an exponent of that 21st-century derivative of Randism which holds that society is divided into makers —the privileged minority who profess to need nobody’s help — and takers — the mass of mortals who, to one degree or another, require some measure of concern or assistance on the part of their government.

Not only is the makers/takers dichotomy an unethical point of view, it is woefully inaccurate, inasmuch as the supposed “makers” class contains as many moochers dependent on government protection of inherited wealth as it does innovators or manufacturers of tools necessary for life. And conversely, the so-called “takers” are often the toilers who provide the muscle or the man-hours to actually keep the wheels turning that allow the ticker tape (or, these days, the digital dial) to reflect some measure of economic progress.

Even so, we take our satisfaction when and as we can. And if the party that now controls both elected houses of Congress on the basis of its hatred of government per se is willing to name someone as leader who at least pledges — as Paul Ryan has done — to forgo the right to shut down government by rejecting a routine debt-ceiling increase, then maybe that’s the best we can hope for.

So here’s a weak whoopee that the GOP is willing to abide by some measure of economic common sense. Maybe they’ll even get tired at some point of exploiting Benghazi!

But that really would be asking too much.

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Editorial Opinion

“No Deal”

It has only been a few weeks since the speaker of the House of Representatives, without seeking the concurrence of the president of the United States or even bothering to consult him, chose to invite the head of state of another nation to

address a joint session of the Congress. And it was on a matter, moreover, which was even then the subject of delicate negotiations between this country and a potential adversary, Iran.

As expected, that leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, had a view of the issue that was diametrically opposed to that of President Obama. No problem on that point: People and nations differ. The timing, however — just as negotiations with Iran were reaching the crucial point and (no accident, either) just before Netanyahu faced an election back home — was atrocious. And the issue — the very sensitive one of a deal with Iran to restrain that country’s ability to make a nuclear weapon — was no small matter. Neither was the matter of this country’s constitutional checks and balances, which Speaker John Boehner’s partisan power move, at the very least, put in jeopardy.

Steve Cohen, the 9th District congressman who happens to represent Memphis, more or less said all the above back then, and we were happy to quote his words editorially, deferring to him as a Jewish American, a lifelong supporter of Israel, and a patriot.

Putting all the breaches with tradition and good sense aside, the fact is that Netanyahu spoke well and forcefully in his address, the point of which was to condemn the proposed agreement with Iran as a “bad deal,” which, in his view, made it worse than no deal at all.

But there was something terribly wrong with his logic, as there is, to an even worse degree, with a follow-up letter by 47 Republican senators to the reigning Ayatollah of Iran instructing him, in essence, to disregard the proposed deal — to reject it, rather, on grounds that the Republican Congress had the power to strike the deal dead by not ratifying it and would almost certainly do so.

Now this effort to scuttle a pending treaty, to further hobble the elected chief executive, and to nullify, not just weaken, the checks and balances of our political system, is not only egregious, it is patently in violation of the Constitution, both in letter and in spirit. It is in fact, borderline treasonous. Once again, though, leaving that aside, it ignores the fundamental point of view, as did Netanyahu, that the five other nations participating in negotiations with Iran — Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany — have made it clear they will not join the United States if it should follow Netanyahu’s advice and jettison the pending deal. They, in fact, are likely to forgo the existing multi-national sanctions they have adopted in deference to the U.S. position and to resume trade with Iran, leaving the United States out of the loop and Iran home free to do as it chooses with its nuclear program. That’s what’s wrong with Mr. Netanyahu’s logic and with that of  the GOP barn-burners in Congress. And, along with a trampling of the Constitution, that’s the bottom line of what “no deal” actually means.  Iran wins outright.

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Editorial Opinion

Cohen On Netanyahu

Close study of major changes in official American policies and attitudes reveals a principle that has been informally given the name of “Nixon-Goes-to-China” — a reference to President Richard Nixon’s historic 1971 diplomatic opening
to a country that U.S. officialdom had always withheld recognition from.  

During Nixon’s early prominence, he was a scourge of what he and other Cold Warriors scorned as “Red China,” and it was only from that well-established position that he could so dramatically change positions and tilt for a change in policy.

So we come to the current controversy over a decision by the Republican leader of the House of Representatives to issue an invitation to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and to do so not only without consulting Democratic President Barack Obama but to make sure the president knew nothing of the invitation in advance.

Who better to come to grips with the matter than our own 9th District congressman, Steve Cohen, who, in a public statement, identifies himself as both “a supporter of the state of Israel and a Jewish American.” His views on the Netanyahu matter derive from an undeniable sincerity.

Cohen has declared that he will not attend Netanyahu’s speech before Congress. He noted the insult to Obama and the breach of precedent involved in the invitation by Boehner. He pointed out that the Israeli prime minister is a candidate in forthcoming elections in his own country, and that Netanyahu has improperly used video footage of previous speeches before Congress in his electoral campaigns, making the United States government an involuntary campaign supporter by proxy.

Cohen then noted the uses to which the Netanyahu visit will likely be put: “The Speaker’s invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu is political gamesmanship and it is a very dangerous game. The prime minister’s use of the U.S. House chamber as a stage to argue against the comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, which is currently being negotiated among Iran and the P5+1 — the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom and Germany, is reckless.

“While Americans and members of Congress may disagree on anything, even foreign policy, providing a forum of such immense prestige and power to the leader of another country who is opposing our nation’s foreign policy is beyond the pale. It endangers the negotiations, insults the good faith of the other nations involved in the negotiations, and emboldens Iran who may well view this schism in our government as an opportunity for advantage. While we can disagree with our president, we as a nation should be as one on our foreign policy and any disagreements should be presented in a respectful, appropriate and time-honored manner.”

Cohen concludes: “[M]y support of Israel has not wavered but I believe that this speech at this time and brought forth in this manner is dangerous to Israel as well as inappropriate. Nothing should come between our two nations. The actions of the Speaker and the Prime Minister have caused a breach between Democrats in Congress and Israel as well as the administrations of the United States and Israel. My lack of attendance does not mean I will not be aware of the content of the speech nor does it mean I won’t follow the commentary both pro and con, but I will not be part of the spectacle.”

Agree or disagree as you will, this is well and powerfully said.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Republicans at the Crossroads

When it comes to the Republican Party’s immigration divide, the more things stay the same, the more they stay the same. 

The 2016 campaign has begun, and Jeb Bush, a pro-immigration-reform candidate, is believed to have raised the most money. Yet Republicans in Congress are under pressure to roll back the president’s executive action that conservatives consider amnesty. Republicans don’t have the votes to do it. The issue promises to dog the GOP from now at least until Election Day.

A few weeks back, House Republicans passed a bill that would defund parts of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in order to block President Obama’s executive order shielding up to 5 million people from deportation. The bill would restore funds that expire in February to the rest of the department. Though the bill can’t pass the Senate, with all Senate Democrats united against it, GOP leaders there promise to bring it up anyway. 

And “Plan B,” they say, doesn’t yet exist. Failure to pass a bill before February 27th will allow Democrats and the president to claim Republicans risked funding vital national security functions in a time of rising terror threats, concerns that register high in polls of voter priorities. 

Some Republicans argue a lapse in DHS funding would make little difference, because most of the department’s employees are considered essential and would remain on the job with their pay delayed. But creating an avoidable cliff, especially for GOP leaders who have promised an end to them, is foolish in light of the unavoidable cliffs that are up next on the calendar.

Conservatives are likely to fight their leaders and push for more confrontation over the debt ceiling in March, the Medicare “doc fix” in April, and the Highway Trust Fund in May — all must-pass bills that conservatives will view as opportunities to gain leverage over Obama.

Meanwhile, to soothe conservatives, the House prepped a border security bill that would effectively eliminate hope for comprehensive reform, requiring the DHS to secure the border completely — blocking 100 percent of entries — in five years. But conservatives dismissed it for failing to include interior enforcement measures for immigrants already here illegally. The bill was pulled.

The latest concession was Speaker John Boehner’s recent announcement that the House would sue the president over his executive action. It’s hard to see that token move assuaging angry conservatives.

Some momentary reflection and reconsideration of immigration followed GOP nominee Mitt Romney’s defeat in 2012 — a devastating 71 percent to 21 percent wipeout among Latino voters — but faded rapidly, and two years later, the party is more divided than it was then. The “autopsy” by the Republican National Committee suggested passing reform and stated, “It doesn’t matter what we say about education, jobs, or the economy; if Hispanics think that we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies.” The warning went nowhere.

But immigration reform remains a goal for those who influence and fund presidential campaigns. The New York Times reported Wednesday that Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Fox News Channel, recently gushed at remarks by Bush on the benefits of immigration reform. Murdoch, and influential casino magnate and GOP funder Sheldon Adelson, both took the remarkable step of urging the party to pass reform in high-profile op-eds published within one day of each other, after freshman Rep. Dave Brat (R-Virginia) used the immigration issue to topple former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in a June primary election.

Republicans won’t be passing any immigration reform, but it will remain the subject of contentious debate for the next two years, from the halls of Congress to the campaign trail — much to the delight of Democrats.

A.B. Stoddard writes for The Hill, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Light in the Legislative Tunnel

Okay, so what happened to gridlock? In Washington, there was the passage of the so-called “Cromnibus” spending bill, which provides safe passage for $1 trillion in federal expenditures through 2015. No showdowns, no filibusters or cloture battles, no threats to shut down the government.

Granted, there are some objectionable provisions, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) inveighed valiantly (but in vain) against one of them — a proviso that seemingly opens the door for big financial institutions covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to resume the trading in derivatives swaps that contributed so much to the Big Crash of 2008-9.

But congressional Democrats didn’t want another shutdown battle and, for a change, neither did Republicans, who may, after their virtual sweep at the polls this year, simply want a chance to prove they can actually govern. There is still a gridlock of sorts. The word “cromnibus,” incidentally, is an amalgamation of “continuing resolution” and “omnibus.” The former term, often abbreviated as “CR,” denotes a decision to continue with the previous year’s spending and authorizations in lieu of an agreement. But only one aspect of this year’s omnibus bill had to be dealt with in that manner — funding for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which the GOP held up so as to leverage DHS funding next spring against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

Still, the end-of-year spending bill hearkens back to what, in comparison to gridlock, were the good old days of bipartisan wheeling and dealing, mutual backscratching, and backroom deals. That’s what constitutes “progress” in our time.

And in Nashville … After two years in which the state’s new Republican super-majority successfully blocked acceptance of millions of dollars in annual funding for Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the GOP’s acquiescent  but well-intentioned Governor Bill Haslam has somehow wriggled his twisted arm free and cut a deal with the feds! And even Ron Ramsey, the arch-conservative state Senate speaker and lieutenant governor who has more or less directed legislative policy during Haslam’s tenure, has professed himself open-minded about the plan that the governor is calling “Insure Tennessee.”

Never mind that Insure Tennessee may or may not be an ideal way of coping with the problem of uninsured Tennesseans or of applying the substantial federal subsidies that come with acceptance of this aspect of ACA. The plan’s complicated methodology has a Rube Goldberg-like look to it — one that will, we hope, get spelled out via debate during the special legislative session Haslam has called for in early January.

The point is that if the GOP’s legislative super-majority, which has granted itself veto power over any proposed version of Medicaid expansion, can be brought to accept Insure Tennessee, and, if the feds do follow through with a waiver for Haslam’s alternative, there are real benefits. Most importantly, TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid, would get a badly needed infusion of operating funds, enough to help rescue Tennessee’s hospitals, so many of which are teetering on the edge of insolvency.

Make no mistake: Neither in Washington nor in Nashville is right-wing tunnel vision over with. In some ways it may be just beginning. But maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel — something worth groping toward, anyhow.

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Opinion Viewpoint

The Raging Bull in D.C.

It’s ironic that one day after his reelection to a sixth term as senator from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, the soon-to-be Senate majority leader, characterized the Congress as an angry, raging bull. In a stern, public admonition, McConnell warned President Obama against invoking executive action to alleviate our chronic immigration crisis, comparing such action to “waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

Ironic and sinister. The Republican leadership, which gained control of the U.S. Senate in the November 4th election and now controls both houses, blocked all attempts at reasonable immigration reform during the most recent session of Congress. Then, they blamed the president for any and all immigration crises, including the arrival of thousands of women and children from Central America this past summer. Then, they accused the president of being weak/soft on immigration and as frustration set in, the president’s numbers with Hispanics fell precipitously. Then, the day after their victory, the Republican leadership warned the president against taking much-needed action to solve our broken immigration system — action favored by the majority of Americans.

This script, written in Washington, seems to have emerged out of a Gabriel García Márquez novel. 

President Obama has the opportunity to lead via executive action, and he should do so immediately. He can end deportation of those in the country under irregular circumstances, excluding, of course, those who have committed serious, violent crimes. Rolling through a stop sign should not be grounds for deportation. He can put in place a program whereby millions of people are offered authorization to remain in the country, if they wish. They could apply for work permits; they could pay taxes with greater ease, and live here — temporarily — in relative peace.  

Obama’s ratings with Hispanics dropped 20 percent during the past two years. People are frustrated by the lack of action on immigration reform, and they blame one man, the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, rather than Congress, with its many faces, multiple agendas, and 50 shades of long-term deception on the immigration issue.

Executive action on immigration is not what any of us had hoped for as the solution to our broken system. But it looks like it will happen, and any executive action can be signed away by the next executive. It’s entirely possible the next executive will be a Republican, assuming Democrats behave as badly and awkwardly as they behaved in the most recent election cycle.

The most cited example involves McConnell’s Kentucky opponent, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who wouldn’t say whether she voted for Obama, when asked by reporters. It’s not a trick question, and it’s not an unfair question for a woman running as a Democrat for the United States Senate. Democrats lost (Grimes lost by 16 points) because they refused, in many places, to run as Democrats or to champion the many accomplishments of the past six years. Instead, they ran as lite, low-calorie Republicans, and many moderate Democrats and Independents simply voted for the real thing.  

On immigration, Democrats need to hold together as a party and support a president who has very few options at this point. Democrats need to develop a short-term strategy to support those with irregular immigration status who want to live and work here. Then, the Democratic leadership needs to develop a long-term plan to win the White House in 2016, retake the Congress, and pass comprehensive immigration reform. Americans are demanding this type of activist, bold leadership. The American people are much further ahead of their political leaders on this issue, and when the Democratic Party realizes this, they’ll return to power.

But it might be time for some new ideas within the Democratic leadership. Many pundits assume that Hillary Clinton is a lock for the Democratic nomination, but Clinton’s glide-path to the White House is fraught with turbulence. Elizabeth Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts, claims she’s not running, but we’d like to see her energy, brilliance, fearlessness, charisma, and leadership in the White House.

Can the nation endure an actual liberal from Massachusetts in the White House? We know what we can’t endure: the raging bull that’s de rigueur in D.C. these days.

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Opinion Viewpoint

A New Day in Washington

With the stock market at an all-time high, with almost 50 consecutive months of positive job growth, with the nation’s annual deficit at a six-year low, and with America now the leading producer of oil and gas products in the world, why are a majority of Americans so dispirited and disappointed with President Obama and the Democrats? 

And, separately, with a divided government in Washington now, is there hope for progress on key issues in Washington over the next two years?

Let’s answer in reverse order. 

Yes, there is hope for progress, but it depends on two things. First, which wing of the Republican Party will lead and negotiate matters of legislative seriousness in Washington. If Republicans follow the “sore winners” wing of their party — symbolized by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who declared election night that the Republican sweep ends an era of “Obama lawlessness” — it’s unlikely anything meaningful gets done. The paralysis and foolishness of Washington will only persist. 

But if Orrin Hatch of Utah, Rob Portman of Ohio and, yes, Mitch McConnell — the GOP Senate majority leader from Kentucky who on election night called for cooperation and change — are the dominant faces of Republican leadership, there’s a chance for a new day to emerge. 

Can important compromises be reached between the president and Congress on trade, taxes, immigration, and energy policy? 

Very likely, especially if Republicans agree to the creation of a public-private bank to jumpstart critical U.S. building initiatives — including new airports, broadband networks, roads, schools, pipelines, and subway lines. In addition, the Republicans need to accept that an outright repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, aka “Obamacare”) isn’t going to happen. They should aim instead to repeal the medical device tax portion of the ACA, a policy change I support, as do many Republicans and Democrats. 

But, first, the Republicans should give the president the trade promotion authority he has sought but been denied by the Senate’s Democratic leadership over the past years. What a White House visual that would be in the next few weeks: the president, surrounded by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, signing a piece of legislation! 

Obama and the Democrats have to be willing to do their part. The president’s first reaction to the election last Wednesday was a seeming effort to dodge any accountability for our party’s losses. Fortunately, on Sunday, Obama pushed the reset button by acknowledging that the buck stops with him.   

If I were advising the president, I’d recommend three things:

First, he should sign the Keystone Pipeline legislation and then agree not to change immigration laws unilaterally right now. And, in exchange, the Republicans should agree to raise the minimum wage and not repeal the ACA. This deal is achievable if the president leads on it.  

Independent analysis of the environmental impact of building the Keystone Pipeline substantiates a negligible carbon impact, and, in addition, a large number of Congressional Democrats want it as well. The long-term job-creation impact of the pipeline’s construction is in dispute. But what is not is that the pipeline’s construction would immediately produce thousands of well-paying jobs.    

Second, to deal with immigration, the president should appoint a bipartisan, Baker-Hamilton 9/11-like commission to offer recommendations by June to the president and Congress. He should ask majority leaders John Boehner and McConnell to agree to a vote on all or some of the recommendations before Congress adjourns for the year in the fall. If the Republicans don’t act in good faith, then the president can act by executive action at the end of the year. 

Next, raise the carried-interest rate to 25 percent, and lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent to make it more competitive globally, while granting a 90-day, 12.5 percent tax holiday for repatriation. Proceeds from the tax holiday could fund a public-private bank to begin rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. 

And last, Obama should be more social with Congress, spending regular time with congressional leaders from both parties who have complained that they don’t see the president enough. If for no other reason, better answers to the avalanche of foreign policy challenges the country faces are likely to be attained if there’s increased dialogue and trust between Congress and the president. 

Some will argue that these recommendations aren’t big enough. But it’s surely preferable for the political argument in this country to be about how to do more things in Washington and not just about how to get something — anything — done.

And we the people should do our part. Let us be as diligent in educating ourselves on the issues as we are in hurling invective at our political opponents. Let us not attack others’ political ideas unless we have alternatives to fix problems we know exist. 

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

“I’m Not a Scientist … ”

I was reading a story the other day about the Senate race in Kentucky. That’s the one where Rhodes College grad Alison Lundergan Grimes, a Democrat, is taking on incumbent Republican, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader.

In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, McConnell was asked his views on climate change, and specifically whether he agreed with the overwhelming scientific consensus that it’s real. McConnell went straight to the standard line from the GOP playbook on this issue: “I’m not a scientist,” he said, deflecting the question.

Well, duh. That’s why we have scientists: to tell us the scientific evidence for one thing or another. McConnell is well aware that global climate change is happening. Only a fool could read the hundreds of articles about warmer temperatures world-wide, the loss of our polar ice caps, the rise of sea levels, the increasing power of storms, long-lived droughts, and massive floods, and not conclude that the scientists might be on to something.

But McConnell knows that to admit that he believes in the scientific consensus will lose him votes among know-nothing voters who still see global climate change as a plot for scientists to get grant money. In this Limbaugh-esque worldview, scientists are like welfare queens, gaming the system for profit. McConnell knows that if a large part of your base is ignorant, you’ve got to act ignorant, too, or risk chasing them off. He also needs to keep his big-oil donors happy.

Though I’m not a huge fan of Senator Lamar Alexander, he is at least on record as being sensible on this issue: “Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming,” Alexander said in 2012, adding: “If fire chiefs of the same reputation told me my house was about to burn down, I’d buy some fire insurance.”

Sadly, Alexander is an exception among GOP leaders. Florida’s Governor Rick Scott and Senator Marco Rubio both have repeatedly used the “I’m not a scientist” dodge, as has Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose state has already lost 2,000 square miles to rising ocean water. House Majority Leader John Boehner is also “not a scientist.”

The weird thing is that by using this line, these GOP leaders are admitting that scientists know more about, well, science, than they do, but that they’ve decided to ignore the scientific consensus. Imagine extending this “logic” to other areas. It would mean you could have no opinion on anything in which you were not an accredited expert. The economy? Sorry, I’ll leave that to the economists. War in the Middle East? I’m not a general, so I can’t have an opinion. Ebola? I’m no doctor. It’s beyond absurd.

I have a suggestion: The next time you hear one of these clowns use the “I’m not a scientist” line, mentally insert the word “rocket” in front of “scientist.” It makes total sense that way.

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (October 1, 2014)

CREDIT: Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

Mark Nassal | Dreamstime.com

John Boehner

So now they expect you to reward them. The most unproductive, polarized, ineffective, and despised Congress in American history has abandoned the nation’s business in order to focus on convincing you that they are worthy of your support for reelection. After a five-week summer recess and a grueling eight days back in session, the congressional Republicans just said, “Fuck it,” and lit out for the territories, leaving trivial matters such as war and peace to wait until after the mid-term elections.

Indulge me in a hypothesis: Let’s say that you are the personnel manager of a large hospital, and right in the middle of a measles outbreak, all your employees decided to return home to prepare for their performance reviews. When they came back after the epidemic had worsened, would you rehire them?

And yet, the noise on the right has grown so deafening, they think they’re winning. Republicans are as confident as Mitt Romney on election night. The hammer-locked Congress, led by the fearsome tag-team of “Blubbering John” Boehner and Mitch “The Obamacare Assassin” McConnell, don’t even realize that their strategy of destroying the president at the expense of the country hasn’t worked. Even after Obama’s reelection and Eric Cantor’s loss, they still didn’t get the message and continued with their destructive agenda.

The goose-stepping Congressional Republicans have obstructed, delayed, blocked, and filibustered every single initiative offered by the president, costing countless numbers of desperately needed jobs, and now they want your vote. Republicans have loudly criticized the president for taking executive actions and then they leave town during an international crisis, abdicating their Constitutional responsibilities.

The British Parliament’s debate was fascinating, but Congressman Bubba from Birmingham can’t be called away from his fish fry. There are donors’ hands to shake. Can you imagine if John McCain and Sarah Palin were elected in 2012? We’d be dropping nukes on the Kremlin screaming, “We’re all Ukrainians now,” although recent events have shown we may have used the Palin family fistfight diplomacy first.

While Obama was securing a unanimous vote by the UN Security Council to crack down on foreign fighters joining ISIS, only the second U.S. president in history to chair such a committee, right-wing media exploded in outrage over his salute to a marine while holding a coffee cup. Fox News went wild with indignation, even though this militaristic gesture of saluting while exiting a helicopter was initiated only 30 years ago by the Hollywood warrior, Ronald Reagan.

Then, the usual Fox suspects exulted at the resignation of Eric Holder, like the 7th Cavalry claiming a scalp, while vilifying the attorney general for his presumed “racial favoritism.” Holder once said that when it comes to discussing matters of race, we are “a nation of cowards.” His choice of words may have been combative, but he was right. Or, maybe half-right. We don’t discuss race across color lines, but that never stopped the Caucasian Party from discussing it among themselves.

To believe the GOP, you’d think that roving gangs of displaced Acorn volunteers and welfare cheats were conspiring to vote under false names to steal the next election. Just listen to their rhetoric: A Fox News host said that Holder was, “one of the most dangerous … men in America,” who, “ran the Department of Justice much like the Black Panthers would.” The morally bankrupt Dick Cheney claimed Obama “would much rather spend money on food stamps … than defending our troops.” And Old Faithful, Palin, telling a recent audience how to combat liberals who “scream racism just to end debate,” uttered this gem: “Well, don’t retreat. You reload with truth, which I know is an endangered species at 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue.” Her verbal bomb fell about two blocks short of its target. For the sake of sane government, these right-wing obstructionists are richly deserving of being swept from office. If they can’t win fairly, they cheat. They demand new documentation as a condition for voting, they restrict days and hours to make it difficult for the poor to vote, they gerrymander districts to ensure a Republican majority, and they lie. All the time.

In these dark days, what we are witnessing is the last gasp of white supremacy in this nation. That’s what all this “we want our country back” stuff is about. But the GOP is willing to burn down the country club before they’ll admit any of these mixed-race aliens into their midst. Largely based in the South, the Republican Party is now the last bastion of the old Confederate mentality. Regardless of who controls the Congress in 2014 or even wins the presidency in 2016, this is the last spasm of the philosophy of white entitlement. 

Ultimately, leaders will come along who see the value of diversity and replace the agenda-driven, politicized, corporate-owned justices on the Supreme Court and restore honor to the term “public servant.” No time soon, however. The Fox News demographic may be aging, but not fast enough. Die-hard viewers of the corporate propaganda outlet still think Obama is the anti-Christ.