"You have discovered that the veil that separates your ordered life from disarray is wafer thin. This is the ordinary truth of existence from which none of us is exempt. In time, we all find out we are not in control. We never were. We never will be. But we are not without power. We always have the freedom to choose how we will respond to whatever it is that life offers us. You can collapse and be dragged under. You can harden around your misfortune and become embittered. Or you can move toward the opportunity that is offered to you. That of change and renewal... This is the great act of insubordination toward the vagaries of life afforded to us all...What doesn't kill you makes you crazier" – Nick Cave (the musician)
My post on May 31st, Washington Clown Car, focused on Republicans and the gun culture. “If there’s any one individual in the United States to blame for our inability to put things in place to prevent gun violence, it’s Mitch McConnell,” said Peter Ambler, the executive director of Giffords, a group devoted to fighting gun violence. “McConnell understands he’s hostage to that extreme base that just doesn’t tolerate any departure from any of their views.”
Just to shout from the rooftops how little Republicans care about policies that would benefit the citizenry, Mitch McConnell, once again, is blocking legislation to lower prescription drug prices. Why? It might hurt the Republicans in the mid-term elections. The Washington Post reported McConnell wants to stop Democrats, including Sen. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.), from using a process known as “reconciliation” to pass that prescription-drug bill by a simple majority vote, immune from any GOP filibuster. And to stop Americans from getting cheaper prescriptions, he is willing to sabotage American manufacturers (and therefore assist China) by denying them $52 billion in support under the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act.
In both cases, Americans lose — because McConnell thinks it’s to Republicans’ advantage in the midterm elections. He is willing to hurt the country, and help the Chinese, in order to harm Democrats’ political standing. McConnell tweeted “Let me be perfectly clear: there will be no bipartisan USICA as long as Democrats are pursuing a partisan reconciliation bill.”
In addition, Heather Cox Richardson said There is a coming showdown between the Democrats’ approach to the economy and the old Republican approach. Biden and the Democrats are trying to pass a $52 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) that would invest in U.S. science and technology to boost American industry, support research, and fund the manufacture of semiconductor chips to free the U.S. from relying on Chinese products. But Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has vowed to kill the measure unless the Democrats back off on a budget package that would fund Medicare by placing a 3.8% tax on income “pass throughs” taken by individuals making more than $400,000 a year and would allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices, significantly lowering costs to consumers.
Her article and the WaPo report linked above are worth a read as it presents the case that since the days of Newt Gingrich, as Al Gore fortuitously said, “The Republicans are determined to wreck Congress in order to control it — and then to wreck a presidency in order to recapture it.”
McConnell played a major part in the sabotage, and not just with his extravagant intransigence toward legislation and nominees, highlighted by the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016.
In 2009, he urged the Obama administration to support legislation creating a debt-reduction committee — and then opposed the legislation after the Obama administration supported it. In 2012, he threw his support behind a majority vote on a debt-ceiling proposal — and then, when it appeared the bill would pass, he said he would block it with a filibuster.
And, in the spirit of mid-term elections, if you believe the Republicans on the TeeVee blathering about inflation and how the Democrats won’t do anything about it and it’s all Brandon’s doing, consider that it might be more about GREED. Check out Robert Reich’s take on the subject below.
According to the Charlotte Observer, this is the new ‘Big Lie.’ From stickers at the gas pumps blaming Biden for energy industry price-gouging, to claims of “Bidenflation,” Republicans are winning the messaging war on inflation.
They reported that The keystone of the Republican argument on inflation is that President Biden’s deficit spending caused inflation to rise dramatically. Florida Sen. Rick Scott made this argument last year, saying, “...thanks to the insane tax-and-spending spree of President Joe Biden and Democrats in Washington, we are seeing six straight months of raging inflation.”
However, PolitiFact rated the claim “mostly false” because the majority of deficit spending over the past six years was signed into law by President Donald Trump. That’s important, because when Republicans make the case that Washington “spending sprees” are causing inflation, they are blaming themselves. In fiscal year 2020, the last full year of Trump’s presidency, the government ran a deficit of over $3.1 trillion, the largest of all time and the largest as a percentage of GDP since World War II. They are blaming themselves.
In terms of upcoming elections, Damon Linker’s latest post ranks the awfulness of Trump v. DeSantis in 2024. He writes DeSantis may well aspire to be something like an American Viktor Orban, bringing the Hungarian strongman’s blustering, highly competent style of conservative cultural populism to the United States. That’s certainly not good. But there are worse things than Orbanism in the world.
One of them is losing a free and fair election, rejecting the results on the basis of lies and conspiracies, and then provoking an insurrectionary assault against the national legislature in a bid to keep oneself in power. That is a coup attempt, a headlong assault on the peaceful transition of power, and it is far worse—categorically worse—than anything we’ve seen, or are likely to see, from DeSantis.
And, if you’re feeling all lovey-dovey toward Mike Pence for saving the day a year and a half ago, he has recently doubled-down by calling for a national ban on abortions. In an interview with Breitbart, he said “Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history, a new arena in the cause of life has emerged, and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn and the support for women in crisis pregnancy centers to every state in America. Having been given this second chance for Life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land.”
It’s also killing me that there are many women on board with the Republican agenda. A piece in yesterday’s New York Times reports that Mayra Flores, a Republican and an immigrant and who was sworn in last month in Texas’ 34th Congressional District, is one such indication of how women are embracing the ideals of Drumpf. She beat out Dan Sanchez (D) in an historically blue region. Flores did say that In Florida, there’s anti-socialism sentiment. But I think a lot of it has to do with religion. A growing segment of Hispanic evangelicals feels much more tied to the evangelical movement than to any sort of Latino political identity. Christ. I just wrote about the project of the Christian Nationalist movement to break American Democracy. Maybe Flores has yet to get the memo. Or maybe she originated the memo…
Yeah, I know, I’m jumping around quite a bit in this post but my angst about the Republican party and it’s systematic destruction of Democracy is a subject that rankles my inner being. I hope y’all start shouting from the rooftop in any way you can. In a world full of Kavanaughs, Greenes, McConnells, Grahams, Jordans, Boeberts, Gosars, and Hawleys…be a Buttigieg. (BTW, the last day to register to vote in Kansas is tomorrow, Tuesday July 12)
I’m considering printing up these bumperstickers…too much? Anyone want to go in on them? Are you unsubscribing now?
Don’t unsubscribe…pass this on and enjoy today’s ‘cartoon’…
Wow, McConnell really does have THREE chins, to go along with his TWO faces!! Good lord!
That proposed bumper sticker is a shocker, but we have entered the realm of required radical action. It’s going to take some shock to wake people up.