The GOP and Immigration

Ned's many friends are no doubt aware of the crushing commitments on a Head like his. He has just been to Our Nation's Capital on a mission of the greatest importance and now is continuing his work on yet another Literary Thunderbolt in collaboration with Prof Dr Q A Wagstaff FRS OBE. He has taken a Pause from his literary labours to warn his friends against Wolves in Sheeps Clothing: to wit, the modern GOP's ham-fisted approach to immigration. Many of the Reptiles in the House say they are for a "Path to Residency."What they mean is they do not support eventual citizenship for our illegal friends because that would allow them to vote, and as they are all too aware, no sensible, thinking person of colour votes GOP. Therefore we admonish our Democratic friends not to be taken in by such chicanery. The GOP reptiles, as usual, are counting on their listeners to be as ignorant as their benighted supporters. Beware. Beware!

S and P's Chickens Roosting?

According to the NYT, the Justice department  is going to sue S and P, a "ratings" agency, for fraud in its role in the financial collapse of 2008-9. Of course, all S and P did was rate Collateralized Debt Obligations, which proved to be highly speculative at BEST, as AAA, as high as US debt at the time.  S and P have had the supreme sneering insolence to downgrade the feds since then. Their excuse at the time was that they were only issuing "an opinion" which was no better than any body else's opinion, a self-evidently preposterous claim. One can only hope they get the 'justice' that we would give them, involving jail time and repayment of salaries and bonuses for the Sneering Plutocrats and their lickspittles, toadies, sycophants and lackeys. Because, make no mistake, the impact on our economic environment from this outrageous action was far greater than the impact on our environment from the Transocean/BP/Halliburton oil spill in the Gulf, and the feds charged BP upwards of 30 BILLION DOLLARS FOR THAT.

A GOP Pack of Baying Hounds

One commenter to a NYT article on Hagel's confirmation hearing described the nominee as seeming to be "not very bright." We awake from our self-imposee winter torpor to state unequivocally that  any comparison between Hagel and the room-temperature crowd of baying hounds that represents the Senate GOP inquisitors is immeasurably to Hagel's benefit. We have seldom witnessed such a crowd of chuffed-up baboons outside of the DC zoo. Throughout it all Hagel, who is every bit as right wing as the typical Republican, maintained a air of dignity tinged with a faint air of tristesse as what has become of the GOP. One only has to summon up the cretins: Imhofe, Cruz, Graham (and we say this with an air of sadness ourselves) and most of all, McCain, who has sunk into a mire of degradation such that we have seldom witnessed in a formerly respectable public figure. But perhaps his standing as near the bottom in his class at the USNA, should have foretold this. 

More F35 Madness

Today's NYT is reporting that the "Pentagon" and Lockheed have agreed on the latest round of F35 purchases. The planes now cost $137 million EACH. We ask our friends to enumerate all the useful things this country could acquire for each F35 we did not build.

F 35: Our Latest Insanity

As New York and New Jersey begin to emerge from the destruction of that Category One (the smallest) Hurricane, the Pentagon (read: War Department) is going merrily ahead with plans to spend $394 billion for the so-called "Joint Strike Fighter."This latest dose of madness was conceived in an era when we had the "enemy" of the USSR. Last time we looked, the USSR was no more. And the F35 cannot prevent another dozen terrorists from diving planes into cities, should they so decide to do so.
What prompted our latest outrage is the fact that all across this pathetic country infrastructure, from bridges, to roads, to rails, to mass transit, to water and sewage systems, is collapsing under our very noses, and all we can think of to do is build more obscene fighter jets, nuclear carriers and submarines that we don't need and can't afford. Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage gushed into the waters of the East Coast, and in some cases, continue to gush because "no one could have foreseen" the destruction of this pipsqueak hurricane.
Just wait 'til a REAL one comes along. But at least we'll have the F35 to bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan and drones to bomb schools in Pakistan. We can console ourselves with that as our homes float away in our own sewage.

Dems: Don't Get Euphoric Yet!

With all the blather about the inevitability of Democratic victories as far as the eye can see, Ned would like to interject a bit of reason into the unwonted euphoria (or is it simply relief?). Regardless of demographics, there is that ol' electoral college to keep in mind. Here's why: here are reliably red states, as far as the eye can see, with the possible exception of Arizona: Arizona, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska. These eleven states have 54 electoral votes and have about 24 million people, and some of them are actually losing population. California has 38 million people and has 55 electoral votes. Moreover, does anyone believe that the phenomenal black turnout in key states like VA and OH would have been the same for a nonblack candidate? Or if the morons of the state GOP hadn't tried to suppress their votes?
Remember that that Sneering Plutocrat Romney still got 47% of the vote, and would have gotten more had he not been overheard dissing half the country to his elitist moocher, parasite friends as, ironically, moochers and parasites.
One day, maybe in 2016, the GOP will stop shooting itself in the foot and actually run a candidate from the 20th century--much less the 21st.
It ain't over yet.

Brooks: A "New" GOP?

Poor David Brooks. In a recent NYT op-ed, he describes the "new voices" in the GOP and tries to see a way forward for the Republican Party. But this is a party that suffers from a fatal disease: half of its most reliable base consists of religious fanatics who have more in common, seriously, with The Taliban than they have with Reality-Based communities. Then take the rest of their base: racists (Obama got 10% of the white vote in Mississippi, and 15% in Alabama) and selfish, grasping, amoral Sneering Plutocrats, who care, like the Dragon of the Niebelung, only for their pile of filthy lucre, and for whom enough is never enough. Given this handicap, how can they survive? By gerrymandering congressional districts for one, and by rulings by a pliable and contemptible Supreme Court (think Citizens United) for another. Finally, they have to depend on the stupidity of a part of the electorate and the distractions (earning a living, taking care of kids, etc) on another part of the electorate. Or perhaps they just mount such disgusting campaigns that they hope voters get turned off and stay away.
There is in fact only one vacuum in modern American politics: the Populist. Think Oklahoma in the 30s, or West Virginia in the 60s. The Democrats have given up these voters and the GOP has nothing to say to them since it would alienate the Sneering Plutocracy. What we need is clearly a Populist Party, one that stands for health care, a much reduced military, education, a protected environment, fair trade, and community. Oh and did someone mention Climate Change?