More Republican Head Shrinking

It is about getting and keeping power, in the end. It is the aphrodisiac for the weak minded to assemble under the banner of republican. Some of them hate women, some hate people of color, some hate everyone not white, but republicans have had the economy of a predator that usually doesn’t waste energy on what matters least to their aims.

And for right wingers, that is power. The full frontal assault on women’s health issues is not economical, and the lizard has gone mad for lack of prey. Because of forces out of its control. So it is stupid assaults on various voting blocks to please other voting blocks. But women make up 52% of the electorate, way more than the religionists that want to control sex for some bizarre allegiance to God.
All of this, at least the all out nature of it, is a sideways attempt to get votes. But the ratio of alienated voters from their actions, almost certainly will far outstrip any gains they may make with other voters.

They can’t stop the numbers increasing for those who vote, and won’t vote for them, at least without fully breaching the constitution, and they can’t change who they are, at least enough or fast enough, so we get self destructive malicious attacks, lashing out to regain control of single issues, like birth control, which is surrogate for attempts at wielding religion as a weapon beyond the constitutional firewall in our system of government, another road fraught with treasonous implication.
When all the spiteful fury is spent for desperate attempts at keeping power, and after they have lost those ill advised assaults, like on women’s health, I honestly don’t know what they will do. It will be a point of reckoning for us all.

Shrinking the GOP Mind

The primitive brane lives in all of us, for sure. And to different degrees, these lower mind functions are filtered through the conscience mind to recognize, reason, and filter that kind of primal thinking. For whatever reason, hereditary, childhood experience, simple environment, the people I call wingnuts, seem to be lacking the elements to process a higher consciousness, to manage these primal impulses. And they are run by compulsive reaction that forms their world view.

It is fear to blame, imo, mostly, of one sort or another, right on up to the existential kind, that rules their behavior and ultimately their political formulations. The filter is either very weak or non existent to separate out what is important and what is not in conducting their lives.

There are those wingnuts who are just sociopaths and hucksters taking advantage of the frantic world of right wingers. But most are simply drenched in a kind of all consuming terror, and the way it manifests itself, especially when under duress, is a manic rush to control their external environment to the nth degree.
And in these times, rattling around in their wingnut belfries, is the biggest fear of all. And that is becoming a white minority in their own country. So we see what we see. Folks out of control and lurching for one life preserver or another to cause others to behave the way they want them too. With the fantasy that if they can just do that, the fear will leave them

The Modern Moderate Politician In America

If moderate is determined by someone who wants both a party affiliation AND a process open to compromise, then they are for sure extinct in the American pol wild, for the foreseeable future, imo.. As we are in a period of struggle with a GOP that is dying, at least as it has been, and when that happens the natural response is for them to grasp for a little more and more purity to make it all better. Which is exactly the wrong thing to do. And that goes double for a party that exists for no other reason than to oppose change, and maintain the status quo.
There is very little the conservatives are for these days, beyond permanent war and maximizing profit for the few. They are defined by what they are against, which is everything liberal and progressive, and the urge is toward being better and more of what your purpose is for existing in the first place.
And in a two party system, one side or the other gets to pick the rules of engagement to the lowest denominator, and those are the rules the other side must accept in order to win. At least to the necessary degree.
I think democrats are in pretty good shape over all. Not perfect, with still surges of GOP light left over from the country’s and its voters, 30 year experiment with the hard right. And taking to the populist bent is wide open for them to make hay with. The biggest mistake they could make would be doing the same over reach as the republicans, and instead, focusing like a laser on what works to achieve their policy goals. Which are things like near universal health care coverage, without going all or nothing for a single payer system, for now. As well as other end result progress for the 99% whose lot they are charge with improving.
We have a super smart, if imperfect president, who is a good learner, and understands the current politics as well as anyone – as well as a pretty stable rank and file voter base, along with the reps they picked to represent them.
There is nothing wrong with the more pure in ideology to voice their wants, but only if it is done within the dem tent. If we don’t end up in ashes due to global thermonukular warfare, I like the odds better than I did. Thanks to the GOP porcupine, flopping over so every one can see the soft underbelly of what they are really about.

Why I Support Abortion Rights

Before Roe was decided, there was a clear moral case, that overpowered the learned moralities of a deeply religious country. It was the morality of girls getting “in trouble” and they and sometimes their parents doing desperate things to fix that trouble. In a country still up to it eyeballs in Victorian era mores over sex and marriage.
It was the morality of the cold bite of reality, from reading too many accounts in the local paper of all sorts of half assed often dangerous efforts to abort fetuses from the unmarried pregnant female. I can remember reading accounts as a teenager, of death from botched abortion attempts, or back alley bootleg abortionists, ending in young girl bleeding out as a result.
So Roe was decided, even if by legal scholars claims of poorly decided, by legal norms of constitutional law. It didn’t matter, as the bulk of the citizens quietly and loudly demanded relief to make abortions legal. And many of them pretty religious, but also with a keen sense for social problems that are self inflicted.
There were those in the minority, a distinct minority who would not under any circumstances relent in their objections to legal abortions. They are still around today, and most all are evangelical Christians, or politicians seeking electoral favor with these people.
I doubt any moral argument would change the minds of these absolutist moralists, and they will continue to undermine abortion rights. And even though it’s been 4 decades, a majority of the public can recall, or learn second hand, of the lack of morality involved with forcing young women into taking actions that too often killed of mangled their bodies and minds. This is all I need to know to support abortion rights, that and the fact I don’t have a uterus, and if I did, it wouldn’t belong to the state.

What the Republican Party Owes America

The wingnuts owe us a lot of things, first among them, is an apology for having fucked up our country so badly. But my sense is they have become untethered from the realities of maintaining the minimum threshold of responsiveness to the electorate, that is spinning out of control some more with each new day. The crackup is near, and granted the public gives the white man party a lot more rope than the party of those “others”, there is still a limit to that leeway.
So I just try to remind myself of the axiom, no pain , no gain, and we are just going to have to suffer the results of the GOP crackup, the contrast of which couldn’t have been clearer than with Obama’s SOTU address last night. The people have a clear choice, and there is not a lot more to be done about it until they make that choice, other than what dems are currently doing.
I say let the cash and crazy fly its freek flag high, and call it a public service message from wingnut hell, and if the citizens of this country want an insane corporate run existence, well, that is just how it will be. Or, they can see what is happening, and become willing to support the only remedy of putting the shredder to the concept of money as guaranteed free speech, to make the constitutional change to put that whacked out theory to rest, and beyond the reach of wingnut judges.

The potential GOP candidates that could
have come without spoilage, are sitting this one out. Not wanting to be
tarnished with the ugly to come, directed at Barack Obama and in
general. In addition to, I suspect at this stage, a recognition of
unspoken high respect for his political skills.

It is a setting of the table for a leap of political realignment I
predicted yesterday, that was begun in 2006, and briefly stalled in
2010. That portends to extend past the current economic straights, with a
strong ideological undertow, created by the GOP
itself. And the failure of its 30 year conservative movement. What we
are seeing is the last bright burning of hyper dogma from the party, a
dying convulsion leading to brief re animation. Brought on by pride and
entitlement longstanding and run amuck.

There may well be some more last gasp convulsions before the worm
turns, but it must turn, because the current carcass of a movement has
nothing to offer but pure negative politicking on whatever the target of
the day is.

But soon there will be no place else to hide, and the gooper
braintrust will have to act to salvage something to create another
avenue to power. And it cannot include the tea party manifesto of
destruction and hatred. And must include the fact that the American Pie
must be shared by all.

So long as something drastic and bad does not happen to the economy
or something else, we are on the Newtsters last chance rocket ship to
irrelevant Hell. The GOP won’t vanish into the ethers, but it must reconstitute, and beyond the usual jingoistic bullshit.

I'm Not Dead

But will be going off the grid for a while, for any one that happens to stumble onto this little blog, and cares. Happy Holidays to all, and don't take no wooden nickells