Tag Archives: Marco Rubio

Turn the Other Cheek? The Left Tried That – And Got Their Teeth Kicked In

U.S. Agents Take Undocumented Immigrants Into Custody Near Tex-Mex Border

Much has been made over the last few days about the treatment of some of Orange Foolius’ top henchmen/women. Last week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (whose name is SO “’Merican”) was harassed out of a Washington Mexican restaurant. Allegedly the next day, policy advisor and poster boy for the neo-Nazis Stephen Miller was taunted (he probably took it as a compliment) with cries of “fascist” at another Mexican eating establishment. Then on Friday in Tampa, another SCROTUS Succubus, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, was harangued out of a screening of a biographical film on PBS’ Mr. Rogers, blonde hair flowing in the breeze as she sprinted to a car and received a police escort because she was “so harassed.”

But it was the treatment of Head Liar and Apologist Sarah Huckster Suckabee that seems to have drawn the most attention. Over the last weekend, Huckster was supposedly waiting to nosh on a tasty cheese plate – you know, while the children ripped from their parents’ arms were sitting perhaps THOUSANDS OF MILES from wherever their parents were – when the owner of the establishment quietly asked her party to leave. According to reports, the wait staff did not feel comfortable serving her – hey, why would some members of the LGBTQ community want to serve an unadulterated liar and bigot on issues that concern them? – and the owner QUIETLY asked Huckster to leave. While she and her party did leave without issue, she then went and whined about it OVER AN OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT ACCOUNT (a violation of law) to get her Orange Points for the week.

The discussion regarding this issue has brought out some real doozies from the conservative factions. Huckster Suckabee started off her Daily Press Briefing on Monday – the first held in a WEEK, mind you, because you can’t explain the logic in ripping families apart when the entire WORLD including Pope Francis, the Methodists, Jewish rabbis, Muslim imams and atheists are against you – by issuing a whimpering Nancy Kerrigan-esque bullshit soliloquy. “We are allowed to disagree, but we should be able to do so freely and without fear of harm. And this goes for all people, regardless of politics.” She then launched into some verbal diarrhea about how the SCROTUS had done so much, earning her Orange Points for THIS week so that she can miss out on her turn in the barrel.

This has been continuous from those on the right for the last few days. Florida Senator Marco Rubio – who actually COMPARED THE SIZE OF HIS DICK TO ORANGE FOOLIUS’ during the 2016 Republican Campaign (what, you don’t remember the “hand size” comment?) – put this beauty out over Twitter:

Now remember, this is the same man who was called “Lil’ Marco” by this scam artist that he now dons knee pads and Chap-Stick for. Who said, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” Who said, “Go ahead and knock the shit out of him, I’ll pay your court costs.” Who had followers in Charlottesville ACTUALLY KILL a woman because they believed in him.

There have also been other SCROTUS sycophants who have echoed those same sentiments, however. And conservatives sounding off on this issue would be fine if it weren’t for one thing:  that ship has already sailed because YOU DID NOTHING ABOUT YOUR SIDE IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Nobody – and yes, let me emphasize that…NOBODY – did a fucking thing about it when Orange Foolius basically wrapped his dick in the flag and screwed Lady Liberty with it. Nobody sounded off when he attacked John McCain or Gold Star families, nobody on the right said anything when he savaged allies abroad, NOBODY SAID SHIT when he attacked other businesses because they DARED to displease him. Now YOU want a side to “be kind,” “be nice,” “turn the other cheek.” You know what that got us last time…KICKED IN THE TEETH.

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We all remember back when Michelle Obama stood up on the stage at the 2016 Democratic National Convention and, amid the sanctimonious slathering coming from the rabid dog that became SCROTUS, said “When they go low, we go high! (and after eight years of the bullshit she put up with from right-wingers, that was bold)” And, for the most part, most of the Democratic Party and liberals did adopt that mantra (unless it was simply something so utterly outrageous that it could not be accepted – WHAT THE CONSERVATIVES SHOULD HAVE DONE). Shouldn’t that work BOTH ways, however?

For decades, abortion clinics have been bombed and attacked, with women looking to utilize the services of Planned Parenthood harassed by hordes of religious whackos holding fake fetuses at them. For decades (if not centuries) minorities have been treated like a second-class citizen IF they were lucky. For decades gay couples lacked the rights to even make the critical “life or death” decisions because THEY WEREN’T ACCEPTED as a “married” unit. For decades the Roman Catholic Church has DENIED their “religion” to those who had premarital sex, a divorce or other “abomination” that THEY DETERMINED wasn’t “right.” Then there were these wonderful people:

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So now because some right-wing wench who read all the studies of Goebbels and is putting his lessons to work can’t have a cheese platter in a restaurant the left is supposed to kowtow? Sorry, no fucking way.

IF you want to broadcast your support for this administration and the SCROTUS, that’s fine. That’s your right. But you also have the right to be shamed for those actions, especially those that supposedly go against the conservative right’s conviction and “morals” (we established long ago, however, that they don’t have any). You have the right to be informed that you are being a villainous bitch (or bastard) and have to put up with perhaps a crowd that doesn’t like you very much for that stance. It’s the price you pay for BROADCASTING YOUR STANCE.

Now I am sure that there will be some that say, “Well, it’s (their) job.” OK, great. You can quit. If you are seeing injustice occur, you don’t stand on the side and enable it. You don’t go along with it and try to “change it from within.” You can walk away and maintain some semblance of morality to the issue. Here’s the rub, though:  if you continue to be an apologist for the situation, make excuses and “whataboutisms” regarding the subject, you no longer are doing a job. You then become party to what is going on and complicit in the act.

The left has held its tone in check for some time, to be honest. Liberals by definition are on the tip of the spear when it comes to social change, sometimes putting themselves literally in the crosshairs of the “establishment” (re: conservatives), or does Martin Luther King, Jr., or Kent State not ring a bell for anyone? That conservatives are now earning the same derision and scorn that once was reserved for those activists who fought against injustice is simply an evening of the playing field.

After almost 18 months of watching this aberration in D. C. act, I would actually applaud the left for holding back as long as it did. Shame is one of the last vestiges that seems to affect how someone behaves (why else would some conservative sheriff’s make someone walk with signs shaming them for criminal acts?). The problem is that conservatives, along with sacrificing any morality that they once had, has tossed on the trash heap their abilities to be shamed into contrition for their actions.

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Vive la Resistance! Jamais de Remise!

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The past two weeks since Election Day have been a stunning demonstration about what is the current status of the States of America. Since the election of the GOP nominee to the office of President, there has been turmoil of an unprecedented level, mostly against the fascist that was voted in. An examination of these issues easily shows that, while you might not have been a racist that voted for the GOP nominee, you accepted his racism and others started acting on it.

In New York City, the rise in “hate crimes” (crimes perpetrated because of someone’s race, religion or sexual persuasion) has caused Governor Andrew Cuomo to create a special police unit in the NYPD to counteract such incidences. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimates that there have been more than 700 instances of attacks following the election of the race-baiting fascist that is the GOP nominee. That breaks down to more than 50 per day, ranging from simple graffiti to whack jobs ranting in a Starbucks to HIGH SCHOOL KIDS chanting “Build that wall!” at Hispanic sports opponents or promoting “white power” at THEIR OWN CLASSMATES. There are also reports of supporters of the GOP nominee being attacked, but far fewer than the racist stances taken by many of those same supporters.

And what has the GOP nominee said about these things? Next to nothing other than two words spit in a 60 Minutes interview to “stop it.”

So, where does this come from, pray tell? Could it be the racial stance taken by the GOP nominee, who opened with calling Mexicans rapists and drug dealers and upped the ante from there? To calling for a registry of Muslims in the States of America (I’m sure there are plenty of Jewish people who shudder at that suggestion)? To citing the “influence” of Jewish people in “banking and the media” and suggesting that they are a cabal that is stealing from the poor, poor “white man?” That for six years decried President Barack Obama as a “Muslim” who wasn’t a citizen of the States of America before, in a 15-second offhand remark, rebuking those accusations and thinking he ushered it away? Yes, you can firmly lay it at the door of the ignoramus that was voted in on Election Day by a MINORITY of the people under the auspices of eradicating “political correctness.”

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To this point, those that supported and voted for the GOP nominee (and to you, I have but one statement – you might not be racist, but you’ve demonstrated that racist statements, thoughts and ideas aren’t a deal-breaker for you) have come out with the “well, he’s our President and his success is our success” statement as a means of quieting the revolt growing in the MAJORITY of those who didn’t vote for him. Yes, you mean as in how well Obama was received upon his first election in 2008 to the Presidency? The insults yelled during the STATE OF THE UNION speech at him? The blatant racism that ran rampant for eight years, including questioning his birthright? And don’t even try to say, “Two wrongs don’t make it right,” because in this goddamn case, it does. If you offered no quarter over the past eight years, expect none to be given.

Another dubious argument by those who voted for the GOP nominee is “Let’s see what he does, he’s not even in office yet.” And you know what, you’re right…he isn’t. In adding anacondas, piranha and more alligators to that “swamp” he boasted he could drain, you don’t need to see much more.

To begin with, the man who will sit at his right hand, former Breitbart Chief Executive Officer Steve Bannon, is at best an alleged wife-beating opportunistic buffoon and at worst taking cues from the Joseph Goebbels/Adolph Hitler playbook (another thing…fuck Godwin’s Law when talking about the cretinous GOP nominee). Through Breitbart, Bannon promoted the Neo-Nazi (we’re not calling it “alt-right” here, we’re calling it what it is) movement with their version of the “news.” They’ve also gone into race-baiting, misogyny and gay-bashing under Bannon’s watch.

SiriusXM Broadcasts New Hampshire Primary Coverage Live From Iconic Red Arrow Diner - Day 1

Then there’s his choice of Kris Kobach, the Secretary of State in Kansas (a state which is barely able to function after the destruction by Governor Sam Brownback), for his transition team. Kobach was the author of a bill for the state of Arizona, SB 1070, that gave police the right to request “documentation papers” from anyone at any time. That law was found to be unconstitutional on several counts by the Supreme Court, but Kobach could barely hide his glee about unleashing his brand of fascism – supported by the GOP nominee – on the country as a whole. “There’s going to be a lot to do there in part because Mr. Trump and Mr. Obama are diametric opposites when it comes to immigration policy,” Kobach stated following being named to the GOP nominee’s team. “So there will be a lot of changes.”

There are the climate change deniers, the anti-Muslim brigade and the former racist who was deemed so “deplorable” that he was DENIED A FEDERAL JUDGESHIP. Perhaps the worst are those that I call the “opportunistic hypocrites.”

This would include those that, during the campaign, dropped to their knees in front of the GOP nominee, people like Ben Carson, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who once stood against what the GOP nominee represented. Chris Christie all but sacrificed himself on an altar if it would change the GOP nominee’s opinion (and earn Christie a job) and what did that get him? It also includes people like Mitt Romney and Nikki Haley, who stood vehemently against him, his thoughts and his statements…until a juicy federal post was dangled in front of them, that is. When that occurred, they moistened up their lips with Chap-Stick, put on their kneepads and went to work pleasuring the GOP nominee for his favor and a job. I certainly hope there aren’t any mirrors in their houses because they would be too embarrassed to even look at themselves.

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It is for the last 18 months and the reasons stated previously that we should never surrender the opposition to the GOP nominee. We need to stand and fight, if not for ourselves and our philosophies but for those who cannot fight – minorities, the downtrodden, those judged “un-American” because of their religion, women who prefer a choice in what happens with their bodies and those who are facing a return to “second class” citizen status in the LGBTQ movement. We need to defend every piece of turf taken over the past 60 years (yes, we’ve got to fight those same goddamn fights AGAIN) to ensure that those progressive moves don’t disappear under the thumb of a fascist dictator and his cooperating henchmen (and if you think the Crypt Keeper, Mike Pence, is any better, he may actually be WORSE – or have you seen his belief in “conversion therapy” for gays or that women should be forced to perform funerals for aborted fetuses?).

The battle cry should be heard far and wide. We shall never acquiesce ANYTHING to the conman who suddenly finds himself at the helm of the States of America. There will be no “chance” given to someone who has consistently demonstrated through words, actions and his personnel decisions that, if he isn’t an out-and-out fascist, he’s at least following the playbook pretty fucking close. For these and a host of other reasons that will become apparent – and there will be more and they will be blatant – the people of this country must say vive la resistance! Jamais de remise! It is the only thing that will prevent the destruction that is coming.

The GOP: Ready to Party Like It’s 1799

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Despite the fact that more than half of their constituency would rather there be a raging dumpster fire in the middle of Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, OH, instead of the coronation of a dipshit as the party leader, the Republican Party will open its 2016 National Convention on Monday night. Yes, the Grand Old Party, the Party of such legendary statesmen as Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, will (from appearances) nominate a fascist in Donald Drumpf, devoid of any actual governmental leadership, and his almost-as-fanatical henchman Mike Pence (we’ll get to him in a moment) come Thursday night. What will go on between Monday and then? That promises to be the intriguing question.

Political conventions, by tradition, are about as exciting as having your wisdom teeth removed, but they are also almost as old as the country itself. The first political convention was held back in 1831, when the Anti-Masonic Party (if you can’t guess, they were against the Masonic Order and its influence on politics – and we think we created some of those conspiracy theories!) met in Philadelphia to nominate William Wirt as its candidate for President. The National Republican Party (not today’s brand) also held its first convention in 1831 in Baltimore (nominating Henry Clay for President) and the Democratic Party held their first convention in 1832, also in Baltimore (nominating Martin Van Buren). The eventual winner of that 1832 election? Incumbent President Andrew Jackson, who crushed the opposition in getting 54% of the popular vote and obliterated the opposition in racking up 219 electoral votes (his closest competitor, Clay, received 49).

Since that time, the major parties in U. S. politics have met every four years to go through the process of nominating their candidate for the Presidency. As the years have gone on, these conventions have become a way for the individual parties to put on their best look for the citizens of the United States by showing off their up-and-coming leaders and portraying their ideals as the “future of America.” They have also shown the major problems that can occur inside a political organization, from outrage over the leaders chosen to actual physical battles on the floor of the convention and outside the convention hall.

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In 2016, the GOP didn’t even wait until the convention to fuck things up. They did that from the start following the 2014 midterm elections with a clown car assortment of 17 Presidential primary candidates that basically ensured that whoever emerged from the nomination process would be doing so without even a majority of the votes from PEOPLE IN THE PARTY. For all his crowing about drawing the most votes in the GOP primary, the Orangutan Mutant didn’t get more votes that the three men who followed him – Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and Ohio Governor John Kasich (who will not attend the convention of his party BEING HELD IN HIS STATE). This isn’t even counting the votes that went to other candidates, such as former Governor Jeb Bush, current New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham or “whatever the hell they do” candidates such as Carly Fiorina and Dr. Ben Carson (and this is just a part of the clown car), prior to their departure from the race.

Faced with the potential for a xenophobic, misogynistic and fascist candidate taking the helm of their party, many in the GOP have been looking for ways to get FAR away from Der Drumpf. Adding an intriguing possibility of the proverbial monkey wrench into the engine’s inner workings, these “Never Trump” people are fighting a battle on the platform and probably will stage some sort of demonstration on the convention floor at least one night of the gathering (and hopefully every night). Perhaps they can do it well enough that it will hide the embarrassment of the party for the way they are putting on their very own convention.

Because the convention has been beset with organizations and groups leaving it like rats evacuating a sinking ship, the GOP hasn’t got enough money to be able to pay for the week’s stay in Cleveland. The organizers for the Republican National Convention are groveling at the feet of conservative mega donor Sheldon Adelson for an influx of cash – about $6 million worth – to offset the costs for the convention. As of two days prior to the start of the “great celebration of conservatism,” Adelson has yet to respond to the letter.

Then there’s the actual platform that the GOP has pushed through. Instead of taking the approach that the party discussed in 2013 following the crushing defeat they took at the hands of President Barack Obama – including attempting to reach out to minorities, adjusting their stance on immigration and following a pro-trade path with the international community – the 2016 version of the GOP has decided to follow Drumpf in jackboot step. Some of the planks that have been put into the GOP platform make it look like they’re ready to party like its 1799, let alone 1999.

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First off is the idiotic suggestion from Mr. Oompah Loompah to erect a blockade wall on the southern border of the U. S. The GOP ACTUALLY IS ENDORSING this idea, although they don’t call it a “wall” but a “physical barrier” to be erected. This “wall,” which would cost upwards of $25 BILLION to build (and would never stand to Constitutional review, as Der Drumpf would have to take land rights from their legal owners to do it), is just the tip of the draconian immigration policy that would be pushed by the GOP (including deportation of 11 million people, as Drumpf has desired).

Next is the continued drive by the Republican Party to roll back LGBT rights, in particular marriage equality. This is despite the fact that their VERY OWN CANDIDATE said he would be “the best candidate” for the LGBT community. Also working its way into the platform was the GOP insistence on “bathroom bills” such as the one that passed in North Carolina, HB2, that mandates a person use the facilities of their birth sex. I personally want to see actress Laverne Cox of “Orange is the New Black” looking Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in the eye when they both enter the men’s room at Quicken Loans Arena – I’d bet that platform plank would be removed before the end of the night.

On international trade, the GOP has sucked up to the teats of Drumpf again, calling for “renegotiation of trade pacts” so as to “not allow foreign governments to limit access to their markets while stealing our designs, patents…and technology.” Guess who that little tidbit is aimed at? This is despite the factor that the trade pacts – such as NAFTA (now entering its third decade of existence) and the yet-to-be-ratified Trans-Pacific Pact, which has the support of both Democrats and Republicans – normally help to keep prices down (this isn’t to say they are entirely outstanding; a side effect is manufacturing jobs moving to areas that pay employees less).

The GOP and Drumpf have stated that the Convention with be a cavalcade of stars, including a “Winner’s Night” leading up to Der Drumpf being named commandant…err, I mean, the GOP Presidential nominee. This cavalcade of stars includes such names as Natalie Gulbis, the 484th best woman golfer on the planet (and, if you didn’t notice by the ranking, she hasn’t won much lately), actor Antonio Sabato, Jr. and actress Kimberlin Brown (and if you can name anything they’ve done, you have way too much time on your hands), not exactly the “star power” that you might like to help unveil your highly disliked candidate. Toss in his kids – who’ll be afraid to say anything remotely bad about Herr Father lest he disinherit them – and people Drumpf has been walking on for at least a year now (Christie, Carson and Scott Walker, for example) and it becomes a “who gives a rat’s ass” gathering of nothingness. (The four demon spawn of Drumpf equal the same number of sitting Senators who’ll speak at the convention.)

Then there’s the jewel that is Pence (told you we’d get back to him). Pence has shown himself to be just to the right of Genghis Khan in his ruling abilities. As Governor of Indiana, he led the drive for a religious segregation law that allowed people to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs. But when queried about it by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Pence could not say that the new law wouldn’t prevent people from using it to discriminate against LGBT persons and that it was wrong to discriminate against them. EIGHT TIMES Pence was given the opportunity to say LGBT people shouldn’t be discriminated against and EIGHT TIMES he couldn’t bring himself to say those words. (Pence later signed a law that explicitly said the religious freedoms law could not be used to discriminate against anyone “regardless of race, gender or sexual proclivities”…but only after facing the withdrawal of a significant amount of business from the state.)

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Second, Representative Pence (member of Congress, 2001-13) was into shutting the government down over Planned Parenthood while Cruz was still handling the “dildo case” documents in Texas. Furthermore, during his tenure as Indiana governor, Pence pushed through the most heinous anti-abortion laws in the nation, including a law that made it mandatory that the aborted fetus had to have full funeral or cremation rights performed. Fortunately for anyone that is sane, the courts struck down that and other provisions of the Indiana law passed in March of this year before they went into effect.

You wonder why the “Trump/Pence” logo was fucking the United States? That’s what they’d do if they were elected. (They have since switched to just the names of the candidates and the idiotic “Make America Great Again” statement.)

The entirety of the Republican National Convention should be a train wreck, played out over national television as the GOP embarrasses themselves even further. With their unwanted leaders in Drumpf and Pence to their unwanted hangers-on in Christie and whatever D-list actor or politician wants to put their two cents in as to how great Der Drumpf is, it will be another week of embarrassment for the Republican Party. But that’s their standard they are bearing for the 2016 election…perhaps they’ll be ready the next time around, if they haven’t splintered into warring factions by the next election.

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The GOP Signs Its Death Certificate

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Every time I think I’ve seen just about everything possible in the 2016 Presidential primaries, there comes something new that just boggles my mind. Recently there has been some actions that I’ve never seen before and, if taken through fully to action, then the GOP has signed their own death certificate.

First there was the “coalition” that was contrived between the two bottom-dwellers in the Republican race for the nomination. Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich entered into a “gentleman’s agreement” (re:  nothing to actually document that they made this decision) for Kasich to remove himself from the race in the state of Indiana, which has the religious conservatives that flock to Cruz and has its primary next week. In exchange for this “removal,” Cruz would take himself out of the mix in the New Mexico and Oregon primaries, two more progressive states that would be better suited towards Kasich’s message. The goal of this subterfuge was for the candidates to – in a shock of all shocks – be able to actually prevent Donald Drumpf from obtaining the delegates he needs in his molasses-slow slog towards the GOP nomination.

Now, regardless that the “coalition” was immediately disavowed by both campaigns almost as soon as it was made on March 24, the sheer thought of such actions is something that hasn’t been seen in a Presidential campaign previously. It was almost like the trailer for the new Avengers film Captain America:  Civil War where you see Cap teaming up with the Winter Soldier to take potshots in a three-way fight with Iron Man. Sure, Cap and the Soldier are strong, but they can’t singularly take down Iron Man, thus they have to swap blows in the attempt to defeat him. The allegory is the same…Cruz taking his shots at Drumpf on one hand, while Kasich battles him on the other.

If this wasn’t bizarre enough, what happened after the latest round of primary voting on Tuesday boggled the mind of many in the political spectrum. After Drumpf drubbed his opposition in all five states that voted on April 26 – Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island and the big prize, Pennsylvania – Cruz (who finished THIRD in all voting behind even Kasich) decided that he was actually winning this race. With this firmly embedded in his narcissism-addled mind, Cruz decided that it was time that the nation met his running mate and, as such, introduced his Vice Presidential nominee.

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To say that Cruz’s choice, former opponent/now confidant Carly Fiorina, came out of left field was a bit of a surprise. Not only does Cruz, as a first time Senator (like the current President Barack Obama before he was elected) “lack experience to be President” (hey, this is what the GOP has been saying about Obama since 2008), he then makes a choice for the “heartbeat away from the Presidency” a woman who manufactures abortion videos in her mind? If that wasn’t enough, Fiorina’s singing to Cruz’s daughters after she took the stage was either grand theater or another sign that the GOP has firmly went into the loony bin. The only thing that would top this is, after being thumped by Drumpf in Indiana next week, Cruz decides to go ahead and name his Cabinet.

As it is, the GOP has already given the clear indication of what the next six months to Election Day are going to look like. They’ve signed the death certificate of their party as it currently is comprised and are pleased with that, provided they come out on the other side with things organized the way they want. It is dependent on what happens with the delegate count for the GOP.

If Drumpf is able to reach the delegate level to win on the first ballot (1237 delegates), then they will allow the Orangutan Mutant to take the nomination. But there will be Cruz forming a third-party run – to give “true Republicans” a real choice in the election – which is why Fiorina was anointed as his running mate last week. They weren’t going to burn a qualified candidate on such a position and, perhaps in the back of their minds, the GOP sees Cruz doing a meteoric flameout and not being reelected by his Texas constituency (hey, Texans may be conservative for the most part, but there are limits) to the Senate come 2018. So the party will subordinate Drumpf’s win by quietly backing Cruz in his efforts to undercut him.

Now the GOP isn’t stupid. They realize that by splitting the vote, they will virtually ensure that a Democrat will win the White House in 2016, be it Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders (and all the tea leaves are pointing at Clinton). But by doing this split-vote, they will save the overall GOP from the embarrassment of having Drumpf elected President and firmly destroying the party and instead divide the group as it is now into two factions – the racist, xenophobic knuckle draggers that think the dog Drumpf has any fucking clue as to what to do when he catches the car and “true Republicans” who might bring the party back to their roots – as a strong military/strong business/”state’s rights” party that doesn’t dwell in social actions.

And if Drumpf doesn’t win on that first ballot? Then the GOP can ramrod the Cruz/Fiorina ticket through on a second, third, or fourth vote (Kasich and even Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s delegates come in here). Yes, they will still lose because a now infuriated Drumpf will either run as an Independent and take votes away or his supporters will not come out at all, sealing the loss for the GOP in the White House. But this option is once again better than allowing Drumpf to fully destroy the party.

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The GOP has firmly given up on electing anyone President in 2016. Their major concern is maintaining the U. S. Senate – any change putting the Democrats back in charge there would be considered a disaster – and at least keeping a reasonable edge in the House of Representatives, where gerrymandering should provide that advantage. If the GOP can hold the Senate, then “golden boy” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan can still be considered for the Presidency come 2020; if they lose the Senate, then Ryan would have to work with the Democrats to be able to demonstrate that the GOP isn’t an obstructionist party (which would damage Ryan in some people’s eyes – those people that the GOP is looking to evict through stopping Drumpf).

Through their actions, at least over the last eight years if not the last 20 or so, the GOP has inflicted the “death by 1000 cuts” sentence on themselves. As those actions have now come to fruition in the emergence of their Frankenstein monster, Drumpf, as their presumptive leader, the GOP realizes they need to die to be able to live once again. By signing their death certificate – and ensuring that they will lose the 2016 Presidential election – they might preserve some edges in Congress and excommunicate some from their “party” as they head to an uncertain future.

The GOP Are Liars or Psychopaths – You Make the Call

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In what seems like a millennium ago, the top contenders for the Republican Party’s nominee for President of the United States in 2016 stood on a stage with one question asked of them. “Will you support the eventual nominee of the party (hell, this was Fox News so they didn’t have to designate), whomever it may be?” Of the ten people on the stage during that first debate, nine raised their hands in the affirmative; only one, Donald Drumpf, chose to not raise his hand. Now either those other people who once were running against Drumpf – and, by extension, the Republican Party as a whole – are either liars or psychopaths and it is up to us to make the call.

Since that first debate, Drumpf has employed a scorched earth policy where he seldom left any opponent unsinged and, in some cases, burned them to the ground. Let’s take a look, shall we? (These are all direct comments on each of his fellow candidates from Drumpf himself, in the order that they dropped out of the race)

Rick Perry – “an absolutely horrible job of securing the border” (never mind that it isn’t the job of a state’s governor to do that), “should be forced to take an IQ test” (pot, meet kettle), “needs a new pair of glasses” (this is a familiar theme – attack the way someone looks)

Scott Walker – “a puppet,” “massive deficit, bad jobs forecast, a mess” (using the entirety of the GOP playbook for running government, it must be noted), “your very dumb fundraiser hit me very hard – not smart!”

Bobby Jindal – “Spent $1000 to register in New Hampshire and dropped out the next day. Such a waste!”

Lindsey Graham – “dumb mouthpiece” who has “zero against me – no cred!” “embarrassed himself with his failed run for President” “So easy to beat!”

George Pataki – “Couldn’t be elected dog catcher if he ran again” (don’t worry, you’ll see this one again…), “terrible governor of NY, one of the worst”

Surprisingly, Mike Huckabee was left unscathed by Drumpf. Guess that means Drumpf never took him seriously as a candidate, which was true as he never got out of the “kiddie table” debates.

Rand Paul – “Why is Rand Paul allowed to take advantage of the people of Kentucky?” “truly weird,” “reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain.”

Rick Santorum also dodged the Drumpf attention – unless Drumpf looked up “santorum” and was appalled to the point of silence.

Carly Fiorina – “If you listen to her for more than ten minutes straight, you develop a massive headache,” “has zero chance” and basically everything he noted in the Rolling Stone interview about her.

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Chris Christie – “spending all his time in New Hampshire” instead of trying to campaign across the spectrum of states early in the primaries. Then he climbed into the trunk to be “The Gimp” for Drumpf.

Jim Gilmore – nobody paid attention to him. In fact, if you look above, he wasn’t even in the picture when this whole clusterfuck started.

Jeb Bush – WAY too many to even mention, but let’s go with “low energy,” “the bottom of the barrel” and “a pathetic figure” as some of the kinder statements.

Ben Carson – “incapable of understanding foreign policy,” “very weak on immigration” and “many lies by Ben Carson” – and who can forget the pantomime by Drumpf of the teenage Ben Carson knifing a close friend and comparing his “pathological temper” to the “sickness of a child molester.”

Marco Rubio – Again, WAY too many to even mention, but the kinder statements are “little Marco,” “the lightweight from Florida” and “all talk and no action”

Sure, there’s that old adage of “sticks and stones” but, in the case of when you’re looking to draw support for something that you might need some friends to help with, this isn’t exactly the best way to go about seizing that support. About the only way that these people, for the most part, should be voting for Drumpf in any election is if they are either complete liars, psychopaths or masochists who don’t deserve consideration for any political office.

This isn’t even getting into the recent tete a tete between Drumpf and Senator Rafael Eduardo “Ted” Cruz, still battling for that brokered convention in Cleveland (which may soon become known as the “Second Mistake by the Lake”) come July, over their wives, which for those who thought the campaign couldn’t sink any lower suddenly found that it could.

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And here is where Drumpf has made his biggest mistake. In “counterpunching” when he views an attack (and in which another SANE person running for political office would have said “hey, that’s the way the game works”), he has successfully pissed off virtually anyone that would even be an assistance to his candidacy. In addition to this, while he’s been racking up state wins, Drumpf forgot about the bigger picture – keeping those people that you’ve beaten in your corner to help your drive further up the ladder.

Anyone can get the gullible base of the GOP – yes, the racists, the isolationists, the “keep your guv’ment hands off my Medicare” folks, the “God, guns and gravy” constituency – to come to your corner. Just tell them the (many) lies that you’re going to make things “like they used to be” – when the women knew their place, the blacks were off the streets by dark and the police let Bubba go home after he downed a 12-pack and run his car into the entrance of the local chapter of the NAACP. The bigger problem is in getting those that actually have a brain to follow your gruel and, beyond that, getting someone that isn’t a part of your circle to actually believe you have what it takes to lead.

And therein is where Drumpf has lost and will lose the election. While he may be winning the GOP nomination, he is winning it with 30-40% of the vote. As of 2014, approximately 39% of the voting populace in the U. S. identifies as Republican; that is approximately 98 million people in the country. Let’s give benefit of the doubt and give Drumpf 40% of that figure…that’s 39 million people who ALL have to vote come November.

Do you remember the results from 2012? In the 2012 elections, Barack Obama racked up almost 65 million votes while Mitt Romney earned almost 60 million. It was considered a “landslide” victory by Obama over Romney, who was well-liked by his fellow Republican candidates and the GOP as a whole.

Now add in that Drumpf isn’t leading in any demographic outside of Republicans – minorities, Hispanics, women, you name it, he’s failing miserably. If you can tell me where Drumpf can find enough StormTrumpers and Brownshirts to push over 66 million voters (not going to happen), then you need to spend more time picking lottery numbers than presidential hopefuls.

But I digress…any party or person who would, after being subjugated by the slimiest verbosity from the pompous Orangutan Mutant, who has any respect for themselves, their party and maybe even their country, and then still says, “I’m voting for him,” is…well, I think the point has been made.

Where’s Loki to Take Care of Business?

I’ve had it. It’s only been a month since the GOP presidential primary began and it’s official…I’ve reached the point that I’m ready for Loki, as portrayed in the film Dogma, to come into the business meeting called the Republican primaries and massacre the room, just to save us all from the utter depravity that the Republican Party is delivering to the citizens of the United States.

You might think it all falls in the lap of Donald Drumpf (and this is what the Orangutan Mutant will be known as from now on here), but there’s plenty of blame to spread around. When in the hell have we heard, during a Presidential debate, discussion of a candidate’s DICK SIZE? Leave it to Drumpf to drag the proceedings further into the gutter, but that is where he prefers to live as does much of the Republican Party. Hell, this is the same conman who, while avoiding the frightful attack of petite Megyn Kelly before the Iowa caucuses last month by throwing a “veterans’ fundraiser” still hasn’t DONATED THE MONEY FROM THE FUNDRAISER…if that isn’t scummy, what is?

He proved that before the debate last night, where he didn’t waste any time espousing about the size of his genitalia to the crowd in Detroit while screaming and yelling with his fellow candidates. Responding to comments made by 2012 Presidential nominee Mitt Romney (more on this in a minute), Drumpf insinuated that he could have told Romney to “get on his knees” to get his endorsement for that year’s campaign (many have read that as Drumpf saying he could have sought a blowjob from Romney and Romney would have done it). Unfortunately, that’s just the latest in a sleazy list of sexual innuendos, lies, obscenities and insults to virtually everyone that Drumpf has dumped like toxic waste in this year’s campaign.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio has proven to be as adept at gutter speak as Trump is, gleefully tossing out his own baneful rhetoric that his minions lap up like gruel at the trough. Rubio, the “boy wonder” who was supposed to be the savior of the GOP, the “future,” so to speak, now shows that he’s just as good at dirty talk as the whores that the GOP has put up for 2016 that have taken the billionaire Johns money and wiped their asses with it.

Then there’s Texas Senator Rafael Cruz who, strangely enough, is trying to walk both sides, sneaking in snide jabs on Drumpf while stepping back, like a WWE heel manager, and throwing up his hands to say “who me?” Then he goes off on his soliloquy on his “honesty” (please, it’s a close race between him and the Mutant as to most devious in this race) and his “affirmation” (as pretty much every deity looking on retches) make him deserving of leadership. The only thing for sure is that, while Trump is scary for his stupidity, Cruz actually believes the bullshit he serves, which actually makes him more dangerous.

Oh, there is still one other person on the stage, but he’s there just to show what a square looks like. Ohio Governor John Kasich isn’t even in the mix for winning the nomination, the GOP would just like people to remember what a normal person looks like just in case they happen to find anyone when it comes down to the next Presidential election come 2020. If it does happen – and the Republican Party still exists – we might see Kasich again.

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That’s right, if the Republican Party still exists. The list of party leadership that has basically said “fuck off” to Drumpf is…well, everyone that makes up the leadership of the party. 2012 Presidential nominee Mitt Romney, 2008 nominee and current Arizona Senator John McCain, former Nixon speechwriter and economist Ben Stein and a host of others have either encouraged the Republican base to make another choice or have flat out said they will not be voting for Drumpf come November.

The Republican leadership is also possibly looking at the options of a brokered convention (and some sort of situation where, with no candidate with enough delegates to take the nomination, some of those “back room” deals go on that would lock Drumpf out) and Drumpf runs third party, a “real Republican” runs third party to break up Drumpf’s vote or even voting for a Democrat (yes, some have said they’d rather vote for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rather than Drumpf). All of this whirls around while the GOP tries to ensure their tenuous hold on the U. S. Senate (the House of Representatives, thanks to the GOP’s perfection of gerrymandering, is safe…at least until the U. S. Supreme Court has its new member seated by President Barack Obama).

That was what made the end of the debate on Thursday night comical and irritating all at the same time. The final question from the Fox moderators was “would you support the Republican nominee if it is not you?” Each of these men – who for the past two weeks have said some of the vilest statements about a human that you would want to hear in public – lied through their teeth (especially Drumpf) and said yes. Seriously…can you see Rubio voting for Drumpf come November? There’s no fucking way if Rubio has any sense of manhood about him, especially after being derided as “Little Marco” by a billionaire asshole for the last month, that he would vote for such a vile creature (and I could go on with the other candidates, but you get the picture).

Cleared for public release by Lt.Cmdr. Terry Dudley, USS Kitty Hawk Public Affairs Officer

I’ve tired of the constant lies from Drumpf and the others about the “weak” military when the U. S. goddamn military is the strongest fighting force in the world, one that no other nation or even group of “terrorists” wants to even test in any way. I’ve tired of all the discussion of a “weak” economy…what numbers do you assholes want to go back to in 2008? The 10% unemployment? The 8000 Dow Jones ticker? The $3.75 a gallon gas? Want to go back to the precipice of a worldwide financial collapse that would have seen EVERYTHING fall in the shitter?

I’ve tired of the constant barrage of blocking everything the current President has tried to do because “he’s a Communist/Muslim/Atheist sympathizer,” then hear the same assholes complain that “he hasn’t done anything as President.” I’ve tired of hearing both Democratic nominees ripped, one because he considers himself a Socialist (and that isn’t a bad thing) and the other because she just happens to have every fucking page of her life as an open book for the last 45 years under scrutiny (YOU try to live life like that). If you want your candidate to be lily-white, you’re not going to find that person anymore; you might think the Pope would be ideal, but I am sure that there are a couple of skeletons in that closet that we don’t know about.

There’s still eight months to go. I haven’t heard one damn thing from one side about what they will do for the people. All I’ve heard is what they will take away, from their health care to what relationships they can have with their significant others recognized by law to deportations for being a hardworking but illegal immigrant to branding a religion with a scarlet crescent or forcing them out/not allowing them into the county to a multitude of other draconian or ignorant things.

I don’t hear this from the other party in the race, instead I hear about how they would like to help those illegal immigrants become legal, protect the rights of all people – regardless of whatever their lifestyle may be – improve on and extend health care coverage for all U. S. citizens and continue to be the fucking United States of America, the melting pot that has welcomed everyone in the world for nearly the last 250 years. Which side sounds like the one that’s actually thinking and embracing what is now an international community?

Loki, I cede the stage to you…

The Odious Remains of The GOP Presidential Carcass

When they reached their apex a few months ago, there were 17 different people that wanted the Republican Party nomination for President of the United States in 2016. This simply means that there were 17 warm bodies – although degree of warmth was questionable – because ideologically there wasn’t much difference. Even with former “Libertarian” Rand Paul, who danced closer to the far right wing of the Republican Party with the hope to do something his daddy Ron never could do – win the GOP nomination – they were all basically cut from the same cloth even if their gender was different.

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Everyone knew that it was unmanageable. Thus, the bodies began to pile up on the side of the road like an episode of The Walking Dead after Rick Grimes and his fellow survivors had battled through Atlanta. Before a single vote was even cast in the primaries, such party “luminaries” as former Texas Governor Rick Perry, current Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal ended their campaigns that were still virtually in their infancy (seriously, Walker’s candidacy was all of two months’ old). While the political zombies feasted on their decomposing flesh, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and former New York Governor George Pataki were both offed before a vote was cast.

What all these men had in common was they were the true epitome of “zombie” campaigns. For all practical purposes, they were only existing in name only as they drew little support from the voters and the “big money” donors didn’t exactly give them the time of day either. After the voting started, the candidates that decided to leave were among the living but became “zombies” soon after they drew no reaction from the populace.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum all had the good sense to get out after Iowans basically ignored them and they were joined by (we’re not sure what she does) Carly Fiorina, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore (who received all of 12 VOTES – that’s people, folks, not delegates – in Iowa) a week later after the cold shoulder in New Hampshire’s primary. But the big stunner came this last weekend after the South Carolina primary concluded.

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Long ago thought to be the lockdown “shoo-in” to be the nominee for the GOP in 2016, former Florida Governor Jeb! Bush instead proved to be the perfect illustration of how not to run a campaign. After being out of the bruising world of politics for over a decade (he last ran for office in 2003 for a second term as Governor of Florida), Bush was ill-prepared for the partisan world that politics has become today. To be honest, from the start he never looked as if he wanted to be President; he never actually took the gloves off and had to fight for a political position (hell, his last name is Bush and he probably has ridden that his entire political life). When he gave his withdrawal speech on Saturday night after drawing a dismal 8% of the vote in a state his family once dominated, he looked a beaten man, one that wanted to head back to the safety of a Board of Directors rather than the Oval Office.

You would think with the zombies chowing on the flesh on the sidelines (and, if you think about it, wouldn’t the world of The Walking Dead just be the most foul-smelling existence to be a part of?) that the odiferous scent would be left behind the five candidates that still stood and moved on. Instead, the odious remains of the GOP Presidential Carcass are at the same times worse smelling than the dozen people that are now but a memory. Yet one of these people, no matter how distasteful they may be, will emerge as the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

Let’s start with the next one that will be run down by the zombie hordes, Dr. Ben Carson. Carson is right now being kept in the race by those who want to keep Ted Cruz (we’ll get to him, have some patience) down. In essence, Carson carves away some evangelical votes that Cruz would normally get, something that happens when a man has a painting of himself with JESUS FREAKIN’ CHRIST in his home. Then again, Carson loses some of that evangelical vote if they’re Muslim because he believes that Islam “as a religion, is incompatible with the Constitution” and therefore anyone who is Muslim he would not “advocate for being in charge of the nation” (Carson would backtrack that statement faster than an NFL cornerback defending a Peyton Manning pass route).

But that isn’t even the most idiotic (and therefore odious) statement Carson’s ever made. In a speech several years ago, the good Doctor opined that the pyramids on the Plains of Giza in Egypt were there for the Bible’s Joseph “to store grain” instead of tombs for the pharaohs. Carson also suggested a theory about the spread of Ebola by constructing a massive conspiracy that someone could use urine as a biological weapon. Finally, there was his most recent Tweet that the biggest threat facing the United States at this time was immigration…hello, Doctor? Have you been watching the debates going on around you at all…you know, the one’s you’ve been standing there as a part of for the past few months? There’s a whole list of issues that you might have come up with other than one that has been trod so many times there’s literally wear marks on it. It appears that Dr. Carson may just be a brilliant neurosurgeon and a complete imbecile in other areas.

Then we have what many are calling the “last moderate Republican” left in the field, current Ohio Governor John Kasich. Throughout the GOP debates, Kasich has labeled himself as the choice for those who are looking for someone who will “work across the aisle,” a moderate who will listen and work with Democrats in Washington, D. C., simply because he has in the past. Kasich is quick to point out that, while in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001, he helped pass balanced budgets as first the ranking member of and then the Chairman of the House Budget Committee. Kasich notes that this was the last time that the budget was balanced on the federal level, something that is shockingly true in this campaign of lies.

Hiding behind this “moderate” demeanor, however, is a right-winger of the nth degree. His House voting record and that of his Ohio governorship (not to mention hosting a Fox News program between 2001 and 2007) demonstrates that Kasich is far from being a moderate Republican. This week, Kasich signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood…not directly but “any organization that performs or promotes abortions.” That would prevent $1.3 million of Ohio funds from going to the organization, which would use those funds for HIV testing, health screening and domestic violence prevention (and for those of you assholes who say they can get that at the emergency room, why isn’t your ass there for your meds?). Furthermore, instead of prison reform, Kasich believes that there should be more “for-profit” prisons, just so we can see judges crookedly rig the system against the weakest members of society to turn a fucking buck for the state and the owners of the prisons. Finally, Ohio is one of the states with some of the most outlandish incidences of police abusing their authority in the nation – yet Kasich has done nothing about such occurrences.

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Next we have Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and it really doesn’t matter which one you call what because they are virtually the same cartoon character. The twosome both currently reside in the Senate, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Texas Senator Ted “Rafael” (yes, his real name) Cruz, and their paths to where they are now being virtually identical. Both were elected to the Senate with their eyes firmly affixed towards the Presidency rather than doing anything for their constituents; both are uncompromising bastards who would rather die on a mountaintop than intelligently discuss any logical solution to a problem (Cruz more so than Rubio) and both are religious ideologues that, if a Muslim…hell, if a Catholic… said half the shit they said (Cruz said “Glory be to God” upon winning Iowa; Rubio said he would base his decisions “on his faith first” and fuck the facts), they would be screaming religious zealotry. But there’s something far worse in their cabinets than this.

Both of these men are first generation Cuban-Americans (Donald Trump – yes, we’re getting to him – would say Cruz is something else), the proud offspring of their parents who came to the United States to give them a better life than the one they had under a Fidel Castro-led Cuba. Two men who have benefitted quite well from the system of life in these United States, worked hard and garnered an education…who, now that they have received every benefit of said system, are trying their damndest to make sure that someone else doesn’t repeat that performance, that there isn’t another occurrence where someone under similar circumstances to theirs would EVER see the chance to be…them.

This would be the utmost in hypocrisy, innuendo and outright falsification if it weren’t for the leader of the remaining clowns in the GOP car, billionaire Donald Trump. There is literally no way to begin to list the litany of falsehoods, bullshit, antagonistic jabs, attacks (both verbal and physical) and statements that he has offended virtually every person in the United States with, so let’s just start with his latest efforts. First there was Trump’s assertion – and his demon spawn Eric’s backup – that waterboarding was nothing that didn’t happen at a “college frat party” (note you don’t see either of these fucking bastards strapped to a board for a few hours of fun, do you?).

Then Trump tried to recount the discredited story of the famous General John Pershing during a campaign stop in South Carolina. According to the Orangutan Mutant, General Pershing supposedly executed 49 Muslims (it isn’t stated during which U. S. military action this occurred) with bullets dipped in pig’s blood, an obvious jab at the Islamic faith’s beliefs about pigs. All the stupid ass Trump managed to do was once again offend more than a billion people and an entire faith, which in this world today might be necessary to work with somewhere down the road.

It wouldn’t be so bad if this misogynous, xenophobic, race-baiting knuckle-dragger wasn’t leading the GOP Presidential race. But, then again…let’s look at the GOP that supports him.

In South Carolina, where he won a resounding victory, of those who support Trump:

70% believe the Confederate Flag should still fly over the South Carolina state capitol
38% wish the South had won the Civil War
80% support banning Muslims (ALL Muslims) from entering the United States
62% support a national database for Muslims in the U. S.
33% believe that Islam should be ILLEGAL in the U. S.
31% support banning LGBT people from entering the U. S.

I’m convinced that the GOP bottom-dwellers – who now seem to have taken over from those that have any semblance of sanity – have about as much couth as a gutter snipe and seemingly share part ownership of the same reptilian brain. Trump for months now has gotten away with every faux pas (once again, too numerous to mention) that, in the past, would not only have ended other people’s campaigns but any career in any legitimate pursuit they previously held. Are these people voting for Trump this stupid? (I’ll answer: yes.) Are these people this delusional (Once again: yes.). Are they this out-and-out racist? (I’ll say it…yes.)

The GOP could and should have stopped this when he opened his mouth with his announcement he was running. As soon as he ripped into Mexicans, the GOP could have said, “Thanks, but no thanks, you’re not running as a member of our party,” but the GOP realized that there’s about 40% of their party that are this ass-backward as those statistics above present and that they would agree with the spittle that Trump spews. It is truly a sad moment for a once proud party.

There are those that say they like Trump’s “honesty” and his non-PC approach to things. If these “supporters” were all fired up for honesty, then they wouldn’t be looking at Trump, who has to have a scorecard to keep track of the lies that he’s told. As to not being PC? I challenge Trump to take a stroll by himself – no bodyguards, no weapons – down some streets in this country and make the same statements he has used during this campaign…he’d be picking up his teeth from the street if he did, at the minimum.

So among five men cut from the same cloth as the twelve people who came before them, not a one is worth a damn. All they look to do is deny or take from the citizens of the United States (quick, name one thing they’re looking to do FOR the U. S. citizen? Can’t do it, can you, and don’t give me the bullshit about “making America great again,” “lowering the national debt” or “improving our military and their morale” because we know you shoveling horseshit). The odious remains of the GOP have the stench of the zombies that perished in the past on them, they just haven’t had the decency to go ahead and die just yet.

Obstructionism Isn’t a Governing Style

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On Saturday night, I was preparing to go to a basketball game when the news came down. It was reported out of Texas that Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the more conservative Justices in the history of the Supreme Court of the United States, had passed away in his sleep at a hunting lodge in Texas. Justice Scalia reportedly was found dead on Saturday morning and the hunting lodge was so remote that news of his passing wasn’t announced until late Saturday afternoon.

Needless to say, I was quite surprised about this news. I didn’t take any particular glee in the announcement, however, although some did (and, for some of them who were directly affected by Scalia’s stance on several critical Supreme Court decisions such as gay rights and abortion, I can understand that). I decided to wait for a bit before making any sort of pronouncements or addressing any thoughts on the issue – 12 hours seemed about right in my opinion. If only some others would have taken the time to employ the same tactic.

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Virtually as soon as the word came from that ranch in Texas where Justice Scalia had been hunting, the Republican Party began to obstruct the thought of President Barack Obama putting someone in Scalia’s seat. The Senate Majority Leader, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, literally said an hour after Scalia’s passing, “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice,” when other people – including ideological opponents of Scalia’s including New York Senator Chuck Schumer and current Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid – were offering condolences to the family. Another Senator, Utah’s Mike Lee (another Republican), who heads the Senate Judiciary Committee, didn’t even have the guts to respond, instead sending a lackey, spokesman Conn Carroll, to say that the chances of President Obama putting someone in Justice Scalia’s seat was “less than zero.”

The odious remains of the clown car known as the GOP Presidential nominees (more on this later this week) sounded like a bunch of harp seals in responding about the subject on the Sunday morning talkers. On Twitter, Texas Senator Ted Cruz remarked that “Justice Scalia was an American hero. We owe it to him and the nation for the Senate to ensure that the next President name his replacement.” There is plenty of evidence that negates Cruz’s statements as Presidents have, since the creation of our nation, nominated Justices up until they left office.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio was especially ripped by the Sunday hosts for his incredibly stupid statements that he made on the subject. Apparently someone in the Rubio camp informed Super Mario that, when a sitting President is down to the final year of his Presidency, he just quits being President and lets shit fall where it may. On Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd directly said to Rubio, “Do presidential terms end after three years?” when Rubio said, “In the last year of a president’s term…there should not be Supreme Court nominees put into lifetime positions.”

Even on home turf with Fox News, host Chris Wallace drilled Rubio when he asked if any President should be able to make second term Supreme Court appointments. “I’m not saying it’s illegal,” Rubio said. “I think we should wait until after November before we move forward on confirming any justice to the Supreme Court.” Wallace then administered the smack down to Rubio – the last time that such a situation occurred was under President Ronald Reagan when he nominated – and the Senate confirmed – Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy in 1988. “It doesn’t really matter what Reagan did back in ’87,” Rubio snottily – and incorrectly – said.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg of the obstructionism of the Republican Party in this particular circumstance.

Unfortunately, since the Republican “neocon” insurrection that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment over a blowjob at the tail end of the 1990s, the politics of obstructionism is all the people of the U. S. have received. Whether it is the Democrats in control of the Congress and a Republican in the White House or vice versa, it seems that no one wants to actually govern this country anymore. The politics of – well, actually being political – have been pushed aside for partisanship, “point scoring” and bullshit “line in the sand” positions rather than actually trying to lead the nation. As a result, not a damn thing is getting done.

We like to think of our nation as a great example of something that should be the target for other people and other nations to be. Instead, we’ve become a fucking joke in that we cannot even meet in a room to hear about a budget plan for the upcoming year, sit through a President’s State of the Union speech without yelling out bullshit or even give that President the common decency of allowing him his Constitutional right to nominate a person to the highest Court in the land.

President Barack Obama: Inauguration Day 2009

If you don’t like the President, that’s your prerogative. You can allow him to nominate his candidate for the Supreme Court without being derogatory towards the man and the office. Then you can demonstrate your obstructionism (and your disrespect to doing your job) to the citizens of the United States, either by not meeting with the candidate or not holding hearings for said candidate. Then it is on YOU to explain to the citizens of the country why someone who was OK as a judge when they were reviewed and approved a few years previously (because trust me, the Obama Administration isn’t going to pick someone that hasn’t already been approved by the Senate previously and probably by close to a unanimous vote) is suddenly not good enough to be a Supreme Court Justice.

This is the point where the obstructionism may fall apart. The GOP is staking their hill on this Supreme Court seat and it could very well lead to their downfall. With a third of the seats in the Senate up for grabs in November – including some in battleground states that the Republicans need to maintain their grasp on to hold the majority in the Senate – it is possible that a divisive issue could swing the vote one way or the other. Such a subject as naming a Supreme Court Justice – or the resulting blocking of said Justice – could motivate a sizeable bloc of voters to come out against a particular party (in this case, the GOP) and end their Senate majority.

The other question is why would the GOP try to stake this hill? If they are successful in delaying the selection of the Supreme Court Justice until after the November elections, they have to win said election to be able to put in someone they prefer; those odds do not look good at this time (odds makers have pretty much every combination of Democrat versus Republican with the Democrat winning). The next Democratic President could nominate Obama, which would be anathema to any Republican, worse than any nominee that Obama could come up with. There is also the chance that, should a Republican win, Obama could put through a Supreme Court replacement once the new Congress is seated and before the new President takes over (tricky, but extremely possible).

Now conservatives are going to cry that “Reid was obstructionist to Republicans when he was in charge,” and they’d be right. But what was he going to put forward from a Republican House…one of the 50-odd passages repealing the Affordable Care Act? Bills that stripped away through the riders on the side other rights that President Obama had fought to earn for women, gays and other groups that Republicans love to oppress? Repeals of Planned Parenthood funding? Tell you what…when both sides start passing bills straight up, without any riders that bastardize the original purpose of a bill, then you can talk about not having them considered by the other body in the legislative branch.

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Both sides need to realize that obstructionism is not a governing style. It is time that people actually look at who they are voting for and put people in the Congress (and get rid of these Tea Party nutbags who pretend to be “small government” but are basically religious zealots masquerading as small government practitioners) that will work together – rather than against each other – and put someone in the White House who will actually come down to Capitol Hill and sit in the office of the leader of the opposing party and find common ground to lead the nation. Furthermore, the Congress itself needs to get off its ass and move – and do its job rather than hiding behind “listening to the American people” as a reason to not do anything. It could start with doing something as simple as putting someone in the seat of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

What The Hell Happened in Iowa On Monday?

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After more than a year of pandering to Hawkeye voters – quite honestly a state that in no way represents what the United States of America looks like but gets to set the tone for what a political campaign is supposed to look like – the Iowa Caucuses took place on a cold, wintry Monday night. Both the Republicans and the Democrats met in schools, town halls, churches and homes across the Iowa plains to decide how to divvy up the delegates for their respective parties at their National Conventions come this summer. Everyone thought that, for all practical purposes, that it was going to be triumphant marches to victory by both billionaire idiot Donald Trump and millionaire double-talker Hillary Clinton – so what the hell happened in Iowa on Monday night?

For the Republican Party, it always was going to be a bit of a clusterfuck. After starting the process with 17 candidates – and going to the Caucus with 12 candidates still officially running – the process was going to spread the votes across a wide swath of the candidacy. Even Jim Gilmore, who has only participated in one of the GOP debates (the sixth one right before the Caucus), received 12 votes from Iowa’s Republicans…not 12%…12 VOTES. Thus, whoever came out on top was going to have had to made an impression on the Iowa Republican constituency.

Even though he claims differently now (more on this in a minute), Trump was at the forefront of the Iowa race pretty much from the time he announced his candidacy in June 2015. According to some polls, he had built a double-digit lead over fellow candidates as varied as Dr. Ben Carson, Jeb! Bush, Carly Fiorina, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz as the Republican Caucus approached. In fact, Trump was so confident of his place in Iowa, he chose to poke Fox News in the eye at the final GOP debate before the Iowa Republican Caucus and not show up, instead running his own “veterans’ fundraiser” (by the way, jackass…as a veteran I ask where and when is that money going to be dispersed?) to “compete” with the debate.

That move might have been something that tipped the scales. Iowa voters don’t like to be neglected by the candidates and both Cruz, who made a great deal of noise about going “full Grassley” (hitting every county in Iowa with a campaign stop, something that Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley says is critical to winning the Caucus, hence its name), and Rubio, who had an outstanding performance in that final debate, surged at the end by making the Iowa voter feel as if they were important. The result? Cruz defeated Trump by a rather comfortable margin and Rubio almost clipped Trump for second place, which would have been an even more devastating blow to Trump’s campaign and ego.

Trump, defeated for the first time in the 2016 campaign, played it off as if the resounding setback didn’t affect him. He said he was “honored” to have finished second, mentioning that he “had been told to ignore Iowa, that he didn’t have a chance” and that he was “way behind from the start,” a lie if there ever was one. But there was a menace behind his words and his body language spoke volumes, almost like he was telling wife Melania, daughter Ivanka and bland sons to “get to the plane so we can get the fuck out of this hellhole.”

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Meanwhile, Rubio and Cruz were positively giddy over their performances. Predicted to not even garner 10% of the Caucus vote, Rubio more than doubled that in earning the support of 23% of Caucus-goers and nearly upended Trump. Cruz was also proud to see that his “ground and pound” game had supplanted Trump’s “dazzle them with bullshit” approach and he didn’t miss the chance to point this out to “The Donald.”

That seems to be the biggest thing that Iowa voters looked at. After several months of listening to the candidates, it didn’t seem that they bought the Trump bullshit in the very end. Perhaps it was that misstep at Liberty University when he called it “Two Corinthians” rather than “Second Corinthians” (even as a heathen I know what it is called); maybe it was the inability for Trump to have admitted a time when he prostrated himself in front of God; perhaps it was his inability to come up – or even enunciate – what was his favorite Bible verse. While these things might not be important to some, it is important to Iowa and its evangelical voters.

That is an important factor to the voters in Iowa. From the conservative, religious values voters after eliminating Trump, it was a simple step to which candidate did people want to follow, someone viewed as an “establishment” figure or someone who would “shake up” Washington, D. C.? Cruz has prided himself as someone who doesn’t follow the “establishment,” while Rubio has picked up that mantle (after the failure of Jeb! Bush throughout the early campaigning). That they were separated by only a few thousand votes indicates how close that fight may yet turn out.

On the Democratic side, you couldn’t ask for a better fight. Whereas former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thought that she would have a cakewalk over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (and let’s pause here to “pour a 40” for the campaign of former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, which never had a snowball’s chance in Hell; he suspended his campaign after the votes were in on the Iowa Democratic Caucus), it has been Sanders’ virility on the campaign trail that seems to have shocked Clinton. Sanders barnstormed Iowa, making it a fight, where Clinton thought she could throw a couple of token appearances and walk away with an easy victory.

Sanders’ message has found an excited audience, but just who is it? It would be easy to say that it is the young people, college students and the “hipsters” under-30, but that doesn’t explain the 50/50 split that came between Sanders and Clinton on Monday night in the Iowa Caucus. Sanders had to convince some of the adults in the room that his ideas and plans for the future of the United States were viable and that he is a viable choice for the Democratic Party. It may not be what Sanders is doing that is drawing in the crowd.

I’ve said it before…despite being arguably the most qualified candidate in the field (hey Republicans…if you had a candidate that was a former Secretary of State, a former Senator, had a position with a former President of the United States that helped to set national policy during one of the most prosperous periods in U. S. history and also worked with that person as a former Governor, you’d be championing that candidate like they were the Second Coming), Clinton is carrying more baggage than the Titanic and she is trying to navigate through a glacier field that would sink a weaker politician. Although there isn’t an indictment against her for the myriad of alleged transgressions she has made (and I’m not even going to count the e-mail situation, but that is a story for another time), there are those not only with the opposition party but also in the Democratic Party that will not support Clinton. Thus, they are throwing their support behind Sanders, which might explain the 50/50 split in Iowa on Monday night.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic Party of Iowa has still not declared a winner between Clinton and Sanders. In reality, though, Sanders is the big winner while Clinton walks away with a slight victory. Sanders is showing that he can actually bring in voters to his supposedly “socialist” way of thinking – that people are ready for the progressive mindset that he espouses – while Clinton can say she held her ground and took a victory that eluded her in 2008, when she was upended by an upstart named Barack Obama.

So, when will President Cruz or President Sanders take office? Not so fast, bucko. The Iowa Caucus didn’t do a damn thing, in reality. Because the Iowa Caucus hands its delegates out by percentages (what is called a proportional allocation) and not a “winner take all” (as the March “SEC primaries” will be), this is the way that the Republican Party breaks down:

Ted Cruz                     8 delegates
Donald Trump            7 delegates
Marco Rubio               7 delegates
Ben Carson                 3 delegates
Rand Paul                   1 delegate
Jeb Bush                      1 delegate

(no other candidates received a delegate)

And for the Democrats:

Hillary Clinton            26 delegates
Bernie Sanders            21 delegates

(and don’t ask me how they can be 50/50 and Clinton get more delegates…must be that superdelegate thing)

As you can see, nothing has been decided.

The carnival now moves onto New Hampshire, where the barkers are already hawking their wares to the voters of The Granite State. Trump, licking his wounds after the Iowa disappointment, also is projected with a double-digit lead there, but it is supposedly thought a sizeable voting bloc that isn’t fascinated with the Circus of Trump is waiting in the wings to take him down. The reality is, however, that Trump has paid little attention to New Hampshire and has little “ground forces” there…just like what he did in Iowa that eventually doomed his candidacy. Rubio and Cruz, energized by their performances, and other candidates, such as Chris Christie, John Kasich (with the endorsement of the New York Times in his pocket) and Bush, seem to think that they can take Trump down a few more notches in New Hampshire.

For the Democrats, Clinton seems to have ceded New Hampshire to Sanders, in his Northeast backyard, and while she will contest it a bit seems to be pushing onwards to South Carolina and the March “SEC primaries” in the South, a traditional stronghold of the Clintons. She also has come to the realization that, unless she can put together a crushing set of wins in a row, she is facing a similar “delegate fight” to that which is going on in the Republican Party.

It’s just the beginning, political junkies, and it isn’t showing any signs that it will come to a close soon. Short of a seismic shift – something along the lines of Trump saying “fuck this, I’m out” (something that could conceivably happen…or his move to an Independent campaign), an indictment on Clinton, the Hellmouth opening up and sucking both parties into the Abyss – it’s going to be a battle all the way to Cleveland (Republican) and Philadelphia (Democratic)…and the fight may still rage on at the convention floor once they reach those cities.

The Sane Side Finally Stands Up in The Republican Party, But It’s Too Late to Save the Institution

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Ever since the stampede that began literally three years ago following Barack Obama’s re-election and inauguration to a second term as President of the United States – and if you don’t think the 2016 Presidential Race began there, you’re adorably naïve – it seems that, at least for one side of the two party system in the United States, the inmates have taken over the asylum (and just as a tangent, if any other country in the world said “we only have two parties to choose our leadership from,” the U. S. would be screaming voter repression from the highest peaks…in our own country? Not a peep.). The Republican Party – the party that once held such great thinkers as Presidents Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, other politicians such as Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller, journalists Peggy Noonan, David Brooks and the late William F. Buckley – has usually been able to bring some sane minds to its leadership. Around the turn of the century, however, there was a change in the thinking, what became the Neo-conservative mindset, that splintered a once great party. Instead of being a party of intelligence like the people above, it began to erode from the inside, with its hoi polloi beginning to follow the baying of hounds such as Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and the en masse robotic diatribes that flow from Fox News, turning the GOP base into an ugly, misogynistic, xenophobic, scared-of-its-own-shadow (and any minority that may have the audacity to even begin to think its…equal…to them) mob.

The sane side let the mob rant and rave after Obama’s election in 2008 and his re-election in 2012, saving its energy for the 2016 election. They set about trying to say all the right things in their 2012 “autopsy” about what went wrong:  they needed to reach out to women and all minorities – Asians, Hispanics, blacks and gay voters – and needed to have a comprehensive approach to immigration reform. They needed to have fewer debates – presumably so their candidates didn’t shoot themselves in the foot as often as they did in the run-up to the 2012 election – and needed to decide their nominee earlier, changing their primary structure. But the sane side said their principles were still good, they just weren’t “resonating” with the electorate.

Then the sane side let the maniacs in the asylum take over.

It started in 2010, actually. Elected that year, Florida Senator Marco Rubio had made it clear that there was only one aspiration that he desired in his political career and it wasn’t to sit in the U. S. Senate for the rest of his career, it was to be the President of the United States. In 2012, another player came along with that same philosophy, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and both of these men were embraced by the “Tea Party” element (the “Tea Party” element is actually a bastardization of the group originally started by former Texas Representative Ron Paul, but that’s another story for another time). While they didn’t announce it, both of these men were running for the GOP nomination well before they even inked the paper letting the Republican Party know they were in the race for 2016.

The Republican National Committee, after their 2012 “autopsy” and all their plans and their sanity, saw the maniacs bring that all crashing down. They were OK with Rubio (not so much with Cruz) but, after the November 2014 midterm elections Dr. Ben Carson, a darling of the “Tea Party,” began to leak information that he “was interested” in running for the GOP nomination and actually entered the race in May 2015. Instead of getting a few “qualified” candidates, the floodgates opened; by the time the spigot closed, 17 people had announced their candidacy for the Republican nomination, an unruly amount that would present logistical difficulties on several fronts.

It was one of those 17 candidates that truly exposed the maniacal – or, perhaps at its unfortunate worst, the true heart – of the Republican Party. When he made his announcement in June that he would seek the GOP nomination, billionaire Donald Trump immediately stuck his foot in his mouth by insinuating that Mexicans were “rapists, drug dealers…and a few are good people, I’m sure.” He said he would deport all illegal immigrants – estimated to be approximately 12 million in the United States – and build “a wall” on the border between Mexico and the U. S. and “force Mexico to pay for it.”

In a normal world, under normal circumstances and with a normal party that hadn’t fanned the flames of xenophobia and racism after being thumped twice in a Presidential race, Trump’s comments would have brought a direct disavowal from the party’s leadership. Instead, the party’s leadership reached out and embraced Trump while at the same time trying to look aghast at what he was saying. The sane side of the party sat on the bench and tried to reason that their fellow Republicans would come to their senses and realize the rhetoric that the Orangutan Mutant was spewing wasn’t A) becoming of a member of their party, let alone the human race, and B) would eventually move towards a better choice.

As Trump’s comments became more outrageous, his support grew rather than fell. Disparage a decorated military veteran who was a POW in Vietnam? Sure! Ridicule a handicapped journalist? He’s on it! Want me to bash women? Let’s talk about their looks and menstrual cycle! It’s now gotten to the point that Trump has discussed killing journalists and that he could “shoot someone” in the middle of Fifth Avenue in New York City and not lose any voter support. We’ve even reached the point where white supremacist organizations are sending Trump information over Twitter…AND HE RETWEETS IT without anyone blinking!

It’s finally gotten to be a bit much for the sane side of the Republican Party, but it is far too late as you’ve already lost your party to the lunatics. The conservative magazine National Review dedicated an entire issue last week to the question of Trump’s leadership of the Republican Party, firmly stating their opposition to his candidacy and his position as the potential GOP nominee for President. 22 conservative voices stepped up and penned essays explaining their reasoning for not supporting Trump, with a predictable response.

Trump, after lauding the magazine the week prior to the issue’s release, ripped the Review as a “failing rag” saying that Buckley (the founder of the Review) “would be ashamed of them.” The RNC, not surprisingly, sided with Trump in removing the Review from a future debate as moderator, citing that a “moderator can’t have a predisposition.” Other voices have also sounded off and it may actually have an effect.

In New Hampshire, the mood is supposedly turning against Trump despite what current polls say in the state’s upcoming primary. According to the New York Times, a sizeable number of GOP voters are anti-Trump and feel that the polls are being swayed by those that won’t be voting in the primaries. They call themselves the “68 Percent” – “the significant majority of Republican voters here who are immune to Mr. Trump’s charms and entreaties, according to a battery of voter interviews on Thursday at campaign events for his rivals,” according to the Times.

The problem is that the sane side hasn’t stood up to this point yet, to put an end to the maniacal side’s reign of terror. They haven’t been able to thwart the drive from those that feel that Donald Dickhead is the one who should be the face of the United States, the one that we should send to discuss important worldwide topics as climate change, nuclear proliferation (let’s not get into the factor that he doesn’t even understand what the “nuclear triad” is), worldwide famine or pestilence, potable drinking water for lacking areas, reasonable solutions for refugee situations (either through war or natural disasters) and other critical matters. Then there’s the home issues, such as domestic spending, military spending, Medicare/Medicaid, improving employment options and living arrangements, drug and alcohol treatment and a litany of other areas. If Trump thinks he can come in and wave a magic wand, “hire the right people” or just “it’s gonna be huge” everything away, he’s going to be greatly surprised.

Then there’s the problem with the GOP itself. For a party that ran an “autopsy” on itself in 2012, they don’t seem to have learned anything. It seems that the party’s leadership is willing to make the same mistake with the Hispanic vote, thinking that a miraculous outpouring of disaffected white voters will somehow appear out of the woodwork to somehow counteract the damage that Trump has done. Then there’s the factor that the spokesperson for your party’s leading candidate (Trump, naturally) wants to call President Obama a “half-breed” and defends it because she is one, too…not exactly the way to embrace minorities.

Finally, let’s get to the GOP…it really doesn’t seem that they are “for” anything, rather it seems that they are advocates for “taking” things. The Republican Party wants to take away the woman’s right to choose, take away gender equality and gay rights, take away “welfare” and food stamps. They’ll defend “family values” as long as they agree with them (right, Governor Huckabee?), shrink the government (unless it infringes on the military), put Jesus back in the school system (but no other religions) and create jobs (despite not introducing a jobs bill in the past six years) by cutting taxes on everyone who already has more money than they absolutely will ever need.

Perhaps the sane side should have spoken sooner. But perhaps the sane side was lulled to sleep, thinking that they had taken care of the potential problems for 2016 and just needed to keep the wolves at bay with a little red meat. Now, those wolves – the maniacs that they let grow to a size too large to keep in the kennel – are recalcitrant to the sane side’s arguments and discussions. Along the way, they may have destroyed what was once known as the Republican Party…the remainder of 2016 will decide that question.