The Path to Perdition

All budgets are political documents. By choosing among the various sources and uses of public funds, they institutionalize the political philosophy of their creators. They tell us what they value and what has no value to them. Paul Ryan's budget, his Path to Prosperity, is no different. It shows us what conservatives value most, comfort for the comfortable and affliction for the afflicted.

This shameful document would be better-named the Path to Perdition. "Perdition" is defined as "final and irrevocable spiritual ruin." What better way can we describe a world organized along conservative principles? It would be a world where the poor and the sick and the elderly are cast out into the streets to make their way through their desperate lives as best they could. Ryan's budget does that. It would be a world where the rich became richer because government places the weight of their existence on the backs of common citizens. Ryan's budget does that.

This is the horror Ryan would have for America and it would brand America as a hell dominated by plutocrats and their stooges. It is a plot contrived by one of Satan's demons, Paul Ryan, to destroy the promise of America, to bring us finally and utterly to the complete collapse of everything which separates humanity from the world of predators and prey.

The Brutal Truth

The brutal truth is, the Republican Party is mostly old, white people but America isn't.

We've always called ourselves a nation of immigrants and were proud to so as long as the immigrants were from Northern and Western Europe . When they started coming from Eastern and Southern Europe, not so much. Now that they're coming from South and Central America or from Asia, Republicans have become far more concerned with the "wretchedness" of the refuse than the "goldeness" of the door.

Say No to Republican Control of Congress.

In GOP focus on control of Congress amid presidential doubts this fall, The Hill is reporting Republcan efforts to reduce the poltical damage its presidential candidates are doing to Republican influence on American public policy by bolstering its efforts to control Congress.

Americans ought view Republican attempts to control the House and Senate as the kind of political plotting more commonly associated with coups than democratic elections. While they likely are doing nothing illegal, their intentions and motivations are more like those of political extremists who support tyrants and dictators than the efforts of public servants.

The once proud Republican Party is little more than a cult. It has become the home of ideologues, zealots and stooges. Their efforts to retain control of the House and Senate in the face of increasing rejection of their presidential candidates illustrates their extremism. Rather than learn the lesson it teaches, that the American People are opposed to their obstruction of good policy and their support of bad policy, they are focused instead on imposing more of the same on the American People.

That is an outrage.

We expect our public servants to serve the interests of the American People. When they fail to do that, we expect them to fade away. Not so today's Republicans. Rather than honorably departing Washington, they are building bunkers and constructing last ditch defenses. With their threatened legislative outrages such as gutting Medicare, repealing health care for all Americans and coddling the 1%, they are intent on a scorched earth defense of their extremist ideology.

America must say No! We cannot allow the Republican Party to destroy America. Every patriotic American must take every opportunity to condemn it and its treachery.

Religion and Bad Faith

In Religion burns Obama again Niall Stanage and Amie Parnes at The Hill suggest President Obama's "accommodation" of the Catholic Church's objection to the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate is the result of his difficulty in handling religion in politics.

I don't think so.

This isn't so much about religion as it is about the President's misplaced faith in the good will of the Republican Party. He should know by now they don't have any but that's a lesson he seems incapable of learning.

Far be it from me to lecture a black man who's gotten himself elected to the Presidency in the ways of American politics but something has to be done. Maybe, as a learning aid, he could create a White House group dedicated solely to simulating Republican reactions to his proposals and finding ways to avoid it. He could staff it with internet scam artists, convicted con men and late-night TV, infomercial pitchmen. They certainly would know how the Republicans operate. Then, he could make his proposals before them first and let them hammer-away from the Republican point of view until he develops a good way to divert or stop the attack.

When all you have is a hammer...

...every problem looks like a nail.

Mark Penn's advice to President Obama on his State of the Union Address, Opinion: Obama must bring back the opportunity society, is the perfect example of the old saw, "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Penn is a public relations guy and his article is full advice to push the public's buttons by paying lip service to things we believe but just aren't much good. If Obama were to go to work on Penn's Jobs 1, 2, and 3, he might raise is poll number a bit now but the effort wouldn't do American much good.

Job 1: tell America the economy is on the way back.

OK. The economy is on the way back but the truth is, it's nowhere near as good as it could be and the Republicans are the reason. They've done everything they could to ensure everything Obama did wouldn't work. If Obama tells America the economy is coming back, the Republicans won't have to bear the consequences of their obstructions and obfuscations. Better Obama should say he's managed to stop the slide toward utter collapse but much has yet to be done but, unless the Republicans are stopped, it never will be done.

Job 2: Create opportunity

Forget opportunity. Opportunity in America is dead. The plutocracy have rigged our society so that the only opportunity anyone has is the opportunity he had when he was born. We now are class-based society and even that capitalist tool, Forbes magazine, admits it. In America, The New Class-Society they say:

...social mobility in America, the latest research shows, is less than it was, and considerably less than most Americans believe.

"Why?" you might ask. Forbes continues:

Class is changing yet again, and the new incarnation of the class-society is at its most advanced in the U.S. A good education is now the most important determinate of class, and in America access to good schools--whether private or public--is increasingly reserved for the well-to-do.

So, while Penn's advice might be on the right track and what Americans want to hear, it won't work because most Americans cant' afford good educations and the Republicans never will allow the government to help them. If Obama tries to raise the hope of a good education, he'll be deceiving America. Better he should tell America the Republicans are destroying opportunity in America and, until they're gone, we'll have no more.

Job 3: the deficit.

The deficit is what the Republicans want America to talk about. It's big and it's scary. But, like most paper tigers, it doesn't have teeth or claws. The deficit is not a threat to America. The danger is believing we must ignore our fundamental problems and do something about the deficit.

America's deficit was created by bad Republican policies; Bush's tax cuts, Bush's wars and a Medicare drug benefit designed to subsidize the pharmaceutical industry not serve Americans. Once we take care of these blunders, the deficit will evaporate. Obama should lay the blame for the deficit where it belongs, squarely on the backs of the Republicans.

Mark Penn is a PR guy. He's advising the President to tell America what it wants to hear instead of what it needs to know. That's bad advice.

The Dishonorable Paul Ryan

When The White House announced President Obama will release his 2013 budget one week afer the legal deadline for release. Paul Ryan (R-WI) said of the delay:

"I am deeply disappointed in this President’s abdication of leadership when it comes to prioritizing Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. The decision to delay the release of his budget again could not come at a more precarious moment for our fiscal and economic future.."

While Paul Ryan speaks of the President's putative "abdication of leadership," the very act of criticizing the President is an abdication of his duty to his constituents. Instead of devoting his energy to creating public policy which will reverse the many outrages he and his party have committed on the American People, he has chosen to commit another.

Unlike Paul Ryan, President Obama has been working diligently and ceaselessly on the problems America faces. Paul Ryan's scurrilous attack only adds to the President's burden and delays the relief the American People deserve. It poisons the atmosphere in Washington with it's attempt to make a trivial delay seem like an abandonment of responsibility. That's outrageous and and it's unbecoming a member of the US House of Representatives. At least, it would have been in an earlier age.

At one time, members of Congress worked with each other on the problems of the American People. No more. Now Republicans seek only to promote their extremist ideology. Virtually every thing they do is designed to have the maximum partisan political effect.

Paul Ryan is among the worst of the whole despicable bunch. As Chair of the House budget committee, for instance, we might have expected him to do his best to serve all the American People. Instead, he developed a budget, his Road to Prosperity, which was a breathtaking assault on the poor, the sick and the elderly.

This attack on the President for delaying his budget, doubtless to make it more useful to the American People, was beyond the pale. It was one of Ryan's most dishonorable acts.

Dangerous Ground for Rick Santorum

In New Hampshire voters put candidates to the test, GOP Presidential candidate Rick Santorum is reported to have told a hostile questioner, "But as you know, my faith, my Catholic faith, as well as Christian faith, has a theory called 'just war' theory."

Santorum is on dangerous ground when he speaks of just war. Explicit in the Church's just war doctrine is the expectation the decision to go to war will be made only after "rigorous consideration" of strict conditions by "those who have responsibility for the common good." In other words, the decision to go to war must be made only by elected officials who have made the most deliberate and serious analysis of the situation and in consideration of their duty to the common good. That does not include war-mongering by political opportunists who are willing to pervert the tools of modern communication to achieve their personal goals.