Today’s GOP and the East German Government in 1989 — Note the Parallels

Paul Krugman nailed it in his column titled A Tale of Two Parties.  He says:

“Do you remember what happened when the Berlin Wall fell? Until that moment, nobody realized just how decadent Communism had become. It had tanks, guns, and nukes, but nobody really believed in its ideology anymore; its officials and enforcers were mere careerists, who folded at the first shock.”

And how does this compare with our own corporate-owned-and-operated Republican Party?

“The Republican establishment was easily overthrown because it was already hollow at the core. Donald Trump’s taunts about ‘low-energy’ Jeb Bush and ‘Little Marco’ Rubio worked because they contained a large element of truth. When Mr. Bush and Mr. Rubio dutifully repeated the usual conservative clichés, you could see that there was no sense of conviction behind their recitations. All it took was the huffing and puffing of a loud-mouthed showman to blow their houses down.”

Today’s Republican Party is basically just a few billionaires who are in total iron-fisted control over their rank-and-file prostitutes/politicians who are scared shitless of saying the wrong thing or getting their talking points bollixed up.

The Democrats, on the other hand, are a loose undisciplined group of environmentalists, labor unions, anti-war groups, liberal social activists — you name it.  This is NOT an effective way to steamroll an unpopular agenda through Congress.  But this is what makes the  Democrats a lot more resilient against an attack than the house-of-cards-disguised-as-a-monolith GOP.

Paul Krugman closes with:

“…the Democratic establishment in general is fairly robust…the various groups making up the party’s coalition really care about and believe in their positions — they’re not just saying what the Koch brothers pay them to say…What worked in the primary [Trump’s attacks on his GOP rivals] won’t work in the general election, because only one party’s establishment was already dead inside.”

Republicans: “Backward, March!”

I stole that line from a column by Paul Krugman. His column ends with:

“We’ve always known that the modern G.O.P. wants to take America back to the way it was before the New Deal; but now it’s clear that the party wants to build a bridge to the 19th century, and maybe even to the antebellum era. Backward, march!”

He points out that Republicans no longer refer to themselves as “the party of Lincoln.” Nope, that ship sailed a long time ago. The party whose governors keep threatening to secede, naming itself after the president who PREVENTED the southern states from seceding — LOL. That one flunked the smell test a long time ago.

The GOP’s “Backward, March!” order was loud and clear at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering. If nothing else, they set a new Guinness World Record for “number of inbreds per square inch.”

There’s nothing more pathetic — it’s also sort of funny in that sick sort of way — than a bunch of Far Right extremists all trying to out-wingtard each other. “I want to bring America back to the 1800s and ban ALL abortion.” “I want to take us back to the 1700s and put all rape victims in jail. They were asking for it!”

Ann Coulter, Andrew Breitbart, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, all at the same gathering — no wonder there was an emergency pollution alert. Somebody should have called in a waste removal truck.

“A Tale of Two Moralities”

That’s the title of a recent Paul Krugman column. I have to take issue with this column. There isn’t anything I disagree with. But it’s way oversimplified; it leaves out too much.

He’s talking about the great political divide that’s tearing the country in two. The Left believes it’s “morally superior” for “the affluent to help the less fortunate.”

And the Right “believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft.”

And this is why his column is too simplified. The people on the “Right” he’s talking about are Libertarians. They make up a tiny portion of the Right Wing. He doesn’t mention anything about “Christian” snakehandlers and Salem witch-hunters who want to take America back to the 1700s. Or the warmongering rednecks who want the U.S. to invade and occupy dozens of “backward” countries because we know what’s best for them. (And because We WANT the natural resources that God mistakenly put under their soil instead of ours.)

Of course, Republicans and conservatives all pretend they’re Libertarian. Judging by their political slogans, you’d think they really do want “the government off our backs,” and believe in “self-reliance,” “personal responsibility” and “the right to be left alone.” Those soundbites are a lot more appealing than “I hate queers, minorities and everybody who doesn’t go to my church” or “we oughtta just bomb all them third world countries back to Kingdom Come.”

But unfortunately those last two categories make up the vast majority of today’s Republican Party. They all screamed “Freedom died today!” when Obama signed the health care reform bill last Spring. But these same freedom-loving individualists were stone silent when we invaded Iraq under false pretenses, and when Dumbya established massive domestic spying programs and eliminated Habeas Corpus. When our government spends trillions of dollars on wars and the Prison Industrial Complex, the Right mysteriously forgets about their “right to keep what they earn.”

And I disagree with his description of liberals. I can’t speak for anybody else, but the reason I’m in favor of a public safety net (or “the nanny state” as wingtards like to call it) has nothing to do with whether it’s a “moral” issue or “the right thing to do.” I believe in having a safety net because it works. It’s better for the whole country. As the saying goes, “When everybody wins, we all win.” (Or whatever the exact wording is.)

When millions of Americans are unemployed, destitute, homeless, sick and not having access to health care — the entire country gets pulled down. I would assume that the rest of the industrialized world has become “socialistic” for practical, pragmatic reasons; not because of “morality” or “right and wrong.”

When a huge percentage of a country’s population is poor, scared shitless and pissed off — it means the system is NOT Working. Tunisia, anyone?

So that’s my quarrel with Paul Krugman’s column. The Left favors a safety net (“robbing Peter to pay Paul,” whatever you want to call it) because it makes the entire country a better place; not because it’s “moral” or “the right thing to do.”

And the Right is sure as hell NOT made up of freedom-loving individualists who just want the government to leave us alone.

‘The Rage of the Rich”

Also known as “the wail of the one percent.” This New York Times column by Paul Krugman will throw you into a rage. You’ll fume; you’ll yell; you’ll punch your computer monitor.

Paul Krugman doesn’t tell you anything you didn’t already know. But he pinpoints the problem — totally captures that arrogant self-absorbed Marie Antoinette attitude of the wealthiest one percent — and he does it all without a single swear word; without insulting anybody’s parents or anything. He’s a better man than I.

Here’s an item from that column: When Obama tried to close a tax loophole that hedge fund managers were reaping a fortune from, fund manager Stephen Schwarzman — a billionaire — compared Obama’s proposal to the Nazi invasion of Poland.

Regarding whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, Krugman says:

“Among the undeniably rich, a belligerent sense of entitlement has taken hold: it’s their money, and they have the right to keep it…The spectacle of high-income Americans, the world’s luckiest people, wallowing in self-pity and self-righteousness would be funny, except for one thing: they may well get their way.”

And:

“Politicians spend a lot of time hanging out with the wealthy. So when the rich face the prospect of paying an extra 3 or 4 percent of their income in taxes, politicians feel their pain — feel it much more acutely, it’s clear, than they feel the pain of families who are losing their jobs, their houses, and their hopes.”

He wraps up the column with:

“And when the tax fight is over, one way or another, you can be sure that the people currently defending the incomes of the elite will go back to demanding cuts in Social Security and aid to the unemployed. America must make hard choices, they’ll say; we all have to be willing to make sacrifices. But when they say ‘we,’ they mean ‘you.‘ Sacrifice is for the little people.”

Jobs, Stupid!

Later this week, Obama is expected to take a short break from playing Hamster-In-A-Treadmill with his health reform battle. There’s another even more urgent fire that needs to be put out — the 10% Plus (and climbing) unemployment rate.

There’ll be a jobs forum at the White House this Thursday. People taking part in the forum include: Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Disney CEO Bob Iger, economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman and various labor leaders.

Let’s hope he listens to Paul Krugman in particular. His November 29th column has some good advice for Obama.

He says Obama needs to create an “emergency jobs program.” Instead of passing another gargantuan stimulus package and then waiting and waiting for something to trickle down, Obama needs a “somewhat cheaper program that generates more jobs for the buck.”

Federal aid to state and local governments should accomplish this. At the very least it would prevent vital services — and jobs — from being eliminated. He also should create a smaller-scale version of FDR’s Works Progress Administration (WPA). This would create a lot of jobs (even if they’re low-paying) at relatively low cost. According to the Economic Policy Institute, spending $40 billion a year for three years would create a million jobs.

The Economic Policy Institute also recommends a tax credit for employers who increase their payrolls.

His column ends with “Yes, we can create more jobs — and yes, we should.”

Obama is in a tough position. The Right hates him because he’s just seconds away from imposing a Socialist Communist Fascist police state on this once-free nation. And the Left hates him because he hasn’t done jack shit.

In a related story, forty percent of Democrats say they aren’t going to bother voting in the 2010 election. Democratic political leaders are still a lot more popular with the public than their Republican counterparts. But with Republican voters three times more likely than Democrats to vote next year — things could get interesting.

But there’s still hope. Maybe the Republican Purity Test will get those moderate centrist RINOs out of their “big tent” once and for all. Get that spineless pussy Newt Gingrich out of the party and replace him with a Real American. Republican voters: if the Republican candidate isn't far enough to the Right for you, vote for a third party candidate. That'll show 'em!