Wacko Birds

Ted Cruz is now, by his own admission, a candidate for President. Can we safely say that the right wing of the right-wing party is still Conservative except in it's vague longing for something vaguely related to a mythologized and phantasmagoric past?

As he said in his announcement at Liberty University, which students were compelled to attend or be fined, he wants to restore the constitution that Obama, not the color of man we traditionally select, has "stolen" and restore that "shining city on the hill" our former President-in-dotage liked to dream of.  Whether or not you consider him to be a conservative, or a "Wacko Bird" as John McCain called him, the guiding light behind the delusional wing of the GOP is that old Will O' the Wisp, or Ignus Fatuus common to such diverse cultures as Sumerian Mythology, Judaic Mythology, and the Tea Party: the lost paradise we can only regain by abolishing liberty and the pursuit of happiness in favor of  authority and returning to the past. Freedom is Slavery?  We don't ask, our faith (meaning greed) is all we need. Of course, to the wackobird, the notion that we can abolish the IRS and yet receive tax payments voluntarily and honestly through the altruistic and enlightened grace of the public is never questioned. Faith.  They're people of Faith.


Of course the shining city was founded on a purloined hill rooted in genocide, slavery, corruption, conquest, despoilation and oppression, but none of the traditional Wackobird constituency will tolerate any measure of truth when looking at the past or the present. Evidence and anyone who points at it is the enemy.  The insurgent Bloggers are already shouting "NO - YOU'RE the wacko, McCain!"  Nolo Contendere.

Of course If you're reading this you're probably all too aware of his pandering to the werewolves, zombies, ogres and other things that bump around the crepuscular forests of the night. I see it as pandering because Cruz after all, went to schools I couldn't get into with a battering ram and presumably graduated.  So I have to suspect that he wears his prophet's robes like sheep's clothing ( or Halloween lunatic costume if you prefer.)  But what strikes, and scares and disgusts me for that matter is the crazy credo that  "Little Black Barack" is tyrannically ignoring the constitution, assuming illegal powers, spending and taxing and all that nonsense that so adequately describes his predecessor.  We've had a 6 year bull market, deficit spending has been strongly reduced, energy independence is at record highs and unemployment is at near Clinton levels.  There couldn't be a more striking reversal of Bush's disastrous results.

Religious leaders have never had a problem with telling us that things are worse and worse and only a "return" to the past can save us and neither do Cruze or Rand Paul or other birds of that flightless feather throughout the red end of the political spectrum.  They get away with it because so many Americans are simply oblivious and unwilling to be otherwise. They go on howling about Obama not being eligible for the presidency, but not about how Cruze was born in Canada with only one American parent. Making foreign policy and negotiating with foreign countries is only "tyranny" when Obama does it and only a short time ago the loudly stated position was that "if the president does it, it's ipso facto constitutional and if some of us complained, we "hated America" and were collaborating with the enemy. 

Double standard?  Not so much as a totally ad hoc and shifting standard that can contradict itself without contradiction.  Is this the stuff of  all the tyrants of the past, real and fictional? Of course! A style that enlists the disgruntled, delusional, angry and yes the wacko into the battle against their liberty and prosperity and health.  I don't think you can reach them and our future as a free and influential country depends entirely on our ability to get off our asses, stop squabbling, having national "conversations" and staying away from the polls.

A Darkling Plain

So is it desperation making them pull out all the stops and stomp on the loud pedal, or is it just another Tea Hall Putsch; rowdies, thugs and goons colluding to bring down the government and the economy so they can bring on a new and lower world order?

It's become difficult for the Rebel Right to sell the idea that the markets and the economy itself are teetering on the brink of collapse; that there will be a "double-dip" recession, breadlines and trains full of hobos,  a degree of health care reform is about to kick in -- one that the public may just find to be a lot better than the apocalyptic predictions from the professional screamers would have us believe.  Maybe it's now or never for the Rebels. Apocalypse now as whores and horsemen like Cruz and Palin kick in their stalls and empty their bowels in anticipation.

"I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town,” 

Said Larry Klaman to a crowd of foam-flecked idiots in Washington, rallied around memorials his band of Bolsheviks as shut down, telling them to demand that the president  to

 “… get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”

And why?  Because not one of their predictions of doom has EVER come true ( or ones of success either) and they don't have the votes to elect one of their incompetent number or the courage to wait until 2016 and risk further recovery?  What can they do but make a "hail Mary" or a "Heil Hitler" appeal to racism, bigotry and fake history before real history sweeps the stable clean?

“In 237 years, our country has declined more than Rome took 2000 years to do,” he said. “We are ruled, quote-unquote, by a president that bows down to Allah.”

Obamacare is “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since Slavery" said Ben Carson, a Fox Favorite at the "Values Voter Summit"  and attributed the Republican designed plan to Vladimir Lenin -- something only someone as devoid of honesty as Klaman could say and only someone either clinically insane or more ignorant than a baboon could believe.

“one of the most insidious laws ever created by man,”

 said another verbal  terrorist to an audience totally ignorant of the law and what it says, but as always willing to believe anything to support their racist insanity.

I don't worry so much about the ease of assembling an ignorant army at a moment's notice. I think that at any time and in any place enough willing participants to staff a pogrom, man a concentration camp or burn children in a school could be assembled.  It's the highly organized heavily financed group of insurgents that now control a major political party hell bent on taking over absolute control of the United States by whatever means they can.  It's the domination of our news sources by propaganda organizations and corporations with no commitment to the truth and interested only in profit that scare me, because now, as it was a hundred years ago, our country is a pack of dogs happy to turn on itself, but unlike the days of race riots, labor riots, weekly terrorist bombings, lynchings, deportations and suppression of rights, we have 24 hour insanity, 24 hour hate speech, 24 hour lies and hardly a whisper of opposition.

How do we fight by the rules and beat such a ruthless and unscrupulous army?  Is it any wonder that we have a surplus of apocalyptic movies about armies of brainless corpses overwhelming civilization?  Unfortunately we don't have the option of chopping off heads. We don't have the ability to debunk an endless quantity of lies to an audience desperate to believe them. We can't outspend them, we can't shut them up.  We have to hope that in their stupidity they will overreach and fail, but it's a dim hope and it's getting really dark outside.

Democracy or Insurrection?

Let’s face facts. Democracy is a messy business, and competing stakeholders do not always get everything they want. Ours is a system of government designed to accommodate change – gradual or radical - through an orderly and prescribed process. We have elections; we have a balance of power shared between three branches of government; and we have a Constitutional amendment process. 

Although these structures are ensconced in Law, there are also unwritten courtesies, customs, and traditions that smooth the legislative process and keep governance a relatively civilized matter. Thomas Jefferson prescribed these rules of order in his Manual of Parliamentary Practice.

Pending bills originate in the House, move to Senate, are signed into law by the President, and - if highly controversial - are affirmed or overturned by the Supreme Court.  ObamaCare has passed all these benchmarks. Those who wish to modify, replace, or repeal ObamaCare must follow this path in accordance with democratic rules and procedures.

Frankly, the current impasse and government shutdown is NOT ABOUT OBAMACARE, or the Keystone Pipeline, or abortion, or contraception, or ANY OTHER PARTISAN CAUSE.  The government shutdown represents a despoliation of democracy by an unruly rabble.

Do we practice governance as prescribed by Law - according to time-honored traditions of parliamentary procedure - or do we conduct our affairs by ultimatum, blackmail, deception and demagoguery, defamation and vilification, fear mongering, extortion and hostage taking? Do we honor democracy, or do we conduct the nation’s business by insurrection?

Here is what the Constitution states:

The validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned [Amendment 14, Section 4].

"Shall not be questioned"  ... how do these words confer a right to surrender the validity of public debt to negotiation? To blackmail? Extortion? Hostage taking?

All presidents have a statutory obligation to preserve and protect the constitution, as do all office holders in Congress. If this or any president capitulates, our traditions of governance will be dealt a mortal blow; and the nation will suffer a slow and painful decline.  All citizens of all persuasions share this responsibility - and an obligation to pass down these traditions of representative democracy intact to future generations.

As far as I am concerned, the GOP is no longer a partner in participatory democracy. As Hannah Arendt states:

“A disciplined minority of totalitarians can use the instruments of democratic government to undermine democracy itself.”

By this definition, I consider the government shutdown an act of sedition and treason.

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Monday morning update:  On September 30, 2013, in the stealth of night, behind closed doors and hidden from public scrutiny, House Republicans changed the rules of the house and stacked the deck:

"The Rules Committee, under the rules of the House, changed the standing rules of the House to take away the right of any member to move to vote to open the government, and gave that right exclusively to the Republican Leader," said Van Hollen. "Is that right?"

"The House adopted that resolution," replied Chaffetz.

"I make my motion, Mr. Speaker," said Van Hollen. "I renew my motion that under the regular standing rules of the House... that the house take up the Senate amendments and open the government now."

"Under section 2 of H.R. 368, that motion may be offered only by the majority leader or his designee," Chaffetz said.

"Mr. Speaker, why were the rules rigged to keep the government shut down?" Van Hollen asked.

"The gentleman will suspend," Chaffetz interjected.

"Democracy has been suspended, Mr. Speaker."

Video here: