A GOOD REPUBLICAN

Here is an article in the L.A. Times about a good Republican, former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.):

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-pn-alan-simpson-gores-gop-on-immigration-obama-on-budget-20130327,0,1336372.story

This dude tells it like it is. Pulls no punches. Takes no prisoners. Calls it like he sees it. All the good cliches apply.

Why aren't there more Republicans like this?

I don't know, but I suspect there are two reasons:

1. They don't have the guts.
2. Their political future is tied to big business of some kind, most likely oil or finance. They have been bought and paid for. Some Democrats are like that, too.

The solution to gutless politicians, I think, is to get the money out of politics, as much as possible.

Get rid of Citizens United, the shockingly unfair Supreme Court decision that declared, irrationally, that corporations have the same legal status as people and that there are no limits to political spending.

Right on, Alan Simpson.

We may not see your like again.

-- Roger

Copyright © 2013, Roger R. Angle

CAN MITT DO ANY BETTER?

In November, we the citizens of these United States, in order to further our union, will vote for the office of president, the most important job in the nation.

When Obama was running in 2008, the right wingers complained that he didn't have enough executive experience to prepare him for the highest executive office in the country.

OK, maybe that was a valid point. So now, another man comes along who says he has lots of executive experience and who says he can change the direction of the country--create more jobs, get the economy back on track.

This man, Mitt Romney, will likely be running on the Republican ticket, after the GOP convention. Romney has held several big executive positions, including the governorship of Massachusetts.

So let us take a look at what Mitt Romney actually did as governor. What was his record? What did he accomplish? Not much, it turns out.

It is weird that you don't see this information in the newspapers all the time, and you don't hear it on the radio and TV news. You'd think it would be everywhere. 

First of all, Romney didn't do what he said he was going to do.

Romney said he was going to increase job growth. Massachusetts went from #37 to #47 in job creation while Mitt was governor. Down, the numbers went down. That was not supposed to happen, but it did.

What happened to all that big-time expertise? He said he was a successful businessman who knew how to grow an economy. That is what he said then, running for governor, and that is what he says now, running for president.

When he was governor, Romney cut spending for education, probably the most important item for the future of any society.

Question: How to do attract new high-tech businesses when you don't have an educated workforce? Answer: You don't.

Romney raised fees on "everything from college students to mortgages, from buying a boat to opening a bar," according to Paul Begala, a columnist for Newsweek:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/29/paul-begala-what-s-mitt-romney-hiding-in-his-record-as-governor.html

"Fees for university students shot up 63 percent," according to Begala.

What is the difference between a fee and a tax? I don't see any difference. Do you? If it walks like a duck....

Romney's record as governor was bad. Real bad. He cut job training, workforce development and trade assistance, according to Begala.

Looks to me like Mitt Romney was a weak, misguided, ineffective governor, and I believe he would make a worse president.

Oh, he talks a big game. A big game.

But will he deliver? What do you think? Look at his record, and you tell me.

Does he walk like a duck?

-- Roger

Copyright © 2012, Roger R. Angle

executive

MITT'S PROBLEM

Mitt the Sh*tt has a problem: He wants to lead a party of misfits, morons, climate deniers, ideologues and ostriches with their heads in the sand.

The Republican mantra, even back in Hoover's time, was "smaller government, lower taxes, less government spending."

I have got the answer for those people: Move to Somalia. It has no government. Therefore, no government spending. Get it?

Please, all you Tea Party types: MOVE TO SOMALIA!

For Christ's sake, get the hell out of here, or stop with this unrealistic B.S. (that stands for bullsh*t) about lowering taxes for the rich.

Do these fantasticks really believe you can have a functioning capitalistic democracy of 300 million people with no government spending? How ridiculous.

I recall what the distinguished Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said: “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”

Apparently, the Tea Party types don't want civilization. Fine. Somalia is nice this time of year. Become a war-lord.  

I will personally buy Newt Gingrich a one-way ticket to Mogadishu (capital of Somalia, in case you are in the Tea Party and didn't know that) if he will sign a binding contract that forfeits $1-million if he ever sets foot on American soil again.

Of course, since Newtie wants to live in the past, the ticket will be on a boat that he has to row himself. He believes in self-reliance, doesn't he? Practice what you preach, Newtie.

Oh, BTW, I think you can have more than one wife at a time in Somalia. That would suit Newtie just fine, given his history with women.

Meanwhile, back to Mitt the Sh*tt.

Romney needs to provide more leadership. He needs to lead the Republicans away from their unrealistic right-wing ideology and into reality.

Healthcare is a problem, and his version of "Obamacare" in Massachusetts did work. What we need in the good old USA is a single-payer system that covers everyone.

Let's see Mitt come out in favor of that.

That'll be the day, huh?

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

GOP DEREGULATION

These right-wing Republicans prattle on and on about deregulation.

When Tom Delay ran for Congress, he had been an exterminator or owned an exterminator company, and he wanted to deregulate DDT.

Of course, being a Republican, he didn't give a damn about the environment. Why would he care that DDT got into the food chain and destroyed generations of pelicans so their egg shells dissolved and their chicks couldn't be born?

What's death and extinction among birds and animals compared to one man's income?

Screw the environment, right Republicans? What did it ever do for you, beside provide you with a planet to live on, air to breathe and water to drink?

But to hell with all that, right?

A man's income is what counts, isn't it?

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

SLAVE SHIP USA?

I never understood why our supposedly loyal American Republicans want to destroy our middle class and turn the USA into another banana republic, like Mexico, Guatemala and Nicaragua used to be.

Why do they want to protect the income of the rich and super rich and turn the lower classes and middle classes into one giant slave class?

Apparently, they want the whole USA to be like plantations in the Old South, where we work for no wages and exist solely to serve our masters.

These Tea Party members and other right wingers give lip service to protecting the USA, and they chant "USA, USA" like morons every time we seem to win a skirmish in the so-called "War On Terror," which is not a war at all.

They want to increase the defense budget, no matter how much waste there is or how few real threats there are.

But the right wingers don't really care about the country. If they did, they would act to strengthen the lower classes and middle classes with strong unions and employee-owned businesses and policies that would help ordinary people get ahead.

Instead, they do everything they can to protect the private jets of the rich. I heard about one family where the teenage kids were always asking to borrow the family jet, like borrowing the car, driving Mom and Dad crazy. So the family was talking about buying a second jet, and hiring a second flight crew, pilot and co-pilot, so Mom and Dad could have some peace.

Boy, we need to protect that lifestyle, don't we? Chant along with me:
SAVE THE RICH, SCREW THE POOR!
SAVE THE RICH, SCREW THE POOR!

That is the mantra of the Tea Party and the GOP these days.

Paul Krugman has a good column in the NY Times this morning:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/opinion/the-president-surrenders-on-debt-ceiling.html?_r=1&hp

As Krugman says, the Republicans have taken the USA "a long way down the road to banana-republic status."

Krugman finishes his piece by writing, "...how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t."

The weird thing about the right-wing Republicans, who seem to be running the country now, is that they claim to have the USA's best interests at heart.

But their policies and their ideology don't show that.

Welcome to the plantation. We are all on it now. There are two main divisions, masters and slaves. And there are two kinds of slaves, field slaves and house slaves.

Which are you? Myself, I am a house slave. And not very proud of it.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

MICHELE WHO?

I heard on the radio this morning some guy praying to God to protect Michele Bachmann from "the attacks."

I presume he meant verbal and written criticisms of her moronic policies that are designed to protect the rich and screw the middle class and the poor.

I heard her say something to a crowd like, "How many of you want me to go back to Washington and help the Democrats raise spending?"

The crowd booed on cue, like the morons they are.

She should have asked, "How many of you want me to keep representing Wall Street and big business and big banks? How many of you want to keep getting screwed by the rich?"

I wonder if they would have cheered then. Because that is what she is doing, along with the other Republicans.

Oh Buddha, save us from Wall Street and the Republicans.

I cannot believe that Bachmann and the other right wingers can get away with screwing the middle class and the poor so openly.

We need to pray that God (if there is one) gives Michele Bachmann a brain, to see what is really going on, and the courage to stand up against the big banks and the rich.

That'll be the day, huh?


-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

AFGHANISTAN: THE MESS

Oh, what a mess we are in. I never thought we should invade Afghanistan in the first place.

Only a small number of Al Qaeda affiliates, sheltered by the Taliban, planned 9/11, after all. It was not the whole country. That Bush2 business, "You're either with us or against us," was dumb as hell.

Why kill a lot of innocent people to get a few bad guys? Of course, we did much worse in Iraq.

But now President Obama says we are gradually drawing down our soldiers there. Oh, man, I don't know about this.

We abandoned the Afghans once before, after we helped them defeat the Russians. Are we abandoning them again? Are we leaving the good guys to take the heat?

How do we make it all right? How do we make it up to the families, here and there, of people who have been killed and maimed in this stupid war? How do we make the world better, not worse, these days?

I don't know. Normally, I would trust Obama. He's a smart guy, and he's our guy. But he has the burden of politics and trying to please various factions at home. He has to get along with the loony, bloodthirsty, power-mad, delusional, ideologically driven Republicans.

I don't envy him that.

I think we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. At least this way, we are going to focus more energy on nation building here at home.

BTW, I don't see anything wrong with nation building. Isn't that what we did after WWII? Didn't it result in firm allies, stable economies and functioning democracies in Japan and Germany?

What is wrong with nation building?

I think we should build more, starting at home. But I don't think we should neglect the rest of the world.

Also BTW, I think we need a much bigger stimulus package to bring our own economy up to where it belongs. More deficit spending. That is what got us out of the Great Depression.

The GOP is wrong about this, too.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

Greetings From Afghanistan, Send More Ammo: Dispatches from Taliban Country

VOTE GOP IN 2012?

My buddy Phil, whom I call "The Real Doctor Phil, Not That Horse's Ass On TV," says he is neither a registered Democrat nor Republican.

"I vote for the person I think is the most competent and the most honest, who gives the best answers, and who will do the best job," he said.

"But" I said, "how do you tell?"

He said he listens to what they say and looks at their record.

OK, but my friend Phil, whom I call "Doc" for short, sometimes votes for Republicans.

I find that very hard to do. I have done it twice in my life, for John V. Lindsay, mayor of New York City, and for Marian Bergeson, CA state senator. Both were outstanding leaders, I thought.

But since then--and that was 30-40 years ago--the Republicans have had such a brutal record and are full of such crazy ideas and unreasonable prejudices that I doubt if I could vote for one.

I do like Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney, although I think Mitt has shown a lot of cowardice about his Massachusetts healthcare law.

The mayor of Salt Lake City, the other day on NPR, said both Jon and Mitt are good guys. He knows Huntsman especially well and says Huntsman is an intelligent man with wide experience who wants to make the world a better place. And that mayor is a Democrat, which counts for a lot.

OK, I like competence and ethics.

But remember it was the much admired Republican President Ronald Reagan who was partly responsible for the deaths of 200,000 innocent people in Guatemala during the Red scare while he was president.

Not to mention Bush 2 and his illegal war and consequent butchery in Iraq.

The GOP usually wants tax breaks for the rich, more money for the Department of Defense, and less money for Medicare and Social Security. It's motto seems to be "Screw the Poor."

So Huntsman and Romney may be two good guys, but they are in the wrong party.

I am planning to stick with Obama in 2012.

-- Roger

© Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20073089-503544.html

WHY I’M NOT A REPUBLICAN

I consider myself a loyal American and think I’m middle of the road politically. I have never missed voting in an election, and I think we should have universal military service. I believe in public schools and the right to bear arms. I keep guns at home. If someone tried to harm my family, I would not hesitate to punch their ticket. I support the local police and believe in national defense.

But I could never be a Republican. Here’s why: misdirected wars, ignorance of the environment, tax policies in favor of the rich, fake morality, lying for political gain, violent hatred, threats to use force to gain political power, and false-front organizations.

Let me give some details:

1. Iraq. Under the Republican leadership of President George W. Bush, we invaded a foreign nation that was ruled by a vicious dictator (that we had previously supported), but that didn't threaten us and had no capability of harming us. More than 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died. Millions more have been displaced. Iraq had no connection to the attacks of 9/11. Our invasion made no strategic sense and has produced nothing of long-term value for the USA. We have lost 4,000 brave Americans in this war.

Apparently the current regime in Iraq does not have a sterling human rights record. I heard on the radio the other day an interview with an Iraqi man who said, “It’s just like Saddam, all over again.”

We spent billions of dollars and spilled our blood for this?

When we invaded Iraq, I marched against the war, but I told my liberal friends, “The war may be wrong, but at least a lot of good, intelligent Americans are going over there to do the right thing.” Now I’m not so sure. I think it was a colossal mistake.

2. Guatemala. President Ronald Reagan’s policies resulted in the deaths of 200,000 innocent people. It was an hysterical anti-communist scare that had no basis in reality. I doubt if those peons in the mountains of Central American even knew what a communist was, or if they had even heard of Karl Marx.

3. Vietnam. Unfortunately, I can’t blame this misdirected war all on the GOP. President Kennedy took part in the wanton killing of innocent rice farmers. But no one was as guilty as Nixon, and my GOP friend still supports the war. Three million Vietnamese and fifty thousand Americans died, because of anti-communist fear and hysteria. Remember, we had to burn the villages to save them. Ridiculous.

4. When Sarah Palin was governor of Alaska, before she resigned in mid-term, she sent a letter to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California arguing against a policy that would have saved about 2,000 lives a year in Southern California. It would have required the cleanup of diesel emissions near Long Beach and Los Angeles Harbors. To her, profits were more important than people. Cough-cough. I can’t see Sarah for the smog. This is a pro-death policy, not a pro-life policy.

5. Political economy. In the USA, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Over the past 50 years, our income has migrated up the economic ladder. Pretty soon, we’ll be like a Latin American country, where 10% of the people hold onto 90% of the wealth. Apparently, that is what Republicans want. Tax policies, mostly supported by the GOP, continue to push us in that direction. This country was built on a strong middle class, and we should strengthen it, not undercut it.

6. Lies, distortions, and fake morality. A short list:

a. Republican George W. Bush lied to defeat Democrat Ann Richards for the governorship of Texas. This lie was concocted by Karl Rove. They took out ads saying that juvenile crime was up in Texas and Richards wasn’t doing anything about it. In fact, juvenile crime was down. The young Bush started his meteoric rise in politics with a big fat lie.

b. Bush lied about yellowcake Uranium from Niger. He lied about Saddam Hussein plotting to attack the USA. His secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, lied when she said we might see a mushroom cloud over the White House.

c. Newt Gingrich was having an affair while his wife was in the hospital. At the same time, he was criticizing President Bill Clinton for his lack of morals. Isn’t that living a lie? It certainly is fake morality.

d. The so-called “Ground-Zero Mosque” that Gingrich and other right wingers raged on about was not a mosque at all, and was not planned for Ground Zero. It would be a 13-story community center that would be open to the public, with a concert hall, a gymnasium, a child-care facility, a library, a culinary school and restaurant, and a prayer room. It was planned to take the place of an old Burlington Coat factory two blocks from Ground Zero. But you can’t get ignorant people fired up with the truth. A community center on the site of an old coat factory? Oh my God!

e. So-called “death panels” didn’t exist, were not proposed and won’t exist. They were a Sarah Palin special: bull crap on toast.

f. The so-called pro-lifers have a twisted sense of morality when it comes to abortion. Conservative commentator Bill O’Reilly on Fox News called Dr. George Tiller, a physician in Wichita, KS, “Tiller the killer” because the doctor performed late-term abortions. But Tiller saved hundreds of women’s lives, and he would only do the procedure if the woman’s life was in danger and if the baby was already brain-dead inside them or otherwise not viable. Then a nut-job murdered Tiller, believing he was doing the right thing.

7. The violent hatred. I have a right-wing friend, who shall remain nameless, who called President Obama both a Nazi and a Marxist. Of course, that makes no sense. Hitler rose to power in 1930s Germany by fomenting anti-communist hysteria and blaming Jews for the country’s extreme economic problems. Henry Ford and other big American businessmen supported Hitler because they feared communism. Ford built the tanks that Hitler used to invade Poland. But American right wingers now despise Obama and call him Hitler. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be both a Nazi and a communist.

8. Threats to use guns to gain power. Some extreme right wingers now say they are going to use “Second-Amendment remedies” to bring down Congress and the President. Sounds like Latin America or Nazi Germany. And these people call themselves good Americans? Unbelievable. Mainstream GOP leaders have not repudiated them, as they should.

9. Neglect of the environment. A right-wing friend said to me one time, “Maybe God put us on Earth to destroy it.” Hmmm, OK. Then we’ve been doing a good job. If you hate the outdoors, and nature, and forests, and clean lakes and rivers with fish in them, and green trees, and wildlife, then you’re a good Republican.

10. Many right-wing organizations, like “Americans For Prosperity,” are fronts for big business. AFP is a political front for the billionaires Charles and David Koch, owners of Koch Industries, a $100-billion-a-year oil conglomerate with HQ in Wichita, KA. The Koch brothers have paid AFP spokesmen who say such things as, “Liberals are like red ants at a picnic, you just have to squash them.” Do these people sound like good Americans? Why hide in the shadows if they aren’t doing anything wrong? What are they ashamed of? Is violence good for American politics?

The Grand Old Party’s principles seem to be that you have to kill for peace, that pollution is OK, long live the rich, tell any lie to win, hate the Democrats for they are the enemy within, it’s OK to use guns to gain power, and it’s OK to conduct political business in the shadows.

Are these your values? They are not mine.

I could never be a Republican. The truth is important to me. Civilization is important. The right to dissent is important. Free speech is important. The strength of the USA is important. “United we stand, divided we fall,” as someone once said. The right-wingers and tea partiers are trying to divide the country, not unite it. They don’t have the nation’s best interests at heart, and they don’t understand the consequences of their ideology. They are so sure they are right, they will kill the rest of us to prove it.

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle

TRUTH & LIES ABOUT TERRORISM

Lying to the American people about anything is a form of Unbearable Crap. Especially when the topic is terrorism.

Here is a bit of truth from Michael Moore: "Terrorists aren't trying to kill us because they hate our freedom. They are trying to kill us because we're in their countries killing them."

I wasn't going to bring this up, but have you ever actually read the writings of Osama bin Laden? What he wants and has always wanted is for America to get its troops out of the Arabian peninsula and out of Islamic countries in the Middle East.

The right wingers in the USA would have us believe that even listening to or reading Bin Laden amounts to "appeasement," and they compare that to Neville Chamberlain trying to make peace with Adof Hitler.

Wait, isn't there a difference? Who invaded whose land? In the 1930s, after big business in the USA stopped supporting Hitler, our former ally led Germany in trying to take over Europe and the world. Hitler was the invader.

In modern times, we invaded Iraq. We invaded Afghanistan. Are we the invader, or not? I don't think we went in there to take over those countries. Ostensibly, we went there to spread democracy. In his gut, W knew it was the right thing to do.

Was it the right thing to do? If so, what have we gotten out of these invasions?

Dick Cheney said that oil in Iraq would pay for the invasion and occupation. Has it? Yeah, right. Sure. If you believe that, I've got a bridge I want to sell you.

That is another piece of Unbearable Crap.

Copyright 2010 by Roger R. Angle