What to Do When Your Buddy’s Girlfriend Dumps Him

Foreign affairs is not my strong point. I’m better versed in domestic issues. But I do see a current American dilemma boiling down to the following scenario:

You’ve known your buddy for years. You’ve had good times. When you see your buddy treat his girlfriend pretty shabby, you look the other way. After all, your buddy is one of the only guys in his neighborhood whom you feel you can count on. Suddenly one day his girlfriend says she’s had enough. She burns his clothes and tosses them out the window. She goes running out the front door. He chases her out of the house. Does he have a gun? A baseball bat? Maybe he’s just shaking his fists? What do you do? You love the guy after all. But you’ve got standards. You see how he’s mistreated her all these years. You know she has every right to protest. She has every right to want him out of her life. So the best you can do is tell him to stop shaking his fist, or to put down the bat or the gun. You love the guy but you don’t want everyone thinking you condone his bad behavior. Then again, he is one of the only dependable guys in the neighborhood. Man, you’re in a spot, aren’t you?

For the past thirty years, we’ve been buddies with Hosni Mubarak. We’ve stood by as he has promised governmental reform to his people and never delivered. Now in a wave of protest that started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt, Mubarak’s people are pissed and they’re not going to take it anymore. But as in the case of the guy whose buddy’s abused girlfriend finally leaves him, President Barack Obama had to walk a fine line this week of pledging support to Mubarak while warning him not to run after his “girlfriend” with a baseball bat or a gun.

This business of allies is quite complicated. Sometimes you make friends with the best of a bad bunch. In an ideal world, would we really be friends with Hamid Karzai or Asif Zardari, two men who repeatedly snub us in both word and action?

Well, as I said, I’m no foreign affairs expert. I just know it’s a real pain when your buddy’s been acting like an ass and finally gets called on it. Now you’ve got to choose between loyalty and virtue. This week, it looks like we tried to have our cake and eat it too.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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The Night of the SOTU: From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

OK, I lied. Tuesday night’s State of the Union spectacle ranged from the not so sublime to the not as ridiculous as we might have expected. Unfortunately every time Barack Obama speaks the expectations are sky-high. Many hoped for soaring rhetoric that would give a worried nation the security of knowing we have a plan to get us out of this economic slump.  The rhetoric was hardly soaring and the plan was vague at best. Even liberal pundits who avoid criticism of Obama at all costs could not avoid the seeming contradiction of a five-year freeze in discretionary spending coupled with a 1960′s space-race like initiative to increase our global competitiveness. How do we improve our education and technology without investment? How do we invest with a freeze in discretionary spending? MSNBC commentator Lawrence O’Donnell called it a mathematical puzzle with no solution. The other assertion made by the President that was awfully hard to swallow was that any bill with earmarks would be vetoed by him. Senate Leader Harry Reid has already gone on the record calling this notion absurd. I suppose the only highlight from the speech was Obama’s reasonable suggestion that health care reform had room for improvement and that should be pursued. Repeal of course, is not the answer.

Sometimes the annual mandatory drudgery of the State of the Union is at least enlivened by the sports arena atmosphere on the House floor. When Obama says a great lib talking point, the Democrats rise from the seats and cheer. The Republicans sit on their hands. Every once in a while everyone rises. But not this year. This year the ghost of the very much alive but badly wounded Gabby Giffords cast a pall on the whole affair. In a show of “civility” many Republicans and Democrats agreed to sit together, tossing out the unwritten convention of segregated seating. At first, I loved the idea. It meant that each Congressman would have to decide when to clap based on the merits of the speech and not on “peer pressure”. But the bottom line was this reduced the number of standing ovations and applause breaks. At one point, when Obama made a fish joke about Washington bureaucracy, it reminded me of Bill Maher waiting for applause after a stinker joke. I actually liked Obama’s joke but it still went over awkwardly.

After Obama gave us lukewarm confidence in the year ahead, Republican Representative Paul Ryan came along with the GOP response and warned us we’re going to hell in a hand-basket. Do not ever let this man staff a suicide hotline. I will say however, that his performance beat the crap out of Bobby Jindal two years ago and what’s his name last year. One commentator today said the job of the GOP response is to “do no harm” and Ryan achieved that. He sounded reasoned and competent even if you disagree with his politics.

The rank and file GOPhers would love to have left it at that but someone whispered into the echo chamber that is Michele Bachmann’s head, that she should deliver her own State of the Union response geared toward the Tea Party. And so, streamed live on the Tea Party Express web site was Michele Bachmann. Having just said a day or so earlier that our Founding Fathers worked tirelessly until slavery was abolished (I kid you not), one should have expected Bachmann to be totally ridiculous Tuesday night. Well, she was only slightly ridiculous. She came with props, most notably charts telling us what we already knew about spending over the past few years. She joined Ryan’s chorus of how ineffective Obama supposedly was over the past two years. She might have gotten through her completely unnecessary oration clean as a whistle were it not for two things.

First, CNN decided Bachmann’s speech was worth covering live. So, using a Fox camera feed (OMG … CNN in bed with Fox just days after Olbermann leaves MSNBC … be afraid, be very afraid) CNN showed us Bachmann delivering her speech … wait for it … to the Tea Party camera somewhere off stage right. The result was that most of us wondered what imaginary friend Michele was talking to for the entire speech. It was one of the more bizarre errors in optics ever to be witnessed, and indeed toppled the record holder, Mr. Bobby Jindal and his odd look of two years ago.

But the kicker for me on the content side was the way Bachmann concluded the speech, citing the soldiers at Iwo Jima (which she could not pronounce) and somehow suggesting that Japanese tyranny which we defeated in the 1940′s was equivalent to Washington tyranny today. So of course she was calling for us to defeat this tyranny once again. Fortunately, she stopped short of explicitly requesting second amendment remedies.

After sitting through Tuesday night’s display, I longed for the days from Thomas Jefferson through William Howard Taft, when Presidents literally mailed it in. No public speech and no need for opposing rebuttal. Let’s face it, every year the night pretty much amounts to the President setting unachievable goals and the opposition calling him a liar.

Well at least this year, no one actually yelled “you lie” from the floor.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Live Blogging the 2011 State of the Union Address

This year, I am continuing my time honored tradition of live blogging the State of the Union address. Just like last year, I will have the able assistance of my  radio co-host Sandi Behrns. We hope you can join us live! If you miss the live event, you can read the transcript any time after the event.

To attend the event or watch the replay, click here.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

Bangkok Comes to the Super Bowl and other Tidbits

Bangkok Comes to the Super Bowl

A good fifteen years ago I read about how American tourists, men, would travel to Bangkok for the express purpose of paying for child sex. The trips were basically booked as sex tours. One thought that went through my head when I read it was “well, at least not in America”. It’s not that I am so naive to believe that every prostitute in the US is eighteen or older. I just didn’t think that outright child sex trafficking went on in America.

Then earlier this week I got an e-mail from Change.org which opened with:

Dear Rutherford,

Every year, children as young as 11 are trafficked involuntarily to Super Bowl cities. There, football fans – usually men, often inebriated – will pay traffickers to have sex with them.

Now as much as I admire Change.org’s mission to right wrongs and fight injustice, their e-mails tend to be on the Debbie Downer side, each one more depressing than the one before. So when I read this, I immediately asked myself is anyone covering this besides Change.org or is this melodrama? A quick Google search ended any doubt immediately. This from McClatchy back in February of last year:

Two dozen volunteers from around the country gathered inside a Miami conference room earlier this week to prepare for the Super Bowl.

They’re not here for the game, though, but to spend several days fanning out through the city to rescue underage girls who have been trafficked to South Florida as sex workers.

….

Ernie Allen, who heads the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said girls typically enter prostitution at age 11 or 12.

“This is truly an example of supply and demand,” said Allen. “They use these kids as commodities for sale or trade, and go to where demand is the greatest, and where they can make the most money. That’s why they follow events like the Super Bowl.”

via Volunteers fight dark side of Super Bowl: child prostitution | McClatchy.

So, it turns out pedophiles don’t need to travel to Bangkok to get their fix. I’m not a big football fan to begin with but it sure does seem to take a bit of luster off the game to contemplate as you’re watching the fourth quarter action that some of the fans in the stands are looking forward to scoring with an 11-year-old.

The Civil War was about Slavery, Imagine That!

I always get a kick out of the Conservative habit of re-writing history to suit their ideology. One the latest memes to surface is that the civil war was not really about slavery but about much much more. In their Five Myths series, the Washington Post (and author James Loewen specifically) takes on five myths about the Civil War. Three of these myths gave me a big kick:

1. The Civil War was about States rights. Myth! The South believed in a strong federal government and was angry that the Fed was not enforcing slavery related laws in the North.

2. The Civil War was about high tariffs and taxes. Myth! Hysteria over high interstate taxes peaked under Andrew Jackson in 1833. The tariffs in effect in 1860 were written by Southerners in 1857 and were the lowest they’d been in decades.

3. Most white Southerners didn’t own slaves so slavery could not be the driving force behind the war. Myth! While it is true that most Southerners did not own slaves, most aspired to own them. It was emblematic of having made it, of having entered the upper class. To end slavery would be to end one of the cultural touchstones of nobility in the South. So those who did not own slaves still had a lot vested in the ability to own them.

The next time you’re tempted to celebrate the Confederacy, remember what it was really about, enslaving fellow human beings and treating them like property.

Reaping What You Sow

Could someone please explain to me why we elect an evangelical Christian and then get our panties in a knot when he acts like … wait for it … an evangelical Christian? Robert Bentley, the new Governor of Alabama made quite a splash this week when he said, “Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.” He subsequently apologized after the left and separation of church and state, and anti-defamation groups lost their lunch. But should he have apologized? I say no.

Let’s start with the location. He made the statement in a church service following his inauguration. He assumed, I think rightfully, that he was addressing fellow believers. But let’s also examine what he said. “I want to be your brother.” That is exactly what evangelical Christianity is all about. It is the belief that everyone needs to be saved. It is the belief that it is the duty of the devout to turn others to Christ and save their souls from eternal damnation. Bentley’s comment was completely consistent with his belief system and stated in a completely appropriate venue. To my knowledge, Bentley did not campaign as an atheist, a Jew or a Muslim.

Bottom line: Alabama got what it paid for. Now let’s just pray that Romney, Huckabee or Palin doesn’t choose Bentley as their running mate in 2012.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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AZ Aftermath: Complete Abdication of Responsibility

“Jared Loughner acted alone and is solely responsible for his actions.” There are a great number of attempted murders that might be dismissed with such an assessment but Loughner’s attempted assassination of AZ Representative Gabrielle Giffords is not such a case. I suspect from the reaction of folks with whom I’ve been arguing that a good number of conservatives would like to see Loughner locked away and his case swept from memory.

Why do I say this? There are three distinct issues raised by the Loughner shooting spree and a corresponding conservative reaction:

1. Our social discourse — Despite the fact that Loughner has said nothing since his arrest, conservatives would have you believe this was not a political shooting. From what we can tell Loughner’s head was full of a mishmash of political influences from the Communist Manifesto to Mein Kampf to some strange right-wing notion of subliminal mind control through the use of grammar. Because his political ideas were incoherent does not mean they were not political. His primary interaction with Giffords a few years ago involved him making a nonsensical socio-political statement to her which she basically ignored. It is one of the things that the authorities think fueled his rage and his obsession. Since it is strongly believed that he is schizophrenic, there is a distinct possibility that our toxic political environment churned the crazy soup brewing in his head. Some conservatives would have you believe that using this event to reconsider how we conduct ourselves is tantamount to “blaming” the reckless speakers. Call it blame if you like but we are responsible for the social environment we create.

2. Gun control — Suggest to some conservatives that there is no reason for Walmart to sell the fire power used by Loughner (a semi-automatic pistol with a 30 round magazine) and you get hit over the head with the 2nd Amendment. “Fine, limit him to a 10 round clip and then he’ll just buy two guns and bring both to the party.” It is like talking to a child where you try to lay down reasonable ground rules and they tell you all the ways they can get around them. Does that mean that we simply abandon the ground rules? Who needs to go hunting with a semi-automatic pistol firing 30 bullets without reloading? Who needs to defend themselves with that much fire power? Most folks get mugged by one to three assailants. Seldom does a group of 30 punks come up to you to rob you or threaten you (unless you’re in Afghanistan). So why is self-defense a legitimate excuse for this much fire power? Part of the problem is we are arguing with wingnuts who believe they might one day have to fight off the government. Calls for legitimate self-defense against criminals are baloney. It’s this nutty right-wing paranoia run amok.

3. Mental health system reform — The one thing just about everyone agrees upon is that Loughner is mentally ill. Yet little over a week after this assassination attempt, Congress will vote on repealing the Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 which contains provisions for improvement in mental health care payment and  administration.

The phrase “teachable moment” tends to gag me. I find it awfully saccharine. That said, the fact that a sizable number of people in this country wish to take NOTHING from this tragedy to make it less likely to be repeated is disgusting. On the contrary, some folks have the nerve to be offended if you suggest that trash talk can influence sick minds, or that easy availability of assault weapons invites misuse of them or that we need to do more than just pay lip service to better mental health care initiatives. They say to discuss the factors that might influence a tragedy is to exploit that tragedy for political gain. This is pure crap, plain and simple.

So, if Loughner is solely responsible for the actions that took place in front of the Safeway in Tucson, Arizona, then I guess all we need to do is lock him up and the problem goes away. That is, until the next Loughner comes along and puts a bullet in a politician’s head.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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“Guns Don’t Kill People. People Kill People” — Still Stupid

The old phrase goes “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” No doubt whoever said it first thought it was quite profound. It was stupid then and in light of last Saturday’s massacre in Tucson, AZ, it is all the more stupid now. So let’s see, someone needs to defend the poor innocent little gun. It’s gotten a bad rap. It’s not the gun’s fault that it falls into the hands of criminals, lunatics, suicides and klutzes who accidentally shoot their own foot off or worse. This is an absurd asinine argument. The fact is the way you control misuse of guns is to limit people’s access to them and control by legislation, their allowed use of them in a civilized society.

In the aftermath of the attempted assassination of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson last Saturday, several remedies have been proposed by law makers.

1. Two law makers have said they will “pack heat” from now on when they give town hall meetings. Yeah, that really solves the problem to have politicians shooting civilians.
2. Peter King of New York wants legislation that bans the carrying of a firearm within a certain perimeter of the President, Vice President, Congress member or Federal judge. This is a more reasonable solution although it explicitly protects only elected officials, which comes off a bit self-serving.
3. Carolyn McCarthy of New York (who lost her husband to gun violence) has suggested banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition clips. The gun used in the Tucson killings had a clip that allowed for 33 rounds to be fired. For what normal legal purpose would such a clip be necessary? Ms. McCarthy’s suggestion seems to me quite reasonable. She is also for reinstating the ban on assault weapons that lapsed during the Bush administration.

Last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Arizona Republican Representative Trent Franks argued that we should not be disturbed by the type of gun Jared Lee Loughner used in the mass murder because that is a standard gun used by police. You’ve got to be kidding me right? Used by police is the key phrase here folks! You don’t justify what the average Joe can carry on his hip by what police carry on theirs. Police are entrusted with the protection of the public. Jared Loughner and folks far less crazy than he, are NOT entrusted with the protection of the public. Very simply, there are folks who should, by the nature of their job, have a gun and those who should not.

This brings us to the concerns of hunters. Do hunters need a 9mm Glock? Wouldn’t a good old-fashioned rifle do the trick? And wouldn’t it have been a lot harder for Loughner to get that close to Ms. Giffords carrying a rifle than carrying a Glock? Surely we can limit the type of guns sold to average citizens such that they can enjoy “gun sports” and not be as great a danger to the general public.

Of course the other issue with the easy availability of guns is the difficulty of doing adequate background checks. Loughner obtained his gun legally. This despite the fact that he had been rejected by the army and suspended from community college for bizarre behavior AND had run-ins with the law. We Americans love our guns almost as much as we love our dogs, so heaven forbid a little more regulation keeps guns out of the hands of a Loughner because it might impact the cultural values of Billy Bob who wants to carry his gun wherever he damn well pleases.

Gabrielle Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, is an astronaut and her brother-in-law is one too. Scott Kelly made the following statement from the International Space Station this week:

We have a unique vantage point here aboard the International Space Station. As I look out the window, I see a very beautiful planet that seems very inviting and peaceful. Unfortunately, it is not.

These days, we are constantly reminded of the unspeakable acts of violence and damage we can inflict upon one another, not just with our actions, but also with our irresponsible words.

We’re better than this. We must do better.

via Astronaut Scott Kelly’s Tucson tribute from space.

Scott Kelly saw one world, seemingly without division and without conflict. A beautiful sphere where land yields to water and then back to land again, beneath a panorama of blue and white. For some reason, his comment reminded me of an old episode of Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone called “To Serve Man”. In that classic episode aliens from space come to Earth and offer us peace and advancement. As the episode ends we learn their motives are far more sinister. As I thought about Kelly’s observation, I decided Serling got it wrong. Any alien race that visited here would be shocked to find out how quickly the beauty seen from space transforms to the violent ugliness seen on the ground all over the world every day of the year. A large part of that ugliness involves how easy we make it for one man to kill another.

The fact is people kill people with guns. If we control the guns, we control the people who might misuse them. A nine-year old girl was killed on Saturday attending Ms. Giffords’ rally. You have to ask yourself, is a nine-year old’s life the price you’re willing to pay for your “2nd amendment rights”?

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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An Open Letter to Sarah Palin About Guilt by Association

Dear Mrs. Palin,

Since you have offered your condolences, it is safe to assume you already know that Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot today while holding an open air town hall of sorts in Tuscon, Arizona. This is the same Gabrielle Giffords whom you hoped would be defeated in the recent November elections. You expressed that wish by superimposing the crosshairs of a rifle scope over Giffords’ district on a US map on your web site. It’s a graphic that was quickly removed from your site in the immediate aftermath of her shooting.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, hosted a special edition of “Countdown” in which he urged you to repudiate your use of violent symbolism in the wake of this tragedy. I don’t expect you take his advice because it would imply you were somehow responsible for this tragedy. Let’s be honest. We don’t know yet if the shooter has ever even heard of you. We don’t know if he has ever visited your web site. In fact, from the little we seem to know, he is a typical run of the mill nutjob. We can’t even pin down his political affiliation because while he appears to be an Ayn Rand fan and has a strangely conservative fear of government, he also has the Communist Manifesto on his reading list. So truly Mrs. Palin, it is a stretch to say you even inspired this terrible act of violence.

So I will offer you an alternative bit of advice. By end of business, Monday, you need to line up every political advisor and public relations person currently in your employ who was working for you during the 2010 campaign season …

AND FIRE THEM.

They did you a disservice Mrs. Palin. Crosshairs are a symbol of violence, plain and simple. It boggles the mind that no one in your employ at the time vetoed that graphic. Now of course the graphic made quite a splash when it first hit the web. Liberals went bat-crap crazy when they saw it. Understandably, your advisors probably felt, who cares what liberals think? In fact, let’s go out of our way to piss them off. But they missed the obvious problem. What if some nutjob down the line tries to murder anyone on your metaphorical hit list? At that point, what was once just poor taste, will suddenly look like an explicit call to violence. Is that fair? Maybe not. But that is the way people think. Hell, that is the way you think. You warned America about a Presidential candidate who “paled around with terrorists”. You, more than anyone understand the potency of guilt by association.

Do you understand how police investigations work, Mrs. Palin? One of the first questions the police want answered is who has ever threatened the victim. When Bob is shot by Bill, the police ask witnesses “any reason to think Bill wanted Bob dead?” They might get the answer, “well Bill told Bob once, ‘I’m gonna kill you’ but he didn’t really mean it.” Did anyone want harm to come to Representative Giffords? Well, a former Vice Presidential candidate used a gunshot metaphor to advocate her defeat in an election, but she didn’t mean for anyone to actually shoot her.

Either because your advisors are phenomenally stupid or they are afraid of you, they allowed you to put yourself in association with an attempted murder. I don’t know if your conscience will trouble you tonight as Ms. Giffords fights for her life in a Tuscon ICU, but from at least a very practical, very political point of view, you should be steaming mad at the folks you hired to make you look good.

They failed you, Mrs. Palin. We didn’t understand until today just how badly they failed you.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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A Good Start for John Boehner, Really

The highlight of the second day of the 112th Congress was the reading of the Constitution, cover to cover, on the floor of the House of Representatives. Ehhhh, scratch that. It wasn’t read cover to cover. The naughty parts about blacks being 3/5ths of a man were left out. Apparently this spectacle was staged to satisfy the newly relevant Tea Party movement but one question we must ask is did anyone actually learn anything from the reading, things like the government’s prerogative to tax its citizens for example?

In a great interview Wednesday night on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann”, Yale Constitutional Professor Akhil Reed Amar gives a quick lesson on the Constitution and the intent of the framers, which lately gets regularly skewed by conservatives with wishful thinking and a strong tendency for revisionist history.

In the interview Amar reminds us that American revolutionaries were not right wing conservatives, but rather “liberal nationalists”.  The politics of liberalism is reflected repeatedly in the Constitution and the “let the States do everything” approach was abandoned with the demise of the Articles of Confederation. The amendments further the liberal agenda whether it is the amendments of Lincoln’s Republican administration, or the administrations of the 1920′s (women’s sufferage, income tax), or the 1960′s with the end of poll taxes.

Conservatives make a big deal about how any powers not “expressly” attributed to the federal government fall to the States. Amar pokes a hole in this balloon also. James Madison fought hard to make sure the word “expressly” did NOT appear in the tenth amendment because he understood that the Constitution needed to be a living breathing document that allowed for implied powers of the federal government.

But I digress. Why was today a good start for Speaker of the House John Boehner? Well, the good Speaker read the Preamble to the Constitution and then left the chamber with Eric Cantor in tow, to hold a news conference. That’s right, Boehner didn’t think this suck-up to the Tea Party was worth his time. As Jed Lewison of The Daily Kos points out, this put Fox News in a bit of a quandary. Cover the Constitution reading, or cover Boehner? They opted for Boehner.

The big question right now is was this a deliberate move on Boehner’s part to delegitimize this Tea Party stunt? If so, I say bravo! I’ve already gone on record to say the good old boys won’t let the Tea Party hijack their agenda. I just didn’t think we’d see it manifest this quickly.

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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Mourning in America

On New Year’s Eve, thousands of birds dropped dead mid-flight in Arkansas littering the streets. A similar mass fatality occurred in Louisiana. Scientists have struggled to explain what could have happened, guessing that perhaps the birds were scared by fireworks and went berserk flying into each other and trees and other objects. Everyone has missed the obvious explanation. The birds were liberals despondently anticipating today’s GOP takeover of the House of Representatives.

As Ohio Representative John Boehner accepted the Speaker’s gavel from Nancy Pelosi, the party of “no’ transformed into the party of “not anymore”. Affordable health care: not anymore. Financial regulation: not anymore. Anything even slightly progressive to move our country forward: not anymore. Now of course, the barrier between the House’s sworn intent to turn back the clock and reality is a Democrat controlled Senate and a Democrat in the White House. The “repeal” of the Affordable Care Act will be a symbolic exercise in scream therapy for the House but the Senate will never allow repeal. Even if enough crazy blue dogs team up with the GOP in the Senate, the President will veto the repeal and there won’t be enough votes to override the veto. This will be the first of many useless attempts at reactionary politics in the House. But the plot thickens even more.

One of my conservative readers commented the other day, “These new Republicans better not forget who put them in. We better get the budget we expect.” I had to laugh. It wasn’t one of my more optimistic days and I responded:

The GOP is going to disappoint you terribly. Here’s the deal.

The GOP of the Bush-era (the first six years) is the real GOP. You see there is no such thing as conservative fiscal policy anymore. We have a credit society … a debt driven society … a short-term satisfaction society. There are no grown ups anymore. This is not liberal; this is not conservative; this is a state of the current human condition.

A bunch of Tea Party folks will come into Congress on Wednesday and after a short honeymoon, the old-timers will tell the new guys to STFU and play the game the way it’s always been played: pork barrel spending and caving to lobbyists. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio will have their hands tied (assuming they were the real deal to begin with). John Boehner is old school. There will be no revolution under him and THAT my friends is what is needed right now. A legislative revolution on a par with what is going on in Great Britain.

Our fat spoiled society, underemployed by greedy bastard international conglomerates will go on just as they have for the past decade. The poor will stay poor, the middle class will become poor and the rich won’t know the difference and won’t give a damn. And all you suckers will identify with the have’s when you’re all a bunch of have-nots. You’ve said in the past that my allegiance to liberal politics will end me up in a trailer park in Gary, Indiana. Well my conservative friends, we’ll all be together one day in that trailer park where you can tell me face to face how effective your grand old party is.

Clearly I wasn’t having a particularly good day. But unfortunately, I was also speaking the truth. Just within the 2010 campaign we saw radical Tea Party politicians like Rand Paul start to step things back a bit when they went from the primary to the general election. Do we really believe that after years of the House ignoring Ron Paul’s call for military budget restraint that suddenly his son is going to be taken seriously in the Senate? Who are we fooling? Look at our new Speaker. He’s been around since 1991. Boehner is going to bring fresh ideas to Congress and clean up waste and corruption?

There is not a lot to be happy about today. What is the prescription for liberals? I think our best course is to look at the good things the GOP wants to do, like cut the deficit and control needless spending and then hold them to it. Let’s not be obstructionist about good ideas just because they come from the GOP. Remember, idiot Republican Congressmen voted against stuff they once supported once Obama also supported it. We don’t want to follow that example. In the area of spending cuts, let’s push for serious Department of Defense cuts. Let’s make the conservatives truly share in this sacrifice they say we all must share in.

On Twitter today, the snark about John Boehner was in full bloom. Keith Olbermann tonight is fuming particularly noxious exhaust. I say we jump from the anger stage of mourning and go straight to acceptance. Accept who is in charge in the House and hold them to their promises to the American people. Our anger and disappointment from last November will be vindicated in the utter failure of the good old boys to get anything useful done. When the Tea Party patriots of the new House get a lesson in reality, it will be our turn to say:

How’s that hopey changey thing workin’ for ya?

Respectfully,
Rutherford

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