Tag Archives: Greene

Final Thoughts (Maybe) About the Republican “Performance” in the SOTU

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The New York Times published an interesting piece about the Republicans’ unprecedented outbursts during President Biden’s State of the Union address: Heckling of Biden Reflects a New, Coarser Normal for House G.O.P., https://nyti.ms/3Xq479c While it bore similarities to my own comments in The Barbarians Are Inside the Gate, it was a bit too abstract for my taste and replete with “both sides” implications, a now all-too-common trait of main stream media.

But what struck me most were the comments that gleefully recalled the moment when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up Trump’s speech following one of his SOU addresses to Congress. In essence, those comments claimed that the obscene heckling of President Biden was justified by Pelosi’s previous conduct. What’s good for the goose, and all that. Hypocrisy, they say. You can’t have it both ways, they say.

I confess I didn’t read all the 666 comments the Times allowed before closing comments (a curious number, I note in passing – assess as you will), but of those I did read, not one noted the obvious difference between Pelosi’s demonstration of hostility to the then pretend president and the yelling and disruption that occurred during Biden’s speech.

I refer to the obvious fact that when Pelosi tore up Trump’s speech, Trump’s speech was over. He was finished talking. Should Pelosi have waited until Trump departed or until she was in the hall outside or called a press conference later to show her contempt? Maybe. But there is a fundamental difference between her post-speech demonstration and the multiple interruptions and crass behavior during the speech by members of the Republican Party. Her action did not disrupt Trump’s remarks, no matter how distasteful they were to her. The Republicans, on the other hand, did everything they could to disrupt and disorient the President. And they failed.

My final (maybe) observation: the writers at the New York Times, Washington Post and other newspapers that still claim to some degree of objectivity in matters political should stop calling these Republican Party louts “conservatives.” There is nothing “conservative” about most of them. They don’t just want less government; they want no government.

Just two days ago, Ted Cruz, officially the U.S. Senator from Texas, tweeted: “Abolish the IRS.” https://bit.ly/3Ih6PtCCruz is not the only Republican to advocate that. You may also recall that many other leading Republicans have advocated abolishing the Department of Education and other federal agencies, including Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) introduced a bill in early 2021 with co-sponsors including (unsurprisingly) Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), to do that very thing.

To be clear, I for one believe the United States Tax Code is a monstrosity. One fine day, I plan to write about it in some detail. But the idea that we can in one swoop “simplify the Code” and then eliminate the IRS while still effectively collecting enough revenue to pay for the U.S. Miliary, among many other federal services that help assure this country’s safety and prosperity, is blatantly stupid.

The National Taxpayer Advocate did a Microsoft Word count of the tax statutes and implementing IRS regulations in 2012 and came up with roughly 4 million words. At roughly 450 words per page, that works out to around 9,000 pages. The National Taxpayer Advocate also noted that the tax code changed 4,680 times from 2001 to 2012, an average of once per day.  https://bit.ly/3DYxWa8

That was ten years ago. Most likely the Code is substantially larger today. Much of it is designed, by Republican and Democratic administrations alike, to foster or discourage various forms of economic and other behavior. Changing it to a simpler system whose focus is mainly, if not solely, to fund the government is highly desirable in my view but it’s not something that can be done overnight in a sudden “simplification.” Advocates for that approach are not “conservatives. They are either anarchists or … well, this is a family blog, so I won’t go further.

Suffice to say, the complexities of the Code and its pervasive influence on the conduct of American businesses is such as only a prolonged and careful reexamination has any chance of success. But the Code’s very complexity and influence has spawned entire industries of tax lawyers, tax-specialist accountants, software companies and tax preparers, all of whom have a vested interest in keeping the complexity. And then there are the giant corporations that benefit from manipulating their operations and accounting to pay less tax than the might in another system.

To return to the main point, the Republican Party has become the Party of Grievance. Their appeal to the good old days, when white people ran everything and most things were thought to be cheaper and readily available at all times, those days are gone. Permanently. The Republican Party is the Party of the Past, a past that never really was and that was unsustainable. You may be able to turn back the clock, but you cannot undo time. It moves forward whether your clock, or your mind, keeps up or not. To believe in the past that the Republican Party is selling is to believe in a mirage, a false idol that leads you to your destruction.

The Republicans can yell and scream until the dogs come home. They have nothing constructive to offer the American people or the country. Joe Biden was too gracious, too composed and, in boxing them in on Medicare and Social Security, too clever for the screamers. They won’t learn anything from it. They’re out there every day justifying what they did because Nancy Pelosi hurt their feelings. Grievance and more grievance – the Republican Party’s true platform.

The Barbarians Are Inside the Gate

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The reference is, of course, a play on the title of a famous book and movie about the battle to get control of RJR Nabisco in the late 1980s. Wikipedia tells the story well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RJR_Nabisco  The subtitle of this post is: “When They Tell/Show You What They Are, Believe Them.”

The original thought for this post began with the revelation that the Republicans, newly in the House majority, had disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, reported everywhere at the end of January. But it goes way beyond that.

I refer now to the disgraceful desecration of the Capitol by Republicans during the State of the Union address by President Biden on February 7. Picking up where one of their number yelled “you lie!” at President Obama during a 2009 address to the Congress on health care reform, the Republicans as a group and individually heckled and shouted at President Biden multiple times during his speech. It reminded me of the chaos we sometimes see in foreign legislatures where yelling and disruption are commonplace, where physical violence occurs between disputatious parties. But not here. Not here.

Obviously, no rational person expects the Republicans to agree with much of what Biden proposes. But the State of the Union address is not a place for street rabble to shout down the President. Historically, the displeasure of the party out of power has been adequately demonstrated by their silence when the rest of the Congress applauds usually while standing. It’s a strange ritual, to be sure, but it’s been going on for a long time and everyone understands what the play is.

Until now. The gang of Republican traitors and criminals who helped orchestrate the January 6 attack on the Capitol to try to overturn the 2020 election have turned the State of the Union evening into a circus-like affair. They show no respect for the office of the President, no respect for the sitting President, no respect for each other, and no respect for the American people.

To be clear, this isn’t just about bad manners. This same group is composed of QAnon believers (Marjorie Taylor Greene who shouted “liar” at the President), proponents of automatic weapons everywhere (Lauren Boebert), people whose moral compass has led them repeatedly to deny the reality of what happened on January 6, 2021, and who was responsible (see this video for the reality they continue to deny: https://nyti.ms/3HM77XH). They are the real election thieves, the book burners, the science deniers.

They are led by Donald Trump whose brazen disregard of the law and mores of American society and politics have led him to commit multiple crimes the complete listing of which would fill many pages. He and his sycophantic followers continue to deny the truth about the 2020 election. It was Trump who called the Secretary of State in Georgia to demand that he “find” just enough votes to overturn the will of the people of Georgia. Everyone has heard the tape by now. It was Trump who tried to extort the president of Ukraine to launch an investigation of his political opponent. Everyone has read the “transcript” by now.

And yet, and yet, Trump continues to walk free, to continue his false narrative, to continue stealing from his supporters, to continue as the most dishonest, corrupt political leader in modern American times and perhaps at any time in American history. The boorish display by Republicans at the State of the Union is just a symptom of a much greater and more important danger. Democracy itself is on the line.

And yet, and yet, many Republican commentators continue to raise the specter that if Trump is held accountable for his crimes, there will be civil war, or the door will be opened to retribution by the succeeding administrations intent on punishing their predecessors. If that is true, the idea of America as the Founding Fathers envisioned it is indeed already dead.

It doesn’t have to be that way. But those in charge of the many “investigations” must act and act soon and aggressively to change the course, the curse, of events. The evidence of Trump’s crimes is both overwhelming and widely known. His so-called defenses – mainly the ludicrous “lack of intent” claim – are preposterous but whether they are or not is beside the point. If it is true that “no man is above the law,” if it is true that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, then the salvation of American democracy demands that Trump be prosecuted for all his crimes in every legal regime where jurisdiction exists. He can make his defenses there where the rules of law and evidence govern.

I have no better idea what is going on, or not going on, at the Department of Justice and the Special Counsel’s office than anyone outside the inner sanctums there, but time is running out. The government must act, or it will be destroyed by the fascist proponents of winning at all costs, the believers in “alternative facts” when the truth denies their self-serving goals. Those people have made clear (just look at Kari Lake’s post-election conduct in Arizona and Ron DeSantis’ abuses of government power in Florida), they will stop at nothing to get what they want. The system that made America one of the most important countries in the world is on the line. It’s past time to call the question.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Does Not Believe in Evolution

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You may think the title of this short post is click-bait, but I assure you I saw the video with my own eyes and ears just a few minutes ago. You can see for yourself at https://www.rawstory.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-evolution/

A Member of Congress, an up and coming standard bearer of the Trumpublican Party, formerly the Republican Party, does not believe in what she calls the “so-called science” of evolution.

There is nothing left to say.

 

Democrats, Time to Call the Question on MTGCuckoo

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Media reports, https://wapo.st/3blQSS0, for example, indicate that Marjorie Three Names, real name Marjorie Taylor Greene, known to me as MTGCuckoo, has once again violated House rules and norms of behavior by openly confronting Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez outside the House chamber, screaming at her and calling her names. WAPO reports that this led “the New York congresswoman’s office to call on leadership to ensure that Congress remains “a safe, civil place for all Members and staff.”

Indeed. It can be frustrating at times to observe the extreme formalities used by Members of Congress in addressing each other during hearings and debates, but those formalities serve a vital purpose. They are a device for keeping the focus on the issues being discussed and to reduce the flaring of tempers and personal recrimination that serious disagreements about serious matters can inspire. By and large they work.

Or at least they worked until the arrival of Donald Trump on the American political scene. Trump consistently behaved like the trashy human being he consistently proved to be. He labeled his political adversaries in his own party with offensive nicknames, made derogatory remarks about their physical appearance and their families, mocked a disabled reporter and on and on and on. His Republican competitors vehemently objected to Trump’s schoolyard behavior until he won the presidency. Then, like the miracle that was supposed to end the COVID crisis at its inception, they bent the knee to him, seeking jobs, swearing fealty to him personally and adopting his constant lies as “alternative facts.”

Trump inspired a new wave of Republican leaders who have adopted his tactics, among them is MTGCuckoo, a QAnon conspiracist among her other charming propensities. She cares nothing for tradition, standards of personal respect or any other norm of civilized conduct, just like her idol, Trump. With the support of 11 Republicans, she was stripped of her committee assignments in February because her extremist remarks that included

questioning whether deadly school shootings had been staged and whether a plane really hit the Pentagon on 9/11.  A supporter of the fantastical QAnon conspiracy theory, she also shared videos with anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment, and expressed support for violence against Democratic leaders in Congress.  [https://cbsn.ws/3yazBF6] ….

Greene has made a number of incendiary and false statements in recent years, among them that Black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party,” that Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — the first two Muslim women elected to Congress — represented “an Islamic invasion into our government offices,” and that Jewish megadonor George Soros collaborated with Nazis.

She had previously harassed David Hogg, one of the teenage survivors of the Parkland school shooting, on the Capitol grounds and, reportedly, another member of Congress in a hallway dispute over Greene’s refusal to wear a mask.

This obnoxious and dangerous behavior has not harmed Greene’s appeal with the Trump base. She continues to collect large donations from them. In typical fashion, Republican House leadership has done nothing meaningful to rein in Greene’s manic conduct.

This is on the Democratic leadership. MTGCuckoo is violating every rule  and norm of behavior for a Member of Congress. She craves attention and will do almost anything to get more of it. One of these days someone is going to get hurt because of her low class schoolyard behavior. It may be her or someone else, but Democrats control the House and should put a stop to this immediately before it gets further out of hand. Many of the Trump sycophants look to people like MTGCuckoo for guidance regarding their own behavior. She doesn’t care a bit if she inspires some craven Trumper to act out their violent fantasies on a Member of Congress or someone else.

Closing Note: no doubt someone will decide to chastise me for hypocritically name-calling Greene in the fashion that I am criticizing her. Guilty as charged. Now they don’t have to bother. Greene has earned the nickname I gave her on Twitter, and I’ll continue to use it as long as she behaves like a tantrum-throwing child who makes statements that are, by any standard, beyond the realm of rational behavior. She belongs in rehab, not in Congress. My choice of nickname relates to her behavior, not to her appearance or her family. Apologies, however, to cuckoos.