29 June 2010 Can we replace all the Senators and get rid of Texas?

29 June 2010 Can we replace all the Senators and get rid of Texas?


The Kagan hearings are being televised. A well qualified woman, properly nominated by a sitting President is being subjected to un-necessary grilling before television cameras by U.S. Senators. She will be hammered with all manner of idiotic questions as Senators who belong to the GOP look for any small niche in her suitability. While her academic credentials are quite adequate, she has never sat on a judicial bench. The GOP is using this as a cudgel. But it should be discredited. Although every past justice has been a lawyer, 41 of the 109 justices had no prior judicial experience. So if it has been acceptable 44.69% of the time prior to today, it should be quickly shoved aside as irrelevant.

Even the Democratic Senators will shove their faces into the camera’s field of vision to make long rambling and not very useful statements to remind voters that they did their assigned job in the matter of selecting a new Supreme Court Justice.

Since Ms. Kagan is qualified for the job, was nominated by a Democratic POTUS, and since there are sufficient Democrats holding Senatorial seats to provide a majority of votes for Ms. Kagan; the whole process has bogged down into pointless attempts at character assassination, poking around for undisclosed personal flaws, and yet another effort by the GOP to shut down Obama’s attempts to carry out his office.

The Senate has also refused to authorize an extension in unemployment benefits for several million citizens who have no other source of income. But as is the historical precedent, the GOP will hire enough lobbyists, spread enough lies, and generate enough hatred and racism to convince their base that it was not their party which essentially sold the nation’s economic security to the banks and energy companies, creating the un-regulated mess that threw us into a depression and near meltdown. I fail to understand how anyone who can read their own name can believe anything published by the GOP, its lobbyists, and its candidates. They consistently convince the middle and lower classes to vote against their own economic interests and for those of the wealthy.

I would gladly vote against the Senators from Tennessee in a heartbeat, and will do so when their terms of service have been completed yet again.

Texas GOP Unveils Brand New, Far-Right Platform

http://washingtonindependent.com/88487/texas-gop-unveils-brand-new-far-right-platform

https://www.1888932-2946.ws/TexasGOP/E-ContentStrategy/userfiles/2010_RPT_PLATFORM.pdf

Texas is once more demonstrating why it should be handed back to Mexico. These links show how far Texas has not come since its entry into the Union. The GOP in Texas would be quite likely to vote for a theocracy led by Southern Baptists. It would offer no welcome to minorities of any sort. If Texas were to become able to implement their policies as laid out in these articles, Texas would become an area of political, religious, and ethnic intolerance – more so than it already is. It would soon be a North American mirror of Iran.



Fishing and politics

In 2005 I monitored two fly fishing groups. One began to deteriorate into a fishing/proselytizing site. I became less and less involved with it. The other began to undergo politicization while simultaneously suffering an age-gap problem. I found myself unhappy with the on-line behavior of the youngest participants and in an uncomfortable middle politically.

About summer 2006 several of the more conservative and older members found their selves to be at extreme odds with the youngest group and outnumbered by the more progressive faction. Several of them were banned from the group and their core began another group. At this point, I was tired of the behavior of the youngest group and when I was invited to join the new group, I did.

By 2008 the old group had ejected most of the youngest/problem participants and the degree of civility was mostly restored. At the same time, the new group was becoming more and more polarized to the extreme right of American politics. Since the 2008 election I have found myself to be uncomfortable with the political positions of the new group. I have found that a percentage of them exhibit behavior with tea party mob activism, with theocracy and proselytizing, and happily accept the worst practices of the GOP. Nearly all the few progressives initially invited to participate have left this group, claiming to feel unwelcome and not wishing to support the group any longer. While the group was initially formed to continue charitable actions, the behavior of the mid and core level participants no longer justifies membership for most of them.

Now the wheel has turned full circle. In the last week I have watched as two people were publically threatened with expulsion unless they tender a public apology over arguments that demonstrate the rising intolerance in the group. While I appreciate the irony of such public behavior, I’m saddened that friends I’ve fished and communicated with should act so much like tea party mobsters. It will not be long until I am unable to participate in this group any longer.



Dinner tonight will be Beef Stroganoff over egg noodles.