Green Eagle

At least for a little longer.  When we last checked in on crazed Pennsylvania police chief Mark Kessler, he was suffering a humiliating failure of his Peace Officers' March On Washington, intended to force Barack Obama from office, where no one showed up.  Well, this week was the hearing on whether to fire this sorry excuse for a human being.  Didn't quite go according to plan: "A public hearing for suspended Gilberton, Pa. police Chief Mark Kessler, whose YouTube gun demonstration videos drew national attention, was cut short Thursday night when a man dropped a semi-automatic pistol on the floor, the Republican Herald reported." Another successful use of a firearm by a very well regulated militiaman.

So what is behind the Republicans' delusional claim that nothing bad will happen if they let the debt ceiling expire?  Here's what I suspect:  Their actual goal is to force President Obama, in order to prevent the nation from going into default, and to comply with the 14th amendment, to raid the Social Security trust fund to pay our current bills.  If they can keep it up long enough, they think they can bankrupt Social Security and destroy it through this underhanded tactic. As usual, to Republicans, everything is a chance to divert more of our wealth from ordinary people into the hands of the rich, and in the process, they have turned the really rich (who control our politics today) into insatiable, slavering monsters who must be fed more and more of what the middle class has left.

It is inevitable that, with the current undercurrent of violence which pervades the right these days, the idiotic claim that Obama is just like Hitler would be heard again.  Here's an example from Brenda Barton, a Republican legislator from Arizona a couple of days ago: "Someone is paying the National Park Service thugs overtime for their efforts to carry out the order of De Fuhrer... where are our Constitutional Sheriffs who can revoke the Park Service Rangers authority to arrest??? Do we have any Sheriffs with a pair?" Barton is of course now claiming that, in referring to Obama as "De Fuhrer (sic)" she never meant to compare him to Hitler.  Oh, of course not, Brenda- what would ever make us think that calling someone "De Fuhrer" could be construed as comparing them to Hitler?  Well, I am not going to go on with Brenda or the other right wing outbreaks of this malicious nonsense, but I am going to reprint here a very early post of mine, from ...

About any sort of compromise with the Republican party.  The Republicans are now engaged in an open attempt to destroy democratic government in this country, and replace it with the rule of force- i.e. a dictatorship. Every time I hear about a deal that allows Republicans to save face I want to scream.  These people are undermining our country, and the only appropriate response is to crush them without quarter and totally humiliate them.  This is the only way to stop them from ever using this strategy of extortion again.  If they get anything out of their tantrum, or even if they are allowed to emerge from this episode without suffering harm, we are dooming ourselves to repeat this ugly episode again and again. I doubt that Obama has the fortitude to do the right thing here.  Maybe we will have to wait for Hillary, who will put a stop to this behavior as fast as she can.

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned" - U.S. Constitution, Amendment 14

A very concisely put summation of where we find ourselves today, from reporter Robert Parry: " Now, in 2013, the Republican Right has doubled down on that strategy, merging a government shutdown with an impending credit default in an effort to extort more concessions from Obama and the Democrats. But the larger goal is to create a new constitutional structure in which the Right, regardless of its minority status, gets to dictate what the federal government can and cannot do. To make this strategy work, however, requires a readiness to play Samson and to pull down the temple on your enemies as well as yourself. That appears to be the extreme option that the Koch Brothers and their fellow right-wing billionaires have chosen. If they can’t rule America, they will reduce the country to economic rubble through a fiscal crisis and a premeditated financial collapse. Then, perhaps out of the rubble, a chastened American people will emerge to accept their subordinate position in th...

Michelle Bachmann: " ..., as I look at the End Times scripture, this says to me that the leaf is on the fig tree and we are to understand the signs of the times, which is your ministry, we are to understand where we are in God’s End Times history.” "Rather than seeing this as a negative, we need to rejoice, Maranatha Come Lord Jesus, His day is at hand.  When we see up is down and right is called wrong, when this is happening, we were told this; these days would be as the days of Noah.” And this woman sits on the House Intelligence Committee.  You could have no better example to prove the Republicans' intent to destroy the government's ability to function.