Irreconcilable Differences

No,my wife and I are not getting a divorce but it’s getting harder and harder to reconcile my differences with my Republican friends.

Yesterday, as I was watching the IRS hearings, my mind was swirling, as I was trying to make some sense of what a few conservative witnesses were saying. The Tea Party witnesses were obviously political activists and not entitled to tax-exempt status, but one used the word tyranny to describe her dealings with the IRS, even thou she was not denied.. Another said “This dialogue is about the jackboot of tyranny upon the field of our founding documents," said Karen Kenny from the San Fernando [Calif.] Valley Patriots. Really,would the founders have approved tax-exempt status for political activism or for  keeping a donor’s name a secret? I’m sorry ,I’m going to save my tears for the single mom, holding down a couple of minimum wage jobs being told that her public assistance is being cut due to sequester cuts.The IRS hearing is just political theater because if they were serious, something would be done about the abuses of the intent of code. The issue of targeting has already been addressed and stopped but the real scandal of tax-exempt status abuse will continue.

Republicans are throwing out a new slogans to describe their obstructionists  practices.Mitch McConnell is saying that President Obama is creating a “culture of intimidation” as an excuse to do nothing. Senator Grassley is saying that the president is trying to “stack the court” by filling the vacant D.C. Circuit court’s vacancies. The president has a constitutional duty to appoint nominees to those positions. Truth is,the GOP is trying to eliminate the three vacant spots to keep the president from filling that lower court’s vacancies  because they want to stop his agenda.

Conservatives think that just because they are holding hearings;it  means that the parties they are investigating are guilty of something that will be proven  at a later date. Right now, they are trying to find the facts to fit the charges. As I was  looking through the right-wing blogs this morning;I found their latest outrage. On site posted “ the nerve of the president appointing Susan Rice to be the National security Adviser when she was part of the Benghazi scandal.” You see what I’m talking about? Susan Rice should get an apology from those who accused he of any wrongdoing but it’s another case of “we indict, you prosecute.” 

The Republicans, media and some Democrats are trying to make out like Senator Marco Rubio is an immigration guru and that any chance of bill getting passed has to meet his approval.  That's a bunch of hogwash, the bottle neck continues to be the far- right wing of his party. Senator Rubio, has to take a lot of hard-right  stances just to keep his credibility intact  with those folks. 

A lot of people are getting tired of the race- card being used, but it’s not as easy to dismiss it as it may seem. An example of that is being discussed on our on-line forum. The example in the story doesn’t have a definable use of racism because not much context was given. For one thing,signing in English or Spanish amounts to the same thing,so the attorney in question should have said “don’t forget to sign the Spanish version” and nothing would have been said.  Freudian slips of the tongue happen all the time, and unless you live in a glass house; you shouldn’t be casting stones.

Having said that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that a certain percentage of remarks against the president are racists ones.  Those are two separate subjects because on the latter, I have a lot substantial facts to back up my suspicions.  After all, I'm an old timer, and I've grown up with generational racism, so I know it when I hear or see it.Too many Republicans in high state offices and even federal judges had to step down because of racist emails. I even heard a congressman yell out “you lie” at the State of the Union and have read about racists remarks made towards the first lady.  

We have to come together and condemn the actions of the two Jasper,Texas cops who beat a black woman's head against a desk in trying to subdue her. Yes,this is the same town where two white men chained a black man to their pickup and dragged him for miles which led to his eventual death.There's a video tape of the incident but no audio.  It doesn't matter what the lady said or how much she resisted arrest because this all stemmed from a $150 traffic ticket. The policemen were fired and the charges were dropped but the city of Jasper will pay dearly. It's incidents like these that keep the race card alive. 

There's a time and a place for everything and sometimes it takes a moment of spontaneous action to drive home a point. Yesterday,Michelle Obama faced-down a heckler by meeting her head-on and giving the crowd a choice of who to listen to. The crowd chose Michelle but the heckler was given her right to free speech. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity for Michelle but it will give the next heckler something to think about.


The country is changing fast, and a lot of old-timers are not adapting to it very well. After thirty years of Reaganism, they now see “don’t ask don’t tell” being repealed, a Massachusetts liberal as the secretary of state, a Republican turncoat heading up the defense department,  and a black president and a black Atty. General. I’m not being too hard on my old Republican friends because that’s exactly what the people inside the party are saying. That’s the reason some are talking about a tyrannical government and a need to be armed to the teeth. It used to be that they could take out their frustrations at the ballot box but that no longer is a given. I remember when I was a blogger at the VA, I could never get my opponent  to agree that we have a multicultural country. I think when we agree on that;the rest will fall in place.