Today is Saturday, October 19, 2013.

I’ve been reading and listening to all the aftermath from the October 17th vote to open the government and raise the debt ceiling, and on the surface, it seems pretty clear that the conservatives in the GOP miscalculated when they tried to use the A.C.A. as the bargaining chip for funding the government or paying our debts. It seems that, even if a simple majority of Americans doesn’t like or trust the A.C.A., according to the polls a massive 75% saw no reason to shut down the government and resist paying our debts, in order to make a conservative point about it. I think this plays well for the moderate Republicans as we go forward, and the conservatives will have to figure something else out, if they want to stay relevant.

A few of these conservatives are moving in a direction of a third party–a split int the GOP that would create a new conservative party and leave the GOP to the moderates. The philosophical divide is pretty clear in the party, so it seems rational to forecast a potentially permanent split. However, there’s a danger afoot here. There’s another scenario possible, which I find disturbing. Here’s a quote from Matte Kibbe, the CEO of FreedomWorks, a so-called ‘grassroots’ organization to promote conservative causes and help finance conservative candidates.

“Grassroots activists have an ability to self-organize, to fund candidates that they’re more interested in, going right around the Republican National Committee and the Senatorial Committee,” he added. “That’s the new reality. Everything’s more democratized and Republicans should come to terms with that. They still want to control things from the top down, and if they do that there will absolutely be a split,” Kibbe warned. “But my prediction would be that we take over the Republican Party, and they go the way of the Whigs.” (CSPAN interview, October 18, 2013)

OK, I get what he’s saying, but there’s something unnerving about the quote. FreedomWorks isn’t really a ‘grassroots’ political organization. It’s funded and backed by very big money. I found this information about this and other so-called ‘grassroots’ conservative organizations.

“Taken together, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks (another far-right political group seeded by the Kochs) and Murdoch’s News Corp, owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal , form the corporate headquarters of a conglomerate one might call Tea Party, Inc. This is the syndicate that funds the organizing, crafts the messages, and channels the rage of conservative Americans…” (Adele Stan, AltNet, 10/24/10)

According to Joan McCarter of the Daily Kos, the origins of this alternate conservative wave in the GOP allegedly go back to the early 80s with the tobacco industry funding potential 3rd party conservative movements. As early as 2002, the Kochs and tobacco-related CSE were conspiring to create a national organization akin to what we now call the Tea Party. With the 2009 spontaneous ‘uprising’ against the bailout, these billionaire power brokers saw their chance and stepped in to push for and fund the ground swell of reaction to ‘bailout economics’ as well as to support any potential political candidates that they could find, (e.g. Ted Cruz).

So, Matt Kibbe is actually talking about ‘Tea Party, Inc’ as a syndicate taking over the GOP and forcing the moderates out. I’m not usually a paranoid person and I never fall victim to conspiracy theories, but this situation makes me very nervous and should be a concern to all. He’s letting us know what their plans are for the future of the GOP. This isn’t ‘grassroots’ at all, no matter how they would want everyone to believe that. Their funding sources are too rich to believe what’s happening is truly ‘grassroots.’ These arch-conservative billionaires and their syndicate can’t buy as much of the moderate GOP patronage as they thought, so now they’re apparently planning to destroy the party and take out the moderates from the political equation. We simply can’t allow them to do that. Their tactics and strategies are undemocratic and their vision for this country is so 19th century, it’s more than frightening. I’m not saying yet that they are fascists, but there’s a strong resemblance in their attitudes, political aggressiveness, and in their laissez faire economics bundled with governmental and military functions, and frighteningly conservative social agenda.

If the GOP falters in the 2014 mid-term elections, you will see Tea Party, Inc suddenly with a great deal of money to throw around for the 2016 elections. And if they can take over the GOP in the next two years, and send the moderates ‘the way of the Whigs’, as Kibbe says, we will see the country divided and polarized to a degree not seen since the Civil War. The Democrats and the GOP moderates need to protect the government and the American people from this ‘Tea Party, Inc.’  They have to put a firewall around them and keep them contained until we can find a way to make THEM go the way of the Whigs.

Today is Thursday, October 17, 2013.  So it looks like my Social Security check will arrive after all and my husband heads back to work this morning at the Veteran’s Administration. We have three months to breathe before things heat up again threatening to shut down the government and default on the debt. These extreme conservatives who have driven this sixteen day exercise in futility need a history lesson, I think. I’ve been thinking seriously about the conservative claims that America is on the brink of collapse; American influence is on the decline; the American way of life is being replaced by some socialist hell led by the devil himself, President Obama, whom they ironically and stupidly often characterize as a kind of Black Hitler. (So, tea partiers, is President Obama a socialist or a Nazi? He can’t be both!) And to let all this happen will lead to the end of capitalism and democracy in America as we know it.

In any case, I was born in 1950 and have watched this country in the post-war period, experiencing  on some level the administrations of Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush1, Clinton, Bush2 and now Obama. I’ve experienced the polarization over Vietnam, the corruption of Nixon, the politically ineffective but heartfelt idealism of Carter, Reagan’s questionaable trickle down economics and deregulation, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Communist Bloc, Bush1’s amazing international coalition in Gulf War One, the Clinton boom years and US intervention in Yugoslavia, 9/11 and the Iraq/Afghan wars…and no matter how much we as Americans disagreed with this that or the other policy, we always took the middle path to tolerance if not acceptance of differing political points of view. The Democrats learned their lesson about extremism in the ’72 election and it took a while to reconfigure their political objectives and platform and have relevance again nationally, but in the end the pendulum swings in our politics have always led to consensus and great strides forward in American political, social and economic life.

My point is this: In the last 60 years, in spite of our domestic political disagreements, this country has produced the largest and most successful middle class in the history of civilization. We have created the most politically stable, militarily powerful, economically vibrant, culturally creative, globally influential country in history. We have most of the best universities in the world and our music and film industries have global reach. We are envied, admired, hated, and loved for all of the above reasons. And we did all this with a sense of humility, moderation and compromise.

Now, however, we have no civility, humility, moderation or compromise. Our extremist conservatives have this apocalyptic belief that America is on the brink of collapse and they are desperately trying to avert the Great Disaster. This is ostensibly due to our spending-to-debt ratio and the A.C.A., combined with social/cultural developments like gay rights/marriage equality/gays in the military; increasing non-white, non-Christian, non-European electorates; their inability to change abortion laws, and then there’s a non-white man in the White House with a ‘Muslim’ name.  So, they use procedural tools in Congress to block the democratic process in order to force their intolerant and extremist views on everyone.

This modern form of conservatism has been on the fringes of American political life ever since I was a kid–well, they became fringe once they had been marginalized after McCarthy was censored and discredited in 1956-57. But I can remember them as the John Birch Society or, in the 60s-70s, Lyndon LaRouche and his followers. There’s also a distant element of Libertarianism in this new conservatism with ideological roots going back to Ayn Rand. You know this just by the presence of Ron and Rand Paul in the GOP, although any real Libertarian philosophy is very minimally present in the tea party ideology. Yet, today, this form of political extremism is dominating the GOP. Without a doubt, debt and spending are problems we have to solve, so from a fiscal and economic point of view, I have some sympathy for that tea party issue. Beyond that, these extremists seem to me to be nearly anarchistic in their hatred of government, and their social positions are so primitive it seems their calendars still say 1313 and not 2013.

If you listened to Ted Cruz after last night’s vote ending the shutdown, he still raged on about how the A.C.A. will bring us to the apocalyptic brink of disaster, as if he were some modern St. John giving a new exegesis of Revelation. This silver-tongued demagogue knows how to turn a phrase and speak with conviction and that’s what makes him so dangerous. He has this religious sense of the coming American Apocalypse, he sees signs of it everywhere and he’s smart and articulate enough to convince millions who aren’t thinking critically about his words.  We’ve seen his kind in American politics before– McCarthy and Huey Long come to mind. It never ends well for these people if history is any guide!

What is disheartening to me is the fact that Ted Cruz and his tea party cohorts are politically safe in their own districts in their home states. The gerrymandering in the last round of redistricting in the South, particularly, has created very polarized local politics without much chance of finding middle ground on anything or defeating tea party candidates. So, I expect that we will continue to have to fight against the politics of the American Apocalypse into the next couple election cycles. The GOP needs to look at this problem very carefully. They need to find a way to neutralize the tea party within their ranks or risk irrelevance in the near future. As it is now, they have no ability for long term planning or problem-solving–after all there hasn’t been a budget since 2009. This is the PRIMARY job of the House of Representatives, so it’s pretty clear these elected officials are ineffective in doing the job they were elected to do. Since the 2010 mid-term elections and then the 2012 national elections, the wave of recalcitrant tea party lawmakers has made doing the business of government very difficult. In their zeal to stop their believed collapse of America, they have successfully created fear in the hearts of business and foreign governments over the ability of the U.S. to continue to lead the world. The tea party strategy could, in one grand Irony, cause the decline of American influence in the world, if we can’t control them.

Today is Wednesday, October 16, 2013. Cruising the internet and youtube for interesting points of view on any topic, I came across these two pieces of information, one from Kuwait the other from Russia. I’ll provide the links so you can watch them as well. But, this is the issue:  as we in North and South America and Europe culturally move towards accepting and honoring gay people and their relationships, welcoming them as full citizens with all the rights and benefits of citizenship, places like the Middle East (other than Israel), Russia and many places in Africa are rejecting and attacking gay people.  Kuwait has just this last week announced that it will now conduct ‘homosexual’ screening of ex-patriots, who are returning to the Gulf States. They have not said yet how this ‘screening’ will work, or what methods will be used, but they are trying to bar all homosexuals from being admitted to any of the GCC, where in all member countries, homosexuality is a crime and punishment can include execution.   Here’s the news link for this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJxiAIUwTrI

The other related story comes out of Russia, where it has been announced that research is being conducted to create a medicine that will ‘revert homosexuals to heterosexuals.’  There is a political problem, apparently, as ‘gay politicians’ are fighting against legitimizing the research and the use of any such medicine. And once again, the Russian spokesperson reiterated the position that all of this is to protect young boys from being recruited into a homosexual lifestyle.  The Russian perspective on homosexuality apparently hasn’t changed since the turn of the 20th century!  They apparently haven’t read or studied the research in human sexuality that has been conducted in the West since the 1940s that rejects the notion that homosexuality is a choice on the one hand, or on the other, a neo-Freudian problem of ‘latency’ that only requires a little recruitment and propaganda to turn young boys ‘to the dark side.’  The Russians claim they are not ‘anti-gay’–same sex behavior is not illegal–you just can’t discuss homosexuality or display any signs, symbols or positive views of homosexuality in public. In other words, they have a legal requirement that all gay people stay locked ‘in the closet’ and the State has the key. And as long as they are held psychologically and physically captive in that legal closet, the State now wants to administer ‘medicine’ to ‘heal’ them. This is unbelievable!   Here’s the link with the interview:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybEsJNDvG_E

I’d really like to read some of your reactions to these two news items!

Today is Saturday, October 12, 2013. We’re still in the middle of the shutdown with the House Republicans still trying to exercise their waning power over the situation. The polls are showing the devastating effect their political war against America has had on their approval and popularity. They are making a last ditch effort to undo the ACA, which they hate not because it’s flawed after being chewed up by the political process, but rather just because it equalizes marginalized people by removing the insurance industry’s ‘risk assessment’ in assigning coverage. This includes victims of HIV/AIDS, women’s family planning and birth control, and anyone with a pre-existing condition that would otherwise deny them coverage. And then there’s the ideological issue of ‘redistribution of wealth’. They chafe at the idea that there are subsidies, in order to get those who otherwise can’t get insurance, to enroll. They claim young men will pay more than anyone else and it’s their forced enrollment that subsidizes the older generation’s medical coverage.  The argument over these issues ultimately led to the shutdown and the potential default on US debt.

This is what bothers me:  The GOP has lost the last two elections for the Presidency. They’ve lost the last three senate elections. They did win the House in 2012, primarily because of gerrymandering the redistricting in conservative states, and they believe that gives them a mandate to end the ACA. They’ve offered over 40 bills to end the ACA and all of them failed the process because of lack of support. The tea partiers in the House, led by Ted Cruz, decided to shut the process down over the budget negotiations. They realized they could just ‘say no’ and the whole system would come to a screeching halt. The government would just shut down and stay inoperative until they forced Congress and the President to end the ACA. They believed they could do it and get away with it.

I just can’t get over the idea that they believed the Democrats would simply give up on universal health care coverage, a political goal since the mid 1930s, and after it was finally passed in both Houses, signed by the President, and approved by the Supreme Court, just let the tea party walk in and defund it. The tea party is delusional.

It strikes me that their behavior is an echo of the Old South in 1860-1861 when, rather than end their slavery and plantation system, Southerners opted to destroy the Union and create the ill-fated C.S.A. This sort of all-or-nothing mentality, this rigid ideological posturing, is the underlying principle in this current crisis as well and can’t be tolerated by the vast majority of reasonable, more flexible Americans.

Part of this rigid ideology is the tea party social agenda, which I’ve written about in an earlier blog. But last week a research project on the three political factions of the GOP, 1. tea party 2. evangelicals  3. traditional Republicans, revealed what I have suspected all along. Namely, there is a racial and gender paranoia within the GOP. There is an irrational feeling that white, straight, Christian men in the GOP feel uncomfortable in a world where women are not under their control, where Blacks, Hispanics and Asians constitute a majority, and gay people are out, visible, and have equal rights. The country they thought they knew and think they remember doesn’t exist anymore. A Black man with a ‘Muslim’ name is president. It’s complete anathema to them. As a friend recently said, the GOP is boldly going into a future they think they remember, and which never existed.

I think the GOP has miscalculated, mistaken and misunderstood the American people. It’s time they give up their illusions about America and their delusional notion that they can bend the will of the country in their direction through political extortion rather than a civil, political process.

Check out this research project: http://www.democracycorps.com/attachments/article/954/dcor%20rpp%20fg%20memo%20100313%20final.pdf

Friday, October 11, 2013 is National Coming Out Day. The impetus for this is to help the public realize that gay people are an important part of their daily lives, whether in the family, at work, at play, in the community or even in church. It is very clear to everyone that the more visible gay people are, the less likely homophobia will raise its ugly head. For those of us who have come out and live openly and authentically, the day also affirms our dignity.

So, I will share my coming out story and, if anyone reading this also has a story to tell in order to celebrate the day and honor our lives, please contribute as well.

I probably started my coming out in 1957 at the age of seven when I kissed a boy named Chuck at the local park. He just looked at me funny, but didn’t say anything and we continued playing. Apparently, no big deal! I developed a crush on a boy in my 5th grade class in Riverton WY in 1960. I didn’t really know how to hide it, but no one seemed to notice how I felt; everyone just considered us friends. We moved that summer to Halliday, North Dakota and, once again, I developed a crush on a neighbor boy, Merrill. And again, no one picked up on it; we were just considered friends. Well, I have no idea if these boys had any romantic feelings for me, but by the age of ten, I had figured out that I needed ‘to hide the light’ and not let the other kids or the adults become aware of my affection for him. The subtle ‘message’ about this was loud and clear. The only person who had a clue about my feelings was my Dad and, in retrospect, I realize he dropped hints that I should cool it.

By the age of fourteen, it was becoming pretty obvious that I was gay and my Dad had ‘the talk’ with me around midnight on a school night. He woke me up and made it clear we needed to talk.  He first asked me if I had a girlfriend, which, of course, my thought was, oh no, he wants to have ‘the talk’ about the birds and the bees! I told him that it was midnight, I already knew about the facts of life, I had to get some sleep for school in the morning, and, no, I didn’t have a girlfriend. Dad said this was more important than school and followed up with the question, “Well, do you have a boyfriend then?” I nearly fell out of bed.  I told him that I was only fourteen and I wasn’t ready for girlfriends or boyfriends. So, no, No boyfriend. Dad looked at me and said, and I’ll never forget these words, “You know, you will have a boyfriend one day. Do you know what a homosexual is?”  I did know, and told him, yes, I knew. He then continued, “You know, that’s who you are, right? I think you are a homosexual and if you ever have a problem adjusting to that, please come to me and we’ll find you some help with it.” This was 1964. My father may have had a lot of faults, but when it came to me and my sexuality, he understood and was clearly supportive.

I was in total shock, though. My Dad thought I was gay! I really didn’t consciously know yet that I was gay. I carried Dad’s words with me through high school and simply avoided most social interaction that would lead to dating, sex, and all that. I did, as a senior, find a friend who was a girl, Kari, and we ‘dated’ through the year, but I actually was more attracted to her dad. He sometimes took me sailing with him on Puget Sound and I really enjoyed his company. He taught me how to tie knots, unfurl the sails and other little jobs on the boat. Being with him and feeling what I did when we were sailing together made me realize my Dad was right. But I had no idea what to do with that realization. It was 1968 and society was coping with its racism and the problems that resulted from political assassinations and the Vietnam War. Gay people were simply not yet on the radar.

I ended up in the military between 1968 and 1972 and I started a gradual ‘coming out’ with my friends in the army. They all talked about it behind my back anyway and of course that got back to me. I never really confirmed or denied any of the rumors, but my closest friends and apartment mates, Steve Marshall, Dave Fair, and Eddie Lind got the idea and often teased me about it, but in a nice way. They would point at guys and ask if they were ‘my type’. I did go out with one guy for a couple months while stationed near D.C. my last year of service. He had a car and I didn’t, so he would come over to pick me up to go out to dinner and a movie. Whenever he was at the front door, Steve would always yell down the hall, “Hey, Gary, your date’s here!”

I did fall in love with a couple guys–one in Vietnam and one in D.C. when I was stationed there. But I never acted on that and never revealed my true feelings for them, because they were my friends. The guy in Vietnam figured things out, though, and we had a short discussion about it. He told me he knew what was going on with me and that it was not a problem for him, but he was only going to be a friend and nothing more. I told him that was fine; I didn’t expect anything else. It was said and done and we stayed close friends until he went back to the States. I never saw him again after that.

After the military, I went to college and I lived communally in a house initially with three others. Melanie, Valli and Dan. I told Dan at one point that I thought I was gay and he just looked at me with that ‘so what’ expression. I just shrugged my shoulders and told him I just wanted to let him know. At one point, I left my personal journal in the living room and Valli read it. It led to comments about me being gay. I was angry about it, not because they thought I was gay, but because my friends had opened and read my journal. We all got over it and it never really damaged our friendship. During my time at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, I really did think I could do it all and have it all. It was 1972 and the possibilities seemed endless. I fell in love with one of the men in our circle of friends, Gary F., although people didn’t get that and thought I was following him around because I was interested in his girlfriend, Melanie. They ended up getting married. Here I was trying to be obvious and it was misinterpreted. I lost direct contact with Gary F. over the years, but reconnected with him 30 years later. I admitted to him how I felt about him back then, and thereafter, we stayed in contact. He sent me poetry, letters and cards until he died in June of 2010.

But, in 1972, because I thought I could have it all, I also got together with my best female friend, Enid. I wasn’t really hiding in the closet as much as I wanted to experience as much of life as I could. In the end, I did fall in love with her, too, and I thought, OK, I really like this woman and I wanted to be a father, so why not? So, yeah, maybe not smart–I thought I was in love with two different people, one a man the other a woman, both in my larger circle of friends. And since Gary F. was obviously straight, I was left together with Enid, which was for me perfectly acceptable at the time. She is an amazing woman and I still care deeply for her and she is the mother of my two children. She is still one of my favorite people in life. My Dad was furious with me when I introduced her to the family and even more so when I told him we were going to get married. His response was, and I quote, “You’re going to ruin that woman’s life and you know why!”

We got married in 1974, had two kids by 1977, and by 1978 our relationship was drastically transforming and, because of her own personal issues, she opened the door for me eventually to move on.  Our marriage was really over already in 1979, but I still wasn’t ready to leave, and she asked if we could stay together for the time being. Finally, in 1983 I informed her that I was going to start dating men, and introduced her to my first real boyfriend, Rohm.  It happened like this: I had been away studying  in Portland for a summer quarter, where I met Rohm. I called her and told her we needed to talk so I went home for the weekend. I told her that I had met someone. She looked at me and smiled and asked, “Are you having an affair?” I had to say, yes. She asked me then what her name was, and I had to say, “His name is Rohm.” She started giggling and said, “So Gary’s human after all!” Pretty amazing woman. But there’s something behind that comment:  I really did have this uber-responsible sensibility and was pretty judgmental about people who didn’t live up to their personal responsibilities, especially regarding family. I suppose I had that attitude because of my rather irresponsible father. So, for me to step outside of my family and start a relationship with someone else–especially with a man–seemed a bit out of character.

It took another three years for the kids to grow up enough and for me to tie up all the loose ends to leave and start my life anew, which I did in 1986. I don’t exactly remember when I came out to my own family. I believe, I told my younger brother, Lyman, first sometime in the mid-80s. After I had left the house, my Dad called Enid and asked her if the reason for our divorce was that I was gay. (He had known that all along…)  She told him to discuss it with me. Well, there was no need. In the end, coming out for me was such a long life experience lasting from my teen years until I was 33, that I can’t pinpoint one watershed moment that I could say ‘that’s the moment when I stepped out of the closet.’ If there was such a moment, it was probably when I announced to my wife that I had a boyfriend. But even then, that wasn’t some great crescendo or climax in my life.

Coming out is a constant process. There are always people who have to be told. I was a high school teacher for 35 years and had to ‘come out’ every year with each new group of students. I never had a problem with students reacting badly. They were always understanding, caring and accepting. And if someone wasn’t, I never heard. Coming out is something I often have to do in the most mundane circumstances. Just today I went to the eye doctor and she asked me about my insurance. I said that I was now on my spouse’s policy. She then asked, ‘Where does your wife work?’  I had to say, “My husband works for the V.A.” She immediately apologized and then continued the examination.

I’m now married and living a wonderful retired life with my husband. We met more than seventeen years ago on August 4, 1996 in Lincoln, Nebraska and we’ve been together ever since. We were legally married in Vancouver, Washington on May 4, 2013.

So, that is my story! Now, what’s yours?

Today is Tuesday, October 8, 2013. I waited until the President gave his press conference on the shutdown and Boehner’s reaction to it before I wrote my thoughts for the day. I was disappointed in John Boehner’s response. He gave exactly the same Republican talking points that he rolled out over the weekend:  1) The House proposed 4 Bills to fund the government that included ‘fairness for the American people’ when it comes to the ACA, all of which were rejected by the Senate.  2) The Senate refused to negotiate. 3) President Obama never got involved other than to support the Senate decisions.  4) The President has refused to negotiate and come to him to have the ‘conversation’ about the problem. As President, he should be talking to all the congressional leaders to help jump start the process.  In addition, this time he added his view that the President wants the Republicans to ‘surrender unconditionally’ before he will sit down to have the ‘conversation’ Boehner keeps wanting.

What Boehner didn’t say, and hasn’t yet said in public, is that the ‘refusal to negotiate’ is only about the defunding of the ACA. Every Republican proposal has included defunding the ACA, which was passed by Congress, signed by the President, approved by the Supreme Court, survived 42 tea party efforts to stop it, and began on October 1st this last week. It is absolutely true that any House budget proposal that didn’t defund the ACA would be passed immediately.  Boehner is saying without putting it into words that the government will stay shut down and the debt ceiling will not be raised unless the Republicans are allowed to defund the ACA, which will not happen. He is trying to say it’s Obama’s fault that the government shut down and that the debt ceiling will not be raised, forcing the U.S. to default on its debt. I just don’t see it that way. I see clearly that it’s Boehner’s fault. He could put a bill on the table without defunding the ACA–a ‘clean resolution’–and we would have the budget we need and there would be negotiations on the debt ceiling. He refuses to do that, because he won’t stand up to the tea party radicals who want the ACA to disappear.  This Republican strategy is Ted Cruz’s idea and it’s cynical, destructive, and infantile.

These tea party people could care less about the national and international economic impact should the debt ceiling not be raised. They apparently don’t care at all about the government shut down or anything else, but defunding Obamacare.  In my opinion, the government needs to be up and running yesterday and we dare not default on our debt. They are willing to risk serious long-lasting social, political and economic repercussions, because they hate the ACA. It’s madness.

Today is Sunday, October 6, 2013. I am sitting here this morning thinking about the how polarized the world is–especially over what is in the final analysis an irrational reaction to ‘human rights’. We know how polarized America is–the politics of this last week has made that abundantly clear. The near anarchistic anti-government movement within the GOP is dividing the party because of the ACA and universal health insurance, and perhaps destroying the chances for the Republicans to regain the White House in the future. This key argument is really all about health care as a human right. The ACA is meant as a humanitarian effort to protect as many American citizens as possible from exploitation by insurance companies. The radical right sees it incorrectly as a government grab for more power over the people. That’s a bizarre way of looking at things, but it’s all about the extreme dichotomies in the country today. Politics has no ‘center’ anymore here. We can’t build compromises and coalitions from centrist moderates in either party, because there are so few left. We, the People, are left with irrational arguments that shut down the government and put us all at risk.

This is, I suppose, a reflection of the cultural/political divide in the country. Obama won almost 90% of those counties across the country with over a million population. The urban core of the country votes Democrat. The suburban, exurban and rural folks vote Republican. There is a racial component to this as well–the Republican constituencies are increasingly white, straight, exurban Christians, where the racial, sexual and ethnic minorities almost exclusively vote Democrat. The more polarized we get, the more extreme and the more dangerous the politics:  government shutdowns for no good reason and threats to destroy our economy and hurt the world markets over the U.S. debt ceiling, for example. That’s playing with fire, in my opinion.  The tea party seems to love it, though. They seem to relish in this fight against principles of good government as they push for ‘smaller’ government. I don’t know. It strikes me as rigid, recalcitrant behavior based on a belief that we need to return to a 19th century model of America, complete with laissez faire economics, caveat emptor consumer practice, a dominant straight white male political culture, and an intolerant, bigoted fundamentalist Christianity.  None of this is possible, I don’t think, given the current demographics in the U.S.  The Republicans are irrationally and boldly marching into an idealized past that never existed, and those elements of the past that DID exist, (the above list) we certainly don’t want repeated in American society.

But such polarization exists elsewhere, too. North Africa and the Middle East, for example. The various Muslim sects are at each others’ throats and they’re all against Israel, and it’s based on irrational religious impulses. Then there’s Russia, We all know they passed a law in June ostensibly to protect children from gay pedophiles, but seriously, ONLY gay pedophiles, which is completely irrational. The law, in effect, makes illegal any public discussion, display or promotion of the LBGTQ community in Russia. It puts gay people back in the closet and locks the door. Now the Duma (their congress) wants to pass a law that bars gay people from having children, and even takes children away from their birth parents, if they are gay. An ideological extension of this law is now a policy that no Russian child can be adopted by a Swedish family, because Sweden doesn’t allow discrimination in adoption based on sexual orientation. This means the Swedish agencies don’t automatically report the sexual orientation of the prospective adoptive parents once they have been vetted and approved as good candidates for adopting a child. Russia has therefore pulled the plug on any Russian children being adopted by Swedes. More polarization over something completely irrational.

I just don’t understand how we can be so intellectually, scientifically and technologically advanced and progressive, and yet we are faced with these completely irrational challenges to what really are Human Rights, our understanding of human nature as it is, and the role that government can play in supporting our humanity.

Today is Saturday, October 5, 2013. I haven’t written in a couple days because there’s been nothing in the news that has struck my fancy. This morning, however, after last night’s New Moon, I thought I’d write some of my thoughts on the current situation in Congress after the Shutdown.

The Republicans are frustrated and Boehner yells at the Democrat’s ‘This is not a game!’ after the Democrats discussed strategies to ‘win’ the argument. But it is a game, and the American people know it. Politics has a strong element of gamesmanship in it and don’t mistake that as a reflection of my cynicism. I don’t think it’s cynical at all to talk about tactics and strategies for winning an argument or winning the vote on a piece of legislation.

As I understand it, as of yesterday, the House Democrats plan to introduce a series of procedural maneuvers called a ‘Discharge Petition’ to force a vote to open the government. The House Republicans refuse to allow this bill on the floor for a simple majority vote, for fear of re-opening the government with the ACA still intact. You see, the bill is a stripped-down and ‘cleaned’ version of an earlier Republican petition that had been shelved, but still can be revived. It’s not a new Democratic proposal, which under the rules is not allowed at this time, but rather an old Republican proposal that now has a new coat of Democratic language that re-opens the government and keeps the ACA funded. And that, according to the House rules (of the game) IS allowed.

In order for this Discharge Petition to make it to the floor for a vote, the sponsors would have to gather 50% of the House in support to sign off on it, so 218 signatures. Political analysts say it’s touch and go, but there are potentially 220 supporters, including 18 moderate Republicans who could support it against the wishes of the House leadership and the anarchistic, government-hating minority tea-partiers who have Boehner by the testicles. If the sponsors can get 220 votes, it would re-open the government with the ACA still funded.

This maneuvering will take at least a week to accomplish, so we’re looking at October 14th as the earliest date for the vote–only 3 days before the default-on-the-debt argument/vote. Meanwhile, we, The People, have to sit and watch this ignorant circus, sweating bullets that our duly elected officials might send this country to hell in a handbasket designed by the Tea Party whose Golden Boy, Ted Cruz, is squeezing John Boehner’s tiny little balls.

Today is Tuesday, October 1, 2013. I should be writing an entire analysis of the stalemate and consequent government shutdown, but I don’t feel the need. It’s all over the TV and web anyway. Let me just say this:  I do blame the tea party, especially Sen. Cruz and his cronies. One can complain about the ‘leadership’ in both parties as well as the President, but the lack of leadership is not the primary cause of this shutdown. The ACA is here to stay, it’s law, I want it; it’s a rational approach to the broken health care delivery system in this country. The tea party and other Republicans have an ideological problem with it, because it’s a federal government program. They hate federal programs. OK, that’s fine, but most people I don’t think believe replacing ‘big’ government with bad government is an appropriate path.

As I see it, conservative opposition to the ACA has less to do with ‘big’ government or cost and more to do with the fact that all Americans, rich, poor, middle-class, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, women and LBGTQ people will now be covered universally with no pre-existing conditions. This includes ‘family planning’ and AIDS treatments. The lead up to all of this has been saturated with radical conservative rhetoric denigrating poor people, women, gay people and immigrants. (Who can forget the horrific comments about legitimate rape, food-stamp recipients, marriage equality, etc.) There is no doubt in my mind that much of the opposition to the ACA has more to do with these ‘cultural war’ issues and less to do with the notion of ‘big’ government. In the end, this government shutdown is a result of an act of cultural war against the real America as it is in all of its diversity and growing social and political equality. The ACA helps move previously relegated 2nd class citizens to first class status and that riles the misogynists, xenophobes and homophobes like nothing else. It helps make everyone ‘more equal’ under the law with relatively equal access to health care without fear of being rejected for who they are, as could happen with private insurance companies and health care delivery before today.

Today is Friday, September 27, 2013. We have three days of intense negotiations in D.C. to resolve the conflict that could shut down the U.S. government. Of course, there is a lot of bizarre rhetoric from both parties, but once again the radical conservatives, a.k.a., Tea Partiers, are behind this recent effort to defund Obamacare or shut down the government, which ever they can do.  Most Americans have some sympathy with the desire to reduce the debt. I don’t think that’s really the issue here.

I came across this article about Larry Klayman, a Tea Partier, who has called for a coup against the government. On the surface it’s laughable. But read his call-to-arms carefully. The core of his objections to the current U.S. administration is in this statement:  “I call upon millions of Americans who have been appalled and disgusted by Obama’s criminality – his Muslim, socialist, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-white, pro-illegal immigrant, pro-radical gay and lesbian agenda”.  

Here is the full text of Klayman’s appeal:

Last Wednesday, the great usurper, Barack Hussein Obama, after having been indicted by an Ocala, Florida citizens’ grand jury, was convicted by a people’s court of defrauding the American people and Floridians by proffering them with a fake birth certificate. See www.citizensgrandjury.com. As readers of this column and www.wnd.com know too well, Obama is not a natural born citizen eligible to be president of the United States, as he was not born in this country to two American citizen parents. However, to justify his fraud and his elections to the highest office in the land, and after years of inquiry, in 2011 the Obama White House posted on its website a birth certificate purporting to show him having been born in Hawaii. The problem is however, according to forensic experts, the birth certificate is altered and forged.

The day of reckoning has come. Obama, having failed to plead in response to the indictment that was served upon him, waived his right to a jury trial. Thumbing his nose at We the People, as the citizens’ prosecutor, I appeared before a citizens’ court judge and presented evidence from Cold Case Posse investigator Michael Zullo showing that Obama tricked voters into electing him in 2008 and 2012. As a result, the citizens’ judge found him guilty on two counts of falsifying information to federal and state election officials. He was thus sentenced to the maximum prison term for these offenses of 10 years, and ordered to immediately surrender himself into the custody of the citizens of the United States and Florida.

Of course, Obama will not willingly obey the law of the people. He will attempt to hide behind the iron fences of the White House, perhaps cowering under his desk for fear that the people will rise up and demand his ouster.

We’ve heard this kind of xenophobic, racist and homophobic rant before from Tea Partiers, but never in a call-to-arms against the government. Klayman has intensified the opposition to Obama’s administration another notch to the right.  I have no doubt there will be no ‘coup’ against the government on November 19th. But as a symbolic statement of the Great Divide in American social and political life, this anti-Obama, anti-America-as-it-is diatribe is hard to ignore.

The rhetoric champions white, Anglo-Saxon, straight, suburban, Christians and that just isn’t the real America anymore. These Tea Partiers apparently don’t have the ability to understand that America’s increasing diversity and social egalitarianism are its greatest strength as the economic and cultural beacon in this ‘globalized’ world.  And in this economically globalized world, these people wanting to shut down the government over the ACA or default over the debt ceiling and, for some, hold a coup is just plain ignorant. The impact on the world economy is apparently not a concern to them. But then, they are extreme nationalists and don’t seem to understand anything beyond the end of their jingoistic, exceptional American noses.

check this out!  http://www.democracycorps.com/attachments/article/954/dcor%20rpp%20fg%20memo%20100313%20final.pdf