Impeachment: Just the Republican Way of doing Business

I don’t often predict upcoming political events, but I’m going to go out on a limb and predict a startling and almost unbelievable act: the Republicans are going to impeach President Obama.

I’d been running this thought through my mind since the day Obama was first elected to the presidency and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell announced unashamedly that the goal of the Republican Party would be to make Obama a one-term President.

His announcement was followed shortly by news reports outlining a decision by Republican leaders that the party would withhold its cooperation from any and all Obama initiatives, even if a failure to cooperate meant a complete halt in government operations.

Despite their decision and the strategy that followed, Obama’s popularity skyrocketed and when the election of 2012 was concluded and Obama had won an overwhelming victory, the Republican Party was thrown into a state of confusion.

Still, the party continued its losing strategy of personal attacks on Obama as well as its avowed noncooperation. It seemed that the party had learned nothing from the debacle of Mitt Romney’s defeat.

Then, along came an attack on what turned out to be a diplomatic mission and a CIA facility in Benghazi during which four Americans were killed, including the American Ambassador to Libya. The Republicans immediately seized on this action to accuse the Obama Administration, particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of a cover-up.

When their mud didn’t stick, they dug up three so-called whistleblowers who appeared before a House panel headed by a well-known Obama critic, Darrel Issa, testifying about alleged cover-ups. The information supposedly covered-up hasn’t been revealed.

Even before these events, some Republicans began to talk about impeachment without using that term.  One voice, Mike Huckabee, Fox analyst and one-time governor of Arkansas, predicted that Obama would be forced to leave office when all of the “facts” of Benghazi were known. He referred to Obama’s actions or lack thereof as “high crimes and misdemeanors,” words in the Constitution describing the bases for impeachment. Others referred to Benghazi as worse than Watergate by a factor of ten or more.

The drumbeat continues and is intensifying. At this moment, it seems clear that the tea baggers in the House of Representatives are just dumb enough to initiate impeachment proceedings. Clear thinking Republicans, if there are any left, haven’t yet stepped forward to condemn the lunatic fringe.

Note: Since I wrote this, two additional so-called scandals have been reported by the media. The IRS revealed that it had been targeting right-wing organizations for special scrutiny when those organizations had applied for tax-free status. Almost concurrently, a major news media reported that the Justice Department had secretly subpoenaed the phone records of some of its employees, including their home phone numbers.

At this moment, an impeachment is right on track when we compare the sequence of events in the Clinton case to the events occurring in Congress and in the Executive Branch. An impeachment of the first Black President in our country’s history, a highly popular President, would, in my judgment, destroy the United States as surely as another Civil War. Unfortunately, we are in the grip of an amazing stupidity.

The Obama Paradox: Or Why Republicans Can’t Figure it Out

When it became clear in 2008 that Barack Obama was going to become the first Black President of the United States, several top leaders of the Republican Party met in a hotel in Washington D.C. and hatched a strategy to discredit him.

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky stated it succinctly, “Our goal is to see that Obama is a one-term president.”

To achieve their goal, the Republicans agreed that the Party would withold any Republican stamp of approval from any and all Obama initiatives, legislative actions, appointments, and suggestions of bipartianship.

This often led to ludicrous legislative decisions that required the party as a whole to oppose bills and other actions it had previously supported.

To make matters worse, Republican leadership condoned and carried out the continuation of election season slurs against Obama meant solely to create an image of Obama as incompetent in the public mind.

Among the more inflamatory labels Republicans tagged Obama with were Nazi, socialist, commie, and Kenyan anti-colonialist, the latter a creation of perennial loser Newt Gingrich.

Others, such as John Sununu, employed code words signifying Obama’s race as Black, conveniently ignoring his White Kansas ancestry.

Among other derogatory terms, Sununu described Obama as lazy and, on one occasion, wished Obama would “…learn how to be an American.”

More juvenille yet, Donald Trump and a host of lesser luminaries on the right continued to question Obama’s place of birth despite official records showing he had been born in the Kapiolani Women and Children’s Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Even the words of no less an authority than the Governor of Hawaii, who verified the existence of Obama’s long form birth certificate, failed to silence the Republican furor over a sitting President supposedly born in Kenya or Thailand or God knows where else.

Overcome by their belief in the conspiracy  theories that swirled around Obama’s head like buzzing mosquitoes, the Republicans were thus all set to celebrate his defeat in the Presidential Election of 2012, lulled asleep in part by the repetitive predictions of Republican pollsters that the Republican candidate Mitt Romney would win.

To the shock of everyone who supported Romney, Obama carried both the popular and electoral votes with room to spare. And to this date, the Republicans haven’t figured it out.

But the major question isn’t how and why Romney lost to Obama. Romney was an incompetent canddidate who listened to a group of incompetent campaign advisors. Everyone in the Romney camp failed to recognize the changing demographics in America as well as the staleness of conservative ideas and policies on women, rape, abortion, and birth control.

The real question is, why have the Republicans refused to cooperate with President Obama on even the most mundane matters even in the face of his two overwhelming presidential wins.

The most obvious but also the largely unspoken and most vexing explanation is racism. Americans almost to a person will deny that they are racist. Yet, racism exists. How could this be? 

Either Americans are racist and are lying when they deny it, or else they are racist but are unaware of it. In either case, racsm is pervasive in the United States and it’s effects are clear to see for anyone who cares to look.

True, everyday on every level of interaction, White and Black Americans work with each other without the overt displays of disrespect White Republicans have demonstrated toward America’s first Black President.

But these everyday interactions are marked by a noticeable distinction: with few execeptions, Whites are in positions of economic and social superiorority to the positions of Blacks.

We know that the primary element  in racism are feelings of superiority over a group of people. In America, those feelings are conflicted by a history of the American insistence that “all men are created equal.”

Thus, a dichotomy: on the one hand, Blacks and Whites are equal. On the other hand,  they clearly are not. Consequently, Whites are often unable to accept the reality of the authotity of a Black person over a group of Whites.

The two overwhelming wins of Obama over war hero John McCain and economic hero Mitt Romney thus gave rise to a level of disbelief in the legitimacy of a president heretofore unknown in the United States.

The Republicans’ stunned disbelief, fueled by the sudden emergence of an extreme right wing element in the Republican Party called tea baggers thus made it imperative that the Republican Party disavow any connection with Obama.

Moreover, the underlying fear that Obama’s policies may prove successful and acceptable to a vast majority of the American public would be proof positive that Republican policies and practices were outdated relics of past centuries doomed to fail in a 21st Century America of changing demographics and social mores.

Only time will tell if these conjectures will prove valid. In the meantime, Americans will continue to dance around the subject of race and of Obama’s forward-looking policies.

But in its usual cycle of depression and optimism, I expect that the U.S. will eventually overccome its racist tendencies just as Major League baseball eventually accepted Jackie Robinson as its first Black baseball player so many years ago.

Thanks, Jackie, for sticking to it in the face of slurs, slanders, and racial epithets and becoming one of the greatest players in the game.

Blueberry Pie and Ice Cream

Occasionaly, I feel a need to talk to God so I call him on His private line. He’s listed in the Yellow Pages under Sid The Miracle Worker and Purveyor of Blueberry Pies.

As he explains it, “Nothing is more comforting than a hot slice of blueberry pie slathered with a big dipper of vanilla ice cream.”

“Sid, “says I, “it’s time you did something about Congress, specifically the tea baggers. We’ve got a president who was elected overwhelmingly but a minor cadre of tea baggers think they are running the government.”

“I understand your problem, Bubba, but…”

I interrupted him, ”How many times have I told you, Sid, the name is Bob not Bubba.”

“Sorry, I must be getting old. Yesterday, I couldn’t remember the name of the guy who irritates me with crazy prayers, like “Dear God, would you please change Barack Obama into a frog?”

“Mitch McConnell?”

“That’s him. Anyway, I gave him an active colony of crabs to keep his face tight for awhile.”

“Quick thinking, Sid.”

“That’s my forte, Pal.”

” Well, think quick on this one: Dear, Sid, would you kindly convert the tea baggers into a bunch of jabbering baboons.”

“That would be an insult to real baboons, son.”

“Well, then, how about cutting off their pay when the Sequester kicks in?”

“Possible. Let me think about it.”

“Or, change their guns to cap pistols or something?”

“Hehehehe. That’s wicked.”

“I knew you’d like it.”

“While I’m rolling your ideas around in my heavenly brain, you take a break. Treat your friends  to some comforting hot blueberry pie and ice cream.”

“Sorry to say, Sid, I have no money. The Sequester has plain cleaned me out.”

“I would give you a gift certificate, boy, but I’m a little short myself. Those damned baboons in congress have sequestered me right out of my rightful place in Heaven. We’re going ala carte in Sid’s Blueberry Emporium. And, beginning March 1, the price of a prayer will increase 20%.”

“My, God,” I said, “The tea baggers have taken over Heaven.”

“We’ve filed incorporation papers. We’ll be Heavenly Compassion, Inc. soon. I’ve been placed on the Retired List.”

“Tell me, Sid, who’s going to be God after you leave?”

“Jerry Falwell.

Somehow, I’ve lost my appetite for blueberry pie.

We NEED Gun Control

We NEED Gun Control.

Believing is Seeing

Statement: You no longer have to take off your shoes to go through the security line at airports.

Response: No kidding.

The statement was uttered by a Homeland Security guy to me at both Hobby Airport in Houston and Baltimore-Washington Airport in Baltimore.

You can guess what happened next.

When I walked through the scanner with shoes on, the bells and buzzers went nuts.

“You’ll have to take your shoes off,” a guy in uniform said.

“But the guy back there said I don’t have to,” said innocent me.

“You don’t, unless the buzzers go off. Then you have to take your shoes off and send them through x-ray.”

He continued, “Some shoes have metal brads that set off the buzzers.”

I looked down at my shoes. Copper looking brads glared up at me as if saying, “You should have known, you dumb ass.”

The brads were right.

I’ll know what to do the next time I fly.

Unless someone tells me otherwise.

Then, I’ll take of my damned shoes no matter what.

A Real Choice

A Real Choice.

Greed or Deed: Which Future do You Prefer?

On November 6, Americans will dutifully tromp to thousands of polling places throughout the country and cast their votes for two competing visions of the role of government in the 21st Century.

The choices are clear: a future of greed or a future of deed.

The greed of giant corporations and the overly rich who grasp for more and more money at the expense of the poor and middle class is exemplified by Mitt Romney, a millionaire many times over who has made his money by buying American enterprises, closing them, and shifting their operations to China. Thousands upon thousands of Americans have lost their jobs as a direct result of Romney’s greedy decisions.

A vote for Romney is a vote for the richest 1% of our population and a direct slap in the face of all Americans not just the 47% of Americans that Romney has publicly denigrated as leeches dependent on public assistance. The Romney way is a way of greed

A future of deed is richly exemplified by Barack Obama. His vision of the future is one of inclusion, a future in which all Americans play by the same rules, a future in which the poor, the sick, and the infirm recive the assistance that they are unable to provide for themselves.

Obama’s vision of inclusiveness is illustrated by one of his first deeds as President, the passage of his well-named Obama Care in which all Americans are, for the first time in the history of this country, covered by medical insurance. No one need sit for hours in a cold emergency room waiting for attention as Romney has expressly stated is his preference.

This is only one example of a future of deed, a future that emphasises social cohesion and a government that truly looks after the well being of all Americans rather than the richest 1%.

A future of deed should be preferable to everyone. But it isn’t. Large segments of our society prefer to remain in a state of penury rather than cast a vote for Obama and a positive future. This is a major puzzle of this election.

Greed is a powerful pull because we all envision ourselves becoming a part of the 1%. However, we stand a better of chance of becoming rich under a system that provides an opportunity for the many rather than the few.

Spock was a very wise Vulcan.