Week of 08/04/2014

The GOP’s Latest Pathetic Stunt
– by David Matthews 2

I have to remind myself that I used to be a card-carrying member of the GOP.

Of course this was back in the days when the GOP was still trying to play the “Let’s get the government off our backs and out of our lives” angle from the Reagan Days.  Back when the worst entitlement program was when a Democrat believed that he “deserved” to be president simply because he paid his dues and bided his time.

Oh that hasn’t changed.  There are still plenty of “entitlement” politicians in that outdated domineering party.

The real problem is that the party that I used to be a member of – the GOP – seemingly cannot help but to come up with new reasons to validate why I left them in the first place.  Or, it’s probably more accurate to say that the GOP has abandoned people like myself and they really don’t seem to want us to come back to them anytime soon.

I can understand some their petty little brinksmanship games.  Being the voices of sabotage, questioning everything that President Barack Obama does, saying “no” when he says “yes” and crying “foul” even when he does everything they demand.  They are doing everything that the Democrats should have done when they had the legislative power and Bush Junior was in the White House.

The problem is that they don’t seem to know when they’ve gone too far.

The GOP’s myrmidons in talk radio and Fox News have been so thorough in getting rid of the moderate voices in the party that all they have left are the lunatic fringes.  You have the rabid evangelicals, the pervasive anti-intellectuals, the fascistic nationalists, and the delusional purists that are stuck in a fictionalized version of the 1950’s.  Anyone that serves as a voice of reason has been either bullied into silence or else chased away as being “liberal” or “Republicans In Name Only” and then told they have no other alternative but to not get involved at all.

So how do they know when they’ve gone too far in their extremism?  It’s like getting sobriety advice from the suicidal drunk in “Leaving Las Vegas”, or gun safety tips from the ghost of Kurt Cobain.

Which leads me to their latest disgusting embarrassment.

The GOP members of the House of Representatives recently voted to authorize House Speaker John Boeher to sue President Barack Obama in court.  The reason?  Because they supposedly don’t like Obama using his executive power to carry out laws his way.

You know… the whole “separation of powers” thing.  Where the legislature writes the law, the executive branch carries out the law, and the judiciary interpret and judge the law.  Boehner and his GOP cohorts think that just isn’t working for them anymore.

Oh, but this applies only to a certain law.  It has nothing to do with the gross intrusions into our personal lives by the intelligence community.  It has nothing to do with the absolutely corrupt appeasement of the criminal banks, which allows them to steal homes of Americans and then get away with their criminal acts by paying essentially pocket change.  It doesn’t even have to do with the recent proposed changes in environmental regulations that their corporate masters claim would bankrupt the nation.

Nope, it all supposedly has to do with Obama’s implementation of the Affordable Care Act… aka “Obamacare”.  The very law that the GOP screamed bloody murder over and committed over two years and shut down the nation in a desperate attempt to repeal it.

See if you can keep up with the lack-of-logic in the GOP’s case: Boehner wants to sue the President because the President is trying to carry out a law that Boehner has been trying to get repealed over forty times, because the President isn’t supposedly carrying it out in the way that Boehner’s predecessors wrote the law, which Boehner claims was made to fail, is failing, and which he does want to fail if he can’t get it repealed, which he has wasted endless hours of taxpayer money trying to do.

You with me so far?

Good, because we’re not done yet.

This is all following Boehner’s politically schizophrenic pattern when it comes to Obama.  Boehner bitches when Obama takes any kind of action, claiming that Obama is somehow “exceeding his authority” and not “advising Congress”.  Boehner bitches when Obama advises Congress, claiming that Obama is “dictating”.  Boehner bitches when Obama waits for Congress to act, claiming that Obama “refuses to show leadership”.  Basically whatever Obama does or does not do, Boehner bitches about it and thinks that Obama should do the exact opposite.

Let’s get brutally honest here… John Boehner is nothing more than a whiney, stuck-up, self-centered, Jersey-tanned bitch.  His title in the House of Representatives had might has well be the “Bitch of the House”, because that is what he has turned the office into.

As for the House plans on suing the White House?  It’s really nothing more than a deplorable political stunt, cheaper than a two-dollar hooker running a BOGO sale!

You know, this is supposed to the same political party that appointed itself to be the champions of the United States Constitution!  The same legislative body that took it upon itself to spend the first days of its new political dominance in 2011 to read the whole Constitution!  Has it really been so long ago that they somehow forgot these things?

And if you happen to read what that document says, then you would know that the only real remedy the House has is through impeachment.  But the problem with that is that then the House would have to come up with some actual “high crimes and misdemeanors” to charge Obama with.  Plus they would have to then bring the case before the Democrat-controlled Senate and then hope they would somehow get a two-thirds majority from them to sustain the impeachment.  They couldn’t do that even when it was Bill Clinton and he had an actual crime he was charged with!

Oh, but I guess we don’t have to worry about that, do we?  Because Speaker Boehner bitched that all of the impeachment talk is just “a scam”.

“We have no plans to impeach the president”, Boehner bitched.  “It’s all a scam started by Democrats at the White House.”

Really, Boehner?  Really?

You really would go so far as to call your fellow GOP-ers “Democrats”?  You would consider Senator James Inhofe and Congressmen Jason Chafftez, Blake Farenthold, Ted Yoho, Lou Barletta, Steve Stockman, Steve King, Kerry Bentivolio, Jack Kingston, and your newly-sworn House Majority Leader Steve Scalise all to be “Democrats”?  That’s low, even for you.

And, for that matter, former Governor Sarah Palin and talk radio colon Rush Limbaugh.  Are they “Democrats” now? 

Speaking of, how about all of the previous times the GOP and your party’s myrmidons in talk radio and Fox News were demanding to impeach Obama over the terrorist attack in Benghazi, or over the IRS investigating the so-called “Tea Party” groups?  Or over Edward Snowden’s revelations concerning the NSA snooping?  Or for getting re-elected in 2012?  Or, for that matter, winning the 2008 election?  Are those all parts of the “White House scam”?

How many times have the American people been subjected to endless claims that the House was just an election away from impeaching Obama?  And for what, you may ask?  Well, apparently, for existing.  Are they all “Democrats” now?  Are they all part of that “White House scam”?

Yes, this lawsuit is nothing more than a cheap political stunt for the GOP.  It’s timed to coincide with their election-year summer campaign schedule, and it gives them the illusion of doing “something” when it is nothing more than a waste of money and time.  It’s designed to appease their rabid extremists, just like their previous decision to shut down the government for a brief while.  And it was over the same law to boot!

The truth of the matter is that the “Grand Old Party” is so decrepit and morally bankrupt that they have no sense of where “the line” is anymore, never mind when they have crossed it.  They have long demonstrated that they have no honor, no morals, no ethical standards, and no sense of decency.  And they certainly cannot count on their mindless voters to keep them honest.  The ones who could vote them out don’t even bother to try.

Unfortunately, like the suicidal drunk in “Leaving Las Vegas” – played so well by Nicholas Cage – the GOP’s path to self-destruction will not stop until the party come to an end.  It’s just that they are hell-bent on taking the rest of the country with them.