Category Archives: republicans

Open Letter To The Republican Party

Dear Elephant Men:

Hey guys? You know we’re watching you, right?  And no matter how many times you tell us you’re legislating to prevent fraud, we know exactly what you’re doing.

You know that, right?   Repub

Nobody’s that dumb or lame, really. Why treat us as though we are? Makes it hurt all the more.

“Voter fraud” has the same believability and cover story value as euphemisms like, “Enhanced Interrogations,” “Trickle Down Economics” or “Clean Coal.” Everybody knows what you’re doing, and can see through your lies, even while you deny doing anything and continue to behave in the same manner.

So enough of this fig-leaf excuse of Voter Fraud please?  It’s really beneath you to continue to deny what you’re doing.

Once and for all, there is no voter fraud! Certainly nothing that could be used to explain the sudden rash of Voter Fraud laws pushed through by Republican-led legislatures in nine states. And just so nobody is missing the fact, let me ask this next question directly…You guys are creating laws, directing the will of nine individual state legislatures, to enforce a solution to a non-existent problem, is that right?

The only problem you’re solving is that you guys are held in such low esteem you can’t win an election without cheating.

Don’t you think there should be a law about that? Using a state legislative process to foster political ends? In nine different states? Smells like some sort of conspiracy to me…hmm…?

Lest anybody be confused, this is nothing but a bald attempt by Republican legislators to suppress voting by blacks, students, poor people and anyone else who might vote Democratic. You guys couldn’t win the Presidency last time around, so rather than reform your party by turning to positions that might appeal to larger segments of the voting public, you chose instead to stay with your Big Money Masters, and to restrict people’s right to vote in so-called swing states.

And that’s what you spend your time doing? On the public payroll? Stealing elections?

Aren’t you even a little ashamed?

Okay, fine! That’s your choice and we respect that.

But hey guys, call it what you will, it’s still JIM CROW all over again…and just as shameful.

Hey, don’t get me wrong. Nobody’s accusing you guys of racism. The fact you’re legislating to disenfranchise blacks has nothing to do with racism and everything to do with the fact you’ve completely abandoned whatever moral authority your party once possessed.

So, in reality, you no longer have any ethical basis to stand as a national party.

Sorry guys, but the truth hurts. And if you want to win the presidency sometime soon—just so you know—it won’t be by kissing the backsides of the wealthiest sliver of the nation’s population, or by writing off Immigration Reform and Income Equality. Nor will you win by continually trumpeting your aversion to 21st Century sexual and cultural norms.

One thing more, it’s time you guys stopped running for office in our highest institutions of government, then worked to dismantle that government and cripple its ability to make a difference in the lives of its citizens.

Yeah, I know, that will get you millions of dollars from the Koch Brothers.

But it won’t win you many votes in whatever voting booths you allow to remain open.

Just remember, we see what you are doing.

And we will not forget.

I Am A Ukrainian

How can you not stand up and cheer at what we’ve just witnessed in Eastern Europe? To see an entire populace rise up against injustice, autocracy and the armed lackeys of a corrupt police state reminds me of what real courage looks like, especially when it’s bolstered by the adrenaline of outrage and moral authority.Ukraine

I couldn’t watch this impoverished proletariat fighting so valiantly—and risking so much—for their rights, their country and for the future of their children’s children without thinking about how far we Americans have drifted from our own revolutionary and democratic ideals. So far that we would allow George W. Bush to twice steal the presidency of the United States (see michaelparenti.org/stolenelections.html) staring impotently with our mouths open, too afraid of the consequences that might come from shouting out the truth and fighting for our rights. Too comfortable, in all likelihood, with our material possessions and modest successes to risk any of it by standing up and shouting “Fraud! Thief! Liar!” as we should have done—as we have an obligation to do as legatees of our revolution and its democratic values!

And so we turned over in bed, having taken a sleeping pill to deal with any discomfiting after-effects of watching our country hijacked by these lackeys of disgruntled billionaires.

Yes, we’ve fallen so far from our American ideals that we would allow almost every state legislature controlled by Republicans to institute laws designed to deprive citizens of their voting rights in the name of preventing voting fraud. A fraud admittedly non-existent and clearly invoked as a fig leaf to conceal the pathetic conniving of a fastly-shrinking political minority.

Where is our outrage? Where are the barricades we would mount to fight for the democratic ideals our forebears died to secure and preserve? Where indeed! Instead of mounting barricades we sit docilely in front of our TV sets while this minority band of politicians gerrymander themselves into the power of the majority and attempt to dismantle every right and protection built up to protect the poor, the weak and the elderly.

Why do we allow these cynical enemies of democracy to determine the national conversation? Why do we allow them to first dismantle our economy under Bush, raid the treasury to protect the banks and  tycoons who created the crisis, then block almost every attempt made by Obama to prevent the poor and the middle class from falling off the game board entirely?

Once I was proud to say “I am an American.” Admittedly it was a time of innocence. A time before Viet Nam. A time before we unnecessarily declared war against Iraq. A time before banks and bankers were allowed to destroy our economy with impunity. A time before Republicans and their billionaire puppeteers were allowed to dictate the national agenda. And, yes, a time before drones were sent to foreign skies to kill enemies and civilians alike without due process.

It was also a time before the events of this last week. A week when I was able to watch breathlessly—with equal measures of hope and trepidation—as a country of 46 million people shook off the chains of corruption and domination that a small group of tyrants had imposed. This was what a fight for democracy and freedom really looked like. It was a week where true-life heroes, brave enough to challenge bullets and riot police, were arrayed before the world in a laughable contrast to the Olympic ‘heroes’ who captured most of the media’s attention.

There was only one international event truly worth watching this week. One event where the human species was shown to reach its most brilliant and most memorable heights.

And it didn’t take place in Sochi.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ugly Americans

To: The United States of America

From: The Republican Party

ransom

We have kidnapped your legislative process. If you ever hope to see a working constitutional government again, obey the following instructions TO THE LETTER.

  1. Place The Affordable Health Care Act (a/k/a Obamacare) in a dumpster behind the White House marked “Dead On Arrival.”
  2.  Throw the Food Stamp program, The Head Start program and any other program that benefits poor people into the same dumpster, making sure to weight down the lid with the aggregated hopes, dreams and aspirations of that same underprivileged and impoverished population.
  3. Given that they have little chance of survival in the New America we envisage, toss the chronically poor, all welfare recipients, those too lazy to work for minimum wage and all bleeding heart liberals who advocate for such societal leeches into a second dumpster, making sure the lid is shut tight so that no air can get in.
  4. In a third dumpster, also behind the White House, toss in the Environmental Protection Agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, opponents of the Keystone Pipeline and anyone else who believes the American government has a responsibility to regulate Big Banking, respond to global warming or ensure that all women are allowed to make adult decisions about their own bodies. Then, ship all three dumpsters and their leftist contents to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts where they rightfully belong, and where they have a harbor of sufficient depth to entomb the dumpsters for eternity.
  5. Next, take all the money saved with the elimination of the above programs and agencies and convert them into untraceable securities and currency made up of large denominational bills, which you will then place in a giant Louis Vuitton designer container in the lobby of the Goldman Sachs building in New York City.

Do not notify the police or attempt to trace the ransom. If anyone other than a millionaire or a billionaire, or their representatives, attempts to retrieve the ransom we will blow up the capitol building, even if we are inside it at the time.

Should you fail to follow the above instructions to the letter or, even worse, assist President Obama to succeed in any way, you will never see your democracy again.

 

 

Lady Liberty Paralyzed By Elephantiasis, Prognosis Not Good

For those who remember her as a symbol of vibrant democracy and American virtue, the recent succumbing of Lady Liberty to a paralyzing strain of elephantiasis has been particularly disturbing.Liberty

“What makes this form of elephantiasis so destructive is that the invading agent—in this case the Republican Party—is using the very same laws and constitutional processes to subvert and paralyze Lady Liberty that were put in place to protect her and keep her safe,” commented former American president George Washington, as he rolled over in his grave.

Trackers of the disease point to two seminal events that allowed a minority party to essentially bring the forward progress of an entire nation to a grinding halt. “First the sons o‘bitches stole the presidency,” growled former president Andrew Johnson, also rolling over in his grave, “from top to bottom, from hanging chads to Supreme Court interference in the electoral process, they poked Lady Liberty in the eye and opened the door for all sorts of mischief to sneak through the gates she’d been guarding.”

“That allowed an illegitimate, prisoner-torturing, war-mongering American President to stuff the Supreme Court with more of those gun-loving, people-hating Republicans who would sooner throw the Constitution under the bus than go against the wishes and best interests of billionaires and anti-government zealots,” Jackson concluded.

“And damn if they didn’t steal the next presidential election, as well!” Teddy Roosevelt, himself a former Republican, chimed in, being the latest in a long line of ex-presidents to turn over in his grave. “Hell, in all the history of exit polls for presidential elections, there’ve only been two that supposedly predicted the outcomes wrongly,” he continued. “Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004. Both states whose electoral vote results threw victory into the arms of George W. Bush. You’d think the American media would have had the stink detector—or the courage—to question whether it was the exit polls or the reported results that were bogus?” the former president opined through gritted teeth.

Elephantiasis trackers next point to a confluence of American political events that set the stage for the disease to invade Lady Liberty and totally capture her vital organs and democratic processes. Having voted out the Republican majority in congress who, along with their illegitimate president, had allowed the plundering of the American treasury and economy, American voters elected a Democratic president and congressional majority who not only pulled the American economy back from the brink of total collapse, but also voted in a universal health care program that would bring health care to all Americans, including over 30 million of our nation’s poorest citizens.

That act of social conscience and long-overdue legislative protection for America’s most vulnerable citizens drew an immediate whiplash reaction from traditional Republicans and a GOP-led force of angry zealots who called themselves tea-partiers. And though nobody noticed at the time, the nascent bacillus of Lady Liberty’s elephantiasis secured its first beachhead when this mushrooming mob of angry voters, seemingly forgetting the Republican excesses of the Bush years, voted in a GOP majority—not only in the House of Representatives but in statehouses across the country.

The Elephantiasis bacillus

The Elephantiasis bacillus

In politics, timing is everything. In the development of Lady Liberty’s elephantiasis, timing was of crucial significance. Because those GOP majorities took power at exactly the right time for them to gerrymander voting districts to ensure Republican control of state houses and congressional districts for years to come, no matter how many geographically-bizarre districts had to be created, no matter how much the GOP’s base would eventually contract. Suddenly, at the stroke of state house pens across the country, a minority party with a shrinking base of support, was given a guaranteed legislative majority from which to pursue minority viewpoints and block the will of the American people.

And what of Lady Liberty? Her legs have grown so gargantuan and difficult to lift, it’s all she can do lately to get out of bed in the morning. And with every presidential or senate initiative blocked or ignored by Republican intransigence, she finds herself mostly moving backwards, living in the past, fighting battles she thought she’d won years ago. Kept in the past by a Republican Party and a conservative Supreme Court working tirelessly to set back voting rights reform and civil rights protections, to keep women, immigrants and minorities in their “rightful” place, to reduce middle class earning power and destroy recently enacted restrictions on reckless banks and Wall Street shenanigans, and to bring back the era of clothes hanger abortions. A Republican Party that has filibustered 420 times in recent years to block any kind of initiative that doesn’t resonate with their trickle-down, “serve the wealthy first” theories of economics and social justice, an obstructionist party that refuses to spend money on anything other than defense contracts, foreign aid and the construction of a 35 foot fence along the Mexican border.

The argument never changes. Time and time again, Lady Liberty has been told the deficit can’t be increased, that the precipitous loss of revenues—incurred because the Republicans under Bush virtually sacked the American economy—have driven up the deficit so dramatically there’s no money left to help struggling college students, hungry children, crumbling roads, falling bridges, a failing educational system or to even maintain the social contract she made years ago with our nation’s elderly and infirm. Suddenly Lady  Liberty finds herself spending more money on weapon systems than on an elder population forced to compete for Walmart greeter positions and to work into their 80’s. Rather than plan and legislate for the future, she finds herself repeatedly fighting battles the Republicans refuse to acknowledge having lost. Just last week, the Republican controlled house once again voted to kill off Obamacare, the success of which so frightens them they would rather bring the entire government to a halt, and leave 32 million people uninsured, than allow the law to be funded.

And if there’s nothing else she’s learned from her battle with elephantiasis it’s that there’s no arguing with this particular political disease. It will either have its way or kill her as it progresses. For Lady Liberty has learned better than most that our political process isn’t just broken, as many maintain, but that it’s been hijacked. Just as the Nazis, the Bolsheviks and the Chilean military under Pinochet hijacked their countries’ political processes.

As for Lady Liberty, it’s highly ironic that she may finally pass away at the moment her condition, under Obamacare, is no longer considered uninsurable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whither Goest The Republican Party?

Like most of you, I take my Republican-issued declarations with large doses of honey and over-the-counter stomach-settlers. So when Reince Priebus, or Prince Rebus as I like to think of him, the Chair of the Republican Party, started issuing declarations about how the GOP needed to change, I naturally expected a bowl of mush.Prince1

Prince was presenting the findings of his 97-page Growth and Opportunity Project Report to a breakfast meeting of assembled Republican leaders, men and women with gray hair, aged bodies, and calcified opinions.

First, the voices from the study rose up to describe how the general population views “the Republican Party today.” Those voices loudly called out, “Scary”, “Narrow minded” and “out of touch”, essentially calling it a party of “stuffy old men.”

To that, I would only add the word “white” as in “stuffy old white men.”

But there was poor Prince Rebus, this morning’s star bearer of bad news, telling his bosses they were so unpopular they needed to stay indoors and away from the windows. And then he offered each of them a tall beaker of hemlock, that poisonous brew said to have killed Socrates, when he went on to explain what the new Republican Party would now stand for.

“First,” Prince declared, defining the way forward for Republicans and their Party, “we must embrace and champion comprehensive immigration reform.” As if such heretic a thought might get lonely sitting out there by itself, he quickly continued, “Republicans today have to start speaking up for the little guy; it’s time we were the ones blowing the whistle at corporate malfeasance and attacking corporate welfare.”

Honestly, he really said that.

As blue-haired matrons and patrons of the party went faint, Prince ignored their wounded cries of protest, the shouts of pain—shouts of “Never!”, “No!” and “Say it aint so!”— from the gathered party members. Into that wall of growing agitation and protest, he blithely continued, “We should speak out when a company liquidates itself and its executives receive bonuses but rank-and-file workers are left unemployed. We should speak out when C.E.O.s receive tens of millions of dollars in retirement packages but middle-class workers have not had a meaningful raise in years.

“For the G.O.P. to appeal to younger voters,” Prince continued, “we do not have to agree on every issue, but we do need to make sure young people do not see the Party as totally intolerant of alternative points of view.”

Even though everyone at the breakfast knew in their heart of hearts the Party was, indeed, totally… and irrevocably… intolerant of anyone else’s point of view!

Also, in the hope of attracting younger voters, Prince called for an ”RNC Celebrity Task Force” to host star-studded events and fundraisers. Clint Eastwood and Pat Boone were two of the youth-oriented celebrities who first came to mind.

In pushing for more openness and acceptance within the party, Prince pushed his breakfast audience, “C’mon, guys, can we lighten up a bit? Can we stop bashing the gays for once. And stop doling out invasive ultrasounds as pre-abortion punishment? And no more thumping the bible—or the constitution, please!” (Well, he didn’t really say that, but it would have been delightful if he had!)

In an interview with Bob Schiefer around this time, Prince , with great candor, admitted the GOP did a “lousy job” of marketing itself. Adding, “This is no short term view…If we don’t start now, we’re not going to have anymore success in four years, eight years, or twelve years.”

Now, about those four years, eight years, or twelve years…

Here are a few questions I wish Bob Shieffer (perhaps channeling the spirit of Mike Wallace) had had the temerity to ask Prince, starting with.…”What gives you the right to survive as a national political party for those four, eight or twelve years? Shouldn’t your survival depend on earning the support of a significant segment of the population?”

And once Bob got started in that vein, he could have asked, “Why should learning to better market your ideas change anything? If you’re still pushing unpopular or antiquated ideas, you will remain unpopular. Then, the only way you can win elections would be to nominate stealth candidates who pretend to espouse popular viewpoints, but then renege on those positions once winning office. Sort of like Mitt Romney aspired to do in his long term etch-a-sketch evolution from Conservative Republican to Moderate Republican and back to Conservative at the end. Is that the new model? Keeping the lid closed tightly on zealots like Todd Akin or Chrstine O’Donnell so that everybody appears ginger peachy to the boob in the voting booth?”

Then I would have liked Bob to sum it all up, “Prince, can you face up to the fact America has moved beyond—far beyond!—today’s Republican Party? Even if the party has managed to gerrymander enough districts to stay in a crippled position of power. America doesn’t want a Republican Party that disavows everything America stands for—tax fairness, women having the freedom to choose what happens to their bodies, gays having the freedom to marry, economic fairness, a generous government that supports, assists and protects its most vulnerable citizens, a government committed to furthering human rights here and abroad.”

And here’s what I would like to say to Prince once his proposals for an enlightened GOP fail to get traction. “Face it Prince,” I would admonish him, “The Republican Party is a gang of angry, embittered, mostly white and usually wealthy people trying to hold onto their power and their wealth in a country turning less white, more impoverished and more heterogeneous by the day. The first mission of the Republican Party today is to protect the wealth and privileges of the few, to promote a strict almost fundamentalist view of the Constitution, and to cripple the ability of the government to advocate for those less fortunate on the economic ladder.”

Those are the Republican views and policies Prince needs to rewire if the Republican Party wishes to survive as a serious political entity in America.

But rather than working to change the Party’s toxic policies or principles, Prince announced instead a $10 million dollar outreach program to polish up the GOP brand.

Anyone familiar with the Republican brand knows  $10 million won’t even begin to remove the stain.