Thursday's Rambling Discourse On...

I've watched as a Democratic President has tried to operate the Executive Branch as a Center or Center Right organization run into massive difficulties with the GOP bunch for using their policies - granted a decade or so later. The mocked Stimulus was larded with GOP policies goodies that garnered nothing from the GOP and probably did poorly thanks to the amount devoted to their policies. The crazy inspiring "Obamacare" is was warmed up decade and change old GOP program that is now socialized medicine infringing on religious something or the others. The guy whose policies the left can barely keep its contempt for at less than a dull roar is a socialist - a position well left of most of what passes for the left today. These sentiments are played by the so-called moderate Republican Mitt Romney. (I forgot - severe conservative Mitt)

A hell of a lot of ... liberals (chokes me to use the word in this context) gleefully blame the "left" for not turning out in the 2010 mid-terms and sinking Democrats. Never mind that Democrats turned out in ordinary numbers and that the depressed turnout was Independents and it was their turn in voting that sank Democtrats - it was the left. The left, the bogeyman of not only the Reichwingers but also of the "liberals." I'll explain the " marks. Their liberalism comes down to being accepting of anything that isn't looney-toons right. It doesn't matter a bit if things are poisoned by GOP positions or actually crafted on decade old GOP policies, they'll do and criticism is left wing cut our throats bullshit designed to ... who the hell knows. A ways back they'd have been called Reagan Democrats except they're to the right of them. It comes down to them holding up the crazy of the GOP and stating that their opposition to that amounts to liberalism.

Mention tax rates that are higher for wealth than those under Clinton (less than Reagan) and they'll lose their minds about leftism. Honest to Pete, proposing tax rates of Reaganism levels is somehow ultra-stupid looney leftism. OWS is composed of dirty inconveniences who aren't sufficiently attached to Obama and their proposition that Reagan was too left on economics. Glass-Steagal was the law under Reagan and not Clinton? The decline of the middle class and particularly the blue collar economic situation began with Reagan and he's too goddam liberal?

I'm a gun owning construction guy leftist and I claim the label because I am left of St Ronnie Ray Gun. I want the government out of things that do not have real effects on the general good. Most of us (by huge margin) who own guns do nothing bad with them and want to be left the hell alone about it and the people who do bad things concentrated on. I want tax codes that do what the hell they're supposed to do, a mortgage deduction for a goddam mansion or second homes or vacation homes does not encourage home ownership - it rewards wealth. The industry's benefit from those is immaterial compared to the difference in having REAL wages paid. There is no discernable benefit to society at large in having a smaller tax rate on investment income than on ordinary income that is gotten in some actually productive manner. I don't have a big problem with encouraging investment in public bonds and such because they do serve the common good. I don't mind being reluctant to go to war and for more than an emergency reaction forcing Congress to approve and fund such a war. I cannot for the life of me see why some electoral financial behavior is not treated as bribery when in fact it is. i have no idea why things like big oil are subsidized. I have no idea why derivative trading is still allowed and in fact - why the hell a bunch of banksters aren't under indictment for fraud when they knew they were selling and insuring junk. Consider that the S&L mess almost sunk McPOW and did sink others. huh.

I am sick and tired of religion and government getting mixed up with each other. You certainly cannot take the church out of the candidate but you can sure the hell take the church out of the law and the government out of financing in any fashion the church. If a hospistal insists that it provide religion based treatment protocols that is certainly their busines, but the government should not give them a damned cent. What? You don't think the Catholic hospitals are government subsidized? What exactly would you call Medicare and Medicaid payments? They sure the hell ain't coming out of their collection plates.

How in the hell is it that in 2012 a major political party is making an issue of contraception? How in the hell is it that a New Jersey Governor would advocate putting the 60s Civil Rights business to a referendum? And then not be laughed off the stage as he tried to walk that back with more utter nonsense. Do you really want an answer?

You can thank those "liberals." You can thank them for their timidity and fear that the Right might make an issue of something. You can thank them for the idea that anything left of goddam St Ronnie consists of lunacy and is worthy of mockery and fear. You can thank them for the idea that any (D) will do, rather than putting a (D) up against the pretenders or when it actually happens voting for the pretender. That's not about a purity test, it is simply about what fits in any sort of Democratic Party that is something other than "not the Republicans."

I've just wasted a bunch of bytes preaching to the choir, the people who are the problem are so stuck in the lies that define their politics that this is pointless. I've pretty much quit promoting anything for that reason - they are the Democratic Party despite the rest of us and a wall is more persuadable.