Who Really Stands Behind Our Troops?

Who Really Stands Behind Our Troops?

Republicans have always been very good at delivering the pro-troops message – they're reliably tough on national security threats from foreign lands. Building up and maintaining the strongest possible military has been a key issue that has moved millions of Americans to put their trust in Republican congressional and presidential leadership over the years. But are the Republicans really the party of a strong U.S. Military?

Under the Kennedy administration, spending for the military went UP, a marked increase from the previous TWO administrations of Truman and Eisenhower. After Kennedy was succeeded by the Republican Nixon and Ford administrations, military spending actually WENT DOWN. Following Republican Ronald Reagan's eight year presidency, both the H.W Bush and Clinton administrations saw a DECREASE in military spending.

And who, in recent history spent the MOST on the U.S. Military? That would be none other than the Democrat, Barack Obama. Yes, you read that correctly. The “soft on crime and the military Democrat” Barack Obama increased military spending drastically. Obama’s budget proposal ignored caps on military spending set by the 2011 Budget Control Act. He added $38 billion to the $523 billion restriction set by the Act.

It would seem that if you want increased spending on the troops, it's best to have a democratic administration in Washington.

Source: David Stockman and the New York Times

I Think I Know Who Wrote that Infamous Times Op-Ed

The biggest guessing game in Washington and New York today is not how many years the collective members of the corrupt Trump administration may end up with when the dust of corruption investigations all settle, but rather who is the author of the explosive New York Times Op-Ed that appeared in today's paper, setting politico mouths wagging and ordinary folks running for their dictionaries.

In the short wake of news that Watergate hero journalist, Bob Woodward was about to unleash the most devastating book to hit the Trump administration since...ever...the New York Times piece smacked the White House with all the strength of a very well calculated tsunami, sending dozens of WH staffers and hangers-on scrambling to get their personally written denials into the president's hands before the Accuser-in-Chief could start tweating his own dark suspicions.

I've been thinking a lot about the possible  identity of this sordid White House whodunnit and I've come up with a name. It may not turn out to be the right name, but I think, all things considered, it's a pretty fair reach.

The last few hours have presented any number of possible culprits, from Vice President Mike Pence (too obvious) to WH lawyer Don McGhan (he's been in the headlines enough, without this) to Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates (too obvious) to WH Chief of Staff John Kelly (way too obvious). The list goes on, up, down, sideways and through a confusing prism of possibility.

But one name is glaringly absent from the speculation and I think it may just be the one that, finally, we'll all come to view as most obvious of all: WH chief advisor, Kellyanne Conway.

Yes, THAT Kellyanne Conway, the loyal Republican ragamuffin who has been by Trump's side since the very beginning, the same Kellyanne who had as much to do as anyone, with pulling off the biggest election day upset since Truman crushed Dewey.

THAT Kellyanne Conway.

I can hear the moans of disturbed shock and vicious head snapping. NO WAY IN THIS WORLD. Not loyal-to-a-repulsive measure Kellyanne Conway. But, as WH Press Secretary Sarah would say, "Look..."

Kellyanne Conway knows the ins and outs of White House politics better than anyone within miles of the Beltway. She's been around forever, playing a number of key roles for a variety of Republican politicians. Her success record is enviable. And of course, there's that little crowning achievement of the 2016 election. She's seen it all, she knows it all, and she's smart enough to know where it's all going. Additionally, she's just savvy enough to know the speech patterns of the big WH players, so that certain choice words (which she does not use) like "lodestar", (which Mike Pence DOES use) are sprinkled throughout of the piece to push off those nasty journalists and WH insiders who so desperately want to out the author.

Kellyanne was interviewed on Fox about the Times piece yesterday, and she was admirably coy, which is a fair description of her most valued talent. Know the Spin, enjoy the seat on the Throne. Kellyanne would just laugh away any accusation that she was the author of this "treasonous piece," as Trump quickly called it, but the eyes reveal everything and if you look at her countenance through the Fox appearance you might pick up a few clues. For one thing, she never denies authorship.

Then, there's the matter of Kellyanne's husband, George. George Conway, a conservative Washington Lawyer, has made a peculiar mark for himself by being one of Trump's fiercest agonists, and he capped off his place in the peanut gallery Pantheon by tweating about the Times piece moments after it was announced. Talk about putting the shiv in the rotting corpse. There has been a lot of discussion about the strange dynamic behind this Washington Power Couple and it is not altogether unreasonable to think that George is beginning to have some influence over his more famous partner.

Lastly, if you look closely at the Times piece you may find, as I did, that there is a certain gentle, even elegant form to the prose. It's impassioned, well considered, and cogently presented. It's the kind of piece someone who has been around for a very long time--someone who knows what they're talking about--might commit to paper.

Someone like Kellyanne Conway.

Deficit Spending and the Pols Who Just Can't Decide

Deficit Spending and the Pols Who Just Can't Decide


Republicans love to hold themselves out to the American voter as the party of fiscal responsibility. Their talking points constantly attack “reckless” Democrats who  live to spend, spend, spend (mostly, they claim, on social programs like Medicare--a huge spending program which Republicans previously opposed but now favor, since their constituencies now support it). 


Ask the man or woman on the street which party has their best financial interests in mind and you will probably always hear that its the Republicans who are the more responsible, more economically responsible party. After all, Republicans are “conservatives” and there's nothing more conservative than being cautious with money.

Unfortunately, history does not bear out that Republicans and Conservatives are fiscally responsible. In fact, over time, the Republicans have shown a penchant for being wildly Unconservative when it comes to public spending. Apparently, nothing makes a politician more liberal with money than having sway over someone else's finances. Especially if there's an R after their name.

Let's get something right on the table. No bias in these pages, no Fake News, or fudged stats. Barack Obama holds the prize (prior to the Trump administration) for being the president who oversaw the biggest budget deficits in U.S. History. 6.69 trillion in deficit spending marked the eight years of the Obama presidency. 

But, wait. Republicans hold second, third and fourth place in the Deficit Spending Hall of Infamy. Second place goes to George W. Bush at 3.29 trillion over two terms, Ronald Reagen at 1.412 trillion, over two terms, and finally, George H.W. Bush at 1.03 trillion in his single term as president. 

Remember, Congress has to vote to approve the budget of the United States and an awful lot of “conservative” Republicans seem to have no problem voting for these budget-busting budgets.

When Democrat, Bill Clinton inherited the giant deficits of his predecessor, George Bush, he quickly turned things around and left office with a budget SURPLUS.

Source: Investopedia, Mary Hall.

Values from Your Friendly Politician

Republicans have been saying they are the party of “family values” for so long that many Americans believe this is true. Because they espouse “family” based valued (but, often don't follow them in their own private lives) Republicans are thought to be more respectful of the family unit, more willing to go that extra mile to support legislation intended to help the American family succeed and prosper. 

Conversely, many voters consider the Democrats to be a threat to the institution of the family. After all, Republicans are happy to have voters believe that Democrats are the party of free-love, crazy communes and all sorts of questionable “alternate lifestyles.” If voters value their American family lifestyle, they'd better vote Republican. 

Or, maybe not.

Rather than being the template for true “family values,” a disturbingly large number of Republicans have been accused of being serial cheaters and involved in any number of tawdry political and romantic scandals (Roy Moore, anyone?) The Right Wing loves to hold up Bill Clinton as the poster boy for sexual scandal but it's time to remember that, in addition to the scores of Republican Senators and Representatives who have been driven from office by sexual and financial scandals over the past fifty years, the current occupant of the White House has been accused by no less than 13 (!) women of sexual assault. And yes, Donald Trump is a very vocal proponent of Republican family values.

Law and Order and the Great American Farce

The Republican Party has a long history of being the political institution that Americans turn to when crime rates are soaring and fear of lawlessness hangs near the top of voter concerns. Republicans have been considered the “law and order” party since the days of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy." in the late 1960s. Republicans are perceived to be reliably strong, committed administrative crime fighters who can effectively keep America safe from all real – and imagined – threats.

Largely, this crime fighting messaging has been successful because poll after poll has shown that Americans believe the Republican Party is much stronger on crime than the Democrats.

But is this true? Like so many of the assumptions Americans make about the Republicans, it is, in statistical fact, dead wrong. (see: Homicide Rate. Crime in the United States, Uniform Crime Reports, FBI) Over the last fifty plus years, the rate of homicide has been HIGHER under 28 years of Republican administrations—the “law and order” folks -- than it has been under the Democrats -- a full 1.2 percent higher. For every one hundred thousand Americans, there have been 7.9 homicides under Republicans and 6.7 under Democrats. 

The crime wave that swept across America during the seventies and eighties was presided over by several Republican presidents. Richard Nixon came to office, promising to be “the law and order president” but his administration saw a rapid increase in crime that peaked at the end of his years in the White House. When Nixon left office in disgrace, after having presided over perhaps the most corrupt administration in history, at that point, the crime rate was at an all-time high, 9.8 per 100,000 Americans, in 1974.

That crime rate soared until the nineties when Bill Clinton, a Democrat, became president. At the end of Clinton's last year in office, crime had fallen a full 42 per cent.

And who was the greatest crime fighting president of the past fifty years? That would be Barack Obama, under whose administration, crime fell to its lowest levels on record.

Why then, do Americans believe the lie that Republicans always protect them and Democrats always put them at risk? In a word or two, the answer is messaging. The Republicans have always expressed a solid and unified message when it comes to crime and criminals, and they are relentless in voicing that hard-as-nails, tough-on-crime image, even if it's just a fictional concoction of K Street public relations firms. It's the message Americans want to hear and focus groups don't lie, right? The Democrats have always tended to take a back seat when it came to the crime issue and they've pretty much allowed the Republicans to bluster their way through the Congress and the Presidency with phony, hyped-up (mostly impossible-to-deliver) promises about fighting various "wars" on crime.

The crime statistics seem to prove one thing: If you want to see your State and City crime numbers go down, don't elect Republicans to fight the battle. They're just not very good at it.

Lies Republicans Tell America

I am not a Democrat.

I am not a Republican.

I am an American.

In this age of tribalism and strut-thumping division, that sentiment sounds downright corny.

Well, here's the truth. I have never known a time when America was not divided—by race, ethnicity, class, educational opportunity and political belief. But this country has never been as divided as it is now. Not close.

The political, historical, and social fabric of our nation is ripping at the seams, our collective emotions have become raw and unhinged. A dizzying chasm of separation has replaced strived-for unity as the product of our American experiment. Which is saying a lot, when you consider that the last fifty years have included such periods as the Civil Rights Movement, the Woman's Movement, and the War in Vietnam.

We have witnessed the sad transformation of our country, over these years. It's easy to see the harm that corrosive, divisive politics has brought to the doorsteps of every American, “the little guy,” the “forgotten American” for whom Donald Trump's populist campaign pretended to hold out so much promise.

We have seen the Trump promises wither with pressing political expediency, as one after another of those commitments to the “forgotten Americans” have been tossed aside for more pressing concerns – those concerns that benefited the donors and corporations whose obscene financial contributions (thank you, “Citizens United”) have shaped the tawdry political landscape of this nation.

In the next few months, this blog is going to change a bit. On days when there isn't breaking news (when is that?) we will be focusing on the various lies that Republicans tell America. 

I can already hear the aggravated responses from Republican politicians and supporters: the Democrats lie, too!

Of course, the Democratic Party has not always held a higher ethical ground. The southern Democrats stood for a particularly noxious form of racism in the first half of the last century. They engineered, then perpetuated an ill-thought out and questionably motivated campaign of carnage in Southeast Asia – a war whose consequences continue to haunt and shape the daily national conversation. I am certainly not claiming that the Republican Party holds the patent on illicit sex scandals or criminal outrages.

But Democratic malfeasance is not the subject of these blog posts or of the book that will follow. The situation that America finds itself in is unprecedented in the three hundred year history of the nation. It is no exaggeration to say that while America sits at the precipice of a very dangerous moment in history, it is the Republicans who are shaping – perhaps, inexorably – the nation's future.

That seems as good a time as any to focus on the untruths, mistruths, fabrications, and flat-out falsehoods that have occupied such a prominent place in Republican thought. If you're interested, the next few weeks will be filled with such lies – the lies Republicans tell America...

This is how it begins

Seventy years ago, on quiet streets throughout Germany, SA paramilitary troops and ordinary German civilians went on a rampage, throwing bricks and stones through the windows of Jewish businesses and synagogues across the nation and in Austria and beyond. On what has become known as Kristallnacht, Jews were pulled out of their places of business and worship and executed by roving gangs of mad, hate-fueled Germans, who had been fed a continuous diet of propaganda and "alternative facts" by their bloodthirsty leaders. In all, over 7000 Jewish businesses were destroyed and thousands of German, Austrian and Sudetenland citizens were transported to concentration camps.

Most Germans did not respond to this carnage because it had been committed against "others," the Jews, whom Germans and Austrians had been assured, were not really Germans and Austrians at all, but rather, "foreigners" who had invaded their pure, Aryan homelands. Most Germans did not respond because, after all, the leaders who were running things, had to know what they were doing; these policies had to be good for the Nation.

Which brings us to the South West border of the United States, June, 2018. 

In a sudden departure from policy that has been carried out by Republican and Democratic administrations for decades, President Trump ordered that all children of immigrants, seeking to enter the U.S. at "illegal" entry points, be separated from their parents and housed in makeshift detention centers. The parents are sent in one direction, to face the deportation folks, while the children are sent in another direction to face an uncertain, horrifying journey through a system that is not prepared to handle their needs, physical or psychological. The Press and members of Congress are not allowed to tour the facilities, and only carefully censored pictures (showing strapping, teenage boys) are disseminated. The hundreds and hundreds of infants and adolescents are hidden from view. A few pictures of the cages in which these frightened children are held do seep out to the newspapers and news broadcasts.

And once again, we look at the situation and wonder, Does this really have anything to do with us?

The president and his Attorney General and his Homeland Security rep inform us that this is all being done for the greater good. Just trust them because if they're doing this, it has to be for a good reason.

Does that include the greater good for the thousands of children who are being permanently damaged by this insane and callous policy? Do we care?

The Republicans are starting to get antsy about all of this. Not because the prospect of thousands of psychologically beaten children makes them uncomfortable but because many of their constituents are beginning to question where this country is going. "Is this really who we are as Americans?" is a familiar refrain being heard these days. I guess it is, because these policies are being carried out in our very own names. 

You know things are getting scary when the number of Republicans polled who support this policy is ONLY 58%, according to Gallup. Usually the Republican "base" is much more enthusiastic about Trump's misguided policies.

Maybe its time to look at what's happening down in Texas, by the border, and wonder if this is not coming close to our very own Kristallnacht? Is this how it all begins in the nation where Sinclair Lewis once posited, "It Can't Happen Here?"