GOP Clowns

I am always amused and offended when I listen to members of the Family Values Party aka the Republican Party bashing same sex relationships, and Dems caught with their zippers down.  In reality the GOP men are the biggest offenders or the most careless and somehow get a pass.

In the Louisiana Governor’s race the leading Republican candidate is Senator David Vitter, whose 2007 involvement with a prostitute is being used against him by a fellow Republican.  I close my eyes and I see his wife standing next to him at the podium, wearing a mantle of pain and embarrassment and I shudder for her and the other wives who are willing or forced by circumstances to “stand by their man”

Moving on to the Presidential candidates.

The Donald’s lead is dropping in Iowa and New Hampshire. I guess primary voters are starting to listen to him with their brains instead of their Tea Party brainwashing.

However, even with the drop he is still the only candidate with double-digit support in Iowa. At 24% he is down 5% from last month.

In the latest WSJ/NBC/Marist Poll, he has 21% support, which puts him ahead of Carson by 5 points in Iowa and Fiorina in New Hampshire.

Bush, Rubio and Carson are at 11, and 10%.

The rest of the car? Just looking.

But while they are looking they are fighting with each other.

The Donald has been fighting with all the other clowns, but especially with Fiorina and Bush. His comments about her face would have caused him to lose massive support if anyone was listening. At this point, his anti-immigration, birther message is the central theme of his campaign and so he is getting the support those who agree with him.  His tax plan was widely panned by the pundits; the Far Right kept right on loving him.

Rand Paul is attacking Ted Cruz. The 2, who in the past supported each other are now enemies.

Cruz has alienated just about every Senator and Paul has criticized him in extremely personal terms. Cruz single handedly corralled the votes that shut the government down 2 years ago.  Now he can’t get a Senator to vote for him to be the dogcatcher.  His hopes of being the next president have turned to ashes, but his ability to be vicious remains intact.

Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have so far stopped short of reaching a scorched earth exchange. Stay tuned, it will happen soon.

Bush is feeling Rubio’s breath on his neck and is concerned that his protégé will overtake him in the polls and in the spotlight by casting himself as a fresh thinker vs. Bush whose father and brother already sat in the Oval Office.

Bush also has to contend with The Donald, who seems to genuinely dislike Jeb, referring to him as “low energy” which upset the Bush campaign and resulted in Trump amping up his attacks.

Christie and Paul have been going at it. In reality it makes no difference what those 2 think of each other. Both have single digits in the polls and will be picking up their marbles and going home very soon.

With this cast of characters and not a sane, electable member of the Grand Old Party in sight, the 2016 Presidential election is the Dems for the taking.  For the sake of our country and the world they had better not blow it.

MORE THAN PRICELESS

Mass murders in America

I wish I could say that these horrific acts started in 2008.  They did not.   The LA Times has a list going back to 1984.

For the past several years, we have been caught in a vicious cycle of members of society, using others for target practice.  We gnash our teeth, we cry, we listen to the President express his condolences on our behalf, the pundits pundit and then silence until the next time.

And there have been too many next times, there continues to be next times.

On January 8^th, 2011 Jared Lee Loughner shot Congresswoman Gabby Gifford in her head, killed 6 and wounded 10 others.  Okay, now we will get some laws passed to help to curtail this madness, I thought.  After all, she is a well-liked and respected member of Congress.  This ability to shoot and maim because in this country buying a gun is almost as easy as buying a quart of milk will start to end.

Nothing happened, the organizations representing the gun manufacturers successfully cowed our elected officials and while Gabby and the others who survived, struggled to recover, and the President and some members of Congress made speeches, and there was no legislation. Anyone could still go to a gun show and buy and walk away with a gun,

Between 1/8/11 and 12/13/12, there were 6 additional mass shootings, 42 killed and 71 injured.

And then on 12/14/2012, our worlds stopped at the news of a teacher and a student shot at an elementary school was at the end of that day 20 first graders, 6 staff members and 1 mother were dead. (The gunman committed suicide).

President Obama standing at the podium, addressing the nation for the 12^th time since becoming our President said, “Our hearts are broken today”.

I know my heart was broken, but in the middle of my grief, I thought now, now we would see some action. Now Congress will tell the NRA to get lost and pass what is known as “common sense gun legislation”.

We are still waiting.  Not only did Congress not pass any new legislation, they allowed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1993 to expire.

8 states have passed laws banning high capacity magazines.  State laws is not the answer, we need strong Federal laws.

We have to protect our citizens from those who would do us harm.

We have to make it difficult for anyone to purchase a firearm.

We have to stop allowing the gun manufacturers and their mouthpieces to convince us that in passing laws, we are curbing their 2^nd Amendment rights.  Under that premise, there should be no seat belt laws, no drug laws, no non smoking laws, no laws at all that lessens our ability to do what we want, when we want.

We, the American people do not elect Senators and Congressmen to kneel at the thrones of those who do us harm.  We elect them to preserve and protect this nation.

They have and continue to fail miserably in fulfilling their oath of office.

It is now our turn. I will be ending every blog that I write from today until laws are passed with this:

15 Trips to the Podium

Every time there is another mass shooting, another let’s call it what it is, murder of children or family or friends, we get upset, I know I do, and I say what can I do.

Today, a friend of mine wrote to me and said, "Enough is enough, BimPrincess. But how do you go about stopping these horrendous things from happening? It seems to me that young people all over the world are killing each other and for what? Our young are dying too soon...too soon!"

I had no answer.

Well tonight the President went to the podium for the 15th TIME SINCE HE WAS INAUGURATED, and had an answer.

He had a very simple one. If you have had enough of our spineless politicians bowing down to the NRA and their constituency, which is the gun manufacturers, not hunters and homeowners and so not passing laws to protect us, then the President said, when you vote, you should make sure that the person for whom you are voting is willing to pass laws to protect us, so that our Presidents do not continue to make that trip to the Press Room.

I will contact my Senators and my Congressman’s office and urge them to pass gun control legislation, which the President will sign. I urge you to do the same.

If no legislation is passed I will not vote for their re-election.

Now let’s do the math, if each of us share this message on our social media platform and each of our friends share it and call Washington DC in a few days, Washington DC (when they return from their vacation) would be inundated by phone calls, emails, etc.

I hope you will. For all those who have been murdered and for all those who are suffering every day the loss of their lost ones.

A Visit to the Clown Car

I was very pleased to read that Mitt Romney decided not to make a 3^rd run for the Presidency. Having Mr. 47% on the Clown Car would surely have tipped it over.

It seems however that he is keeping a very close eye on the inhabitants of the car.

Speaking at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, Mr. Romney said that he would never have predicted that the GOP front-runner would be The Donald and the Dem leader a Socialist. Well Mr. Romney, no one else would have expected either. He is certain that The Donald will not be the party’s nominee. (From his lips…)

Whether he has the backing of Mitt or not, Trump is still riding high in the polls. In the Suffolk Univ./USA Today poll he is 10% ahead of Carson and Fiorina and Jeb Bush is moving down.

The poll included a one-word description of Trump and Fiorina.  Based on the results, the GOP has a problem.

Ted Cruz continues to show how unqualified he is to be President.

He has successfully alienated his colleagues in the Senate to the point where only a few of them were willing to sign the letter he wrote to give to McConnell, telling him not to consider a spending bill that did not defund Planned Parenthood.

The spending bill passed, it did not remove funding for Planned Parenthood, and the government will not close down, especially since the President has been waiving his veto pen in the direction of any bill that defunded PP.

Rand Paul who is also running for President (with a 2% rating in the polls) said about Cruz: “Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names, which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the Senate, and as a consequence, he can’t get anything done legislatively,” Paul said in a Tuesday night interview with Fox News. “He is pretty much done for and stifled and it’s really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem.”

Cruz also has been saying that he has “..spent much of my adult life working in law enforcement”

Of course that statement caught the eye of a reporter (Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post) who after analyzing his career, wrote an article that shows he has worked in law enforcement for 6 of his 18 working years.  Why would he feel it necessary to exaggerate his credentials? I guess he did not realize that people are listening and the facts are in the public domain and so can be checked.

Jeb Bush continues to believe, even as his poll numbers remain in single digits that he will be the nominee, even after dropping from double digits.

With Rubio ahead of him in the polls, Jeb came out swinging in an interview, attacking Rubio for among other things missing votes in order to campaign. (Rubio has missed more votes than any other Senator this year.) Bush will need more than Rubio’s missed votes to overcome the deficit provided by his last name and his abysmal record as Governor of Florida.

Kasich, Huckabee, Jindal, Christie and Graham are still in the Car, sporting their 1 and 2% numbers from primary voters.

PS. Kevin McCarthy may have shot himself in the foot with his ‘Benghazi committee is succeeding…Clinton is dropping in the polls remark’. Democratic Senators have sent a letter to Boehner asking him to disband the committee. There were rumblings that the 50 or so Tea Party members would not accept him as the new Speaker, how do they feel now? Stay tuned the election will be held on October 8^th.