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Furloughed and flustered

When I was growing up it seems as if I always heard the word “furlough” associated with someone in the military. “So and so is on furlough from the Marine Corps.” Furlough seemed synonymous with “leave” or perhaps “liberty,” the latter term is used by the Navy to mean a short time away from one’s duty station. For instance, an overnight liberty might commence once work for that day has ceased. The sailor wouldn’t have to be back on board or to return to their base until 7 a.m.

It seems like only in recent years have I heard the word furlough associated with unpaid leave or time off. I bring the word up, as many Americans might suspect, because nearly 800,000 federal government employees were on furlough today because of a failure of Congress to pass a spending bill for the new fiscal year. I am one of those persons who is furloughed.

If you have followed the news in the United States you will know the stated reason for members of Congress failing to pass a concurrent resolution, or a bill to keep the government running financially in lieu of a budget. Why no budget? Oh, budgets are so last century.

The short reason for this fiscal and internecine legislating is that a minority, though significant enough in congressional rules, of Republicans say they want to “de-fund” the Affordable Health Care Act, or Obamacare,” which took effect today. This law ensures all Americans have access to health care and can be fined if they don’t have some sort of health insurance plan.

Obamacare has been a deceitfully unpopular law. The Republican party continue to remind everyone of that. However, those who approve of it plus those who didn’t think it went far enough make up a number of folks that is larger than those who just don’t like it. ¿Entiendes? The fact that the law has gained a nickname taken from that of the President, and who is the chief proponent of the bill, is another reason for the unpopularity of the law. Unwisely perhaps, President Obama has taken up with the nickname. This unpopularity underscores that the so-called “Tea Party” faction of the GOP probably dislike the president as much or more than the law itself. The deep hatred for Obama is probably as much rooted in the dislike of his complexion than for his party or ideas. I would think many of those who do not like Obama because of his race may more often than not deny their intense dislike for people of color. Over the years, after knowing many people who feel this way, I don’t believe such feelings are driven by overt racism as much as something from inside their own heads. Maybe it is just from a prejudice that is so deeply-seated that it is hard to pinpoint.

This legislative drama that has played out over the media, especially that of cable news stations, has become so convoluted that it is hard to remember the initial premises. A Republican House member will be asked something, realize he has no case, and then shifts blame. It’s typical tyke …

Mom: “Jimmy, did you break the vase on the table?”

Jimmy: “Well, yes. Well, no. It’s not really broken.”

Mom: “Jimmy, it is clearly broken. There is glass all over the floor.”

Jimmy: “Well Mom. But it wasn’t being used.”

Do I blame the Republicans? Yes, but primarily those minority of GOP members who are ultra-right members who are mostly of the “Tea Party” faction. But the Democrats involved are not exactly doing all they can do, being all they can be.

Furloughed. That’s right ladies and gentleman. My ass is furloughed and Congress is acting like a bunch of little kids trying get themselves extracted from a series of lies. At least I know that many members of Congress will be furloughed when the constituents get their next chance to speak from the voting box.

 

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Texas AG: My name is “Sue.” How do you do?

Fate would seem to guarantee that had Gregory Wayne Abbott been born a girl his parents would have named him Sue. Or so one would think.

As of September 2012 the Texas Attorney General “Greg” Abbott had run through more than $2.5 million of the taxpayers money from having filed 24 lawsuits against the United States. It also appears that Abbott hasn’t run out of things over which to sue the federal government.

An article today in the right-wing Washington Times says Abbott is once again threatening to sue Uncle Sam. This time Abbott plans to waste more scarce tax dollars in litigation should President Obama sign a United Nations Arms Trade Treaty.

Earlier today the UN General Assembly approved the treaty over 23 abstentions and “no” votes coming from North Korea, Iran and Syria. What great company Abbott is in with his animus toward the treaty!

The UN News Center, the official news site for the organization explains what the treaty will and will not do:

 “The treaty regulates all conventional arms within the following categories: battle tanks, armoured combat vehicles, large-calibre artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles and missile launchers, and small arms and light weapons.

 “According to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs, the treaty will not do any of the following: interfere with domestic arms commerce or the right to bear arms in Member States; ban the export of any type of weapon; harm States’ legitimate right to self-defence; or undermine national arms regulation standards already in place.”

Those darned Europeans and their “misspelled: words such as “armoured,” “calibre,” and “defence!” Why it would make a pure-D, red-blooded American want to go buy a big batch of Freedom Fries.

It’s that Second Amendment right of U.S. citizens which has the AG’s boxers in a bunch. Well, I’m not sure he wears boxers and I suppose men’s undies really shouldn’t be a topic here since Abbott is partially paralyzed and wheelchair-bound. That’s not to say Abbott is a great leader in rights for the disabled. He’s not. And even though he is of the Republican religion whose tenets say “thall shall not sue,” Abbott started off his career as a de facto serial plaintiff’s lawyer by suing the owner of the tree that fell on the future Texas AG as he was jogging by.

Abbott said in a letter to the president that the treaty fails to recognize an individual’s right to bear arms and to protect their families. He claims the treaty will be carried out by bureaucrats who are not accountable to U.S. citizens.

“I recognize that the ostensible purpose of the treaty is to combat the illegal international trade of weapons into third-world war zones,” Abbott writes. And writes. “The treaty could, however, draw law-abiding gun owners and gun store operators into a complex web of bureaucratic red tape created by a new department at the UN devoted to overseeing the treaty. For instance, the treaty appears to lay the groundwork for an international gun registry overseen by the bureaucrats at the UN.”

His legal rant to Obama is an example of the “black helicopter” style of paranoia that Abbott taps into for furthering his political career. How can one forget his threat during the 2012 elections to order any international election observer arrested who would dare show up at a Texas polling place?

Was it not that the AG was playing to his Tea Party base the litigant-averse Republicans would burn Mr. Abbott, and presumably his wheelchair, in effigy for the filing of frivolous lawsuits. In fact, a law signed in 2011 by fellow mad dog Republican Gov. Rick Perry seeks payment for court costs in suits in which the loser must pay.  Would that happen with all the frivolous suits filed by Greg Abbott?

Well, it is like that old saying that old sayers say all the time, at least Democratic ones: If hypocrisy was a crime, most of our Texas elected officials would be behind the cross bars!

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The congressional Little Train That Won’t scores one, ties one for the good guys

Surely the House Republicans — words that now rank up there in refuse as “dirty bastards” — are patting themselves on the back. You see, the voted to keep the government open until the end of the fiscal year in September. Finally, they do something, kind of, almost on the order of doing what it is they are supposed to do.

“This a bill to keep the government operating while we debate then how with sequestration,” said House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers, R-Ky. “This is not a sequestration bill.”

Meanwhile, the GOP brethren in the Senate, employed a filibuster to delay naming John Brennan as CIA director. The cause would, ostensibly, be one in need of a good discussion, only in some other forum than a vote for the nation’s top spook. Instead, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. and son of the goofy former Republican Rep. Ron Paul, decided he would hold up the CIA nomination over a statement made in a letter by Attorney General Eric Holder opining that drone strikes could be legally carried out on American citizens on American soil.

Granted, that former White House counter terrorism head Brennan had said early in the confirmation process that he could foresee extraordinary circumstances when domestic drone strikes could be carried out. I think such moves should be explained by government officials to the best of their abilities. I mean we’ve all seen movies where the Army or CIA or both come rolling in at just the right time to fight the bad guys. And we just love it! I don’t like the willy-nilly use of drones. I don’t think police should use them. I don’t think private citizens should have them. So it stands to reason I probably wouldn’t want them blasting to pieces some couple who where just making out on Lover’s Leap. Of course, without domestic drones where else would the folks who draw on their Second Amendment rights to own Tomahawk missiles mount the damn things!

Were it not for the likes of those who crave Fox News stardom like Paul and McCarthyite Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, a civil discussion on the use of drones in the U.S. of A. would be something worthwhile. But what you have is Paul and Cruz with dreams of the Oval Office and kicking Democrats in mid-air off Air Force One. Plus the fact that these senators are off track holding up confirmation of such an important office with an issue that really has nothing to do with the CIA except perhaps in a consulting role.

I remembering Republicans crying bloody murder when the Democrats blocked confirmation of some federal judges appointed to the bench by Gee Dubya Bush. “This has never happened in history!” was the GOP talking-point heading. But the Republicans do not think twice about holding up anything that can be construed as progress for the Democrats, the President or the United States.

It has been awhile since I read what it would take for the so-called “Nuclear Option,” — the nickname for disposing of the filibuster in Senate rules — to occur. I think maybe the time has come for that option. Just maybe the Republicans would think twice about going off the tracks to interrupt any type of move which might help better our country.

Then again, the Tea Party wing of the GOP wants “their country back.” They want their country “the way it used to be.” You know, where the blacks wouldn’t vote, much less get elected as the nation’s CEO.

 

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Sequestration might not be such a bad thing for me, was it not such a bad thing

You know, I would kind of like the looming Sequestration was it not that I am squarely in its sights.

The runaway train of automatic spending cuts seems hell-bent on crashing somewhere even though the president has called the top Republicans a week before the magic date of March 1. I am just guessing but if Congress and the Obama administration do anything at all, they will kick the can down the road a little more and we’ll have to go through all of this stressful crap over again. Yes, I’m worried. And my dog is worried. Actually, I have no dog. But if I did have one, it would be worried.

My part-time job is my money-maker at the moment. I must find someway to supplement it or do something else. Of course, any of that is down the path. If furloughs hit if or when Sequestration comes it will be incremental, like death by a thousand paper cuts.

So you have federal guys who will lose nearly a quarter of their annual salary. Some government contractors — especially ones working for the Pentagon — could see their jobs go “poof.” The Sequestration will cause even more economic chaos than one might imagine with the loss of jobs and the loss of spending dollars for both working folks and the unemployed. You could see even longer lines going through security at the airport. Maybe stacked up flights. We may lose some of the gains made at controlling the borders because la migra might see furloughs. The job loss could cause economic panic, a return to 2008 and the almost-Depression, through a lack of spending and shattered economic confidence.

That takes me back to the lead. The Republicans have it all planned out. The Sequestration will make the deep cuts the GOP wants and they are already blaming it on the Democrats and especially Obama. But not so fast GOP. The Republicans might be good at running out the clock. Yet Obama still has the public on his side. Once the damage is done from the massive spending cuts, the ticked-off will look for someone to blame. That blame has an easy target nicknamed the Grand Old Party.

It will be a windfall for Democrats, of whom I am one. It will also be a disaster for those who will be hurt by Sequestration, of whom I also am one. So there you go — you’ve got your classic win-lose. And such a victory doesn’t look very sweet right now.

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The joys of news

The TV networks were able to pull off both the shootout at the Big Bear Corral and the State of the Union. It appears the police got their man, the one who once stood in their own ranks. It will be interesting, to me at least, what comes out in the investigation surrounding the death of Christopher Dorner. That is provided it was Dorner whose remains are inside that burned out cabin. It likewise will be interesting what becomes of the initiatives introduced in the SOTU address.

As for me, I’m exhuasted. I didn’t sleep enough because I watched too much news coverage. What a bitch! Now I am nodding offfffffffffff. Sorry. I’fpppppppppddddddddd. Think I better eat then get some sleep.