China in 1911, Bulgaria in 1944, Egypt in 1952, Turkey in 1960, Greece in 1967, Libya in 1969, Portugal in 1974 and Liberia in 1980. USA in 2011.
As we wander away dazed from the plane crash that was the debt ceiling debacle and subsequent passage, it begins to look more and more like the aim of the tea party rabble is the first coup d’etat since the 2000 election Florida recount, when a skinny tie and penny loafer wearing mob of christian immigrant-hating, anti-tax patriots conspired with The Supremes to install George the Younger in the White House in an unruly and chaotic corruption of the democratic process more in keeping with a banana republic than the mighty United States of America. Now this week, drunk on the hopped up hard cider of a Pyrrhic victory, tea party cabals all over the country are busily tossing sticks in the spokes of government, hoping to force their will on a body politic that’s frankly sick of them but who can’t seem to figure out how to exorcise this particular infestation.
Witness the shutdown of the FAA, an entirely uncontroversial federal agency whose sleepy governance usually attracts about as much attention as a drag queen in The Castro. Now all of a sudden due to a tea party intoxicated on its own sustained belligerence, construction projects are shut down all across the country because they refuse to provide funding as long as it contains provisions supporting rural airports and allows workers to unionize. Senator Orin “Wait, what day is it…?” Hatch is using parliamentary sleight of hand to prevent a vote in the senate because he’s concerned about the labor provisions. In other words, he is advancing the union busting strategy at the heart of the republican agenda. Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Ooooooohklahoma insists on eliminating the subsidies that allow smaller airports to be able to function and, although his position is not even supported by committee member Kay Bailey Hutchinson – a republican colleague from Texas – he promises to tie it up to prevent it from coming to a vote, thus “saving” the $200,000,000 a year the subsidy costs. Never mind that this brilliant plan of systematic obstruction has this result;
The FAA has been forced to furlough nearly 4,000 employees and issue stop-work orders on more than 200 construction and other projects paid for with trust fund monies. Work on another $2.5 billion in airport construction grants has stopped because employees who handle the grants have been furloughed. Tens of thousands of private sector workers have been affected.
Sure sounds like a good way to get America working again and create jobs to me.
Attacking from another direction, republicans have attached multiple riders and amendments to a spending bill that funds the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior, favorite targets of oil soaked gas-bag politicians for years but now squarely in the cross hairs of opportunistic anti-environment, global warming deniers and other assorted industry shills riding the waist-coat tails of the tea party government demolition momentum before stunned and godsmacked democrats can organize a coherent plan to stop them, all in the name of reducing the size of government or helping the economy or some other transparent fairy tale meant to continue the mass hypnosis of discouraged and frightened American voters.
Opposition to these two agencies also plays right into the tea party mythology inherent in the republican zeitgeist; “Don’t Tread on Me”, you can’t tell me what to do, pardon me while I briefly get my hands dirty mending a fence or something. The only thing genuinely frontier-ish about it is the whiff of horse shit that accompanies it. Hell, every time George Bush went out back for a “Let’s do some chores” photo op, they had to point him in the direction of the fence he was supposed to be fixing; “Over there, Mr. Havecamp…”
Opposition to these two agencies also plays right into the tea party mythology inherent in the republican zeitgeist; “Don’t Tread on Me”, you can’t tell me what to do, pardon me while I briefly get my hands dirty mending a fence or something. The only thing genuinely frontier-ish about it is the whiff of horse shit that accompanies it. Hell, every time George Bush went out back for a “Let’s do some chores” photo op, they had to point him in the direction of the fence he was supposed to be fixing; “Over there, Mr. Havecamp…”
The only thing amusing about this whole ignominious spectacle is watching the republican presidential candidates trying to out-tea party each other during campaign stops.
“I think the Department of Education should be eliminated…”
“Oh yeah? Well I think the Department of Education and the Interior Department should be eliminated…so there!”
“Yeah, but I was against these things before you were…”
Hilarious. They all want to be in the big chair when the dust from this tedious exercise settles at Christmas time in 2012 so they’re falling all over themselves courting the one-trick ponies of the tea party but they should be careful what they wish for. In spite of the sea of pitchforks and torches massing at the far end of Pennsylvania Ave., most of the country has spent the last few days either scratching their heads or changing their party affiliation to Independent.
Finally, in the news yesterday, my boy Rick “If my wife and god say it’s OK” Perry appears to be very close to being hoisted on the deeply questionable petard of his “Day of Prayer” in Houston, organized as some kind of idiotic publicity stunt back in December when he was still groggy from the spiked egg-nog. Now as the date approaches, gays are getting married with impunity in New York and it looks as if the only people coming to this ridiculous extravaganza are going to be the kind of fringe elements of the American religious landscape that scare the shit out of people, not inspire them. Only 8,000 or so have sent an RSVP for a stadium that holds over 70,000 and among them are the worst kinds of knuckleheads, including Mike Bickle, (no relation to Travis Bickle), a missionary from Kansas City who thinks Oprah Winfrey is a sign of the apocalypse. ( I always thought missionaries went to places like New Guinea and ended up in a giant cook pot – what the hell is he doing in Kansas City? ) In any case, Rick’s peeps are furiously spinning this, saying it’s not really a political event; merely a generous show of spiritual and moral leadership and a cry out for god’s help. Yeah, like that makes me more comfortable about it, Rick.
No sir, when one of your key note speakers is of the opinion that god sent Hitler down to rid the planet of Jews, I think you have one crazy bastard too many. Now if you could just get Michelle Bachman to come too…
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