Isn't It Grand, Isn't It Fine

If you want a good overview of the politics going on in the states right now, Rachel Maddow is in a groove. Last night's show highlighted the bizarre legislation in Michigan. Governor Snyder, who had vowed not to be a partisan,has raised taxes on the middle class and seniors, while cutting corporate taxes. His budget proposal would impoverish local and city governments. Not to worry, the Governor would be allowed to declare a "fiscal crisis" and appoint an overseer or corporation to run the beleaguered municipality. It's the most recent version of creating "Company Towns". The corporation or overseer then could remove from office any democratically elected officials. Sounds a little unconstitutional but that was in the old days.

To vent, I listen to Mike Malloy Truthseeker on progressive radio stations. The other night he raised an issue about Wisconsin that totally escaped me. Since his broadcast, leftwing blogs have picked it up. Scott Walker, the governor, talks to Jesus Christ every day in the morning and Walker says that Jesus tells him what to do--literally. Jesus Christ told him when he was a younger man to get a job at IBM even though he didn't want to. The same applies to his abandoning his last campaign for governor--Jesus told him to quit. The son of a Baptist minister Scott Walker revealed these sensitive moments to the Christian Businessmen's Group. He is only doing on the budget bill what Jesus wants. Interesting, however, that all the Christian denominations have come out against his budger repair bill. How does this square with what Jesus has been telling him?

This Saturday Wisconsin farmers will be riding their tractors and combines into Madison to protest the Budget Repair Bill. It's not union solidarity we're seeing here--well,some of it is. The farmers are pissed that the bill repeals a state-run insurance scheme that was created by progressive Republicans--remember them--during the insurance frauds of the early twentieth century. The plan pays for itself and has no budgetary consequences. Older farmers depend on this program. The other bone the farmers have is that their wives supplement the family income and keep the small farms going by being teachers or nurses. The budget repair bill would lead to greater unemployment.

The Republicans don't seem to think the Wisconsin recall laws are legal. Interesting. Efforts to mount recall campaigns are picking up steam and there are enough signatures to recall at least one Republican. Eight are targeted by this campaign.

Reversing Wisconsin's entire history, Republican legislators passed a law that regulates who can come in and out of the Capitol building and it warrants metal detactors and the usual security apparatus. To outsiders this would seem normal but it is a source of pride to people in the state that Wisconsin keeps its capitol open to everyone 24/7.

It turns out that the report of some $7 million in damages to the Capitol was bogus and put out by the Right to defame the demonstrators. Anyway the Painters' Union offered to repair any damage done for free.

Americans for Prosperity, the Koch-funded astroturf organization run by Abramoff's old lobbying buddy, held a bus tour of the state. Joe the Plumber, who is not named Joe nor is he a Plumber, asked the people of Wisconsin whether they sided with socialist America or the real America. The bus tour topped out at 600 in Madison, not a great showing for teabag nation.

Felon Rick Scott,Governor of Florida, managed to win a bipartisan court case that challenged his refusal to accept federal funds for the high-speed rail project from Tampa to Orlando, a project that has been on the drawing boards for a decade. Scott also managed to alienate the entire state with his budget address. As Rachel Maddow has pointed out twice so far, he's cutting $1.75 billion from public education and slashing property and corporate taxes by $1.68 billion, which will mean squat to the deficit. Demonstrators at the capitol are now far outdrawing the past teabag crowds by several thousand.

The first Iowa Republican events have started. Five would-be Presidential contenders spoke before a Faith Forum. New favorite Buddy Roemer, former Democratic senator and Governor from Louisiana, spoke about faith and didn't address his previous three marriages. But Newt was there railing against all the secular socialists in the Obama Administration. In a quiet moment, Newt talked to a Christian radio station and admitted that he did let his wallace flop out, as Captain Beefhart would say. Newt admitted he was working so hard to save the nation that he slipped and committed adultery. I'm sure Callista was pleased to hear she was an accident in his life. Unlike Scott Walker,Newt speaks with God and graciously God forgave him his adultery and rewarded him with a wonderful marriage. So if God forgave him, then there's no problem. As Newt said, if his past mattered, he would be irrelevant now but since the future is at stake then all bets are off.

Andrew Sullivan in his Daily Dish opined two days ago that the Republican Party no longer exists. He gave a detailed taxonomy of the fragments of the Republicans and the conservative movement and I agree with him. Proof of this is the sad spectacle of Dick Lugar now coming around to accepting the House budget proposal even though he had openly opposed them. Lugar is frightened of a teabag primary. Also only 33% of Maine Republicans now believe that Olympia Snowe should be renominated--this about a woman who won with over 70% of the vote last time. There really is no there there.

Dana Milbank said that John Boehner is using Richard Nixon's Mad Bomber strategy on the budget, using the insanity of the House proposals to muscle greater concessions from the Senate and the White House. I prefer the incompetence argument and that he has no control over the House Republicans. Hapless Harry Reid is miffed that he thought he had a budget deal with the Republicans only to see Mitch McConnell walk away. The Democrats today are trying to force a vote on the House budget proposal to get sitting Republicans to go on record for cuts to the most basic of programs.

Rep. Peter King is holding his I Hate Islam hearings on the House side. The irony of this is that when Ronald Reagan was going to speak at the Nassau Coliseum in new York the Secret Service put King on a watch list because of his fervent support of the IRA, who were then at their bombing best. King is trying to demonstrate that the Muslim community is not cooperating with law enforcement authorities. Unfortunately for him, Duke has done a study and the FBI confirms that over half the terrorists suspects are picked up on tips from the Muslim community. However, this doesn't deter anyone. One witness tried to implicate Rep. Ellison, the only Muslim in the House, and the Democratic Party in aiding terrorism.

The off shoot of this Islamophobia is the resurgent attacks on Sikhs, who have nothing to do with Islam. After 9-11, Sikhs here in Virginia and in Texas were killed as a reaction to the bombings. Now this has started up again in southern California. At Divinity School, one of the fun things was to see Sikhs unravel their turbans and after cleaning,hang them down five flight of stairs.

With the war continuing in Libya, Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox News as "a friend" to announce that if he were President he would have created a No-Fly Zone last night. This is the type of rhetoric which got us into boatloads of trouble the last administration. As Secretary of Defense Gates pointed out, creating a No-Fly Zone entails preliminary bombing and disabling Libya's air force--which in former days was considered an act of war.

While President Obama continues calls for Muammar Qaddafhi to step down,Michael Scheuer, whose Bin Laden book I liked, reverted to his old obnoxious self and called Obama a "racist". He said that Obama was like "Kipling and Woodrow Wilson" in calling for democratic cghange in Libya. Scheuer said that Qaddafhi represented "zero" threat to the stability of the region. But only days before in a Washington Post op-ed he said that the unrest in the Arab world benefited Al Qaeda.

I don't know why organizations such as Planned Parenthood and NPR fall for the stunts of conservopunk Jim O'Keefe. NPR's chairperson resigned today after a video surfaced that their major fund-raising believed that the teabaggers were racist and maybe NPR was better off without federal funding.

President Obama's decision on Gitmo was terrible, even though understandable. Under the last Defense Bill, Democrats and Republicans prohibited Gitmo detainees from being tried in civil courts or if innocent being transferred to another country. Obama's decision to reinstate the flawed military commission process is being challenged by House Republicans, who want to eliminate the review process being proposed. What this all this means is that the United States has abandoned its own history and now accepts holding people indefinitely without trial. At issue are 45 cases, which could not be tried because we tortured the detainees and their testimony would not be admissable in a court of law.

But have good cheer, Canadian professors are teaching Omar Kadr at Gitmo so he won't go home hating our guts. They have developed a home schooling program for the child soldier who has been languishing there all these many years.

Meanwhile Bradley Manning still sleeps naked. Having been in solitary for the last seven months and only charged--some 59 of them--last week, Manning has been subjected to sleep deprivation and having to stand at attention naked at the morning roll calls. I bet money on the fact that he did not leak the diplomatic posts to Wikileaks. He did leak the footage of our armed forces killing civilians and reporters with gunships as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan files. Basically, his treatment is to send us and everyone in the military a lesson. But it might have been nice if the military had followed some rudimentary legal guidelines.

Oh by the way, Michelle Bachmann will decided whether she's going to run for President in June. Sarah Palin is going on a Faith tour and is scheduled to miss the first real Republican debate at the Reagan Center. The Donald really does have people in Iowa scouting out the feasibility of a Presidential run. While the faith gang was in Iowa, Ron Paul was running from town to town. This suggests that the Love Revolution might be back.

Client Number 9--Eliot Spitzer--is rumored to be exploring a run for the Mayor of New York.