Time to Stand Up to Undermining Political Pundits

I see King of the Craven Assholes, Cenk Uygar – he who, until recently, used to be a neocon – is leading the charge on DailyKos in the “Obama Caved” stakes regarding the budget.
The punditry of the Left has left me agog this week, but as it’s late where I am, I’m saving some brief ire tonight to fire firmly in the direction of Cenk’s more than ample ass.
His idiocy about Obama failing in the budget negotiations knows no bounds, and – as per usual – he has his sheeple following blindly, all polishing up their gratuitous criticism, which is de rigueur for anyone wanting admission to the Obama-Haters-and-Baiters Club, currently occupied by a curious conglomeration of Teabaggers and a certain species of so-called Progressives.
Yes, let’s blame Obama, shall we? Because we all know he could have done so much better at standing up to the Speaker of the House. I mean, look at everytime either of them appeared before the camera – the President, cool, collected and looking a bit weary and irritable in the way a perturbed parent does when presented with a spoiled brat to control. Then there was Mr Speaker, sweating and all aglow in orange preoccupation.
Of course, Cenk, we all know that the President should have just told Boehner and co to kiss his black ass (thus satisfying the desire of your ilk for the President to act in the ghetto manner you so knowing ascribe to your idea of his race’s behaviour) and walked from the room. The government would have shut down. People wouldn’t have received their Social Security checks or their disability or unemployment payments, Federal workers wouldn’t have been paid (many were even told there would be no back pay this time), the troops in harm’s way would be expected to fight for free.
And who knows how long this would have gone on … but hey! Ne’mind, we’d just have blamed Obama for that too. What was the alternative? Give in and defund the EPA and Planned Parenthood, for lesser cuts? At least the President held strong from the beginning in vouchsafing these two federally funded institutions, prime targets in the culture war initiated by the Republicans. Or doesn’t that matter to Cenk and his cronies? I’m beginning to wonder, especially since at least two high-profiled Progressive media bots have even likened rape to “hooey.”
Every week, there’s something new which some 24/7 cable big mouth has to use as a stick with which to beat this President about something else. As if they know better than the man at the helm. Cenk’s got room to talk. He so totally didn’t understand the President’s motives behind his dealings with the Egyptian revolution that Chuck Todd was despatched to his program to calm him down and stop him from embarrassing himself, in desperately trying to convince two guests that Obama meant the opposite to what he’d actually said in a speech.
Really, Cenk, do yourself a favour and go someplace else. Your Obama hatred is so palpable that people are seriously in danger of mistaking it for the wrong kind of prejudice.
And if you’re seeking to case blame and aspersion for this budget fiasco, cop this:-
Try blaming the Democrats first, because this is the 2011 budget which should have been passed last September, as you well know, when there was both a Democratic majority in the House and a bigger one in the Senate. But the fools on the Hill were all too concerned with hitting the campaign trail and trying to distance themselves from the policies they’d passed and on which they’d allowed, in their timidity and detachment, to be railroaded and spun pejoratively by the Teabaggers, that they seriously didn’t have time to pass this budget and punted.
And if that’s not enough for you, try blaming the voters; because it’s they who gave us a Houseful of Teabagging neophytes who’ve turned themselves into the proverbial tail that’s wagging a sniveling dog and a majority of only four Democratic Senators in the upper house, one of whom is Joe Manchin.
And better yet, Cenk, blame all your so-called Progressive friends, you know, the ones who listen to your rantings and whine daily about how much they hate Obama, how he’s done nothing and achieved even less, or – worse – how he’s no different to Bush. And how they took the advice of your friend and colleague Ed Schultz, who, on several occasions, implored the sheeple not to vote in order to teach Obama and the Democrats a lesson.
Yes, Cenk, you and all your cohorts should be made to remember those simple facts whenever you see Eric Cantor’s smirking face on camera.
Or then again, maybe you’re just a ratfucker who needs exposing, himself.

A Well-Informed Electorate Elects a Responsible Government? Ask Eric Cantor

“Reckless Eric” Cantor is a marvel to behold.

As a Congress, consisting of Tea Partying ignorati and well-heeled, corporately-funded and criminally-intentioned spivs on one side and spineless and cowering Mr Pooters crying out for nursemaids on the other, dithers and dathers about finalising a government budget, our Eric steps manfully into the fray to annouce that, should the Senate not decide to come to the table and submit a budget proposal for consideration before the approaching deadline of April 6th, then the budget passed by the House – the one which cuts Federal funding for such dangerous organisations as Planned Parenthood and NPR – will automatically become the law of the land, fiscally.

Our Eric says that with certainty. He says it, not only with certainty, but with clarity before the nation’s news media, who scribble away furiously on their notepads and raise nary a query about his pronouncement.

Well, our Eric is wrong. And with that arrogantly simple-minded statement, he proves patently that he’s unfit for the office of Congressman from the 7th District of the Commonwealth of Virginia, ne’mind Majority Leader for the House of Representatives.

Somewhere, in some nether world, James Madison, who shares a common Virginian heritage with Eric and me, is screaming from beyond the grave. If you cup your ear, you can probably hear him.

What an insult to the author of the Constitution, that not only a Congressman, but also a leading politician from Madison’s home state, should be so ignorant of Congressional and Constitutional procedure!

I’m a product of the public school system in the Commonwealth. Way back in the dark ages, when Richard Nixon was President and VietNam was still in swing, as a high school junior and as part of my curriculum, I had to take a year-long civics course, simply entitled “Government.” Every high school junior and senior in the Commonwealth had to take the course, and we all had a red and blue textbook, with the title “U S Government” emblazoned in white across the front.

Up in Fauquier County, my teacher was a retired Army officer and avowed libertarian from an old Virginia family, named Col Slater V Marshall. We spent the entire first semester, studying the Constitution and the government, its three branches and their functions and how they related and policed one another in the system of checks and balances. We learned about elections. On Fridays, we discussed events current in the news and debated the hot topics of the day. When we’d finished an exhaustive study of our own government, at some point in the school year, we learned how a parliamentary democracy works, and we also studied how the then-Soviet Union was set up to govern.

One of the things we learned, whilst studying our own government, is how a bill becomes a law. As part of our exam process, we had to reiterate, in essay form, the passage of a bill from the moment it was introduced to the moment it became law.

Eric Cantor attended one of the most exclusive private boys’ schools in the Commonwealth. I can only imagine that they didn’t do a very good job of teaching civics there; and if they didn’t, I’m astounded that he didn’t pick this sort of information up during his undergraduate tenure at George Washington University or later in his law studies at William and Mary.

Now I’m not the biggest fan of Eric’s, but I give him credit where credit is due, for being able to be consistently re-elected to what is largely a very rural constituency. And I have to be honest. Virginians are Virginians. I’m as proud of Eric being Majority Leader of a party I don’t support as I’m as proud of Norfolk-born-and-bred Ed Schultz being a predominant political voice of the Left in the media. But anyone of my generation, and that includes Ed, would have choked chewing their cabbage to hear Eric pronounce that if the Senate didn’t act on presenting their version of the budget, then the House’s version becomes law. Without passing through the Senate. And I have to wonder how many people of subsequent generations, including those populating the political news media now, realised the enormous faux pas the House Majority Leader made in asserting that.

Because it’s simply not done.

Put simply, fiscal legislation begins in the House, is approved by the Senate (or is diddled with, sent back to the House to be passed) and then sent to the President for his signature or his veto. In asserting that the House rules supreme and supersedes the Senate, Eric’s either patently ignorant or pandering patently.

Which one?

I think the latter, and I think it’s just another in a long line of scare tactics which have become normal behaviour for the Republican Party. The fact that Reckless Eric blatantly made this statement on the record and in front of the nation’s cameras, and the fact that the news media covering the event, blithely recorded it and made no attempt to refute (or, indeed, “refudiate”) the assertion, is simply indicative of the collective ignorance pervading the country at the moment. In fact, the only media personality who actually picked up on Eric’s misguided assumption was Lawrence O’Donnell, who skewered Eric for his ignorance on last night’s The Last Word.



I don’t presume to know why none of the newshounds shadowing Eric didn’t pick up on his error. Maybe they were ignorant of the procedure, themselves. If that’s the case, they have precious little business covering events on Capitol Hill. Or maybe they knew and allowed this to be broadcast, in hopes that the informed viewing public would pick up on the discrepancy and howl in indignation at what was tantamount to a gross error in legislative procedure made by a senior member of the House majority party, which is probably assuming too much and giving too much credit to too many members of the viewing public, themselves.

More than likely, it’s probably a case of mutual and cynical pandering on the part of both Eric and the press. As we say in Virginia, Eric’s hankering for a full-on government shutdown. He’s so thirsty for it, he can barely resist licking his lips. He knows this isn’t 1994 – although if the GOP get absolute control of the government, as they have in some of the Midwestern states, it will be worse than Orwell’s 1984 – and he knows that, with the aid of a corrupt and compliant corporate media representing both the Right and the Left, blame for any government shutdown will be laid firmly at the President’s feet.

If that be the case, that’s not just shameful, it’s shameless and immoral. Not only does it show the disrespect evident for the President by various elected officials, it also shows the same on behalf of the media, who used to be trusted, reliably, to inform the public – and even worse, it shows the low regard with which elected officials and the media regard the general public.

Whose fault is that?

Well, it was yet another Virginian, the author of the Declaration of Independence, himself, who confidently asserted that a well-informed electorate can be trusted to chose a responsible government.

How long, then, is that piece of string?

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