We need to say goodbye to the Democratic Party

I have been a Democrat all my life; yes, even as a very young boy I remember my father talking about the Democrats and FDR, his New Deal. My dad came from a well-off family in the South, a family at one time I am almost sure had slaves. But the South was Democratic then, all the way, and it was just the right thing to be left leaning. That's changed in the last few years and the Republicans have taken over the South and turned the people there into a conservative stronghold that had a major effect on the 2016 Democratic Primary, particularly for Bernie Sanders.

Did you know Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Democratic Socialist?

But the Democrats today hardly resemble those of FDR's era; in fact you can't even draw a close parallel these days between what they call the Party and what the Dems started out to be. FDR wasn't a Party starter for Democrats, Andrew Jackson has that honor, but Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the epitome of the Democratic Party, having served four terms in office until his death in 1945. This man set the tone for what the term liberal meant, and followed through with actions that give him a place in history as one of the greatest Presidents of all time.

Here are snippets from the democratic Platform of 1936, three years into FDR's presidency...

• Protection of the family and the home.
• Establishment of a democracy of opportunity for all the people
• Aid to those overtaken by disaster
• Safeguard the thrift of our citizens by restraining those who would gamble with other peoples savings
• Early formation of the Social Security concept
• Expansion of consumer electricity through creation of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)
• Making homes available to people of meagre incomes 
• Just treatment of war veterans and their dependents

There are other issues like taking farmers off the road to ruin, worker's pay was increased and hours shortened, actually saved banks and paved the way for a better financial foundation, gave youth the opportunity to stay in school and get an education, which 12 years of Republican neglect had closed, and help for the unemployed. There's more and you can read the complete 1936 Democratic Party Platform here. I want to point out that in every case but one, above, the programs are for the average person, not corporations or the wealthy.

FDR, although born into a wealthy New York family, was a president of the people and his programs substantiated this, but considering the 1929 stock-market crash, some feel he could have paid more attention to a struggling economy; The Great depression lasted until 1939. It is worth noting that the Dow Jones industrial average didn't return to its summer 1929 high until 1954. But as a catalyst, Roosevelt combined a stimulus project with his goals for social equity and created the Rural Electrification Administration to wire the countryside. Perhaps FDR could have used Janet Yellen.

And why take you back all these years down the reminiscing trail to a time some 84 years ago when many of you weren't born or were too young to care what politics was all about? Well, dang it, to illustrate the stark differences in that period, that I might remind you was closer in time to that of the Founding Fathers of this country, that FDR based a lot of his concepts on. As an example, when it comes to corporations...

"To say that the founding fathers supported corporations is very absurd. Its quite the opposite in fact. Corporations like the East India Trading Company were despised by the founding fathers and they were just one reason why they chose to revolt against England. Corporations represented the moneyed interests much like they do today and they often wielded political power, sometimes to the point of governing a colony all by themselves like the Massachusetts Bay Company did."

We've come a long way from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the journey has ended in a disjointed, confused, and divided Democratic Party that seems not to know how to repair itself. Well, it is my opinion that the Democratic Party is irreparable, therefore, dump it and start over. Progressives, in number, passed liberals a few years ago and seems to be the real new face of the Party. It appears that hard party liners like the Clintons, even Obama, do not want to accept this fact and continue to stick to ideology that just doesn't work anymore with a new generation.

It is a fact that Democrats lost more than 1,030 seats in state legislatures, governor's mansions and Congress during Barack Obama's presidency. It can't all be blamed on the man because it was Debbie Wasserman Schultz who neglected the Party as DNC head for five years, until she was recently fired, and these losses finally added up to a catastrophe for Democrats. But it is still hard to understand how the upper echelons of the Party could sit by and watch over 1,000 of their legislative and governor's seats just evaporate. To me, this is the ultimate of political incompetence.

Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, ran for President as a Democrat in 2016, but lost in the Primary due to the killing machine of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chair. There were many of us who were supporters of the Bern, and many of us believe today that, until he is given the reins of the Democratic Party, it will remain in its quagmire. Bernie was asked by New York Times Magazine what the Party stands for. His response...

"You’re asking a good question, and I can’t give you a definitive answer. Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo. They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats."

The article indicates that his answer is partially for effect, since he does have his own liberal values for what he thinks the left should stand for. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren joins Sanders in a call for revamping the Party, but one still wonders why she didn't swallow what establishment pride she had during the Primary and throw her backing behind the Bern. It could have turned everything around, but she didn't and it didn't. And the 2018 midterms will only be a fight against the Trump administration and for congressional seats to block his legislation. First things first.

Latest Trump administration imbecile, Mick Mulvaney, skewered

The Washington Post did it, a clever writer by the name of Alexandra Petri has thoroughly lanced Donald Trump's new Office of Management & Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, for the almost absurd new budget introduced by the Trump administration. Although Mulvaney in this case is just the messenger, he is known so far for comments like this in a press briefing last Thursday...

"White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney defended the Trump administration's proposed deep cuts to social welfare programs like free school lunches and Meals on Wheels as 'about as compassionate as you can get" for taxpayers.'"

More...

"'Meals on Wheels sounds great,'" Mulvaney said, adding 'we're not going to spend [money] on programs that cannot show that they actually deliver the promises that we've made to people.'"

From SF Gate...

"Meals on Wheels is a nonprofit group that receives funding from the federal government, state and local governments and private donors. 'We serve more than 2.4 million seniors from 60 to 100+ years old each year,' the organization writes. 'They are primarily older than 60 and because of physical limitations or financial reasons, have difficulty shopping for or preparing meals for themselves.'"

Mick Mulvaney will go down in history as just another one of Donald Trump's peons who signed up to say just what the new monarch tells him to say.

But on now to Alexandra Petri's very creative rendering of just what the new Trump administration budget will accomplish.

Cut the State Department by 29%...

"Right now, all the State Department’s many qualified employees do is sit around being sad that they are never consulted about anything. This is, frankly, depressing, and it is best to put them out of their misery. Besides, they are only trained in Soft Diplomacy, like a woman would do, and NOBODY wants that. There's more here...

 Environmental Protection Agency...

"We absolutely do not need this. Clean rivers and breathable air are making us SOFT and letting the Chinese and the Russians get the jump on us. We must go back to the America that was great, when the air was full of coal and danger and the way you could tell if the air was breathable was by carrying a canary around with you at all times, perched on your leathery, coal-dust-covered finger. Furthermore, we will cut funding to Superfund cleanup in the EPA because the only thing manlier than clean water is DIRTY water.

Here's a summary of more quips. Re. Commerce dept., Budget will make us strong enough to fight all natural disasters on our own; Don't need Labor Dept. Future labor will all be on the backs of the women. Forget Healthcare, just punch disease in the nose. Why should we fund Historic Sites. Trump hates parks he doesn't own. Who needs Public Broadcasting or the Bird? Just listen to "audio footage of a Trump son shooting a rare land mammal." U.S. Institute of Peace: Too "wimpy" for this administration. U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, will just make them tougher.

Okay, you get the idea and you'll be glad if you peruse the whole article at The Washington Post.

In an opinion piece by Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, his headline screams, "Trump budget an exercise in stupidity." The words stupid, idiot, and similar descriptions of the genre of the Trump administration have had a field day, and this is a classic example of being right on target. Since Trump's budget's largest item is defense, this is Bookman's comment...

"We spend more on our military than the next eight countries combined, even though five of those next seven countries are strong U.S. allies such as Britain and France. We spend three times as much as China and nine times as much as Russia. In fact, just the increases in military spending requested by the Trump administration — $30 billion for the current fiscal year, and $54 billion next year — swamp Russia’s total annual military budget of $66 billion."

That paragraph should send any level-headed person into an incredible vertigo of confusion when you look at the slashes to programs designed to help the American public that are being drastically reduced or cut altogether. Bookman summarizes how Donald John plans to get all the money for the $54 billion increase...

"...by gutting scientific research, medical research, foreign aid, the State Department, community block grants that support Meals on Wheels and similar programs. The EPA, which today operates on the same budget it had 15 years ago, and with 2,000 fewer employees, is targeted for 31 percent budget cut."

And here's an outstanding point that is just one in a long line of screw-ups this President has made internationally; what will the rest of the world think? Do we yank the helping hand that so many countries depend on to just survive in the name of building a defense program designed entirely for the purpose of spending money to make the corporate world even richer? It gets more ridiculous and more pathetic with each passing day with the outlook even bleaker.  

Populism Bernie Sanders:YES-Populism Donald Trump:NO

Steve Bannon

Steve Bannon's populism seems sketchy from his past, so why is he where he is now, leading ring-nosed Donald Trump down the path for his style of populism and nationalism? Both Trump and Bannon have evoked the name of Andrew Jackson because of his populist beliefs, but Jackson also had to deal with sectionalism between the North and the South, due to the stark difference in economies. The North was industrial, the South agricultural. This became highly complicated when Congress passed the Tariff of 1828, favoring the North.

The reason I bring this up is that, although he would tell Congress what he was going to do, then do it, regardless of their concerns, he did things with a background from experience that had led to his first election in 1828. Andrew Jackson won with and governed with a substance neither Donald Trump nor Steve Bannon could ever claim. So why all the comparisons? It is Bannon's obsession with Jackson's populism and nationalism that the White House adviser intends to steer in the direction of his own version that includes white nationalism along with racism and general bigotry.

Andrew Jackson is from Tennessee. I am from Tennessee. Jackson's view on white nationalism and racism does parallel both Trump and Bannon, according to U.S. News...

"...Jackson's belief that democracy and race were inextricably bound together, that whiteness was a prerequisite for self-governance, fits neatly with Trump's own worldview – a worldview that is coming to define not just Trump's administration, but also the Republican Party."

We also know that Andrew Jackson was also a co-founder of the Democratic Party. And Democrats regularly paid tribute to Jackson for years, until the issue of racism came into focus. You see...

"His policy of 'Indian removal,' an act of ethnic cleansing that killed thousands, moved to the forefront of his legacy, as did the fact that he held nearly 300 enslaved people, the source of his significant wealth."

It was then that Andrew Jackson began to tank with the Democratic Party. It was obvious that, "For Jacksonian democracy to work, non-white people had to be subjugated, either through their removal or their enslavement (and, in later eras, through Jim Crows old and new)." But if the Democrats now shun Jackson, Republicans in the present form of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon have picked up the gauntlet and are running with the white nationalism, tinged with racism and feminine hatred. Old Hickory surely had his faults but nothing to compare with the Trump/Bannon debacle.

Concourse tries to explain the insanity of Steve Bannon. The younger Bannon blames it all on the financial hard luck of his father...

"...a hardworking man who spent 50 years working for AT&T, accumulating as much AT&T stock as he could during that time in the belief that it would constitute a safe inheritance for his kids—saw the value of those shares crater during the 2008 financial crisis, and sold them at a loss in a panic."

As an afterthought Stevo contends that he was "outraged" that no one went to jail in the financial community over the chicanery during the Geo. W. Bush administration, Hell, so was I and millions more, but we didn't take it out on people of color nor did we debase women. Hamilton Nolan, the Concourse writer states...

"I am in no position to judge Steve Bannon’s honesty, so I’m willing to assume it’s true that the crash is indeed what spawned his political philosophy. If so, Steve Bannon is an insane man. Has he helped to fix the root causes of the 2008 financial crisis by guiding Donald Trump into the White House? No. He has helped to put in power an ignorant billionaire who has vowed to slash Dodd-Frank and other regulations designed to help prevent another financial crisis, and who has turned the regulation of Wall Street over to a coterie of Wall Street insiders and deregulation zealots."

The Daily Beast reported that Trump's fascination with Andrew Jackson only began in 2013, and there was another short conversation about the former president when there was talk during the 2016 election about removing Jackson from the $20 bill. DB says...

"But the reason Jackson has taken on such a physical and rhetorical presence in the Trump White House is, in fact, primarily because of Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist and the former head of Breitbart. According to officials in the Trump campaign, presidential transition, and administration speaking to The Daily Beast, Bannon would often discuss Jackson’s historical legacy and image with Trump on and after the campaign trail, and how the two political figures were a lot alike."

Bannon even gave Trump a suggested reading list on Jackson. And Trump placed a biography of Andrew Jackson on his desk he frequently pointed out to reporters, but no one could ever confirm that he had read it. All nice window-dressing for an administration in the throes of taking this county back to the dark ages of racist hangings, house burnings, and a Ku Klux Klan that gave rise to the 784 hate groups that now reside in the U.S. Thanks in great part to Donald Trump adviser, Steve Bannon. Let me leave you with this from the Daily Beast...

"The simplest explanation for Steve Bannon’s actual political philosophy is 'He is racist, xenophobic, and has deep-seated resentments and anger issues with origins that we can only begin to explain.'”

God help us all! 

Trump's new budget exposes lies-Here's big one

Well, it's common knowledge what Donald trump thinks about women from the statements he made during the 2016 Presidential campaign. Remarks like...

"You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it, you can do anything.
Grab them by the p***y, you can do anything."

"About Rosie O'Donnell he said that she was 'disgusting, both inside and out' and that if he were running her show he'd 'look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers and say, 'Rosie, you're fired.'"

He said about Carly Fiorina, "Look at that face. Would anybody vote for that?"

There's more you can see here but the above shows clearly Donald Trump's disdain for women.

Fast forward to Donald John's first address to a joint session of Congress when he "...promised the American people that he was going to spend his term granting wishes..." then added. "...that he’d invest in women’s health." But along came the emperor's new budget which made his promises look like Pinocchio with a two-foot nose. Lower income and older women are hit very hard with womens' advocates contending...

"...that if the AHCA were to be enacted as-is, Trump’s promised investment in women’s health would be a comical falsehood."

You might say that this statement ["comical falsehood"] pretty much reflects the total of the Donald Trump experience so far. The Daily Beast has been condemning the monarch's budget through the interpretation of the Congressional Budget Office analysis released this past Monday. For starters...

"...24 million kicked off insurance and an additional $880 billion gouged from Medicaid, all in the name of a measly 1 percent reduction in the deficit."

DB says the numbers are really not representative because of the different math between Obamacare and the American Health Care Act. What it comes down to is the fact that this large number will lose their health insurance and older Americans will see increases they simply will not be able to afford. Daily Beast says...

"Allowing premiums for older people to shoot skyward means that a 64-year-old making $24,000 per year will see half of their income go toward the cost of covering medical insurance."

The outset is a family on the cusp of retirement that all of a sudden is bankrupted by their health care costs, and the Republican health care plan leaves them nowhere to turn. Here's another opinion...

“'[Republicans] are doing nothing to invest in women’s health,' Jamila Taylor, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, tells The Daily Beast.
Taylor is particularly concerned with the one-two punch the AHCA gives low-income women and women of color."

 And on the same subject, the GOP is hell-bent on defunding Planned Parenthood, the main entryway for low income women to get the health care they need. The Senate's biggest idiot, Joni Ernst from Iowa, has a bill to redirect their funds. Here's one reaction...

"'If passed, these bills will cause a national health care crisis, leaving millions with nowhere to go for basic care,' said Dana Singiser, vice president of public policy and government affairs for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement."

As you can see, the "comical falsehood" has now turned into a serious tragedy, and it will all be on the head of Donald Trump. 

Big mouth Trump scuttles his own travel ban legislation

Hawaiian judge, Derrick K. Watson, has shot down Donald Trump's latest attempt to keep immigrants out of the United States. His decision had a great deal to do with the running off at the mouth by Donald John and his bootlicking advisers. To backtrack, the way this man was elected was to trash the America we know and tell all his followers he could make America better, in his words "Make America Great Again." It is his bluster and buffoonery that these poor souls follow, so it is just natural to keep up the act to maintain his popularity. At the expense of our country, of course.

Had he and his minions tempered their statements following the introduction of the second travel ban, Judge Watson might have given it more serious thought, although his decision would have probably been the same, based on substance. This is very similar to Trump's claims of Trump Tower wiretapping, where, against seemingly insurmountable odds, he continues to pursue his charges. The Washington Post reported...

“Based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of surveillance by any element of the United States government either before or after Election Day 2016,” the Democratic and Republican chairmen of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday in a statement.
“He stands by it,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said of Trump’s original claim.

 Politico says, "The federal courts were poised to hold the first version unconstitutional. But it’s not at all clear that the new order will survive judicial scrutiny, either." However, liberal lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, says Trump could win before the Supreme Court. In both cases, just another example of the fact that Donald Trump thinks he can never be wrong, and to carry out his hissy fits he ties up departments of government to carry out his unfounded charges. It is a classic case of putting an oversized ego in front of what is best for his country, and it is totally pathetic...again.

Republican Congress stopped dead in its tracks...by Republican?

Trump's latest political mess

I guess the first question is, is Donald Trump a Republican? We know he isn't a Democrat. Or is there some non-party designation for his highness that was put into play by the political establishment when his eminence somehow became President of the United States? The latter we may never know. The former is displayed every day in a White House that seems committed to confusion and chaos. All travel bans have been shot down by the courts, the repeal of Obamacare, engineered by Speaker Ryan, is floundering, the Mexican wall seems to be going nowhere.

And now this headline from the Washington Post re. Donald John's budget released on Thursday: "Capitol Hill Republicans not on board with Trump budget." Here's how WP described it...

“President Trump on Thursday will unveil a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad.”

Some in Congress have complained that the budget doesn't have enough defense spending, but no one even mentions the fact that there will be drastic cuts to the welfare system. Based on the year 2015, each night 564,708 people were experiencing homelessness. And over 500,000 veterans still wait more than 30 days to see a doctor, in a system rife with incompetence and under funding. If Medicaid is turned over to states, especially those like Arizona, there's no guarantee these people will have adequate coverage, if any at all.

In addition, WP reports there are massive cuts to the arts, scientific research and aid to our allies overseas...

"A Budget Blueprint to Make America Great Again,” would increase defense spending by $54 billion and then offset that by stripping money from more than 18 other agencies. Some would be hit particularly hard, with reductions of more than 20 percent at the Agriculture, Labor and State departments and of more than 30 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency."

""It would also propose eliminating future federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Within EPA alone, 50 programs and 3,200 positions would be eliminated."

I don't believe there is anyone out there, I don't care how liberal you are, that will argue with the fact that the government is top heavy and overspends. But there are many on both side of the aisle that question this amount of spending on defense. And we know there are tax cuts for the wealthy on the way, plus, remember all that "pork," those projects in congressional districts that are done for the sole purpose of getting someone reelected. No one talks about this anymore. So, what we are left with is a budget that represents Donald trump's version of Republican ideology.

During the 2016 election, Trump supporters were bellowing the fact that, if an outsider like Donald Trump, a supposedly savvy businessman, took over the White House, he would change things so it would run like a top. Well, here's what the Washington Post had to say...

"Trump was only the latest in a long line of political figures who argued that if someone from outside politics took over the government, he’d whip it into shape with his business savvy and management expertise. The result has been the most chaotic and incompetent White House anyone can remember. As Politico reported Wednesday, 'A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government,' creating 'an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch.'”

Finally, White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said “You can’t drain the swamp and leave all the people in it.” As a Trump appointed member of the team and a conservative republican, I'll let you decide.

Trump cronies getting restless-Looking for blood?

Are the good ole boys of Congress finally tiring of Donald Trump's incessant tweeting, making claims that he cannot back up, and putting the American government in the position of having to explain why we have a lunatic running the country? It would seem so when the Washington Post publishes a headline like this...

"Republicans are threatening to expose Trump as the emperor with no clothes"

Here's a part of the accompanying Washington Post story...

"...a spokesman for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) threatened to subpoena the Trump administration to produce evidence of Trump's claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign. The White House has declined to produce this evidence publicly, offering various excuses, including the Constitution's separation of powers and — most recently on Monday — arguing that Trump wasn't speaking literally when he made the claim."

 And there's a downside to all this Twitter activity anyway. Apparently Donald John's aides have been deleting select tweets, which could be illegal, according to Reps. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) and Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), chairman and ranking member of the House Oversight Committee. They have sent a letter to Trump re. the "...administration’s record keeping habits and its nontransparent use of social media and other forms of electronic communication." This numb nuts thinks the office he holds means that he can do what he pleases, when he pleases.

Huff Post reports that, “The need for data security, however, does not justify circumventing requirements established by federal recordkeeping and transparency laws." It would appear that the confusion and chaos of this administration has finally reached the point that those high in government feel the free-wheeling has got to stop, or at least slow down. You can see Chaffetz and Cummings letter to the White House Counsel on the above HP site above. Speaker Paul Ryan has admitted that he does not believe the claim that there were wiretaps.

In addition to the letter from the two representatives, Devin Nunes had required the Justice Department to submit evidence to him of Trump's claim that President Barack Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the campaign by this past Monday. When he didn't get it he indicated he might resort to a subpoena if it wasn't received by the committee's March 20 hearing. Now we can remember Congress threatening several actions against Barack Obama when he was in office, but it was the opposite party. In this case, it is all Republicans, supposedly Trump's party

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who chairs the subcommittee looking into the wiretapping...

"...asked the Justice Department and the FBI to provide copies of any warrants or court orders related to the alleged wiretapping. Having not received anything, Graham said he may push for a special committee."

While all the GOP members who are supposed to be on his side continue to question the bizarre behavior of the White House wacko, loudmouth keeps right on tweeting away.