What the hell, GOP?

After they lost the White House (again) in last year's presidential election, the Republican Party appeared to go through some serious soul-searching, with some in the party coming to the public conclusion that they needed to make their party more welcoming to more Americans. Because, you know, the Tea Party turned out not to be enough of a base to get Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan elected as President and Vice-president.

If you ask me, the GOP has some pretty funny ways of trying to grow their base. Just in the last two days they've told the American public, through votes in the House of Representatives, that they don't care if people can't get health care and can't get enough to eat to be able to go out and support themselves.

Today, the Republicans in the House voted (again - how many times is this? 40? 45?) to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and threatened (again) to shut down the federal government if they don't get their way. This comes on the heels of a vote yesterday, also led by Republicans, to cut billions of dollars from federal food assistance to the poor. In that vote, they claimed their purpose in the close (217 - 210) vote was to cut fraud and waste from the program and to make sure that able-bodied adults on the program were working. This is a big disingenuous, considering the fact that most food assistance recipients are employed, and that most who are not working are either children, elderly, disabled, or looking for work that they cannot find.

In the case of food assistance, the Republicans are also ignoring the fact that in some states, the system is actually underutilized. Here in California, for example, recent statistics show that only about 55 percent of those who are eligible for food assistance actually get it. Another report from Texas shows that a third of eligible Texans do not receive food assistance. In California, the shortfall is so pronounced that the state is actually running ads attempting to get more eligible households to apply for benefits.

Regarding health insurance, those opposed to what has come to be called Obamacare are ignoring, conveniently, that there are more reasons than just being poor (and, in GOP eyes, apparently, lazy) that people do not have health insurance. For example, many people who are uninsured are unable to get insurance because they have "pre-existing conditions". Either they are denied outright by insurance companies, or they are offered coverage but at such an expensive rate that they cannot hope to afford it. But, I guess, the Republican position is that if you've already been sick, you just deserve to die if you get sick again. And then there is also the part where, even if you are insured, if you or someone in your family is struck by a catastrophic illness, the insurance carrier can just drop you from coverage. And even if they don't drop you, there is a cap on how much care they will cover and if you exceed that, too bad, so sad, but you're on your own.

Which would be laughable if it weren't so serious, with the accusations that along with Obamacare would come "death panels" that would do things like ration care. Care under the current system is rationed, just using different criteria for the rationing. But, with their bias in favor of the rich, some in the leadership of the Republican party think that rationing based on ability to pay is quite all right.

Coupled with the ongoing fight of the GOP against affordable health care and against food assistance, though, the GOP has some other issues when it comes to attracting more people to the party. With their continuing war against women, the Republicans don't seem too concerned with attracting more women to their party. Then there are the efforts in a number of states to game the electoral system so that fewer people from groups that traditionally vote for Democrats are able to exercise their right to vote. But, I've written about those things here before, so I won't belabor those points now.

And then there is Phil Gingrey. Gingrey is a member of the House of Representatives from Georgia, representing the 11th District there.

There are reports that Gingrey, who is said to be worth between $3 million and $7 million, complained in a closed-door Republican meeting on Wednesday that the $172,000 per year he gets paid for being a Congressman is just not enough. For perspective, that is around $14,333 per month that he makes. Or, about $3,583 per week. Which comes out to around $512 per day or $64 per hour. Of course, these figures are based on a 52-week, 40-hour-per week, work schedule, with no vacation time. We all know that the House is not in session anywhere close to 40 hours per week, every week of the year.

For example, last year the House was in session for 153 days. There are, of course weekends, and I don't begrudge the representatives their weekends off. However, they also had nearly the whole month of August off, working only four days. They also had two full weeks off in April. Figuring 8 hours per day of work for each of those 153 days, for their actual time at work, the representatives each made $1,124 per day or around $141 per hour.

The thing is, though, some representatives don't show up for work every day. Gingrey has missed, according to one source, 3.6 percent of the roll call votes during his tenure in office up to this month. So, even accounting for the fact that most representatives do some work when they are not officially on the clock on the floor of the House, they make very good money.

The other thing that bothers me about Gingrey's complaints is that although he thinks he doesn't make enough money, he voted against the bill in January 2007 that raised the federal minimum wage to its current $7.25 per hour. Excuse me? He doesn't think he is paid enough, but he is not willing to allow the poorest workers in this country to make even $7.25 per hour which, when required deductions are made, puts that worker below the official poverty level? Now who is feeling entitled?

Gingrey, by the way, who is an M.D. in real life, also voted to defund the Affordable Care Act. Then again, Gingrey also defended Todd Akin's statements about "legitimate rape" and how if a woman was "really" raped, she would not become pregnant because her body would "shut that whole thing down." Akin clearly did not know what he was talking about, but he had an excuse; he's an engineer. But Gingrey has no excuse for concurring with that statement. He's not just a physician, he is an obstetrician and gynecologist, for Pete's sake. As the Republicans so often seem to do these days, Gingrey later backpedaled and said that his remarks about Akin's statement were "misconstrued". As a medical professional, he should have known better than to make the remarks in the first place. Instead, he let his ideology overtake common sense.

Okay. I've ranted more than enough for one day. But I've been busy for the past few days and was saving all this up for when I had time to write about it. It just bugs the hell out of me when politicians go out and blatantly insult people who are doing the best they can and then try to take away all the help that some of those people need to get on their feet again, either physically or economically.

It's really difficult to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps when you can't afford a pair of boots in the first place, or enough food to maintain their strength to go out to work every day or to pound the pavement looking for a job so that you can earn some money. And when the GOP keeps telling people that they want to bring more people into their "big tent" but treats anyone who is not up to their standards of wealth and health (and, sometimes, gender and ethnicity) like crap, and insults them besides, it's proof that the leadership of the Republican Party just doesn't get it.

NOTE: This post was edited to remove remarks that were spurred by what turned out to be satire. The point remains that we live in a tine when it is sometimes nearly impossible to tell satire from reality because the things people really do and say are sometimes so over the top that they appear to be satire.

In which Priebus threatens to flounce...

At this point, the Republican National Committee is just acting childish.

Reince Priebus, the chairman of the RNC has laid down a challenge to CNN and NBC: cancel planned projects about former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, or the Republicans will not "partner with" either network "in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates they sponsor."

The quotes are from letters Priebus sent to the two networks, by the way.

So, basically, what the RNC is saying, "if you don't play by our rules, we're going to take our toys and go home." In essence, they are threatening to flounce. Kids flounce. Divas flounce. Responsible adults, and organizations run by responsible adults, do not flounce.

Of course, what the RNC is claiming is that the programs, a feature-length documentary to be aired by CNN sometime next year and a four-part miniseries scheduled to be shown on NBC in 2015, are really just elaborate campaign ads, efforts to promote Clinton ahead of the 2016 presidential campaign. Which I find kind of funny, considering that there is no indication at this point from Clinton or anyone else that she is going to make another run for the White House.

To their credit, both CNN and NBC have said they will continue to participate in the projects, while NBC has pointed out that the mini-series they plan to broadcast is under the auspices of their entertainment division and has nothing to do with their news division.

I think there a couple of things going on here.

First of all, this is just another attempt by the ruling right wing of the Republican Party to control the national conversation. This is nothing new. They have previously shown a willingness to do anything they need to in order to be able to define the rules of the campaign and control the information that the American people are allowed to receive. They want, specifically, to have the deciding say in where the primary debates are held, who can participate in them, who can moderate them, what questions are asked during the debates, and who can broadcast them.

The issue of who can participate in primary debates, which are between members of one party, is particularly problematic for the Republicans, who complained during the 2012 primaries that, especially early on, too many Republican candidates were allowed to participate, taking the focus off the two or three candidates in their party who the RNC wanted to be perceived as the front-runners. Here, again, the RNC's control issues are apparent, with them wanting to be able to decide even which candidates should be taken seriously.

This is not to say that I think all of the candidates among the Republicans in the last election cycle should have been taken seriously. Clearly, some of them were not only not really serious but not even close to qualified. But I also think that there were candidates who had serious qualifications who were quickly marginalized by the party leadership because they were not seen as sufficiently to the right. I think that during the primaries any candidate who can put together enough money, enough supporters, and enough media attention to be visible nationally should get to participate in debates, at least until the various primaries, caucuses, and state conventions start showing who the public considers to be the viable candidates by winning votes and endorsements.

The other thing, I think, that is going on, is an attempt to sabotage the existence of primary debates altogether. The Republicans, or the leadership, at least, have very vocally complained about the number of debates last primary season. I think the problem they see is that, in the debates, the candidates started to say what they really believe and, in some cases, showed themselves for who they really are, and in some cases (I'm looking at you, Rick Perry) how incompetent they really are to run anything, much less the most powerful nation in the world.

I think the Republican Party apparatus would be just as happy if their candidates did not have to participate in any debates, did not have to talk to the press at all, and didn't have to make any statements about where they really stand on issues. Look at the end of the 2012 presidential campaign, after the conventions. How long did Mitt Romney go without making any statements to the media at all following the revelation of "47 percent" comments that got him in so much trouble? The RNC knows that their candidates' positions on many issues do not resonate with many, many people in the country, including many, many Republicans. They realize that their candidates have a better chance of being elected if the voters don't know their candidates' positions on the issues.

There is a third thing going on, I think, around this attempt to prevent the airing of projects concerning Clinton. Ever since Bill Clinton was elected president, actually ever since before that election, the Republican leadership has made no secret of their hatred for the Clintons, both Hillary and Bill. I think something else they are trying to do here is to erase, to the extent they can, all mention of the former President and the former Secretary of State. It's kind of like the thing that used to happen in ancient Egypt, where an incoming ruler would sometimes to back and obliterate all mention of the former pharaoh by physically scratching his (or her; there were a few female pharaohs) name from every monument they ever had erected.

So, the Republican leadership are showing their asses again. This really should not be a surprise. But you'd think that they would at least hire spokespersons who can conduct himself like an adult, rather than employing people like Reince Priebus, who sounded like a child in a report about this issue, broadcast by ABC News, where he is seen saying that "we are done playing in the sandbox..." in relation to his demands to CNN and NBC.

Priebus might as well have thrown a tantrum, stomped his feet, and come right out and said, "Do what we want, or we're taking our toys and going home."

Enough, already...

Is there some reason why the media in this country can't at least wait a week or two before they start talking about the next presidential election?

The election was two days ago. Not all the absentee and provisional ballots have even been counted yet. But it seems like all I've been hearing and reading today are speculations about who will run for President in 2016.

Since Barack Obama can't run again in 2016, names from both parties are being mentioned as possible contenders. On the Republican side, and since few people expect Mitt Romney to make another run, the most commonly-mentioned names are Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Florida senator Marco Rubio, and former Florida governor Jeb Bush.

There are troubles with most of these names. The Romney campaign all but hid Paul Ryan in the last weeks of the election. I suspect that they did not trusting him to stay on-message. New Jersey governor Chris Christie made points for fighting so hard to make sure the residents of his state got the aid they needed after Hurricane Sandy, but he lost points among the hierarchy in the GOP and the Romney campaign for appearing to be too friendly to, and saying nice things about, President Obama during that time. Jeb Bush, the son of one president and the brother of another, still has questions hanging over his head in some people's minds (including my own) about just how much of a role he had in the electoral shenanigans in his state during the 2000 presidential election. I don't know much about Marco Rubio, so I can't say what his strengths or handicaps might be should he decide to make a run for the White House.

On the Democratic side there is, of course, talk that current Vice President Joe Biden might run for President next time. There is also much speculation, especially after Bill Clinton took such a vocal role in the Obama campaign this year, that Hillary Clinton might be thinking about running again in 2016. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's name has also been mentioned. Another name I've been hearing, although he is apparently considered to be a longer-shot as a candidate, is Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villarigosa.

All the speculation is interesting, I'll admit. But I don't really care right now.

What I do care about is hearing about how the Republicans in Congress plan to dial back their ideological rhetoric and start doing the business of the country rather than simply trying to obstruct any legislation proposed by the Obama administration in the name of trying to deny Obama a second term. Since that plan failed and he can't run again, continuing to hold up important legislation will only be seen as mean and spiteful.

I also want to know what the leaders of the Republican Party are going to do to disassociate themselves from the misogynist, racist, and classist rhetoric we heard so much of during the run-up to the election. How are they going to step away from the excesses of the Tea Party? I want to hear them say that, yes, Barack Obama is a Christian and not a Muslim. And that it wouldn't matter if he was a Muslim. I want them to put a stop to this "birther" nonsense coming from the extremists in their party.

And, dear God, I want them to put a muzzle on Donald Trump, who holds no position in the GOP, but walks around like his money and notoriety give him some special dispensation to interject himself into the political conversation, to the point that he clearly retains only a tenuous grasp on reality.

I would also like the Republicans to step away from Rush Limbaugh, but I suspect that that's asking too much.

But, mostly, I'd love it if I didn't have to hear about politics at all for at least a little while. I'd like to see all the campaign signs down. And I'd like to pretend that the next campaign for California governor won't start ramping up in about six months, since it's just two years until that election. This is especially something I' like, considering that by the time that's over, the next campaign for President will be strating in earnest.