TheNextReport

The GOP win is a victory for an electoral strategy that deliberately obstructs the legislative process over a long period of time so it can later claim that Washington doesn't work; the opposing party is held responsible for gridlock when the next electoral cycle comes around. This is a fundamental defect in how democracy functions and should be eliminated through constitutional amendment. It is the constitutional responsibility of the legislature to propose and act on legislation. Government through obstruction is clearly not what the framers intended. Why do I get the feeling that what's at work is not how best the country can benefit by what the government does in its behalf, but who gets the credit.

Election Day in America has cable news shows discussing the possible agenda of the GOP when they take over the Senate. Even MSNBC, the station with a slant toward the left, is talking about the certitude of a Republican win and likely destruction of the national program of the Democrats. One has to wonder why anyone would bother going to vote when media reports on polls have already reported the results before anyone has the chance to cast a ballot. All across he country the electorate will dutifully check boxes, pull levers, punch papers, and press buttons in the firm belief it is enacting its sacred franchise, when democracy by polls has already decided the important questions before us.

While we are busy holding the Obama administration accountable for its faults, the impending surrender of the Senate to the GOP/Tea Party spells disaster for the country. Lest we forget: these are the same people responsible for nearly tanking the world economy, waging unnecessary and costly wars, trampling the first amendment, blocking legislation that would keep guns out of the hands of deranged teenagers, deluded "patriots" and a host of other whackos; who would replace the certainties of science in the classroom and in public policy with the speculations of religious faith; who permit the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries while providing tax breaks to oil companies and private billionaires: who take healthcare, food stamps and unemployment benefits from the poor and the hungry, and toss Social Security to the wolves of Wall Street; who have no understanding of the workings of the environment and less of the subtleties of a woman's anatomy. Lest we forget...

(Written October 3, 2013) The brown shirts and the white sheets take over Washington! The key question: why would so-called mainstream Republicans be so eager to obey the commands of a small group of radicals? The last election made it clear that black, women, Latino and other minorities were not interested in what the GOP was selling. So what does the Tea Party arm of the GOP do to make its appeal more inclusive? It shuts down the government in protest of the President's healthcare initiative. Smart move for those who believe the public will swallow anything if it is repeated enough. The truth is GOP leaders have been seeing their party and its message becoming a political anachronism and are willing to swing wildly until they hits something. The suspicion that Speaker John Boehner finds his political leadership skills at the bottom of a scotch glass is becoming more apparent. The threat of engaging in violence, sometimes mistakenly referred to by this group as civil disobe

Yes, I know. In reality it is all arbitrary, this New Years crap. It's a new year every moment, depending upon where you start from. This linear time thing just provokes more questions, for which there are no apparent answers, yet we still persist in asking them because... that is what we must do. My wife and son are in the next room singing songs in Basque, a language that has no apparent antecedent, from a people whose origins are unknown, a bloodline that apparently runs as an ancient tangent to the rest of what we call the human race. So we continue on in the world of what is apparent, with joy and trembling at the wonder of it all.