Insanity Is The Most GENEROUS Explanation

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Thirty-three times in 18 months.

 That’s how many times the Republican-controlled House has voted to repeal all or part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (which they call “Obama-care”), even though they know that such a measure is doomed to fail in the Senate.

Even if such a bill through some miracle managed to somehow survive the Senate, it would certainly be vetoed by President Barack Obama. The most recent vote came this past Wednesday.

I’ve often said that a key quirk in the wingnut psyche is the absolutely unshakeable conviction that if something fails repeatedly, it’s because they just didn’t ram their heads against the wall hard enough. “The economy crashed despite big tax cuts? That just means we need more tax cuts to grow the economy!” And so on.

There’s a fine line between perseverance and insanity, and Cryin’ John Boehner and his merry band of fools crossed that line so long ago that they can’t even see it in the rearview mirror anymore.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that this wasn’t some form of mental illness on the part of the Prince of Orange and his crew. There are some cynics who say that the Republican leadership knew the measure, like the 32 before it, was doomed to fail. There are some who even say that the whole thing was a political stunt.

They say the whole thing’s a ploy to get House members staked out on their positions on the health care reform bill so that those votes could be used against them in the upcoming election, when those impressive voiceover announcers who only seem to surface at election time will be intoning “Congressman Schmendrick voted with Obama” with the type of voice-of-doom gravitas that suggests that they equate that voting record with unqualified support for child molestation.

But that’s hard to believe, don’t you think? I mean, that would make the Republican leadership seem like a bunch of completely politicized hacks who would take one of the 42 remaining days they’ve allotted themselves until the end of the year to address the people’s business and use it for the sole purpose of creating sound bites.

That would be a crassly cynical act by a party that’s decided to abandon the idea of addressing any real progress on jobs, immigration, national security, energy independence or any substantive issue at all, a party whose one and only priority is not governing, but winning.

That can’t really be it, can it? I mean, I know that’s what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said was his party’s “No. 1 priority” a while back, but he was joking, right? Because that would make them seem pretty useless to the average American.

No, I’ve got to go with insanity here. Another indicator that the Republicans are suffering from some sort of mental breakdown is the things they say about the ACA that are completely divorced from the reality of the actual bill.

Quotes like Mitt Romney’s assertion that “Obamacare puts the government between you and your doctor.” Or his claim that “Obamacare means 20 million American will lose the health insurance they have and want to keep.”

Or the oft-repeated claim, most recently seen in an ad from one of those shadowy anonymous SuperPACs attacking Florida Sen. Ben Nelson, that the health care law’s cost will be $2 trillion, “double what we were promised.” Or the claim from Florida Gov. Rick Scott that a company with 20 employees “could go out of business” because of the law’s requirement to buy insurance (even though companies with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from that requirement).

All of these assertions have been rated “false” by the nonpartisan fact-checking site Politifact. The “business with 20 employees” canard from Scott was given the lowest rating for truthfulness: “Pants on Fire.” And yet Republicans keep repeating these and other proven falsehoods over and over and over again.

Now, some people would insist that that means they’re all a pack of liars who have such complete contempt for the American voter that they think you’ll believe anything.

To believe they’re not seriously delusional would mean that they believe, as Adolf Hitler stated in “Mein Kampf,” that “in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility … for the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world.”

And that can’t be right. They can’t really think that way. Can they?

John Boehner's Family Is Suffering In This Economy, Too. He Thinks. Maybe.

WaPo:

"I've got real empathy for those who are unemployed," the Ohio Republican said. "As most of you know, I've got 11 brothers and sisters. I know that three of my brothers lost their jobs. I'm not sure whether they've found jobs, yet, so I've got a lot of empathy for those caught in this economic downturn."

Yeah, real empathetic there, John.

Do you at least know how many houses you own?

This has been your daily message from the non-elitist, in-touch-with-the-people party of family values.

It's Not the America I Grew Up In Either. So What?

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Recently, House Minority Leader John Boehner gave an interview to The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review in which he - surprise! - criticized Congressional Democrats and the President.

It was a wide-ranging interview covering subjects like the financial reform bill, which Boehner compared to "killing an ant with a nuclear weapon." (I'm sure people adversely affected by the financial meltdown will be glad to know that the crisis was only an "ant" as far as the Republican leadership is concerned.)

As usual, Boehner trotted out one of the catchphrases of the American right: a professed yearning for, as he put it, "the America he grew up in," which he claims is being "snuffed out" by those awful Democrats.

Well, according to Brother John's Wikipedia page, he was born in 1949. So the "America he grew up in" saw the Red Scares, the polio epidemics, the Korean War, McCarthyism, the Berlin Wall and the hydrogen bomb. It also was the era in which the Vietnam War began, although no one really paid much attention at the time. Oh, and let's not forget the overarching and ever-present dread of a nuclear war that would wipe out civilization (fallout shelters, anyone?)

It should also be noted that America wasn't exactly congenial if you were black, brown, gay or disabled, and was pretty doggone restrictive if you were female. If you were an abused child, your plight was more likely than not to be ignored or hushed up.

I joined up with America in 1962. The America I grew up in saw the aforementioned Vietnam War in full bloody flower, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy and Malcolm X, race riots, anti-war riots, the 1968 Chicago "police riot,"
hippies, Yippies, an exploding drug culture, Nixon, Watergate, Charles Manson, an OPEC embargo which led to a gas crisis, an economic crisis, a hostage crisis, "malaise," a major city going broke, Chrysler going broke (and having to be bailed out), polyester leisure suits, disco, and a limited selection of weak, lousy beer that we only drank because we didn't know that there was anything better.

Oh, and there was still that fear that we were going to start swapping nukes with the Russians and wipe out all life on the planet.

Consider this, though: The America Brother John and I grew up in also gave us the vaccine that eradicated polio, the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, the Interstate highway system, Elvis, Chuck Berry, the Civil Rights Act, the Clean Air Act, the Ford Mustang, moon landings, communications satellites, weather satellites, the transistor, the microchip, the MRI ... the list of advancements, societal and scientific, goes on and on.

And now? There are still environmental dangers like the Gulf oil spill, but on average, the country's air and water are measurably cleaner than they used to be. We are able, if we have the will, to give everyone in the country instant access to more information than our ancestors ever dreamed of.

We still have our differences with the Russians, but we don't live in fear that we're going to blow each other off the face of the Earth. We still fear attack, but it's not a world-ending one. Things are not perfect, but they're certainly better, for children, women, minorities, gays and the disabled. And the beer selection is excellent.

The America I grew up in is like the one John Boehner grew up in, the one my children grew up in, and the one that every American child born while you read this column is going to grow up in. It's a place of fear, violence, chaos and injustice. It's a place of hope, kindness, creativity and progress. It's always, as Dickens put it, the best of times and the worst of times.

What America is always doing, though, is moving forward. That progress may be slow, or it moves in fits and starts. That can be frustrating. But there's no going back, Mr. Boehner. The America we grew up in is gone, and it's not coming back. A new one is being made every day on its foundations, just like every day since the country was founded. You can slow that down, but you can't stop it.