Okay, now I am just plain angry, and I admit it. We finally removed a traitorous POTUS from office, but the party claiming to be conservative is actually extremist. They cling to the extremism, “lock, stock and barrel.” If you believe that I’m saying this because I back the “other side,” you are wrong. I support truth. Full stop! Family tradition says don’t comment publicly on what most, falsely believe is “political.” When one of only two major parties is extremist, even national security community experts should be talking about it. Where the hell is the leadership in the national security community?
What prompted my anger today is actually just the last straw in 7 years of straws. It’s not their biggest humiliation but the one that pushes me over the top. This morning, the headline from REUTERS on the new, GOP led House of Representatives declared, “Analysis: U.S. House Republicans favor message over substance in early legislation | Reuters.” I believe they were far too kind with this headline. As usual, REUTERS, one of my top three credible news sites, along with the Associated Press and BBC News, offers analysis on this headline. Like the other two sites, they do excellent research, special investigations and analysis on some of our most important national/ global issues. Today’s is no exception.
My frustration and associated anger.
· I do analysis on national security threats for a living these days
· Since the infamous, Trump down the escalator event and the GOP capitulation to the traitorous former president, I have been a critic of the party itself as enablers and participants in undermining our national security
· Their instigation of immoral culture wars for their own selfish reasons, have done more to divide our nation than at any time since the end of the US Civil War. The American values and family values they claim are not values at all but mechanisms to sustain their Pavlovian control over those claiming (dishonestly) to be “principled conservatives.”
· Today’s headline declares in bold letters that all of the GOP whining, moaning and dishonesty about the condition of America, employed during the Midterm, campaign season, to be nothing more than propaganda. If the whining and moaning scare tactics were real, they would address them with their newfound and tiny control of the House of Representatives.
· Yes, political parties of all types are not entirely honest. At some point in US history, most of them have bent truth so far as to break. Today’s GOP has not only broken truth but now survives exclusively on conspiracy theories and extending the domination of the 1% and their political sheepdogs, at the expense of the rest of America.
· A critically divided nation is the single largest national security threat and is built entirely on conspiracy theories, often that not only support the big campaign donors, but some of the globes most dangerous leaders. Read Putin here.
· The current party has two wings.
o First, the controlling majority which are MAGA types.
o Secondly, the handful of principled conservatives that remain are too cowardly to speak up for morality and demand restoration of their party. The handful that does, are either run out of the party or shunned.
Now… back to the topic at hand
If anyone paid attention during the campaign season, listening to Republicans (they are not conservatives) you would believe that America was disintegrating before our very eyes, under the opposition’s leadership. Yes, we have a lot of problems, and many existed before Trump and well before the new administration. Many of these problems are still unresolved and some are in the early stages of, restoring what Trump and minions destroyed or significantly undermined. That is simply the truth. Facts are stubborn things.
What is different, is that Trump and his minions damn near sunk the democracy boat and it’s taken two years, just to keep the US, stably afloat and begin moving forward. Now, McCarthy and his capitulation to the most extreme extremists in Congress are demonstrating that they are fully intending to try and sink our nation again with more culture wars instead of doing the job that we pay them for. They are NOT taking up even one issue that they lied about while campaigning.
Any American believing that there is a single principled conservative left in Congress need only look at the facts. We have the overwhelming majority of sitting GOP Congressmen that used election denial” as a part of their campaign and 147 who voted to not support the 2020 election results. Sixty percent of America had election deniers on their midterm ballots. This perfectly defines the extremism of the current party. Even TX. Congressman, Dan Crenshaw, a grandstanding and utterly dishonest GOP conspiracy theorist, admitted that every one of the “deniers” knows that they’re lying.
Not one of the sitting GOP congressmen audibly condemn the armed insurrection organized and perpetrated by a sitting POTUS. By default, this violates their oath of office. Many GOP congressmen actually participated in or enabled the rebellion, including my own Jr. Senator, whose Seditious devotion directly supported and in my professional opinion, helped to incite the rebellion. The only two courageous GOP congressmen are now no longer in office for being honest. That is former representatives, Cheney and Kinzinger.
In my opinion, two of the newest and most dangerous declared targets for the McCarthy extremists, are undermining the IRS and offering yet another tax break, for the wealthy. If this sounds familiar, the only significant piece of legislation during the Trump administration was a monstrous tax break for the 1%, especially affecting those who wrote the biggest campaign donation checks. Now, though inflation is easing, and wages are slowly (too slowly) edging up, McCarthy and his sycophants want to reward the elite wealthy… again instead of working Americans. First, the issue with the IRS:
· On day one, McCarthy and the extremist GOP congressmen begin to underfund the IRS and are using not only conspiracy theories to justify this, but I also adamantly see this as a national security threat. Why?
1. Roughly 90% of US revenue comes from taxes.
2. Staffing of the IRS since 1991 has shown a significant decrease which impacts our ability to” pay our bills.”
3. The so-called 87,000 staffing increase, would merely make up over the next few years for the 50,000 projected loss of staff due to retirement, job transition and otherwise. Those staff are required in order to pay our bills, not to hunt down average Americans and pick their pocket, as McCarthy and his henchmen would have us believe.
4. Tax evasion, primarily from the elite 1% costs the US Treasury roughly a trillion dollars a year. This would more than make up for the 900 million projected deficit.
5. Between more unique tax cuts for the wealthy (who have done exceptionally well the past few years) and hobbling the IRS, McCarthy is literally and dangerously limiting our nation to afford what is required and needed. This is beyond a threat. All risk assessments at the national security level include budget as a key issue.
6. See the quote below from the new Speaker of the House’s website:
Washington, D.C. – Speaker Kevin McCarthy (CA-20) released the following statement after the passage of the Republican-led House’s first bill, H.R. 23, sponsored by Rep. Adrian Smith (NE-03):
“Government should work for you, not against you. As part of the House Republican Commitment to America, I promised we would vote to repeal the Democrats’ army of 87,000 IRS agents on our very first day in the majority.
“Promises made. Promises kept.”
Let’s now take a look at how the 1% benefit from the GOP approach and how the rest of us will assume significant risk, financial and otherwise.
1. McCarthy has put Social Security and Medicare at risk to become Speaker - NCPSSM
2. Republican takeover of U.S. Congress would mean tax fights are back | Reuters
4. What Will The Midterm Elections Mean For Tax Policy? (forbes.com)
It’s quite easy to summarize these two related threats to the nation. The rich get richer and the rest of us bear the burden. The IRS is not your enemy. Without them doing their job with appropriate and enforced oversight, we will go broke. The grotesque level of dishonesty employed by the new Speaker of the House and his sycophants keeps the burden of running our nation squarely on the shoulders and breaking backs of working folks. It further undermines our security because we simply won’t be able to pay for it.
To quote the old movie line from Network, 1976: Newsman Rants, 'I'm As Mad As Hell, And I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore!'
I personally could care less how any citizen identifies politically. I do expect citizens to stop allowing politicians with exclusively selfish agendas, to manipulate them into believing utter BS! At this point in history, the current GOP is extremist and a serious threat to our national security. We’ve spent seven years watching them kowtow to Putin, give away our national security, further overburden American taxpayers, undermine our actual national values and forge ahead with ignorant and self-serving plans. In the future and if you must vote Republican, find and support actual principled conservatives that act on facts and critical thinking. Not one GOP rep in either house of Congress currently meets that standard. If they did, they would have not been elected.