Category: Howard Sosbee’s posts

Twelve gauge, pump action shotgun with 36 inch, full choke barrel. Magnum load, size 6 chilled shot.

One phrase, being uttered by Republican campaigners for public office can be wholeheartedly supported on both sides of the aisle: “grow the economy.” It is a phrase you are likely to hear over and over from Republican candidates. However, based on experience of the past six years, it would be nice if at least one candidate would tell us just what they propose to do to accomplish it.

With all of the fussing and fighting about the Keystone XL, it is remarkable how little has been said about the environmental risk involved. When the issue is raised, the proponents of the project point to the millions of miles of pipeline already in use in America and the number of years they have been operating. You will notice they do not add the words: “without incident.” Google “oil pipeline leaks”, and be ready for a lot of information. But you will probably not hear about the recent pipeline leak into the Yellowstone River, nor a status report on the Kalamazoo River leak, an old one that demonstrated the additional difficulty of trying to clean up tar sands oil in particular, which, being heavier than clear sweet crude, sinks to the bottom of the river. Do you think a reporter who dared to research and write a comprehensive report on this subject would have very good job security in today’s corporate –controlled media?

Headline, main news section, Santa Cruz Sentinel, January 14, 2015 : “ GOP presses attack on Obama agenda”. Wouldn’t you think, after years of doing absolutely nothing except attacking Obama’s agenda, and seeing nothing constructive come of it, and now with the world watching, couldn’t Republicans come up with some kind of a plan to address the country’s ills?

Those of you who thought something might change as a result of the 2014 elections can now disabuse yourselves of that notion. The last six years have seen all the blame for all the world’s troubles laid squarely at the feet of Pres. Obama. Now that he is no longer running for office, shouldn’t the opposition’s barbs be aimed elsewhere? You might think so, but the leading opposition candidate just stated otherwise. According to Mitt Romney, just about everything wrong in the US (and the world, for that matter) were caused by the policies of “this president”. Not a word about relentless obstruction, or the campaign to hate Obama, or a Congress that simply refused to govern.

“And it shall follow as the night the day…” Whatever else we may see on the TV news every morning, one story will always be there: death by gunshot. As long as the country is awash with murder weapons, handguns and assault rifles, there is no way we can alter this scenario.

The other morning (Tuesday, November 18, 2014) a Republican representative from Congress came on television and stated, with a straight face mind you, that shale oil from Canada flowing through the Keystone XL pipeline will “relieve the United States of dependence on oil imported from people who don’t like us”. Yes, he said that as though the US had not already achieved energy independence on its own, and as though Americans don’t know that every drop of that oil is going, not to the US for consumption but to the world market. Not to mention the risk of catastrophic environmental damage when Keystone springs a leak, as all pipelines do, especially since it will be carrying a particularly toxic type of petroleum at very high pressure. Do Republicans really believe that Americans are so uninformed that they will accept any baloney served to them by some politician?

If you want irony, check out the editorial cartoon by Mike Lester in the November 7 issue of the Sentinel. It shows Uncle Sam telling the GOP to “take away his (exploitive) hammer!!” While a cartoon version of Obama smashes away at “America”. This, mind you, follows six years of Republican obstruction which, by any measure, has caused more misery and destruction to America’s economy and well-being than any comparable period in history. Now that’s real irony. Or is it hutzpah?

Have we any idea what the Republicans will do now that they own both houses of Congress? Looking at what they have already done in states they control, does not elicit much in the way of warm fuzzy feelings.

The Republican strategy obviously worked. When Mitch McConnell stated in 2008 that Republicans would see to it that this was a “one term presidency, we wondered how they would pull it off. Actually they didn’t. They couldn’t get him out after one term, but they did succeed in almost completely destroying his presidency. Their double-barreled approach is unique in American political history, (and one must wonder if it will be repeated when the next Democrat is elected president). First, they obstructed Obama’s every initiative so that he could not govern effectively, then blamed him for not governing. Meanwhile, they used every trick in the book, including an accommodating punditry, to maintain a constant “hate Obama” campaign, tapping into America’s latent racism (come on, admit it). A whole vocabulary of coded language was resurrected from Jim Crow days to maintain a constant barrage of anti-Obama noise. Whenever they were called out on it, the response was indignant and vehement denial. Sadly, this approach would not have worked if Obama, himself, had not helped it along by systematically alienated his progressive base. As one critic put it early on: “Obama campaigned from the left, but governed from the right.” Too much of his progressive base simply stayed home in 2010 and 2014. The big question is: will these same folks stay home in 2016?