Motley Moose – Archive

The results of the last midterm congressional election, in 2010, were termed a “shellacking” by President Barack Obama. Some pundits said it was “not as bad as it could have been”, and also pointed to the 1994 midterm election when another first-term Democratic president lost control of Congress. That was little comfort for those of us who wanted to see President Obama’s agenda (our agenda) advanced.

The Democratic Party lost 63 seats in the House of Representatives, the biggest midterm loss since 1938 and the largest seat exchange since 1948. John “Big Gavel” Boehner became Speaker of the House and progress towards implementing the president’s agenda came to a screeching halt. The 112th Congress passed less legislation than the Do Nothing Congress that Harry Truman ran against in 1948. (The current Congress, the 113th is on pace to do even less).

The Congress that the 112th replaced, the 111th Congress was one of the most productive in recent history. Fifty years after President Harry S Truman first talked about universal health care, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democratic majorities gave us the Affordable Care Act of 2010. That legislation affects the lives of every American by putting in place a structure to allow purchasing health insurance that is not just affordable but which provides minimum standards for coverage and does not punish policy holders for getting sick.

The “problem” with passing the Affordable Care Act was that in 2010 it put a big target on the backs of many Democrats who had been elected in the wave election of 2006. That year, another midterm election year, Democrats and other sentient beings were motivated to vote in order to create a firewall against the abuses of the Bush Administration. Democrats picked up 31 seats … and the majority … making Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) the first woman Speaker of the House of Representatives.  

This is the third part in a series of posts examining how to create super-packed districts of one race. The other posts in this series pack blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, and whites.

More below.

Meet the people who gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives

25% of Americans do not believe in evolution.

21% of Americans believe there are real sorcerors, conjurers, and warlocks.

25% do not believe in astrology.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in 10 Americans mistakenly believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act creates a panel that makes decisions about end-of-life care.

20% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth. – Gallup 1999

33% don’t believe the 1st Amendment applies to all religions.

24% believe President Obama is a Muslim.

Voter participation in American mid-term elections is notoriously low. The 2010 election is no exception. Only 41.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Approximately 56% voted for the GOP. That means 23% of eligible American voters gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives. Look once more at that list above and ask yourself – Is this any way to run a country?

Warning: I’m going full Godwin’s Law right from the start.

During the middle of the 20th Century, the world watched as the German people were led into a disastrous multi-front war. Rational people have struggled to understand how the German public could have been led down the path to war and genocide.  More than sixty years later it is still hard to believe it all happened.

These quotes offer an explanation about how a seemingly rational, modern populace could have descended into such madness.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels

“It is not truth that matters, but victory” – Adolph Hitler

“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” – Adolph Hitler

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” – Adolph Hitler

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” – Adolph Hitler

When I look around at the political climate in this country leading up to the 2010 elections, I am struck by how successfully the GOP has managed to mislead the American populace. I have come to the sad conclusion that the real difference between the Republicans and Democrats can be explained by the quotes above.

The Democrats looked at the disaster of the 1930’s and 40’s and came to the conclusion that we must always be on guard against this happening in America. The GOP looked at the same disaster and saw a road map to electoral success. How else to explain the shouts of socialism, death panels, trickledown economics, or the Iraq war?

What GOP lie of 2010 bugs you the most?

In 1994, Newt Gingrich unveiled the Contract for America. Many political analysts view  this document as being helpful to the GOP’s effort to gain control of Congress in that year’s election. Now that the GOP finds itself in a similar situation in 2010, they have decided to release a Pledge to America with the hope that it will help them gain control of Congress in the mid-term elections. Whether that proves to be true is yet to be seen.

A draft version of the document has been released on the Internet. What I’ve read so far appears to be a typical GOP document filled with misdirection, misinformation, half-truths, and outright lies.

The misdirection starts on the first page in the intro. They save the lies for the content. I’ll deal with those in a later post.

An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, striking down long-standing laws and institutions and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people.

What they say in that paragraph is true. The misdirection is that they want people to think they are talking about the current government when it is obvious that they are describing the Bush administration that was appointed by a conservative controlled Supreme Court  and enabled by a compliant GOP-controlled Congress.

Today’s weather was bearable, for February in Michigan. The temperature was around 27°F and the air was calm when Al and I headed out for our walk. Our neighbor, Beau, who you met in an earlier diary, must have been craning his neck to see us as soon as possible. He practically sprinted out of his house before we even reached his driveway. Something was obviously up.

I’ve known Beau for a few months now, ever since he moved here from Mississippi. I know him well enough to recognize when he’s wearing a smug grin. It didn’t take long to find out what had put it there.