Tag Archives: paul ryan

January 26, 2019 · 19:42

An Unnecessary Condition Of Affairs: A Temporary end to the #TRUMPDOWN

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I pondered writing this post late last night but was too tired to write it. It’s not long at all and it it is something that I wrote about previous shutdowns. Back in 2011 I wrote the following words regarding the shutdown provoked by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan and their Right Wing supporters at Fox News and Right Wing pundits, which ended up with the disastrous policy of sequestration.

“The attitudes that we have formed and angry words which we now use so ubiquitously are reflective of a deep hatred that now is becoming what defines us as a people.  In fact the deep and abiding hatred which now permeates our society is now threatening the international standing and I would say the national security of the United States.  We have only ourselves to blame because through our actions and inactions of the past decade we have made our choice to be what we have become and there is no one group especially in our political, media and business elites that have served us well.  In fact we have as voters chosen this toxic mix of elected officials often more influenced by hate spewing pundits and our own self interests rather than that of the nation and future generations much as we would like to claim that we are looking out for the future.”

Interestingly enough these same people, hitched their wagons to President Trump’s disastrous decision to shut down the government to build his monstrous monument to his morbid #MAGA manhood; that big beautiful wall. Of course anyone with a knowledge of history knows that such walls are expensive and ultimately self defeating.

For now the current Shutdown is over. Increasingly isolated Trump had no other exit for the trap that he laid for himself. Standing alone in the Rose Garden he capitulated to reality.

So for at least three weeks, the shutdown is over. Of course it really isn’t over as long as Trump thinks he can succeed, and there remains the ever present threat of him declaring a National Emergency. I think the latter is more likely, especially if the crisis in Venezuela results in bloodshed at the American Embassy. But for that we have to wait and see. My hope is that a legislative fix is found that actually increases border security without wasting money on that wall. One does not return to provenly ineffectual past remedies to solve present problems, but I digress…

To quote from the testimony of the former Confederate General Robert E. Lee before a Congressional Committee after the disaster of the American Civil War, or as it should still be called the War of the Southern Rebellion.

Before the committee, Lee, who had resigned his commission less than a month of been promoted to full Colonel and rejecting President Lincoln’s offer to command the Armies of the Union accepted commissions by Virginia and the Confederacy said:

“I may have said and I may have believed that the position of the two sections which they held to each other was brought about by the politicians of the country; that if the great mass of the people, if they had understood the real questions would have avoided it. I did believe at the time that it (the war) was an unnecessary condition of affairs, and might have been avoided if forbearance and wisdom had been practiced on both sides.”

But Lee was engaged in the same sort of moral equivalence that many politicians and pundits use today. In his testimony, Lee blamed both sides and conveniently left out his role in the conflict. Before the war Lee inherited the slaves of his father in law who had expressly said that they were to be emancipated. He delayed and did not do it. When he resigned his U.S. Army commission he said that he would only raise his sword in defense of Virginia, but he personally led two invasions of the North, invasions that his Army used to capture free blacks and return them to slavery. Despite the urging of some Confederate Generals, Lee steadfastly opposed the emancipation of slaves to serve in the Confederate Army until February of 1865. When the war was for all purposes lost, Lee redoubled his efforts and had hundreds of deserting Confederate Soldiers sentenced to death at Drumhead Court Martial. The vast majority of those troops were from Georgia and the Carolinas and their states, families, and homes were being ravaged by William Tecumseh Sherman’s Army’s March to the Sea.

Yes the American Civil War was an unnecessary condition of affairs, as was the Trump-McConnell Shutdown. In each case the blame is not shared across the board. These disasters can be laid at the feet of the men who provoked them and demanded them. In the case of the Civil War, those were the leaders of the South, who having the assurance of Lincoln that slavery was safe in the Slave states decided to secede, and who through the Fugitive Slave Law Of 1850 had an instrument to enforce slavery in the Free States.

In the current situation it all comes down to race once again. President Trump and many Republican leaders have blamed immigrants and racial minorities for all the problems of the country. They offer support to White Nationalist, Neo-Confederate, and Neo-Nazi groups, while demonizing anyone with darker skin. Trump’s Wall, like his Red MAGA hats are symbolic of that race hatred, and fear mongering. The Trump Shutdown can only be blamed on that. Trump bragged about the Shutdown and took responsibility for it. He owns it, maybe we should start calling it the #TRUMPDOWN ? It does have a nice ring.

So until tomorrow when I return to other subjects,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

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June 15, 2018 · 00:01

In Today’s Struggle for Principle with Trump there Will be No Republican Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

As I watch President Trump’s administration attack the law, the Constitution, and violate the civil rights and human rights of citizens as well as people who have come to the United States to flee oppression and danger at home; to threaten freedom of speech and freedom of the press; to categorize political opponents inside and outside of his party as traitors; to legitimize the most repressive dictatorial regimes while attacking longstanding allies; even as he works to destroy the work of American Presidents and diplomats to build a world order that has brought great benefit to the United States and the world by defeating the Nazis, Imperial Japan, and eventually the Soviet Union. He has chosen the choice of being a rogue superpower rather than being the moderating and stabilizing force in the world that it has played since World War Two. Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post yesterday:

“The United States’ adversaries will do well in this world, for Trump’s America does not want war. It will accommodate powers that can harm it. It will pay them the respect they crave and grant them their spheres of interest. Those that depend on the United States, meanwhile, will be treated with disdain, pushed around and used as pawns. At times, they will be hostages to be traded for U.S. gain. The United States and the postwar liberal order protected them and helped them prosper, but it also left them vulnerable to any American leader willing to offer them up as sacrifices to appease aggressors. That is a kind of realism, too… It recognizes no moral, political or strategic commitments. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself.”

The President and his administration show little regard for the Constitution and established law in this country and our treaties and agreements with other nations. He appoints men and women who had they been Germans after the Second World War would have been charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity to high office. He defends White Nationalists and Neo-Nazis. He confounds loyalty to himself with patriotism and loyalty to the country.

He uses propaganda to demonize those who seek law and justice. In any normal time a cry would arise from his own party saying “no more,” but his party does nothing, and even those leaders who occasionally speak out against his policies take no actions because they are afraid of retribution. That happened to long time conservative Congressman Mark Sanford in South Carolina this week when the President tweeted his support for his primary opponent. During the primary season White Nationalists, self-proclaimed Nazis, and other Trump supporters advocating the most extreme, unconstitutional and abhorrent positions often swept the field against conservatives who themselves would have been considered extremists just a few years ago. The GOP is on the Party if Trump and it took less than two years to become so.

Barbara Tuchman wrote in her book The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam something that we are observing up close and personal as President Trump and his administration flounder in a sea of make believe, a cloud cuckoo land of alternative facts, alternative truth, and alternative history:

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

To be true, the Trump administration is not the first in history, in fact not even in our own country to ignore facts when making decisions. However, it is remarkable in its ability not only to shun facts but to make up its own narrative that depends on denying reality while impugning the character, honesty, and decency of those who present facts and truth that is verifiable. To be sure, competence and prudence are not and probably will never be marks of President Trump, his closest advisors, or his enablers in Congress. My hope is that some Republican in either the House or Senate rises up to confront the ineptitude and folly being demonstrated on a daily basis.

President James Buchanan

In some ways the incompetence and refusal to deal with reality by the Trump administration reminds me of the administration of James Buchanan during the years before the American Civil War. Buchanan’s collusion with Chief Justice Roger Taney regarding the Dred Scott decision before his inauguration stained him from the beginning and poisoned his relationship with Congress by declaring that the Congress never had the right to limit slavery as it had in the Missouri Compromise. Buchanan’s presidency is considered by most historians to be the worst in American history, incompetent, arrogant, and ineffective.

Likewise, Buchanan’s attempt to jam the Lecompton Constitution through Congress as a reward to Southern Democrats blew up in his face. The Lecompton Constitution was a gerrymandered bill which ignored the will of the vast majority of Kansas’s settlers who were anti-slavery. The work of the pro-slavery element in Kansas was so onerous that it brought Republicans and Northern Democrats together for the first time as Southern Democrats threatened secession if Kansas was not admitted as a Slave State. Ignoring warnings that supporting a measure that would open the door to slavery in all the western territories would split his party, Buchanan pushed on. His intransigence on the matter brought Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois to the fore in opposing it. Nicknamed “the Little Giant,” Douglas was the odds on favorite to be the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. Douglas was not against the institution of slavery, and he was a racist, but he had no tolerance for those who would upend carefully crafted compromises to expand it through the whole country. Thus he  took his case to the floor of the Senate and to the President himself.

The Confrontation between the Senator and the President was unparalleled. Douglas recalled, “The Lecompton constitution, I told Buchannan bluntly, was a blatant fraud on the people of Kansas and the process of democracy, I warned him not to recommend acceptance of it. With his head titled forward in that bizarre habit of his, he said that he intended to endorse the constitution and send it to Congress. “If you do,” I thundered, “I’ll denounce it the moment that it is read.” His face turned red with anger. “I’ll make Lecompton a party test,” he said. “I expect every democratic Senator to support it.” I will not, sir!”

Angry and offended by the confrontation of Douglas, Buchanan cut the senator off and issued his own threat to Douglas and his political career saying, “I desire you to remember that no Democrat ever yet differed from an administration of his own choice without being crushed….Beware of the fate of Tallmadge and Rives,” two senators who had gone into political oblivion after crossing Andrew Jackson.” The redoubtable Senator from Illinois was undeterred by the President’s threat and fought back, “Douglas riposted: “Mr. President, I wish to remind you that General Jackson is dead, sir.”  It was an unprecedented action by a sitting Senator, to confront a President of one’s own party and threaten to oppose him in Congress was simply not done, but now Douglas was doing it, but doing so to his President’s face, and the consequences for him, his party, and the country would be immense.

Undeterred by facts, Buchanan and Southern Democrats fought for the bill’s passage. When Buchanan’s supporters pushed for Lecompton’s approval and the admission of Kansas as a Slave State, Douglas fired back, warning “You do,” I said, “and it will lead directly to civil war!” I warned the anti-Lecompton Democrats of the North that the President intended to put the knife to the throat of every man who dared to think for himself on this question and carry out principles in good faith. “God forbid,” I said “that I ever surrender my right to differ from a President of the United States for my own choice. I am not a tool of any President!”

Under Douglas the Northern Democrats joined with Republicans for the first time to defeat the admission of Kansas as a Slave State. Douglas recalled the battle:

“After the Christmas recess, the Administration unleashed its heavy horsemen: Davis, Slidell, Hunter, Toombs, and Hammond, all southerners. They damned me as a traitor and demanded that I be stripped of my chairmanship of the Committee on Territories and read out of the Democratic party. Let the fucking bastards threaten, proscribe, and do their worst, I told my followers; it would not cause any honest man to falter. If my course divided the Democratic party, it would not be my fault. We were engaged in a great struggle for principle, I said, and we would defy the Administration to the bitter end.”

Douglas and his supporters did just that, Buchanan and his supporters were outfought and outmaneuvered by Douglas’s Democrats and their Republican allies. The bill was sent back to Kansas where in a new election the people of Kansas voted solidly against the Lecompton Constitution. In the following Congressional elections the thoroughly discredited Democrats lost their majority, their party now hopelessly divided with Southerners determined to destroy Douglas at any cost, even if it meant losing the presidency, the conflict opened the door for the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

I wonder if there will be a Republican in the Congress with the courage that Stephen A. Douglas displayed in confronting the incompetent and vindictive President Buchanan during the Lecompton Crisis. Will there be a Republican with enough courage to stop the insanity of the Trump administration even if it means in the short term to divide the party and doom their political future? Honestly I doubt it as does conservative Republican political strategist Rick Wilson. Wilson wrote:

“Nothing you do matters to this Congress. No matter what damage you inflict on our economy, our alliances, trade, our stature in the world, our role as an exemplar of democratic values, our ability to serve as an honest broker in the international community, and our security, Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell will lay supine before you.” 

But if Trump’s march of folly is to be stopped, someone in the Republican Senate or House will have to have the courage to stand up and defend the necessity of thinking for themselves, and doing what is right, sadly there is no Stephen Douglas in today’s GOP.

Have a great day.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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April 28, 2018 · 00:05

The Satanic Truth Of Paul Ryan, Ron Johnson & Ayn Rand

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

When I see political leaders who clothe their politics in a veneer of the Christian faith and claim to be pro-life while in life doing everything that they can to oppose the basic teachings of the Church regarding the worth of people and their rights I get very angry.

Yesterday I read the words of Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who told a group of high school student that food, medical care, and housing were not basic human rights. His reasoning was based on Ayn Rand. Then I read that Atlas Shrugged toting Paul Ryan fired the Catholic Chaplain of the Speaker of the House for praying during a session dealing with the Trump Tax plan:

“As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, may all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great Nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle,” the chaplain said. “May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.”

A week later Father Conroy heard from Speaker Ryan’s office:

“A staffer came down and said, We are upset with this prayer; you are getting too political,” he said. “It suggests to me that there are members who have talked to him about being upset with that prayer.” Shortly after, when he saw Mr. Ryan himself, Father Conroy said that the speaker told him, “Padre, you just got to stay out of politics.”

This wasn’t the supposedly faithful Catholic speaker’s conflict with the Church on its moral teachings. In 2012 the Jesuits at Georgetown handed a chunk of his skinny ass noting that the House Budget proposal went against Catholic moral teaching:

“As the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has wisely noted in several letters to Congress, “A just framework for future budgets cannot rely on disproportionate cuts in essential services to poor persons.” Catholic bishops recently wrote that “the House-passed budget resolution fails to meet these moral criteria.” In short, your budget appears to reflect the values of your favorite philosopher, Ayn Rand, rather than the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Her call to selfishness and her antagonism toward religion are antithetical to the Gospel values of compassion and love.”

But that’s Paul Ryan whose core values reflect those of Ayn Rand who denigrates the key parts of the Christian faith in regards the sacrifice of Christ which she called “monstrous” and any responsibility to others. Regarding Christ she stated to Playboy:

“According to the Christian mythology, [Christ] died on the cross not for his own sins but for the sins of the non-ideal people. In other words, a man of perfect virtue was sacrificed for men who are vicious and who are expected or supposed to accept that sacrifice. If I were a Christian, nothing could make me more indignant than that: the notion of sacrificing the ideal to the non-ideal, or virtue to vice. And it is in the name of that symbol that men are asked to sacrifice themselves for their inferiors. That is precisely how the symbolism is used. That is torture. ”

In regard to the latter the following exchange between Rand and Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes is telling because it cuts to the very heart of Ryan’s Fred with the Church:

Rand: “You love only those who deserve it.”

Wallace: “And then if a man is weak or a woman is weak he is or she is beyond love?”

Rand: “He certainly does not deserve it. He certainly is beyond it . . . he cannot expect the unearned, neither in love or in money, in matter or in spirit.”

Wallace: “There are very few of us in this world, by your standards, who are worthy of love.”

Rand: “Unfortunately yes, very few.”

Ryan, a true Randian Apostle and evangelist told members of The Atlas Club, a group of Rand devotees: “I grew up reading Ayn Rand and it taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are and what my beliefs are. It’s inspired me so much that it’s required reading in my office for all my interns and my staff.”

Such philosophical schizophrenia is endemic in people like Ryan who on one hand claim to be followers of Christ and faithful Christians while exalting in their lives and social beliefs the atheistic creed of Rand.

The words of Father Conroy were in keeping with not only the Catholic tradition, but a tradition of human and civil rights that has been a hallmark of the American political and religious tradition since the earliest protests of abolitionists against the institution of slavery. But those are not the traditions that Senator Johnson or Speaker Ryan adhere. Instead they are devoted to the perverse ideology of Ayn Rand, which is nothing more than Social Darwinism and the exploitation of the weak for the benefit of the strong. Sadly, that ideology permeates the supposedly “Christian Right” to the point that it has completely overwhelmed anything that could be considered “pro-life” in their theology. Just because you are against abortion doesn’t mean that you are pro-life, especially if you despise those who are already born and condemn them to death.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was martyred by the Nazis wrote:

“Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness and pride of power and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense, shock the world far more, than they are doing now. Christian should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak rather than considering first the possible right of the strong.”

The amorality of the current GOP position on life is absurd. According to it you can kill babies overseas when targeting terrorists with drone strikes, you can execute men and women when there is evidence that they might have been innocent; you can use economic sanctions to so cripple poor country’s to kill hundreds of thousands of children because they do not have food, water, or medical care; you can funnel tax revenues to the richest of the rich and deny food, housing, jobs, education, medical care, post natal care, ad infinitum to people but just don’t abort babies and you are the most commendable of men.

That my friends is Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson. They make President Trump for all of his faults loom like a saint when compared to them. Trump makes no apology for what he is. Trump doesn’t hide behind the image of being a Christian. Yes, he will take the prayers and adulation of Christians, and he will definitely take their votes and money, but he doesn’t pretend to be something that he is not. I respect him more than I do them. As terrible as he is there is the possibility that he could actually a conversion experience, but they won’t because they have perverted the faith for a Satanic ideology.

Bonhoeffer noted:

“It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie…. There is a truth which is of Satan. Its essence is that under the semblance of truth it denies everything that is real. It lives upon hatred of the real world which is created and loved by God.”

What Ryan, Johnson, and their fellow travelers proclaim in thought, word, and deed Satanic truth, and incompatible with the Gospel. What Ryan did with Father Conroy was truly despicable and politically motivated. I expect now that the deed is done that the Right Wing propagandists, maybe even with Russia help begin to attack the life and character of Father Conroy.

Think about that.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 23, 2018 · 00:01

The Shutdown is Temporarily Over but Not the Danger: the Emperor Has No Clothes

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Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The Shutdown is over much sooner than I expected it to be. I predicted that it would be long and bad, and for the moment I am wrong, but the temporary spending bill is just that and nobody really knows on February 8th when this agreement expires.

There are a lot of questions but at least the Democrats got the Republican House to approve a six year extension for the CHIP act which funds healthcare for children and the GOP House had fought for months. It did not however address the Dreamers although Mitch McConnell has promised that the DREAM Act will be addressed and voted on by the Senate before the next shutdown deadline. That may happen in the Senate but McConnell neither controls Paul Ryan’s House which is dead set against it not to mention President Trump.

Now the President was for a really big and loving solution to the DREAM Act until he wasn’t so only God, Jerry Falwell Jr., and maybe Franklin Graham know for sure know for sure. Of course whether they do or not really doesn’t matter until they speak with Stephen Miller and John Kelly who seem to acting as Trump’s brain in the absence of Sloppy Steve Bannon; after all after he was for it last time they told him that he was against it. I’m surprised that the President hasn’t branded Flip Flops with his name yet.

There are some very troubling things that came out of this episode. First it didn’t have to happen and that is not the Democrat’s fault, they have never been fans of shutting down the government and the proof is in the deal that Chuck Schumer thought he made with the President last Friday and the quickness in them agreeing to this continuing resolution despite the uncertainty of what will happen next.

That has pissed off a lot of progressive Democrats who are pressing for the Dreamers. Honestly I wished they had pushed harder for it but I do understand the long game in this. If McConnell honors his words and a decent majority, in the Senate approves the measure then it goes to Ryan and his Omega House caucus of bullies. The thing is that most Americans by a wide margin think that the Dreamers should be put on a path to full citizenship and if the Omegas don’t fail to do it then the next shutdown belongs to them. If they do agree to it and Trump vetoes it then it belongs even more to him. Of course the rabid immigration hawks would support them it doesn’t end well. Of course I could be wrong, I was wrong last week to a degree and I still don’t trust the President, nor McConnell, nor Ryan.

I was impressed that the Democrats did grow a spine last week and despite the crowing of the most convinced Trumpers and the anger of most disillusioned Democrats this was not a loss for the Democrats. Their willingness to negotiate followed by their stand to bring on the shutdown exposed Trump the “dealmaker” as an empty suit for all the world to see, bluster aside he was a non-player in this despite his tweets.

The danger not is that the emperor has been shown to have no clothes and that is profoundly disturbing when dealing with the current world crises. Neither our allies or our enemies will believe a word that he says and when something really bad happens he is going to have to find a way to show his manhood, and that will likely end in terrible wars, possibly nuclear. The same could prove true regarding the economy. No-matter what happens domestically in the wake of this shutdown, the next one could be worse and Trump’s now completely exposed weakness might well lead to disaster.

I admit that not every is going to agree with me. I may be a progressive and I have my idealism, but I am also a realist. The Democrats don’t have a majority and they only way to get it back is to help the GOP sink itself.

“As Sun Tzu wrote:“Engage people with what they expect; it is what they are able to discern and confirms their projections. It settles them into predictable patterns of response, occupying their minds while you wait for the extraordinary moment — that which they cannot anticipate.” 

If the Democrats win in November, even a temporary loss on the Dreamers doesn’t matter. So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

 

 

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January 21, 2018 · 01:40

“Societies Can Break, Democracies Can Fall” An Unprecedented and Dangerous Shutdown

US-POLITICS-CONGRESS-TRUMP

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

The present government shutdown is like none that we have seen before. What is going on now is a blatant attempt by the President to humiliate and destroy his opposition from both the Democratic Party and the few Republicans willing to oppose him. Interestingly enough he is being aided by the two Republican congressional leaders who has already emasculated, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Both have already so compromised themselves with the Trump’s ardent supporters that they know that their political survival is absolutely dependent on what they do for him.

All this is despite the fact that on Friday Senator Chuck Schumer offered the President more than any previous Democratic leader to end the shutdown, even going against the Democratic base by agreeing to fully fund the President’s wall. The President at least pretended to agree to a deal that would protect the people protected under DACA, the “Dreamers.” The legislation to protect them was first introduced in a bi-partisan bill sponsored by Republican Orrin Hatch and Democrat Dick Durbin. It eventual died but was resurrected by President Obama through his immigration policies. President Trump ended that but on numerous times indicated that he wanted to find a “loving” solution to the plight of the children undocumented immigrants who were brought to this country, some as long as three decades ago.

However, less than three hours after the meeting Schumer was told that the conditions that he thought were agreed to were rejected with Presidential Chief of Staff John Kelly saying that they were “too liberal.”

For all intents and purposes these young people that were protected under DACA are Americans but are prevented from becoming citizens because of how they got here. They are not a menace, they are our neighbors and contribute much to this country; their only crime was to be brought here as children, and now they are being demonized by Trump, Ryan, McConnell, and most of the GOP host in ways that fully assimilated German Jews were during the early days of the Third Reich.

By their words, actions, and policies and actions these men are showing that they are committed to only one thing: total victory for Trump. But that is what Trump has been about since he first went into business, for him it is and always has been a zero sum game, whether be it in business, marriage, entertainment, as a candidate, and now as President.

The plan now is to try to make the Democrats loom as the devil behind the shutdown while they simply are doing what Ryan, McConnell and the GOP Congress did in 2011 and 2013. The hypocrisy and lies that they employ to do this will be on full display all weekend and until they achieve their goal, even if the Democrats eventual agree to end the shutdown, and if they do that is when Trump will move in for the kill.

What is happening is dangerous beyond anything that we have ever seen in this country. The danger to the country is greater than at any time since the Confederate States attempted to destroy the Union in the name of White Supremacy and Slave Power in 1861. Sadly, the President is much more like Jefferson Davis than Abraham Lincoln.

On March 14th of 2016, almost eight months before President Trump was elected  I wrote these words on this site:

“I am afraid. Over the past few weeks violence has become commonplace at the campaign rallies of Donald Trump. In the past week a reporter from the Breitbart News service, an organization that is solidly behind Trump was assaulted by Trump’s campaign manager, and Breitbart threw her under the bus for him. Protesters have been assaulted, reporters threatened, Trump not only condones the actions, he encourages them, threatening to use the law and courts to ruin people’s lives, and offering to pay the legal bills of his supporters who have been charged with crimes. He labels any opponents as “bad people” who need to be punished. The ultimate cruelty is that though he is the one inciting the violence, he and his supporters blame that violence on the victims, be they Democrats or Republicans, protestors or media, pundits, politicians or preachers. He is creating a frenzy among his most violent supporters that demands victims to satiate their new found bloodlust…

If he succeeds in his takeover bid, it will forever change American politics, especially if he is able to ride the fear, and to the White House. I don’t think the latter will happen, but I would not exclude it from the realm of the possible…”

Well Donald Trump is the President now and anyone who thinks that he can be contained, even by the Mueller investigation is foolish.  Today the American system of government so carefully crafted by our founders to prevent such events is now collapsing before our eyes. It is true that over the years that both parties and for that matter almost all Americans bear some responsibility for this, but it is Donald Trump who in the past year has upended almost every societal and political norm in that the founders put in place. Based on his past action and his nefarious personality as well as intent of his supporters; the true believers and the opportunists, we cannot have confidence that our institutions will survive. The only reason that he would cut a deal,with the Democrats would be to further embarrass and degrade McConnell and Ryan, but since they rallied to him Saturday I don’t see that happening.

Historian Timothy Snyder noted:

“The European history of the twentieth century shows us that societies can break, democracies can fall, ethics can collapse, and ordinary men can find themselves standing over death pits with guns in their hands. It would serve us well today to understand why.”

We I see the words and actions of the President, his supporters and even some friends that I thought I knew, including retired military chaplains I fear for this country. I don’t want to sound like an alarmist but that is what I see going on. This is not an ordinary shutdown and it will not end with business as usual. God, I do hope that I’m wrong, but I know in my heart that I am right.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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January 20, 2018 · 02:30

Shutdown

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Well another government shutdown is here and it all could have been averted but for one man, a man who since 2013 has been egging on the GOP on shutdown threat after shutdown threat.  Two of those shutdowns occurred and cost taxpayers billions of dollars, harmed many Americans and caused great damage to both the reputation of the United States and national security as this one will if it goes on as I expect that it will.

Now why would I say that?  Even now Senators are now working to find some kind of deal to minimize the consequences of the shutdown by finding some sort of short-term funding bill that will kick the can down the road for another few weeks.  But even if they do come to an agreement the fact is that Paul Ryan’s GOP madhouse has to agree to it and that is no sure thing. In the House the GOP Freedom Caucus and others want the shutdown. But even then, after the House and Senate finally agree on something one more person has to sign on to it.  But ultimately the man who has to sign the legislation is the same man who has wanted a shutdown for years, and now he has orchestrated one on his watch. Last week a deal appeared to be in place and he blew it up and in the process revealed the racism that guides so much of his thinking.

That man wasn’t Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan, neither was it Chuck Schumer. Although Ryan and McConnell are certainly complicit in this debacle the real culprit was President Trump. In the midst of crises around the world that he has been stoking as well as fear at home he has engineered another crisis with no logical reason for it, that is no positive reason for it which makes me believe that his motivations are either based on ignorance or something nefarious. There are arguments for both but based on his actions over the past couple of years I lean  towards the latter.

President Trump came to power through legal means but neither before he took office or since has he shown one shred of respect for our country’s ideas, laws, or Constitution. Many of his supporters have surrendered all principle in supporting him, especially conservative Christians and no matter what he does, even if he “murders a man on 5th Avenue” they will still support him, and this emboldens him.

I don’t expect a deal and I do expect a real crisis while this is going on and when that happens be it a major terrorist attack or possibly even war on the Korean Peninsula because no-one is expecting it. I could be wrong and I would hope so, but the fact is if you look at history despots of all kinds use tactics similar to this to overthrow democracies. As Timothy Snyder wrote:

“The mistake is to assume that rulers who came to power through institutions cannot change or destroy those very institutions—even when that is exactly what they have announced that they will do.” 

I do hope I’m wrong but I have such a bad feeling about what is going on now and in real life I have to find out what happens with my civilian contractors when I wake up.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

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March 25, 2017 · 06:30

The Trumpcare Train Wreck: Incompetence + Hubris = Disaster

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Mark Twain once wrote, “Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.” That being said is amazing to watch a political party with a majority in the House and Senate, combined with their party’s President, drive the train of government over a cliff in pursuit of legislation that was at best ill-conceived and misbegotten, and at worst an abortion wrapped in a train wreck driven by haughty hubris, and guided by the unparalleled incompetence of the Trump administration and the House leadership. Despite warnings that he did not have the votes to get the bill through the House, the President pushed on, insisting on a vote that brought an end to the bill. It reminded me of Barbara Tuchman’s immortal words:

“Wooden-headedness, the source of self-deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”

I watched in morbid fascination this week as the House GOP led by Paul Ryan attempted to ram through this hopelessly flawed bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, only to pull it minutes before the vote. Ryan had to run to the White House to tell the President that they didn’t have the votes as Trump’s display of intra-party brinksmanship crashed and burned in the face of House realists who recognized that the bill would doom them with their constituents and Freedom Caucus extremists who could have cared less about theirs.

The bill would have caused as many as 26 million people to lose their insurance, not reduced the deficit by much, and raised the cost of insurance for those who still were able to have it. The effort exposed both the incompetence of the GOP as well as the lie that they actually care about the people that put them in power, with the worst effects of the bill being felt in the counties and states that most heavily voted for President Trump and the GOP majority. It exposed the basic immorality of this party which regards the acquisition of wealth for wealth’s sake as more important as people, or the best interest of the country, in the best tradition of Thomas Hobbes, and Paul Ryan’s inspiration, Ayn Rand.

I have never seen anything like it in my life, and never want to see anything like it again. It is a a disaster for the President equal to the failure of James Buchannan to pass the Lecompton Constitution which would of admitted Kansas as a Slave State, over the desire of much of the Democratic Party of 1857 and 1858. To see this happening even as more and more facts come out about the possibility of members of the Trump administration, and campaign team being paid and influenced by Vladimir Putin’s Russia made the week even more surreal.

Watching the reactions of the House leadership and the President afterward was even more fascinating, and disturbing. It looked to me that the President is willing to destroy Paul Ryan and the House leadership, while blaming the the Democrats for not helping. Likewise there were times that it looked like Ryan was trying to undercut Trump even as the Freedom Caucus tried to undermine both Trump and Ryan. Sadly, the GOP did nothing to bring any Democrats over to their side as to vote for Trumpcare would have been a poison pill.

What will happen next is still to be determined, but the first major attempt by Trump and the GOP Congressional majority to pass what was supposed to be their signature and defining legislation demonstrated that they are incapable of governing. Say what you want about the polices of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, one cannot accuse either of incompetence when it came to passing difficult legislation and even winning Democrats to their cause.

As a person who was a Republican from 1976 until 2008 are a disgrace to the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Dwight Eisenhower. They are incompetent ideologues and demagogues who will destroy each other if they don’t succeed in destroying the country first, and I hope that we all can keep them from doing the latter.

Have a great weekend.

Peace

Padre Steve+

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