CARLY FIORINA -- ANOTHER REACTIONARY

Carly Fiorina, who touts herself as an example of the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story, appears to be the Republican candidate for the Senate this fall. She will run against incumbent Barbara Boxer.

Fiorina, like Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, the GOP candidates for governor, has run some truly noxious ads.

In one ad someone moans that "free enterprise is almost gone." Really? You mean the kind of free enterprise that gave us the economic meltdown and now the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? I can't wait for that kind of free enterprise to be gone.

Fiorina makes the claim that government doesn't create jobs. Jobs come from the private sector, we're told. That's the same private sector that has wrecked the economy over the past several years. If anything, it was lack of government regulation that led to this debacle.

Fiorina has a new ad mocking Barbara Boxer for suggesting that climate change is a national security issue. Terrorists kill, Frau Fiorina tells us, and Barbara Boxer is "talking about the weather." Fiorina ignores even studies by the Pentagon that suggest global climate change will result in massive security issues as people flee from droughts or floods to seek sanctuary elsewhere. She ignores the fact that droughts and floods and tornadoes and hurricanes spawned by climate change will kill far more people than any terrorist.

Fiorina is just another disgusting reactionary spouting the same old tripe we get from right-wing Republicans and one can only hope she gets trounced in the general election.

THE ROTTEN FRUITS OF CONSERVATISM

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is both the tragic and visible symbol of conservatism's policies. Conservatism, as a political philosophy, is one big massive lake of toxic sludge.

Almost all the major dysfunctions we see now are the result of conservative policies. The financial meltdown that almost led to a second Great Depression was a result of the deregulation we saw during the Bush administration. The continual shafting we got from credit card companies, who could shaft us with impunity, was a result of the whole laissez-faire conservative philosophy.

The lack of care of the environment is right out of the conservative playbook. The free market is supposed to cure all ills. It doesn't happen, has never happened, and never will happen.

The people who talk big about the Constitution and "big government" are the first to intrude into our personal lives and stomp all over the Bill of Rights. We see an egregious example of that in Arizona with a draconian law that essentially legalizes racial profiling. The states of Nebraska and Oklahoma are doing their best to intrude into personal reproductive decisions.

Just like the Gulf of Mexico, our system needs a massive cleanup and that begins with recognizing conservatism for what it is.

DISGUSTING TEA PARTY RALLY

The Fresno Bee reports that an estimated 4,000 people attended a Tea Party rally in Fresno yesterday. Of course, you don't know how many of these people are the usual band of reactionaries, or how many went out to observe a freak show. It's a little like a traffic accident for some people. They just can't help looking at the carnage.

I loathe conservatives. They are racists, economic imperialists, nationalistic jingoists, and major league hypocrites. They gripe about "socialism," but have no problem with using Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. They drive on tax-payer funded roads, use public water and sewage systems, buy food and medications regulated by the FDA, and on and on it goes. As the old saying goes, it's better to be silent and thought an idiot than to open your mouth and prove it.

THE GOP'S INSIDER KNOWLEDGE

When GOP pundits like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck talk and when GOP politicians talk about such issues as job losses, character assassination, and creating large budget deficits they speak from personal experience. They have been so adept at all of those things. No one is better at destroying jobs and making life more miserable for most Americans than Republicans. No one can smear quite the way Republicans can. And Reagan and the two Bushes were champions at creating budget deficits. This is a commentary by Tiny Dupuy at www.trueslant.com:

When Republicans warn that a policy is a job-killer – Americans should listen. If any group of lawmakers and thinkers know about killing jobs it’s the Grand Old Party. In 2008, the final year of the Bush Administration, after two terms of careless deregulation implemented with bastardized pseudo-free market battle cries, the economy lost 2.6 million jobs. An annual job loss not equaled since 1945. When it comes to job extermination the GOP’s display case has a full assortment of trophies. So, of course Republicans are now the best authority on how not to kill jobs. Basically, don’t do what they did.

WATER POLITICS IN THE SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY

Here in right-wing country water is a major issue. Agriculture is the big industry and big farmers think they should have all the water they want for next to nothing. When they don't get their way they like to blame environmentalists. Environmentalists have these quaint ideas about protecting species that might go extinct if the water policies of the big farmers get enacted.

We even had to suffer a visit from the right-wing shill Sean Hannity a few months ago.

Marc Riesner's great book Cadillac Desert shows the idiocy and folly of water policies for the few at the expense of the many. This article by Yasha Levine shows that Californians are also in danger of a Katrina-like disaster if the levees and dams built to satisfy the big farmers ever break. The article is at www.alternet.org:

Imagine the devastating flooding of Hurricane Katrina multiplied by epic sandstorms, drought and economic collapse of the Dust Bowl. Now picture it happening an hour east of Apple's headquarters in Silicon Valley and spreading all the way down to the Mexican border. It's not as far-fetched as you think. A routine 6.7-magnitude earthquake would be enough to set it off, liquefying the decrepit levee system that walls off California's main source of drinking water from the Pacific Ocean and triggering a deadly flood that would submerge roads, destroy homes, wipe out thousands of acres of farmland, kill countless numbers and possibly cut over 20 million Californians off from their water supply for a year or more.

California's politicians have known about this looming catastrophe for decades. They also have had the power to neutralize the threat. But no one has done anything to prevent it.

THE VILE GOP AND ITS SUPPORTERS

Today President Obama signs the new health care legislation into law. It's legislation Republicans and their supporters have lied about, made threats about, and predicted doom about. It's legislation that's long overdue.

There is no reason the richest country in the world shouldn't have health care for all its citizens. Health care should not be a profit-driven enterprise, but Republicans and their supporters believe in the "free market" for everything. They really like the "free market" when it means big profits from their wars. Death and destruction are the Republican way.

They really exposed their true colors in the run up to the vote in the House of Representatives. Taunting a man with Parkinson's disease, shouting racial slurs, and homophobic slurs show how cruel and out of touch these people are.

I hope the passage of this bill will be the beginning of a wave of new progressive legislation in the same spirit as the New Deal and Republicans can take their hatred and bigotry and mouth-foaming rhetoric off into some dark corner.