Meet some of the members of the new Republican death panel

Republican Death Panelist Paul Ryan

Republican Death Panelist Mitch McConnell

Republican Death Panelist Donald Trump

The Republican Congress, Senate, and Donald Trump are coming for Grandma. 

They’re coming straight to the nursing homes of America, where 1.4 million Americans, mostly elderly, all of them frail, are being cared for.

And they’re going to see to it that Grandma and Grandpa — and there’s a good chance this will eventually include you when you get old — will die a ghastly death, impoverished, uncared for, homeless, and suffering.

The victims of the new Republican Death Panel aren’t “freeloaders” or “welfare cheats.” These are honest Americans, hardworking in their day, who held down jobs, raised children, taught school, ran small businesses, served in the military, often lived frugally to save for their old age, and tried, each in their own way, to make life in America better.

They are now in nursing homes because they can no longer care for themselves and, in most cases, there is nobody able to properly care for them.

To get into nursing homes, they first had to spend down their life savings for their nursing care. Then, when they were virtually broke, Medicaid took over and began paying their costs.

Now the Republican health care “reformers” want to murder them. Oh, they’re not going to do it by putting a pillow over their faces and smothering them. Or by pumping some fiery poison into their veins. Or by shooting them. That would be relatively merciful.

No, the Republicans have a crueler idea.

They’re going to force the frail elderly out into the streets, where they can die slowly in the gutter. The death panelists won’t do it directly. Like the Mafia don who never goes out and shoots anybody himself, but simply says “I wish Joey the Mouth would disappear,” and then feigns innocence when Joey is found at the bottom of the river wearing concrete shoes, they’ll enlist, or force, others to do it for them.

They’re going to do it by cutting the Federal contribution to Medicaid, forcing the states, which cannot afford Federal-size contributions, to try to cover nursing home costs. But the states won't be able to do it. Not most of them, anyway.

The eventual upshot will be that many older people who fall ill and cannot care for themselves will not be admitted to nursing homes. And many people currently getting cared for in nursing homes will be forced to leave. Since their life savings have already been “spent down,” they will have no place to go. They will be pushed out into the streets. And there they will die.

That’s when the Republican death panelists, led by Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, whose work will be signed and approved by Donald Trump, will blink innocently and say, “Not my fault. All I did was cut Medicaid overhead so the rich could have a tax break.”

It’s time to call out the defunding of Medicaid for what it is. And what it is is murder, pure and simple. Murder of the poor to give more money to the very rich. Murder, bloody murder!

The Secret Service, the White House, the tan suit, Ebola, and Republican attack opportunists

The Ebola virus has African origins. Our

president's lineage is half African. Therefore

as any good Republican can see, err, ahh...

The Republican penchant for attacking the president – on any grounds, on flimsy grounds, on no rational grounds whatsoever – is getting a tad tiresome.

It started with that socialistic, communistic, fascistic, maybe even Muslimistic (not to mention totally totalitarian) idea that was the crown jewel of the Obama administration: seeing to it that as many Americans as possible had health care coverage. O, the horror of it all! 

Even to this day, Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell is running for re-election on a promise to repeal that accursed law and throw us back to the tender mercies of the greedy insurance companies. They will, he implies, do as right by us as they always have in the past because, uh, Freedom.

The American public has also endured Republicans foaming at the mouth concerning, uh, well let’s call them (and this is only a partial list) Benghazigate, Birthergate, Golfgate, Vacationgate, and what until now has been my all-time favorite. 

TanSuitgate 

TanSuitgate was when Republican Congressman Peter King launched into a vicious attack on President Obama for wearing a tan suit to a press conference. Then, facing withering scorn for his own idiocy, King walked it back maybe, oh a half step or so, and insisted he was only speaking in metaphors. Metaphors? Isn't that actually Congresspeak for speaking in tongues? 

For the record, here’s one of the Congressman’s kingly "metaphors" on what clearly, from his enraged tone, must have been nearly an act of treason by Obama:

“There’s no way I don’t think any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King said.  “You have the whole world watching, you have a week, two weeks of anticipation of what the United States is going to do and then for him to walk out — I’m not trying to be trivial here — in a light suit, a light tan suit.”

So why am I not amazed, or even slightly surprised, that the Republicans are barking and snapping like a pack of rabid Yorkshire terriers because the Secret Service is is falling down on its job of protecting him?

Yes, we should all be concerned about lapses in the President’s security. And yes, the Secret Service needs a cataclysmic culture change to get the problem fixed. But some professions of concern over the president’s security by all the folks who’ve been trying to bring him down for the past two terms strikes me as a bit, eh, shall we say disingenuous?

 When Congressman Darrell Issa, the would-be scourge of President Obama, attacks the Secret Service for not adequately protecting Obama, one has to think his secret hope is that some of the mud flung at the secret service will instead stick to the President.

As the Fiscal Times reports:

Rep. Darrell Issa’s two terms as chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have been marked by hearings on issues that seemed to greatly excite members of the hard right, Issa himself (R-CA) and the anti-Obama element of the Republican Party. Until now, Chairman Issa’s tendency to work himself into high dudgeon over scandals, including the “Fast and Furious” investigation and Lois Lerner’s IRS emails have failed to get real traction with the broader American public.

This morning, however, given the latest news reports about the severity of the Secret Service’s lapses in protecting the White House, Issa might finally get what he seems to have wanted all along – the chance to indulge in some high-profile righteous anger that has the sentiment of the American people behind it.

And now, the E-bomb

Now the latest stink bomb in the Republican arsenal is emerging. Ebola. You see, the E-bomb is all Obama’s fault. 

Many Republicans—and conservative media outlets—are also now hitting the president for thus far refusing to block flights to the U.S. from those nations, something some European countries have done.

Of course, if we block air traffic to the affected African countries and fail to send medical assistance to the areas where Ebola has reached epidemic proportions, the epidemic will inevitably spread faster, likely evolving into a worldwide pandemic that could cripple the United States.

Meanwhile, we’d have more and more, longer and longer delays at American airports, more and more angry passengers, more and more financial losses.

But of course, that would have to be the President’s fault, too.

Fallout from Onion spoof reporting on a “hostage-taking” Congress proves nobody in Washington has a sense of humor. Least of all Republicans.

If there’s anything Congress hates more than an agreement that could put the United States back on a stable economic footing, it’s a spoof that highlights its Republican-driven incompetence and irrationality.

Case in point:

The satirical newspaper The Onion ran a spoof – both online and in Twitterfeeds – that purported to follow Congress taking twelve children hostage and demanding $12 trillion to let the kids live.

A half brain-dead idiot would have to know it was a spoof, and a damned pointed one at that. It featured a Photoshopped picture of John Boehner holding a pistol to a little girl’s head. That’s it, at top right.

The spoof included a Tweet that said, Three-course lunch from Charlie Palmer's Steakhouse delivered as per Rep. Boehner's demands #CongressHostage

And what was that, if not a pointed reference to the fact that in the United States, wretches starve while the Congressmen, who could turn around the economy if they wanted, instead stuff their faces and make trouble for the nation?

The spoof even included a followup story that involved the pompous pontificating of Senator Mitch McConnell, who has had a major hand in holding up agreements in the Senate. Here’s the Onion explaning McConnell’s alleged position on the ransom:

Obviously, the most important thing here is to reach a deal that works for both sides," read a statement from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the disputed $12 trillion agreement that would free the young children currently being held at gunpoint by the country’s legislative branch. "But many important questions still remain: How will the ransom money be allocated? How can we cut needless expenditures such as individual ski masks for every congressman? Should there be a stipulation to take one of the children with us to ensure a clean getaway? Unfortunately, it may be quite some time before we can reach an adequate consensus on these and other issues." At press time, FBI officials said Congress had moved to extend the money drop-off deadline until early December.

The bad congressional behavior that inspired this spoof was so pointedly reflected in this story that the Republicans must have had a Category Five meltdown. Next thing you know, the Capitol Police — this is for real now — began investigating the Onion reports.

C’mon! What’s to investigate? We know where the report originated. At the Onion. We know what their motivation was: to spoof Congressional bad behavior. And we know who did it: The Onion staff members.

I met a few dumb cops in my police beat reporting days, but never this dumb. Why do I suspect that the cops aren’t "investigating" on their own?

Why do I think that somebody on the Republican side of the aisle is putting them up to it — perhaps by threatening sotto voce to cut the Capitol Police budget is they don’t make a big deal out of this to punish the Onion staff?

Instead of investigating The Onion, I have a better idea. Let's investigate Congress.

A warning to Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Jon Kyl and our too-quick-to-compromise President from...Madagascar!

In Madagascar, an island nation off the coast of Africa, a bunch of tinpot colonels and other military types decided to take over the government.

That was a day or so ago. Since then, the military usurpers seem to have found themselves up a certain unprintably-named creek without a paddle.

Seems the usurpers, having announced that they were bringing the government down, have – umm – retreated to the safety of their barracks. Maybe they could still pull this thing off if the new president will negotiate, but so far he seems to be telling them to go jump in that creek they're stuck in and take a few deep gulps of swamp water.

Now right here in the United States, Senator Mitch McConnell, Representative John Boehner, and lately Senator Jon Kyl, Republican problem children all three of them, are also threatening to bring down the president and make him a one-term phenomenon.

Yes, their actions would bring the government to a halt for the next four years. Yes, they're endangering the United States economy and what's left of the prosperity and health of every American citizen. Yes, their near-treasonous attempt at a forceful overthrow of the presidency is even endangering us diplomatically and militarily.

But the thing is, you see, they think Barack Obama will negotiate himself out of power if they keep this sociopathic stuff up. And his behavior since he came into office gives them a rational basis for thinking this way. So...

Memo to President Obama: Stop trying to negotiate with politicians who are trying to kill you. If you explain your case to the American people carefully, forcefully and frequently, they'll see that their interests are in line with yours, not the subversive Republicans.

Memo to McConnel, Boehner, Kyl and other Republicans: You might win this. But you might end up getting sent back to the barracks, your butts whupped, to sit in the corner with your dunce caps on until you're voted out of office. Is it really, really worth the gamble to you?

What President Obama needs to do—right now!

Okay, so we’re a nation of idiots. So Americans need to understand Washington in terms an imbecile could grasp. So maybe I need to explain in comic book and fantasy action movie terms what it is President Obama needs to do.

Remember “Raiders of the Lost Ark?” Remember Indiana Jones, his whip always at the ready, vanquishing foe after foe with his bullwhip—knocking them down, knocking the weapons out of their hands, yadda yadda until it all becomes a bit tiresome?

And then suddenly Indy gets approached by a another posturing thug, a turbaned bozo who not only waves a sword, but does sword tricks with it. But our hero has had enough of this posturing horsecrap. He shrugs, whips out his pistol, and plugs the posturing jerk right between the eyes. In the theater where I watched this, the audience stood up and cheered!

President Obama needs to take a leaf from the Indiana Jones script. Enough already with the debating, the arguing, and worst of all the compromising with posturing Republicans (and a few Democrats) who refuse to compromise. That’s all bullwhip.

Instead, the President needs to pull out the Presidential equivalent of his pistol—the public accusatory confrontation—and start plugging Republicans right between the eyes.

For example, there’s a Republican Senator named Jim Bunning, who has forced the furlough of Federal transportation workers—putting a stop to construction projects that are desperately needed to keep our infrastructure maintained and Americans working. He’s also strangling desperate Americans by choking off their unemployment benefits.

It’s time for President Obama to call a televised press conference and declare:

“If a terrorist tried to starve millions of Americans, render them homeless, and bomb the US economy, we’d have every right to declare him a war criminal, arrest him, and try him for war crimes.

“Senator Jim Bunning, you are the moral equivalent of a war criminal. You are sabotaging the business of the people of the United States. By putting a chokehold on the extension of unemployment benefits and other critical expenditures you are causing hunger. You are causing people to lose their homes. You are exacerbating a severe economic situation, damaging every American, every citizen, every taxpayer. I’m calling you out, Senator Bunning, as the the closest thing there is to a traitor who deserves to be turned out of office and run out of town on a rail.

“Now let me talk about another moral equivalent of treason—the actions of that smug, smirking Senator Mitch McConnell, who is creating Tokyo Rose-type propaganda to demoralize and mislead Americans who simply want affordable healthcare….”

There’s ample precedent for the President to publicly call out the troublemakers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt did it—and achieved the New Deal—by sneering at a trio of bloviating enemies of America, the infamous “Martin, Barton and Fish.”

Would there be howls of dismay from the right? You betcha! There were howls of dismay and worse under Roosevelt.

Would the obstreperous senators who’ve currently afflicted the Congress and the American people with legislative sclerosis tremble in their shoes, even as they pretend to outraged? Sure they would. But in short order they’d also buckle, particularly if the next step is public torchlight demonstrations in front of their homes, angry throngs calling for their heads in Washington and demands for investigations of their financing and their intentions.

So enough with the bullwhip, Mr. President. Pull out the pistol that was installed in your bully pulpit by virtue of the overwhelming majority of people who voted for change and now want to see you either change things or at the very least make an all out effort that will leave the obstreperous Republicans with something a bit messier than egg on their faces.