The Unstoppable Elizabeth Warren

As despised as the Affordable Care Act has been is the Consumer Financial Protection Agency .  And as despised as Obama for getting away with the ACA, Senator Elizabeth Warren is despised by Congressional republicans for taking on the powerful banks.  And when it comes to dastardly villains, hell bent on power and revenge, there is none like Mitch McConnell.  Oh, sure, he may duck into his shell whenever a controversy arises,

but when the coast is clear and he is surrounded by his own kind, he is a true leader.

Let us remember that it was Mitch who first stated his primary purpose after President Obama's 2008 election was to make him a one-term president.  He may have a weak chin, but he has balls that even Donald Trump must admire.  Under McConnell, republican senators have stood firmly on the right to oppose Obama's every act as president -- even when he was making a proposal that had been strongly endorsed, even suggested, by republicans.

Perhaps the most absurd act of obstruction by McConnell was last year's refusal to hear testimony on the nomination of Merrick Garland for Supreme Court Justice.  It was not only unprecedented and undemocratic, the rationale given for this militant act against the president's authority was ridiculous.  As everyone from pundits to legal experts to late night talk show hosts pointed out.

His outrageous gambit appears to have won.  We may soon have a supreme court justice that moves to the right of right-wingnut Antonin Scalia.

And now he has his sights on Elizabeth Warren.

It is easy to understand why he wants Warren neutralized.  She was the voice that led to the creation -- her creation -- of the Consumers Financial Protection Agency.  Following the Wall Street fiasco that led to the Great Recession, right wingers couldn't figure out fast enough how to stop the call for regulation and monitoring of Wall Street.  And Warren is smart and persistent.  She can't be outargued, and she won't be manipulated.  She thrives on challenges and attacks; she knows she has facts and the moral high ground on her side.

She also has the American people on her side.

And, as they used to say at Ronco,

When it was learned last year that Wells Fargo executives had pressured employees to set up millions of fake accounts in customers' names, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau pursued the complaints and fined Wells Fargo $185 million dollars.  During the Senate hearing, Elizabeth Warren told Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf, 

"This is about accountability.  You should resign.  You should give back the money that you took while this scam was going on, and you should be criminally investigated."

The plot thickens, because Donald Trump in his effort to keep his swamp full to capacity, nominated Elaine Chao to be transportation secretary.  Elaine Chao, since 2011, has sat at the board of Wells Fargo.  And... wait for it... Elaine Chao is Mitch McConnell's wife.

So I guess we could say there is history here between Warren and McConnell.  Or we could say, follow the money and the special interests.

McConnell had a rare opportunity to really stick his foot in it two days ago, when Warren was on the floor speaking against the nomination of Jeff Sessions to be attorney general.  She was reading a 1986 letter from Coretta Scott King to the Senate opposing Sessions' appointment to a federal judgeship.  Thinking this was the moment he had been waiting for, he had Warren stopped and told to sit down.  There was then a vote as to whether to rebuke Warren for "impugning" Sessions' character, which of course fell on party lines.

If you haven't already been immersed in this story, your head may be spinning, you may be saying "Wh-What???"  But it is true.  There is a rule -- Rule XIX -- that was created in 1902, back when Mitch McConnell was just a boy.  It came about because a couple of South Carolina senators engaged in fisticuffs on the floor of the Senate.  And -- this could only happen in Congress -- the rule does not just ban fights on the Senate floor, but any disparagement of a sitting Senator.  This odd and arcane rule has not been used in some forty years, and apparently did not apply when Ted Cruz accused Mitch McConnell of lying. So Warren's crime was that she read a letter stating that Jeff Sessions -- a racist -- is a racist.  And maybe that she is a woman.  A powerful woman.

(In a wonderful act of unity and defiance, a number of Democratic Senators, all male, took their turn to read the same letter for which Warren had been censured.)

More important, Mitch McConnell has once again put Warren front and center of the fight for honest government.  And she relishes that fight.  We can all scoff at the rule that allows unsavory senators like Jeff Sessions to hide the truth.  And we will.  We are fighting on the internet.  "Nevertheless, she persisted" has become yet another battle cry against the tyranny of Trump's right-wing.

And you can catch Elizabeth Warren on talk shows and on the internet spreading the good word.  Fighting for us all.

Thanks for the inspiration, Elizabeth.

 

Praying for 2016

Nikki Haley is finally reaching across the aisle.  On Saturday she will be praying for all of us.  It's apparently called "The Response," and while they want you to think they're waiting to hear what God has to say, it really is just another snow job by the right wing in an attempt to divert us from the fact that they are the cause of a lot of our problems.  The web page for Saturday's event is interesting, given that presumably the most important thing about this event is that it is not supposed to be about politics or government, at all.

Call me a cynic, but after all Nikki Haley has done to keep black people from voting or their children from getting a good education, it is interesting that the home page of this event sandwiches her in between two black men, ministers if you will.  I guess buddying up with Tim Scott worked so well she figured it was time to hunt up some more conservative African Americans.

From what I can see, Zoe Warren appears to be an actual non-political religious person.  But Samuel Rivers, Jr., representative from Goose Creek, is not just political, but so political that he can't quite get the dirt off him.  Not only does his Facebook page sing the praises of the Bush family business (the presidency), but his right wing positions include high marks from conservative business groups and the NRA.  He wrote a a guest column in the Post & Courier (that has since been withdrawn) opposing EPA regulations on water bottles that appeared to have been cribbed from the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.  At least he toes Haley's line politically, which I'm sure makes her happy to have him standing next to her, prayer-wise, even though he has lied about having an actual Doctorate of Theology.

While we're scratching our heads over this big event, I have to ask myself who is paying for it.  After all, free admission at the North Charleston Performing Arts Center isn't like crowding into a church hall or a school cafetorium.  Well, hold on to your hats, folks, because the sponsor is the American Family Association, the group that is so rabidly anti-gay that it is currently asking followers to stop doing business with WellsFargo because of its support of LGBT rights.

Not a political gathering.  At all.

According to David Lane, president and founder of the American Renewal Project, this will be a day of fasting and prayer.  But wait.  David Lane is the guy that is going to wage war for Christianity.  He is going to fight for prayer in schools and to get rid of gays.  He is going to bring back those good old family values, the kind you can find in the Bible, but I think he means more Old Testament than what Jesus preached.

And non-political?  From the American Renewal Project website, his mission:

"...to make evangelical Christians a power in the Republican Party."

And in Lane's own words:  "An army.  That's the goal...."

So what are they going to be praying for?  Nikki says she wants to "pray to remember that we're not in charge."  But would like to be?

There will be lots of proselytizing, lots of pretending to care about the poor and the sick.  But the bottom line under all this hypocrisy is that they actually have the power to change that.  And as far as I recall, God never said to turn to Him when you can fix a problem yourself.  Are they asking for a miracle, in the sense of pray and you will be made well?  Maybe.  Because the alternative would be to pray for health care, and ain't no one on that stage that's going to be praying for that.

And one last thing.  The people on that stage aren't really going to be the ones that are praying.  Or, they may be "praying" but they aren't going to be listening for an answer.