Who Does the GOP Represent?

Polls show that Americans’ anti-immigration sentiments are down – way down. But listen to the GOP whining in the House of Representatives and you would believe that Americans are in more danger from the brown horde, than they ever were from the yellow peril. Or even the godforsaken Irish.

If you listen to the severely religious politicos of the evangelical right, we are a beachhead away from beingswamped by the gay agenda. Yet support for gay marriage is greater than ever – a majority, in fact. In great swathes of America, gay marriage – apart from the receptions – is banal.

Contraception use among sexually active women of child bearing age – and most of those women are – is, thankfully, high. But to listen to the GOP, mandated contraception coverage is Satan’s assault on religious freedom. It doesn’t matter that Catholic women have abortions and use contraception at identical rates to women in general – the church totters if these poor naifs have “the Obamanation” thrust his atheist agenda down their throats.

Gun ownership is down to perhaps 20% of adult Americans – no more than a 1/3rd of households have a gun. And the vast majority of Americans, including gun owners, support common sense gun control. Yet Republicans characterize this adult approach to firearms as the plot of a camarilla of wild-eyed “obamabots” intent on striping “good Americans” of their God given 2nd amendment rights. No less than an unconstitutional gun grab, in fact.

The majority of us believe that the environment should be given priority, even if it means that economic growth is curbed. An even larger number of us believe that that the danger of global warming is either accurately stated or even underestimated. And a vast majority believe that the government is doing an appropriate amount or not enough to address the environment. Yet the GOP says that environmentalists are anti-job shock troops. And that we should drown the EPA in a bathtub.

Even on taxes the GOP is out of step with ordinary Americans. A vocal TEA party (“taxed enough already” – clever right?) makes it seem as if there is groundswell of anti-taxers in the US. But most Americans support raising taxes, as well as cutting spending, to narrow the deficit. Yet Republicans ignore this strain of common sense to back the rabid right.

Why is the GOP so out of touch with ordinary citizens – even as it portrays itself as the party of “real” Americans. It has to do with its paymasters. Thanks to the Supreme Court, all politicians have to spend a large amount of time groveling for dollars. But the GOP relies more on corporate donors. And as Upton Sinclair pithily observed, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!“

They GOP has a profound capacity for ignoring stuff. Republicans have few qualms against making things up. An overwhelming 97% of climatologists accept man made global warming. Bunk! retort the lay conservatives. The scientific community accepts evolution as a scientific truth. Codswallop! huff the religious, God created us all. Some 6,000 years ago add the true believers.

It is hard to know which is worse. That the GOP is so deluded that they believe they are representing Americans, or that they are so cynical that they can casually ignore what the majority of Americans want. Whichever it is, the Democrats, by not effectively calling them out on it, remain their biggest enablers.

A Simple Solution to Illegal Immigration – And Why We Will Never Use It.

Faced with problems Americans like to take action. “Don’t just stand there – do something” is the rallying call. Unfortunately, people mistake action for achievement. But often doing something is ineffective. And that ineffectivity – this being America – frequently costs a lot in blood and treasure. Especially with our boundless enthusiasm for fighting misguided wars.

Vietnam – expensive and pointless.

Some of these wars are costly in both blood and treasure – Vietnam and Iraq. Others are costly in just treasure – the wars on poverty and drugs. And then there is the War on Illegal Immigrants

And here, there is good news – and there is bad news. The good news is that we don’t have to keep spending billions to fight this war. The solution is simple – and almost free. The bad news is we’ll never do it.

The secret lies in supply and demand.

Our problem is that we keep tackling the wrong one – supply. It doesn’t matter how many walls, patrols, drones, and the like are deployed, immigrants still cross the border illegally – because there are JOBS.

No jobs for illegal aliens = no illegal aliens

And therein lies the solution. Just take away the jobs – i.e. the demand for this labor.

How?

Penalize the employers. Throw the the owner, the CEO, and the human resources managers of any company employing illegal aliens in jail – and the problem goes away.

If you want to ensure 100% compliance, add homeowners, who don’t check the immigration status of nannies and housekeepers, to the list of jailbirds

But it will never happen – because there is too much money being made.

Is an ISIS Victory an Unmitigated Disaster?

The standard wisdom, in the face of the Sunni insurrection in Iraq, is “something must be done”. Which begs the question – why?

In answer, chickenhawks will trot out the usual litany of threats to America. The armchair generals will intone that we have to fight “them” over there, so we won’t have to fight “them” over here. Lip-service will be paid to humanitarian issues – “top this” stories of atrocities to women will make make the talk-show rounds. And mutterings about the threat to America’s petroleum supply will be muttered.

But let’s take a step back and look at what is really going on.

The Middle East is a political earthquake zone. And as everyone, who lives in an earthquake zone, knows there is nothing you can do to stop the earthquake. You’re best strategy is to accept its inevitably and build your life around that fact.

Determined, fanatical and deadly – but not the Third Reich.

Right now ISIS is in the halcyon days of fighting. Let’s assume they create their Sunni paradise in Iraq – even a new caliphate stretching across the region –  then they will have something they will have to defend and manage. Commentators might say Islamic fundamentalists don’t care about a modern state. To them electricity and running water are distractions; stone-age existence is just fine – look at Afghanistan.

But there’s a difference. Afghanistan has never been a “modern” country. But the Iraqis have had a bite of the apple. It will be harder to put that genie back in the bottle. ISIS will have to make a choice. They can either maintain infrastructure, or let it go to hell in a hand-basket and be ever vigilant against unrest. Either way it’s a pain in an insurrectionist’s ass. And it takes away from focussing on the Great Satan.

The argument that the creation of a terrorist state will engender another 9/11 makes no sense. The planning for 9/11 took place in Afghanistan, but it could just as well have taken place in Pakistan, or Indonesia, or a private house in Yemen. The damage done on 9/11 was huge, but the method was decidedly small. A total of 19 men on four planes.

Let’s spend the money on this. That will make the conservatives happy.

We already spend $55 billion on Homeland Security. Instead of spending additional trillions fighting wars abroad, why not spend some more at home, identifying people who have overstayed their visa – like the 9/11 hijackers?. If we beef up border security it will also aid in stanching the flow of illegal immigrants. That will win conservative support.

As for the petroleum threat, if Middle Eastern oil supplies are disrupted (and why would they be – terrorists need to eat) it will only give us greater incentive to develop our own supplies. There may even be a consensus that renewables get  a serious look. Which will make the liberals hot to trot.

There has been a divide in American foreign policy since Teddy Roosevelt sent the Navy on a “look at mine” circumnavigation. On one side stand the isolationists, who believe in “fortress America” safe behind ocean barriers. On the other side stand the hawks, eager to throw American military might at any and all threats to America – real or imagined.

Some times the isolationists have been in the ascent – especially after the Vietnam War. But the hawks rely on our short memories to get us involved in overseas military adventurism. Now they are throwing the “terrorist threat” in our face.

If it seems a familiar plaint, it is because we have heard it before. We were warned that communists were going to eat our lunch. Children were drilled in cowering under their desks. Congressional committees were smoking out communists at the highest levels. And it culminated in expensive, bloody and pointless wars in Southeast Asia.

Let’s not do Vietnam again.

Now we are warned about the inexorable spread of fundamentalist Islam, unless we do the above mentioned “something”. We are told these people are too determined, fanatical, too uncivilized, to be stopped unless bombed. Well we bombed the hell out of Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos for good measure) and look what that got us.

Condaleeza Rice – who by all accounts is extremely smart, analytical and knowledgeable – was so swept up by Saddam’s existential threat, that she spoke of smoking guns being mushroom clouds. Which sounded wise until the Emperor was discovered to be nude.

And forget the appeasement argument. There is no Hitler in the Middle East. Wannabes sure. But ISIS in no Nazi Germany – no matter how much cast-off American materiel they capture.

They hate us because we are there – so why don’t we just leave?

America Won the Cold War. Was It Worth It?

Has America benefitted from the end of the Cold War? It was heady times in 1989 as the Berlin Wall was torn down. So heady that historian Francis Fukuyama wrote “The End of History” – a celebration of the triumph of western liberalism over other political philosophies.

The wall came down and we won – right?

He believed – as many did – that western ideas, seasoned with a health dose of western consumerism, would be so compelling that alternatives would throw up their hands and plaint “why bother”.

Hubris. He might as well have written an essay called “The End of Weather”.

The yearning of Islamic fundamentalists to establish religious states, subjugated to Sharia law, is well evidenced now. But in 1989 the only imaginable, existential threat to the Pax Americana – the Soviet Union and its clients – had been vanquished.

Little did we know that the Soviet influence in the Middle East was not the malignant force we thought, but actually a useful prop to stability in the region. Yes, there were wars between the Israelis and the Arab states. And yes, there were terrorist attacks – such as the Beirut Marine Barracks massacre. But compared to today’s swirling chaos it was halcyon times.

The calm waters of the 1990s were only troubled by a Balkan brouhaha and a few bombings by some shadowy group, which no one had heard of, called al-Qaeda.

The M1 Abrams. The best at what it does. What it doesn’t do is fight terrorists

Then 19 men flew 4 planes into infamy. And we reacted in the only way we knew how. We fought as if we were fighting the Soviet Union. We “shocked and awed” the hell out of people. We mounted up on our trusty depleted-uranium steeds and beat the standing armies of our foes.

But we also discovered, in our unarmored Humvees, that we had ridden into a valley of death. So we wishfully proclaimed “Mission Accomplished” and declared the foe beaten. But unlike the Germans and Japanese of WWII – who had the decency to stop fighting when they lost – the Islamic zealot kept up the struggle.

Even the Soviet Union, reborn as the Russian Federation, is rattling sabers again. It makes the old days seem pretty rosy.

The fundamental check of the Cold War was MAD or “mutually assured destruction”. We knew that if the Soviets tried for our extinction it would result in their own. As Albert Einstein famously said, “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones”.

But “mutually assured destruction” doesn’t work if one side hasn’t the ability to destroy the other, and the other side can’t find the first.

Neocons may have had fantasies of a new world order spread by a metastasizing democracy – but we have learned that the Middle East doesn’t do that. I suspect that the realpolitik wing of the powers-that-be in DC are praying for the return of oppression-as-usual by Middle Eastern strongmen.

We need realism from grown-ups in Washington. We can’t count on politicians, who are more interested in winning the political battles than winning the war on terrorism. In all likelihood, because these good old boys – and girls – aren’t too sure what’s going on, who’s fighting who, or even where or why they are doing it.

If we continue to be mired in a Middle Eastern mess we will be unable to focus on the true threat to America’s global sway – China.

Bush’s Draft-Dodging, Iraq War ‘Chickenhawks” Are Back.

To be considered an “expert” today it is sufficient that you have failed spectacularly at your job. To be considered an “expert” on war, it helps if you avoided fighting in one. This is evidenced by the procession of Bush men and neocons, who are getting air time to tut-tut the President, over the devolving situation in Iraq.

“I’m Dick Cheney. I start wars I don’t fight in them.”

Once again, everyone’s least favorite, demented, grumpy uncle, Dick Cheney, is weighing in. This time in an Op Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal. He says of Obama “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.” In one airy wave of his hand he dismisses the American blood spilled by the Bush administration in the Middle East.

He spanks the President for the usual litany of foreign policy failures. Meanwhile, no American troops are dying in fly-specked desert hell-holes.

His 15 minutes are up.

Katrina had its Michael Brown. Iraq’s “Brownie, you’re doing a helluva job” award goes to Paul Bremer. Bremer, Bush’s envoy to Iraq during the occupation, learned nothing from America’s reconstruction of our defeated enemies after WWII. Swanning around in his desert boots, Bremer demolished the power structures of Iraq – leaving a power vacuum eagerly occupied by all manner of violent men.

“I’m Paul Bremer. We’re going to do it my way. If it doesn’t work we’ll blame the next guy.”

He crushed any good-will spawned by our liberation of Hussein’s oppressed, and he took away the livelihood of thousands of Iraqi security forces.

But his disastrous spell in Iraq hasn’t disqualified him from uttering inanities to the media. He has even gone so far as to suggest that America needs “boots on the ground” – again. Haven’t enough Americans died ‘Bremie’?

John Bolton – his motto, “I’ve never found a Muslim I wouldn’t sacrifice someone else’s child to kill” – has also offered his “wisdom”. Not abashed by the results of toppling one middle-eastern strong man, he now says that it is in America’s strategic interest to topple the ayatollahs in Iran. Dear God man – stop trying to blow things up. It doesn’t work.

We may not like Iran or the men who lead her. But they at least have skin in the game and an actual country to maintain. They aren’t suicide bombers.

“Bomb, baby, bomb.” – John McCain.

John “get  off my lawn” McCain is hot to get it going. “Bomb early, bomb often” is his devout wish. While it will no doubt make him feel good, I have no idea what he thinks it will actually achieve. ISIS doesn’t fight with massed tank brigades, while carrying big neon signs saying “Bomb Here”. McCain learned to fight the Soviet Union at Annapolis in the 1950s and cannot seem to get his head around the modern enemy.

Paul Wolfowitz – Bush’s Deputy Secretary of State; so called “architect of the war on Iraq”; and famous prognosticator that the Iraq war would pay for itself – is back demanding that the US cleave to an open-ended commitment to Iraq. Just like South Korea.

He might have a point if Iraq where an ally fighting another country. But exactly where would he put this desert DMZ?

Bill Kristol, a delusional fan of the war on Iraq - “American and alliance forces will be welcomed in Baghdad as liberators” – is now ignoring Bush’s adventurism to promote Obama as responsible for the Iraq imbroglio.

“See, not a drop of blood on them. Wasn’t my fault. Don’t blame me. It’s the new guy.” – Tony Blair

Even Bush’s transatlantic poodle is yapping. Tony Blair has posted a letter to his website denying that his eager acquiescence to the Bush follies has any part in today’s disintegrating Iraq.

The list goes on – but you get the point.

There is one conservative that has had an epiphany on Iraq – Glenn Beck. He announced on his radio show – in regards to going to war with Iraq – “Liberals, you were right. We shouldn’t have”. Credit where credit is due.

If you had hoped that the nightmare that is Iraq would have finally convinced the neocons – and their fellow travelers – that war is stupid, expensive, and kills a lot of Americans for no reason, you will be disappointed.

The Middle East: Iran and Syria May Be Our New Best Friends.

Neocons had a fantasy that the US could crush the strongmen of the Middle East – and usher in a bucolic age of democracy, á la americain. They were deluded. The region doesn’t do democracy.

 

On the other hand, the goal of practitioners of realpoltik  is stability. And ironically our best allies to that goal are Iran and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. If the neocons had got their way and Iran been attacked – and Assad’s foes armed – the instability in the region would have been catastrophic.

Let me explain.

Democracy is a noble aim, but it isn’t learned overnight. European democracy traces its roots to the Magna Carta (1215). It took centuries to arrive at the democratic governments of  modern Europe. The genius of the United States was that it had the intellectual talent to create a peoples’ government and the good fortune to have a blank slate to start with.

The Middle East, on the other hand, is mired in a culture of autocracy and lacks the Jeffersons and Madisons to write a new path. Further, it is riven by a divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

It may be simplistic, but the wellspring of the conflict in the Muslim world is the disagreement over who is Mohammed’s rightful heir. If you believe that is assinine, consider the bloody history of the Catholic/Protestant divide in Europe.

To understand the political/religious blocks in the Middle East, the following map is useful:

The astute reader will notice that Shiites are a majority in Iran and Iraq – which both have Shiite governments. Syria also has a significant Shiite population and its leadership is drawn from the close allies of the Shiites, the Alawites.

It is clear from the map that Iran is a natural ally of Al-Maliki’s Shiite government in Iraq. And has no desire to see a Sunni presence reestablished in Iraq – (Note: Saddam Hussein was a Sunni.)

It is doubly ironic that by toppling Hussein, the US opened the door to Shiite Iran’s influence in Iraq. And now that Iraq’s Shiite government is threatened by the Sunni insurgent group, ISIS, we are looking to the Iranians to backstop that government.

On the other side of Iraq, Assad’s seemingly solidifying grip on Syria will aid in containing Sunni adventurism from that direction.

Further, the power center of organized Sunni Islam is the Saud family in Saudi Arabia. And they have no more interest in seeing a chaotic Middle East than the US.

There is one significant fly in the ointment, Iran and Syria are virulently anti-Israeli. Iran is once again, after an estrangement engendered by a disagreement over Syria, a major supporter of Hamas – a Palestine group that actively denies Israel’s right to exist.

And Hamas is Sunni.

Well nobody said the Middle East was uncomplicated.

Really? 6.15.14 Iraq and finger pointing; “White folks” made me do it; Drunk golf-cart driving; Advertising your opponent; Insurers make more money; #1 corrupt state.

Chickenhawks in full CYA mode.

Desperate to divert attention from who actually got us into the Iraq nightmare, early supporters of Bush’s adventurism are lining up to point the finger at Obama for the decay of Iraq into a failed state. Ex-UK PMTony Blair is the latest. In an essay on his website he washes his hands of any responsibility for the Iraq imbroglio, saying it isn’t his fault.

As any parent knows, when a child denies responsibility for something, there is a large likelihood he did it. More so with politicians.

Not a white man in sight.

Marion Barry blames the white man.

Barry was the Mayor of Washington in 1990 when he was taped smoking crack in a Washington hotel room. In a new book “Mayor For Life” he lays out who’s at fault – “white folks”. In his logic, the status quo (whites getting all the money) was being upset by his funneling of DC funds to black businesses. So the white power structure “set him up”.

Either he is cynically using the civil rights struggle to cover his ass. Or the crack killed a lot of brain cells.

DWI at the US Open

I wonder who Tony Lineberry is blaming for his substance abuse problems? Lineberry had the responsibility of driving US Open golf commentator, Roger Maltbie’s, cart from hole to hole. Ignoring a NC State trooper’s order to stop, he drove the cart over the trooper’s foot, was chased down and arrested for, among other things, DWI.

Lineberry has not responded to requests for comment.

Do you know who this is? Neither did anyone in VA’s 7th Congressional district until Eric Cantor spent $5 million introducing him.

If nobody knows your opponent don’t spend any money introducing him.

The political surprise of the week was the defeat of Eric Cantor in the GOP primary for Virginia’s 7th district to unknown and underfunded David Brat. The Tea Party claims Bart’s victory is evidence that the GOP is still not conservative enough. Others say it was a condemnation of Cantor’s supposedly moderate position on immigration. Constituents indicated that it was due to Cantor’s aloofness and lack of interest in the district’s business.

But whatever the reason, it seems clear that the $5 million Cantor spent to smear Brat only introduced the previously unknown economics professor to those longing for an alternative to Cantor. Brat couldn’t do nearly as good a job with his limited $250,000.

Insurers want in on the Obamacare action.

Opponents pan Obamacare as socialized medicine. Bollocks. The ACA is so good for the insurance business that insurers who sat out the first year are clamoring to get in.

I suppose that is good news for the consumer. But the bigger story is the money that is going to the companies’ profits, marketing and executive salaries. Money that – in an actual socialized system – would not have to be spent or would go to patient care.

The most corrupt state

By one calculation Mississippi is the most corrupt state. On the list the top 10 most corrupt states 9 have a Republican governor and legislature. Illinois is the exception. Unexpectedly, New Jersey didn’t make the list. Slackers.

Religious People – The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly.

“One of the greatest tragedies in mankind’s entire history may be that morality was hijacked by religion.”  ― Arthur C. Clarke

A Southern Baptist becomes a Christian.

Pastor Danny Cortez is a good man, who would have made Jesus proud,

Danny Cortez is the Pastor of New Heart Community Church in La Mirada. Being unusually empathetic for a Southern Baptist he listened to his parishioners.

He became increasingly aware of how hurtful the church’s attitude to gays was. And by August 2013 he came out as “gay affirming”. Soon after, his 15 year-old son came out. And Cortez reacted by saying, “I may have destroyed my son through reparative therapy.”

Although the Church was displeased with the abruptness of Cortez’s announcement the elders voted to keep him as Pastor and pursue a “third way” – neither condemning same-sex relationships nor supporting gay marriage.

A first class bigot.

On the other end of the compassion scale is Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council. He doesn’t like gay marriage. It offends his religious sensibilities. Fair enough. The Constitution entitles him to his opinion, and to express it.

Tony Perkins is an odious little man – who greedily grabs rights he denies to others.

But it isn’t enough for Perkins to have his constitutional liberties. It is necessary that others are denied theirs. He says, “Increasingly, Americans are being forced to celebrate unions that not only step on free speech and religious liberty but also deny children a mom and a dad.”

What about the free speech and religious liberty of gays? What about denying a a parent couple to children of gays. Nobody has to celebrate anyone else’s marriage. if you receive an invitation to attend a gay marriage, don’t go – you don’t even have to send a gift if you’re cheap as well as bigotted.

(Note: If you want proof that Perkins stance is motivated by bigotry and not theology ask why he doesn’t protest the marriage of divorced people – or divorce itself, for that matter)

The Courts are unanimous on gay marriage.

Since the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, every court decision on gay marriage law has been in favor of equal marriage rights. Tony Perkins’ rant was in response to a court’s decision striking down Wisconsin’s gay marriage ban.

The Supreme Court will have to decide the issue for once and all. And it may have already tipped their hand – recently declining to stay the decision by a lower court to strike down Oregon’s anti-gay marriage laws.

Alabama’s Chief Justice shreds the Constitution.

Judge Roy Moore is a legend in his own mind. As far as he is concerned, If it’s good enough for him, it’s good enough for the Founders.

Judge Roy Moore is bewitched by Christianity. He is so in its thrall that he claims that God is necessary for the law and courts to function – thereby thumbing the founders in the eye and shredding the Constitution,

For emphasis Moore drags in the Pledge of Allegiance and its phrase “under God’. Here he ignores – or is ignorant of – the fact the Pledge did not exist until 1982, wasn’t the official Pledge until 1942, and didn’t include the “under God” bit until 1954.

Why are some Christian theologians so obsessed with the naughty bits?

There is more sex talk in the Church than primetime TV (just). In response to a Time cover featuring Laverne Cox, transgender star of “Orange is the New Black”, theologian John Piper said that genitals are gender. Piper is firm. If you have a penis, God made you a man – a vagina, a woman.

So what’s an Hermaphrodite? God’s idea of a joke? Or A Siamese twin? Or a baby born with its brain outside of his skull? God is definitely sloppy with the physical.

And why not the other way around? Why isn’t it that God gave every soul a gender and once in a while mismatches the genitals.

The GOP Makes A Scandal Mountain out of a Prisoner Exchange Molehill

“War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” ― Bertrand Russell.

The intensity of the GOP’s emotion surrounding the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl reflects political derangement, not a rational review of the President’s actions. For years, the GOP piously pleaded Bergdahl’s case. Even at his release, many GOPers were celebrating and tweeting the good news. But those celebrations have been choked, and the tweets deleted.

Benedict Arnold. Was he worse than Bowe Bergdahl?

Now the GOP would have us believe that Bergdahl was the most perfidious American soldier since Benedict Arnold. And that the five Taliban commanders released are so efficiently evil that they threaten the Earth in a manner usually seen only in superhero movies.

Let’s reel in the hyperbole. These men are no doubt hostile and may well be talented, but I doubt we have released a Napoleon or a Genghis Khan. In the final tally, The Bergdahl Affair is about just six men. American history is littered with Presidential decisions involving thousands more.

How do you compare the Bergdahl affair with the calamity that was the Iraq war? Saddam was a nasty guy. But there are lots of nasty guys. And under his dictatorship terrorists had no place in Iraq. If we had left him in place 4,488 American troops and 245 military contractors would still be alive. (Plus 150,000 Iraqis – if we care) And there would have been a power to check the Iranis.

Like Bush, Reagan had his agenda, and he was not about to let legal niceties stand in the way of deals with terrorists and state sponsors of terrorism. Nor would they prevent his fulminating against legally elected democratic governments.

241 marines killed in Beirut – how soon we forget.

And also during Reagan’s watch, 241 marines were killed in a sloppily protected barracks in Beirut.

LBJ and Nixon were not paragons of honesty in pursuing the Vietnam War – 58,209 dead.

Perhaps the most flawed reasoning on the Bergdahl affair is that it will inspire the Taliban and other terrorist malefactors to kidnap US troops. Because, of course, that idea hadn’t occurred to them before.

But it is pretty standard stuff for the Obama deranged. Let’s look at the Obama actions that incite the worst vitriol from the GOP. They want to impeach him for negotiating the release of an American POW. And the program they hate most? One that works toward giving all Americans health care.

Can you imagine the reaction if he suggested the same tax rates for capital gains as for earned income? Or removed the cap on the social security tax? Or proposed that hedge fund managers are taxed by the same rules as school teachers?

Combine Benghazi with Bergdahl and the pattern is clear. There is no limit to the political gain Republicans will try to wrest from the events surrounding a few Americans serving abroad.