Politics Plus

Were this to happen in any other state Than Texas … or North Carolina … or Wisconsin, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, or other states, where Republicans lied their way into complete control, I might believe this is the individual officers’ doing, and perhaps it is anyway.  But in those states where the primary Republican emphasis has not been the promised jobs, but has centered on what goes on between women’s legs, the following crimes fit the Republican pattern.

A pair of videos posted online show police probing the genitals and anal regions of three women they claim to suspect of possessing marijuana. In one video, a woman is seen bent over and grimacing as an off camera police officer conducts the search. Shortly before this search, a male officer explains to the woman that he is calling a female officer over “because I ain’t about to get up close and personal with your woman areas.”

The videos depict two vehicle stops, one for speeding and another for littering. In both videos, a male officer asks the women if they have any marijuana in the vehicle, suggesting that the purpose of their search is to find evidence of this drug. At one point, immediately before conducting her search of a woman’s genitals, a female officer warns the woman that if she “hid something in there, we’re going to find it.”

These searches almost certainly violate the Constitution. Although police do have broad latitude to search a vehicle when they have probable cause to believe that they will uncover contraband within, it is quite a stretch to extend these precedents to this most intimate of searches. As the Supreme Court explained in a 2009 decision regarding a student who was strip searched by school administrators, “both subjective and reasonable societal expectations of personal privacy support the treatment of such a search as categorically distinct, requiring distinct elements of justification on the part of school authorities for going beyond a search of outer clothing and belongings.”…

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Here are the videos:

There was no justification for these searches.  “I smelled marijuana” is to police, as “The check is in the mail” is to deadbeats, or as “I’m telling the truth” is to Republicans.  These are acts of intimidation and humiliation that fit the war on women in Republican Regimes.  If, fact, given their disrespect for women and their privacy, perhaps the GOP should be renamed as the GOPP.

Here is the sixteenth article in our Republicans on Parade series, featuring individuals who personify what the Republican Party has become. Today’s honoree is Ted Cruz (R-TX), for his absurd statement on shutting down the federal government, in addition to being a master of TEAbuggery.

Tea Party members of Congress like Sen. Ted Cruz are threatening to shut down the federal government in an effort to defund health care reform while, simultaneously, attempting to place the blame for any such shut down on President Obama.

Obviously, pulling that off successfully will require the creation of some pretty ingenious arguments, one of which Cruz tried out last week when he was interviewed on Newsmax TV where he asserted that the term "shut down is a misnomer; what it in fact is is a partial, temporary shut down" where "nonessential government functions are temporarily suspended…

Inserted from <Right Wing Watch>

Here’s the video:

Republicans cannot disclaim this fascist. After all, he’s one of their Senators. As for his veracity about the effects of a shutdown, even Republican Governors are begging House Republicans not to shut it down. There’s a word for it. Bulls love to do it. Bears do it in the woods, and Cruz must think his doesn’t stink, or he wouldn’t be serving it up like this.

The Republican leadership goose-stepped into the House chamber, shortly before attending to what Republicans do best: vacation.  They expected easy passage on a measure in support of one of their two goals: the transfer of wealth from the poor and middle classes to billionaires.  Much to their chagrin, hardly anyone showed up.

Amid the morass of Washington’s endless budget fights there was a moment of sweet revelation last week: House Republicans choked outright when they failed to muster support for the draconian dreams of Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin legislator and fabled budget hawk who last year ran for vice president on a program of unforgiving fiscal austerity that his colleagues suddenly found too politically risky.

A $44 billion measure based on the tooth-and-claw Ryan blueprint approved by the same House just three months ago had to be yanked from the floor when not enough Republicans showed up to vote yes. An embarrassed leadership was forced to concede that the size of the proposal’s cuts to transportation, housing and urban development had become intolerable even to the fiscal zealots among the rank and file, who no longer had the stomach to walk the austerity talk.

The embarrassment was deserved. The leadership offered hollow excuses about a tight legislative calendar, but the truth was more accurately explained by Harold Rogers, the Republican appropriations chairman and no slouch as a budget hawk. The frustrated lawmaker underlined the moment by noting: “The House has made its choice: sequestration — and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts — must be brought to an end.”

The retreat hardly settled the larger budget wars, which remain noxious. The Republicans have not abandoned their threats to bring government to a halt, to stage-manage another federal debt crisis, and, of course, to fiscally strangle the law of the land known as Obamacare… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <NY Times>

I disagree with the author’s contention that Harold Rogers (R-NC) explained this correctly. In my opinion, the key factor was timing. Even the "fiscal zealots among the rank and file" feared going home for summer recess and having to explain their support of 1% greed to local residents, even conservative ones, whose lives and livelihoods will be impaired by the damage the cuts would do to transportation, housing and urban development. So instead of voting, they used the Republican method, also known as the cowards’ way out.  They snuck out of town.

Ryan does not care who he hurts, as he goose-steps behind Ayn Rand. He even held a budget hearing on poverty with no input from poor people, as Melissa Harris Perry explains in her open letter to him.

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When it comes to opinions, Paul Ryan, and the Republican Party, measure their value by one metric alone: the net worth of the person who has the opinion. This is true, because Republicans equate financial worth with personal worth.

So don’t think for a minute that caving-in means a change of heart. Republicans are expert at using fear to motivate their sheeple, and they spread that fear using lies. However, they are also motivated by fear.  What they fear is the truth.