Tioga Herald

New York Times Ross Douthat: Moderation and Filibuster Rule

According to Ross Douthat of the New York Times, moderation means moderating in the decisions of U.S. Senate rules. I wish to disagree. I propose that moderation means moderating on the actions taken by the U.S. Congress, particularly the U.S. Senate for legislation beneficial for the American people. It’s not the damn rules for running the U.S. Senate, stupid.

Moderation would be to abolish the damn filibuster rule completely and the U.S. Senate stop spending taxpayer dollars to make McConnell and others happy when they are in the minority at this time. The way to do that is to simply take votes and not be concerned with the time-consuming resource-grabbing details of a rule. The idea is that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. It’s broke already and it is breaking the backs of the American taxpayers who are loyal to the American government and what it CAN achieve. Thus, if it’s broke, then abolish it completely.

Yes, we need to acknowledge that all voices are being heard. But when a minority controls the U.S. Senate and is given the freedom to block legislation with a refusal to negotiate which is girded by a stupid rule like the filibuster, then it is time to rid the nation of the stalemate. In the process, don’t be stupid and claim the issue is moderation about the rule.

A man now sitting in the U.S. Senate, from Florida, is a jackass. When the people of Florida voted in favor of a rail line from Orlando to Miami, passing through an area where I had built a home and would be enabled to ride that train to work each day, the same as those living 60 miles from New York City can ride a train to work in Manhattan each day, this senator who now occupies a seat in the U.S. Senate, as governor, blocked the wishes of the people of Florida and stopped the building of that train. Even within the Republican Party, there were those opposed to Rick Scott doing this, but Rick Scott did not give one damn.

I feel like filing a lawsuit against Rick Scott because he caused me to lose money on a beautiful house I had built. Rick Scott and others don’t moderate, they dictate their desires, including Trumpicans doing the same thing. Many great Americans lose money, due to what they do. Thank God that I received a bit of help from President Obama’s HARP program. Even then, it was not enough to truly help me as much as I needed. But those are the lumps one has to take in life. But going forward, I intend to speak out against the stupidity of Douthat and Senate Republicans in blocking the progress of America while people like Mitch McConnell get rich from the American taxpayer. I wish I had his money because I could do better for America than SOBs like McConnell, Scott, and others to work to destroy democracy by not listening to the people. For instance, the SOB from Wisconsin who likes to hold the Republicans of Florida up on a pedestal for the way they have turned it into a one-party Republican state, while falsely claiming it is democracy. It’s a dictatorship, stupid. We need moderation in actions of a democracy, not rules of the U.S. Senate.

Former Governor and Senator Bob Graham, while governor of Florida, heard a great deal of complaints about the car inspection program in Florida. As has been told, there was one day, as governor, Graham took his own car into an inspection station and watched the inspection. He decided that it was not worth keeping the program. He moved to abolish it. He did abolish it. When Jeb Bush took power, he reinstalled the stupid inspection system which did no good. Within a few years, it was once again, cancelled. So the taxpayers paid for a program which was disliked and had been removed by Democrat Graham, who later sat in the U.S. Senate as head of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Tells me that Graham had intelligence for democracy by and for the people, while Jeb Bush was a dumb ass who had no intelligence.

Former U.S. Senator and Governor of Florida, Lawton Chiles decided he did not want to have to spend taxpayer dollars on the health costs required due to lung cancer from cigarette smoking. Did he choose to block Medicaid, as Rick Scott has tried to do? No. He got together with several other states and did not file a lawsuit against government, but filed a lawsuit against big tobacco, business people like Rick Scott. Florida and several other states won the lawsuit. According to a report by a journalist suffering from lung cancer due to cigarette smoking, Peter Jennings, Gov. Chiles took that money awarded to Florida and invested it in public education training of young people to help such people learn the ramifications of smoking. According to Jennings’s report, the program demonstrated good results in reducing smoking among the younger people of Florida. Then Jeb Bush came to power and he nixed the entire public education program, plus more in public education because he and a brother (Neil Bush), the destroyer of the FS&Ls of America (because they were implemented by FDR), wanted vouchers and privatized education, paid by Florida taxpayers.

So we hear from Douthat that we need to moderate the rules in the U.S. Senate for filibuster? I don’t think so. Moderation is about the actions necessary to support the American people and the use of our tax dollars. Moderation would be the abolishing of the crap done by lawyers to clog our court systems for personal injury and workman’s comp lawsuits (and other examples) and benefit only the lawyers and a few good people in America, while overall, we overspend on a court system which should be used to challenge a former governor of Florida who caused people like me to lose money when a train system, approved by a majority of Floridians, is decimated from taking shape. Meanwhile, we spend the money to expand I-95 in South Florida from six lanes to 10 lanes and implement the anti-train fantasies of Ayn Rand and her “virtue of selfishness” theories, as written in the book and movie, Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand approved of abortions and the ideas that anything goes, according to what individualism wants and community, society, self-sacrifice, and “what can I do for my country,” can be damned. Ayn Rand came here from Russia so she had no idea what capitalism is about, but got quite a listening ear in America, destroying the gains made by people like “trust buster,” Republican Teddy Roosevelt (and others) in the process.

To the U.S. Senate, Manchin and other stupid ones there, abolish the filibuster rule and get America going again by compromising and working for moderation regarding actions necessary to make things happen for the American people. Douthat of the New York Times, think again about what you are saying because you seem to be speaking with a bias that favors the minority side of U.S. Senate which is now the Republicans, yet you claim it is “moderation.”

I would say that anyone against abolishing the filibuster is lazy and does not want to do the job they are paid to do. Lazy human beings in the U.S. Senate, where they are paid huge salaries, health benefits, and retirement benefits which are far better than what the average American citizen receives. All of this paid by U.S. taxpayers to lazy people who do not know what it means for democracy and peace and justice in America. Dictator McConnell, ripping off the American taxpayer and then denying the average American citizen opportunities to earn more, in the name of “don’t spend,” but a big lying hypocrite who takes and takes for himself.

In the words of a SNL comedy routine in days gone by: Douthat, “you ignorant slut.” Douthat, not only ignorant, but his bias towards McConnell and Republicans in the U.S. Senate is showing.