Omnibus Terror

This is a wild ride. I know people are probably expecting me to talk about the March for Less Freedom in Washington, D.C. today, but I'm actually going to skip that. They have a Constitutional right to protest until they are blue in the face. I'm a little ticked off at the media coverage, since there are protests and rallies there every day and none of those get coverage, but this one needed nonstop coverage and live feeds, but whatever. Also, for those who still don't know... no, the kids didn't organize the protest like the media tells you. The Women's March did, and it isn't a hidden secret. It's on all their marketing information. 

What I do want to discuss is the Omnibus bill that Trump threatened to veto and then signed. It was a pork filled disaster that should have been set on fire on live TV before forcing them all back in a room to rewrite the damn thing. It isn't an official budget, because our government is apparently completely incapable of coming up with an actual budget. But it is also so fiscally irresponsible it should make everyone sick. 

Senator Rand Paul with the Omnibus Bill. (Photo: Senator Rand Paul/Facebook)

At this point, no breaks. You keep your butts in Washington, D.C. until you get your damn job done, and done right. Then you can leave. And not a minute before. 

I've taken some polls here, on Instagram, on Twitter, and on Facebook. The results are pretty even on your thoughts, with "Trump has a plan" squeezing out a narrow win. 

Personally, I think he screwed up by signing this bill. And I'm not alone. I spend most of the day in my car for work, and listen to talk radio during the week. Rush and Hannity are split on it. But I know the callers calling in to talk to Rush were not at all happy. I listened to their grievances. I listened to the people who sent me messages. I listened to the people talking all around the internet. Hopes are not high right now. 

If Trump has a plan of some kind, he better make that plan real clear sometime soon, because it sounds to me like his base is deflating. There are plenty of people coming up with their own theories as to what he's doing here, but at the end of the day, the only person who knows what the hell Trump is doing is Trump. And not being a diehard like some other folks, I am having a tough time rationalizing the signing of this thing when he could have fought for the American people instead. Seriously, we're going to fund border walls in other countries but not the one on our own border? We're funding overseas scholarships and women police? Why are we doing this? We're going $1.3 trillion deeper into debt to fund stuff in other countries while thumbing noses at the American people. We can't balance a budget. We refuse to listen to the suggestions on real ways to actually balance the budget. We're now poking China while we're in debt to them up to our ears. It should be real fun when China decides to call in their debt! And yes, they can. And yes, we'll be screwed.

The midterms are fast approaching, with most predictions being a blue wave. Yes, I know all the excuses about how the 2016 polls were wrong and all that good stuff. The fact is, polls are usually a pretty good predictor. Obviously they don't always work. But they do a lot of the time. Because people have decided polls are suddenly always wrong, the base is already not feeling powered enough to go out and vote because obviously we're going to win regardless of polls, so why bother. A lot of folks, myself included, are trying to get the base to get up and vote in the midterms because now isn't the time for complacency. But this omnibus may have made our jobs harder. 

People feel betrayed. No, not everyone. I can already see the angry comments. But a lot of folks are, in fact, feeling betrayed. How fired up are those people going to be about voting in the midterms? These are the folks who are looking at the republicans and figuring they are just going to give the dems whatever they want anyway, so what? And they're right. Our Senate and Congress are full of spineless amoebas. They scream and nod about rights and fiscal responsibility and then we get something like this omnibus. The libertarians are laughing and saying, "See? You should have voted 3rd party and should in the midterms!" But the fact is that the libertarians aren't on the ballot in most states, so no, they aren't going to win jack. They certainly aren't going to take Senate and Congress, and frankly, they wouldn't know what to do with it if they did! They can't stop fighting among themselves over their platform long enough. 

The right is in real trouble in November. In a perfect world, anyone currently holding office - and I don't care a drip who they are - would be voted out onto their butts and replaced with fresh new faces. It would be nice if average people who actually have to live with this crap were able to run for office so we could replace these pieces of trash with them. Every single person in office right now should be losing their jobs at the next election. Primary out every single one of them. Term limits should be put in place immediately. And from here out, government is no longer a career choice. You serve your term and get the hell out so you have to live with what you did like the rest of us! 

But it isn't going to happen because average people can't afford to run, the parties don't support new people, and we love to complain about our politicians so much we keep voting them back in so we can keep complaining. 

At this point, if you haven't realized your politicians - dems or repubs - don't give a single flip about you, you are a lost cause. They are there for themselves. They will blow smoke up your rear all day long to get you to vote for them, and then do whatever they want. And we'll complain. But we'll vote them right back in again. We won't hold their feet to the fire. And they know it. 

Stop making excuses for them. The omnibus was just another bad bill that got signed when it shouldn't have been. You can have as many long explanations as you want to. The fact is - we don't know what any of these people are thinking. Not really. And we're going to pay the price. The others are sitting back asking what the point is. And because the base is now deflating and the joy and confidence has been wiped out of so many, there very well may be a blue wave in November. It won't fix anything. It will make it worse. It will make it a lot worse. Nothing will get done. The dems will ramp up attempts at impeachment until Nancy Pelosi is the president or the people get so sick of it they don't vote in 2020, either (which is actually the goal). And we'll sit here scratching our heads asking what happened. We'll have a wasted two years to sit through when nothing gets done at all, we'll continue being wasteful, and we'll sit here day after day watching them poke each other in the eye without actually doing any work. Sounds like fun. 

I'm tired and I'm frustrated, and I know a lot of other people are, too. Something has to change. At some point, we need to stop letting our politicians crap on us. We need every single one of them out of office. We need to break the cycle of voting in one party and then the next and then back again, because nothing changes that way. Clear them all out in the primaries and get fresh faces in there. If we could do that, it would cost less to run for office and real people might get a shot at it. Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe we could actually get something done. But we need to stand up as a country and do this together. We need to get brave, we need to swarm to the polling places on primary day, and we need to vote these idiots out of office. Get your own name on the ballot for the primaries. And vote for anyone other than an incumbent or other old face. Clear them all out, one and all.