Oh ... How do you sleep at night?

Ive often complained that I dont understand politics or politicians, but the truth is, I dont really want to.

I dont know what it is that makes men and women who say they want to run for office to help make their country, state, county, city a better place and then find themselves sucked into the madness that is American politics. Its a vocation that takes pretty much decent human beings and turns them into lying, cheating, double-talking cretins who make used car salesmen (no offense) look like followers of Mother Teresa.

Ive found it amazing over the years that politicians the ones who settle in for the long haul, pulling their chairs up to the pork, PAC and lobbyist troughs and just digging in like the pigs and gluttons they become think the American people are so stupid they actually believe their double-talk and bull----. By the same token, however, why would they think otherwise? The American people, who get an up-close, first-hand view of their shenanigans, keep sending them back to Washington, Atlanta, and local government agencies with hardly a second thought.

What? My elected representatives at the highest level cashed in certain stocks and bought up others after they attended a meeting that gave them advance warning of the possible impact of the coronavirus pandemic? Well, thats just good business. What, the businessman we put in the highest office in the land filed 13 bankruptcies and cheated both the American taxpayer and businesses he owed out of millions of dollars? That just shows hes got down the art of the deal, baby.

Did you say the person who wants to be president has changed his mind on important issues depending on which way the wind is blowing on a particular day so many times that he doesnt even know where he stands on those issues? Thats called playing to your base. Everyone does it.

I think Ive made it clear over the years my disdain for Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell. From his opposing stem cell research because the extreme right of his party opposed doctors and scientists playing God ... until someone in his family benefited from the science, to proclaiming that the entire Republican party should focus all of its efforts on making sure Barack Obama did not get a second term in office ON THE NIGHT HE WAS ELECTED, McConnell is the poster boy for lousy, self-serving, partisan politics at its worst.

As majority leader of the Senate, McConnell has spent the last 12 years the eight years that Obama was president and the four that Donald Trump has held that office doing nothing but putting conservative judges in office. McConnell conceded that the Democratic-controlled House would not go along with his right-wing agenda, so he has had the Senate do nothing but vote on judges over the last decade-plus. Other than hold a time-wasting impeachment trial that a group of power-tripping and wrong-headed Democrats dreamed up in the House, McConnell has proved to be the epitome of all that is wrong in American politics.

But the turtle man has outdone himself in his hypocritical call to replace recently passed Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before her body was even cool following her death from cancer. Wasnt it McConnell, you might ask, who led the charge to keep an Obama Supreme Court nominee from taking a seat on the high court at the end of his tenure in the White House? Yes, but see, McConnell has an answer to such charges of blatant hypocrisy and just out-right lying. He says that when Obama, a Democrat, was in office, the Senate was controlled by Republicans, so there were obvious philosophical differences. Now, with a Republican in the White House and a Republican Senate, he says, its OK.

Meaning? More political blather and bull----.

McConnell has long since proved himself a shameful self-serving opportunist whose traitorous actions in a better time would have landed him in prison or out of the government on his duff. With his disregard for Ginsburgs service, he has also shown himself to be the only passably human ghoul that only the lowest of the low aspire to. The people of Kentucky must be proud ... as they send him back to the trough to misuse and misappropriate more of our hard-earned money.

Email Carlton Fletcher at carlton.fletcher@ albanyherald.com.

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CARLTON FLETCHER: McConnell is the poster boy for sleazy, partisan politics - The Albany Herald