Thursday, February 18. 2010
Here it is, Thursday, February 18, 2010. My family and friends living in the Snow Belt probably don’t want to know that’s it’s been sunny and in the 70’s and 80’s here in Sandy Eggo, so we’ll just leave it at that. Actually, I’m chuckling … eh … soon enough it will start raining again, but for today, I’m chuckling!
There’s my older brother Rick though; wish he would consider relocating to Los Angeles. He’s a musician, a great keyboardist by any standard, and could possibly get some great gigs in L.A. I’d relocate to L.A. to join him. It would get him out of the horror of the Wisconsin winters and into a kinder, gentler climate.
Of course, Rick and I together, cut loose on Los Angeles, home to so many … err … sinny-type activities and sinny-type people like the two of us …
Which reminds me Wednesday was Ash Wednesday! I didn’t make it to church to get the Ashes. Didn’t make it to New Orleans for Fat Tuesday either. Somehow, Fat Tuesday sounds far more appealing than getting ashes criss-crossed on my forehead.
Yesterday was also the one-year anniversary of President Obama signing the stimulus bill. The one the Republicans in Congress love to dump on, but, when the stimulus money creates some jobs in their state for a civic project, they are all too happy to be there at the ribbon-cutting ceremonies and claim sole responsibility for that money making it to that particular project. Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican!
Which brings up the Mount Vernon Statement, a little gimmick cooked up by some establishment “conservatives” to try and gain the support of the “grassroots” movement known as the Tea Baggers. Or Tea Party, if you want to be kind to them.
This is funny: part of this gimmick includes a plank of beliefs, one of which is this: “It honors the central place of individual liberty in American politics and life.”
They honor personal liberty, unless of course the personal liberties you wish to engage in go contrary to their religious and/or political views. Things like a woman having the final say over her reproductive system and overall health; if you like to smoke marijuana, or, if like me, you like to view naked women on the internets or in magazines and frequent establishments that offer nude and semi-nude women dancing for our pleasure.
Their view of personal liberty doesn’t cover any of those and I would venture to guess many others, like being guaranteed we are free from unreasonable searches and seizures. The assault on the Fourth Amendment by Republicans, ever since President Ronald Reagan was in office, has been horrendous.
If you go through an airport scanner and the TSA workers find you with a large amount of cash, an undetermined number, you can be flagged as a potential drug dealer and have all your belongings confiscated. With no evidence to suggest you have any connection to any crimes whatsoever. Thank President Reagan for that one; it was part of his agenda, although we should also put some blame squarely on the shoulders of the Democrat-controlled Congress that passed the bill that created the assault on the Bill of Rights.
Now of course, thanks to the previous president and the Republican-controlled government from 2002 to 2007, we have the Patriot Act that lets the federal government erode our liberties even further. Sadly, the current administration has done nothing to do away with those parts of the act that infringe on our liberties as once guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights,
Enough of that tangent, although it’s a pretty good one.
Most egregious though is their claim that some in this land are against the Constitution are actively trying to do away with it. This is the heart of the teabaggers hatred for President Obama. For them, the president is both a Socialist and a Fascist.
The teabaggers are now claiming that Hitler and the German Nazis were really closet Socialists!
The claim is that the president and his fellow Democrats are trying to usurp the Constitution with programs like the health care bill and the Stimulus Plan that is now a year old. Really. And these are the same guys who cooked up the Patriot Act and nearly 30 years ago, the law that allows federal employees to confiscate your belongings based on nothing but a hunch.
The signers of the Mount Vernon Statement are against the Stimulus Plan because it is running up the national debt and growing government. These are the same guys who rubber-stamped President George W. Bush’s policies for six and a half years, budgets that had our treasury go from a surplus into debt. And the kicker is, they did it five times with “reconciliation,” the process by where the controlling party of both Houses of Congress get together and pass a bill without the support of the minority party.
If the health care plan does pass and is put on President Obama’s desk to be signed, it will be done through reconciliation. No Republicans have any plans to vote for the bill so it is the only way health care will be passed in America — and it still won’t go far enough to alleviate the suffering Americans go through because they are either uninsured or under insured — or worse yet, the health care insurance companies drop their insurance coverage due to things like pre-existing conditions.
Republicans have used the filibuster over 200 times since the Democrats took control of Congress — and these are the same people who, nearly five years ago, threatened to use the “nuclear option” (eliminating the filibuster) if the Democrats tried to filibuster any of their proposals, like expanding the national debt and prolonging the war in Iraq. And that includes Mr. Maverick himself, John McCain.
The truly entertaining thing about the Republicans and the anniversary of the Stimulus Plan is this: in front of national cameras and media, people like House Minority Whip Eric Cantor and Senator Kit Bond rail and flail against the Stimulus Plan, but then quietly sign documents asking the federal government for stimulus money for projects in their states and districts.
They even show up at the ribbon cutting ceremonies, holding the giant promotional copies of the federal checks from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, President Obama’s stimulus plan — and tell their constituents just how well the Stimulus Plan is working!
Think Progress has a pretty nice list of the hypocrites who railed against the Stimulus Plan but asked for and received stimulus money
The president gave a pretty good speech Wednesday and had the political courage to point out the hypocrisy of his opponents. When the mid-term elections come around, let’s hope the Democrats use these facts in their campaigns against the Republicans who will be up for re-election, making sure the Republican Party’s newest constituency, the ones they wrote and signed the Mount Vernon Statement to impress, the teabaggers, see it. Gotta wonder if they will be unimpressed.
Or maybe, filled with their hatred for President Obama, the teabaggers will ignore reality and vote for the hypocrites because let’s face it, what many of the teabaggers really don’t like is a Black Man with a Muslim name as President of the United States. That’s what it’s really all about and for the teabaggers anything is better than that reality.
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