The Grand Old Party

They ripped off a presidency with the intent to drain the life blood out of this country, sold off most of our assets and mortgaged us to foreign interests until we were lucky to have a job or a home or a life intact. They got us into an endless war, and in the process they stuffed their pockets with payoffs from greedy corporations already gouging us pitiful working families with their lies and exorbitant prices until we were desperate just to keep our heads above water. And in some places, like New Orleans, a city was destroyed and thousands literally failed to keep their heads above water.

And while that was going on, when we were slipping down the best of the best lists, our schools unable to keep up with the schools in other countries, our infrastructure falling apart, our jails filling with depressed young fugitives, our health care systems crumbling under the corruption and jacking up their prices so they could get some of the bounty, what was happening with the grand old party folks thumbing their inarticulate right wing, gun toting, noses at us in our desperation? Well, according to Emmanuel Saez, the Berkeley economist, “the year 2007 was an incredibly good year for the super rich. The 14,588 families who made up 2007’s top .01 percent averaged $35,042,705 in income, 1,080 times the $32,421 average income of America’s bottom 90 percent. The gap between the top .01 percent and the bottom 90 percent, before 2007, had never stretched over 1,000 times.” And that doesn’t even mention the massive number of people who earned zero to $32,421, the people who do the hard jobs, cleaning and feeding and tending to the rest of us--when they can get jobs at all.

Just when we were all about to go under for the third time, Barack Obama stepped into the arena and offered us some hope. And since he came into office he has been working feverishly to deliver.

So what are the Grand Olds up to now?

They have continued to undermine every attempt to put this country back on track. And they are not only doing that here at home, but they are now going to other countries trying to block any advances Obama has made, or hopes to make, to bring peace to the middle east and to mend all the GOP-damaged fences.

The dictionary defines a traitor as-- "a person who betrays a friend, country, principle, etc."

My high frustration level.

One of the reasons that I started my blog was so I would have a place to let loose some of the frustration that would threaten to put me in the back seat of a squad car for battering some brain dead lamppost I considered a friend, or a family member, who pushed my political buttons. Knowing my tendency to go apoplectic, these lunatics would casually drop such items, informing me for instance that they heard from a reliable source that Obama really was a biased Muslim, or that he was prejudiced against white people and was about to take their guns away (which would happen if I had my way), or that he was this or that, or somewhere in the radical middle. They were always so far off track that I would go ballistic. ‘Where did you get that? Who have you been listening to now? Jaba duh Hut? Faux News? For god sakes do your own research!" I would hear my voice rising and would need to choke it back down my throat before it reached the shriek stage. And at my age that could be dangerous. So I started listing the buttons.

First there was Bush and 9/11 and when were they really going to tell us the truth. And there was the Bush family legacy, the uncle who was Hitler’s financier for instance, which certainly puts a new spin on who was or who wasn’t a fascist. And there is the endless enduring war--the crippled state of the union--the McCarthy era that sits beneath the surface of this country’s politics like asparagus between seasons creeps below the soil and pops up the following summer like a new crop--and the Texas group, but maybe I shouldn’t even mention that. There is also Leonard Peltier and the abuses of Wounded Knee and Pine Ridge. And now there is a whole slew of new stuff. The schools blocking children from hearing the uplifting encouraging words of our caring articulate president, for one. And even worse, the gun toting toads at the town meetings. There is something about gun toting toads that scares me as much as seedy old clowns with their dirty wigs and big floppy hands and feet. Egad! And there are the equally seedy old white men who sit in our government drenched in their fury that a man of color could be smarter and more honorable and definitely more honest than they ever even knew how to be, men who I can easily visualize in their white robes and dunce caps.

I am so appalled at the stupidity of the people who buy into their lying propaganda. Who do they think will pay their medical bills when they get shut off by their present plans because they have already spent their share of money on their uncured prostate cancer? And no other plan will take them because it was not a brand new doomsday diagnosis. Do they think they will just cut into the long lines that will be at the hospital emergency rooms? If that ever, god forbid, happens maybe they should be forced to wear shirts that say it was their lies that got us there--and then find out just how happy that makes the rest of us who have been fighting so hard to keep this country from sliding back into the last great depression the same greedy people or their greedy granddaddies caused. See, now even my writing is starting to shriek. God help America!

What's with the nasty Republicans?

9/4/09

When I started this blog I wanted to write about things that concerned me. It seems that I would need several blogs going simultaneously to include all the things on my mind. And if that were the case I would need three more of me to get it all down. Today, for instance, I’d like to shout about the nasty abusive nature that seems to permeate the Republican citizens of this country who seem to have forgotten what country this actually is. A case in point--What sort of church would encourage a minister to pray for the death of the president? The death? What happened to the prayers for a person’s soul, or a person’s enlightenment if you feel so opposed to your target’s personal or political direction? Such ministers, possibly too out of touch with their own souls, which may be hovering on the brink of some deep pit, should take a good look at who they are, and who the devil is to whom they may be paying homage.

And in the meantime the rest of us, whatever our political party, should look into the hearts of our great grandmothers for moral direction instead of up the you-know-whats of corporate whores.

Gun Insanity

With the gun enthusiast showing up at town meetings with guns, automatic and otherwise, it seems pretty obvious that they are there to intimidate the crowd and the politicians. It also seems absolutely crazy that we in this country have let things go so far to allow such a mess. Where would the blame fall it the crowd panicked and a riot resulted?

I can not believe that these gun enthusiasts who claim their rights to posses such guns without sensible controls have anything between their ears but the need to intimidate and threaten. It is laughable that they feel Obama will take their toys away when it is just their miss use and their abusive threats that will hopefully make the rest of us know that is just what should happen. For the safety of decent people and the officers who have sworn to protect them, such inconsiderate psychopaths and thugs should not have guns.

A case in point--In my area in 2008 an 8-year old boy lost control of the 9mm micro submachine gun as it recoiled while he was firing at a pumpkin at a sportsman’s club machine gun shoot and fatally shot himself in the head. The gun was an Uzi made by and for the Israeli special forces with a fire rate of 1,700 rounds per minute, not a hunting or sport weapon. The boy’s father was ten feet behind him and reaching for his camera when the child fired the weapon. My heart goes out to the mother who, I understand, was not there at the time.

At that show there were at least four children who took part. Imagine what could have happened if one of those children in his panic had spun around and fired on the hundreds of spectators.

There were prosecutions as a result of that sad bit of stupidity, but I personally doubt that those empty headed gun-toting loons learned a thing. And they think they are threatened.

Where are the friendly police officers when we need them?

As a caucasian woman who has been on this planet for seventy some odd years, I thought I had seen everything, and honestly believed folks were a lot smarter than they seem to be these days. The incident in Cambridge between a police officer and a respected tenured professor from Harvard, a long time resident in that community, deserves some closer scrutiny. In the first place I have never lived in a town where the local police didn’t have a good idea who lived where in their area. From what I’ve seen, that has always been part of their job. And I can not believe the officer in question, with the career he has had with the department there, had no knowledge of who the professor was. It also seems very sad to me that the Cambridge police personnel have not been taught the basics of defusing such incidents without having them escalate like that one did.

I recall once when I lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, they had a problem with their police interaction with the people in that city, many who were African Americans too, and it was decided that to change that situation they had to change the attitudes of their police officers. So they not only switched the extremely military looking black uniforms and hats to something less threatening, white hats for instance, but they put their officers through training sessions that taught them how to say, Please--Thank you--I’m sorry, Sir, or Ma’am or Miss. Those simple changes helped defuse a whole city, for a while anyway, and I for one appreciated that a lot.

It seems we are back to being afraid of our officers with their tasers and their angry agendas. And since the Bush Patriot Act, they seem to demand that we be afraid. The stories we read about abuses are endless, and include taser use on woman and school children and confused men for reasons that seem things any good officer could have handled easily. And no one seems to be given a chance to explain without being deemed resisting arrest.

I resented the fact that the police officer was compelled to state that he did not vote for President Obama, as if we couldn’t have guessed that from his response. If I had been his superior I would have considered his attitude suspect at that time when there was so much at risk, and when our new young president has been working his butt off doing more in the short time he has been in office than any president has before him. Considering the desperate situation his predecessor left behind, this country on the verge of bankruptcy, etc. I think that police officer should be grateful that he still has a job. If it were not for the compassionate hard work of persons such as President Obama, trying to keep all our heads afloat, that officer could be inching his way along a bread line.

I know all the policemen and women out there are taking enormous risks to keep us all safe and I appreciate that. But rather than bullying confused and frightened people I would suggest they push to get the more lethal weapons off the streets, and especially away from town hall meetings. If I were a cop I would certainly be working hard toward that aim instead of encouraging people to buy up any weapons they can, the worst of the assault weapons on the market. I would bet that police officer who didn’t vote for Obama in the first place is one of the ones blocking any sane gun laws. But I could be wrong. As for our local officers to date, and as a graduate of their Citizen’s Police Academy, I have nothing but praise for them. Hopefully everyone feels that way in my town, as they should be able to feel in all other towns in this country.