Oh Those Wacky Politicians
Everyone knows full well that politicians, for the most part, will say and do anything to win elections or to boost their poll numbers. What we have seen over the past year and a half may be completely unprecedented. One party, the Republican Party, has completely shed their former beliefs in an effort to court a segment of the populations that only accounts for 20% of the voting electorate.
For the better part of the 00s they favored PayGo, now all of a sudden as we are heading into the second decade of the 21st Century they are against it.
When they had majorities in the 00s they spent like mad and passed the bill (as has been said many times in postings on this blog) "onto our children and grandchildren". Now? Well now we have to make sure everything is paid for before even extending payments to the unemployed. One Senator, Tom Coburn even went out on a limb and called himself courageous for blocking the extension. Sure, Senator, but since you have regular paychecks to fall back on I guess I could see where you would think you are courageous for keeping hundreds of thousands of people from getting income because they can not find a job thanks to you and your party letting loose in the 00s. Tom Coburn is also in a lot of hot water for daring to say that Nancy Pelosi was a nice person and that Fox News was biased. Type his name into a search engine and you will see a lot of pages that once supported him now throwing him out with the bathwater. He did make a comment that I completely agree with and I am glad that he said it but I wonder (and doubt) if he truly feels this way: "Just because somebody disagrees with you dodn't (sic) mean they're not a good person ... What we have to have is make sure we have a debate in this country so that you can see what's going on and make a determination yourself." http://www.pri.org/politics-society/top-gop-conservative-coburn-slams-fox-news19...
This has naturally pissed a lot of Tea Partiers off as they like to scream and shout down those with differing ideas and sure as hell do not want to debate with anyone. Their ideas are the only ones that are right and do not dare tell them that they could be wrong. After all they are the true patriotic Amercians (refer to picture above).
During the Health Care Reform debate they fought tooth and nail to get mandated insurance into the bill as a replacement for the public option, then they voted against it and now are complaining about the largest portion of the bill that has their signature all over it.
The latest Republican not believing now what it believed in the past has been Obama signing a new START with Russia. The original START was signed by Bush I and unanimously approved by the Senate at the time (Republicans are already on record stating that they were going to filibuster START). Rudy Guilliani and Sarah Palin have already gone on the attack calling Obama weak and Guilliani going a step further calling the idea of "A nuclear-free world has been a 60-year dream of the Left" Really? Well one former Republican president may disagree with that. I guess if Guilliani is going to stand by his statement this president is now a liberal for stating in his memoirs: "[F]or the eight years I was president," he wrote in his memoirs, "I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my mind." Who was this liberal lion for Guilliani? Well of course it was the torchbearer for the modern Republican Party, Ronald Reagan. What was that Reagan commandment about not attacking fellow Republicans? Well it went out the window a long time ago but for Guilliani to go after Reagan like that is just unbelievable.
Obama had his own comeback to half governor Sarah Palin after she launched a tirade attacks on him over START: "I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues." He said this in an interview on ABC. He went on to elaborate: "f the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin."
There is a lot of misinformation coming out about this treaty which is nothing new for the obstructionists like the suggestion that this new treaty is going to mean that Russia will not have to get rid of any of their nukes while the US will have to get rid of the majority of theirs. This is patently false, but it will not (and has not) stopped those on the right from claiming that it is true. The list of lies from the Republican Party in the past couple of weeks is really outstanding, but one of the biggest is that 16,000 new IRS agents as part of the new mandate insurance (which does not take place for another four years) to enforce the fines. There is nothing in any bill anywhere even suggesting that this has any basis of fact in it but that has not stopped the politicians, talking heads, and bloggers that continually play off the fears of Tea Partiers from claiming that it is in fact true.
NOTE: A new Fox News poll just released pitted the IRS against the Tea Party and guess which got higher numbers. If you said the Tea Party you are way wrong. By a margin of 49%-36% people have a much higher approval of the IRS, put in the unfavorable part of the poll and the IRS has a net of 11 while the Tea Party has a net of only 2. Another part of the poll asked Americans who matched closest with their values. The Tea Party garnered 19%, the Republican Party garnered 25%. The Democratic (evil, un American, fascists, socialists, communists, baby killers) garnered, um, well, this is a bit embarrassing they got 40% in the poll. And we know it has to be true because Fox News, the most trusted news outfit, did the poll.
The bottom line on the mandates (which I opposed from the beginning) is that we have four years to fix that portion of the bill. There is no point in worrying about it right now. There are measures in place to offer tax cuts to those that can not afford the mandate to help them pay for it but before that ever comes to pass it will be fixed.
Then there is John McCain. I do not know what has happened to this man. For close to 30 years he has gone by the mantra of The Maverick. He ran for President twice under that mantle and now he is claiming that he was never a maverick (no real shock to those of us, knowing his voting record knowing that he was nothing close to a maverick, but probably shocking to those who voted for him because they believed he was a maverick). Anything to court 20% of the voters I assume.
Then there is the doctor in Florida that posted a sign on his office door telling people that voted for Obama to seek care elsewhere and that their healthcare change started now not in four years. It is not that big a deal he is free to see the people he wants to but what is simply amazing is that he is basing this all on a bill that he has admitted that he knows nothing about. He is truly playing politics with patient care and that is nothing short of astounding. He is playing politics based on being uninformed which is nothing short of ignorant.
Now to wrap this up, we have Virginia governor Bob McConnell declaring that April is Confederate History Month. In his declaration he played revisionist history and completely omitted any mention of slavery. When pressed on it he said that it was not a major issue for Virginians at the time of the Civil War (pretty sure that the 500,000 slaves at the time thought it was a big deal). After more than a week he finally said that leaving slavery out of the proclamation was an omission on his part and apologized. What this really brings up is that the South is still extremely bitter that they lost the war. I have lived the majority of my life in the South and it is absolutely sacrilegious to call the Civil War by that name. My favorite name they have come up for it is "The War of Northern Aggression" despite the South actually firing first. I simply do no understand the need to remember and honor the country that lost. All over the South you can find rebel flags flying high (sometimes over American flags, which begs the question, why is that fine but a Mexican flying the Mexico flag over the American flag is wrong?), hanging on walls, hanging in trucks. You do not see anyone celebrating the British, or the French, or the Germans, or the Spanish, or the Japanese, or the Austrians, or the Cubans. I have no issue with celebrating and honoring those that fought on both sides of the Civil War. But, seriously, how can you call yourself a patriot of America, if you think the South should have won (creating a country separate of the United States) and you support a new era of secession. It does not mix.
Addendum: How I forgot this one I will never know. Republicans have been trying to kill Medicare/Medicaid since it's inception (along with Social Security, minimum wage, and a host of other programs) and yet they found themselves trying to prop themselves up by trying to protect Medicare/Medicaid during the HCR debate and claiming that Democrats were trying to kill it. This despite the FACT that Democrats were only trying to cut out the excess parts of the program that had no bearing on people on the program in order to pay for parts of the HCR (something Republicans have been preaching at us every time they are in the minority). Now that HCR is passed Republicans are once again trying to jettison Medicare/Medicaid.
And finally I am making a pledge and I would like all of your to make the same pledge if it so suits you:
I am an American and I believe in non-violence to solve our political issues.
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