Well….as you know, the healthcare debate is one that hits really close to home for me since I haven’t been able to afford health insurance for the last nine years and, under any plan that the repubs have presented, I’ll never be able to afford it until I turn 65 and qualify for Medicare. One of the things that just bugs the hell out of me are all of the righties attacking the health care reform bill with the lies that it has already resulted in higher costs and people losing their insurance…when you hear these things being said, just remember that most of the law has not even taken effect yet….so any higher costs or loss of coverage is because the insurance companies have decided to make those changes, not that they have been forced to by the law. Where are the repub voices that decry the insurance companies taking advantage of these lies to further gouge the people? They will never be heard exactly because the insurance companies own the repubs and have purchased their vote to both defeat the current law and to help them get their hands on Medicare to further control the healthcare market.
So, can we at least try to make the repubs tell the truth for once and do what is best for the country instead of just themselves and their owners? Geez….
Well…I’ve been reading about the salivating the media is undergoing when they talk about a republican “moderate” like John Huntsman getting into the 2012 presidential race, and I can’t help but sit here amazed that this is a story at all. I know the media needs to feed the the 24 hour news cycle and find the next big thing, but talking about a repub moderate is like talking about a dodo bird…they just don’t exist anymore except in comparison the the hard right that dominates the party. Does anyone in their right mind think someone like Huntsman can get through the primary process that is dominated by people that used to be the fringe right that included the John Birch society? Ronald Reagan couldn’t even get through to the nomination in this era of ideological purity and litmus tests that the fringe has imposed on them….making the pragmatism (or supposed pragmatism) of someone like Huntsman a death sentence for his candidacy.
Just had a thought, maybe this is just another ploy from the repubs to lie again…run someone as a centrist, just like they did for governor in Michigan and Wisconsin, and lie like crazy to everyone but their base, and then have this “stealth” candidate win so they can give the rest of the country away to the rich and business…machiavellian, I know, but stranger things have happened…remember you heard it here first and I won’t be afraid to say “I told you so” when this plan is worked right in front of the media’s eyes and they miss it….
Well….I know this is kind of obscure since not many of you know who Senator John Kyl is…oh, you do? Good, that might put this more in context….okay, a couple of days ago Senator Kyl went on the floor of the senate and made the assertion that 90% of the funding that Planned Parenthood gets is used for abortions; no matter that the the real number is around 3%, since you know that facts don’t mean much to the repubs…but, the breathtaking part is not the lie…nope, even better than that, the statement that his office put out later is….they put out a press statement saying that what he said on the senate floor was not meant to be factual…not meant to be factual? Then what was it meant to be? A recipe for cornbread? C’mon senator Kyl….at least try to hide your lies for a little while longer…you can use page 84 of the repub playbook, chapter 15 entitled “Say anything, it doesn’t matter”. Geez….
Just a short one for the other stuff….read an article this morning that dissected the Ryan budget proposal and it’s fiscal effects on the national debt…and compared it to the effect of ending the Bush tax cuts…guess what? Ending the Bush tax cuts has the same effect as all of the cuts that Ryan proposes that will fall on the middle class and the poor. Is there any question the Ryan has an ulterior motive? Reward the rich Ryan….has a nice ring to it doesn’t it? geez….
Well….don’t know how long this one is going to be but had a couple of thoughts that I wanted to get down….the first thing that started me down this path was an article by our ex-senator Spence Abraham the basically said to our gov “keep doing what you’re doing” and ignore that the people of Michigan really don’t want the direction you are going…saying what I’ve been saying for quite a while, that the repubs don’t care what you and I think. But the worst part of the article goes on to revise the history of the previous repub governor Engler; praising him for taking on big government and asserting that the state was in great shape when he left. What strikes me in all of this is the continuation of the same old repub results, ruin the state or nation by your imbecilic policies, then lie about them and claim that it was all good. When Engler left, he left behind a legacy deregulation that prevented people from suing pharmaceutical companies even if they were negligent and their products caused death, and an economy that was fast taking on water from the tax cuts he gave to every business with no strings attached.
So, what have we learned here? Oh, you know, that the repubs will lie, cheat, and steal…it’s in their DNA….geez…
Well…I was going to label this one “October 29th part two” but I thought better of it…because I’m going to explain a little bit why I feel so depressed about what is happening in politics today. I think part of it was the euphoria that came with the ending of the eight years of hell under ole GW and having possibilities for this country to go forward again, to have the fingers of business lifted from the scale of life, and to see that maybe, just maybe, we could have a government that governed for people like you and me. And now, for reasons that I cannot comprehend, we are poised to go right back to those bad old days…to a governmental philosophy that can be best described as by the republicans and for business; the rest of the country be damned.
I know, I learned a while ago to not let these things take so much out of me, to not get so invested in things that I can’t control, but this one feels different…it’s like this is it for the country and the resilience that we have shown over the years is coming to a end. I’ve lived through the cold war, the communist scares, mutually assured destruction, and Watergate and I have never felt that we couldn’t come back until now…this time the people have killed the idea of America….they have bought into the lies and made them the truth of their reality even when it’s not so….we are no longer in this together…and I’m so depressed…
Well…that title is a paraphrase of a Led zeppelin song title, and it came to me today on the bike that if we let the crazies and the know nothings take this election, it nobody’s fault but ours. It our fault if we sit this one out because it has become too partisan, or because we’re not energized enough, or because we’re too busy…this is way too important to not take a half hour out of our busy days and get out to vote…and there is a difference between the candidates that can’t be overstated…go back to Bush and deregulation or keep going forward where government puts it’s thumb on the scale FOR us, not against us.
This could be our chance to make sure businesses won’t keep spending secret money to get their way; to buy legislators and legislation that allows them to get rewarded for taking, taking, and taking…if we don’t believe the lies those right-wing ads are full of…if we hear ‘failed stimulus package” and think: LIE…if we hear 500 billion in Medicare cuts and think: LIE…and if we hear “Nancy Pelosi’s best friend” and think: LIE….we can get them to stop with our votes because they will stop spending the money if it doesn’t get results. So, let’s not give them the results they are looking for. It’s nobody’s fault but ours if we let this country go down the drain…again, it up to you and me…
Well….don’t you just love the repubs mastery of the non-fact in the political ads they are running here in Michigan? Every one of them repeats their mantra of the “failed stimulus program” and the “Socialist expansion of government” of the Obama administration but they don’t acknowledge the true facts; what Paul Krugman said in the NYT this morning. There was neither a stimulus program or any expansion of government…in fact, there are 350,000 less federal workers now than when Obama took office. If there was a huge increase in government stimulus spending, where are the new roads, bridges, airports, or tunnels? There are none…okay, there have been repairs of some existing roads, etc., but to say there has been a huge increase in the reach of government and it’s spending is just another lie..but the problem is, you people believe the crap the repubs have been spewing…and it is a page out of the playbook they have been running since Clinton…repeat a lie enough times, and in the minds of the public, it becomes the truth…talk about your 1984 comparison.
Most of the money had to be spent on safety net programs that the repubs just hate and never lead to increased spending on the part of the consumer that is out of work…so why haven’t the Dems hammered the repubs on these inconvenient facts…well…they don’t have their own tv network for one, but I think there still is a spark of the old style of politics in the Democratic party…where you expect people to want the facts; but in today’s political environment, facts are just something to be ignored if they don’t fit your narrative…and the lies continue…geez…
Well…If you’ve read this for a while, you’ve noticed some repetitions in what I’ve had to say but there is a method to that madness on my part; the repubs have succeeded so well in repeating their lies until they become not truth but accepted “wisdom” so I think we need to keep repeating the truth until the truth overwhelms the lies of the right. So, I’m going to keep repeating the numerous outrages that have been foist upon America by the repubs until people can recognize truth again…until people start to think critically again and say to them “prove it”. Prove that the Bush tax cuts increased federal revenue (the non-partisan CBO says it didn’t), prove that deferring to business is the way to “lift all boats” as Reagan was heard to say, prove that the constitution is being ignored by Obama…just because they say it doesn’t make it true…geez…