David A. Schwinghammer, click here
to update your web pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
13 Reasons to vote the straight democratic ticket 9/1/2010 9:40:57 AM
The Republican party has lost their minds.
Thirteen Reasons to vote the straight Democratic ticket.
GOOP equals Grand Old Opportunists.
1. The economy: The GOOP never learns. Deregulation and winking at Wall Street gambling led to the Great Depression (Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover were presidents prior to the Depression). GOOP didn’t learn a thing. George W. Bush deregulated as much as possible and when he couldn’t he appointed “graduates” from Liberty College, Patrick Henry College, and Bob Jones to run important agencies. The run-up to the worst recession since the Depression is eerily similar to the fiasco in the thirties. Of course conservatives revere Calvin Coolidge as one of our greatest presidents. Historians rank him somewhere around 32nd out of forty-four. I would think that’s a bit high.
2. Balancing the budget: Republicans haven’t balanced the budget since Eisenhower. They’ve got a lot of gall suggesting they can do better. Reagan quadrupled the national debt, George W. Bush doubled it again, and George H.W. Bush helped contributed as well. These three were responsible for 80% of the national debt, prior to Obama. Then there was the fancy footwork Bush pulled where he didn’t count the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the money he borrowed from Social Security. Obama is counting them plus some of the leftover debt from Bush.
3. “Just say ‘no’”: Republicans could have had tort reform if they’d negotiated on Health Care. Meanwhile insurance companies are charging doctors liability insurance and the docs are passing it on to us, while lawyers rake in millions suing doctors. Funny Republicans are actually for tort reform; we know how they love insurance companies.
4. Education: When Obama passed legislation saving 100,000 jobs for teachers, police officers, and firemen, GOOP accused them of paying kickbacks to the Democratic Reelection committee. This from the political party that siphoned money from the Katrina relief fund. It’s hard enough to find competent teachers who will work for low pay without these kind of baseless accusations. It’s all about teachers unions who tend to work for democratic candidates.
5. Scapegoating. Moslems, homosexuals, Latin-Americans. Are you next?
6. Religion: The GOOP freely admit that their base consists of fundamental Christians, contrary to the First Amendment, which they’re now working hard to distort, claiming America was founded as a Christian country. Not according to 30% of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, including George Washington, who were freemasons. Their main tenet was separation of church and state.
7. Patriotism: When health care reform passed, Texas governor Rick Perry threatened to secede from the union. Missouri held a nullification referendum. Lincoln must be spinning in his grave.
8. Guns: 30,000 gun deaths every year. The GOOP considers these deaths collateral damage. No gun locks, no liability insurance, no background checks. All this because of an ambiguous amendment to the constitution that seems to apply more to 1787 than anything.
9. Candidates: Where do they get these people? How does a woman run as a Republican when right wing conservatives view her as a second class citizen? How does Marco Rubio run as a Republican senatorial candidate when he’s the son of a Cuban refugee who at the time he came to America was stereotyped as a criminal and a derelict by conservatives. Then there’s Sarah Palin, who couldn’t even deal with softballs thrown by that barracuda Katie Couric.
10. The Texas School Board rewrites history, giving Jefferson Davis equal time with Lincoln. Meanwhile Dick Armey claims the Jamestown settlers were socialists because they almost starved to death their first year in America. They were far from socialists. They were looking for gold and the northwest passage. They didn’t know how to farm, and they had antagonized the Indians so much they refused to help them. Meanwhile the Pilgrims almost starved as well, resorting to eating the Indians seed corn, but they’re not socialists.
11. Republican activists: Andrew Breitbart outs racist Shirley Sherrod. The GOOP blames it on Obama. Once again the GOOP learns nothing from Watergate.
12. Fox News. “Fair and balanced” in whose universe? This is a propaganda network and “commentators” like Beck and Hannity should remind you of somebody else who tried to rewrite history, namely Joseph Goebbels. MSNBC has been tabbed a liberal network, but Chris Matthews tends to criticize Obama almost as much as he praises him and Olbermann dared criticize the president for not pushing for single payer health insurance.
You won’t find conservative commentators criticizing Bush.
13. Climate change. The GOOP gloms onto the three percent of environmental scientists who doubt climate change, risking the destruction of the human race. A big chunk of Newfoundland just fell into the ocean.
Philadelphia has weather like Mobile, Alabama, in August. Then there’s stem cell research. A political hack judge rules against stem cell research which was making strides toward curing diseases like Alzheimer’s and helping paraplegics.
The Republican party is rapidly going the way of the Whigs and the Know Nothings. We used to laugh at Lyndon LaRouche when he kept running for president as a libertarian, wanting to do away with the Federal Reserve and put us back on the gold standard. Guess what? The GOOP loves those ideas.
