Reiterating without repose the sad commonality that corporations are people, Republican presidential frontrunner, Rick Perry (R-TX), compared the GOP fight for lower corporate taxes to the Civil Rights Movement.  I’m not making this up.  Yesterday, on the day the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial was opened in Washington, DC, Governor Perry was speaking to a group in Rock Hill, South Carolina.  Yes, South Carolina, where the first shots of successful southern succession were fired.  When asked if he cared to comment on the state’s place in Civil Rights history, Perry began to correlate the need of freedom from over-taxation, over-litigation, and over-regulation to the struggle of civil freedoms in our nation’s history.  Watch.

Well, yeah, now that you mention it, Governor, why should CEO billionaires be forced to sit in the back of the limo?  Where is the justice?!  Perhaps we could all get behind a new Corporate Civil Rights Act that will ban discrimination based on bank accounts.  Anyone?

Please, Governor, don’t mess with my intelligence.  To compare your fight to increase the wealth of your campaign donors to the struggle of African Americans in a 1960’s segregated South is a travesty.  How in the hell can you include in the same breath tax loopholes for millionaires, tort reform to protect millionaires, and lax oil and gas rules applied to billion dollar big oil to the beatings, burning, and bigotry of an entire race of human beings?

Governor Perry didn’t you learn anything about the Freedom Rides of 1961?  How about the Little Rock Nine?  The dogs and the water cannon in Birmingham, Alabama?  Surely you have heard of the Ku Klux Klan?  Perhaps you could name an important Supreme Court Decision…like Brown vs. Board of Education?

I guess we know now why the State of Texas is revising all the history text books.

I have to hand it to my Conservative friends.  You did it again, and I don’t blame you for dancing in the streets.  I’m sure at this moment, Capital Hill is sporting many more Republican Boners at its head than merely the House of Representatives.  Once again, you put in your closer in the bottom of the 9th, with bases loaded, and my President up to bat.  And whiff.  Funny thing, though, this game is nothing but a field of dreams.  Yes, build an imaginary debt crisis, and they will come.

The American debt ceiling has been raised dozens of times in recent history, many during Republican administrations, with hardly any pang of heartburn at all.  During the Bush administration the ceiling was raised no less than seven times without blinking an eye or binding its hands to budget cuts.  Watch.

If you haven’t read Naomi Klein’s, The Shock Doctrine, I recommend it highly.  Ms. Klein’s message conveys that in the media frenzy of war, disastrous acts of nature, or economic instability (if you can’t find one that is occurring at the time, make one up) legislation can be passed by agenda-led politicians that would never make it through the scrutiny of common sense during so-called normal times.  The Patriot Act is an example tied to the War(?) on Terror, and now there is this debt deal in response to some manufactured debt crisis that began its rumblings shortly after the new Tea Party members of Congress were sworn in.

The stock market, unlike the bond market (indicator of true government debt), began fluctuating, sure, but the stock market is about as fickle as a teenage girl’s affection.  If you think the stock market of today is an adequate indicator of our country’s economic stability, think again.  Savvy politicians know it’s more a measure of our collective neuroses.  When my therapist asks how much anxiety do I feel today, I say I don’t know, let me check the Dow Jones.  The more scared the investor of impending world doom, the more jumpy the markets become.  Thank you, 24/7 news cycles.

We can argue economic ideology until Michele Bachmann has an intelligent thought, but it’s no great secret that I’m a demand girl.  I believe spending creates demand, and in an unprecedented time where the private sector either can’t…or won’t, then the government has to.  Cut government spending programs like food stamps right now, and where will WalMart or Safeway make up the difference in sales?

A myriad of independent economists, the Simpson-Bowles Commission, even that loathsome Gang of 6(66), recommended increased taxes and decreased tax loopholes, along with spending cuts, if there absolutely has to be a budget deal as ransom for the debt ceiling raise.  I would have yelled my opposition to cuts in education, the interior, Pell Grants, and yes, health care, but I would have swallowed it with a shot of something strong knowing that with increased revenues there would be a truly shared sacrifice.

What the hell happened?  All tax revenues are off the table?  I can hear it now, “But ‘Schmootz, there are Republican-prized defense cuts in the package.”  Oh, well I’m sorry, I feel much better knowing that the Republicans got only 98% of what they wanted!  Oh, and then you say, “But ‘Schmootz, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2012.”  Baaahahahahaha!  Watch.

I used to lament the fact that my President is weak in the face of Republican strategy.  I used to say that he is at heart a community organizer, and therefore a bad negotiator, as he always begins his bidding from the middle.  Now I’m beginning to think my President is less a victim of this train wreck and more a driver of the locomotive.  First a watered-down healthcare bill with no public option, second, a complete cave-in on cutting the Bush tax cuts, and now what could be called a possible evisceration of the defining ideals of the Democratic party over the last 40 years.  I don’t know what else to call it any more.  I need to see some kind of strength in leadership.

Now some “O”-bots might call me a whiner and a complainer, and that I should support the Democratic ass no matter what.  Well, that’s not going to happen.  Starting today, I reached my own economic ceiling.  This is to let all those who are sending me emails and mailing me forms of intent, just stop.  My maximum private contribution is going instead to my local food bank and my local school; the shelter for the working poor and the elderly center; Project Angel Heart and Meals on Wheels…and if I forgo a few shopping trips, there is extra for Planned Parenthood and a few others.  I’m putting down a few in-town grass roots.

Mr. President, can I really break away from the political process and redirect my own discretionary funds in a way to help those who are actually hurting out there?  Yes, I can.

This issue, debunked long ago during the campaign by the non-partisan Factcheck.org, has resurfaced as a distraction to mask the fact the Republican Party has no pertinent policy or logical answers of their own that will provide any kind of economic or healthcare cost relief to the American public.  Instead, the hate mongers and obstructionists from the Right have made a call to arms to all their wing nuts to put down their cream of wheat, start cheeking the meds, and take up the cause. 

Remember this poor soul? 

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 Well, apparently they pulled her daughter away from Jerry Springer re-runs and Jon and Kate.

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 If this wasn’t so sadly pathetic, it would be comical.  Ok, I admit I have gotten a few good laughs at their expense.  Once again, the Republican Party is exploiting the least among us for their own agenda, and these unfortunate people have no idea how they are being used.  Funny how propaganda works. 

As the fervor builds among the followers, those conservative hate-spewers of the airwaves are right there to stir the pot.  Fortunately, these entertainers are no more cognitively savvy than their audience.

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As I always say, let them keep talking.  It worked for Sarah Palin and her intellect to nowhere, and it will work here.  The lunatic fringe always gets the attention, and in this case of hysterical gestation of a ludicrous conspiracy there is no exception.  These people will eventually get tired and go back to their television sets and will remain blissfully ignorant of the political party who believes life begins at conception and ends at the birther.

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If it was not so pathetic, it would be funny…ok, funnier.  South Carolina governor and Bible belt resident, Mark Sanford, admitted today that he has been involved in a yearlong love affair with his dear, dear, best friend.  No, not his wife, but an Argentine named Maria living in Buenos Aires.

Sanford, a father of four, disappeared last week, without telling his wife or staff where he was going. When reporters began asking questions, his office said he had gone hiking on the Appalachian Trial. Sanford later admitted he had mentioned the possibility of a hiking trip to his staff before leaving. He confirmed Wednesday he had actually visited Argentina for several days.

Today, Sanford walked a little more slowly to the microphones than he did when he announced his refusal of the Obama stimulus money. He apologized to his wife and four sons, and the governor announced his decision to resign as head of the Republican Governors Association.

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On the heels of Sen. Ensign’s infidelity admission, you have to ask yourself, what makes these men cheat? Is it power?  Is it weakness?  Is it hubris?  I know; it is the fact gays are marrying in three out of fifty states. THAT is what is destroying these families.  How quickly I forget.  My only suggestion would be, until Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa citizens vote discrimination into their constitutions, the Stepford Wives of Republican politicians should start hosing their loving husbands down before they go hiking.

For a party who professes to stand for small government, personal freedoms, and strong defense, the GOP is suffering from an identity crisis.  Ronald Reagan, the deity of the party, proudly announced that government was not the solution to the problem, it was the problem.  Not anymore.  The Bush administration with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the Medicare prescription drug plan, the Patriot Act, and No Child Left Behind assembled a far reaching and many times intruding expansion of the federal government.  Since the Reagan years, there have been few social issues that the Republican Party didn’t want a hand in, or other part of their anatomy.  From attempts to legislate morality in the Terri Schiavo case, to LGBT civil rights, to immigration reform, the Republicans did little to uphold personal freedoms.  In fact, a case can be made for the GOP trying to take Constitutional freedoms away.  In terms of national defense, the outcome of the last eight years is evident.  We lost our moral conscience and the ethical high road, and in the process, our strength.  George Bush’s Republican Party did more to hurt the GOP’s historical advantage on national security issues than any Republican president in modern times. 

The above mentioned “moderates” have created the National Council for a New America.  It’s not so much we are a “new” America; it’s that today’s GOP is so out of touch that they don’t recognize us anymore.  America has evolved, but the American spirit and ideal is still very much the same.  Darwinian Theory can be applied here as the Republicans continue to exist on all fours while the majority of America has grown a spine and moved on.  A few members of the party have recognized that you either evolve, or you do not survive…but only a few.  They have been met with ridicule and venom from members of the ultra right wing, such as Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh that is usually savored for Liberals.  Seems to me they are doing nothing but undermining their party…but you are going to hear no complaints from me.

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The problem is the loudest and most obnoxious Neo-cons in the party believe the answer to the GOP’s problems is to win the debate or win the argument, not to step back and examine what’s not working.  Though I can’t say I am surprised that the leaders are not accepting responsibility for the last ten years.  Only cowards believe torture is an enhanced interrogation technique. 

The Republican Party has become a party of regional Southern strength where racism and bigotry have a long and ugly history.  The educated, suburban voter across the country has fled the GOP for obvious reasons.  Education level is becoming an easier and easier predictor of political allegiance. Republican problems relating to minorities and younger votes are also well established, but the Neo-con establishment marches on with little acknowledgement of this reality. The GOP has no new clothes; it stands naked before the country old, wrinkled, and flaccid.  God in heaven, gentlemen, cover up.

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