Saturday, September 25, 2010

GOP pledges to turn back the clock to 2008... or 1958.. or is that 1848?

"Tomorrow, my health insurance will suck less."

That was Rachel Maddow on her Wednesday evening show.

On Thursday, Sept. 23, all our health insurance policies now suck less. That's when some of the provisions in the health reform legislation we fought so hard for kicked in. You can find all the details at http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/benefitsofreform?source=issues.

You can call it Obamacare if you want. The Republicans do this in the form of a curse. Every time they utter the name "Obama" it's in the form of a curse. They have been programmed to do this by Fox, or maybe the Tea Party, or maybe their tiny little minds can do nothing else. The Republican lexicon now consists of very few words that matter.

Which brings me to the Republican "A Pledge to America," released on the same exact day that our insurance plans began to suck less. This is the day that the Republican Party platform began to suck even more and, possibly, stink to high heaven.

"Repeal Obamacare." You probably saw that one. You can translate that any way you want to. I choose to think it sends this message to the Republican Pod People: "Scary black man from Kenya with Muslim origins and no birth certificate still wants to kill grandma! And you too! And billions of unborn white conservative babies!"

Repubs pledge to make the rich even richer than you and me by keeping George W. Bush's tax cuts. This past week, Forbes Magazine released its list of the 400 weathiest Americans. Their wealth, combined, is $1.37 trillion. I don't know about you, but this is a little more than the net worth of me and my closest 399 friends. These richy-rich folks are whining that a return to a reasonable 39 percent tax bracket will stifle American ingenuity and cause them to hire fewer employees. They shall be forced to sleep under bridges and beg for crusts of bread on the streets.

All nonsense, of course. Pres. Bush paid back his rich cronies when he and Congress (Democrats too!) passed these tax cuts and then waged two wars with less tax money than before and ran up a huge deficit.

In its pledge, the GOP vows to "roll the government back to 2008 levels." What the GOP won't have to do it roll back Pentagon spending to 2008 levels because that would be a decrease in spending. To the GOP, defense spending is sacrosanct. So repubs plan to "freeze stimulus spending and impose hard limits on future spending."

Will they do that with Pentagon spending too? No, due to the fact that they don't hate the troops but the Democrats do. This is sometimes just implied by Repubs but often they say it out loud.

Wyoming's Rep. Cynthia Lummis made this statement on Thursday:

"While people in Wyoming and people all over the country have been speaking out, those in power have carried out a job-killing, budget-busting agenda. The wishes of the American people have been blatantly and repeatedly disregarded."

Wyoming is a one-party Red State. It's lone rep and two senators are all GOPers now, as usual. When they speak about "the people of Wyoming," they're thinking of their conservative base, which is almost everyone they know. Those "speaking out" the past year are the Tea Party fringe. When they speak out, the GOP listens. Many Liberals wonder: "Huh?" I've been to Tea Party rallies and have asked that question many times.

At its Sept. 8-9 meeting in Buffalo, the state legislative committee pledged to vote in December on a bill to establish a $2 million "litigation account" to pay for "legal challenges to portions of the new national health care reform law." This was reported Friday in the Casper Star-Tribune. Republican Sen. Charles Scott of Casper wrote the bill. He says that "Obamacare" will result in higher costs in Wyoming.

There's that scary word again. Scott contends that "Obamacare" is an extreme far-left bill. That tickles many of us Progressives who actually wanted a single-payer system. Health reform was a compromise. But Repubs always think they are the only ones who should have a say and they whine when they are forced to compromise. They have very little practice doing this, as "No" and "Hell No" are their favorite terms.   

So, the Wyoming people have spoken. "Stop the scary black man in Washington, D.C. He wants to kill Grandma and take away her guns! And he wants to make rich people less rich! UnAmerican!"

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