The Republican Party has always had one principal goal in mind: to gain control of the presidency in order to use it as a springboard to control Congress.
What would that do you ask? Well, if those goals were achieved, the Republicans would be able to leave their ineradicable stamp on every law and on every piece of legislation that came off the Hill. They would also be able to influence the U.S. government for years and years and years.Don’t look now, but the GOP has achieved just that by hook and crook. They stole the presidency, managed to gain control of Congress and now, for the first time ever, all three branches of government are either Republican or (at the least) are leaning to the right.As amazing as it seems, the vision of Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America has ostensibly been realized.
But, in a closing analysis, what exactly do we have on our hands? Well........
- We have gone to War for reasons that still are unproven.
- We have an economy that would need to go up quite a bit to reach a floundering level.
- We have a stock market that looks dilapidated and morose (much like our Commander in Chief)
- We have gone from having a budget surplus (crafted by the Democrats) of a trillion dollars to a level of debt of which the likes has NEVER been seen in this country before. (Yet we still give tax-breaks to the ridiculously wealthy and see nothing wrong with it… well, some see something wrong with that, but right now we are in the minority)
(Or are we? According to the 2000 election there were more Democratic votes....sorry to interrupt again-Scott)
- The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looks like a rubber-stamper for pharmaceutical industry interests. This is leaving people wondering whether to eat (which is needed in order to sustain life) or pay their pharmaceutical bills (which are also sometimes needed in order to sustain life)
- We continue to pillage and loot the environment; yet oil prices are through the roof (creating a tug-of-war of having to pay the bills or driving a car)
- Our position in the world has weakened to a terrifyingly low point.
- National disasters have revealed that disorganization runs amok at the highest levels of our government. No matter how many trips the president makes to stricken areas (and did we all notice how quickly he got down to Florida… which just happens to be the state his brother Jeb is governor of…hmmmmm, not quite as quick as Texas, but quicker than Louisiana), it doesn’t seem to get any better over time.
- As if all of that stuff weren’t enough; the majority leader of the Senate is under investigation for insider dealing AND the majority leader of the House is under indictment for money laundering and illegal activities.
- Add to that the fact that there are high-ranking Presidential and Vice-Presidential advisors being either indicted or, at the least, being considered for indictment for releasing the name of a top CIA operative, or lying about it to law enforcement.
- A lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, is indicted for misappropriation of funds while a senior official in the Budget Department is implicated in lying to Federal investigators about his (Abramoff’s) involvement.
- The president’s standing in the polls is lower than it’s ever been.
Now… for people with a brain this would be instructive since most surveys also show that more than 50% of the U.S. population believes that the country would be better served by Democrats. And, in the midst of upcoming mid-term elections, the Republicans are going to have to evaluate the costs of allowing the extreme right to call the shots and hence suffer even more unimaginable consequences.
Despite advantage after advantage, the Republicans, through their incredible tunnel-vision perspective, have managed to squander our surplus, give away any chance of rebuilding the economy and, through their blind lust for power and money, made us indentured servants to Saudi Arabia, Japan and China and doing so through lies, misdirection and deceit… not bad for five years of power. Will there be a world left for democrats when it comes time for the next election in 2008 or will we simply inhabit a post-apocalyptic world like Mad Max?
Again, as I’ve said many times before on this site: only time will tell.
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3 comments:
You are correct in many of your points. I would agree, this country is not 'united' and that is our greatest weakness.
An individual may not have gotten us into this mess 'entirely' single handed, but the party faithful are so blindly following an 'indivual' like he is the pied piper that it is downright frightening.
Thanks for the plug for President. I would like to think that I would be a rarity, one who focused on what was right and needed to be done for all the people, not on how I could win a 2nd term.
In 'Wall Street', Gordon Gecko stated "Greed is good, greed works" and while that may apply to wealth it certainly does not apply to politics. It's time for the Right to wake up and recognize the difference.
Let Dudlicek be Dudlicek would be our motto, if I, as your COS, would say.
peachblossom is dead-on. Using your mind and voting for whomever you think would do the best job should not be a foreign concept to people, but it is.
Most times, party lines are correct and the person who best fits your ideologies usually lie within your party affiliation (its why you are affiliated with that party to begin with).
It's when party affiliations overshadow all else that we start to get into trouble as a society... or, more prudent to these other comments, get into trouble as a union.
Interesting reading. A few observations/responses in regards to the Katrin/Rita/Wilma commnets:
First of all, the delay in federal aid for Louisiana was a result of the initial failures at State and Local levels (both Democrat adminstrations by the way). Politiclal in-fighting between the Governor and N.O. Mayor, an unprecedented scope of damages as well as the fact that New Orleans did not begin to flood until a day later when efforts were already being concentated to other parts of the state all culminated to become the image of big-government failures.
Other factors were when New Orleans did begin to flood, the Mayor refused to implement the emergency responce plan already in place for the city, preferring to enact his own. On top of that, the Governor, claiming sovereignty rights, refused to allow federal troops into Louisiana until well after the levees broke. Only allowing troops in after the press started having a field day as the flood waters kept rising and the rumors started flying about the amount of dead bodies floating around and stuck inside the Superdome. Thankfully, the casualties have been aound 1/10th of that predicted and initially reported.
Fortunately, FL and TX,learning from Louisiana's errors, prepared for the worse, allowing the fed government to stage itself before the storms for a quick roll-out. So, rather than it being a case of a brother or home state preference, its was a matter of those state's leaders checking egos at the door and letting those equiped to handle the job, do the job.
FEMA's (birthed by the Carter admin and overhauled by the Clinton) failures are too numerous to mention. Its greatest failure was that it took on a roll it was never meant to or set up to take on - that of a rescue operation. Instead its job is and should be mainly organizational and managerial. It's one thing to contract clean-up crews to move debris and to write checks for gererators and trailers, its quite another thing for a bureaucrat to command a military operation.
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