Cross posted on Texas Kaos and The Burnt Orange Report.
I would like to remind Republicans that, whether you like it or not, President Barack Hussein Obama, an African American with a funny name, won the November 2008 Presidential election by a vast majority of votes. Contrary to Republican belief, the President is a Christian, not a Muslim. He was born in the United States, not in Africa. He is not a socialist. At least look up the definition of socialism before calling the President a socialist. And please don't go to Glenn Beck's or Sarah Palin's websites to find its meaning because neither has a clue. Palin and Beck believe socialism, fascism, communism, nazism, stalinism, totalitarianism and Hitler mean the same thing.
In November 2008, most Americans obviously wanted nothing to do with your candidates, John McCain and Sarah Palin. There was a reason for the overwhelming rejection.
Since we live in a democracy, elections have consequences. The people have spoken. We elected President Barack Hussein Obama hands down. End of story.
But for you Republicans, it is not the end of the story if your party loses. Are you sore losers or are you completely out of touch with reality because you march to the orders of self-serving charlatans and snake oil dealers?
A recent poll proves Republicans have serious problems. Republicans, especially the teabagger faction, simply can't get beyond their personal baggage, biases and prejudices to accept today's reality. Maybe this is because your elected officials alternate between acting like dictators, spoiled brats or bullies on a middle school playground when they don't get their way. Some behave asextremist lunatics, too. Nor are your leaders in either Washington D.C. or Austin likely to smooth your ruffled feathers, explain the democratic principles that govern our country and how we should work together as Democrats and Republicans to do what is right for the majority of us. Hell would have to freeze over first, especially in teabagistan.
You folks find yourselves between a rock and hard place in a world of white hot anger because your party's fearless leaders have been lying to you, misleading you and using you for years. They tell you what you want to hear in order to get your votes but the second your elected leaders arrive in either Austin or Washington all are palling around with and working 24/7 on behalf of their banking lobbyist sugar daddies.
Having won some early skirmishes by teaming with Republican allies, the banks now appear to have the upper hand and may wind up killing — or at least substantially diluting — both pro-consumer measures.
Get it? Your Republican leaders think it is really cool for the banks to continue to rob and gouge you.
The banking industry has also succeeded in working closely with Republicans to water down and then block a measure that would give bankruptcy judges greater authority to modify mortgages, including reducing principal payments. Senate Republican leaders say they have the support of all 41 of their members — enough to kill the provision by making it impossible to get the 60 votes necessary to cut off debate.
Your leaders also have no problem if the bank takes away your home because you lost your job.
Media giants and radio talk show hosts like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and FOX have been doing the same thing. Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann are duping you, too. All use words and images targeted to prey upon your deepest fears and anxieties. Republican lawmakers use you to get your vote and then they forget about you until the next election. Your party's big fund raisers even make fun of you.
In case you have not noticed your Republican leaders don't even pretend to work for or care about you. You see, your Republican lawmakers, Sarah, Rush, Glenn and Sean, all do the bidding of powerful corporate interests.
It is no wonder that you are angry. You have been lied to, misled and abused for a very long time.
You should take your anger to the ballot box in November. Vote against those who have sold out on you. In America, this is where change happens.
Change does not happen when you call elected officials n*iggers and fag*ots in front of the nation's Capitol. Or anywhere for that matter.
Change does not happen by throwing bricks through lawmakers office windows, cutting their home fuel lines, threatening to send sharp shooters after their kids, mailing white powder to lawmakers' offices, putting coffins in their front yards and making death threats to those who voted for health care reform.
Nor is it a good idea to ram your SUV into a car carrying a child because of an Obama bumper sticker. Fortunately the child and her father in the rammed car were not hurt. The raging rammer is charged w/a felony. His car insurance company will probably drop him for mental instability. A judge will likely sentence the rammer to spend time in a mental health facility or jail.
And then you folks wonder why Republicans are branded as
The Party of Hate.
The Party of Intolerance.
The Party of Obstruction.
The Party of Lies.
The Party of the fat cats, for the fat cats and by the fat cats.
The Party of racism and xenophobia.
The over-the-top angry teabagger at a rally in Columbus who hatefully screamed at, insulted and threw money at a man with Parkinson's disease is so ashamed of himself now that he has cooled down, said he can't sleep at night. Well, helllllllooooooooo, this is what happens when one fails to take responsibility to properly inform oneself instead of marching to the drumbeats of self-serving manipulators that trawl for victims. While the teabagger threw money at and raged against a victim, the shark who had pulled his strings hid in a safe place. The shark did not get exposed on national TV cable news nor did the shark get captured on you tube clips.
Where health care reform is concerned your Republican politicians have been talking out of all sides of their mouths about it. Mitt Romney was for the individual mandates before he was against them.
And John Boehner's and Michael Steel's assertion that health care reform will bring Armageddon is, well, just nuts. Health care reform was signed into law on Tuesday. Asteroids have not crashed into the Earth nor is the planet cracking up and breaking apart. Maybe Boehner and Steele are talking about their own mental Armageddons.
If your fearless leaders would have been honest with you all would have told you the truth about health reform.
Instead of Armageddon health care reform throws a tremendous life line to the people. You will like it, believe it or not. Surely even Republicans have pre-existing medical conditions. Surely some are jobless and cannot afford to purchase health care insurance. Others have children with pre-existing conditions.
Check out what your fearless leaders failed to tell you.
* 10 million of the most struggling Americans will be covered by Medicaid
* We will provide subsidies to help working class Americans afford their insurance
* Americans with preexisting conditions will immediately have access to insurance through a high risk pool
* Insurers will be required to spend at least 85% of premiums on care
* Reform will reduce the federal deficit by $1.3 trillion over the next twenty years
* There will be tax credits this year to help small businesses give their employees health insurance
* Health care reform will end denial of coverage because of preexisting conditions, first for children and later for all adults
* We will prohibit lifetime caps on benefits
* Insurance companies will be unable to drop you from your coverage because you get sick
Medicare will see multiple improvements:
* We will immediately begin closing the Medicare donut hole
* We will immediately remove copays for preventative care
* We require Medicare Advantage plans to spend at least 85% of premiums on care
* We extended the solvency of Medicare by many years.
Your Republican lawmakers fought against health care reform tooth and nail, they lied to you about death panels, killing Granny, socialism and abortion because their fat cat health insurance industry buddies wanted to continue ripping you off, denying you care and forcing you into bankruptcy, if need be, to save the life of a dying loved one.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winning economist, professor at Princeton University and opinion journalist for the New York Times weighs in on the state of the GOP.
For today’s G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan — not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side — Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions — are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern.
Why you folks to continue to believe in and vote for a bunch of paranoid fanatics who can't stand you, that mock you and use you is quite frankly mind numbing.