Over the course of its history the United States has traveled through some terribly dark valleys, valleys that were dusty with filth and slime; Warren Gamaliel Harding, Richard Milhous Nixon, and arguably the worst of them all: George Walker Bush; all Republicans; to the surprise of no one. The Bush presidency, aided by a pandering Republican congress, was a running diary of 2,292 cabalistic days and as many funereal nights of stark incompetence and fetid amorality that left the nation with two wars, no friends, and " for every intent and purpose" broke.
The Republicans inside the congress and the beltway, when they had the chance and the power, held not one oversight hearing, as the Constitution demands they do. It was all too much, too much "Yes sir, Mr. President, we can slash revenues without the first guess how we'll pay for it, because, as you know, Vice-president Cheney exclaimed that 'Reagan proved, deficits don't matter!'" It was too much, too much, "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists. You're not a real American, which is to say, a true Christian." It was too much, too many supplementals to the defense budget, to fight a "slam dunk" war based on lies, (But then, the CIA just doesn't lie, as we've been lectured.) all the way to an aircraft carrier 20 miles off the Pacific coast and "Mission Accomplished." It was too much, too loud a congressional dismissing of "Heck of a job Brownie" while Justice Department attorneys were being dismissed as insufficiently "Bushites." It was too much, too much rape the environment while Wall Street rapes the country and the world. It was everything bad about bad.
Talk about not being the least contrite and unabashed: The Republican Party has shifted not an inch from its slaughterous, take-no-prisoners course since it sought to destroy the Clinton presidency.
Of the train wrecks ahead is a wholly dysfunctional health care delivery system; the very worst on the face of the planet if one measures what is spent versus the terrible results obtained thereby, vis-Ã-vis every other country. Currently we spend 18 cents of every $1.00 produced. There is no disagreement that, unless the trajectory of the arc is demonstrably reduced, by 2020 we'll be devoting a full quarter of every dollar to procure those same disgraceful results, and that, even if every non-defense expenditure is reduced to ZERO, the country will find itself hurtling into the economic abyss from which there will be no recovery. Regardless whatever else is done to restore the economy, unless health care spending is brought under control, the end result will be the same: into the economic abyss.
It is that serious. And to steer to a more hopeful destination, President Obama has solicited the good will of the Republican Party. He truly wants whatever health care reform bill hits his desk to be the product of a genuine bi-partisan effort.
But what has been the response of the GOP? Well, in the words of Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri's 7th District, "It would have been better if the government never got in the health care business, if it had never created Medicare, Medicaid, or the Veterans Administration health care or SCHIP, or any other program that would distort the marketplace." (link to video: http://www.firedupmissouri.com/content/radical-roy-blunt-it-would-have-been-best-if-medicare-and-medicaid-never-existed) The Missourian also opined that the only function of any GOP alternative is to "kill health reform," and, with that assassination, the Obama presidency. South Carolina Republican Senator Jim DeMint seconded Blunt's proposition that the GOP's exclusive task with the issue is to make of it Obama's "Waterloo."
Nothing is too low for a Republican. On the presumption that he is not a natural born citizen of the country, reprised is the question concerning the president's place of birth. It's irrelevant that across the Internet are copies of Hawaii's digitalized certificate, in lieu of an actual copy; that having been archived and no longer available. (NEWS FLASH: I can't get mine either. I was born at Detroit's HarperHospital in WayneCounty, in 1946. But all those old [like me] certificates have long been mothballed, leaving any need for "proof" to be satisfied by a digitalized registration certificate. But, unlike the whack jobs on the Right, I was in the US Army, and do have the original of my DD214.)
So what we have here is reminiscent of the marriage counseling visit I noted at the outset: one side using the opportunity to harangue and excoriate the other, fully expecting the target of the attacks to sit, and, even to pay for the experience. I wouldn't, and neither should any Democrat, especially including Barack Obama.
"" Ed Tubbs
Palm Springs, CA
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