The keystone of Republican politics is the tax cut. Tax cuts Republicans argue stimulate growth and employment so much so that the tax cuts pay for themselves. Look around, is the economy thumping, are jobs plentiful? The Bush tax cuts have cost us nearly three trillion dollars.

::::::::

Republicans are bums! Let's use that statement as our alpha. Republicans were bums yesterday and they are bums today and they will be bums again tomorrow. Are we clear on that? Republicans are bums!

Will Rogers once said, "I'm not a member of any organized political party I am a Democrat." Rogers was alluding to the propensity of Democrats to fight amongst themselves and this is because Republicans are the party of single interest and Democrats are the party of everyone else. Republican leaders go behind closed doors and hold a caucus and they come out with the party's platform and you better damn well go along 100% or you can get the hell out! In advertising this is called the bandwagon approach you either get on the bandwagon by buying the right toothpaste or beer or you're not cool or with it.

Because the Republicans are the party of single interest they have little need to worry about factions within their party so when someone proposes a gay rights plank, forget it! Or a strong environmental plank, forget it! A mortgage rescue plan, consumer protection, civil rights? Forget it!

Read the fine print, politics is the art of convincing you that you want something without fully explaining what that is. Hear ye, hear ye, and know all ye present the official platform of the Republican Party! Number one, we wish for smaller government because that equals greater freedom for you! When they say smaller government they mean less regulation. When they say energy independence they mean drill for oil in the Arctic wildlife refugee or in the Gulf of Mexico.

Calvin Coolidge was as much responsible for the Great Depression as Herbert Hoover was but Hoover was left holding the bag. A deeply spiritual man Hoover wasn't evil and he wasn't stupid but he was a man who was incapable of rising above his own beliefs. His religious teachings taught him that sometimes God lets bad things happen to good people and that somehow we come out stronger for it. His political beliefs taught him that a problem with banks or speculation should be left up to the experts in the banking industry and Wall Street to resolve.

Why did Hoover think this way? Because Republicans are bums! Republicans were bums yesterday and they are bums today and they will be bums again tomorrow. Are we clear on that? Republicans are bums!

The Republican Party of Herbert Hoover was basically no different than the Republican Party of today. They throw out new canards of hot button issues to entice the less than critical thinking to vote against themselves at the polls. In the 1960's the Republicans were the party of law and order which meant to control the uppity coloreds and the dirty hippie anti-war protestors. In the 50's it was Communist witch-hunts in the 70's it was Vietnam and the cold war and in our own times it's been invisible terrorists.

Here there is a flaw in the slaw in 1968 my father was voting for Hubert Humphrey and my sister for Bobby Kennedy and then Eugene McCarthy. How could that be, how could they both remain loyal Democrats and not support the same candidate? Humphrey was the choice of the party machine so could it be that my sister and millions of other Democrats were disloyal? Was continuing the war in Vietnam the right thing to do? The Republicans thought so and so did the presumptive Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey.

Humphrey was a fine man and a good Democrat but he was wrong about the Vietnam War. This was the post World War two America and it was beyond our belief that America could be forced to back down by a tiny Asian country. The divide was by age the WW2 generation versus the rising generation.

In 1948 Harry Truman faced a split in the Democratic Party over Truman's insistence that a strong plank against segregation should be included in the party platform. The southern delegations walked out of the convention never to return over the issue of racial equality. It was Hubert Humphrey who ordered the band to play "Happy Days are Here Again" and energetically waved good bye to the departing southern delegates from the rostrum. Which group of Democrats was being disloyal?

That is why Democrats fight with each other because we are the party of change. The Republicans fight too but they fight, civil rights, seat belts, unleaded gasoline, clean air acts, Social Security, Medicare and on and on because Republicans are the single interest party. Their single interest is money and if Thomas Dewey had said, "Maybe we need to take a stand against segregation too!" He would have been laughed right out of the Republican convention hall because Republicans may change issues but they don't change ideology.

Harry Truman said fifty years ago, "Something happens to Republicans when they get control of the government" Republicans in Washington have a habit of becoming curiously deaf to the voice of the people. They have a hard time hearing what the ordinary people of the country are saying. But they have no trouble at all hearing what Wall Street is saying. They are able to catch the slightest whisper from big business and special interest." See any change from fifty years ago to today?

The keystone of Republican politics is the tax cut. Tax cuts Republicans argue stimulate growth and employment so much so that the tax cuts pay for themselves. Look around, is the economy thumping, are jobs plentiful? The Bush tax cuts have cost us nearly three trillion dollars. The average American got seventeen dollars a week while Dick Cheney got $300,000. This is straight Republican politics a nickel for you and a dollar for them.

Then after they've bleed the public coffers white they exclaim in the name of good governance that we must do something about the deficit. Let's cut social programs and programs that help the middle class. The Republicans even have the gall to propose cuts in social spending while maintaining their precious tax cuts. The reason is simple, Republicans are bums! Republicans were bums yesterday and they are bums today and they will be bums again tomorrow. Are we clear on that? Republicans are bums!

Tax cuts are Republican policy Democrats try to grow the economy through public spending, education, NASA, public works. While Republicans try and shrink it through tax cuts. If you and your spouse are going to earn a quarter of a million dollars this year then, sorry, but you don't need a tax cut. If you will earn less than $47,000 then maybe you do.

Democrats promote peace, remember our adventure in the former Yugoslavia? A peace keeping mission, we didn't wrest control of the government but we wouldn't let them kill each other either. Remember Jimmy Carter, the only peace treaty between an Arab State and Israel? Six years later, Reagan is in office the Marines are in Beirut and in retaliation for the attack on soldiers in a war zone Reagan orders an obsolete battleship to shell innocent civilians. That's Republican thinking for you! When you make a mistake cover it up by making a bigger one! Something blamo, kill lots of innocent people that'll teach em!

Democrats build the economy from the ground up not from the top down. The GI bill was a Democratic solution and Republicans warned how terrible it would be. But the GI Bill kept millions of returning world war two veterans from swamping the job market. See how that works? You can either pay them to go to college or you and give them unemployment and food stamps.

VA and FHA financing helped to grow the economy by keeping interest rates low and by requiring quality standards of construction. Flooding the banks with free money is a good way to cover the banking losses but it won't fix anything because the economy will continue to grow weaker and the banks will have to cover still more losses.

During the last Depression FDR bought the troubled loans from the banks. They refinanced them and administered them and millions of Americans kept their homes. The Republican solution is to offer the banks incentives to help homeowners. It's more of the Hoover solution to leave it up to the experts in the banking industry and Wall Street to resolve. What is the Obama administrations program? To offer the banks incentives to help homeowners.

So when I take Barack Obama to task it is because tax cuts are Republican policy! If you're happy that Obama is going to shave off the cherry for the wealthy but leave your tax cut in place then you agree with George Bush. These tax cuts were Bushes idea. Obama could have used this as an opportunity for a second stimulus to put money where this economy really needs it at the bottom. Instead he proposes leaving in place $2.2 trillion in tax cuts.

Democrats created Medicare, a single payer system. The bill was originally part of Harry Truman's 1948 single payer nation health insurance program. Republican's believe healthcare is best left to private corporations. So in Obama's healthcare reform legislation which side did he land on? The plan that was passed was less generous than the healthcare plan proposed by Richard Nixon a generation ago.

So when I take Barack Obama to task it is because of his Republican policies and what do we know about Republicans? Republicans are bums! Republicans were bums yesterday and they are bums today and they will be bums again tomorrow. Are we clear on that? Republicans are bums and Democrats who govern like Republicans can be bums too!

Authors Bio:

I who am I? Born at the pinnacle of American prosperity to parents raised during the last great depression. I was the youngest child of the youngest children born almost between the generations and that in fact clouds and obscures who it is that I am really.

Given a front row seat for the generation of the 1960's I lived in Chicago in 1960. My father was a Democratic precinct captain, my mother an election judge. His father had been a Union organizer and had been beaten and jailed for his efforts. His first time in jail was for punching a Ku Klux Klansman during a parade in the 1930's. I never felt as if I was raised in a family of activists but seeing it print makes me think, yes. That is a part of who I am.

We find ourselves today living in a world treed by the hounds of madness, a complicit media covering contrite parties. Multilevel media, giving more access to communication yet stunting actual communication. More noise, less voice, more sound less music, more law less justice, more medicine less life.