D.C. Under the Far-Right Heel

What would the country look like if the increasingly far-right Republican party had total sway over our government? They campaigned on jobs, jobs, jobs. How about a reality check.

Take for example Washington, D. C. Although the GOP-controlled U. S. House has been in power just a little over a month, they are busy negating the will of the D.C. taxpayers.

Today's article in the New York Times, "Even Less Representation", gives us a glimpse of what Republican control looks like:

"The district’s hard-won home rule came under assault from day one with a House rule scrapping the already pathetic power of its elected representative..... This overreach was rationalized by cynically redefining the city as just another part of the federal government.... now piling on with a proposal to overturn the district’s legalization of gay marriage duly enacted last year under home rule.

"Then came the Republicans’ broad assault on federal financing of abortions in the states, tailored to include a particularly insidious clause, barring the Washington district government from using even local taxes for legal abortions"

While we have watched transfixed in the last weeks as the Egyptians dramatically moved their country toward democracy, the far-right in our bastion of freedom are relentlessly trying to dismantle ours. To insert their religious beliefs into laws that mandate government intrusion into, and control over, our most basic freedoms.

If these rights come under the heel of federal and state control.... what other of our rights could be next? This is what is happening in our country. You can change this.... 2012. Vote.

What's the GOP Tea Party Brewing?

Our country is being battered by a take-over attempt, the battle-plan drawn up by the religious right and corporations. Sure, they call themselves "patriots." But, that's just to keep the unwary faithful from catching on. Winning would result in a corporate-theocracy, based on their narrow interpretation, not just of the Constitution, but of the Bible. The vehicles are the tattered remnants of the GOP and the flamboyant Tea Party led by the looniest of tunes, no need to name them.

The once-Grand Old Party is being dragged behind the stampeding Tea-herd, yoked to them as a result of their obstructionist, personal-attack history. Hopefully, these false patriots have set themselves up to become history. It's just a matter of time until voters realize the "shining city on a hill" is Dubai.

The GOP/Tea Bag consortium proclaims they want smaller government, more liberty, but almost every action they take moves the country in the opposite direction.

It was the Republican administration who misled us into the moral and fiscal swamp of the Iraq war and nation building. It was the Republican administration who put into place the unfunded budget-busting drug program for senior citizens.... a giant boondoggle for the drug and insurance companies. It was the Republican administration that assembled the Homeland Security Administration behemoth, the biggest single expansion of government, ever.

It was the Republican administration who put us on the path to unsustainable debt.... and a good argument can be made that it was done deliberately in order to later say we can no longer afford Social Security and Medicare. For them, corporate welfare is fine, individual help is unpalatable.

Smaller government, fiscal restraint. Read the tea leaves, that's not in the brew.

As for freedom and liberty, GOP liberty is only for some. All are equal except women, gays, and non-believers, next up to receive the GOP backhand. Corporations have been awarded personhood by the ability to pour money into our electoral process thanks to our no longer Supreme-judgment court. Sad to say, the highest court in our land has become just another tool in the GOP/Tea Bag toolbox. Left unfettered, is the United Corporate States of America far off?

As for the promise to create jobs, forget that. What the GOP/Tea Baggers crave is social reform, made in their religious-moral-code image. In their perfect world, women would be forced into burkahood as control over their reproductive rights fall under government control. Gays would be denied civil rights while corporations would be granted more rights... to pollute, to manipulate financial markets, and to further deregulate our food products. And clean energy, less dependence on oil. Forget it.

But there will be a reckoning..... 2012 is coming. We can reject this toxic brew. What happens to our country is up to us.

Religious Right.... They're Baaack!

It's downright spooky.

As journalist Christine Wicker exposes today in "Evangelical Leaders Using God Like a Hired Gun" (HuffingtonPost) when the branding of Barack Obama as the anti-Christ, palling around with terrorists, and a secret Muslim didn't work, they started "using God like a hired gun to terrorize the town's people, the evangelical Christian mullahs are declaring that Obamageddon is at hand....

"...using that very word and asking as the Religious Right/Republican Townhall magazine did in a September headline, 'Could We Survive a Barack Presidency?'

"Evangelical publisher James Strang answers the survival question by warning his readers that people who hate Christianity will take over the country once Obama is elected.

"In fact, 'life as we know it will end,' Strang writes."

You can hear the wind howling, sense the ghouls skulking in wait, the Four Horsemen bearing down.....

Wicker continues, "Last week Focus on the Family's James Dobson added his own doomsday predictions with a 16-page rant about evils that will befall the United States by 2012 if Obama is elected."

But young evangelical leaders are resisting using God as their hired gun. Dobson blames misguided young evangelicals for elevating Obama. Wicker points out, "It's them he's hoping to scare most. But they and emergent church leaders such as Brian McLaren, who endorsed Obama, have broken ranks and won't be coming back.

"A great mass of other evangelicals, who never followed the evangelical mullahs and never will, are also going for Obama. Maybe Dobson thinks they'll listen to him."

But that's not likely, they're already off pursuing their own causes, and "won't be convinced by Dobson's scare tactics. They're more likely to agree with a new bumper sticker popular in Colorado, where Focus on the Family is based.

"It reads, 'Focus on your own damn family.' "

Dobson, sure that he could shoo Republican primary voters away from the Senator, said in a Focus on the Family press release that McCain "is being touted by the media as a man of principle, yet he was involved with other women while married to his first wife, and was implicated in the so-called Keating scandal with four other senators.

"He was eventually reprimanded by the Congress for the 'appearance of impropriety.' The Senator reportedly has a violent temper and can be extremely confrontational and profane when angry. These red flags about Senator McCain's character are reminiscent of the man who now occupies the White House."

"The man who now occupies the White House".... oh yes, the last guy the Religious Right elected.

And Dobson didn't leave out of that release McCain's love of alcohol and gambling.

Wicker, shining light in dark places, explains "When Dobson saw that threats to take his toys and go home didn't keep McCain from winning the nomination, he forgot his previous scruples. Now Dobson sees McCain as God's man. It's Obama who's the devil. And under God's direction, as he always is, Dobson is speaking out again...."

In his current sixteen-page delusional tirade against Obama, Dobson channels the things that could happen if Christians don't unite behind McCain.... the same McCain he branded as an adulterous, profane, violent, scandal-tainted, drinker and gambler who he is now anointing to preside over the most powerful elective office in the world.

It almost the bewitching hour. Hopefully the Religious Right's false soothsayers will be defanged and return to being merely pompous pumpkins. God must be so proud....

Vote! It matters.