13 August 2013
Undermining a President-The Republican Party Agenda #1
It seems to me that there is a soto voce smear campaign being wages against the President, not because he is a Democrat, not because he is of the other party, but because of his race. I am listening to an intense series of Republican representatives from Iowa, Florida, expressing such shock and insinuating the President's complicity in alleged irregulatities that all of a sudden became dire national issues within the eight months following Barack Obama's inauguration.
See what the House is dealing with while the Senate is struggling with 554 amendments to to the Senate Bill on health care reform. According to Republicans and news media stars (who talk without breathing) President Obama should be held accountable for the following:
Suddenly, the past eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration never existed. George Bush paid for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with money the Congress approved as supplemental funds outside of the official government budgets. Who gave Wall Street a trillion dollars to prevent a world-wide economic collapse, but did not have any accountability for how those federal funds should be used?President Obama brought those extra-budgetal items into the formal budget process. There is no mention of the huge budget surplus left to President Bush by President Clinton, especially with the Republicans having controlled Congress throughout the Clinton years and the White House for 12 of the prior two decades.
John Boehner in a CNN interview referred all questions about a Republican health care plan to the party's web site: gop.org. I looked at it and I am embarrassed for Republicans seeking a cogent, coherent health care plan alternative to the Democratic Party's plan moving through Congress. The web site makes me sad while reading comments in their Forums. Comments therein are dominated by some people who believe in a literal Constitution as the only legitimate way to evaluate the federal government's actions since 1787. Most predominant in the health care forum is the argument that the 10th amendment prohibits the federal government from regulating insurance providers. The prohibition derives from their view that the insurance industry is by governed and controlled by State law so therefore the insurance industry is by definition not interstate commerce. The majority of comments refer to most federal government programs as unconstitutional.
In response to one post asking whether we should leave people to die in the streets, another post said that "if you don't have health insurance- get a job." Nothing of substance was evident in any of the Forums I read, except for one written by a marine in Afghanistan. Most of his comments were ignored or dismissed as unrealistic, too much government and not worth doing. George W. Bush did not get much mention except that he was a liberal and undisciplined in his spending.
I could not find anything like the information Republican House leader Boehner asserted was there to read nor was there anything else worth reading. I did find remarkable that they had a list of Republican Accomplishments and a list of Republican Heros. Most of the accomplishments occurred during Reconstruction after the Civil War or prior to World War I. Most predominant were those Republicans who were African-Americans, mostly during Reconstruction in the South, sponsors of anti-KKK legislation, Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights legislation. Weirdly slanted commentaries of these hallmark achievements as due to Republicans and were accompanied by biographical material about an African-American legislator elected during Reconstruction while Grant was President. One would conclude, according to this line of thinking, that the entire Civil Rights Movement following World War II was unnecessary. Who can swallow that?
Their propaganda is pathetic.
Sherfdog
See what the House is dealing with while the Senate is struggling with 554 amendments to to the Senate Bill on health care reform. According to Republicans and news media stars (who talk without breathing) President Obama should be held accountable for the following:
- ACORN irregularities that are alleged to involve importing young girls to be prostitutes, abusing its 501(c) 3 tax status to commit gross election violations such as same-day registrations;
- Irresponsibility with spending that have us with such a huge deficit, with such wasteful spending to bail out the economy that the dollar is in danger of losing its status as the world currency.
- Creating a health care system that will create generate such tax burdens that we will bankrupt the country.
- Anything else that people feel that is bad about our country since January 21, 2009.
The Republicans no longer control all three branches of government. Let's see how these Republicans react to a Supreme Court ruling that goes against their agenda. Will they again decry the decision as judicial activism? Looking at the record of the SCOTUS in 2009 and 2010, a number of decisions have reversed prior decisions, gone beyond the written legislation or seem to show a libertarian activism. Why are only the liberal-tinged decisions proclaimed as examples of judicial activism?
To me, allegations and insinuations of this sort coming from the Luddite Republican congress are indicative of the thinly veiled, social and institutional racism still entrenched in our country. Assumptions of guilt, of slackness of incapability appear in media reporting and especially in video and photographs that accompany news online and in print. Earlier this year, we heard comments about people feeling that they just didn't trust President Obama's judgment. Then, he became responsible for the huge level of the National Debt, for the failures of the banking system, the failure of our public education system and now for the skyrocketing health care costs that are entirely the fault of Medicare.
Suddenly, the past eight years of the Bush/Cheney administration never existed. George Bush paid for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars with money the Congress approved as supplemental funds outside of the official government budgets. Who gave Wall Street a trillion dollars to prevent a world-wide economic collapse, but did not have any accountability for how those federal funds should be used?President Obama brought those extra-budgetal items into the formal budget process. There is no mention of the huge budget surplus left to President Bush by President Clinton, especially with the Republicans having controlled Congress throughout the Clinton years and the White House for 12 of the prior two decades.
John Boehner in a CNN interview referred all questions about a Republican health care plan to the party's web site: gop.org. I looked at it and I am embarrassed for Republicans seeking a cogent, coherent health care plan alternative to the Democratic Party's plan moving through Congress. The web site makes me sad while reading comments in their Forums. Comments therein are dominated by some people who believe in a literal Constitution as the only legitimate way to evaluate the federal government's actions since 1787. Most predominant in the health care forum is the argument that the 10th amendment prohibits the federal government from regulating insurance providers. The prohibition derives from their view that the insurance industry is by governed and controlled by State law so therefore the insurance industry is by definition not interstate commerce. The majority of comments refer to most federal government programs as unconstitutional.
In response to one post asking whether we should leave people to die in the streets, another post said that "if you don't have health insurance- get a job." Nothing of substance was evident in any of the Forums I read, except for one written by a marine in Afghanistan. Most of his comments were ignored or dismissed as unrealistic, too much government and not worth doing. George W. Bush did not get much mention except that he was a liberal and undisciplined in his spending.
I could not find anything like the information Republican House leader Boehner asserted was there to read nor was there anything else worth reading. I did find remarkable that they had a list of Republican Accomplishments and a list of Republican Heros. Most of the accomplishments occurred during Reconstruction after the Civil War or prior to World War I. Most predominant were those Republicans who were African-Americans, mostly during Reconstruction in the South, sponsors of anti-KKK legislation, Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights legislation. Weirdly slanted commentaries of these hallmark achievements as due to Republicans and were accompanied by biographical material about an African-American legislator elected during Reconstruction while Grant was President. One would conclude, according to this line of thinking, that the entire Civil Rights Movement following World War II was unnecessary. Who can swallow that?
Their propaganda is pathetic.
Sherfdog
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