Who’s Fooling You

Look out, everyone who follows U.S. politics – and actually cares about the outcomes of bills, policies, and the declining quality of life in the supposedly greatest nation in the whole wide world! Tonight is the president’s State of the Union address before Congress and a vast television audience. I’m not warning about what the president will say, I’m warning what the GOP rebuttal via House Rep. Paul Ryan will sound like. Chances are it will be cautiously genteel, while, at the same time, undermining anything positive the Democratic administration has achieved thus far, and intends to create for the future.

Why should we care? Because the GOP’s agenda goes deeper than a simple “No” to progress. The Republican’s idea of cutting the deficit isn’t to create jobs, as they love to say over and over again, but to raise taxes on the middle class, while once again providing deeper tax breaks for the wealthy. They want to take Health Care (in every form that isn’t private) away from those who desperately need it; turn back time to when Social Security didn’t exist, and, in general, while providing fork-tongued lip service to creating “jobs” (for which not one GOPer has provided an idea or plan), ensure that their own campaign pockets remain well-lined from their wealthy contributors, and, in general, absolutely ruin the United States of America in ways far worse than most realize.

Another crazed aspect to the drumbeat of the GOP is that they believe the country is behind their desire to dump entitlements based on their boost in the House from midterm elections. Who are they listening to? Their unemployed middle class and poverty-stricken class constituents, or the lobbyists who make sure those campaign checks don’t bounce? Where was the “mandate” they claim was laid at their feet? Hey guys, the Senate is still a Democratic majority. I wouldn’t claim a “mandate” to cut off the heads of your fellow countrymen and women unless you adhere to the out-of-touch pomposity of Louis XVI of France. In fact, it’s beginning to look as if many of the GOPer’s are moving in that insane direction.

Pssst. Remember what happened to Louis and Marie in the end? I’d think twice before cutting off benefits of “the people.” We may not have a guillotine, but we do have other forms of effective punishment, such as voting you all out of office when the time is right. 2012 may be very different than 2010 at the ballot box.

Oh, I hear it now out there in cyberland. “Typical Liberal talk” some of you are thinking. Okay. It may be “Liberal”, but I believe it’s basically “Humane Talk.” Why is it wrong to become absolutely paranoid over the very idea that the agenda of a party is desperately dangerous to the health and well-being on every single level for the average American citizen! How many of you out there have enough money socked-away to not need your Social Security check in the future – or now?

How many of you have pre-existing medical conditions which could very well ensure that the only private insurance you’ll ever be able to be qualified for is barely “insurance” at all and will cost you thousands beyond what you would have been able to receive through having a choice between government-funded or private insurance – or both in the form of Medicare which has an excellent supplemental insurance policy option in place.

I’ve written it before and I’ll write it again: the Republicans are throwing the middle class and the “poor” under the bus, and the future of our country under their rule will cost millions of lives, drain our government even more than it is now through the uninsured, and inevitable amping-up of crime as desperation sets in with the monumental numbers of Baby Boomers who are just now reaching that magic retirement number to be eligible for SS benefits and Medicare. What happens if all of these options are taken away? A colossal national nightmare, that’s what.

Think about it. Then think about it some more. The above radical ideas to shelve what is rightfully “ours” are absolutely crazy. Nuts. Perverse. Stupid. Greedy. Self-serving. What the GOP loves to call “entitlements” are part of the fabric of our modern society. We pay into these “entitlements.” It isn’t a hand-out. Had we not gone into two wars with nary a cogent thought beyond an administration’s petty greed for oil and revenge, we wouldn’t be in such a financial hole. Yes, we need to defend our country. But for how long when we must defend our rights in our country so that we are strong enough as a nation to withstand further attacks of many varieties.

Unless we have a solid base at home, we cannot bring war to an end elsewhere when we step up a war against ourselves. And that, my friends, is precisely what is happening: war has been declared on our turf by our own representatives. The voices of dissent are growing louder and are targeting the very foundation of all that keeps us together.

Bottom line. Beware the seemingly silver-tongued Ryan, the laid-back clueless Eric Cantor, and all of those who wish to stick it to the “Middle Class” while the rich get another tax break from their cronies in D.C. who, by the way, have a great health care plan as members of Congress, and lucrative jobs waiting for them when their terms are over...while those who aren’t in such cushy circumstances are left in an arrogant, insensitive toxic dust because their so-called representatives just. don’t. really. give. a. damn.

Beware the ignorant voices.