In Part I we saw that America’s grass roots political sanity had run amuck. Cousins fighting cousins with no idea of what is true or not, just parroting the blasted “talking points” sowed by high-paid political consultants of each party. It sucks. And just look at the big, fat, radio pundits like Rush Limbaugh or television talking heads eat-up-with-dumbass, e.g., Sean Hannity on Fox News (Fair and Balanced, you know)? Funny how American voters flock to them like flies to repeat and circulate their stupid “talking points” as political facts full of certainty, without a pause to breathe. And we have seen them shrink and wither when you hold up their ubiquitous notions (presented as fact) to the light and you quickly discover that these talking points are indeed, half-truths, fabrications, and sometimes, bald-faced lies! Put it to the test next time a neighbor or a cousin invites you to play a game of “ain’t it awful” about how horrible something really is, yet it cannot stand the litmus test of truth in simple fact-checkers like “Truthout.com or Snopes.com.” Snopes calls these ridiculous notions circulated/perpetrated by some Americans, “Urban Legends.” Maybe the perps should be called Backyard Bubbas. That they are so sure of their facts without checking first makes them crazy as a bunch of road lizards with a Roadrunner in hot pursuit.
You got to wonder about our nation’s own sanity simply because we seem to love to play these games with cards that lie before the pack is even broken and shuffled. And, pray tell, what does such a deck of cards cost? The answer is, what is it worth to you or a political party to buy the total demonization of a candidate to bugger him or her and keep him out of office? It makes you sigh to see these words of broken glass circulate as gospel when the truth is somewhat easy to test by various means available to those who want to check a “talking point’s” authenticity. Before you wallow in a game of “ain’t it awful” across your neighbor’s fence with him. Or cast your vote at the ballot box, based on lies and disinformation
This same cousin in Part I of this arduous missive has not written for some time after I “Snoped” him on several of his wanker “talking points” about which I cannot recall the substance (perhaps because they were eat up with bloody nonsense). Oh, yeah, now I remember. It was a well-organized list of Obama’s department heads (Czar’s, the article derided). The contention was that they had each committed wrongdoings and even crimes, and by no means should be trusted. And of course, neither should Obama. Of course none of these prickly “talking points” proved to be slurs concocted to demean and diminish the reputation of our president. You got to wonder what sticks in their craw about Obama. He has performed well for the people thus far. Overall, you got to give him some credit. Look at all the good stuff he has done and argue against his killing bin Laden if you got the guts. I think in this case even the GOP poster child, Reagan would say we are better off.
Or the how ‘bout Obama’s steady and cool hand in guiding economic recovery of our worst recession that had started to gather steam before Bush passed the baton. Jobs, a good stock market, a nation that has overshadowed all others in the world in the ability to produce goods and services, maintain, and still be the most prosperous and strongest world economy while the rest of the nations in the world are doing a slow economic crumble. Gotta give ‘im that, eh? And for maintaining our military, still second to none. Many will argue that, but methinks they must have ulterior motives. Why? Because we are still the strongest military force in the world, all the rest of the nations added up together. For all our faults, most all the world nations trust America to perform when the going gets tough (which is almost every day now).
The opponents of Obama have tried their hardest to demean Obama’s national healthcare program, beginning with dubbing it “Obamacare.” Such a tag is derisive and smells of racism, I tend to think. Sad.
For all its criticisms it is a beginning of the FIRST American affordable healthcare plan. EVER. And for all the people. So all you running for office who have avowed to kill it, tell us what you have done for affordable healthcare for all Americans in your last 10 or 20 years in office, will you? We’re waiting, Jeb Bush, Ron Paul, Scott Walker, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry (oh you quit?), Bobby Jendal, Lindsey Graham, Rubio, Pataki, Christie, Santorum, ugh this is such a murderous exercise just to go through this roster of creepy, broken candidates.
Yet just the other day I got an email from my troubled cousin (with talking points growing like Texas Bull-Nettles between the phrases and odiferous lies). It was about the Clinton crime family and how they have cheated America for all their ongoing self-serving ways. They never give up. Even when the facts crush them and their viability as serious humans. His shtick this time was how the Clinton Foundation is a front for unlawful and illegal activity. You got to ask, what is it that fuels such a dogging criticism of the Clintons? Whitewater. Benghazi. Now, the Clinton Foundation. Nothing stuck. Nothing sticks. But the dogging and wicked laceration of the Clintons continues. There was a pithy piece yesterday where Newsmax.com reported that a top House Republican and Majority Leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy, admits that the Benghazi probe by Republicans is a Hillary hit job. Democrats demand that Boehner disband the Benghazi panel. Read all about it here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/09/30/kevin-mccarthys-comments-about-benghazi-should-raise-a-red-flag-for-republicans/
The only thing ever to stick even in a half-assed perspective was the Bill Clinton BJ in the White House back when he was president. So Clinton lied under oath on a personal question asked of him. Big deal. They should never have asked the question, and Clinton should have refused to answer with a big “Nunya business” reply. Funny thing, but Congress impeached Clinton, yet did not go the full distance and remove his ass from office. Why is that? When you got the possum treed, what, you just gonna let him go? After all those millions of dollars spent (including US tax dollars) to prosecute Bill Clinton? I think, deep down I meant to say persecute. Wonder what Freud would say? Perhaps the Senators and Congressmen all conjured up images of their own misbehaviors in high office under the spotlights and were scared shitless (I meant to say witless, dang it) to take it to the max and remove Clinton from office. Speaking figuratively perhaps there were even compromising Billy Goat pictures of the persecutors to prompt them to think twice before removing Clinton from office, and that caused them to snap back and withdraw. Like chickens would. You think? Figuratively, of course. Go figure.
You want to talk about crimes, real crimes? Well, GW Bush and his Cabinet said we needed to attack Iraq because they were in cahoots with Osama bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein had nukes pointed at American cities! (All lies, and Bush had to know this when he said it) Colin Powell spoke before the United Nations for our warlike legitimacy, to show the world......wait for it................artists’ drawings as proof of Saddam’s Weapons of Mass Destruction facilities and other forms of circumstantial evidence, lame as a 3-legged goat. And so like an angry mob nation we attacked Iraq! I never was for attacking Iraq, and now I and the rest of the world sees the awful results of what we did. Oh, and yeah, we brought freedom and democracy to Iraq, right? Yeah, right! We occupied Iraq for almost 9 years as Americans lost their lives in the combat service of their country to the tune of 4,484. A hundred thousand of our uniformed soldiers were severely wounded, and over 1.45 million Iraqis were killed.
By the time we attacked Iraq in early 2003 our National Debt was at:
6.7 Trillion Dollars!
12 years later in 2015 our National Debt is at:
$18.1 Trillion Dollars!
Today, it is painfully useless to keep counting. Thanks to crooks in high government places, who in the world takes the trouble to keep on counting with each new trillion dollars that pops up on the radar as it is attached like an eternal barnacle of shame to our National Debt?
To use Reagan’s catchy phrase that says whether we did the right thing or not after Bush, the great Decider attacked Iraq, I got to ask: How ‘bout it, Yanks? Are we better off? Is Iraq better off? Did we bring them democracy? Is the world, now assaulted by bigger and better terrorists (can you say, ISIS?) at every corner of the world better off? That’s safe? Safer? Is the springing up of Isis a better target than al Qaeda back when Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld insisted on Iraq the target? What would they answer today in 2015? Are we truly better off now having to fight ISIS in multiple Middle Eastern countries instead of al Qaeda? Was the tradeoff a good one for the world? And America, are we better off?
Anyone care to venture a guess as to where our dollar is headed? With all the quantitative easing to meet our national debt obligations doesn’t it seem like we are playing Monopoly with funny money? No value added, just more printing press dollars, diluted by continuing the big cheat. And of course you can read much on how that is all Obama’s fault. Yet the borrowing and spending madness began back with Ronald Reagan and the Laffer curve where money and prosperity was supposed to “trickle down.” It didn’t. The rich got richer and the poor, well, whoever gave a crap about them, anyway? The GOP? We all know where the GOP stands on raising minimum wage and union-busting and all other things Republican, don’t we? And how they demonized and insulted the poor by saying they shouldn’t expect a government to take care of them from “cradle to grave.” Who said that? Was it Ted Kennedy? Barack Obama? Bill Clinton? Or Ron Paul, maybe? Duh. Some caring. Yeah, right.
Did removing Saddam Hussein a la “Shock and Awe” deliver a death blow to Osama bin Laden? Nope. President Obama did that years later with crack teams of Special Forces that landed on foreign soil by stealth in helicopters. That took more balls than Bush showed after landing on a carrier to proclaim his lame “Mission Accomplished” with his flight suit stuffed with toilet paper, wouldn’t you say? Did attacking Iraq destroy al Qaeda and the other terrorists’ will to fight? Well, Duh! Anybody ever hear of Isis? They seem much bigger and badder and more troublesome than al Qaeda ever was. We got huge problems now after deposing Saddam Hussein and opening the Pandora’s Box that will never see the cessations of furies coming at us as terrorists. Exponentially. Good job, GW. We couldn’t have screwed up better this time. And all the dumbass chaff that still walks and talks and runs for office in the Republican Party is a bunch of deviants, floundering and flopping about in confused denial.
Why the GOP candidates now in the race for president won’t even blast George W. when needed for them to be credible. They deviate to their stupid talking points of why Obama is responsible for Bush’s failures. Even when it stinks to high heaven that with sane people. Gives more meaning to the adage, “My party, right or wrong.” Next debate just watch all the GOP candidates, like a bunch of Keystone Kops, run for cover and stumble over their talking points in an endless and futile exercise in denial and wanton shrugging of accountability as a party professing to be worthy and deserving of the public trust. If they would just tell the truth and stand up as a party and admit that no, we are not better off for all of Dubya’s missteps and mistakes from when he invaded Iraq up until now, they might just get elected, some of them. The world knows full well that our “Shock and Awe” invasion and occupation sucked from the beginning. It was all Bullshit, and they know it. But the GOP puts credence in saying crap like, “Obama pulled troops out too soon.” You turkeys!
Is America better off? Was the $4 Trillion money well-spent during Bush’s first term as president? Look America in the eye, Trump! In short, was it worth it? How about you, Cruz? You got the stomach to answer the hard questions even it means denouncing some of your party’s historic stupidity? Will that loss of money we borrowed and spent help us or our children in the future? What do you say, Jeb? Or could we have used it for more important things than war with Iraq? Anybody? I feel a fade-to-dark feeling of Republican cowardice when it comes to the truth. A punching out conscience, so to speak.
So what did happen with the GOP history rewritten by those who would scuttle the truth and lie? Did Obama and his financial advisors and Congress cause our debt to double in little over 3 years of his first term as president? Not hardly. First Grade arithmetic tells us how to add and subtract. Something else caused it, and those who are not interested in political talking points of either side must look at the long hard truth of what happened. For our own sake and for our country and very existence. What we gonna do, rewrite history into something it ain’t like in Orwell’s chilling novel “1984?” Can anybody meet the Gipper litmus test and say, “We are better off?” Ye who cower in silence when it comes home to roost over and over again, just raise your hand. Everything will be okay. Honor bright, ye candidates for president. Show some balls. You, too, Carly. Tell it like it is. Maybe that’s why Trump leads the pack in the polls. Like in some voters may see him as having the balls to tell the TRUTH. And the rest of you as cowards who are not talking. But try it all you wannabes. If you do, perhaps voters will remember you while all the cute lies and “talking points” are forgotten like the sewage it is as it spirals down the toilet of time.