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Fat Guys And Moose Hunters

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FRANCES EARL

Call to Patriots

Published: February 12, 2009

There's this grossly obese guy with a fat mouth to match, not elected to any office, yet every lie, every accusation he dreams up, is repeated almost verbatim by our Republican representatives and senators.
Is this how low the Republican Party has sunk? Are they so without leadership that they can only continue their lies and distortions and obstructionism at a time when this country borders on a recession that most credible economists agree is worse than anything they have ever encountered?
The Republicans controlled both the executive and legislative branches of our government for eight long years. The Democrats having a majority of exactly one vote for the last two years (Sen. Joe Lieberman?) could not stop the Republicans, during which regulations were eliminated from business after business, from state and federal agencies that were supposedly watchdogs over our safety, food supply and environment.
A decade of give-away tax breaks to the wealthiest among us and the responsibility of financing needed services our taxes pay for were put squarely on the working class. But they continue to say tax cuts are the way out of this mess, failing to understand that a decade of exactly that has produced unemployment, not business expansion. And the fat guy repeats this fallacy day by day. Who's the fat guy? Think Rush, not Bush, but oh so close!
We apparently don't have enough on our plates so former Vice President Dick Cheney continues the "make them afraid and they will follow" mantra of the entire last decade by warning of an imminent attack, this time nuclear or biological — all because we have elected Barack Obama. In truth, Dick and Dubya have directly aided al-Qaida in recruiting an army of terrorists by giving them every reason to hate Americans!
We should not rush to pass President Obama's stimulus bill, but it was necessary and wise to rush to believe in WMDs in Iraq that never existed? Somebody should tell these guys the election is over and they lost! Frankly, if they threaten to filibuster a stimulus package desperately needed by our country and its citizens, I say let them do it. Let our people see exactly who it is that is preventing them from climbing out of the hole they are in.
For our Gov. Charlie Crist, I have some suggestions as well. How about rescinding those tax breaks the corporations and the wealthy (tangible taxes, etc.) got from the other shrub, former governor Jeb Bush, instead of cutting public school education? How about going over the list of tax exempt goods and services and eliminating some of them? How about getting back at least a portion of the give-away former Florida House Speaker Ray Sansom pushed through for that hangar — you know, the hangar that, strangely, is identical to the planned one by Jay Odom, which we are told is for the college that hired Sansom at a salary more than $100,000 a year. Too bad he got caught and had to give it up.
Seems as though Crist's answer to the pile of rubble he finds himself unable to dig Florida out of is to beg for passage of the stimulus bill with his hand out for a temporary fix for Florida. Florida needs a fix all right, but an influx of money will not do it. What we need is a cleanup campaign. Did the Bush-created elite class not get it yet? Impoverish the working class, take away their jobs and their homes and, guess what? No consumers for all the stuff you guys have given to Taiwan, India and others to make at such low hourly pay while you fired the American workers.
Republicans claim the stimulus package should contain no money for building or repairing schools or hiring teachers. How come? Why are construction jobs at educational facilities not as good as the same type of jobs for homes and roads? Are jobs for needed teachers not as important as other jobs?
Anyone paying attention may come to the conclusion that public education is considered an "entitlement" by these guys. While they keep cutting education, they name programs such cutesy names as "No Child Left Behind," but they deny the funding for those programs and take even more from our public education system with their voucher giveaways to religious based schools. Do you think the kids who get those vouchers go to top-ranked private schools? Check it out and you'll find some churches with only six or seven students, being taught by unaccredited teachers with no accountability to the state.
Their latest trick is to elect an African-American to head the Republican National Committee to get back the black vote.
"The mind of the bigot is like the pupil of the eye: The more light you shine on it, the more it will contract." — Oliver Wendell Holmes

Frances Earl, former vice chairwoman of the Hernando County Democratic Executive Committee, may be contacted at fearl@tampabay.rr.com.

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