Richard A. Stitt: The Insanity and Depravity of the GOP

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Richard A. Stitt

Albert Einstein once described insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
 
It is stunning to think with our country in a deep recession, the GOP is taking a political path to self-incineration grounded forever in tax cuts, mainly for the richest Americans. Yet, this is the path they continue to follow. However, they have become wackier and wackier now that we have seen the new leaders of the GOP, which include Joe The Plumber, Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, and crazier-than-a-loon Eric Cantor. These folks are their rising stars?
 
Clearly, eight years of Bush pronouncements of no new taxes, six of which were during a virtually veto-free Republican-controlled U.S. Congress, the Bush-GOP policies not only failed to create jobs and income but also in fact caused the loss of both income and jobs for average American workers in each year of Bush's tenure in the White House.
 
Yet astonishingly, after the November 4 election in which Republicans lost the presidency and seats in both houses of Congress, the Republican response to the gargantuan economic collapse that they created is to repeat over and over the bromide that tax cuts are the answer to the economic catastrophe.
 
After Bush left office, he bequeathed to Barack Obama a $1.2 trillion budget deficit, two wars, soaring unemployment, near-total collapse of our banking system, escalating bankruptcies and home foreclosures, and Wall Street Ponzi scheme swindlers who had free run of investors' money that they squandered on get-rich financial contrivances such as derivatives, junk bonds, hedge funds, and credit default swaps (even the name sounds dishonest).
 
During Bush's White House occupancy, none of these fraudulent business practices were ever explained or investigated by either the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) or the Justice Department, both of which became arms and extensions of the Executive branch.
 
Michael Steele, the newly appointed Republican National Committee chairman, stated at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC, "Tonight, we tell America that Republican values, conservative values, are right for America." He admitted that the GOP made some mistakes. "Tonight, we tell America: we know the past, we know we did wrong. My bad. But we go forward in appreciation of the values that brought us to this point."
 
However, the session quickly descended into a crescendo of Barack Obama bashing and sneering contempt for the Democratic Party. Steele called President Obama's stimulus bill "nothing short of frightening." He said conservatives must use the political moment to re-assert their belief in a set of basic principles: limited government, freedom, opportunity, and the ability of the free market to "create, innovate and prosper." Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) erupted in an almost Satanic-possessed shout of approval, "Michael Steele! You be da man! You be da man!"
 
During this GOP-CPAC howling session, John Bolton, Bush's nominee to be UN ambassador (but never confirmed), joked that "an attack on Chi-town would teach Obama a lesson."

Bachmann, who was in a tight reelection bid in a solid Republican district, stated during her 2008 campaign, "What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an exposé like that."

Bachmann earlier stated that minorities, specifically black minorities, were responsible for the current financial crisis. She based her opinion on a right-wing publication written by Terry Jones, Investors Business Daily. The article criticizes the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) for pushing "Fannie and Freddie to aggressively lend to minority communities." Jones goes on to say that Clinton was misguided to push "home ownership as a way to open the door for blacks and other minorities to enter the middle class."

Yeah, Michael Steele, "You be da man," -- unless you start embracing programs such as expanding state children's health insurance program (SCHIP) to families with children. The program was designed to cover uninsured children in families with incomes that are modest but too high to qualify for Medicaid for millions of poor children. G.W. Bush vetoed that bill and it took a new Democratic Party controlled Congress to finally get the bill passed.
 
What is it about these Latter Day Republicans who seem obsessed with guns, violence, and conflict? We recall that Bolton also joked that if you blew off 10 floors of UN building in New York, it wouldn't make a difference. Another GOP wacko, Alan Keyes, stated that Barack Obama is a "radical Communist" who "must be stopped." Sean Hannity, inveterate Republican Fox News Channel advocate for violence, has a Web site instigating the violent overthrow of our government and supports armed rebellion to oust Barack Obama.
 
There's the right-wing Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper, the New York Post, depicting two policemen standing over a chimpanzee's body shot dead, with a caption that Democrats would have to find someone else to write the stimulus bill. Clearly, this was a call to incite any number of Screech Radio's army ant colonies of "lone wolves" to assassinate President Barack Obama. It cannot be interpreted in any other way. There is no ambiguity in the Post's inflammatory political cartoon.
 
We're only a little over one month into Barack Obama's administration, yet the level of incendiary rhetoric and heightened call for violence by the Republicans is only in its incipient stages. It's not enough for the GOP to just say "no" to the stimulus bill. Their real and dangerously treasonous agenda is to advocate armed rebellion, disorder, and sabotage of our government.
 
Apparently, the GOP's thirst for blood was not quenched sufficiently during Bush's preemptive genocidal war against a broken country, Iraq. There, he and his GOP abettors are responsible for murdering tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens, putting 4,252 U.S. military personnel in body bags and the wounding of over 30,000 more, many disabled for life. Now, the GOP is threatening to take their frenzy of physical force to a domestic level.

One thing is for sure: the NRA couldn't be happier.

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION

Richard A. Stitt
Austin, TX 

Technorati Tags: Reader Contribution Richard A. Stitt George W. Bush Barack Obama economic stimulus Bobby Jindal