We Can't Trust Republicans With Our Children

A guide to political messaging for this election.

Any person who votes for any Republican this election will vote to keep the current Congressional leadership in place. If you like what you've seen, then, by all means, vote Republican! But, it's clear, they don't love America... especially our children! A variation of this theme should be used in all races the last few weeks before this critical election. This is my advice.

Since 2006, the Republicans have been in control of the Executive, and both chambers of the Congress. We have to remind people of this--and don't tell me that they know, because I teach at a university and if many students don't know I assume much of country doesn't either! Then, it's a simple connection between the enablers and the decider(s). Let's chase the evil-doers where ever they are! [Obviously, there has to be a different strategy for state-wide, and local races. Phil Angelides,for example, should concentrate on framing "Aanuld" as a concervative who doesn't represent the state's progressive tendencies. The Terminator isn't responsible for Bush but Congress is!]

1. We can't trust Republicans to educate our children. If equality of opportunity is still part of the American dream, then it has become dimmer. Funding to education (including ancillary programs & services, such as libraries) has been cut. Standards and quality have been sacrificed in order to conform to the monstrous No Child Left Behind program--which has meant move children forward but leave their brains behind. The cost of getting a higher education (grants, loans, interest on student loans) has risen dramatically.

2. We can't trust Republicans to help the 9 million children that have no health insurance. Millions of children live in poverty in one of the richest countries in the history of the world. We witnessed in horror the plight of the children in New Orleans (along with their "under-privileged" parents) drown and starve for days. Over a year later, many are nomads in their own land. Since 9-11-01, more American children have died because of malnutrition, inadequate health care (if any), and from preventable accidents and violence than the terrorist toll.

3. The Republicans don't care about the qualtiy of the air, food, and the environment. The Republicans are bad with your food, water, and the air you breathe! The children are particularly vulnerable to polluted air, water, and dangerous environmental hazards. Leaving public health to the good will of the market forces is not a good way to protect and enhance the common good. Without regulations, supervision, and inspections, e-coli will more easily contaminate spinach again, the last fish will be taken out of the water, and the last tree will be cut down. Besides, some things aren't supposed to be profitable, like, libraries, schools, hospitals, because certain services promote the commonwealth. After all, being part of a civil society should have as many benefits as possible for the greater number of people.

4. We can't trust the Republicans with our children in the military. It's very irresponsible (if not outright crazy) to take a country like the United States into war on a pack of lies. This cost of war has been enormous. The burden is not shared equally, but it is the younger and the poorer who're being killed over there. Incompetence at the highest level of our government has cost America thousands of young lives, and have made us more open to terrorism! War profiteering is not a victimless crime. Not only they sent our troops to an unnecessary war (invasion of Iraq) and exposed to them to unnecessary dangers (occupation of Iraq), but they did not give them the proper body armor to protect themselves! Just the other day, several generals of the joint chiefs testified that they receive 47 reinforced armor vehicles (when they need thousands) a month, while in WW2 our country could build & deliver 20,000 aircraft a month!

5. While they talk about morality and are busy accusing the Democrats of not loving America, the Republicans harbor paedophilia. As you must have heard by now, Republican Congressman Mark Foley is a paedophile, but the problem is that the Republican leadership knew about it and of his inappropriate advances towards a minor but the Republicans chose to cover it up! Politics above morality. [Interesting point to hightlight: Sex between two consenting adults was deemed worse by the Republicans than the sexual advances of a Republican Congressman towards a teenage boy!] The culture of corruption--whose scope and breadth is unprecedented--of the Republicans now shows that their priorities are not about morality and the love of America, but of money, power, and utter selfishness. They clearly hate America!

In a traditional fashion and a return to the "ole good ways" these people deserve some frontier justice. If the involved Republicans and their supporters in the media had any decency, they should have disappeared from sight, or ran out of town covered in tar and feathers. This is not a time for the Democrats to rejoice as their chances of taking over Congress are improving day by day. This is a very serious situation. Obviously you need power to make things right: correct the mistakes, re-allocate the resources available, re-establish new priorities, punish the crooks, and plan for the future. But, I will not be surprised if the Dems screw this up. They're prone to doing something stupid to divert the public attention from the real & burning issues and have the nation focus on unimportant distraction! What could they do, you ask? I could list several possibilities here but I don't want to tempt fate....

Update: I couldn't resist to include the following gem. Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House--one of the Republican leaders who knew and covered up this latest scandal--is also the one responsible for running the House as a personal fiefdom and for passing the student strip search bill. Hastert bypassed the committee and brought it to the floor where it passed by voice vote, so the constituents wouldn't find out how their rep voted!

The Abramoff scandal has more legs folks. By the way, although I don't normally use certain terminology (ie. "hate America," "evil doers"), it's fun to use others' language to further highlight their hypocricy! Also, wouldn't it be nice to find out with whom male prostitute Jeff Gannon (a.k.a. James Guckert) slept during his many visits (hundred or times) to the White House? Somebody has to be debriefed and spill the beans!

Update 2: This Jon Stewart video is hilarious and to the point! Worth spending the time watching it if for nothing else but for an "explanation" of the Foley scandal. Oh, and btw Republican Senate leader Bill Frist now believes the Taliban [you know the ones that supported Osama Bin Landen and that we invaded Afghanistan to overthrow] should come back to govern there! Frist also hates America! We knew that Fox News didn't care about the truth--even if hiding the truth is not good for America--so this conservative propaganda machine had the Foley sexually-explicit emails but chose to protect a Republican pedophile rather than some underage pages on Capitol Hill. Yeah, "no big deal" or, in other words, what's a few innocent victims' importance as compared to the great work the Republicans have been doing for America! It's a "vision thing"!