GOP Pronunciation

We have been hard on our GOP brothers
Yet their trickledown smothers
Making it more than just strange
They go backwards for change
Perhaps we’ve missed all the meaning
And there’s more that we should be gleaning
When they add to our debt
By “no tax” pledges and wars they forget
We have all been chasing a rabbit
And the Right has made it a habit
To make jobs overseas
Despite all the pleas
By workers who want work and pension
Instead of handouts and tension
Or vouchers for health and schools
While being taken as fools


All this time, I have been bewildered by the GOP talking about jobs and yet legislating only social engineering projects in the House. In fact, in order to train the millions of Americans who simply want to work for a living to learn patience, they are testing our memories and patience. There may have excellent support that the GOP should not run their campaign by fact checking. It destroys delusions.

At the state level, we have seen a refusal to accept federal monies to enhance their Medicaid (which includes child healthcare) while simultaneously adding to “small” government by passing and financing laws to mandate ultrasound (including transvaginal ultrasound in some GOP states). Is this social engineering reminiscent of the old USSR? Maybe worse. At least in the USSR, an individual did not have to pay for an unnecessary medical act mandated by the government. Remember that abortion, regardless of the discomfort it brings in discussions, is still legal in our United States. So the party of “small government” that threw months of hissy-fits about “Obamacare” being mandatory are demanding that women in seven states pay for the MANDATED medically unnecessary procedure to undergo another medical procedure. Hmm. Small government? Exactly where? Will we have a small government staff for each woman who must have government ultrasounds and one for maintaining the unequal pay for equal work rules? Will we have another small government to ensure that these uppity women don’t get contraceptives? The GOP platform mandates that women who are victims of rape must bear the children of rape so, in effect, the small government acting in loco fetus chooses the fetus over the rights of the mother to have a legal procedure performed to protect her physical and mental health. I am currently reading Half the Sky that points out dramatically that the most repressive regimes abuse women the most. Are we headed to a link up with the Taliban? According to authors Kristof and WuDunn, more egregious violators of women include India, China, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Are we crowding women out of political expression here so that they are property once again? So we abolished slavery with the 13th Amendment? Are we circumventing that amendment state by state and causing women to lose their hard won independence? By curtailing women’s healthcare funding and attacking Planned Parenthood, are we marginalizing women in the US so they are no longer a factor in our society except to bear children as the State mandates but without financial assistance?

There are a number of other curious ironies by the party that touts freedom but acts to enhance the role of government in the home and family. Some are personal and reflect back on their disdain for fact checking. Paul Ryan claimed a “two hour and fifty-something” marathon a couple weeks ago, even when challenged by the interviewer Hewitt who recognized that as an amazing time. It was only when Runner’s World documented his actual time that was well over 4 hours that he claimed a “misstatement.” His running mate Romney, while governor of Massachusetts claimed both MA and UT as his residence and only after that fact being pointed out did he reimburse MA for taxes not paid. Lie, of course not, it was an error by his accountants. We have all heard the spin by Ryan that Obama failed to follow the Simpson-Bowles recommendations. He omitted the fact that he, Ryan, voted against Simpson-Bowles and that he, Ryan, actually led the GOP commissioners in voting against it. Why not blame Obama? Maybe he won’t notice. Similarly, Ryan blasted Obama for “looting” $716 Billion from Medicare. He, Ryan, also eliminated $716 Billion from Medicare and his came from benefits instead of payments to providers like hospitals as the Obama plan does. Ryan’s Medicare would last only until 2016 when he could save it by destroying it much like our criticism from Vietnam. The establishment of Voucher-nation would also include education. The idea of this pure marketplace is brilliant. We will put individual taxpayers in the position of bargaining with large, wealthy private providers to get a good price for medical and education services. He will restore the donut hole in medication pricing to help those poor pharmaceuticals along while we bargain. Now let me think. Can I trade a medical voucher for services like getting my broken down used car fixed so I can drive to all my minimum wage jobs to keep my family together? No matter. Mittens says I should borrow money from my parents. “Oh, they died? Find some living parents who will lend you money.”

As I said, we have been too hard on our GOP friends and we have set the bar too high. After all, they brought us the two greatest financial calamities in the past century, the Great Depression by Harding and Coolidge and Hoover and the Great Wall Street Fraud by GW Bush. Who were we to know that trickle-down referred to the pee down your leg instead of money? They were right, and the pee trickled down. Now they talk of millions of jobs and they will be right again. Just be sure to pronounce it as JOBES. I can assure you that with vouchers and without guaranteed healthcare coverage, we will see millions of people suffering to compete with Job and his medical afflictions. We will see women returned to their rightful place promoting men in the home and hearts of the nation. We will see the wealthy getting wealthier but slimmer so they can fit like tiny camels through the eyes of needles. We will see the poor carrying water for the parched lips of the wealthy as in the biblical allusions amended by the religious right. There will be the opportunity to buy education-by-voucher if you did not spend that voucher on food. This is the Brave New World. You had better be brave or you cannot compete in the new Darwinian experiment from the right. It is a new approach to an open market where there are no impediments like regulations on the corporations that caused the Wall Street collapse. This is where risky investments are rewarded by success or bailout and you can share in the next bailout on your minimum wage job, Job.

You may not share in the profits and your paycheck may be smaller, but you will be free to bargain and to borrow money from your parents. Is life good or what, Job? You have learned patience in your afflictions and now you can enjoy the payoff. No need to retire, Bain has your pension money. No time to get sick and you have new choices with your freedom. Job, do you buy medicine or food? Do you train for new skills or buy food with that voucher? Do you feel the power?

Please vote. The Job you save may be your own. Is it jobs or Jobs? Maybe it is all in the pronunciation. Could it make a difference? Can you make a difference? Will women remember in November? So do a little fact checking and maybe you can avoid the next trickle-down. Those pants may be the last you will own and you don’t want to pee in them.






Peace,
George Giacoppe
7 Sep 2012

"...Fear Itself." An Open Letter to Obama

I have watched with dismay as the Clinton campaign abandoned all restraint with their sleazy TV ad featuring sleeping children at risk. My dismay increased as it appeared to work: Clinton won both the Ohio and Texas primaries, reportedly on the strength of late-deciding voters who would have been most affected by her attack ad. Now I think it is time to respond—but not by defending the Obama machismo, or by pointing out that Clinton’s claim to be “experienced” has no validity. The response should come by invalidating the entire premise of the political discussion in this country, which, since 9/11, has based itself on the politics of fear.

To put it briefly, Senator Obama should now focus his campaign on the fundamental bankruptcy of this politics of fear and fear mongering. The opening salvo should simply recall Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous line when the nation was gripped by fear of the Great Depression:

"…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…"

This line, and the policies that stemmed from it, succeeded in a way that few could have predicted. FDR was saying—and the rest of the line reinforces this with its description of fear as "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance"—that fear itself cripples any attempt on the part of people and governments to respond to a crisis. He did not maintain that there was no crisis. He simply said, nevermind the fear, nevermind the paralysis, let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work.

This principle—perhaps updated to: "the only thing we have to fear is fear mongering itself"—fits the present situation almost perfectly. To undermine fear and the fear mongers would provide a perfect antidote and alternative not only to a) the Clinton TV commercial and her contention that Obama has no credentials to protect the nation from terrorism; but also to b) the similar attacks already being mounted by Senator McCain, when he says “the Democrats want to surrender in Iraq”; c) the entire 8-year reign of the Bush Administration, which has made fear mongering its central strategy and creed; d) the fear now mounting in the general populace of economic recession, the falling dollar, and the loss of American primacy as a respected world power.

Consider that since 9/11 every level of public discourse has been shaped and whittled down to one fear-mongering principle: terrorists are coming, we must fight them abroad before they get here, every cent invested (almost all militarily) in this fight is worth it, and, in this modern fight to the death, the American people SHOULD be afraid, should be so terrified and terrorized that they will make any sacrifice in blood, treasure, and their civil liberties in order to combat the demons planning to invade and kill us all.

It is a familiar, ancient cry that has worked almost unconditionally. Any opposition to military plans by Congress has been crippled before it could even be mounted. Congress itself has been gripped by fear—the fear of seeming to be “soft on terrorism.” And it has colluded in launching an illegal war against a country that was no threat to us; continued to fund an occupation of that same country for more than five years; spent a billion dollars a day to keep that war going; and allowed the United States to become known worldwide as an empire as aggressive, acquisitive and cruel as Rome or Great Britain. Worse, beginning with the Patriot Act and continuing with secret wiretapping of American citizens, a widespread policy of torture, and even the suspension of the ancient right of habeas corpus, the very liberties Americans are supposed to be defending have been steadily eroded. And through it all, fear has been the engine driving the whole enterprise.

For Barack Obama, all this has so far been portrayed as a weak spot in his resume. It need not be. The simple expedient of turning fear and fear-mongering to his advantage has the potential of reversing the entire campaign dynamic. For he can say, in effect, this is what we mean by CHANGE. We must change the politics of fear and fear-mongering. We must leave the fear mongers behind, and simply confront without fear the challenges and problems we have. Instead of the hyper-vigilance that has for the last eight years been the coin of the realm (and recall that hyper-vigilance is precisely what afflicts and cripples returning Iraq veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome), we need to be vigilant about the threats that are real. In fact, many of these threats have been ignored because of the huge drain in both money and national energies absorbed by the occupation of Iraq. Instead of pursuing Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, we abandoned the chase and invaded Iraq. Instead of shoring up the holes in our national defense against terrorist threats—our ports, our harbors, our infrastructure—we have been diverted by hyped-up orange and red alerts that turn out to be politically motivated. Instead of confronting the real threat posed to the entire world by global warming, we have been deluded into thinking that more spending and more wastage will somehow induce that threat go away. Instead of dealing with the huge losses to our national treasury due to stupendous military spending and equally stupendous borrowing, we have indulged in myopic tax cuts for the wealthy and privatization policies that have resulted in the enrichment of a favored few and the impoverishment of the many. And all this must change. The fear mongers must go.

In short, there is no need for Senator Obama to try to establish “commander-in-chief” or “government experience” credentials in the vain attempt to counter attacks. He need simply remind people what those so-called credentials (Cheney and Rumsfeld had years of experience while Bush has strutted like a wannabe Mussolini) have brought us: an unending war and a nation on the brink of financial ruin. He need simply remind the public of what fear does and what perhaps the greatest president of the last century said in his first inaugural address to a depressed nation in its grip:

"…the only thing we have to fear is fear itself..." 
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