War, Assault, Campaign: Women Still Lose

This article, "Dispatches From The War On Women: Turning Pregnant Women Into Criminals"
 http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-the-war-on-women-turning-pregnant-women-into-criminals.html#ixzz1vVNloZqq, cites an editorial in the Sunday New York Times, saying the editorial "... minced no words, breaking down the attacks on reproductive rights, access to health care, and challenges to equal pay laws and domestic violence protections. ...  'Whether this pattern of disturbing developments constitutes a war on women is a political argument. That women’s rights and health are casualties of Republican policy is indisputable.'”
http://www.care2.com/causes/dispatches-from-the-war-on-women-turning-pregnant-women-into-criminals.html

No matter how you slice it, there is nothing conservative about this strategy to repress, subjugate and 'second-class' females in the United States.

Even without the GOP policies that blast ever-widening chasms of disparity between the mega haves and the other 99 percent of Americans, it is beyond comprehension that any woman who can vote in this country would ever vote for any these modern-day Talibanesque Republicans.

Wealth Has Been Redistributed--to the Top 1%

You know that "redistribution" of wealth the Repubicans are constantly accusing liberals of perpetrating? The truth is, that something they're doing, but by accusing progressives of it, they put themselves on the offense and their opponents, who aren't doing it, on the defense.

Redistribution of this nation's wealth is something Ronald Reagan started and that the GOP and DINOs have been accelerating ever since.

In 1979 the top 1% got only 9% of all personal income in the U.S. Now the top 1% gets 25% of all personal income. And the interestingly, that's OK w/folks who don't realize how much it's hurting them. They, in fact, love it. It makes them feel good.

Why? Because, just like with sports teams, star atheltes, and entertainment celebrities, Americans love and want to back winners. We live vicariously through them. We think that being a fan associates us with whoever or whatever we're being a fan of and, in a perverted kind of way, that raises (if you want to use that perspective) us to their stratosphere. Backing them identifies us with them, and, might even work to make others think more highly of us. We become part of their community, so we need to look out for them. Defend them. Don't sit still when others disparage them.

So it's OK with people who think and behave like that to think that it's OK to give the rich a break. People with that mentality don't mind bearing the rich's load for them. That makes the poor schmucks who do really good guys -- and maybe the rich and famous, in turn, will really like them and perhaps even throw them a crumb.

Here's a story in the New Yorker magazine that explains it.  http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/04/23/120423crat_atlarge_lemann

Want Smaller Gov't? Elect Democrats

The GOP mantra, particularly among candidates for elected office, is that the Democratic Party is the party of big government and that the electorate should trust the GOP to reduce the size of government.

Historical facts, however, belie that.

I've often heard/read that the federal government has actually grown in Republican presidential administrations. An article that provides statistics says:
 
"Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush both increased the size of the bureaucracy, whether or not you count military personnel.  Reagan increased the non-military workforce  by 238,000 employees, and the federal workforce including military personnel by 324,000.  George W. Bush increased the non-military workforce by 53,000 employees, and the federal workforce overall by 77,000.  Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, reduced non-military employees by 8,000 and the federal workforce overall by 6 37,000. Carter came in third behind George H.W. Bush as a small-government practitioner."

This article, as http://www.brendagrantland.com/Blog/BlogRepublican.html, includes a little quiz the results of which are quite interesting and that Democrats should pounce on like a frog on a fly.

President Obama isn't included in this quiz because he wasn't in office long enough when the article was published. But he has been now and while he Obama is constantly accused of bloating the federal government, according to the article "Big Government? Obama Has 273,000 Fewer Federal Employees Than Reagan" at
http://www.politicususa.com/en/big-government-obama-reagan, it seems that Obama has not increased the size of government.

Plus, he has either cut or proposed cuts in wasteful spending. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57321244/obama-to-cut-federal-swag-wasteful-spending/ And his federal deficit reduction plan -- which the Republicans rejected after previously backing many of the same policies -- cut more spending the the Republicans alternatives.

Historical facts show that Republicans' claims of being the small government party are false. While they're absolute hawks about cutting spending on public programs that benefit middle and poor Americans, they passionately protect government spending on the much more costly tax breaks, subsidies and other welfare for the rich.

Republicans who promise to cut the size of government remind me of men who beat their wives and girlfriends. They're so sorry and promise to never hit them again. We all know how that goes.

The difference is, Republicans never say they're sorry.

Revolution

Recently defeated South Carolina Republican Representative Bob Inglis was interviewed a couple of days ago on National Public Radio in a piece headlined, “Republican Swamped By The GOP Wave.”

http://www.npr.org/2010/11/20/131474413/exiting-inglis-laments-conservatism-s-derailment

Contributing to Inglis’s electoral defeat was what has become the right-wing political career-ending position of daring to say he “believes in” climate change (apparently, although not said, as having some degree of human cause).

As an aside, use of the term “believe in” in this and similar contexts, sends my eyebrows skyward, as if one would “believe in” climate change as though it were some kind of religious ideology or deity.

Despite Congressman Inglis’s 93% conservative” voting record (yet not “conservative” enough for today’s South Carolina voters), I agreed with much of what he said on NPR.

He lamented the disappearance of the Republican Party of Teddy Roosevelt, whose platform as both a Republican and a Progressive of the Bull Moose Party, was conservation. I think that must have been the Republican Party of my parents, or at least my father, who thought the best light switch was one in the "off" position.

That concept of conservatism has been flipped on its head as today’s conservative archetype, instead of being frugal and thrifty, comprises the bigger-is-better, consume-and-throw-away crowd.

New York Times right-of-center columnist David Brooks snarked about the nation’s capital being awash last month with famously high-gas-mileage Priuses—Brooks’s stereotypical vehicle of Birkenstock-wearing, granola-eating, tree-hugging liberals—during The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s Rally to Restore Sanity.

So are “conservatives’” ideal vehicles gas-guzzling, super-sized SUVs and trucks? I think driving high-gas-mileage cars, eating healthfully and caring about trees are truly conservative virtues.

Also in the NPR segment, Inglis, in discussing the Tea Party, harked back to the French Revolution in which a populist movement turned the streets of Paris and other parts of France into rivers of blood—quite literally—with the wholesale purging of the nobility and privileged classes. (Inglis didn’t mention the rest of that story, in which the insurrection split into factions, attempted counter-revolution and countless pay-back executions (better hang tight to your heads, latter-day Robespierres), followed by the Reign of Terror years, which eventually produced Napoleon.)

Inglis’s reference to the French Revolution resonated with me as that bloody era in which innocents were indiscriminately killed off along with aristocrats and royalty has and continues to come to mind amidst the Tea Party rage that has morphed into elected officials with questionable qualifications and what might turn out to be anything but populist agendas.

Another nail in Inglis’s political coffin was veering off the conservative page by decrying faux assertions about President Obama religious faith, birth certificate and being a socialist/communist/fascist and the vicious attempt to destroy reputations and institutions.

I agree with the soon-to-be former congressman on that, too.

I'm on Twitter @jerrianneh