I See Republicans
It was the night before Christmas when all through the house not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, in the hopes that a real Democrat would soon be there...
A few thoughts for the New Year that will see Republicans taking control of every branch of government:
- A real compassionate conservative in the White House would come up with a simple private-enterprise solution to help the working poor overcome a major barrier to having a safe and secure roof over their heads: coming up with the first month's rent and security deposit.
- Why did Mitt Romney wait until after he was elected Governor of Massachusetts to tell the citizens that the state would be faced with the largest deficits, adjusted for inflation, since the Great Depression?
- If finding Osama bin Laden was the Bush administration's number one priority after September 11, 2001, what number is it now? And, why can't our intelligence agencies find a man who is tall by NBA standards and is reported to require regular kidney dialysis treatment?
- If the Bush administration cannot effectively process the amount of intelligence information already available to it, why would Americans accept its "Big Brother" plan to create a centralized system to monitor all Internet activity? Would not most Americans think of "secure cyberspace" as much less important than secure health, secure education, and secure retirement?
- How does an administration that calls itself "conservative" keep government meetings and correspondence secret and work to break individual anonymity on the Internet?
- Someone needs to explain to me the administration's rationale for supporting Internet fingerprinting but not ballistic fingerprinting.
- Who else finds it ironic that the Bush administration pontificates on the sanctity of the separation of powers when it comes to revealing who attended meetings with White House officials after the two-year proctology exam Republicans gave Clinton?
- The most honest statement coming out of the White House in two years was the admission that a lull in the media's fixation on the Bush administration's "War on Terror" allowed examination of Trent Lott's romanticism of racism to reach critical mass.
- In a world where microscopic biological weapons are the hardest to detect and the easiest to deploy, why would any American buy the Bush administration's claim that the country needs to spend valuable time and money on "Star Wars"?
- The worst display of Christmas spirit I have seen this season in my hometown of Boston: A driver beeping his horn at a car holding up traffic to give money to a homeless man. Was that a Bush/Cheney sticker I saw in his rear window?
- Trent Lott was forced out of the new Senate Majority Leader position thanks to Karl Rove's political calculation, but tacit support of bigots by Republican leadership is unlikely to change anytime soon.
- How long will it be before a Republican promotes a government program to relocate seniors to third world countries to lower the cost of Medicare and Social Security?
- I am hoping for a little Republican antidote from the Democrats. Would someone please ask Bill Clinton to open open up his Harlem offices and make like Alistair Cooke. Clinton could use his stature and resources to reintroduce Eyes on the Prize, a critically acclaimed 14-part series on the American Civil Rights Movement that originally aired on PBS, to a country that sorely needs a history lesson. This time the broadcast should be in primetime on a major network.
