Now Just Calm Down

02/02/2005

Paul Munnis

I have to keep reminding myself to relax and calm down where the GOP and President Bush are concerned. It’s like dealing with a difficult child, one who is out to get unwarranted attention. Such people get attention by doing and saying outrageous things. I need to look at the difference between what Bush and the GOP say and what they do. There is a big gulf between the two.

Take Abortion as an example. The GOP says a lot of bad things but they don’t put their votes where there mouths are. They are not sponsoring any legislation to get a U.S. Constitutional amendment because they know it won’t pass. They need a Bill making abortion “Murder.” Then they need another Bill calling for the arrest, trial and conviction of women who had an abortion as well as for the doctors who performed the procedure. Roe v Wade stands in the way of those two Bills. Some in the GOP privately say: “Thank God.”

It’s the same for gun control. It’s also the same for Separation of Church and State. The GOP talks the talk but they don’t walk the walk. So what’s to worry about? It’s just hype. Well, not quite. The Christian Right told Bush that if he wanted their backing in the future then he had better propose a Constiutional Amendment on Gay Marriage. He will dutifully call for it in his State of the Union speech tonight. We’ll see how far it goes.

Bush is trying to form a cabinet and he has a pretty lousy litter box to pick them from. Rice the war hawk, Gonzales the architect of torture, and a cast of hundreds of underachievers including Rumsfeld and Snow whom the White House Staff wants to see fired. I need to take solace from that because they are not likely to be very effective in terms of 2005 legislation with this ah, um, ah, “team.” I should also be glad that within the GOP ranks there is a rainbow spectrum of opinions on the goofy things that they are being asked to support like yanking the rug out from under people on Social Security and drilling in the Alaskan Wildlife Wilderness Area even though the people of America have made it clear that is not what they want. Such a diversity means that those dumb enough to go along with Bush will pay for it in 2006 at the election box and those not so inclined will be crucified by their own Party. Theirs is not to reason why, theirs is but to run up the deficit or die. “Starve the Beast, boy,” that’s what we rednecks want. “Starve the beast.”

Then there is the election in Iraq which from the perspective of an American taxpayer means nothing much except that Bush has his hands out for another $80 Billion and the GOP Congress is giving it to him thus running up the deficit even more. It means another year of body bags and government supplied thong underwear for female interrogators. I wonder if they have to sign for those thongs? I wonder who is the GSA shopper for them? Maybe a mystery shopper from the government comes to a lingerie shop near you… Do you think they are driving up the prices by shorting the supply?

I know that time is the answer to these problems of Iraq but I am impatient for a solution to this ongoing GOP scam. The litany of problems with Iraq are long and include POW torture and abuse, a huge oil scam, and even a failure to provide decent drinking water to a desert people whom they have responsibility for the health and welfare of. What is even more amazing is that the GOP voters support all of this poor behavior. How sad is that? The moral majority should be morally outraged.

It’s not all about Bush either. This is a maddening period while the DNC takes its sweet time picking a replacement for Terry McAuliff as they travel from high priced hotel to ultra swank sunshine resorts on my donation money. The cast of candidates is far from inspiring. It was nice of Kerry to leave them a few bucks. Yet if the replacement is as bad as I suspect that he will be then we can always fire him, something that we can’t do with President Bush. At least in the DNC performance counts for something.

In the meantime it’s amusing to watch Jesse Helms do his “I hate Bill Clinton act” over the possibility that Clinton will become the next Secretary General of the UN. Of course all of these antics are keeping the writers for Jay Leno well supplied with one-liners. Wouldn’t it be interesting if Bill ended up running the UN while Hillary ran the White House?

Coming up tonight is the Bush State of Union Address. If it’s like his previous ones then he’ll put his foot in his mouth, split his Party, anger the rest of the Nation, and then tell us all that we just don’t understand. Really?

I can always shift my attention to the “Minnesota Governor Follies.” Here we have a GOP Governor with a ‘No New Taxes Pledge’ who provides no workable solutions to our $1.7 billion structural deficit. His fix is to let somebody else solve the problems as long as they don’t raise State taxes. On Education he proposes that the Legislature pass a law allowing communities to just raise levies on schools any time that they want to and without any voter referendum; a virtual taxation without representation fix and one sure to not to be enacted. He just doesn’t know how to fix the school funding problem without raising taxes. The Governor has proposed $100 Million for sex offender incarceration with no input on how to fund that program either. What a guy.

When the Governor isn’t busy avoiding his responsibilities for providing solutions to the same problems that he created then he is busy borrowing money to pay for programs that we can’t afford. I am looking at buying some of the state tax free muni bonds. I might as well make interest money while I’m being fleeced. Yet I also know this will be fixed in 2006 when taxpayers have their gag index go into barf mode and just toss Pawlenty out. Interest rates on Minnesota Muni’s will then drop as the bond market realizes that the threat to a balanced budget is gone.

We see that NARAL is beginning to get the message that not all Democrats support abortion and that we are taking a lot of heat as a Party for the support of “Choice.” They are getting alarmed and they should be. They have failed to differentiate between supporting a woman’s choice (rather than having our jails filled with those accused of fetal murder) and gung-ho support for abortion which many Democrats do not condone and would like to see become increasingly rare. Both “Planned Parenthood” and “NARAL,” need to take lunch together and then decide how they will retain Democrats in the coming years.

So, time is the answer to these problems. It always is. Rome wasn’t built in a day…”yada yada, yada…” Right. I know that.

I guess time is more precious when you get over 60. You’d like to see some success in your lifetime on the urgent issues.

But just calm down.