The republican party is on quite the tirade recently. The machine is trying it's hardest to throw every possible roadblock up to prevent the new democratic majority from appearing successful. No doubt this is what the democrats were busy doing over the past eight years, though the republicans have a certain vigor about themselves that always seems to outshine democratic outrage.
This republicans must be drooling over this stimulus bill like a dog over a t-bone steak. Not only do they have the opportunity to shout that Pres. Obama isn't being bipartisan, but they also have the chance to try to blame the collapse of the economy on his tenure. Though there's something to be said for subtlety, something that is completely lost on our conservative friends. You see, bipartisanship implies two sides sitting down and compromising, and despite the President's pleas for compromise and closed door sessions with republicans, they kept at the "tax cuts or be damned" line. You see, there is no compromising after devastating losses in the house and the senate, only bruised egos.
Then there's the whole "let's vote 'no' as a block" strategy. What a better way to send the message to the American people that you're sour grapes. They couldn't get their ice cream after dinner, so now they kicked the plate on the floor and sulk. I refuse to believe that of the hundreds of republicans in Congress, only three thought "hmm, tax cuts didn't work for the past decade, maybe we should try social outreach and corporate crack down."
But that's right, republicans don't really want the government to get any bigger; but wait, what's that? George Bush drastically increased the size of the government while in office? Dept. of Homeland security? What? That's right, if the government grows out of the fear of terrorist attacks then it's fine, but the government growing to create green public programs and limit our dependence on oil? Forget about it. No, its much better to spend nearly a trillion dollars on banks that are failing anyways and don't seem to be all to interested in giving out new loans. And while we're at it, lets give the top 1% of the country some more tax cuts. Surely their lavish lifestyles will trickle down to everyone else. I mean, someone has to build their private jets, wash their boats, and clean their bathrooms.
Maybe to the Hannity/Limbaugh crowd the republicans are perfectly justified in their actions, but the rest of the country, I hope, would rather give the republicans a "time out" so they can quit their whimpering. Honestly, they want to complain about pork spending? Helping cities build new roads, or buy green cars, isn't pork spending, it's called modernization (a concept lost on our senior members of the senate, that haven't quite mastered email yet). Pork spending is the "wooden arrow" money that found its way into the first bailout. You see, Mr. and Mrs. Republican, pork spending is defined as seemingly incongruent dollars being added to a bill in order to assure its picks up the votes it needs for passage. This is what creates the non sequiturs like wooden arrows in a bank bailout plan. If a bill funds public works to create new construction jobs, then its not pork, its just the bill.
Pork would be adding money to a public works bill to fund wooden arrows. Do you see how that worked? I just added something meaningless onto the bill because someone promised to vote for the bill if I added on their wooden arrow provision. Didn't get it? I wouldn't expect you to, Mr. and Mrs. Republican. You've had a hard day yelling until you're blue in the face. You guys should relax, kick back and grab a drink at the Airport bar, I think Sen. Craig might already be there....
