A Brother Turns Away from the GOP. Has He Seen the Light? Maybe!

Will wonders never cease? It appears, according to a recent blog post, my most conservative, most 'redneck' (he was actually born in Milwaukee - but he proclaims redneck devotion), most diehard GOOpr bro has now turned away from the 'pukes party and declared his independence. Extracts follow from his recent blog post: "No longer Republican- Giving up my 'Republicanship'!"

"Although I have been a registered Republican since 1980, that will soon change when I register as an INDEPENDENT! I will also no longer support ANY political party, but will support the individual.

I have also been doing research on the latest "fiscal cliff" deal, and must say, that I am pissed more at the Republicans than the Dems as far as who wanted to cut what. As a Vietnam era veteran who has served this country honorably in both the U.S. Marine Corps (1971-1973) and in the U.S. Army (1975-1976), and have been fighting the VA for over two years for service-connected disabilities (PLURAL), I am just now getting positive action in the form of my SC disabilities being approved. I first and foremost give ALL THE GLORY TO GOD! Without HIS help - nothing is possible!


I also have two other brothers who served honorably in the Navy and Air Force during Vietnam and who also know what its like to fight the VA for earned benefits! Hence, (and I also believe I speak for my siblings, as well as millons of other veterans), when I say that I am adamantly opposed to any "cuts" whatsoever - in any way, matter, shape, or form - when it comes to veterans benefits!


I also must give Obummer credit for stating in the recent "fiscal cliff" negotiations what he told members of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), that veterans benefits will "NOT be affected by defense cuts: 'your veterans benefits are exempt from sequestration. they are EXEMPT!'" That seems to be one promise that I must concede that he kept, and I have to "thank" him for that.

Contrast that to dumbass Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) proposal in January of 2011, when she unveiled a plan to cut $400 billion in federal spending that includes freezing the Veterans Affairs Department’s health care spending and cuts veterans’ disability benefits.


The Air Force Times reports her plan would slice $4.5 billion from the VA, including reducing 150,000 veterans’ disability compensation and the amount they receive in Social Security Disability Income.

Disabled American Veterans Washington Headquarters Executive Director David Gorman said Bachmann’s plan is “[s]uch an ill-advised proposal [it] is nothing short of heartless.” “It is unconscionable that while our nation is at war someone would even think of forcing our wounded warriors to sacrifice even more than they already have,” Gorman said. “Their injuries and disabilities were the result of their service to the nation, and our nation must not shirk its responsibilities toward them. How do you tell a veteran who has lost a limb that he or she has not sacrificed enough? Yet Rep. Bachmann wants to do just that.”

Of course, after she was getting blasted by just about every vets group and organization you can think of, Bachmann recanted on cutting VA benefits. But one has to wonder why in the world would she have even thought of balancing the budget on the backs of disabled vets. There is plenty of government waste and most of it starts in congress. Am I wrong here?

I find it mind-boggling that Republicans were actually taken by surprise by the fact that Obama won’t go along with cutting benefits for disabled veterans. Let that sink in for a minute. Republicans fully expected this president, the Democratic Party, and the American people to support a benefits cut for disabled veterans?!

I also agree that the chained CPI is bad policy, what Republicans are proposing is nothing less than an unpatriotic attack on the benefits that have been earned by disabled veterans. The fact that Republicans would even propose such a cut speaks volumes about how much they really value the sacrifice made by those who served their country. Also, as was reported by Disabled Veterans.org:

"Republican Paul Ryan and the House of Representatives are looking to end VA healthcare benefits for disabled veterans – that’s for over 1.3 million veterans who are Priority 7 & 8. These veterans are the least disabled veterans using the system, usually with disability ratings of 0 percent or no service-connected disability."

According to the Congressional Budget Office “Option 35,” the cuts would leave 130,000 veterans with no healthcare alternative. This means veterans with conditions not recognized by the VA, like certain diseases from Agent Orange exposure, would have to pay for healthcare out of pocket if they had not other service connected disability."


It continued:  "Don’t believe the headlines. These cuts are just an attempt to split the oyster shell in half to steal the pearl. Once 1.3 million bodies get cut out of the VA system, politicians will have an easier time justifying further cuts to VA programs.  Suddenly, the comprehensive health care you once received will be reduced to occasional physicals and virtual appointments via computer. Count on it."

I am also opposed to any cuts in regard to Social Security, Social Security Disability, Medicare and Medicaid. What we need to do is put a stop to the illegal immigrants and others who abuse and fradulently obtain these benefits! But we need not throw the baby out with the bath water. Many doctors are refusing to accept Medicare/ Medicaid patients here in Florida, as they are not getting properly compensated - and IF they do - its at a loss, and they're lucky to get even a paltry payment from 'Uncle Sam' withing 6-months or longer!

For the past year or so, my primary care physician and cardiologist has had a sign in his office that reads: "NOTICE: THIS OFFICE NO LONGER ACCEPTS MEDICARE OR MEDICAID." As he once told me, "Why should I give a $1800.00 stress test and only get reimbursed $20 from the government?"

As for military cuts, I'm not completely opposed to all of them, either. Frankly, I would shut down all military bases currently located in countries that don't want us there to begin with. We can start in the commie, Socialist, Muslum Satan-led ones. Shut down Gitmo and let Raul Castro have all the terrorists that are there now, and tell 'em, "Adios, we're outta here!" If they try to enter the US , SHOOT 'EM ON THE SPOT!! Problem solved! We can then take half the $$ we save and use it for veterans benefits and the other half to pay down our debt. See...it ain't rocket science, my friends. 

 Now, also in the recent fiscal cliff agreement reached by Obummer and Congress I do agree with:

- making permanent most of the Bush era tax cuts

- keeping the earned income and child care tax credits

- raising taxes on the wealthy (though, I would have preferred it start at those earning $250,000 a year or more).


I also agree with what the Daily Kos reported:


"On the plus side, the agreement abandoned the plan for “chained CPI,” a new measure of inflation that would have reduced future cost-of-living increases for Social Security, veterans' benefits and other critical benefits. There were no additional spending cuts. The family tax credit programs — including the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit — were protected, and improvements made to those credits were extended for five years. Emergency unemployment insurance benefits were extended for laid-off workers who would have faced a significant immediate threat if we went over the cliff." .

So, I am no longer a Republican, but an INDEPENDENT. I will now support individual(s) as opposed to a political party!"

 

He goes on to object to the payroll tax being increased back to 6.2% - but of course, if he's really a defender of Social Security he ought to see this is a GOOD thing, since it's the payroll tax that supports Social Security. Take that away (and the two year reduction already reduced S.S. coffers by over $170b as many piled into the system via disability claims leading to more payouts than money received in 2010) and you are looking at future budgetary allocations of monies to recipients which can vary year to year. Imagine the REEPO House voting on how much a senior will receive each year, like they just did with the Sandy victims - allowing only $9.7b in aid when they need $60b?

But given his overall positions (even admiting to reading Daily Kos - one of the top liberal blogs) maybe, just maybe, there is hope for the guy yet. Perhaps the next step will be ditching his obnoxious fundamentalism. I mean, Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is the "reconstruction" of a sibling back to relative normality!

Are People Ready to have a Crazy Person As President?

That's a question that must be asked. This is especially in the wake of an assortment of crazed bloggers (mostly right wing fundamentalists) and their Tea Bagger - Tea Party crazy hangers-on. Leading the charge for these numbskulls, is the "Queen of the Tea Party", Michele Bachmann. Appropriately, she was featured on a recent Newsweek cover as the "Queen of Rage" which also fits her. Now, does she go off on rants every other day, with her eyes popping from her head? Nope! But a person in a rage doesn't have to evince any outward signs of such, and so one must give her kudos for the ability to put on the happy face to disguise it.

Like Rick Perry, and most of the other Repuke numbskulls, a Bachmann presidency would finish off what's left of this country. An election of either her, or Perry or any of the other reeper nimrods (except maybe Mitt Romney) would also convey to the world the level of intelligence of the American voter, which is to say, below room temperature and more at Densan level than Mensan!

Already most Europeans consider us hapless dimwits for the Bush Residency, two terms of it- imagine what they'd do with a Bachmann or Perry (or worse, Palin) residency? We'd forever be the laughing stock of the planet and now have monumental stupidity to go along with our monumental decline as a nation.

I don't know about most people, but I expect any President I put into office to at least possess an education and intelligence to rival my own. I don't want a damned dummy in the Oval Office, nor any person I can "drink a beer" with. If I want to have a beer, I will have it with a good friend or my Packer- fan cousin, Joe, not with a President. And I'd regard any President that wants to have a beer with me as a dolt and unworthy of the office.

In terms of dummyhood, Bachmann takes the cake, except maybe for Sarah Palin who some time ago opined in front of a mouth agape audience in Boston, that Paul Revere's ride was to warn the British!. Fortunately, we haven't heard a lot from that dummy since, but Bachmann has more than made up for the mental lapses!

Recall one interview when Bachmann was asked a question on the Revolutionary war she made reference to Lexington and Concord being in New Hampshire! (As opposed to Massachusetts.) This is so basic that I'd go so far as to make it an automatic disqualifier (as far as my votes goes) for anyone who misses it. And btw, this has nothing to do at all with being "elite" or anything of the sort, but of demonstrating a BASIC acquaintance with the history of one's own country! Too many today are too willing to call liberals who demand educated Presidents as "elitists", which beggars the question of who they'd really want? Alfred E. Neumann?

Then there was the other gaffe, in which Michele Bachmann promised to act "in the spirit of Waterloo, and Iowa’s, John Wayne". Obviously, firmly convinced that John Wayne, aka Marion Robert Morrison, was born there, when he actually hailed from Winterset, IA nearly a 3-hour drive away. But hey! Whatsa big deal! Lexington and Concord are only a few hours drive from New Hampshire!

In fact, the "John Wayne" she was confusing the actor with happened to be John Wayne Gacy - the Chicago serial killer who mass-murdered boys (after raping them) while wearing a clown suit- who did come from Waterloo, IA, Michele's home town.

Hey, maybe it was a "Freudian slip"! They happen!

Another monumental Bachmann gaffe occurred 6 weeks or so ago, when she said in a prepared text that "the Founding Fathers ended slavery", obviously having absolutely no idea that the Founding Fathers deliberately did no such thing. (Indeed, most of them, including Washington and Jefferson, owned a number of slaves.)

This again is an immediate disqualifier for any high office, far far more than being an atheist. Anyone who doesn't know that Lincoln declared the Emancipation Proclamation has no business getting without 20 miles of the Lincoln Memorial, far less the White House!

Now some shameless right wingers on their blogs have said this isn't so and that Bachmann actually said was that John Quincy Adams - worked tirelessly to end slavery. This is true, but then John Quincy, the son of John Adams, was NOT a "Founder" - so she's still wrong! It was John Adams who was the Founder! If we gloss over these facts, what next will be allowed? Anything? A line must be drawn.

As for Bachmann's rage, it is integrated with the whole array of rage of the Tea Party - a niche of nitwits determined to sink this nation under their tsunami of gross ignorance, which Bachmann panders to. This may also be why none of Bachmann's gaffes makes any difference to them. They are, after all, the nitwits who insist the "Boston Tea Party" was against taxation, as opposed to taxation without representation! That's a significant difference!

If the Tea Baggers had one single clue in their hard heads, they'd be able to analogize the East India Company - against whom the Boston Tea Party was conducted- with the mega-billionaries like the Koch brothers who actually back their cause. It's billionaires like the Kochs who are funding the alleged "patriot" revolt of the Teepees, but they're too blind to see it. It would be analogous to the East India Company surreptitiously funding the Boston Tea Party - all the while off loading their main consignment of ten thouand pounds of tea someplace else!

Lastly, some Leftist feminists have come out against the unflattering Bachmann photo on Newsweek, as "sexist" but this is baloney. There were already many dozens of equally unflattering images of her out there, and they never raised a stink. (Which may be why MS. magazine editor Gloria Steinem is not committing one way or the other).

Also, when Howard Dean's "scream" was portrayed on magazine covers some 7 years ago I never heard of any "sexism" complaints! So why now, against this dope Bachmann.

People need to understand that elections have consequences, and apart from Bachmann's screwed up religiosity (based on the "submission" belief, see the lead article at salon.com) there is no place for her or any of the other Repup crazies in the White House given the serious problems we face.

We have two choices next year: make this a better country by slowly digging out from our current economic morass, or plunge it deep into darkness and ignorance as author Morris Berman predicts in his prophetic book, Dark Ages America. Therein he forecasts the light of reason ultimately being extinguished by frenzied, hyper religious fascists and their corporate overseers.

Electing a Perry, Bachmann, Palin, Cain, Paul or Gingrich...would take us one giant step closer to that dark reality!