A bit of common sense

Today’s GOP, aka the Grand Old Party, has the lowest approval rating since the Clinton impeachment trials. According to a CNN poll, voters have a 36 percent approval rating of the GOP. These ratings are happening at the same time  President Obama is supposedly driving America straight into the ground. General observation here: if that were really the case, if Obama was really tanking, wouldn’t the GOP be flourishing with supporters? No, instead there are more ridiculous examples of Republican leaders gone stupid than I can keep track of. But here are a few to entertain/infuriate. 
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) suggests terrorizing your representative this week. Proclaimed leader of the protest, Bachmann invited anyone and everyone to come down to the National Mall on Thursday and protest the health care bill the House plans to vote on Friday. She’s also calling for all protestors to march into their representatives’ offices and make their voices heard. I hope she’s inundated with twice as many protestors showing up at her doors. Now she’s dubbed the event the “Super Bowl of Freedom” via Fox News, trying to plug the event as the tea-party protestor event of the year. 
Sarah Palin is a joke of a politician (well, she’s not much of a politician now, seeing as how she quit being governor) and a bit of a rogue with the GOP. Before Tuesday’s elections she covertly supported a fellow Republican, Bob McDonnell, who was running for governor in Virginia along with a number of other contention states. McDonnell has been ahead in the polls and has purposely kept his distance from Palin, not wanting to be associated with her during his campaign. Despite his obvious reluctance, Palin went on to campaign for him anyway with automated house calls and Facebook status updates. It’s an odd kind of imposition to assume these politicians want her help despite them avoiding her, but then she does whatever she wants anyway.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is at it again, inserting foot into mouth. Wilson accused Obama of being “solely responsible” for the endangerment of American lives over the lack of H1N1 vaccines available on the market. While we already know it’s like Wilson to say rash, overreaching statements (after all, he is the “You lie!” guy), the hypocritical element lurking behind his most recent accusation is a fresh concept. Wilson might say it is solely Obama’s responsibility, but in June he was one of the 95 percent of Republicans who voted against a bill that included supplemental funds to the H1N1 vaccine.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) stood up on Monday declaring that health care reform is worse than terrorism. To be exact, health care reform is a greater threat than “any terrorist right now in the country.” Her entire address to Congress was about how fearful she was, how health care reform was destroying ‘her America.’ It’s a tired argument, made more stupid by the “terrorism” spin. Let’s check her vocabulary and just how stereotyped it is. Did she say values? Check. Freedom? Check. Fear? Check. Terrorism? Check.  We’re good.
Liz Cheney … ugh, what a headache. I guess you can say like father, like daughter. When President Obama went to Dover AFB to pay respects to the dead soldiers brought home from Afghanistan, what did she have to say about it? She called it a publicity stunt when Obama allowed cameras to shoot the event, saying Bush had the dignity to not photograph the casualties. But then the parents present sided with Obama for spotlighting the tragedy of war. Guess the question is between whether or not you think Bush was trying to hide American soldiers’ deaths, something Obama is not doing. 
Following this news is the more recent Dick Cheney scandal of the 2004 FBI report just released investigating the Valerie Plame case. He answered 72 times that he could not recall, including the question of where Libby learned that the wife of the Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson worked at the CIA. Suspicious to say the least …
A climate change hearing on new legislation in the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee was set up for Tuesday. But Republicans boycotted, refusing to show up until there is a full EPA report on the bill. The thing is, a report has already been completed by the EPA under the House version of the bill. Even the EPA is saying the report already conducted is sufficient information on the bill. Silly Republicans really just want to delay the bill another five weeks, which is the minimum amount of time it would take to have the EPA redo their study. Ultimately it serves no purpose to boycott. If they continue, the Democratic majority of the committee will continue without them and pass the legislation onto the Senate floor.
And keep in mind these are all more recent reasons. We haven’t even touched upon the hypocrisy of closeted gay representatives like Larry Craig, who vote against any advancement of gay rights while soliciting sex in men’s bathrooms. Or the corporate agenda pushing politicians left over from the Reagan era. The GOP is wounded and has been for a long time, and if it can’t find its moderate side it could disappear. Like I said, not so grand.