If you’ve read any of my recent posts you’ll know that I’m not too happy with President Obama, despite the fact I sent him money periodically during the 2008 election campaign. This is making me very uneasy, because I don’t like adding to the criticism – which includes an unending supply of ridiculous criticism from the Republicans who so much are disgusting to me. And, it’s not that I don’t think a vibrant Republican party is important, it’s just that until they totally repudiate the “platform” they’ve been operating under for the past 30 years, I am hoping they go the way of the dinosaurs. However, we need a strong party to stand in opposition to the Democrats and I’d be OK with it being called the Republican party if people like Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin weren’t the national face of it. There used to be Republicans, at least this is how I remember it, who stood for (REALLY) family values, balanced budgets, law and order, and a peaceful foreign policy (ie Dwight D Eisenhower to name one). Richard Nixon “muddied” the waters with his organized crime attitude, and it hasn’t changed much since. The part that really bugs me about the Republican party is how they started a calculated propaganda campaign during the Reagan years and haven’t let up since.

This has created a (thank God) shrinking base who listen to the likes of Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others who I can’t name because I got sick of listening to Limbaugh long, long ago and once I realized they were part of the Republican caucus and operating on the priciple that if they say the lie over and over enough with enough different mouths saying it, a sufficient number of people will believe what they are saying is true and they will then develop what they envisioned as the “Permanent Republican majority.” And they would have pulled it off had they come up with someone other than George W Bush as their “color bearer” in 2000. I’m sure, at this point, that they feel they picked the wrong Bush and I’m just as sure that they’ve got Jeb Bush sitting in the “wings” ready to go as soon as the collective memory of the American people has forgotten GW. Personally, I hope that day never comes, but I believe it is the most likely scenario of a Republican return to the White House – and then a continuation of their original plan. I recently had lunch with a friend (probably former friend at this point) who has been listening to Limbaugh for years. This guy’s a professed Christian, yet he has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the Limbaugh view of things. I can no longer even stand to talk to him, because our conversations always stray onto politics, and the garbage they’re spewing just makes me sick to my stomach.

I started writing on this blog because I was so frustrated with things the Bush administration was doing – and time and time again, much to my dismay, being justified by Limbaugh, Hannity, and the paid mouthpieces of the Republican party – and according to their plan further justified by people like my friend who believe they are informed by listening to this crap. I guess what bothers me almost as much is that when you have people who are on the public airwaves spewing propaganda that comes right out of the caucus of a political party, you are endangering the republic itself. And the people listening to it don’t get it and you can’t even talk to them. I have another friend who I teach with who watches Fox “News” and listens to Limbaugh, this guy is a teacher for God’s sake, and he is so sucked in that he can’t see the problem with what they’re doing. When I was much younger, it was my impression that you couldn’t put partisan rhetoric on the public airwaves if it was affiliated with a political candidate or party in any way. What these guys will say is that “There’s ‘liberal’ pundits on the airwaves as well, which is true – but, as far as I know, none of the ones I listen to are participating in the Democratic caucuses. If they are, they are just as wrong as Limbaugh and the other “right wing talkers.”

The progressive “talkers” I’ve listened to are up front about their bias, they don’t claim to be “news” reporters, and they don’t follow the “company line” of the Democratic party. It should be a bit disconcerting to every American when Republican politicians are cowering down to Limbaugh when they let something slip about how vile he is, and then when he attacks them on the air, you see them running to his show to apologize like a dog running with its tail between its legs. How did the Republican party, the party of Eisenhower, Dirksen, Goldwater, Hatfield, and Gerald Ford – among others – get to the point that they are answering to a radio talk show host who has been openly racist, who illegally used drugs, who has had numerous failed marriages (between him, Gingrich, and Guiliani they’re approaching double figures)? And I’m not trying to stand in judgement of any of these men as individuals (although I’m sure it sounds that way) – but think of the criticism these guys have put out about Bill Clinton and others about their personal “habits.” I just feel the Republican party is hurting if these are their leaders – and I know that they are going to criticize President Obama for EVERYTHING he does NO MATTER WHAT! They are trying to undermine his presidency because if he succeeds, they are going to be the minority party, AT BEST (I still think there is a chance, with the irrational behavior they are putting forth, for another party to emerge) for the next generation, and possibly longer. The Republican party needs A COMPLETE SLATE OF NEW LEADERSHIP and they need to repudiate the actions of the Bush “regime,” and people like Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others. These people have made a fortune as the Republican “water carriers” for the past 25 years or so, and the result is a nation that is near bankruptcy, mired in two unwinnable occupations, and despised by almost the entire rest of the world. And these guys could care less, because they believe that our nuclear arsenal is enough to keep us in power indefinitely, ughhhh!

Ok, why am I saying all this? Well, despite the fact that these Republicans are, and are going to be, in President Obama’s face – I believe we still have an obligation to avoid doing the same thing they did in reverse. Republicans allowed President Bush to do whatever Dick Cheney wanted, carte blanche, during the six years they held the majority in both houses of Congress – while he cut taxes during wartime (a first in American history), initiated war with a country which had not attacked us (another first in American history), threw away billions of taxpayer dollars on no-bid contracts in Iraq to companies that Cheney and Rumsfeld were CEO’s of prior to their terms in the Bush administration, outed a covert CIA agent, attempted to destroy one federal bureau after another, and – among other things – warrantlessly wiretapped US citizens and practiced heinous torture techniques in the NAME OF ALL OF US! I just can’t see taking the same approach with President Obama – and I don’t think others are either. I’ve already seen one “Special Comment” from Keith Olberman aimed directly at President Obama, and I’ve heard other Democrats criticizing him – in fact, some of President Obama’s loftiest aims could get derailed by Democrats in Congress. However, President Obama is so much of an improvement over GW Bush that I just feel awkward criticizing him and, in one post, suggesting that he is showing weakness in dealing with Republicans (I even used the word cowardice).

The reality is that my frustration was with the political process in this nation – one that is top-heavy in lobbyists for large corporations and politicians who have taken what amounts, in my mind, to bribes from one corporation after another – disguised as campaign “donations.” (and, believe me, I fully understand that this “bribery” is one thing in our system that is bi-partisan) My disagreement with my friend was spurred when he essentially called me a socialist (which really wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t framed in the Limbaugh rhetoric) because I believe that corporate heads taking salaries in the range of $50 million/year is absurd – and worse than that, paying multi-million dollar bonuses to bankers who have caused Billions in losses which not only affect the solvency of their banks, but threatens the financial health of our nation is just plain wrong in my view (and these guys get really worked up when they use the word “liberal” to criticize someone like me – again, buying into the Limbaugh et al hate message). I just don’t think these people (the CEO’s and other execs) are worth it, and I don’t believe the “trickle down” theory that my friend and millions of other “ditto heads” have bought into has done anything more than literally ruin our economy while putting us, as a nation, into incredible debt. And he’s a “blue collar” guy – yet so gullible as to believe that our economy works best with a very few earning a disproportionate amount of the “pie.”

So, while the Republicans criticize President Obama for shaking hands with Hugo Chavez, for trying to “fix” the economy that was virtually ruined by George W Bush (and boy, in talking to my friend, I can see that these Republicans are really struggling with taking ownership of this economic collapse – I saw the writing on the wall when they were blaming the recession on Obama a couple months before he took office – they always can find someone besides themselves to blame for the disastrous state we find ourselves in – no matter how absurd their claims are – I believe they continue to do this because they know they have a significant number of their “base” who will believe anything they say without seeking corroboration) I will continue to criticize President Obama as long as he continues the Bush policies I expected him to change when I supported him. The continuation of the warrantless wiretapping should be, in my mind, an area where peole like my friend and I could come to agreement. As I stated in a previous post, the Republicans will stop at nothing to support the NRA position that American families should have the right to have an arsenal of assault weapons at their disposal while looking the other way while we give up our right to privacy clearly guaranteed by the fourth amendment to the constitution. It is very frustrating for me to feel that both the Republican party and sufficient numbers of the Democratic party woiuld stand by and watch this guarantee undermined.

And then there is the torture issue. I can tell you that I just won’t be able to support President Obama again if he stands by his decision that torture is legal in the United States. It is beyond my belief that he would say we’re not going to hold those accountable who practiced it (keep in mind that today it was announced that the CIA waterboarded two “enemy combatants” a total of 266 times in the period of a month – for one of them it was like 6 times per day – AND THIS IS OK, BECAUSE “THE CIA IS KEEPING US SAFE!” ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Everyone in the whole wide world knows what we have done – and believe me, it’s not helping to keep us safe. There are a whole bunch of people who REALLY HATE US because of the actions of our CIA (and, of course, the Bush administration which authorized and encouraged this behavior). My son is a member of the US Marines and is likely to be put into harms way during his term of duty. Should he get captured and tortured, can you imagine the international reaction when President Obama demands justice for someone committing a war crime? Despite my sincere hope that Obama succeeds, I just can’t go along with this decision. As far as I’m concerned, the fact that we know what these people did (remember the pictures from Abu Ghraib? Do you really think that was an isolated incident? If you do, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you!), the fact that we know it violated our own laws as well as international laws, and the worst part is that President Obama is a constitutional law scholar – this makes President Obama an accesory as far as I’m concerned. I don’t believe he has the legal right to just say “We’re not going to prosecute these atrocities – we’re just not going to do ithem anymore.” He is a very intelligent man, but that is short sighted thinking to the absurd level. By tackling this problem as he has, what he is really saying is that we DO TORTURE! We’re just not going to do it for the next four or eight years while I’m President. The next President will have the option to do it, because in essence President Obama has set the precedent that keeping the CIA happy is more important than the legal system that has held this nation together for over 200 years. So, as much as I hate to be criticizing President Obama, regarding torture and warrantless wiretapping, he deserves it!