I’m driving to school this morning wondering what the @#** is wrong with this country? If you’ve been around here before you know that I’m a public school teacher in my day job. Today was not the first day of school for my school, but for many schools it was – or they had started already. And, there’s this big “todo” about the fact the President of the United States is going to give a talk to students encouraging them to stay in school, to do their homework, to set goals for themselves, to work hard, and to do things for others – MAYBE EVEN A SERVICE PROJECT! That should be getting rave reviews from any decent, thoughtful American.This is the crux of what I’ve been trying to teach to kids for almost 20 years – in fact, when I heard the speech I was surprised and impressed with what the President said and how he said it. Who can argue against what he said today? Well, AS USUAL, I can give you the answer in a word! REPUBLICANS!

These people are so far over the “edge” that it’s hard to find words to describe them. I read where the governor of Minnesota was more or less encouraging parents to keep their children home from school so they wouldn’t have to listen to the speech. That was the “cry” of one ridiculous Republican after another. One pundit claimed that Obama was going to “indoctrinate” the students into socialism! ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I didn’t check in with Rush Limbaugh after I heard all this other stuff because I knew I couldn’t stomach whatever he would come up with. When are the people of this nation going to understand that these Republicans stand for NOTHING! They are all about destruction when they’re not in power and they’re about destruction when they’re in power. Right now they are trying to destroy anything and everything that has any connection to Barrack Obama they can with the ultimate goal of destroying the Presidency of President Obama itself. When they’re in power their goal is to destroy the very government that we all rely on, especially in times like these.

And, speaking of the “times like these.” This HORRIBLE “GREAT RECESSION” is the result of “Republican Rule.” The Bush administration was openly trying to destroy the very institutions they took an oath to protect. It’s a miracle that we even have an education department left after almost 30 years of this aforementioned Republican rule. Ronald Reagan set his sights on destroying the Education Department in the early eighties, but thank God, there’s even enough Republicans out there who want their kids to get a good education that he didn’t succeed. Of course, being a teacher, I’ve seen how the “no child left behind” legislation has succeeded in undermining the very fabric of the educational system it was supposedly going to protect. In fact, I believe it’s just another attempt at destroying public education, they’re simply coming at it from a different angle. Just like everything else the Republicans come up with, when they put a title on something – look in the complete opposite direction to “get” what they’re really after.

The result of “no child left behind” is more and more children left behind. In my state, they’re not really children when they get left behind, they just drop out of high school because there’s nothing more offered than a bunch of standardized tests seemingly aimed at preparing EVERY student for COLLEGE! If you’re reading this, just take a quick deep breath – DO YOU REALLY THINK EVERY STUDENT SHOULD GO TO COLLEGE? Maybe that’s why they’ve been shipping our manufacturing jobs over seas for the past 14 or 15 years. To make everyone think they HAVE to go to college! Of course, they never had any intention of funding “no child left behind” and even if they did, could any reasonable person actually expect students in special education to compete at the same level as students without learning disabilities? Think of what that does to the student with the learning disability when he/she is asked to take a test that she/he has no chance to pass. Think of what that does to the student who isn’t enamored with college prep courses, but might possibly be good at fixing cars or other machinery, or might be good at building things, or welding, or the plethora of other jobs we could be preparing students for if they ALL weren’t expected to go to college! (PS – now they’re shipping college jobs OVERSEAS!) The real result of “no child left behind” is large numbers of students dropping out of school when they accept the reality that they’re never going to pass these tests. And, believe me – SOME OF THESE STUDENTS ARE VERY BRIGHT IN THEIR OWN AREA! They’re being “left behind” in droves!

I use “no child left behind” as an example because the President’s speech was to school age children about the importance of “staying in school.” But, in just about every other area you can see the result of Republicans trying to destroy this government. Take the DEFICIT that so many of them are now complaining about. I didn’t hear them complain when Ronald Reagan initiated the “rob the government blind” approach to governing. And, for those of you who don’t get this philosophy – check out the statistics of where the money’s gone since 1980 in this country! George HW Bush had even more obscene deficits than Reagan, and his son – George W Bush – well, he topped them all! He not only left Obama with a deficit of almost 2 trillion dollars (remember, Obama isn’t hiding the cost of Bush’s two wars), but he left a government that was in near ruins FROM TOP TO BOTTOM. In my mind, the main job of the President besides keeping us safe is managing the economy and the Republicans consistently manage it “into the toilet.”

Bill Clinton held office for the only 8 years during the previous 28 prior to Obama when a Democrat was in the White House and the money started to funnel back to the middle class (something Republicans hate, for some reason, because most of them are in the middle class). The budget was not only brought into balance, Clinton left office with a surplus of 250 billion per year (the Republicans really hated that and it only took a few months before they gave virtually all of that surplus to the “rich” of this country once GW Bush took office – people earning in the top 1% of all earners). Do you remember all the “investigations of Clinton that went no where?”

Yes, Clinton did do what, to me, was the unthinkable and “have sex with that woman.” But, the reality is NO ONE DIED BECAUSE OF HIS SIN! Of course, we’re all “sinners” so who’s to say one is worse than another, but personally, I’m still having trouble with the lying us into war (4000+ Americans and approx. a million Iraqi’s DEAD not to mention the MILLIONS of lives destroyed in other ways), wiretapping MILLIONS of his own citizens illegally, outing a covert CIA agent (treason), torture (one guy was waterboarded 183 times in one month, and that wasn’t enough so they put him in a small enclosed BOX full of bugs and left him there for an extended period of time), deregulating one business or government agency after another until the whole MESS was about to COLLAPSE – AND THEN BUSH/CHENEY LEFT TOWN! And, now you’ve got these Republicans standing in the way of every piece of legislation that is designed to “fix” the abuses of the Bush administration and, worse yet, BLAMING THOSE ABUSES ON OBAMA! The truth is, when you listen to them, THEY DON’T THINK THEY WERE ABUSES when they were in power! They want to do this again! I guarantee you that if the Republicans, by some miracle, get control of Congress and the White House again, they will IMMEDIATELY try to overturn EVERYTHING OBAMA HAS ACCOMPLISHED!

There’s something else – THEY WON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT BIPARTISANSHIP! I could go on with how ridiculous these thugs are. Or, I could write a complete piece about how disturbing it is that the media even gives these nut jobs a platform. Since when did the very worst among us deserve a majority of the time on the airwaves? Well, that’s the other thing here, the so-called LIBERAL MEDIA is totally controlled by CONSERVATIVES! They are pulling off probably the greatest “SNOW JOB” in the history of this country. I’m telling you, if it wasn’t for the internet THEY WOULD GET AWAY WITH IT! Somehow, people are finding millions of frustrated American’s sites like this one and the word is spreading that WE HAVE A HUGE PROBLEM on our hands!

We elected Barack Obama to take care of this problem and gave him a super majority in the Congress. So far, it’s not at all that clear whether or not we elected the right person. Tomorrow (today for many of you, yesterday for some – but I’m talking about Obama’s speech to both houses of Congress on health care) Obama has the opportunity to solidify his “base.” He also has the “peril” of losing his base if he caves to the idea of Bipartisanship. I can tell you with confidence that if President Obama fails to draw “a line in the sand” over the “public option,” whatever that means, he will lose a significant number of his base – NO MATTER WHAT CONGRESS DOES. He needs to realize by the time he takes the podium that it’s “We the People” who are the reason he’s in office and it’s us who will keep him there. There’s enough of us who are sick and tired of the bipartisan approach to dealing with these thugs, that we need to see some BACKBONE tomorrow (tonight, last night, you get the picture) night!

I’ve written here many times about the areas where Obama’s not “coming through.” Briefly, he’s in essence letting Bush/Cheney et al OFF THE HOOK for clear criminal activity – investigations that would “put the shoe on the other foot” as far as the public debate would go if it was enacted – this is faulty thinking on several fronts that I won’t go into again here tonight, his decisions regarding both Iraq and Afganistan have a distinct “General Patreaus” taint on them – certainly not what was promised or what his “base” expected when he assumed office (remember, Patreaus, Odierno, and the other Generals – whom I have great respect for along with their troops – received their “baptism” in Viet Nam, and they will do whatever they have to do to prevent us from “pulling out” and “losing” another un-winnable war), and probably the most frustrating thing about the President is this constant pandering to Republicans. He doesn’t seem to understand that with the most fervent of them – the ones in “control” of the party, THIS IS WAR! In this “WAR” with Republicans, it is far more important that it be won than what’s going on in Iraq and Afganistan. The future of this country – well, the immediate future – IS AT STAKE! And, I honestly don’t understand if President Obama “gets” that. He almost seems to be TOO WILLING to be a one term President. It’s not time for the “even keel” approach to governing here, it’s time to “roll up the sleeves” and kick @#**! As I listened to the comments by one Republican after another about Obama’s speech to little school children I wondered, “How can these people be so stupid?” But then, UPON FURTHER REFLECTION, I started to wonder about the stakes in this health care “fight.” The Democrats don’t look so smart themselves, right now, and they have no excuse for failing to pass a bill that has a “Medicare for all” – public option – and a plan to cover EVERYONE – to @#** with the insurance companies if they can’t compete. But, thinking back to the state of mind of all these Republicans making stupid comments about Obama’s speech to kids – HOW STUPID WILL THE DEMOCRATS BE IF THEY ALLOW THE REPUBLICANS BACK INTO POWER by failing to pass a bill that is acceptable to the people? 72% of the American public wants a “Medicare like public option.” And, trust me, the only way to screw this up is to openly submit to the health care lobby and fail to have the courage to do WHAT’S RIGHT in this health care debate!