Old Arguments Odd Package

Tonight I witnessed confused desperation.

The craziest part about it: given the last two presidential elections, I secretly harbor a little voice inside my head that tells me that it might actually work.

So I take that little voice inside my head, I rip it out my brain through my ear, place it on the table in front of me and proceed to make every effort possible to rip it apart limb by limb.

All in all, it's a pretty violent process.

No one ever said progress was easy.


You can’t justify more of the same tired dogma that has plagued this country for the last seven and half years simply by taking the exact same ethos that pushed us here and stamping it “change”.

You can’t call a statesmen “bold” after he has voted the exact same way as George W. Bush over 90% of the time during the last seven and a half years.

You can’t make the Grand Old Party new simply by calling its new leader a “Maverick”.

“I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them.”
True: Obama has promised to raise taxes. BUT - also true: under the Obama plan taxes will only be raised on the top five percent of richest Americans. He actually is promising a tax break to the great majority of Americans. Regardless… to flaunt continued tax cut for the wealthiest Americans as the glowing issue of light in a time of economic darkness has no historical base and is extremely irresponsible. Ask Herbert Hoover about it.

“I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them.”
How? Why?

“I will cut government spending. He will increase it.”
Yeah that government spending is a terrible way to create jobs in the face of economic crisis. The New Deal sucked. Soldiers who want medical coverage and college education are sissies. And while were at it, let’s cut the salaries of firefighters, teachers, policemen, postal workers and the like, because, damnit, the best way to kick start the economy is by me buying a new boat.

“Workers that lost a job that won't come back, must find a new one that won't go away.”
Is Enron hiring?

“I have the record and the scars to prove it. Barack Obama does not.”
With this gratuitous attempt at exerting executive superiority by extolling his own military experience, John McCain brought the conservative crowd to a frenzy. One question: If military service was such a determining factor to all of those people who gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota tonight, in 2004, why didn’t these same people support John Kerry over George W. Bush. Are decorated soldiers only credible if they are Republicans? You know what someone with more savvy video editing skills that me should do? They should take the now infamous “Swift Boat Veteran” hit piece that aired four years ago this week and edit it ever so slightly. Change all the images of John Kerry to John McCain. Change all the audio parts that say John Kerry to say John McCain. Keep everything else exactly the same. Do this and force these people to smell the horror of their own stink.

“Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained, but what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice. Let's remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work. When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parent -- when it fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have the choice, and their children will have that opportunity. Sen. Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucrats. I want schools to answer to parents and students.”
I got acclimated to this pattern of language at a young age watching my mom, a high school English teacher, fight battle after battle to defeat vouchers. Here’s how it works: a person with no idea how public school actually work on a day to day basis uses warm language such as “parent choice” and “removing barriers”. Three realities (1) Vouchers would cost taxpayers more – astronomically more – to provide education to every student (2) schools would become private and there would be no standard of uniformity to measure or assess what students should and should not learn. A parent could take the money the state awards to their student and send their student to a school that preaches that the moon is made out of cheese (3) It is entirely politically motivated. The teacher’s unions make up one of the most powerful and galvanized political forces in the country. They often vote for Democrats because Republicans cut the money that goes to education. Therefore, by eliminating Public Education as we know it, Republicans would effectively destroy their most organized opposition. I guess they figure it's easier to do all that than fund schools adequately.

http://www.perkel.com/politics/issues/voucher.htm
http://candst.tripod.com/nkanode.htm
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6342

(I would like to pretend I did a lot of research getting these links, but I just took some of the top ones off Google that read well)

“I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties -- and Sen. Obama -- passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust when we valued our power over our principles.”
As the new leader of the Republican Party, John McCain vaguely claims responsibility for all the Republican atrocities and scandals over the last seven and a half years (an abbreviated list: the blown surplus, the skyrocketing deficit, the housing crisis, the crushed economy, Alberto Gonzales’s amnesia, Karl Rove fleeing the country, The Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act, waterboarding is in the dictionary and Scooter Libby is out of in prison, Hurricane Katrina, blacking out of Environmental Impact Reports, Connecting Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussien oh and by the way where exactly is Osama Bin Laden and those Weapons of Mass Destruction and does anybody still remember Enron?) BUT in same breath he attempts to connect Barack Obama to corruption created, instigated and covered up by the Republican Party… How does that work?

I’m not done yet with this one… McCain criticizes Barack Obama for helping oil companies BUT in the same speech he claims that the solution America’s energy crisis is to “drill now.” But above all else, the greatest hypocrisy in this particular line: His running mate Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is from Alaska. SHE IS MADE OF OIL. And I watched her stand up and cheer after McCain delivered this non-dig.

“My friends, if you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an -- an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier, because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself”
All this from the same stage, the same podium, the same party that - less than twenty four hours prior – had the audacity to mock civil servants. Did anyone else see this on Wednesday? Both Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani uttered scripted digs about Obama’s job as an urban organizer. But while doing so both Republicans made a major mistake: they both flatly laughed when speaking about civil service – as if the concept was joke. To me these two moments of conservative candor were the defining moments of the RNC when the Republican character was revealed in its most detached and tragically elitist form.

"We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again to the values Americans admire.
The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics."
Announcement: I just shattered a small wooden chair from my kitchen into a thousand little pieces against my garage wall (http://delegatedan.blogspot.com/2008/09/lincoln.html). And with it, hopefully, that little pathetic voice of fear and foreboding that continues to find residence inside my head.


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