POLITICS: Republican Incredibility Part 1

I don't understand. The Republicans, who had maintained control in Congress since 1995 (until they recently lost that control to the Democrats), continue on this rhetoric about the Liberals, the Left-Wingers, the Democrats.

Leading to an almost scandalous series of events that lands the United States of America into a dark, dank, dismal hole that will take several years to dig out of, the Republicans can't point fingers, since they controlled Congress, and held power in the White House during most if not all of this time.

Bin Laden is still out there, multiple billions of dollars have been siphoned to fund an unpopular and misguided war, excessive deregulation "free market" policies have led to gross abuse at the hands of Wall Street, over-inflated corporations, and banks.

How can so many decisions go wrong?

Conservative Rush Limbaugh continues his near-extremist rhetoric about how the Liberals are destroying the country, and how President Obama needs to fail. He proposes that tax cuts are the solution to our present economic calamity. He fails to see or acknowledge how the Conservative approach has put us in a hole, and led to a public perception that the conservative Republicans have fucked it up and can't be trusted.

Tax cuts? That's what the Republicans always say.

1. "We're out of toilet paper!" Give a tax cut.
2. "I lost my job." Give a tax cut.
3. "They just spilled another 3,000 gallons of oil in the ocean." Give a tax cut.

Can we be a little more creative, folks?

Tax cuts work in the ideal world, if all the conditions are right. But they rarely are. The idea is: you give people tax cuts, they have more money to spend, and government cuts back on its spending, thus leading to the stimulation of the economy.

In reality, people DID spend the money from Bush's tax cuts, but very little of it would help stimulate the economy...obviously.

• Financial burdens placed on the Middle Class, along with the stagnation of wages and the rise of unemployment, was helped very little by tax cuts.
• The government has consistently increased spending during the Bush Administration, leading to a rampantly increasing national debt. Tax cuts didn't solve this either.

The Republicans have discredited the Obama stimulus package (without offering any inventive alternative), and the President's approach to getting it passed. But what the President did show was that he can take control, and hold firm to what he believes in, and get a bill passed in record time. President Obama took power in a system where bureaucratic tape is stronger than steel--and this terrifies those serving the status quo.

So you hear all this stuff about how scary Obama's "socialist" views and brute force are, and how this doesn't bode well for American prosperity.

People fear change, and Obama did promise that he was going to bring it. So there are those who will fight it, because they don't understand, and their losing the world they know. But change is necessary and inevitable, especially when it's painfully clear that the status quo is broken.

Come back for Part 2 when I rant about the Bernie Madoffs, Wall Street, and the backwards banks and creditors.