It should be noted that Sarah Palin is no longer young. Her lack of education, intellect, and adequate preparation to hold public office are not now (nor were they ever) forgiven by her greatly self-inflated image of her physical self.
I am horribly disappointed with the results of the 2010 mid-term elections. While I knew there would be a loss of Democrat-held Congressional seats, I did not expect quite this magnitude of defeat. I’m fully aware of the heart-breaking unemployment numbers. I’m personally aware of how difficult it is for someone over 50 years of age to find a job that pays a living wage in today’s labor market. I’m cognizant of the way the chronically unemployed are vanished from the pool of unemployed when their unemployment insurance benefits end.
I know that there are very few people who prefer to exist on unemployment compensation – paying a fraction of what they once made- instead of working and drawing a full paycheck. I understand that people receiving unemployment benefits paid into an insurance plan to secure those benefits, which vary in amount according to their previous job’s rate of compensation. I realize that people receiving unemployment benefits are not leeching off or milking the system; are not intentionally taking money from the pay checks of the still fortunately employed.
I have watched the economy and job market respond to “tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations” under previous Presidential administrations. Despite the promises that new jobs would be created and the unemployed would magically find new jobs waiting for them, it hasn’t happened. While Reagan read his prepared speeches and smiled like the shill for corporate America that he was, jobs vanished in the U.S. They magically appeared offshore. Nothing trickled down, nothing could trickle down when the “greed is good” gang pocketed their tax cuts, closed every factory in sight, and awarded their selves ever-increasing dividends and salaries funded by ever decreasing labor costs.
This was true while Reagan smiled mindlessly, while Poppy Bush used taxpayer money to bail out the deregulated savings and loan industry that gutted the savings of millions. This was true when Bush II let Cheney and the neocons deregulate the financial and mortgage industry, let Halliburton overcharge for its part in privatizing out two wars, and then had to bail out those financial houses that had savaged the world’s economy. Notice, please, the party affiliation of all three administrations.
These events and happenings, these failures of jobs to be created by the private sector, this deepening recession that threatens the world’s economy, are all easily documented and verified. Anyone who watched any television news programming other than Fox News over the last three decades must have seen frequent reference to the pattern:
Rich promise jobs for tax cuts.
GOP cuts taxes for rich, jobs appear – overseas.
Americans lose jobs, homes, and hope. Democrats try to bail out nation and people.
GOP lies about the cause of the economic disaster.
Public fails to see through the lies and returns them to power in Congress once again.
To stir up the voters, the GOP backs the use of hatred, racism, bigotry, xenophobia, homophobia, and every other base emotion and practice they can.
I have a bachelor’s degree in clinical laboratory medicine from a state university. I took one course in political science as an undergraduate. My other classes were, for the most part, highly technical. I am not an economist, nor am I an historian by education. Yet I have no problem looking back at the last three decades and discerning the pattern laid out above.
I’m not overly intelligent but I read newspapers and magazines to keep me somewhat informed about what is happening locally and nationally. I watch television news with the exception of Fox News, and I can identify patterns and propaganda. I can spot racism, xenophobia, homophobia, bigotry, it isn’t hard to do. It only takes a bit of time and requires that one be able to read and to take the trouble to verify the most blatant and dishonest propaganda.
So why did the voting public fall for the same lies again?
I understand that people are frightened of losing their jobs and homes. They are frightened of changes in demographics. They lack the education to do the high tech jobs that still exist. They’re being told, repeatedly, that they are being stripped of “their freedom and rights” by demagogues who deliberately excite hatred and fear, who play evangelical Christianity against the actual Constitutional protection of and from religion. Education and intellect are portrayed as enemies of the people. The trigger words, “socialism, fascism, Marxism,” are shouted by demagogues to people who read at an 8th grade level or below, who never read for pleasure and rarely anything other than the sports section.
It really doesn’t take much effort to see these patterns and to spot the results of the continual demagoguery. Millions of our citizens parrot the GOP talking points but have no idea at all what they are about or how false they are.
I’m sorry to say that I believe a majority of our citizens are too poorly educated and too poorly informed to vote wisely. Once again, they’ve been duped into voting against their own best interests.
The single ray of hope I see this morning centers around the coming 2012 election. They jockeying for candidacy has already begun. The GOP shakers have realized what potential damage to their party they have allowed by not smashing Sarah Palin. They’re going to begin that process now. The worst prepared, least informed voters have fallen prey to Palin’s campaign. They, and she, need to be stopped. Even the GOP realizes she is too poorly qualified to fill any further electoral role. As she is essentially a 16-year-old personality, the elimination process will be ugly, bloody, and hopefully fun to see. The Tea Party mobs are going to have to be folded into the GOP and the holy idiots, such as Palin and her clones will have to be eaten by the party. Michael Gerson has begun the ground work in the article below.
Speaking of teen-aged girls, have her other daughters dropped out of school as well?
“Palin's erratic behavior mars 2010 elections
By Michael Gerson
November 2, 2010; 1:14 PM ET
For many Republicans, the bright, golden haze of Election Day is marred by a thunderhead on the horizon -- the increasingly erratic political interventions of Sarah Palin.
In the past, Palin embodied the populist style of the Tea Party movement while espousing a fairly mainstream Republican ideology. On economic, social and foreign policy, Palin seldom strayed from a simplified, popularized Reaganism. The mama grizzly may have been ferocious, but her talking points came from the Heritage Foundation instead of from darker corners of the right.
But this election season has called that perception into question. Palin's endorsement of Christine O'Donnell in the Delaware Republican Senate primary revealed a preference for a shallow ideological purity above achievement, qualification or electoral success. And on Monday, Palin issued a robocall for Constitution Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo in Colorado, one of the most divisive figures in American politics.
Tancredo has made a career of fanning anti-immigrant resentment and lobbing ideological grenades. The people who voted Barack Obama into office, in his view, "can't even spell the word vote or even speak English." America would be better off with a "civics, literacy test" for voting. The National Council of La Raza is "a Latino KKK without the hoods or the nooses." Miami is a "Third World country." Pope Benedict's embrace of immigrants is all about "recruiting new members," in an attempt at "faith-based marketing." "The guy sitting in the White House," says Tancredo, is a greater threat to the Constitution than al-Qaeda. "If his wife says Kenya is his homeland, why don't we just send him back?"
It would be the worst outcome of this Election Day if the conservative wave were to carry Tancredo into office. The replacement of the supremely decent Colorado Governor Bill Ritter with a nativist who mocks the dignity of the presidency and poisons American political discourse would help discredit the decent aims of the Tea Party movement. But Palin calls Tancredo the "right man for the job." Her endorsement raises the question of whether Palin has any standards for her support other than anti-government rhetoric.
Palin recently took to Fox Business Network to call establishment Republicans "sleazy." "Some within the establishment don't like the fact that I won't back down to the good old boys club," she said. This odd mix of Tea Party Jacobinism and feminist grievance has become Palin's operating style. What many Republicans, establishment and otherwise, don't like is this: The leading figure of the Tea Party movement seems increasingly indifferent to Republican fortunes and increasingly tolerant of disturbing extremism.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/11/palins_erratic_behavior_mars_2.html
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