Republican Party

Although I have done versions of this before, this was inspired by a Daily Kos Diary:

This is what happened Monday, Aug. 29, 2005...the day Katrina hit, John McCain's 69th birthday...the day America realized that Republicans don't give a shit about Americans.

Hurricane Katrina:

I remember the radar images from the weather channel the night before landfall. I remember distincly watching it and thinking, "My god...that's going to be bad." I also remember thinking that the government had better be ready to get people out and to deal with the situation.

I was right...it was going to be really, really bad. I mean THIS bad:

While Mississippi and Louisiana were getting slammed by Hurricane Katrina and Americans were dying, THIS is what Bush and McCain were doing:

From CurrentTV comes this amazing footage from WITHIN Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans:

This man is running for Congress and he hangs out with Nazis:

From CBS News:

Tony Zirkle, who is seeking the Republican nomination in northern Indiana's 2nd District, stood in front of a painting of Hitler, next to people wearing swastika armbands and with a swastika flag in the background for the speech to the American National Socialist Workers Party in Chicago on Sunday.

The event Zirkle attended was in celebration of Hitler's birthday. These people are real Nazis, losers who still believe in Hitler's ideology more than 60 years after Hitler got his ass kicked.

Of course this is no surprise coming from a Republican who is pro-segregation.

Republicans are not Nazis. But the ties between Republicans and white supremicists and their willingness to accept intolerance is disgusting to me. Also in Indiana, Republican Speaker of the Indiana House Brian Bosma told a group of Jews they didn't matter because only 2% of the population is Jewish. Ann Coulter has attacked Judaism and Islam. Racism is a frequently used and well-documented tactic by the Republican Party in electoral politics. A Republican in Montana has been openly racist towards a Native American politician. Right-wingers in Delaware have even carried out a genuine pogrom against a Jewish and a Muslim family. Prominent Republicans even blame Jewish conspiracies for their problems. Anti-Semitism, racism and intolerance are rampant in the Republican Party these days.

It is now five years since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Five years since Bush gloated that we had won...and yet almost every day brings more casualties. We are STILL mired in Iraq, still have no exit strategy. And Osama bin Laden, who has never set foot in Iraq, remains free and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization is stronger than ever.

Bush has failed.

And John McCain has vowed to continue Bush's Iraq Quagmire for as long as 100 years. Yes...he said he would be fine with continuing this failure for 100 years. Let's look at McCain's views of Bush's failed Iraq Quagmire: (thanks to MoveOn.org)

* John McCain recently said, "No one has supported President Bush on Iraq more than I have."1 He was Bush's strongest ally in the march to war in Iraq. McCain consistently repeated the same misjudgments made by Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and President Bush. More than 4,000 American troops have lost their lives because of these misjudgments.2
* McCain says we could be in Iraq for 100 years, and has consistently opposed any plan to withdraw troops from Iraq.3 He'd rather dump billions more in Iraq than invest it in our economy back home.

UPDATE: Sometimes a story is too good to be true. Even though this story sounds plausible, turns out http://www.snopes.com/politics/satire/kinsley.asp ">it's been debunked on Snopes.com.

While John McCain is eagerly embracing Bush and vowing to continue Bush's failed policies, it may be a good idea to remember what Ronald Reagan thought of the Little Bush:

"A moment I've been dreading. George brought his n'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida; the one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job. Maybe I'll call Kinsley over at The New Republic and see if they'll hire him as a contributing editor or something. That looks like easy work."

From the REAGAN DIARIES------entry dated May 17, 1986.

So this is the guy we had shoved down our throats and who John McCain wants to emulate?

Time for the voters to reject the failed Bush/McCain poli

I have been reporting on how John McCain has an abyssmal record on the Environment, a poor record on Veterans Issues, but gets the full support of the entire Bush family and bigoted, right wing extremist pastors.

Now MoveOn.org has a good round up of what the true John McCain is really like. Anti-civil rights, anti-choice, wanting to continue the Iraq war indefinitely, anti-children, etc. From MoveOn.org:

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't):

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

Blackwater is a mercenary organization with close ties to Republican politicians. They are one of the many incompetent war profiteers that the Bush/McCain Republicans love so much. Right now they are best known for a scandal where their poorly disciplined and improperly led mercenaries opened fire on Iraqi civilians. Blackwater's slaughter of these civilians has been declared unjustified and has led to an FBI investigation. This scandal led to resignation of US state department official Richard Griffin and a call for more oversight of these "private contractors" (a code word for Republican war profiteers).

So, when a company performs this badly, what does the Bush Administration do?
Renew their contract, of course! Despite being involved in a scandal that led to the downfall of a State Department official and a considerable blow to our attempts to win the hearts and minds of Iraqis, Blackwater is rewarded with a renewal to the contract. This is the very definition of mismanagement and it has become the signiture of Republican policy: reward the incompetent.

Of course we already knew that incompetence is rewarded by the Republicans. Halliburton is another one of these Republican war profiteer organizations that consistently disply amazing incompentence. Yet Halliburton still gets any contract they want from the Republicans, despite frequently overcharging for their services, being blatantly corrupt, and being incompetent in the delivery of services to the point of actually regularly letting our soldiers get electrocuted rather than actually fulfill their contract.

The Democratic Senators unanimously support a new GI Bill to help returning Veterans, providing them with full tuition, room and board to give them more education opportunities.

George Bush, John McCain, and all but 9 Republican Senators are oppsing this support for Veterans, going so far as to threaten a fillibuster to prevent a vote on this.

General Wesley Clark, Robert Greenwald, and Captain Jon Soltz are joining together to demand Republicans support our Veterans:

I think it is useless to try and get McCain behind this. Ironically McCain, along with most Republican Senators, get very poor ratings from Veterans and Solder advocacy groups. From Project Vote Smart, here are John McCain's ratings on Veterans' Issues from 2004 on:

2006 Senator McCain supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 20 percent in 2006.

2006 In 2006 Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Senator McCain a grade of D.

2006 Senator McCain sponsored or co-sponsored 18 percent of the legislation favored by the The Retired Enlisted Association in 2006.

Remember when the senior, elected Bush told America not to worry about the economy? He told us "Don't worry, be happy." That was the old Bush economic policy. Ignore the recession, ignore people's suffering, ignore the issue.

Well, his son is no better. He is also telling America not to worry about the economy.

Wheat, oil, milk, and corn prices all are reaching unheard of highs, making it harder than ever for working class and middle class Americans to make ends meet. Hedge funds are on the brink of failing. Bankruptcies are at new highs, leading to emergency bailouts of banks like Bear Stearns and fears that those banks could fail. The deficit is at an all time high. About the only things going down are wages, employment and the value of the dollar. We have those twin threats of inflation AND recession, a combination we used to call stagflation, though people seem scared to actually utter that word. Simply put, the economy sucks and Americans are hurting.

So today George W. Bush decided to reassure us about the economy. Don't worry about it, we are told. Everything's fine.

Iowa Rep. Steve King recently made news insulting blacks and Muslims in one little hate-filled speech.

But this isn't anything new. Steve King, a man who supports no-bid contracts for Halliburton but was one of only 11 Congressmen who voted AGAINST aid to Katrina victims, has a long record of intolerance and advocay of human rights abuse. Here's some footage of Steve King on the floor of Congress advocating...well, human rights abuses (thanks to Kingwatch.org):

According to King we should treat people like livestock. Just how far does he want to take that? How far does his confusion between humans and livestock go?

So these are Republican "values?" I say Feh!

Republicans routinely insult Blacks, Native Americans and Muslims, and even Jews. It is no wonder hate crimes are up during Bush's time in office.

The latest example of Republican anti-Black and anti-Muslim hate speech comes from a Congressman from Iowa. From an email I got from American Family Voices:

While the Democratic Party has yet to decide who the nominee of the party will be, the radical wing of the Republican Party is just beginning their opening salvo against Sen. Barack Obama.

We need your help today to stop these racist and bigoted attacks.

Congressman Steve King (R-IA) is known for his outrageous and disgusting comments. In the past he's been quoted as comparing immigrants to livestock, calling undocumented workers a "slow-moving terrorist attack", claiming that immigrants have murdered more Americans than the combined death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2002, comparing the abuses at Abu Ghraib to mere "hazing" and waging a war against "secularists" who want to "eradicate Christ from Christmas." Suffice it to say, this man is off his rocker.