Skip to main content

Our Michele

Consider the state of the Republican Party!
Look at Michele Bachmann, for instance,
who is one of the rising starts of the Party!

She said Barack Obama is a socialist,
and accused him and many other members of Congress
of having anti-American views.
She has urged people to pray to God that
Obama's health care reforms fail.
Her husband--and it seems to be a marriage made in heaven--
describes Jesus as his Almight Counsellor.

Ms. Bachmann pictures herself in Army boots:
"I'm a foreign correspondent on enemy lines and I try to let
everyone back here in Minnesota know exactly
the nefarious activities that are taking place in Washington."
While a part of big government--she is in Congress!--
she says she is an insurgent in Washington, working behind
enemy lines to let people know exactly how
big governnent is a threat to all of us.

Our Michele--the one with one "l", not the wife of the socialist
in the White House--is a part of the "tea party" protesters
(You know, throw the cartons of tea into Boston Harbor
to protest taxes) say Barack Obama is a challenge to
America's fundamental values.  Last week she said,
"The people – we the people – are going to have to fight back
hard if we're not going to lose our country."

It is much worse than that.  Michele Bachmann was caught
hiding in the bushes, literally, to spy on a gay rally.  She is the
lovely thang who glommed onto President Bush and held him
in a half-nelson as he tried to exit an address to a Joint Session.
She finds conspiracies everywhere, and hates big government
so much that she may decide she should run for Governor
of the State of Minnesota.  It is a fact that the official
Minnesota State Bird is the Common Loon.

It is not just she who is focusing the Republican Party.
The Party is full of people who are angry, outrageous,
and self-destructive.  Even poor Lindsay Graham,
who is no one's idea of a profound, left-wing thinker,
is being booed and shouted at by his own constituents,
who accuse him of consorting with . . . oh, I don't know:
King George the Third, or those socialists in Washington.

There must be people with common sense somewhere
in the Republican Party; people who know that the nation
is filled with ordinary people who simply want health care,
an education, jobs, for war to stop, and some sense
of equity in how the wealth of the nation is distributed.

There must be grown-ups in the Republican Party, somewhere,
who know that Joe the Plumber, and Sarah Palin, and Rush
Limbaugh are not competent or balanced.  They are State birds!

How can any sensible person, anyone who thinks seriously
about the nation, listen to people like Michele Bachmann
and not worry that something approaching paranoia
is becoming part of the Party platform?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more