GOP Carved Like Sunday Roast

Richard Dawkins carves up Rick Perry and his ilk like a Sunday roast. In Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact, Dawkins adeptly peels back the under-cooked meat of the Republican party with this razor-sharp indictment:

Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Personal Historic Perspective

The first Republican President of my political consciousness in the 1970s was Richard Nixon. By all accounts this President was sinister and corrupt. I still have a mint condition Impeach Nixon bumper sticker inter-leafed in my high school yearbook.

But Nixon, deceitful political animal that he was, wasn't an intellectual featherweight like today's unseemly brand of Republican hucksters (e.g., Palin, Perry, Bachmann). Nixon graduated from Duke Law, served in the House and the Senate, served as Vice President under Dwight Eisenhower -- all prior to a semi-successful presidency.

May the gods of reason and progress taze me with thunderbolts, but Republicans used to be capable of a modicum of people-friendly policies.

How how far right has the Republican party drifted since Tricky Dickey? Nixon did two things that would make him un-electable in a 2012 Republican primary:

1. He enforced desegregation of Southern schools and 
2. He established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Civil rights and environmental protection are a two-headed demon to today's Republican lap dog. Richard Nixon would have to be a Democrat to have a shot at the 2012 Presidency.

Bald Eagles Are Pissed

The headline read:

Bald Eagle Tired Of Everyone Just Assuming It Supports War

Why couldn't that be a NY Times Op Ed instead of a humor piece in The Onion?

Score one for Republicans

In 1972 a Republican led EPA saved our beloved bald eagle from certain extinction by having the foresight to ban the pesticide DDT. This proves at least two things

1. Republicans were much more centrist and reasonable in 1972
2. It is possible for Republicans to do good things

Talon-full of Historical Perspective

Republicans weren't always this bad. The dismantling of government services that served the people began with Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Today Mr. Reagan is valorized by many afflicted with memory loss and dubious analytical skills. He led a cultural wave of gutting government services by putting the proverbial foxes in charge of the chicken coops. The people -- schlubs like you and me -- are the chickens in this metaphor.

In reaction, the Democratic party cast themselves adrift losing their progressive rudder. The Democratic party was soon overrun and overtaken by Corporate Centrists like Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton oversaw the transition to the Corporatocracy we are living with today (e.g., Big Pharma and Insurance Companies kill insurance reform in 2009-10 - a huge dis-service to the citizenry).

Yes and No

No --

Democrats are not blameless.

Yes --

It is possible for Republicans to do good things -- One just has to search the historical record with a fine-toothed louse comb.

The American Bald Eagle

If you have watched American Bald Eagles soar from the bluff-top trees to swoop down on prey in Minnesota's Lake Pepin, you can't not be in awe.

The bald eagle is a magnificent evolutionary adaption and economical killing machine. The difference between the bald eagle and the United States engaging in elective wars, is that the bald eagle kills to generate enough caloric intake to maintain equilibrium.

My definition of self-defense is as sparse and as economical as the eagle's instinct to maintain homeostasis.

The noble eagle takes my breath way.

I do not support war - and I am particularly incensed, offended, and disappointed by wars-of-choice with scant justification.