Let 'Em Bray!

by Pa Rock
Pissed-Off Populist

Every Republican member of the House of Representatives voted against the stimulus bill yesterday - for the second time. Remember that - and when we're all selling apples on street corners and living in cardboard boxes, we'll know who to thank!

One wonders just how many snakes have to bite President Obama before he realizes that the top item on the Republican agenda is his complete and total failure. These bottom feeders are only interested in tax cuts for the wealthy and meeting their own immediate needs. The rest of the country can go to hell in a hand basket!

Well, it's high time the President jettisoned these leaches and went to work for the people who elected him - the poor and the real middle class. No more Mister Nice Guy! Show the slugs what it's like to truly be on the outside looking in!

House Minority Leader John Boehner seemed to be bordering on tears as he threw the bill to the floor and wailed that there was no stimulus to it - it was all spending! Boehner's, and indeed the Republican Party's, idea of economic stimulus is that it can only be achieved by tax cuts for businesses and the "middle class," a group they see as making in excess of $200,000 a year. (Guess where that puts you and me?) That fiscal irresponsibility got us into this mess and has not worked for the past eight years, but maybe it will magically turn around the economy now. Don't hold your breath!

Mark Sanford, the Republican Governor of South Carolina, also got a little overly dramatic this week blubbering about the stimulus package putting enormous debt on our children and grandchildren. I am sympathetic to that claim. Our children and grandchildren appear doomed to pay all of our bills. But two questions, Mark: What type of lives are they likely to lead if we sit back and do nothing? And, where was your fiscal outrage when George Bush was destroying the economy with his ego-maniacal war?

Back in the Ozarks we have a word to describe these self-serving loudmouths - jackasses! The Republican motto seems to have become "Let us bray!"

Hypocrisy, Thy Name is Roy Blunt!

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalists

House Minority Leader John Boehner announced today that he is creating a GOP task force to study America's health care needs. As if Mr. Boehner pretending to even care about health issues isn't funny enough by itself, he outdid himself by naming Missouri's ever-snarling Congressman Roy Blunt to head the task force. As a longtime resident of Blunt's congressional district, I have serious doubts regarding his ability to focus on something that is clearly a non-issue to him. Here's one clue: Blunt's new wife and his son are both tobacco lobbyists.

Here's what I suspect is happening: Missouri's senior senator, Kit Bond, has announced that he will not run for re-election in 2010. Blunt is definitely planning to run for Bond's seat. He is of the old school which sees campaign contributions as the equivalent of votes, and he is very actively putting the arm on all of the big Republican donors in Missouri to fill his campaign war chest. With this new job, he will also be in a better position to attract the contributions of big medical donors and others with a vested interest in keeping the nation's health care system as dysfunctional and uncontrolled as possible.

Grab all that you can, Roy - Robin Carnahan is still going to eat your shorts!

Today President Obama signed the much heralded and sorely needed re-authorization of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The bill will provide several million children with health coverage. It was passed during the last administration but vetoed by President Bush - trillions for war but not a dime for the health needs of poor children! This time when Congress passed the bill by wide margins in both houses, an eager President Obama was standing by awaiting it's arrival at the White House, pen in hand.

The S-CHIP bill passed basically along a party-line vote. The Senate voted 66 ayes and 32 nays. (Nine Republican Senators supported the bill, and all 32 negative votes were from the GOP.) The vote in the House was also lopsided. Two-hundred-and-eighty-nine members voted for its passage, and 139 were against. Of those 139, all but 2 were Republicans.

John Boehner, the Minority Leader of the House who is so interested in health care that he rushed to form a task force on the subject, voted against giving health care to poor kids. Roy Blunt, who represents some of the nation's poorest hill folk, also voted against the measure.

Does Roy Blunt heading a health task force fool anyone?