The Stimulatin' Blues

by Pa Rock
Political Commentator

If the hypocrisy generated by Republicans and their media mouthpieces was pure manure, it could fill the Grand Canyon and create a victory garden that would feed America! (Alright, so it is manure, but like most things produced by the GOP, it is lacking in quality.)

Today a handful of Republican Governors from the American South were gnashing their teeth and saying that maybe they wouldn't accept any of that stimulus money. Yeah, wanna bet? Try telling that one to the voters back home who are without jobs and mired in debt. Big talk emanating from big mouths - but when the cash starts rolling, they will be the first hogs at the trough!

Today the big conservative whine revolved around the unfairness the "bailout" of people having trouble with their mortgages. First of all, the "bailout" doesn't pay the mortgage, it just gives people in trouble an opportunity to take care of their debt rather than walk out on their obligation and let the banks handle the loss. Poll those same Republican noisemakers and you will learn that damn few want the banks to suffer. Second, Obama is right. The people who aren't in mortgage trouble don't really want a bunch of foreclosures in their neighborhoods. Boarded up houses with ragged lawns hurt the home values of all of the neighbors.

But my favorite hypocrite isn't a governor or a radio maggot. My favorite hypocrite is Senator Kit Bond of Missouri. Yesterday he stayed busy travelling around Missouri proudly pointing out how its citizens would benefit from certain parts of the stimulus package - never mind that he had voted against that same package when it passed in the Senate. Keith Olbermann wisely made Bond his "Worst Person in the World" on Countdown yesterday for his opportunistic buffoonery.

Rush Limbaugh put the Republican strategy into words when he said publicly that he wanted to see Obama fail. Fair enough - it's all politics. The problem is that if Obama fails, we all fail - even drug-addled radio clowns. The economy is a lemon, a big sour lemon. Do we want to sit around sucking on it and feeling sorry for ourselves, or do we want to roll up our sleeves and at least try to make lemonade? The GOP likes to squint and pucker and tell us how awful anything is that is done for the public good, but the rest of us don't have to buy into their miserable view of life.

And I, for one, choose not to!

Gobama!