All Theater

Paul Ryan, Republican house majority leader and Wisconsin's 1st district Representitive, this morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe, remarked how despicable was an advertisement, sponsored by some advocacy group, depicting an elderly women being thrown from her wheelchair over and off a cliff. The ad, of course, was an attempt to demonize Mr. Ryan's recent budget proposal that would essentially end Medicare.

This TV ad is admittedly in very poor taste, and as usual, is designed to rouse fear in and among a certain demographic or constituency group. Playing to the fears, and not the hopes, of various groups of this nation is politics at its lowest:; however selling fear is so much easier than selling hope.

As outlined in earlier blog "Everyone's Doing It", both sides of our pathetic body politic continue to use similar tactics and then demagogue the other for doing the very same thing. During the protracted health care debate, the Republican's used a tried and tired set of expressions to scare the nations populace into believing that health care reform was a monumental  evil. "Socialized medicine" was one, and another popular euphemism was the suggestion that such reform would lead to so called "death panels". These are essentially identical tactics used by both parties from two different angles to achieve the same thing: fear!!!! What a bunch of chumps.

Please rebut if you will.

Social Safetynet

From the very beginning, the Republican Party has been fighting to end programs designed to provide some measure of security and dignity to the most vulnerable of our population. In the 1930's it was The New Deal, through the 1960's when the battle became Medicare and Civil Rights, Republicans have viewed these programs as entitlements for the "lazy" of our country. Unemployment insurance, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid have always been characterized by the Right as "give aways" to the undeserving.

The tactics from the time of Ronald Reagen have consistently been one of simple bankruptcy. Just end the funding and these "socialist programs" will disappear. Ironically, one of the death knells was sounded by Republican George W. Bush when he signed the Medicare Part D program which provides pharmaceutical coverage to Medicare recipients. The Part D portion of Medicare caused the cost of Medicare to skyrocket as a portion of our country's budget, thereby making it a large target for deficit reduction reactionaries.

The perception today is that Medicare is simply unaffordable. Reforms are necessary but elimination is, and has always been, the goal of the Republican Party. They are on their way to dismantling union organizing, child labor laws, unemployment protection, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, voting rights, and any low income subsidy alive today.

We need to lower the level of our spending, and we don't need more taxes on the majority of our citizens, but we do need more reasonable minded officials to determine how this is to be accomplished.

Let's here your rebuttal.