Patrotic irony

The latest crop of GOP presidential candidates keep speaking about "restoring freedom", as if somehow we haven't had any since Obama was elected in 2008. They heap nasty and disrespectful comments about him on apparently unsuspecting listeners, who seem to froth at the mouth at the very mention of the name of our current President. They'll be the first to wave the flag and wrap themselves in patriotic fervor, but they refuse to respect the office of President, because the current one has a foreign name and is of a different race. So anything they can think of that they perceive as wrong with things is naturally Mr. Obama's fault, as if he singularly runs the country. There are still plenty of people out there who think that he was fraudulently elected and do not feel that he deserves to be President. These are the same people pushing for voter ID laws that will serve to disenfranchise millions of voters who will have to come up with cash money to pay for an identification card. This, in essence, amounts to a poll tax. I was arguing with a super conservative co-worker this morning about this and I told him, look, my almost 85 year old mother cannot drive anymore, so if she doesn't have an ID and could not afford to buy one, do you think that she should be barred from voting because of this? He said yes, and I just sighed in disgust. You'd tell an elderly woman who can't drive anymore to pay good money out of her Social Security check to go buy a state ID card so she can retain her right to vote. Yeah, what if this were your grandmother? I doubt seriously that my mom would stoop to using the name of a dead person to vote, or some other such thing. Now, I haven't a doubt that our voter registration system is in serious need of housecleaning to clear out names of deceased voters, or those who have moved or other things, but it's already been proven that there is an infintesimally small number of fraudulent votes that were cast in the last election. Voter ID is a solution in search of a problem, as in, there's hardly enough to make it worth the while to push this issue, but sadly, a number of states have passed voter ID laws since the 2008 election because Republican state legislatures don't trust voters and are suspicious of our first black President with the oh-so-foreign sounding name who was elected with more votes cast than in any time in history.

These same conservatives who decry what they perceive as a fraudulent election apparently have no problem whatsoever with the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling that allows unlimited and secret corporate cash to essentially buy elections. What these folks don't seem to get is that now, even foreign powers may buy American elections and they aren't even Americans! So what's it to them that maybe a few illegal aliens got to vote last time around? Now countries who do not have our best interests at heart can, in essence, buy an American election to skew it their way toward whatever end they are trying to achieve. Hostile foreign powers can basically manipulate our elections to create their desired outcome, perhaps someone they loathe so they can justify waging war on us. That is not the democracy that I was taught about in school. It basically renders my vote to be irrelevant because I don't have unlimited campaign cash to buy my candidate of choice. As some of us have been saying, "I'll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." Things like what today's GOP are doing would make old Teddy Roosevelt spin in his grave. Roosevelt was a Republican, as was his predecessor Abraham Lincoln, and it always galls me when I hear Republican candidates extolling their virtues and laying claim to their values when nothing could be further from the truth. As someone who has yet to climb the ladder rungs into the middle class, yes, even as I approach retirement, I have never once in my lifetime heard a Republican sound like they cared a whit about the less fortunate. They always seemed to be looking out for the upper class and wealthy elites, which is why it puzzles me that so many Roman Catholics have become Republicans since Roe v. Wade. That one Supreme Court decision basically threw the Roman Catholics into the arms of the GOP and there they have stayed ever since. Now GOP candidates are speaking out against contraception, trying again to woo the Catholic vote. They are totally against women having access to health care, jobs and everything else we've fought hard to achieve since Gloria Steinem started the women's movement. If these guys have their way, we'd be back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. And it's telling that they are all Very. White. Men. Well, I have news for you, you can't turn back the clock to Ozzie and Harriet. Women have come too far to be shoved back into the kitchen again. And we will not be silent. We make up over half the electorate and we will be heard. So wake up, GOP, and smell the coffee. We won't allow foreigners, secret donors or corporations to buy our elections and women will not be pushed back 60 years into the past. Not now, not ever. I'm personally putting the GOP on call to stop their war on women and to reveal every one of their campaign donors so that we have real transparency in this election. You listening, GOP?