Congress: Bedtime for Bonzo
I don’t suppose that families struggling to survive on minimum wage are aware of the enormous political problems they are causing their millionaire representatives in the GOP-controlled Congress.
Democrats insist it is downright unseemly for the Congress to receive eight or nine self-inflicted pay raises since the minimums saw any hike, but Republicans worry that hasty action could endanger small businesses. Nearly half the states have taken action on their own to increase the minimum wage well above the national standard, but not our Republican Congress. They are made of sterner stuff, moved less by opinion polls than campaign contributions of small business owners who insist a pay raise for their low-paid workers would be the death knell of the fast food industry, plus much of banking.
Our GOP Congress has a duty to first insure business in America will not be harmed. As for fiscal policy, always a top priority, frugal counts only when it comes to poor people.
Minimum wage families don’t really worry Karl Rove in the upcoming midterms because he knows they’re far too busy to vote (and even if they’re so inclined, there are always the countless roadblocks set up by GOP voting registrars in low-rent precincts). However, the President’s veto of stem cell research must have him tossing and turning at night, trying to get those pesky embryos out of his mind.
Rove knows full well how many Americans there are who have a family member with diabetes, Parkinson’s, Altzeimer’s, heart disease or spinal cord injuries and who gnashed their teeth in anger and frustration at the President’s political payoff to the pro-lifers. The ballpark number is 100 million, give or take a few million. With an election coming up, that’s quite a ballpark.
Democrats lost the 2000 election in Florida by a few hanging chads. Rove knows Republicans may well lose the next one by a few tiny embryos. Fertility clinics routinely wash discarded embryos down the drain, but in his veto message, Bush called stem cell research “murder”. Even the right-win Ayn Rand Institute would have none of it. The Institute issued a statement that “embryos used in research, smaller than a grain of sand, are not human beings, they do not see, hear, feel or think.”
Everyone knows the Bush veto was a sop to the pro-lifers, so he gets a vote he had anyway while 100 million families spread across red and blue states wonder what they ever saw in this guy. You can see why Rove is unhappy.
The Bush reputation as world leader didn’t get any bounce at the recent G-8 summit in Europe where he behaved like a total bozo. Camera crews from Funniest Home Videos followed his every move, but somehow footage of his impromptu neck massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his lunch-time expletive to Tony Blair as a buttered roll dribbled down his chin wound up on CNN and other world cable news networks.
I was relieved that after the neck rub he didn’t roll up Merkel’s blouse and kiss her bare tummy, as Putin did with a kid who got in his path during the G-8.
Democrats insist it is downright unseemly for the Congress to receive eight or nine self-inflicted pay raises since the minimums saw any hike, but Republicans worry that hasty action could endanger small businesses. Nearly half the states have taken action on their own to increase the minimum wage well above the national standard, but not our Republican Congress. They are made of sterner stuff, moved less by opinion polls than campaign contributions of small business owners who insist a pay raise for their low-paid workers would be the death knell of the fast food industry, plus much of banking.
Our GOP Congress has a duty to first insure business in America will not be harmed. As for fiscal policy, always a top priority, frugal counts only when it comes to poor people.
Minimum wage families don’t really worry Karl Rove in the upcoming midterms because he knows they’re far too busy to vote (and even if they’re so inclined, there are always the countless roadblocks set up by GOP voting registrars in low-rent precincts). However, the President’s veto of stem cell research must have him tossing and turning at night, trying to get those pesky embryos out of his mind.
Rove knows full well how many Americans there are who have a family member with diabetes, Parkinson’s, Altzeimer’s, heart disease or spinal cord injuries and who gnashed their teeth in anger and frustration at the President’s political payoff to the pro-lifers. The ballpark number is 100 million, give or take a few million. With an election coming up, that’s quite a ballpark.
Democrats lost the 2000 election in Florida by a few hanging chads. Rove knows Republicans may well lose the next one by a few tiny embryos. Fertility clinics routinely wash discarded embryos down the drain, but in his veto message, Bush called stem cell research “murder”. Even the right-win Ayn Rand Institute would have none of it. The Institute issued a statement that “embryos used in research, smaller than a grain of sand, are not human beings, they do not see, hear, feel or think.”
Everyone knows the Bush veto was a sop to the pro-lifers, so he gets a vote he had anyway while 100 million families spread across red and blue states wonder what they ever saw in this guy. You can see why Rove is unhappy.
The Bush reputation as world leader didn’t get any bounce at the recent G-8 summit in Europe where he behaved like a total bozo. Camera crews from Funniest Home Videos followed his every move, but somehow footage of his impromptu neck massage of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and his lunch-time expletive to Tony Blair as a buttered roll dribbled down his chin wound up on CNN and other world cable news networks.
I was relieved that after the neck rub he didn’t roll up Merkel’s blouse and kiss her bare tummy, as Putin did with a kid who got in his path during the G-8.
posted by Victor Kamber | 10:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home