Governor, you're no Barack Obama

Yesterday was supposed to have been the coming out party of the GOP's response to Barack Obama: Bobby Jindal.  It wasn't always planned this way, however.  The Louisiana Governor was tapped back in September to deliver the keynote address at the Republican National Convention in an effort to mirror Obama's 2004 keynote address for the Democrats.  That speech catapulted Obama to superstardom and eventually to Pennsylvania Avenue, so it was the hope of many on the Republican side that Jindal would do the same.  However, a hurricane named Gustav got in the way and prevented Jindal from attending the event.  You see, hurricanes can be a bit of a problem in Louisiana (although Gustav aided the Republicans up north by preventing Bush from showing up personally), so the Jindal unveiling was left for another time.  

In the meantime many, including myself, decided to look into this new character. To any liberal there is nothing more frightening than the thought of a Republican that can draw comparisons to Barack Obama, so Jindal was downright petrifying - as an idea, at least. Reviewing his record, however, I quickly discovered that there was nothing really to fear. Jindal is a Republican's Republican.  In every way that Obama breaks the mold of the typical politician, Jindal fits it.  He's got a perfect voting record against reproductive rights, a perfect voting record for the National Rifle Association (even being honored by the trigger-happy outift), and he's alarmingly obsessed with tax cuts.  

Like any highly thought of Republican, Jindal believes tax cuts are the answer to everything. No problem is too small or unrelated to not be solved by simply allowing rich people to keep more of their money.  How do we raise the quality of education in the country?  Tax cut!  How do we solve the deficit problem?  Tax cut!  What do we do about ballplayers taking steroids?  Tax cut! People that wait until they board the bus to search for their MetroCard, who crack their knuckles in public, who don't clean up after their dogs?  Tax cut, tax cut, tax cut!  I could imagine Jindal standing on the levees during Hurricane Gustav and shouting at the maelstrom about how he would give it a tax cut if it just went away.

Jindal's also quite adept at convincing poor people that they will somehow benefit from these tax cuts (as if anyone like Tom DeLay would ever fight tooth and nail for a tax cut for a poor southern family of five instead of the monied interests that put him where he is).  This last point makes Jindal a great Republican.  And that's why they were so excited about him.  Not only is he just like the other GOPers (which Republicans need to see to like you, I mean really like you), but he's brown.  This is the pink elephant in the Bobby Jindal room.  If he were just another white Republican with his views he would blend in like a cowboy hat at a rodeo. That his standard right-wing agenda is delivered from a man of Indian ancestry, however, makes him a standout.  

It seems that no one wants to admit this.  The Republicans will, of course, use him as an example that they are as meritocratic as the Democrats, just as they did with Sarah Palin, Alan Keyes, and Michael Steele.  All of these characters were supposed to convince us that the GOP was not a good ol' boys club, even though pledging allegiance to everything the good ol' boys stand for is a prerequisite for membership in this club of right-wing tokens.  Jindal is not an example of Republican egalitarianism, but rather an example of the miscalculations for which the party has become notorious.  Obama is thin, ethnic, and a hell of a speaker, and according to anyone who reads Ann Coulter without wanting to punch her in the face, so is Jindal.  This, of course, exposes the fact that the Republicans are seeing Obama at the most aesthetic, basic level, and missing the nuances that make him so unique and appealing.  

As I have written before, Jindal will not find it easy to draw crowds like Obama with the same tired conservative message of trickle-down economics, defense of guns, and an erosion of reproductive rights.  He is a living wedge, whereas Obama is a living bridge.  Extending the analogy, it doesn't quite matter that the wedge and the bridge are made of the same material, their purposes are completely different.  After discovering all of this for myself, I awaited Jindal's first national appearance to see if everyone else would see what I had discovered.  And because I shamelessly engage in schadenfreude, I was hoping he'd bomb out.  I just didn't know it would go this well for me.

Jindal's speech last night was terrible, to say the least.  Aside from following Obama, who once more riveted a national audience with a terrific and uplifting speech, Jindal delivered his unsurprising speech with the sort of delivery you see on post-late night TV; three in the morning when you can't sleep and wake up to watch what's on during those mysterious sleep hours. To really understand how he sounded, imagine yourself on that couch at three in the morning when you turn on some infomercial plugging a blender that can make atoms of bricks (but all I need is a banana shake...) or a juicer that makes it more complicated than it needs to be to eat an apple.  The type of dialogue that goes on between the hosts of these drool-inducing torture sessions and the mark made to look like an interested buyer might properly describe what Jindal sounded like.  

That, or think of your high school principal delivering a message to an assembly of students. Either way, it was a laughable attempt to mirror anything Obama has done in his rise to the top.  Obama wouldn't deliver a speech that poorly even if he had to give one singing the praises of Rupert Murdoch.  The simple fact is that Jindal doesn't have nearly the charisma that the President possesses.  But God bless the Republicans for thinking he did, it offered great laughs.  The worst part, perhaps, is that nothing in Jindal's speech was a riveting departure from what the Republicans have been spewing ever since Obama got in office.  The GOP is trying hard to recast themselves as the fiscally responsible paragons that they were not during the free-spending Bush years, and Jindal tried hard, too.  The problem is that the message is falling on deaf ears.  The country will not support a do-nothing approach from a party that many see as being mainly responsible for this financial mess.  Changing the spokesman doesn't matter, just like changing global warming's name to climate change didn't matter.  Either way, people don't like it and want to be rid of it.

The speech was bad enough, its message derivative enough, but then Jindal had to bring up the K word.  To somehow suggest that government is not needed, that it's in fact detrimental to Americans by conjuring the response to Hurricane Katrina is a major problem for any Republican.  You see, the response to Hurricane Katrina doesn't prove that government is inept, it just proved that the Bush administration was inept.  Perhaps that is the greatest secret of the GOP; that they could argue so effectively against government because they prove time and again just how bad they are at governing.  Their failures are merely proofs of their message: We (the government) are bad, stupid, and corrupt.  The Republicans are out to prove it, apparently, and doing a heckuva job (Brownie).  

Really Bobby, this was not nearly the coming out party everyone in your party wanted it to be; not even close.  In fact, it probably knocked you down a few notches since even Republicans have been voicing their displeasure with your speech.  You told us Americans can do anything last night.  But all we've been hearing lately is how Republicans want us to do nothing. Cognitive dissonance is not a good party mantra, no matter how you dice it.

On the positive side, I woke up at about three in the morning last night and ended up purchasing a super blender from an infomercial on TV.  I guess I actually believed the host and what he told the crowd member he brought up for a supposed impromptu demonstration.  I mean, this thing was crushing bricks!  I simply had to get it.  Perhaps somehow after Jindal's speech, the usually cheesy dialogue didn't seem so ridiculous, anymore.  Can't wait for my shakes!

Let's heed President Obama's call for education reform - starting at home!

President Obama gave another insightful and inspiring speech last night.  His de facto State of the Union helped ease fears at a time when fear's spreading like the sniffles in a kindergarten class. Reassuring as he was steady, he even had Republicans standing for him at various times applauding along with the now overwhelmingly Democratic chambers of Congress.  No doubt about it, Obama is a once-in-a-lifetime speaker and a special breed of politician.  He's not ambitious in the way other politicians are: Seeking only to gain the highest office possible. Rather, he's ambitious in that he wants the highest office to affect the most change.  His vision is that of a newly prosperous America that emerges - ever-Phoenix like - better than before.  That means an America with healthcare for all its citizens, an America without rewards for the wanna-be Gordon Geckos who got us into this financial mess, and an America that actually values education as a means for advancement.

This last issue resonates especially for me as an educator.  Too often I've heard people (even parents within poor minority communities) say things like "you know college isn't for everyone."  Well, now it kind of is.  Unlike the 1980s where a high school diploma could allow you to get by, today's competitive world demands something higher than the twelfth grade to carve out a decent living for yourself.  As countries like China and India continue advancing forward with armies of educated and ambitious young men and women, the issue of under-qualified and poorly educated Americans is now an issue of national concern.  As President Obama detailed last night, you are not just doing a disservice to yourself, but to your country by not entering the realm of higher education.  But this is a problem that has its root in American homes long before children come to be of college age.

Obama mentioned last night that parents ought think about turning off the television and video game to actually read to their children.  Statistics prove that children that are read to succeed at a far greater pace than those who are not read to.  This is something that can appeal to all Americans.  As a teacher, I see on a daily basis the ravages of not placing a value on the written word.  I get kids every year that haven't a clue how to read or write beyond a five year old's normal level in any language because their parents are simply not placing a priority on reading. Literacy is the cornerstone for any future career and without it, there is no hope for advancement in future generations.  The dream of an American century will hinge on how literate our people are, and that starts at home with bedtime stories and books instead of TV.  

Obama's emphasis on personal responsibility is key, but it will mean nothing unless people take the message to heart.  I sincerely hope that poor neighborhoods of color take heed this message and begin treating education as a means to overcoming oppression.  Children in communities such the one in which I teach will know entire rap songs or details from brain-draining television shows before they ever discover a children's book they can summarize.  My students can tell you everything about high school musical but can't name a high school they'd like to attend.  They know how to do every new dance and still misspell the word dance when writing about it.  They have more relatives in prison than in college and proudly state so.  Some of them have seen Night at the Museum more times than they've been to an actual museum. (I'm reminded of a time I took my mother to the American Museum of Natural History and she commented on how we were the only latinos there not cleaning or providing security services.) Simply put, we latinos as a people have not placed a high enough emphasis on getting educated. Our brothers in the struggle to escape modern urban poverty, African Americans, have not done much better in this regard.  How can we ever hope to advance equity in this nation when we are the very engines of our collective entropy, constantly creating disorder in our own histories?  

Ignorance must be stamped out and it starts with simple acts such as talking to our children and reading with them.  Instead of letting them vegetate over weekends, how about planning a trip to a museum or zoo?  Maybe you could read a book from your local library about the things you hope to see at these educational institutions and then have a discussion during your visit.  These small acts amount to much when added together and help turn around the notion that college isn't for everyone.  After all, how many people in positions of authority and power are feeding this garbage to their children?  None, of course!  They understand that college is not an option but a prerequisite of a successful life.  It is only in our poor communities where this defeatism exists with such pervasiveness.  Children are implored to leave school and help the family financially, but a long-term investment in their education would be more beneficial in a myriad ways.  This trading of a long-term solution for a short-term fix has brought many a family from poverty to slightly less imposing poverty in tragic examples of lateral movement and a lack of foresight.  Without education as a priority these decisions seem logical and even dutiful, but with the rising cost of living and heavy competition sure to mark this century, it is basically a formula for failure.

The rising costs of a higher education are truly a legitimate concern, and I can see this point as the only valid obstacle to a family struggling to make basic payments and a decent living. However, President Obama even spoke of programs where community volunteer work could be parlayed into an affordable college education.  These programs would help renovate our communities while advancing our young people in life.  They would build a sense of community, responsibility, and involvement that could potentially strike down any sense of helplessness often felt in these communities.  There is no longer any room in our debate for not placing education at the top of the priorities list.  Enough with the same old practices that have resulted in nothing more than a permanent place in the poorest urban communities in this country.  Let us allow our children the room to grow beyond their current restraints and blossom into tomorrow's leaders.  America needs them.

Same old story with NY Post

The recent uproar over the New York Post's publishing of this crude cartoon

(click for full view)

has brought to light one of New York's little dirty secrets.  For right in the heart of this enlightened, cosmopolitan, liberal capital of culture there is a newspaper that is as ideologically disconnected with Gotham as is Sarah Palin.  The New York Post didn't become the most embarrassing thing to do to paper since the invention of toilet tissue overnight.  It has long been a bastion of conservative punditry, Republican apologetics, and right-wing fear mongering.  

Known best outside of New York for its outlandish headlines (such as the recent one with Alex Rodriguez's face under the not-as-clever-as-they-thought headline of A-Hole) and the notorious Page Six gossip column, which the paper often proudly advertises on the upper right hand corner of the cover page, the Post has actually long been a source misinformation and faulty reporting more loyal to its right-wing owner than to journalistic integrity.  

Some quick examples that come to mind are wrongly announcing Dick Gephardt as John Kerry's choice for running mate in 2000, giving space in their newspaper to hate-mongers like Michelle Malkin (a woman who despite her Asian ancestry still wrote a book with the shameless title In Defense of Internment!) and conservative blowhards like Bill O'Reilly, who regularly gets called out for his shoddy reporting by Keith Olbermann so I'll leave it up to the Keith to fill everyone in as he does often on his eponymous MSNBC show, and referring to members of the United Nations as weasels (complete with doctored photos of UN officials with weasel heads) because they were stupid enough to not support Bush's brilliant Iraq war.

There's nothing new about the stupidity that the Post showed in running such an offensive cartoon, nothing new in the fact that they did not understand (or did not care to understand) the history of racist comparisons of blacks to apes, and nothing new in their insensitive treatment of minority groups.  The Post has long showed itself to be quite unlike the city it calls home.  

As a lifelong New Yorker, I am embarrassed to share a city with anything Rupert Murdoch-related.  That I have to do so with his stupid newspaper and his repugnant television station drives me up a wall.  I applaud those that are protesting and boycotting the Post for displaying their rightful anger at such a blemish on this city's intellectual landscape.  While I believe in free speech (those in charge of the Post have a right to make jackasses of themselves), I also support the right of those protesters to make life a little more difficult for that arrogant snob Murdoch, who recently offered the most insincere of apologies for this scandalous cartoon.  I urged the principal of my school recently to join the boycott and cease accepting the Post in our school to which she agreed.  I am now asking others to spread the word and voice the intellectual consensus of our great city: That this is a city of tolerance, except to the intolerant. Boycott the Post!

Alan Keyes needs a padded room

Really, Alan Keyes?  Really?  I mean we all knew you were an absolute laughing stock even within Republican circles, but now that you have claimed in a press gathering that President Obama is a radical communist and that he must be stopped or this country will cease to exist, you have exposed yourself as insane.  Yes, insane.  I say this without a slight bit of hyperbole. How else to explain calling Obama a radical communist?  I mean Lenin, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-Tung, yes.  But Barack Obama?  Was your buddy George W. Bush a communist when the TARP bill was passed or banks were being bailed out at a record pace?  And where was your anger when the party you so proudly represent sank this country into the hole in which it now finds itself?  Really, give it a rest!  Radical communists don't get voted in overwhelmingly to be President of the United States.  But then again what would a perennial presidential electoral loser like you know about winning an election?  

Alan Keyes ended his most recent lunatic tirade by deciding to delve into the now ridiculous argument that Obama was born outside of this country and therefore not truly the President of the United States.  Somehow we've all been fooled!  If Keyes doesn't consider Obama to even be qualified to be President, how about taking up the cause to the Supreme Court.  He should be a pioneer and lead a challenge to Obama's legitimacy.  Or maybe he knows that once his name is attached to any contest it's tantamount to a kiss of death.  Could it be that Keyes himself doesn't really believe his own crock of lies and paranoia?

Alan Keyes, of course, has a reason to be upset with Barack Obama.  In 2004 when Obama ran for senator, he was opposed by Alan Keyes who was trounced by over forty percentage points. Now, the jealous one himself is back to make the most outrageous far-right claims and do so with a straight face.  The most troubling thing about his words is how he stated that Obama should be stopped, that he should be opposed or the country will fall.  With the amount of crazies that share in Keyes's assessment, it is a legitimate concern that someone may be incited to violence over this idiot's comments.  Alan Keyes has potentially placed in harm's way the life of the President of the United States, and has done so under the cloak of patriotism and indignation over Obama's claims of citizenship (a claim that has long since been verified).  

At the core of his being, Alan Keyes is a failed politician, a man who has won nothing whatsoever in his life, a man who quickly losing relevance and doing anything within his power to maintain it.  He is pathetic with a capital "P" and a sorry excuse for an American.  How he can even think his opinion on one of the most successful men in our country's history matters is beyond me.  In short, Keyes is a loser with a vendetta.  Nothing more.  With his conspiracy theory-filled rant, he also proved another thing, however: He's a lunatic.  If he really has a problem with the President of this country and how that country is being run, let me borrow one of the far-right's favorite suggestions and ask Alan Keyes to get the hell out.  In fact, for a moron like this I'll excuse the following crass remark about this nation often directed at under-served Americans with legitimate gripes: America, love it or leave it.  Please, Alan Keyes, please, leave it!  We are a much better nation without the likes of you around.

Motive?

It's unbelievable to hear the coverage of the chimp attack in Stamford, Connecticut. Apparently, the American news media has failed to notice the last two million years of evolution that has separated us from our ape cousins.  Words such as motive and rationale have been used in discussing the possible reasons for the attack when the actual reason has been staring at us all along: humans.  Like most animal attacks, this one was solely the responsibility of a human being.  Animals are peculiar beings, living only in the moment and not dealing with the more complex realms of thought such as reason and foresight.  They act and never really think (at least in the most philosophical sense of the word).  

This disturbing story has two victims, the woman that was mauled and the chimpanzee that was stripped of its natural life and forced to live in New England as a pet.  Fox, certainly no paragon of journalistic integrity, reported the chimp as a household pet.  I guess they think of it as no different than a hamster. Fact is that wild animals taken out of their natural element and expected to assimilate into human society are victims of abuse no matter how much love their owners give them.  I have been sounding the alarm to friends and loved ones about the plight of animals for a while now, and the exotic pet trade is one facet of animal abuse that is rarely reported.  Unlike the fur trade or circuses, it is much more difficult to consider exotic pet ownership abuse rather than a strange hobby.  

We must understand that animals are not out to hurt us humans, instead, we are constantly hurting them whether we know it or not.  It's an uncomfortable topic for many to read about because, simply stated, people love to consume the flesh of animals.  No matter which animal or how it's cooked, people love meat.  Despite the fact that it is jacked up on hormones, causes more global warming than cars, and has been linked to heart disease, meat will continue to be eaten in basically every meal by the majority of Americans.  If we're not directly ruining the quality of animals' lives by raising them to slaughter and eat them, then we're encroaching on their territory, developing more habitats suitable for human occupation and disregarding the animal life that has resided in these areas for eons.  

Animals are terribly mistreated when you look at the overall picture.  For every dog or cat that is given a loving home there are countless pigs, cows, and other dogs and cats that are victims of human abuse.  This chimpanzee is just the most visible victim of that abuse although he is not being portrayed that way.  Anyone who knows anything about chimps understands how incredibly territorial and violent they can be.  This attack should not come as a surprise, but to a nation raised on images of bike-riding and tuxedo-wearing chimps acting silly for our amusement, it feels like a betrayal.  Well, the only betrayal is how this poor animal was forced to live an unnatural life that led to his eventual (and inevitable) outburst.  

Let me sum it up this way: If a chimp attacks a person in the jungles of Africa, it's probably the human's fault. But if a chimp you own attacks your friend in the suburbs of Connecticut, it's definitely your fault.

Remember the Homeless

I went to Penn Station a few weeks back to meet with a good friend of mine.  We were traveling down to Washington, D.C. via bus and decided to meet inside the station before emerging to find our archaic mode of travel.  Secretly, I was dreading the bus ride.  Despite being genuinely excited to see D.C., I had terrible memories of long bus trips from my childhood.  Once, for example, I took an eighteen hour bus ride to and from Knoxville, Tennessee as part of a chess tournament.  Knoxville was enough of a punishment, but I also happened to catch the chicken pox just in time for the three-quarters-of-a-day ride back to civilization.  Chess was simply not worth that much aggravation.  But, I tried to put the thought of a sweaty, itchy ride behind me and just enjoy this relative zip of a ride (five hours) to a city I hadn't visited since my pawn-pushing elementary school days.

I felt really familiar with Penn Station, which is necessary to my sense of comfort as any new, strange place will instantly draw my paradoxical sense of paranoia and curiosity.  My familiarity was due to having been to Penn Station quite a bit recently.  I found myself going down for holidays to New Jersey and Pennsylvania to spend time with my mother-in-law or father-in-law so waiting for trains at Penn Station became a part of my week-off-from-work routine.  This time, however, I was looking forward to sight-seeing around Washington and hopefully getting inspired to write a good story about the City of Marble.  

So here's the scene thus far: Me waiting for my buddy inside the busiest transfer point on the planet eagerly anticipating my arrival in the world's most important capital city.  It was just then, when I was looking for my friend in the crowd of faces (these strange faces seem to always look sort of like the person you're waiting for, don't they?) when I noticed that the station was populated by a large number of homeless people.  I guess I had never really noticed them on my previous Ronin-style mad dashes through Penn Station with my wife (can't we ever arrive in time to just patiently stroll this station's corridors?), but the waiting game brought them to my attention.  Instantly, I felt a deep sense of pity and guilt.  Pity because there is a great deal of irony about living in such squalor while in the richest metropolis on Earth.  Guilt because I couldn't understand how I could share a space with such desperate people and not even care enough to notice them.  If I, a card-carrying member of the bleeding heart liberals, could be so apathetic to these people, then no wonder everyone else could step right over them as if they were litter.  In so many ways, that is all they are to the general public: Litter with arms and legs (and hearts and minds and lives).  It struck me as the most tragic thing I had seen in a long time.  Why had I been so callous to the plight of these people when I seemingly would be one of the few to take up their cause?  What could I expect in the way of true, quality care for the homeless from slimy, cold-blooded politicians if I couldn't care at all to even notice their existence?  Where did this apathy come from?  

I was in the midst of remembering how much money I had in my pockets hoping to spare some for at least one of them (this could hardly constitute charity, I know) when out from the crowd of pinchbeck friends emerged my actual friend, waltzing up to me unaware of the moral battle I had just waged inside of my own mind. We greeted each other, exchanged pleasantries and went along our way.  Already, I'd forgotten about these poor human beings - again.  Not until now, weeks later, did I even bother to think of them once more; their memory rehashed only because I was reflecting on my trip.  This must've been programmed into me by years of sensory-numbing television and political propaganda, I thought.  Surely, it couldn't be my fault. I was one of the good guys; one of the caring souls that knows all the little nuances about Darfur, global warming, and the health care crisis.  Knows about them because I fight to bring awareness to these causes, and end the apathy that has allowed each of them to reach the point of critical mass.  

But, the reality is that I didn't care because I chose not to care.  The issue is so colossal and so overwhelming that I chose to pretend it does not exist, or that someone else is taking care of it, or that maybe the few times I threw a spare quarter at a train performer I was actually doing my part.  We are all guilty (who can't remember feeling like a saint among sinners by merely being the lone quarter-donor to a singing vagabond on a train).  I'm not sure if by giving clothes to a donation center I am doing much more than I was doing before I had my awakening in Penn Station, but I know for sure that it is the first step in doing more for the homeless of New York City.  If nothing else, at least I'm not ignoring or forgetting them.  And, I'll be doing one more thing: Bringing awareness to their cause as best I can.  This space is a good start, but I can always do more.  If I mention the homeless of our very own city as often as I've mentioned the plight of those halfway around the world, I will be doing something more than what I am doing now.  So please give to those that are neediest among us - and speak about them to those you know.  

I write this not to regain that saint-among-sinners feeling, but to hopefully bring to light the fact that all of us are guilty of being in the midst of abject poverty and simply not giving a damn.  Spare a thought, and then spare one more.  Keep sparing them until you remember these human beings everyday.  Hopefully by remembering, you can find it in your heart to not treat them as a pile of litter.  Let's do it together.

Ignore the Do-Nothings

The Republican resistance to the stimulus package is the greatest proof of the party's asinine mindset.  The party has completely lost its sense of how to properly govern and has devolved into a political critic of the ruling Democratic Party; a group of Roger Eberts watching every movie and deciding which direction to point the thumb, but themselves unable to create a quality film (and seemingly uninterested in doing so).  As the nation continues plummeting into a recession that grows more frightening by the day, the Republicans are furiously battling for a lack of a response.  Somehow, the party that got trounced in the last two nation-wide elections and was mostly responsible for this economic calamity due to their laissez-faire business philosophy believes that it still has a voice worth listening to - even if that voice is demanding a severing of everyone else's vocal chords.  Simply put, the US electorate stripped the Republicans of any real voice, leaving filibustering as the sole weapon of the Do-Nothing Party (how appropriate).  

So rather than actually work to help solve the problem, they are merely standing in the way of a solution to a problem they bent over backward to usher in.  The only support they seem to be getting is from the bafflingly influential Fox News and conservative talk radio.  Idiot pundits like Glenn Beck (perhaps the stupidest of the lot) are engaging in some retroactive continuity and actually arguing that the New Deal was somehow a failure; that it deepened the Depression and offers a lesson for why we should reject this Obama stimulus package.  Of course, Beck offers nothing in the way of an alternative, but solutions have never been his forte.  What he does offer is propaganda history that would leave Gœbbels blushing: The New Deal?  A failure that did nothing!  (Except of course provide social security, medical aid, public works programs, jobs, a foundation from which to be able to win World War II, and infrastructure rehabilitation from which we are still benefitting.) 

All of this laughable revisionist history serves nothing but to further announce the descent into lunacy of a party once headed by such respectable men as Lincoln (but now highjacked by right-wing radicals).  Why should this country and its ruling party take seriously the claims of a party that not only put us in this mess, but also put us in the mess that was the Great Depression? We really don't need men like Herbert Hoover again - sorry Archie Bunker.  The eerily Hoover-like Republicans are years behind at a time when we need leaders that think years ahead. People that cause problems cannot stand on soapboxes and expect to draw much more than hurled tomatoes.  

Remember, it's impossible to take fire safety advice from a smoking arsonist with an empty gallon of kerosine in his hands.