Bailout

The Republican mantra of deregulation is the primary cause of our current economic meltdown. The central core of the Republican philosophy is "get government off our backs," as Ronald Reagan famously put it, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" This macho anti-government mantra, ironically, put people in office who did not believe in government. As a result of the deregulation orgy of our financial markets, unregulated predators armed with highly sophisticated and complex mortgage schemes were unleashed on the American people.

The predators were not concerned with the loans being repaid since they received all of their money upon closing of the loan, and bundling them all up and reselling them on the stock market, nestled comfortably between pensions and the space reserved for the privatization scheme of social security. Now, all those who are so "terrified" of governmental "help" are, well, asking the government for help.

The bill for this will be astronomical, and the Republicans performed exactly as their clients asked, namely to remove "cumbersome government regulations" so they would be free to pillage as they saw fit. In return for services rendered, Republican clients reward them with huge bribes, also called contributions, to run ads back home against "Teh Gay" and abortionists, eevil libruls and down home values.

A perfect example of this is Jim Inhofe, the United States Senator from Oklahoma. One of the most reliable of rubbery stamps for the Bush Economic Miracle (over 90 percent) and his corporate benefactors, Inhofe has drawn the scrappy progressive challenger Andrew Rice. Predictably, Inhofe points to Rice's state senate record of supporting more rights and freedom, or to put it another way, getting government out of Oklahoma citizens personal lives, and smears Andrew as advancing the gay/abortion agenda.

This is in the hopes of trying to deflect attention away from Inhofe's own extremist views and voting record, like opposing virtually any bill that would have benefited our military. From body armor to up-armored vehicles to increased funding for the VA to increased time between deployments, Inhofe has a perfect record of voting against those in the military. I have noticed a couple of Veteran organizations have endorsed Inhofe and have not had time to discover why. One of them endorses almost exclusively republicans, and frankly, any veterans organization that would endorse anyone with such a horrible voting record toward veterans should be suspect.