Political Test

(l-r) Sleepy, Grumpy, Snow White, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Happy, Huntsman

Taken just before eating a poison apple  in her campaign, here is Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs in happier times.

As the candidates head towards Iowa, it’s clear that the cold winds of winter will freeze what little life Sleepy and Grumpy have left.

Snow White, whose voices in her head urged her to run for President, will fall back into her normal near-coma state as it becomes apparent to all but her that it wasn’t God speaking to her, after all.  The voices will still be there, of course, but the good people of Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District can sleep well at night knowing that their favorite Tea Partier will be safe in the hallowed halls of Congress where so many others hear the same voices.

Doc, the oldest curmudgeon of the Dwarfs, heard humming ‘Starry-Starry Night’ when Anderson Cooper asked him a question in a debate.  Same fellow who once requested 400 million dollars in federal earmarks, then voted against the bill in which it appeared.  More recently, he has promised to eliminate the departments of Energy, Education, Commerce, Interior, and House and Urban Development while legalizing all drugs. Probably no need for education since everybody will be zoned out on meth anyway.

Happy burst onto the top of the Republican polls like a ray of bright sunlight, laser focused on a tax reform plan that is dazzling in its simplicity: 999.  Yea! Wow! went his growing legions of fans.  A Republican candidate with a real tax reform plan.  Then, one of those nit-pickin’ scholarly types had the audacity to run the numbers to see how Americans would be affected.

Some computer gamers noted that a 999 tax proposal started with SIM City to which Happy Herman claimed no such thing had occurred.  More likely, it came from the billionaire Koch brothers who’ve made it clear he’s one of their favorites.

But, back to the numbers.  Turns out 999 would raise the taxes for 80% of Americans but give the richest of the rich a billion dollar a year tax windfall.  Oops.  It’s one thing to build America’s tax structure around a video game but quite another for this poor Dwarf to get cold-koched.

Poor Huntsman.  Went to the Wilderness in China, worked for that Commie-Socialist Kenyan Muslim.  Didn’t help himself with his sacrilegious heresy that The Party should embrace science.  What was he thinking?

And, of course, there’s lovable Dopey. The kid who scored C’s and D’s in college but looked great in his cheerleader uniform.

Finally, the John Kerry look-alike, Sneezy.  For women’s rights to choose before he was against it.  Against Obamacare though it is based on Romneycare.

One moment, sneezes to the left; next moment, sneezes to the right.

Got filthy rich buying companies, merging them, firing lots and lots of the unwashed and unknempt.  But, he is finely quaffed.  Just a regular guy.

Republicans have long attacked Keynesian economics and now apparently have their own version: Cainsian economics.

Upon enactment, the world’s biggest economy would be guided by the kind of tax reform that is music to the ears of many Tea Partiers based upon simplicity itself.

If Herman Cain is elected President, here’s how he’d want the tax code readjusted:

9% corporate taxes

9% income taxes

9% national sales tax

But, as the self-styled Sage of Tax Law, Representative Michelle Bachmann, cleverly pointed out: “…the Devil’s in the details” and turned upside down, the number would be 666.

The Mark of the Beast.

The Anti-Christ.

I must admit that my head is spinning.

We all know that Mrs. Bachmann is running for President because she prayed for His guidance and He gave her the sense it was her purpose in life.  Are we to assume from that calling that perhaps God himself once again spake, something like “Beware the Mark of the Beast” and she got the sense He wanted her to turn 999 upside down so she could identify the Beast?

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

He seems like such a likable fellow so maybe it wasn’t the Lord Representative Bachmann heard, just more voices inside her head.

But, back to Mr. Cain who seems to be taking the Republican electorate by storm.

Great smile, happy warrior of the Far Right.

Better yet, a man with a plan to make America great again.

999

Yea for Herman and the birth of Cainsian Economics!

Now, this is tax reform we can all believe in because the Man with the Smile assures us it is “revenue neutral.”

That’s comforting.

Still, something is nagging at me.

Can’t quite put my finger on it.

Maybe it has something to do with a reality check.

You see, for 80% of Americans, their federal taxes will be driven up like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Of course, because it is revenue neutral, there has to be an offset to attain that condition, so his yin and yang of neutrality is made up by some tax savings for neediest of Americans: the top 20% of Americans besieged by class warfare.

They will receive tax savings equivalent to the tax increases for the 80% of Americans who don’t work as hard as they do, aren’t as smart as them, and who whine way too much.

Hmmm.

Maybe Bachmann’s onto something.

666

Ronald Reagan and Friend

President Ronald Reagan famously said:  ”I didn’t leave the Democratic party.  It left me.”

And, now, just months after he would have turned 100, he’s been left again, this time by the party that publicly reveres him as the father of modern conservatism  while running away from who he was and what he stood for.

FEAR Factor

Increasingly, it appears that the reactionaries who are taking control of the party that Lincoln created are governed less by real principle and more by raw FEAR  (False Evidence Appearing Real).

1.  Taxes

Like the Queen in Alice and Wonderland, any  Republican daring to contemplate—even consider—raising taxes to meet the demands of America is met with the chorus: “Off with his head!”

Like Alice, Mr. Reagan would certainly have shaken his head in disbelief.

After all, he raised taxes 11 times as President, including four times in two years.

Yet, the “myth” of Reagan as the great tax cutter lives on.

FEAR.

2.  America’s Deficit

President Obama is widely denounced by his opponents for America’s burgeoning deficit.

No matter that it is not true.  During President Bush’es eight years as President, the country’s deficit ballooned $5,700,000,000,000 even as Vice President Cheney so eloquently put it: “Deficits don’t matter.”

Obama’s policies are projected to increase the deficit by $1,400,000,000,000—a quarter of his predecessor.

Yet the “myth” persists that Democrats are big spenders and the country should look back at that old deficit hawk, Ronald Reagan.

But, fact is, in Reagan’s eight years in office, the deficit increased  more than $3,000,000,000,000 (are you beginning to see a Republican pattern here?) which was more than the combined deficits for all his 20th century predecessors combined (and twice as much as they are projected to increase if Obama if president for eight years).

FEAR.

3.  Immigration

Like taxes, the mantra of anti-immigration stirs the blood of nearly all red-blooded Republicans.

And President Reagan?  Here’s where he stood: ”I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and lived here, even though sometime back they may have entered illegally.”  He believed so strongly about it that he granted amnesty to over three million illegals.

FEAR.

4.  America’s Debt Ceiling

We all vividly recall the GOP brinksmanship that nearly put America into default—and which led one of the credit agencies to downgrade America’s creditworthiness.  Some reactionary Congressmen even went so far as to call for default.

What would Reagan have thought of this?  In a 1987 national address, he told the country:

“Unfortunately, Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinkmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest markets would skyrocket. Instability would occur in financial markets and the federal deficit would soar.

“The United States has a special responsibility to itself and the world to meet its obligations. It means we have a well-earned reputation for reliability and credibility — two things that set us apart in much of the world.”

Indeed, during President Reagan’s two terms, the debt ceiling was raised 17 times.

FEAR.

Which leads me to this.  Of all the Republican presidents in the last half century (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and his son, George Bush) why is it that the Republican Party has abandoned its most revered icon?

Whatever happened to “Win One for the Gipper?”

Welcome to Political Test where liberty and politics come together.

This website is dedicated to Miss Liberty, “ a welcoming mother, a symbol of hope to the outcasts and downtrodden of the world.”≈Paul Auster.

Here, you’ll find opinion, some history, and. . . gasp. . . little tests to see how much history you really know.

So, let’s get started.  For your first political test, answer this question:

Which of these Americans warned:

“They will soon out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious.”

Hint #1:  It’s a famous white guy, craving publicity.

Wait!  All the candidates fit that description.

Hint #2:  It wasn’t the person who wrote this: