Bipartisan Treason

John F. Kennedy would be a Republican if he were here today. When a friend suggested that the Democrats of the fifties and sixties were less liberal than now and akin to the current Republicans, I was stunned. I almost laughed in his face. Then I started to think, he was right.

The Democrats of two decades ago - Harry Truman, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Sam Rayburn, Adlai Stevenson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Lyndon Jonhson, John Kennedy - were all doing things that Republicans do now.

Consider major issues such as budget deficits and spending increases. Hey big spender, no one could match Senator Humphrey. He would be comfortable with the trillion-dollar dreamers in the GOP today. As for reckless budgeteering, popular Republican President Ronald Reagan gets the prize for submitting budgets larger than those proposed by spendthrift Democrats in congress. He managed to tack $2 trillion onto the national debt. Well, of course, Reagan had been a Democrat for decades. He hailed Franklin Delano Roosevelt as his idol.

Here come the Bushites with their control of both houses of congress and a veto-challenged president delivering deficits in the half-a-trillion-dollar range. The Kennedy/Humphrey party worked hard, striving to commit such crimes against the republic, but they never came close to Bush. Both he and Kennedy pushed through tax cuts while spending more revenue than they collected. That's just fine with Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett, who says, "It's good to spend when the economy is sluggish."

"Everyone's a Keynesian now," President Nixon said, meaning that the once despised British socialist economist had won over his detractors. Lord John Maynard Keynes was the champion advocate of deficit spending to stimulate the economy. It's called pump priming.

Most Democrats of old supported Medicare, Headstart, Americorps, controls on agriculture, welfare programs, subsidies to businesses and ranchers, federal aid to education, government snooping, income redistribution, space explorations and federal encroachments galore. Then there is the endless maze of agencies and bureaus: FDA, FTC, SEC, OPIC, OSHA, FCC, BLM, EPA, FAA, DOE, NEA, etc. The GOP opposed the creation of those, but current Republican love them all.

In 1968, Alabama Governor George Wallace said, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties." He was right. More than a quarter of a century later, Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader agree.

War. Did someone mention war? Make that plural. Republicans excoriated the opposing party for involving us in foreign wars. In the presidential election campaign of 1964, the GOP ran ads in newspapers displaying war photos of wounded GIs on the battlefield. They meant to shock you into voting against Democrats and their policies of interference, intervention and involvement. They pointed to the record of Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, who campaigned on the slogan: "He kept us out of war." Later, after repeatedly promising: "Your sons will not die on foreign soil," FDR had plenty to do with meddling us into war against Japan and Germany. Blockading shipping and destroying submarines on the high seas are acts of war. And the Korean war was labeled "Truman's war," by Robert Taft, Republican Senate leader. The GOP pinned the Viet Nam war on President Johnson although President Eisenhower initially sent our military forces there.

Two can play the blame game. Republican presidents sent American forces to fight in Granada, Panama, Lebanon, Iraq - all without any declaration of war by congress, as mandated by the Constitution. FDR called that piece of paper "a horse and buggy document."

Globalism and internationalism seem to be mandatory in both camps. Foreign aid is a given. We give an annual $ 4 billion to Israel to "help it get on it's feet." Israel's neighbor, Egypt, receives $3 billion so that they are not slighted. We blow another $10 billion a year on several other nations around the world. Then, just to show how much we love them, we station soldiers in 128 countries.

The elephants have stolen the donkeys' clothes. The modern party-of-Lincoln folks are international meddlers, collectivist control freaks who pay attention to the Constitution only when it suits their purposes.

Democrats tweedle dee, Republicans tweedle dum. Tax and spend, intervene and interfere, make perpetual war, feed an obese government, and forget the principles of liberty.

Call it bipartisan treason.

When he was the Republican candidate for president, Senator Barry Goldwater said he was "A choice, not an echo." He lost big time and echoes continue.

Modern Republicans are clones, they're the me-too party. Why wouldn't John F. Kennedy be a Republican today? He could spend taxpayers' dollars almost as fast as they do, send soldiers and CIA operatives on the warpath here and there - as he did in Viet Nam and Cuba, interfere with the education system, order space flights (Bush wants to go to Mars,) and trample on states' rights, add to the socialist schemes, and even cuss like Vice President Dick Cheney.

Sure, JFK would fit right in.



Thoughts While Jaywalking

* Colin Powell has gone and done it now. He criticized the Bushites for sending too few troops to invade Iraq. Here comes the smear. Put him into the anti-American slot, along with six generals, ex-CIA spooks, journalists, and all the protesters. Colin, you're not supporting the troops.

* Those protesting illegal immigrants will have to learn that we're trying to integrate, not segregate in the USA. Joining together as a bloc frightens most Americans. We want them to be part of this overtaxed, overworked and overeating nation. If they don't learn English and blend with our culture, the native-born Scandinavians of Chicago and Minneapolis will carry out their threatened strike. I'm sure you can imagine what that would mean.

* We can feel safe about gas and oil prices with the president, vice president and secretary of state all former top executives in the industry. How could we be so lucky?

* President Bush calls himself "The Decider." Then who's "The Impeacher."

* The European Parliament investigated reported CIA flights over their continent since 9/11. They concluded that at least 1,000 flights, with an unknown number carrying kidnapped suspects of terrorism, were made to nations which condone torture.

* Why not a class-action impeachment/recall of Bob, Orrin, Dick, and W.?

* Don't forget to check the St. George smog, multiply by 10, and e-mail your family and friends.


IT'S ALL SO SIMPLE.