Chutzpah Indeed

If a dumbass mispronounces a Yiddish word; co-owns a "counseling" center that practices "pray away the gay;" signs a pledge that asserts that a child born into slavery has a better chance of being born into a two-parent family than African-American children born since January 20, 2009, proposes banning pornography and criminalizing abortion-service providers, does she deserve to make a sound?
Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann is scamming the Sharron Angle playbook, saying she couldn't discuss whether or not her "counseling" center practices "pray away the gay" due to HIPPA laws, then she gets in her bus (ala Shecky Palin) and flees the curious press.
She's making a lot of noise, but none of it seems to make sense. Okay, granted, smart people mispronounce words all the time. George W. Bush mispronounced "nuclear" for 8 years. Oh, wait, bad example. What smart person mispronounces words when a microphone is in their face? Dang. Can't think of one.
More to the point, how has the Republican party sunk so low that she is considered to be a legitimate candidate? I'm not complaining. I mean, if the GOP truly wants a good old-fashioned 1980s style ass-whipping like they inflicted on Jimmy Carter, Fritz Mondale and Michael Dukakis, bring the moron on. But if they're serious about taking back the White House, it sure as hell isn't going to be Batshit Bachmann, Tim "Neither Good Nor" Pawlenty, cultists Mitt Romney and John Huntzman, the pizza guy, Sir "I Do" of Newt, Chrispy Cream Christie, Rudy "a noun, a verb and 9/11" Giuliani or the second craziest male member of the Paul family in Congress.
The Republicans are practicing suicidal brinksmanship with their resistance to raising the debt ceiling, and if the world economy goes belly up they'll deserve the blame. Alexander Hamilton, in establishing the American economic system, believed having debt would be good for the Republic, so his Treasury Dept. took on debts incurred during the Revolutionary War and the Articles of Confederation, totaling $75,463,476.52 on January 1, 1791. The debt rose with the War of 1812, followed by 18 surpluses in 20 years during which the U.S. paid off 99.97% of its debt. With the Civil War, the debt rose from $65 million in 1860 to to $2.7 billion following the war. With World War I, it reached $25.5 billion (in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson set the debt ceiling for the first time at $11.5 billion).
When Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, it was $19 billion, 20% of the GNP. By 1950, the debt was $260 billion, 20% of GNP. Through 12 years of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the gross public debt went from $909 billion in 1980 to $3 trillion in 1992. Under President Clinton, the debt rose and fell and rose to $3.4 trillion in 2000. And then came Shrub. By the time he was through wreaking havoc with the Constitution, invading one country looking for one guy and another to avenge a hit that had been put out on his daddy, all the while using supplemental appropriations that weren't even included in the official debt limit. Shrub and his budget director, the failed Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, ran the clock up to $14.2 trillion. And the debt ceiling was raised almost as a courtesy 7 times.
But, now, those wanting to "take America back" from the black man are trying to do all they can to see he accomplishes nothing. Smart people know better. Smart people can count. Smart people can handle the pronunciation of words from another language, know that homosexuality is not a choice or of Satan, that family planning for the poor and the young is a good idea and that the tax cuts given to his cronies, his buddies, his fellow rich, his fellow oil bidnessmen, have crippled this country's ability to be truly great.
If the debt ceiling is not raised, and taxes on the rich along with it, Mom and Dad won't get their Social Security checks in August. My wife's unemployment will go away. Credit card and mortgage rates will go up and America's volunteer military will truly become a volunteer military.
The Republicans love to accuse us on the left of being un-American. Well, this whistling past the graveyard of impending economic doom makes me question the patriotism of Bachmann & Co., the GOP's TV network Fixed News (and the accompanying probe of Rupert Murdoch) and the truly clueless Rep. Eric Cantor.