California Repubs

Am I nuts?

Is there something I'm missing?

All across the nation, Repubs are digging in their heels and "just saying no" to recovery, to stimulus, to spending and to taxes.

Am I deluded by ObamaNation, am I a thoughtless bleeding-heart liberal who loves to tax and spend?

California's in trouble, and for months now, we've been trying to frame a state budget, and last night, one Republican pulled a vote and the measure failed. It seems that it was an issue of raising some taxes. Governor Schwarzenegger would have signed off on it, but his own party failed to stand and be counted.

Not that I'm pleased with the taxes to be raised: sales and gasoline among others, which hit the poorest of the poor the hardest.

But at least it's a beginning to replenish spent coffers and save the jobs of millions of Californians who depend upon state construction projects and state jobs.

At what point does principle become bullheadedness?

When that principle is held in isolation from all other factors! Even the greatest truth, when held in isolation from other truths, becomes a lie!

Having lost the election and taken a beating in the polls, the Repubs are knee-jerking back to their so-called principles, after violating them for years.

They cut taxes for the wealthy and borrowed hundreds of billions from the world to fund our way of life, fight two wars, despoil the environment, deny health care to children and threaten the wellbeing of millions of seniors across the land.

Repub philosophy has taken this nation downward, and much of the world with it. We are teetering on the brink of disaster, and the Repubs seem paralyzed - rather than thinking their way through the past, they now seek some bizarre form of redemption by retreating into a "principled" recalcitrance further adding to our woes.

There are no easy answers to our present predicament, but just saying no is no answer at all.

P.S. check out "watching Republicans grieve" - a new HBO documentary.