A Verifiable National Threat: The GOP

"Republicans know how to run a business, run a government, and deal with national security."

This morning, as I contemplate our country's economic and national security catastrophe--we can't be in economic meltdown without being also being at grave security risk--I'm reminded that those who've run the government, the investment banks and the Big Three automakers into the ditch are Republicans.

I'm reminded, too, that Republicans love to boast about their patriotism. I just wonder where that patriotism was when the boys in the CEO suite made the decisions that trashed our flagship corporations, blew the world's confidence in our market, trashed our national honor, shipped our jobs offshore, and put the stockholder ahead of the nation.

This crisis -- too paltry a word -- didn't sweep upon us suddenly and without warning. For thirty years, Republicans have made major policy decisions that they knew or should have known would bring us to this point. Where was all that patriotism?

If any teenage mom can explain the flaw in the notion that people will self-regulate, nobody can tell me that our leaders weren't fully aware that deregulation would bring bags of loot to a few at the price of disaster for the rest of us. If you haven't, yet, please read The Shock Doctrine. You'll see just how knowing and deliberate it all is--is, and continues to be. Pray, where is that patriotism?

Since even I can predict a market meltdown if there's nothing but air to sell, you can't tell me that our national failure to ensure that we are a producing economy--a nation that actually makes tangible goods of value--wasn't understood to be a guarantee that one day, an economy built on vapors would collapse. So exactly where was all that patriotism?

And now, when Bush is shoveling our tax dollars and those of the next ten generations out the door in secret deals with family banks and massive bailouts to AIG executives who, as we speak, are again lolling poolside at Arizona's most expensive resports, where's the patriotism?

The lousy management of business, banking, government, and economy is more than evident. So where's the patriotism?

And by the way, Department of Justice: Aren't there laws to stop the looting of the national treasury? Aren't there laws that require our public officials to exercise fiduciary accountability? Isn't rank, bald-faced theft an actionable offense?

I heard this morning that if the Big Three automakers go down, three million American jobs will be gone. If that happens, we're in the second Republican-created Great Depression. Therefore, if that's true, we have no choice but to bail them out, even though they themselves created their own demise. So much for Republicans' mantra of personal responsibility. But what gets me is that everyone saw it coming. It makes me furious that we're in this situation, and it makes me crazy that even one American saw fit to vote for even one Republican last week. A-a-astonishing.

I don't know if there's anything that the American people can do to ensure that those responsible are made accountable in a tangible, meaningful way--as in a racketeering conviction or something--and that we are repaid when the economy finally crawls back into the black. But one thing I do know, now forever and indelibly, and I hope you do, too: Republicans suck at business, government, and national security. They're not just bad. They're verifiably dangerous.