As the shutdown looms..

My husband is a disabled Vietnam veteran who receives benefits from the Veteran’s Administration each month. This is what happens when something goes wrong while in service to our country. We promise to take care of our veterans. They take care of us and, in turn, we take care of them. 

Unless you’re a Tea Party Republican. Those people don’t care about anyone. It’s almost as if they’re living in an alternate universe that’s bleeding into ours. They don’t make any sense and clearly do not understand what governing is. These mentally challenged individuals believe that they can control spending by not raising the debt limit. Trying to reason with them only falls on deaf ears. It’s a fairly simple concept, really. I’m sure they all have credit cards. If they don’t pay off the balance each month, they have to pay, say it with me now, interest or finance charges on the remaining balance. Or, say you finance a car you want to buy. You’ll pay a certain amount of interest on that loan. Same thing happens when you buy a home. It all adds to the debt you owe. That’s what the debt ceiling thing is. Voting each time to agree to simply pay the bills we’ve already agreed to incur is stupid and pointless. We owe the money. And although I know that old school Republicans exist, they’re either too intimidated by these people, or they just don’t care anymore to stop them. And now the Tea Party Republicans want to bail on our fiscal responsibilities. How can they hold office if they don’t understand this? If this were a business, they’d be fired.

Somehow, they’ve even managed to incorporate the idea of freedom, into the equation. Unfortunately all they’ve really accomplished in my estimation is reducing freedom to an unrecognizable slogan or buzzword. And yet, they seem to be the biggest control freaks around. They want to force women to have vaginal ultrasounds before having an abortion, a constitutionally protected medical procedure. They know they can’t win elections so much anymore because of how insane they are so they re-draw the districting lines or find other ways to suppress the vote. It’s always in areas that typically vote for Democrats, so I guess they think if they stack the vote in their favor, they’ll be back in control.

But let’s look at what they do when Republicans (Tea Party or not) are in control. They lied us into two wars. They ended the Assault Weapons Ban. They crashed the economy. They enact laws typically on the state level that endanger workers’ rights and women’s rights. They seem to favor only protecting corporations instead of protecting people. They don’t believe in climate change and they don’t care if the earth is polluted out of existence. They pay homage to the 1% because that’s who fills their election coffers. And then there’s the racism. That filters into everything. It’s part of why they voted to reduce the SNAP program by almost 40 billion. And don’t even get me started on immigration reform or the whole, corporations are people my friend crap. This is compassionate conservatism at its finest.

And now they want to shut down the government unless we defund the Affordable Care Act. Never mind that the ACA is covering kids until they’re 26. Never mind that pre-existing conditions will be covered. Never mind that it’s going to save people money. Never mind that millions will have health insurance for maybe the first time ever. Never mind the facts, because as we all have seen, the GOP doesn’t ever let facts get in the way of decision-making. Instead, they make stuff up out of whole cloth and expect the rest of us to buy it hook, line and sinker. Well, we’re a whole lot smarter than that.

The country is in a mess. Crazy people always come out of the woodwork when these things happen. Many of them were elected to Congress. If we don’t get them out of office, our country will never get back on track. The American people deserve better than these lunatics. We cannot stay home in 2014. We have to stand up and tell these morons that we deserve better than what they’ve given us. Vote.