90% of Americans are low income and middle class, hardworking people struggling to pay their living expenses…many of them struggling so hard they can’t even AFFORD to get swindled into a bad mortgage scheme by the corrupt lending institutions that got us into this current ‘financial crisis’. Let me ask you a question. Which party places the 90% of hardworking, “JOE THE PLUMBERS” as their priority? If you say Republicans, you know you are lying. C’mon, you KNOW you are…If you don’t know you are lying, you are either smoking some serious weed or your head is buried in your neo-capitalist sandbox.

The Democrats are the party that cares about the worker and the common man. They approach their jobs every day asking the question, “What do 90% of Americans need?” Republican politicians get up in the morning angry that they have to share anything with anybody, let alone Democrats. (They don’t even want to share with other Republicans unless it’s sharing the boneheaded, greed-driven rhetoric of that day’s Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh radio show.) No, Republican leaders approach their job each day asking the question, “What do the elite 10% of Americans need on Wall Street, and what can we do to avoid helping ANYBODY BUT THEM?”(They like to call it fancy terminology like “Trickle Down Economics”, when what is really ‘trickling down’ is their drooling over how much money they are making at the common man’s expense.)

What do 90% of Americans need? The last time we had a leader who completely knew the answer to this question, he was assassinated. Of course I am referring to John F. Kennedy. There were three men at that time who had the answers and the courage necessary to give Main Street America the American Dream come true. They were JFK, Robert Kennedy his brother and Dr. Martin Luther King. It is no coincidence that they were all assassinated within a 5 year period. Question: What political party do you suppose the assassins of these men were most closely affiliated with? That’s of course a rhetorical question, because you and I know the answer.

The hate-speak, racism and vitriolic foaming at the mouth by Republican voters toward Barack OBama is scary and astounding to say the least. The more he calmly aligns himself with what 90% of Americans need, the more Republicans (amazingly INCLUDING many who will have their lives helped immensely by his policies) have a childish fit, call him racial slurs and even shout out “kill him” at a rally where Gov. Sarah Palin spoke. Inexcusably, she said and did nothing to stop or at least address these whackos in her audience.  Sometimes something SO conspicuous in it’s absence speaks volumes about a person.

I was performing in a bar in Virginia City during the primaries for this election, and Barack OBama’s image appeared on the bar tv screen. An individual who was sitting at the bar, was not drunk, and who also WORKED there hollered out proudly, “Someone needs to shoot that son of a bitch!” I wanted to take my guitar and knock him off his barstool. Since then I have lost 3 gigs where I performed because of racist comments made by patrons where the bartender would not speak up to stop it.

Recently a Republican voter at a gig where I perform in Elk Grove, California, told me this ‘financial crisis’ has been created entirely because of “all the black people who HAD to have a house”. He went on to say that “All black people are going to vote for OBama because they are ALL racist.”(Rush Limbaugh has specifically been helping to instigate this kind of garbage mentality) Needless to say I explained that such comments were untrue and only made HIM appear to be the racist. The owner found out about the exchange and instead of talking to me about it, just made sure I wasn’t on the schedule anymore.

It is not worth it to me to keep my mouth shut just so I can make money. It is worth it to most Republicans to do whatever it takes just to make money. That is the difference between most Democrats and most Republicans. Let me draw a quick metaphor here using dogs and cats:  If pets had political parties, cats would mostly be Republicans…I say mostly because there are a few exceptions where an occasional cat I’ve met would probably be a Democrat. But by and large, their species behavior and character is that of a Republican: They act kind of snobby and elitist, finicky, and only care about themselves. They want to sink their claws into everything they can. They are always stalking on the prowl as an Imperialist, marking everything as their ‘territory’. If you were to slip and fall in the shower and couldn’t move, they’d only come and find you when it was clear you hadn’t remembered to feed them. Then when they found you, they’d just snub their nose at you and walk away, shaking their heads at how it was your own fault – you made your own bed, now you can lay it it.

On the other hand, dogs would be Democrats. There are a few exceptions, I readily admit, but usually this is because of how their owners trained them not to be kind. Dogs would clearly be Democrats because they are man’s best friend. They want to help any way they can to make your life better, including getting the paper for you in the morning, protecting you from others who would mean you harm, etc. If you slipped in the shower, they’d know it and run to your aid. Unfortunately all they will do is repeatedly lick you and bark trying to tell you that they’d surely dial 911 for you but the key pad buttons are too small for their paws! Think about it, all you Republican cat lovers: dogs even lay around on the couch all day waiting for a handout. Don’t you consider that a democratic quality? But thats harmless compared to how these CEO cats, friends of Bush and Fed Chairman Bernanke, scratched up your brand new leather couch screaming in heat for  this latest corrupt bail out. So both sides do a fair amount of ‘waiting for handouts’, and the handouts Democrats get pale in comparison to the handouts Republican Wall Street types get.  

The question is, who needs the handout the most? Who deserves help from American tax dollars? The answer is unequivocal: 90% of Americans need it. 90% of Americans need some kind of basic healthcare program provided by the government. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN’T GET YOUR OWN BETTER PROGRAM! A national healthcare plan will not mean your private one will suffer or diminish. I’m so sick of this stupid argument by the conservative right. 90% of Americans need and deserve tax relief and mortgage assistance. 90% of Americans need all this ‘Free Trade’ garbage that outsources all our manufacturing jobs under NAFTA and CAFTA to go away forever. 90% of Americans need regulations that prevent huge big box chain, monopolizing corporations like Walmart and Home Depot from crippling and destroying Mom and Pop small businesses in our communities. 90% of Americans need college to be paid for at least for an Associates Degree if not for a full 4 years, and why in the world don’t we guarantee a full ride to any state college for all veterans? These programs could be implemented at a FRACTION of the cost of this unnecessary debacle in Iraq. (Notice I did not include Afghanistan, as it is a different issue there, and we had G-7 and United Nations support for going after Al Qaeda there. We did not have G-7 or United Nations support for invading Iraq because the whole world knew Iraq posed no threat and had nothing to do with the attacks on 9/11.)

The American Dream has become an American Nightmare under the fraudulent, unregulated, excessively greed-driven policies of Wall Street, the Bush Administration and the Republican Party.  Their hypocrisy astounds me. Republicans have a very loud ‘meow’ mantra they consistently proclaim, that being that they are all about keeping government out of business. Oops, wait…that is only until their fraudulent business practices cause them to take a big loss. Then they ‘meow’ ten times louder FOR government to step in…more specifically you the hardworking taxpayer, giving them a handout to the tune of a TRILLION dollars. It’s called “Privatizing Profit, Socializing Losses”. It’s hypocrisy on STEROIDS. It’s a scheme that harms 90% of Americans beyond belief, literally stealing your money to serve the elite 5 to 10% of Wall Street.

A revolution is at the door, because an overwhelming majority of truly patriotic, hardworking Americans are waking up and seeing this corrupt double standard by the Republican Party. They are clearly seeing that what Wall Street has been up to is NOT patriotic, and does not have the interest of the average American at it’s heart. Barack OBama does, and thanks to his courage and leadership, we have hope to once again be proud of America…the kind of patriotic, populist pride our founding forefathers brought to the first American Revolution against ‘taxation without representation’. (Oh, and by the way, it’s a historical fact that our founding forefathers were dog lovers. You knew that, right?  Hope you’ll share your comments here as well 🙂