What's The Matter With Blue Collar Republicans? Part Deux

You're now as American as baseball, mom, apple pie, and...oak trees???

OK...on 11/18, I posted a lame reference to Thomas Frank's "WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?". I say "lame" because it was my second and least attractive effort. The first effort...which I would have taken great pride in if posted...was wiped out after I highlighted it to copy it and accidently hit the SHIFT key. Apparently, on this BLOGGER app, if you have every single letter of a blog highlighted before hitting the shift key, it wipes it all out. I tried to duplicate it with all but one sentence highlighted and found it only worked if the whole thing was highlighted. God bless technological advancements...

OK...I've gotten off track. The point of this post isn't to complain that technology can lead to almost as many frustrations as it resolves, but to further the point that blue collar workers in the heartland of America are voting for Republicans who betray the same moral issues that get them elected.

Case in point (courtesy of Yahoo News):

Congress OKs $388 Billion Spending Bill

"Resolving one last-minute fight, Senate GOP leaders agreed to give abortion-rights supporters a chance by spring to repeal language making it easier for health-care providers to decline to provide abortions or offer counseling and referrals."

You read that right. The GOP leadership is keeping anti-abortion language of the spending bill available for further debate.

Let me list some items that, apparently, they didn't need to leave open for debate:

• $335,000 to protect sunflowers in North Dakota from blackbird damage.
• $60 million for a new courthouse in Las Cruces, N.M.
• $225,000 to study catfish genomes at Alabama's Auburn University.
• $2 million for the government to try buying back the former presidential yacht Sequoia for President Bush. The boat (sold about 30 years ago) is currently assessed as being worth almost $10 million...but the current owners will likely be forced to take much closer to the $2 million approved.
• The FBI (news - web sites), the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) and NASA (news - web sites) got healthy increases.
• Education, however, grew by less than 2 percent. "No Child Left Behind"? How about "Every Child Underfunded?
• Denied attempts to block the Bush administration's restriction of overtime; as many as 1 million or more Americans now are at risk to lose their overtime pay.
• There will be visas for 20,000 more skilled foreign workers for high technology businesses (workers that are cheaper than and redundant to the many unemployed American tech workers, mind you).
• Defeating efforts to extend some federal milk subsidies and repeal country-of-origin labels for many foods.
• A provision was included that named the oak tree as our national tree (added by a Republican from the great state of Virginia).

So, folks, an unborn child could be said to be considered less important by the GOP than...

• Designating a national tree.
• Screwing our kids out of budgeted funds for their education.
• Shielding Corporate America from having to compensate a good portion of the American worker for the time they lose with their family when forced to work overtime.
• Providing Corporate America with cheap, legal immigrant workers rather than pay fair wages to Americans.
• Getting a sweetheart deal on a $10 million yacht for Dubya.
• Sending man back out to space again (likely to help "spacial entrepeneurs").
• Finally understanding the elusive catfish DNA.
• Building a court house in New Mexico that, by the budget, appears to have plans calling for it to be made of diamonds and assorted precious metals (but of course, I jest).
• And...finally...protecting sunflowers in the RED state of North Dakota; apparently meaning that the Republican congressmen from that fine state aren't sure if life begins at conception, but are sure that it shouldn't end with blackbirds tearing apart the precious, living sunflower plant.

So...my brothers and sisters in the heartland of America...allow me to quote Richard Dawson's character in THE RUNNING MAN:

WHO LOVES YOU? AND WHO DO YOU LOVE?

Really...if seeing where the GOP's priorities really are isn't more disturbing than the revelation that no one really wins in THE RUNNING MAN...then y'all are just sheep willingly being led to the slaughter.

If that's the case...by all means...don't let me keep you any longer and deprive the GOP from feeding on your carcasses...