"Help America survive Republicans"? An odd crusade for the left to launch, just when Dems control everything and the GOP is sidelined. On the other hand, financial derivatives for good or ill are big right now, so why not a fourth-order polemical derivative? The first order was Paul Simon's sardonic '70s ballad, "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." The second, a humorless book by two Colorado lefties called "50 Ways You Can Help Obama Change America." So I tagged along (your editor, John Andrews) with an Oct. 11 column in the Denver Post, "50 Ways to Help America Survive Obama." Now comes Post reader Kathy Graybill with her riff on my riff on their riff on Simon's overriffed original.
Give Kathy one thing: unlike many liberals with their handout mentality, this gal has a parodizing parasitic work ethic that won't quit. She labored away at countering my list of 50, to the full measure of her own two-score and ten, and only then did she put down her pen. Having no Nobel Prize to confer, I can at least reward her with publication here.
50 Ways You Can Help America Survive Republicans
By Kathy Graybill * kgraybill@frii.com
*Cleave to the Constitution (there’s nothing in it about capitalism being the economic system of America)
*Dust off the Declaration (“promote the general welfare” not promote only MY welfare).
*Work harder for social justice.
*Save more, borrow less.
*Pray.
*Be Jesus-like and help (financially, emotionally, etc.) those couples not as fortunate as you in order to help them to avoid the divorce epidemic.
*Read!
*Listen to NPR.
*Tithe to open, caring, affirming church groups and charities.
*Question authority in a critical, thoughtful manner – judges (Clarence Thomas as well as Sonia Sotomayor), lawyers (lawyers of mega-corporations as well as ACLU lawyers).
*Distrust the mean-spirited, entertainment news channels.
*Strive to show through our actions our country’s goodness, not by empty gestures and words.
*Gird against all types of radical, dogmatic beliefs that pose harm to others.
*Accept the unbelievably horrendous mistakes that were made by the Bush administration that have left us in Iraq and Afghanistan after so many years and start to pull out.
*Negotiate firmly with Iran while at the same time promote good will with the democracy-loving Iranian people.
*Militarily defend Israel like we would any other ally but don’t defend them if they present an obstacle to making a compromise with the Palestinians.
*Revive NATO.
*Suspect all dictatorial countries - Saudi Arabia as well as Russia.
*See the United Nations as an imperfect institution yet the best one we have to keep countries communicating.
*Secure the borders from companies outsourcing jobs to countries where they can pay workers less.
*Keep our country armed intelligently and geared to the 21st century problems.
*Work for a color-blind community.
*Reject the race card and strive to eradicate all racism.
*Boycott Wall Street.
*Support quality education for all students, not just the ones whose parents have the resources to get them into the schools of choice.
*Be mindful that non-parent taxpayers are paying for your children to be educated.
*Be thankful that we have a socialist public education system so your children can receive an education at a cheap price to you.
*Require that charter schools put ALL of the kids in the district into the enrollment lottery (or better yet, only the poor, disadvantaged, homeless, English language learners; only those with behavior problems, dysfunctional families, inattentive parents -the at risk students) to make our education system equal for all students.
*Be sure that colleges get the funding they require.
*Demand all types of diversity.
*Reject an exclusive society.
*Encourage the working and stay-at-home mom.
*Give to organizations that provide medical and counseling services to all pregnant women in all areas of the country.
*Support the criminalization and shaming of murderers of medical personnel who perform legal procedures.
*Get arrested protesting the war in Iraq that has caused an untold number of deaths and injuries and suffering, (how many abortions we have “performed” on women who didn’t want one is anybody’s guess; talk about death panels for the elderly!).
*Dare the rich CEOs of companies to put themselves on only Social Security for retirement and only Medicare for health care and forego any bonuses.
*Get arrested demonstrating for a timeline to pull troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan.
*Rally for the right of workers to get paid a decent salary.
*Organize for protecting the environment.
*Sit in for renewable energy research.
*Call for breaking our dependence on oil.
*Demand that quality health care is a right for everybody, not a privilege.
*Ridicule those who still believe that global warming is not a danger.
*Tell Cheney jokes.
*Circulate the rape exclusionary clause in the Halliburton employee contracts and demand that not one more cent of taxpayer money go to them.
*Start a Michael Moore club.
*Retire Boehner and Cantor.
*Draft somebody, anybody, that is mature, decent and thoughtful and who believes in the values of average Americans to run against Michele Bachmann in 2010.
*Get active as a Republican and elect at least a few responsible, critical thinking Republicans.
*Or get active as a Democrat – not because Democrats are so much better than Republicans, but because intelligent opposition is liberty’s lifeblood, not mean-spirited screaming.
GWB is gone and the U.S.A will survive in spite of his mean-spirited, ignorant, fascist regime. But at what cost? He ruined our economy (but, to be fair, only the little, regular people are suffering, not Bush’s friends and colleagues - see New Orleans) and killed tens of thousands of people in an unnecessary, poorly conducted war (but, to be fair, most of these people were poor, foreigners and not the God-sent people like Bush and his family and friends). As Bush revved the motor for change (huge tax cuts for the wealthy, non-regulation for Wall Street, two poorly-handled wars), somebody should have hit the brakes for thoughtful deliberation. I didn’t want our kids inheriting a country a rookie, shallow-thinking, uncompassionate rich kid wrecked. But they have.