shipwreckI have never before written about politics for this site but I think the topic most important today.

This article may not look like it’s about children but it is (read to the end).

Yesterday, the Pope came out against the Catholic Church’s unfriendly & unproductive public policy of repeatedly attacking the poor, the gay, and women’s rights.

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By association, the Republican Party is being incriminated by the Holy Father’s words also for its own similar negative focus.

While it may appear to be muddy water at the moment, it is logical that as LBJ lost the Southern Democrats with his very unpopular civil rights push of the sixties – ruining the Democrats chances of a presidency for many years to come – the Republican Party could very well come out of this current fanatical attack on healthcare and the poor losing not  the South or even the nation, but the World.

There is a growing visceral reaction across this nation and I would suggest the planet (at least anywhere people can read and think) against this mean and unfriendly tail wagging what used to be a rather friendly, non-biting dog.

To mix my metaphors, the lunatics are now running the asylum and about to murder the residents (including their children).  This of course is a reference to the economic harm that will be done to the credit rating of the American government if these crazy people do what they have promised to do.  Once the credit rating is damaged, there will be far less that this nation can do for education, health care, and people living in poverty.

It is understood that Republicans cannot kill the new healthcare, but they can kill the economy.

If these folks succeed in killing the American economy for this failed attempt to keep people deemed undeserving of health care from getting it, they will (excuse my metaphor abuse) have killed the goose to save it.

The healthcare will stay, as will the mortally wounded economy which will heap more misery onto those already most miserable (the elderly, the young, the poor & disabled, veterans, & retirees).

I do not have words for the stupidity that drove our economy over the cliff with our most recent nose dive into bank & business failure and unemployment.  It was greed driven and avoidable.

For the Republican Party to take this almost repaired economy and aim it at a brick wall for spite, will put more people into poverty, cost us a recovery, and be remembered by the Pope and the rest of the world as American Exceptionalism that needs to be hated for years to come.  Our credibility as a nation that makes rational decisions is at stake as is our commitment to a safety net to the most vulnerable among us.

Please put an adult in the driver’s seat of this Party of Terror, or risk creating a much poorer nation, causing international economic chaos all over again, and bringing misery to a whole new generation of poor children.