My Jaw Dropped on This News

I can't believe the ignorance of the American voter (OK, we have stupid voters in Canada too, but this one is just hard for me to swallow.) As reported on Politico.com:

More Americans say Republicans would be better for the economy, taking a position Democrats had held through Barack Obama’s presidency, according to a new CNN/Opinion Research poll out Friday.

Forty-eight percent of the 1,009 adults surveyed nationwide said Republicans would “do a better job” of dealing with the economy, topping Democrats by three percentage points.

The number is a contrast from August, when Democrats were rated as better on the economy by 52 percent compared with 39 percent for Republicans.

Think about this. It was the Republicans who pushed to deregulate which let the Wall Street banks take on too much risk. They set up the trillion dollar bet between Wall Street and the American taxpayer. A bet with "heads Wall Street wins, tails the American taxpayer loses". Guess what happened? Wall Street won right up to the point where the American taxpayer lost. And all through this the Wall Street execs got and still get bonuses in the tens of billions of dollars for their "performance".

It was the Republicans and Greenspan at the Federal Reserve who buried their heads and ignored the subprime mortgages. The ones jokingly referred to as NINJA loans (No Income, No Job, no Assets).

It was the Republicans who looked at the great effort Clinton had gone to in creating a positive federal budget balance. The Republicans decided to raid the piggy bank with a trillion dollar give-away to the super-rich in tax cuts. The Republicans argued that we should "trust" the super-rich to immediately turn around and invest and create jobs instead of buying bigger yachts and bigger mansions (think Bernie Madoff).

It was the Republican who said there was no need to build up a positive balance sheet. Funny, starting under Bush I and building into a chorus of howls about "lock boxes" these very same Republicans demanded that social programs be cut to create a budget surplus. But when Clinton achieved it, Bush II and the Republicans immediately turned and claimed there was no need for the surplus. They said they had a "better use" of the money: use it to bribe the super-rich to create jobs. Oh yes... remember all those "jobs, jobs, jobs" created under Bush II? Neither do I.

But now the American public has decided that Obama -- who didn't create the mess -- deserves to be kicked out and the unrepentant Republican party that created the mess should be put back into the driver's seat. My jaw dropped on hearing this. If the American public votes in the Republicans, then I say they deserve their fate as the world's newest banana republic!

My worry will be that Canada can't detach itself from being a "neighbor" and moving somewhere far away -- say, in the southern hemisphere cozied up between New Zealand and Australia -- to get away from the flood of economic refugees who will be spilling over the border as the Republicans close down the last of the "made in America" jobs and move the tax rate on the super-rich to 0% while raising taxes and Social Security deductions on those who actually work for a living.