As America braces for an all-Republican Congress featuring some of the craziest right wingers in the country’s history, I am even more grateful for Barack Obama. He is our last line of defense, the guardian of sanity in a nation that seems to have lost its collective mind.
The Senate will now be under Republican control, and you can bet the new committee will try their best to undo the President’s work.
The environment is a prime target. Pollution control will be under ferocious assault.
And, of course these right wingers will do everything in their power to punish the poor. Programs like child nutrition, food stamps, school lunches and unemployment insurance will be under attack. as will health care and immigration reform.
And you know how Republicans loathe Wall Street reforms. They’re hell bent on giving the robber barons the key to the national treasury – without let or hindrance. Main Street’s investors are in for a wild and scary ride.
In the House, a hard core of Tea Party crusaders are targeting such basic rights as equal pay for women and minorities, legalized abortion and birth control, tolerance of minority sexual orientation, religious freedom – and the civil rights achievements of the past half century.
Against this toxic tide, there stands one man, slight of build but with an iron will – Barack Obama.
The Founding Fathers had the foresight to endow the President with the power of the veto. And President Obama has made no secret of his readiness to use it.
I fear this resolve places his life in even more danger than it already is.
I’ve read that the Secret Service is dealing with four times as many death threats as for any previous President. His election and reelection as America’s first black President has enraged many in this still-racist society.
With the public in ferment over racist police killings – and the killing of police officers – and the feversih rhetoric pouring from the airwaves and the Internet, America seems already to be dangerously unstable.
I shudder to think of the shock waves that will be generated by the inevitable conflicts between the new Congress and the White House during the next two years.
Click for more on the new Senate.
Click for some of the crazies in the House.
