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Jan. 12, 2010
By Brian Fleck
NORTH LIBERTY LEADER
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Despite the bitter cold of late, Buzz still begs for his walk.
It's automatic. At 9 a.m., he starts giving me the stare and a series of nudges. Of course if I give in to his urgings and try to get him outside he retreats immediately. It's cold out there. But the next morning he'll do it again because in the memory and judgment of a dog, it could be winter cold one day and spring warm the next.
It's similar to how Republicans hope to pin everything wrong on President Obama. They forget that almost all our problems today have roots in the Republican administrations of the past, and hope that the mess we're in now is somehow someone else's fault.
I mean, if you can grouse that one Nigerian underwear bomber shows a lapse in resolve for fighting terrorism, what can you say for the administration that allowed 9/11 to happen while on its watch?
Or, at a more local level, I see that Solon's own Christopher Reed is running for Iowa's 2nd Congressional District from a front page article (or more accurately, puff piece) in last week's Solon Economist. In the article Reed says he wants to stand up to "President Obama's desire to redistribute the wealth" Come on Chris, how can you say that with a straight face when it's the Republicans that have the track record of redistributing the wealth, from the poor and middle class to the rich, and super-rich.
And you want to present yourself as a Reagan Conservative? Is that the same Reagan that presided over the Savings and Loan bailouts? The same Reagan that lowered gas mileage standards and thwarted efforts to switch to renewable energy? The same Reagan that saw the indictment and conviction of 138 administration officials? The same Reagan that sold - secretly and illegally - arms to the Iranians, weapons that may one day take the lives of U.S. citizens and soldiers, if they haven't done so already? The same Reagan that gave us Oliver North, James Watt and Casper Wineberger?
Reed also managed to work in family values in the puff piece (have I mentioned twice that it was puff piece?). Whenever conservatives start talking family values it's time to check where your sons and daughters are. If you have no idea of what I'm talking about, Google Mark Foley (sending sexually explicit emails to teenage boys), Ed Schrock (caught on tape soliciting sex from a male prostitute), David Vitter (soliciting female prostitutes), Larry Craig (soliciting sex in an airport bathroom), Mark Sanford (affair with Argentinean soul mate), or John Ensign (affair with staff member) to name a few "family values" Republicans.
Or on an even more local level, look to another Solon candidate, this one running for the Johnson County Board of Supervisors.
Lori Cardella is running as a Republican on a platform of fiscal responsibility, among other things.
For those not local or out of the loop: a seat on our county governing body went vacant with the untimely death of one its members, Larry Meyers. Since there was only about a year left on his term, the board opted to appoint a replacement rather than pay the cost of a special election, estimated to be about $75,000. Another recent, similar election cost $88,000, or a little more than the price of employing a sheriff's deputy.
Cardella, however, who has never run for public office, forced an election by petition and then filed to run for the seat. She could have waited a year and saved the county the money, but opted not to, for her own self-serving interest.
Republicans like to talk the talk but not walk the walk.
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