Apocryphal or not, the image of lemmings committing mass suicide is ingrained in our culture, so much so that we may borrow it to describe the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives:
As the shutdown lingers, some Republican moderates are openly frustrated that tea party darling Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appears to be calling the shots on what House Republicans do next. Cruz was one of the first to suggest passing narrow bills that fund those government agencies or functions that generate any public backlash.
"I think the leadership is committed to play the Cruz strategy all the way out," California Rep. Devin Nunes told reporters, before adding "if you can call it a strategy."
For two days, GOP leaders have pushed through a series of piecemeal spending bills for floor votes that would fund things like veterans affairs, national parks and medical research. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said Wednesday they plan to continue doing this.
"We've got ways to ease the pain on people," Cantor said. "We agree on a lot around here. We ought to fund that, and then we ought to sit down and talk about that which we don't."
Apparently, lemmings aren’t blind. They’re just wimps.
Congressman Cantor, you brought this upon yourself. No point in getting weak-kneed now that your own supporters, Teabaggers and fiscal conservatives, are feeling the pain. Hunting season is upon us, yet hunters out west can’t go into national parks legally. Poor children with cancer, many of them who live near toxic waste sites and other highly carcinogenic locales in red states where environmental regulations are “lax” to be polite, are without last hope now that the NIH is closed.
YOU ransomed the American people, the American economy and the American government for a cup of tea. Own that. Live with it.
We ought to find a group of liberals in the DC area – shouldn’t be too hard, should it? – to tape photos of every child who dies, every family who has to skip food for days, every house that gets foreclosed and family evicted, to the door of Weaker Boener and Mr. Can’t-or.
All this, because somewhere, poor people stand a chance of being healthy. Is it too much to ask, given the hardships they have to go through on a daily basis, to allow them this smidge of human kindness? They are humiliated minute by minute in a society where wealth and fame are valued above anything else. As a poor working mom walks past an ad for the latest iPhone ($600), the latest Lexus ($40,000+), the newest condominium ($1,000,000), on her way to a job where she breaks her back to make minimum wage, with no sick pay, and no paid vacations, a half hour for lunch, and an hour long bus ride back to her hovel to feed her kids whatever cheap food she can buy on her budget, supplemented by the (now suspended) SNAP stipend she gets that’s barely enough to provide milk, bread and a carton of eggs for her family.
Are the rich Congressmen and –women of the Republican party that jealous over the fact that Jesus singles out the poor to obtain the inheritance of the earth?
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