SHAKE, RATTLED & WE'RE BEING ROLLED

Yikes, what a week on the East Coast of the United States!

First, a 5.9 earthquake shake, rattled, and rolled unsuspecting citizens from Atlanta to New Hampshire. And then came Hurricane Irene bringing anything but gentle rains to the very same populace.

What next, locusts and plagues?

Mother Nature was heaving a hissy-fit, a punishing blow.

“I said shake, rattle, and roll tra la la.”

Looking at a map of the East Coast, is it merely coincidence that at the center of the storm sits Washington, D.C.?

Even as Mother Nature cut her swath of devastation across the region, in Washington, D.C. the tide took nary a turn. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of the deeply shaken and flooded Virginia Commonwealth continued his political rant: “No Federal aid for disaster,” Cantor stormed, “without spending cuts.”

Does this partisan ever miss an opportunity to further his political agenda?

“You look so warm but your heart is cold as ice tra la la.”

But Majority Leader Cantor was not alone. As Hurricane Irene barreled along the U.S. East Coast, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas said the nation would be much better off without the Federal Emergency Management Agency popularly known as FEMA.

“I live on the Gulf Coast. We put up with hurricanes all the time,” the GOP candidate told CNN after a New Hampshire campaign event Friday. “There’s no magic about FEMA,” he rattled on. “More and more people are starting to recognize that.”

Would someone please shake, rattle and roll some sense into this man’s callous heart?

Even the Republican National Network aka Fox News posted an opinion piece titled: “Do We Really Need the National Weather Service?”

Do we really need Fox News?

About this Republican onslaught against the Federal government, treating it as some evil doer, which is their campaign slogan for 2012. No doubt about it, their “The Federal Government is Evil” catch phrase has gotten traction and no fight back from the Democratic Party. Instead, the Obama administration has been on the defensive almost apologizing for its efforts to bailout Wall Street and the Auto industry in the wake of the Republican-led storm that was a gale-force destructive wind that blew down our fiscal house in 2008.

Would someone please shake, rattle and roll the Democratic Party?

You’re being sandbagged! If you don’t fight back, you’re about to be shake, rattled and rolled right out of the White House.

What a perfect campaign theme from the opposition party: Reduce the size of government, and, by the way, reduce President Barack Obama while you’re at it. Never mind that the very people who are campaigning on this theme earn their living from…you guessed it…the evil government.

The Founding Fathers understood that there is a fine line between too big a government and one that is ineffectual. But of course the Founding Fathers were patriots first and partisans second, unlike the destructive force of right-wingers leading this earthquake of a political campaign.

No FEMA, no National Weather Service, The Federal Government is Evil. Tell that to the millions on the East Coast who suffered damage at the fury of Mother Nature last week.

As for the Republicans: Locusts and plagues.



Halli Casser-Jayne is the author of A YEAR IN MY PAJAMAS WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA, The Politics of Strange Bedfellows. She is the co-host of the popular The Halli and MoJoe Show on BlogTalkRadio airing Sunday 5 PM/EST. To read more of her musings visit her @ The CJ Political Report dot com and Halli Casser-Jayne dot com.