Pulling back the curtain on the GOP flim-flam men

One must admire the sheer hubris of a political party that touts an alleged belief in small government yet turn into American Hoggers whenever they get their hands on the country's coffers. Or engages in a level of household espionage so great, it attempts to control  individual bodily functions, except, of course, any required to pull a trigger.

That's the modern Republican Party ... all poke, no policy.

Well, that's not completely true. There are some GOP policies that are etched in stone: line the pockets of the country's wealthiest citizens is one; screw the middle-class voters they keep ignorant by withdrawing access to education then convincing them to vote for them is the other. Tax breaks for the top 2-percent ... encouraging businesses to decimate wages by lighting the exits as they head off-shore ... hoggishly banking the big bucks with friends leaving just scraps for workers who invested in that wealth through sweat equity and hard work based on their faith in a broken social contract.  

These are the immutable Republican policies.

Now the titular head of the Party of Pigs has named himself a running mate ... a man whose economic policies are so debase and cruel, his own church in a series of letters has condemned them as moral failures and a group of nuns took to a bus in protest.

Lawmakers should “protect essential programs that serve poor and hungry people over subsidies that assist large and relatively well-off agricultural enterprises,” said the letter, signed by Bishop Stephen E. Blaire.

Yet the utter cruelty of the Republican vision for the country is not limited to parishioners within the Catholic Church. It extends to the men and women who continue to vote against their personal interests in favor of pampered trust fund kids who dodge revenue contributions through offshore accounts and accounting gimmicks lovingly lavished upon them by their GOP soul mates

As every good grifter knows, a successful con kicks off by gaining the mark's trust then topping that off with a huge helping of fairy dust pseudoscience. The Republican swindle appeals to a person of few means but an exalted sense of pride, making it that much easier to convince them that they're not really poor or under-educated; they're puffed up as a "special" class of American unlike "those people" over there so they pay absolutely no attention to these "others" jetting around the world and hobnobbing in ritzy enclaves such as The Hamptons.

The very American Dream they keep selling is nothing more than a flawed and broken Dream the GOP has wrapped up in the prettiest, patriotic-looking covering and tied off with a racially-tinged bow that leaves their constituents economically devastated yet ever-hopeful that one day they, too, will hit some magical lottery and become part of the evasive one percent. The flaw in this thinking, however, is to have a one percent, you will always have a 99 percent. The intervening gap has become practically insurmountable due to unevenly available practices.

And this is the stark choice facing Americans this election. Do we bury our heads into a collective beachhead of amnesia or do we remember the failed policies that lead us -- and the entire financial world -- to the brink of fiscal calamity. One's memory need only retain four years of data ... to the day yet another Republican presidential nominee sought to leave his campaign to attend to a "historic crisis in our financial system."