Thursday, December 1, 2011

Rodger Cook: more Republican cliches and talking points

WSIL (Fanna Haile-Selassie & Randy Livingston) did a profile on Rodger Cook, Republican candidate in IL-12.


"I'm the most conservative person in this race, both fiscally and socially."
OK. What does it mean to be fiscally "conservative"? In the real world "fiscal conservatism" looks like stuffing money the pockets of rich people while loading debt onto the middle class... and then whining about the debt "conservatives" created is somehow the responsibility of Democrats.

And the corporate media, like WSIL, passes along the idea that Democrats create debt without even an asterix noting the claim is untrue.

And what is being the "most socially conservative"? Does he do crystal meth with males prostitutes like so many of the leaders of the social conservative movement? Of is he for returning to Jim Crow laws? Maybe he wants to take away the right of women to vote?

"We need to send people like me that don't care about if you're democrat or a republican, I'm a conservative."
As most sixth graders know "Democrat" and "Republican" are proper nouns and therefore should be capitalized.


then spent the rest of his years as a banking and consulting businessman.
It seems like this should be explained better.

Cook supports domestic oil drilling and coal mining, especially in southern Illinois. Easing energy regulations is one of his top goals,


Didn't we just have an oil man president, an oil man vice president and a Republican Congress? How did it work to let the fossil fuel industry to rule the roost in Washington?

"You know what happens when you cut taxes? The people that earn it get to keep the money, spend it, invest it, create jobs with it," he explains.
Again, hasn't this approach been tried? What we got was a bunch of rich people and corporations getting richer and investing their money in businesses that move money around, but don't produce goods and services.

On paper the GDP is up. But in the real world, the economy sucks by every measure that matters to regular folk.