So I'm listening to NPR and they are broadcasting excerpts from the Republican debate televised yesterday and I hear the following gem from Repubican presidential candidate, former Arkansas governor, and generally clueless person, Mike Huckabee.

There's nothing funny about Hillary Clinton being president. If she's president, taxes go up. Healthcare becomes the domain of the government. Spending goes out of control. Our military loses its morale. And I'm not sure we'll have the courage and the will and the resolve to fight the greatest threat this country's ever faced in Islamo-fascism.

This, my friends, is a classic statement intended to mislead ignorant voters, which the last presidential election showed to be about 51% of them. He is appealing to people who have absolutely no situational awareness; that is, they are not aware of what is currently going on all around them. Specifically, Huckabee is threatening that taxes will go up. Which they have done under George W. Bush. He is threatening Americans' healthcare concerns will be addressed by the government instead of the for-profit corporations that have driven costs out of the reach of most Americans. But of course he says that like it is a bad thing. He threatens that spending will go out of control. Apparently he has forgotten that Billl Clinton left office with a record budget surplus and George W. Bush has amassed a record budget deficit for the nation now. How much more out of control can spending get? He threatens that our military will lose its morale, thereby demonstrating that he is completely out of touch with the current military morale. And he caps it off with the greatest tactic known to demagogues, an appeal to fear and racism, with a shout-out to Hitler and World War II.

What is scary is that people listen to pap like this uncritically. Especially Republicans, who havve been so outrageously and destructively wrong about their support of George W. Bush that they are grasping at alternatives that threaten to do even more damage to the United States of America. Well I am here to tell you, it is hard to conceive of anyone doing as badly a job of leading America as the current crop of Republicans, from the corrupt and selfish Bush administration down through the ranks of good Republican lawmaker soldiers marching in lock step to the Bush administration's drumbeat.

You can listen for yourself at NPR.