Requisite Patriotic Post

Okay, I love this country; let's get that out of the way first. While we've gotten a lot wrong – slavery, the treatment of Native Americans,  stealing Texas from Mexico, not to mention Hawaii from the Hawaiians --  we've gotten a lot right – even if we're still struggling with that concept of liberty and justice for all.
But the current political climate has me wondering how well this democracy thing is working out.
These are uneasy times and the political polarization in Washington seems to be holding our (and it is our) government hostage. Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling that the opposition wouldn't approve Mom or apple pie if Obama spoke in favor of them. Like Rush Limbaugh, the opposition wants Obama to fail. It is their prime directive, their avowed objective. And if it means paralyzing the government, well, they're okay with that. Of course spending can't keep exceeding revenue; yes, there will have to be sacrifices.  But not all on one side. What ever happened to compromise?
I know, I'm looking at this through the eyes of a liberal -- maybe that's why I can't understand what would be wrong with things like eliminating the tax loopholes on corporate jets. Or why the very wealthiest shouldn't pay higher taxes before we start cutting Medicare and Social Security and education. Some of those very wealthiest being executives who profited by government bailouts.
It's hard to celebrate Independence Day when  government seems to have ground to a halt, sabotaged by a bunch of politicians who have fully earned the title "The Party of NO.' May their fireworks fizzle and their ice cream melt.
We'll be celebrating in a quiet way here at home -- keeping an eye on Silverbell, the Jersey girl whose calf in due any day now, and hoping all the time that a miracle will happen and all the flags and rhetoric and patriotic speeches will remind these folks in Congress  that their first loyalty should be to the United States of America -- not to their party nor to the corporations that fund them.
We can hope.