MENTAL HEALTH AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

A Republican vision of mental health

Today on NPR's "Left, Right & Center," the right-wing propaganda agent stated that he had read a survey claiming Republicans have better mental health than Democrats or independents. When I got home I googled around and found the new Gallup Poll he must have been referencing. In it, Republicans self diagnose themselves as being in excellent health. That would, of course include Republicans who have recently come to the public's attention claiming for example that they were only in public toilets to clean up some messy toilet paper (Idaho Senator Larry Craig) or escape from bad weather or scary African-Americans (Florida Rep. Bob Allen) or because they like the sounds in public men's rooms (former GOP candidate for the Louisiana state senate, Joey DiFatta. Each claimed he was perfectly balanced-- and straight. And that doesn't even address Republicans like child predator Mark Foley (who claimed he was mentally healthy after he was apprehended drunk breaking into the boys dorm in the congressional page program) or, more recently, Washington State Republican state Rep Richard Curtis (whose mental stability is so fragile that he sponsored viciously homophobic legislation to prevent gay men and women from employment while he was wearing women's silk panties and planning his next all-nighter of anonymous, drug-fuled sex). Yes, why would any of these Republicans possibly consider himself in anything but the most tip top mental health?

And what about Ron Paul? Millions of Republicans admire or even revere him. A few nights ago he stood on a stage with the rest of the pathetic pygmies™ ranting and raving about a superhighway from Mexico to Canada that will lead to the end of our national sovereignty. The rest of them were so busy trying to outdo each other on how bigoted and xenophobic they are that not one of them bothered to remark on Paul's apparent lunacy. I mean the man is not just one of the pygmies™; he's been a Republican member of Congress or over 10 years.

A border-spanning "NAFTA highway" now on the drawing board, Paul said, would link the U.S., Mexico and Canada, worsening illegal immigration and threatening American independence. "Our national sovereignty is under threat," Paul warned.

Federal and state highway and trade officials and transportation consultants reacted Thursday with befuddlement and amusement. The fearsome secret international highway project Paul described does not exist, they said.

"There is no such superhighway like the one he's talking about," said Ian Grossman, a spokesman with the Federal Highway Administration. "It doesn't exist, in plans or anywhere else."

"It's complete fiction," said Tiffany Melvin, executive director of NASCO, a consortium of transportation agencies and business interests caught in the cross hairs of anti-highway activists. "This is the work of fringe groups that have wrapped a couple of separate projects together into one big paranoid fantasy."

A loose confederation of conservative Internet bloggers and some right-wing groups, among them the John Birch Society, has seized on a burst of activity in federal highway projects in recent years as evidence that the Bush administration is pushing toward a European Union-style government for North America.

..."The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway," Paul wrote to his constituents in October 2006, "but an integrated North American Union -- complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union."

During the Wednesday debate, Paul also linked the purported NAFTA highway to his concerns about the Trilateral Commission -- an enduring bugaboo of conspiracy theorists -- and the World Trade Organization's "control [of ] our drug industry, our nutritional products." Paul added: "I don't like big government in Washington, so I don't like this trend toward international government."

Jesse Benton, Paul's campaign spokesman, said Thursday that Paul believed that the threat of a NAFTA highway was real. "Dr. Paul is not alone in thinking this is a substantial compromise of federal sovereignty," Benton said. "There's a strong belief by a lot of people that [the highway] would run clear up through Canada."

Benton noted that Rep. Virgil H. Goode Jr. (R-Va.) had introduced a resolution expressing opposition to a NAFTA superhighway. It is signed by 42 congressmen, including Paul and two of his Republican presidential rivals, Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

Virgil Goode, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter and Ron Paul... now what have these 4 gentlemen have in common besides being bigoted loons? Well I bet they all fit in among the majority of Republicans who claim to be in "excellent" mental health.