Goofy Letter to Editor by Right-winger

I suppose the adjective, 'goofy' is redundant when referencing the right-wing.  Many comments were made about those silly 'tea parties' that FoxNews promoted, mostly asking where were these 'protesters'  during the bush-Cheney Administration.  One of 'them' answered this morning in a letter to the editor of The Blade.

He said:

We were there in Bush years too

Some things need to be clarified about the tea parties and the dismissive editorials that have followed.

Some questioned where we were the last eight years, and the answer was that we were writing our representatives, calling on them to stop spending our future. The people who showed up on April 15 were the same ones who took an active role in stopping President Bush and Congress from passing an ill-conceived and insufficient "immigration reform" bill two years ago, in part because of the enormous burden it would mean for American taxpayers. We are the same ones who spoke out against President Bush's massive prescription drug entitlement program, again because of the enormous burden to the American taxpayer.

This notion that we are all suddenly active and vocal because there is a Democrat in the White House is at best ignorant wishful thinking and at worst an underhanded attempt to dismiss the significance of the event by gross and willful distortion of facts.

The sad truth is that the actual substance of our complaints and our solutions are being avoided in favor of using crude jokes, tired "right-wing conspiracy" theories, and manufactured accusations of hypocrisy and racism.

It is indeed unfortunate that some individuals chose to take advantage of this event as an opportunity to bash President Obama in an unnecessary manner, but strangely the same type of bashing of President Bush was never used to this extent to dismiss the message of liberal protesters during his administration.

There most certainly was a unifying message in the tea party movement, and it was that our tax dollars are being used in a reckless, irresponsible, and unsustainable manner, and anyone who missed that message was clearly not interested in listening.

Phil Schwan

Lyons, Ohio

So Mr. Schwan was 'active' during the preemptive war on Iraq, the propaganda leading to the invasion of Iraq, the torture years, Abu Ghraib, the warrantless wire tapping, and other erosion of our laws and image in the world.

Mr. Schwan was writing letters to Congress about immigration and the prescription drug benefit.  Wow!  What important issues.  It's a good thing that we have responsible and vocal citizens like Phil Schwan to keep the miscreant leaders of our nation in check.