The New GOPee

I am old enough to remember when the Republican party was a group of adults with rational, albeit misguided, policy objectives. That party is long gone. The new GOP has become a party of third graders with a juvenile fixation on urination. Republicans want to test your urine, tell you where to urinate, and talk about urination in public rallies. The party of Goldwater has become the party of golden water. The GOP has become the GOPee.

For example, GOP legislators across America have introduced bills to force transgender people to use the bathrooms corresponding to their birth gender. North Carolina went farther than any other state in telling people where to pee, but somewhat backed-off after facing strong economic pressure. Even Wisconsin has its own supporters of this regressive idea. Representative Jesse Kremer (R-Neolithic) has been a primary proponent of bathroom gender-verification police.

The Obama Administration put some order on this chaos. In 2016, the Department of Education issued a directive protecting the rights of transgender students, including allowing them to use a restroom in alignment with their gender identity. However, like in so many areas, the Trump administration scrapped the rational Obama policy. We have returned to the previous "where can I pee?" pandemonium.

Another case of the Republican urine fixation is their push to collect and analyze the pee of poor people. Drug testing the urine of those on public assistance is one of the few bedrock principles of the modern GOP. They've gotta punish those "undeserving poor" ! Mean-spirited Republican states, including Florida, Utah, Missouri, Michigan, North Carolina, and Tennessee have wasted taxpayer money on testing unemployment insurance applicants.

Each trial of the Republicans' vast drug testing experiment failed to reveal hordes of drug-crazed welfare recipients. Tennessee screened 39,000 applicants and turned-up 69 positives. Utah screened 9,500 applicants and turned-up 29 positives. Arizona screened 87,000 applicants and found one positive. The percentage of drug users among those on unemployment is consistently much lower than among the employed.

Despite all of the failed programs in other states, our own Scott Walker still is obsessed with collecting and testing the urine of the poor. He has long wanted to pee-test those on food stamps, but was denied by the Obama Administration. He spent state funds on a lawsuit against the Federal government to try to be allowed to do that testing. He has applied to the Trump Administration for permission to urine-test those on Badger Care. There seems to be no limit to the amount of your tax dollars Walker is willing to spend on his strange little urine fetish.

The intellectual leader of the national Republican party has a thing about urine, too. During a campaign rally, Donald Trump babbled on and on about the fact that Hillary goes to the bathroom. She had been a little delayed coming back from a short break during one of the Democratic debates.

This was unfathomable to Trump. To his crowd of mouth-breathing supporters, Trump rambled, “I thought she quit. I thought she gave up. Where did she go ? Where did Hillary go? They had to start the debate without her! Phase two. I know where she went. It’s disgusting. I don’t want to talk about it. It’s disgusting. Don't say it! It's too disgusting! Let's not talk about it!” National politics have degenerated to the point that a presidential candidate delves into his opponent's toilet trip. Sad.

And who can forget the infamous pee-pee tape ? An intelligence dossier on Trump's Russian connections implied that the Russians have a compromising video of Trump in a Moscow hotel. Our President allegedly paid two hookers to urinate on a bed in the Presidential Suite at the Ritz-Carlton. Of course, the White House denied the story.

Out of respect to the office of President, I would normally accept a White House denial of such a wild tale. But Trump is not a normal President. His bizarre obsequence to the Russians, combined with the fact that he constantly lies about all matters big and small, lead one to believe the pee-pee tape story is entirely plausible.

Today's GOP is fixated on your precious bodily fluids. They want to control where you pee. They want to test your pee. They talk about pee in campaign speeches. Some believe that the GOP President paid prostitutes to pee while he watched. Republicans have become the number one party, and I don't mean that in a good way.