OK, let me inaugurate the new blog software with a simple question:

How do you pronounce IOKIYAR?

Is it “Yawk-e-yar”?

The abbreviation stands for, of course, “It’s OK If You’re a Republican” and refers to the numerous things that are “OK” in the minds of those currently controlling congress and the whitehouse, as long as you’re one of their own.

Don’t like what the courts are ruling? Separation of Powers means nothing if you’re a republican, go ahead and interfere in the decades long battle in the courts about Terry Schiavo. After all, the freshman congressman know so much more about the law (and medicine) than the judges and doctors that have been involved in the case for 12 years.

Let’s see, If I’m a republican congressman and I sell my house for $1,600,000 to an aspiring defense contractor, and that contracter then turns around and sells it 6 months later for $900,000 (in the Calfornia housing market, which never seems to go down), and somehow that contractor then gets lots of new contracts, that’s not really an illegal $700,000 bribe, because I’m a republican.

If I’m a high-ranking Whitehouse advisor, and I somehow admit or confirm that a certain person is a CIA Operative, (thereby embarrassing her husband who truthfully reported that we had lied about justification for the Iaq war [not to mention exposing her clandestine informational contacts subjecting them to death or worse, and destroying the intelligence gathering capability]), it’s OK because I’m a republican, trying to protect the president.

If I’m a certain senator from a north-eastern state, who’s main claim to fame is bringing home the corpse of his four month premature still-born child for his other children to cuddle, and I blame the abuse of children by the Catholic Clergy on the liberalism of Boston, it’s OK because it can’t be the Catholic hierachy protecting the abusers, it must be the liberal attitude of all the non-catholics in Boston. Why? because I’m a republican, and I say so.

If I’m a republican governor, and I get $1,000,000/year from advertisements in fitness magazines, and I veto laws that would regulate unjustified claims about benefits of dietary supplements advertised in those magazines, it’s a simple misunderstanding rather than a major conlict-of-interest, because I’m a republican.

If I’m a republican governor and my state (Ohio) loses lots of money because state funds are invested in a rare coin fund run by one of my golfing buddies, it’s OK, because ob viously, I didn’t do anything wrong… I’m a republican!

Given this, those of us who care not only about the honest workers of this country, but our moral backbone in general, really need to understand:

How do you pronounce “IOKIYAR”?