Saturday, February 18, 2012

TAKE TWO ASPIRINS..NO, NO, JUST ONE WILL DO

Let us pay homage to Foster Friess. He is a true American success story. Valedictorian of his tiny Rice Lake, WI high school, Friess was also captain of the baseball, basketball, golf and track teams. Majoring in business administration at the University of Wisconsin, Friess eventually founded Friess Associates in 1974, which has, for 38 years, been one of the most successful investment management firms ever, providing Friess with a fortune that may rival if not surpass that of Mitt Romney. Friess doesn't make things...he makes money.

As a born again Evangelical Christian who attributes all his success to his faith, Friess has poured millions into religious and conservative political causes. He discovered a special combination of the religious and conservative in the Presidential campaign of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who is running around the country issuing calls for the fusion of religion and politics never quite seen before. Santorum injects his rigid, non-reason based religious views on topics such as marriage equality, access of working folks to adequate health care, and even fuels his Armageddon like call to bomb Iran.

Until this week Friess' largess provided Santorum and other conservative causes like the Koch Brothers and the anti union, anti education agenda of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, has been hidden from mainstream voters. Then Friess couldn't resist the opportunity to chime in on the completely invented culture war issued raised by Republicans, including Santorum, regarding birth control. During an interview with NBC's Andrea Mitchell, Friess dismissed the urgent need of women for contraception with the tone deaf joke that "back in my days they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly".

The tens of millions of women who require and depend on affordable and dependable contraceptives for family planning and many non-pregnancy related health issues do not think Mr. Friess and his religiously extremist candidate are very humorous. The GOP is beginning to realize, to their horror, that come November 6, those millions of "gals" will remember Mr. Friess and whoever represents the utterly insensitive and backwards thinking GOP ticket. And on November 7th, Foster Friess may be passing out a lot of free Bayer Aspirin. But thankfully, it won't be used to prevent prevent pregnancy....it'll be used to cure a massive post-election hangover.

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