well…reading the newspapers over the last few years has revealed a troubling theme the I just have to comment on. Even with the overall middle-class tax burden at it’s lowest point in the last 50 years, the prevailing wisdom is that the only way to get the states and federal budget under control is to cut services, to cut the wages and benefits of workers, and cut the gains that have made the middle class the engine of our economy. Just yesterday, ole Newt suggested in Michigan that the only way out of the problem is to cut benefits that teachers and other workers have fought for the last 50 years to get.
I just have to relay what one of my professors in grad school told our class; that you can’t cut your way to prosperity and growth, that a monkey can come in and take away benefits and lay off people…but that is all I hear today…cut, cut, cut….is this jealousy from the people that are now on the outside looking in without protection that comes from being part of a unionized workforce? Where is the shared sacrifice that made our country unique in the world? I truly believe that this is a plan by the righties to fragment the opposing powers that they have fought with for control of the profits of the economy; and they are winning the battle to demonize workers to the benefit of their corporate sponsors. Why is there no uproar on the right when their leaders champion the outsourcing of American jobs which puts downward pressure on the wages of the remaining workers here? Why doesn’t anyone think that a rising middle class in wages and benefits is a good thing? Who is going to buy the 40,000 dollar Suburban when the average wage is being pushed down to minimum wages level?
I think it’s sad that our supposed leaders have stopped leading us to the future and the ideals that have been part of this country since it’s inception; that we can do anything if we just work together and that the future will be better than today….small minds think small….geez…
Well…I hope you’ve heard of this last outrage from Karl Rove…he has a company that is going to funnel corporate money into repub campaigns with the express purpose of making sure that the companies have a hand in writing any new regulations that they will be subject to. Doesn’t anyone remember what happened the last time that Rove was involved in anything? And does no one remember what happened when Cheney wrote our energy policy behind closed doors with the only input being from those that were being regulated? Can you say Gulf oil spill and the meltdown of the financial markets due to deregulation? Well…these guys are promising more of the same; more running of the economy into the ground to benefit only the rich and the sad thing is that their voters, who were hurt the most by these shenanigans, are going to fall in line and buy into the propaganda that will be used to sell it as good for them and the economy….geez…
Well…was just sitting here thinking tonight..(yeah, I know, that’s dangerous) that I don’t really recognize what this country has become..or what it’s people have become over my lifetime….maybe it’s just a perspective thing on my part but I really do think we’ve lost our way. And, I think that some of the posts that I’ve written have added to the polarization that I think has taken away our Americanness and continues to be part of the wall that keeps us from finding our way back. That’s not to say that I’m going to stop writing about my particular way of looking at the world and venting my outrage…and won’t apologize about.
How have we allowed corporations to have so much power over our everyday lives? nope not feeling it right now…more later…okay…back now….
Corporations have the power to destroy our environment, to take away our jobs, to buy our elected officials, and run roughshod over American’s lives and the people that are getting screwed keep electing officials that help them do that. Have we become so stupid that we can’t even think in our own self interest?
This one is not as lucid that I envisioned when I started it…just not feeling as sharp as normal tonight….oh, well….
Have been reading a bunch about how many of the righty politicians have been able to build careers on saying whatever they want without regard for the truth and their followers are so thick (to coin the English slight) that they will just believe it without any critical thought…takes me back to the Bush years that had us listening to Cheney who thought that truth was what he said it was and it could be created by repeating lies over and over and louder and louder….geez….
Oh, one other thing, how many times do politicians that Sarah Palin backs have to lose before the Repubs start to run away from her as fast as they can?
Well…I have to say something about what many of the righty commentators have been spouting for quite a while…when Obama tries to figure out how we got into the messes of the Wall street meltdown and the gulf oil spill to name just a couple, it is a character flaw that he doesn’t take responsibility for what’s happening but tries to blame everything on the Bushies. The character flaw to me is from the righties who, throughout the Bush years, chanted the mantra “so what if we lied to get the US into war…it’s over and let’s move on”. This crap from the party of personal responsibility that made avoiding responsibility in government an art form. How do you know to not make the same mistakes if you don’t know what happened? And how can Obama know everything that was done by the Bushies to damage the governments ability to do it’s job; to protect it’s citizens. They had 8 years to screw it up and did…it’s easy to slam a car into a brick wall…it’s not so easy to fix the damage caused by the wreck…and a wreck of that magnitude takes more than 16 months to repair…geez…
Well…I guess this shows you where the tea-partiers are coming from once the skin is peeled away. Rand Paul, the Repub nominee for senate from Kentucky, in an interview with Rachael Maddow on her show, stated that the federal government has no place in halting workplace or public discrimination based on race. He feels that the marketplace would take care of those types of things; if someone discriminates based on race, gender etc. even in a public restaurant or any other business, that no one would patronize those businesses once the discrimination is revealed. What planet is this guy living on? What does he want next, the Klan coming back? The laws against discrimination were a response to people doing exactly what Paul says won’t happen. Then, to make his Republicanness even clearer, he comes out today criticizing Obama for leaning on BP after their negligence led to 11 people dying and the biggest environment disaster in decades; calling it “Un-American” to criticize them. He says that sometimes no one is to blame…that it was just an accident that is no one’s fault.
You remember what “Un-American” meant in the last Presidential election and what the crazy birthers are still apoplectic about.
Can you imagine an administration that completely defers to business and cuts them loose to do whatever they want with no regard for their responsibilities? Oh…we just had one of those…you remember…run by Ole GW…Geez…
I have only one word of advice for the Obama administration, when Charles Krauthammer agrees with one of your trial balloons; specifically shrinking the use of or modifying the Miranda warnings, you’ve got it all wrong just like he does most of the time. I just marvel at these guys who are so inconsistent that they howl about government intrusion in healthcare, then want government powers increased by the gutting of Miranda. Shame on Obama and Holder for even considering changing what has worked over many decades and that has resulted in much more actionable intelligence than any person held without trial at Guantanamo.
I am going to continue pointing out this blatant pandering to the base on both sides in an effort to force some honesty on the national conversation about these important issues.
One other example that I have to point out was some repub bitching about healthcare (again), and his premise was that since he has polls showing that the majority of Americans don’t want the changes, they shouldn’t happen. Where was he when the majority wanted Al Gore to be president and the Supreme Court installed Bush? If you look at history, public opinion sometimes is not right on these issues; look at the violence that came with the repeal of the Jim Crow laws. Geez…
Look…I may have looked at the political implications and how the parties are using the gulf oil spill, and that is relevant…but I don’t want to minimize the human cost of the explosion of the oil platform…11 people died there and they should be remembered as well as the oil spill…..
Well…this whole idea of the gulf oil spill being “Obama’s Katrina” that is being pushed by the delusional righties is so egregiously political that I have to add a few more comments before I let it go. First, the idea of comparing a natural disaster to a man-made one is a false analogy at best; and at worst a blatant attempt to re-write history and minimize the failures of the Bushies to do what government is supposed to do…take care of it’s citizens in the event of natural disaster. The role of government is not to go around cleaning up after companies that have made world record profits on the backs of Americans, and then, just like the banks, move the costs for their mistakes to the government. Why are the righties screaming that Obama is not doing enough when they yell out of the other side of their mouth that government is too big and we are on the path to socialism. YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS….or I guess you can when all of the their followers only watch Fox news…Geez….
Well….I have to point out this new set of hypocrisies coming out of the righties and their attempts to paint the Obama administration as a failure. Throughout the Bush administration, even when their policies were objectively abject failures, (read that Katrina, lies to get us into Iraq, etc.) the supporters of Bush and his cronies, and Bush himself, had not one word to say on the failures or even a word of criticism of his dilution of civil liberties that the courts have since ruled were illegal.
So what do we see happening now from the right wing attack machine? They have now taken to comparing the oil spill in the gulf as Obama’s Katrina, now trying to make the point that Bush’s handling of Katrina was a failure. Well guys, you can’t have it both ways, your beloved GW was incompetent (which most of the evidence points to as being true) or the comparison could not be made. I’ve had it with these supposed “experts” whose only claim to fame is that they have been the upholders of a failed philosophy; not unlike the southern apologists who are still revering the south’s role in the civil war. Geez…