Monday, November 29, 2010

A Day in the Life of a TRUE Conservative

Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.

Joe steps outside and coughs–the pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys ‘em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.

On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until they’re 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and there’re no social safety nets.

He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.

Joe’s workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joe’s manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that he’ll lose his job if he does not.

Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesn’t have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and she’ll have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides they’ll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. She’ll have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.

His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a “good girl” and not rock the boat, or she’ll get fired and they’ll be out the income.

His daughter says she can’t wait until she’s 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.

They get home and there’s a message from his elderly father who can’t afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.

Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that it’s an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him “a utopian idealist,” and agreeing that people aren’t mature enough to make good choices until they’re at least 25.

Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, “Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!”

Note: This reverse on the riff was copied directly from Thom Hartmann's website. The site is marked "(c) Copyright 1996-2007, Mythical Intelligence, Inc. and Thom Hartmann", however, Thom says of the piece in reply to a request for authorship of item/permission to reprint: "It's not original to me...".

Essay: A Day In The Life of Joe Conservative

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance -- now Joe gets it, too.

He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

Note: This was originally published (anonymously) under the title A Day in the Life of Joe Republican. But this is a misnomer. In the last 140 years, the Republican and Democratic parties have switched sides several times, with one being conservative and the other being liberal. But labels and party affiliations change. What doesn't change are the underlying political philosophies of liberalism and conservatism, and the fact that the liberals usually turned out to be right and the conservatives turned out to be wrong. And so it goes.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

I want this on a sign for my front yard...

Being loud, rude, and ignorant is not a political movement. 
It is just bad manners.

Diagramming Sarah

Sometimes I feel like listening to Sarah Palin is like playing AdLib... or those magnet word games.  Just throw her catch words and phrases into a hat, pull them out in random order, add some conjunctions and prepositions... VOILA!  You can now sound just like Sarah!!

For example...


I am qualified for this job because I'm patriotic. I got a college education at America and I majored in flags. I consider myself very great because I'm a patriot. I'll be working to support absolute rulings. I'm looking for a job that pays between one and one billion dollars a year.
I have experience using good freedoms and a constitution. I have a real patriotic attitude that makes me good for freedom. I think these, among many other qualifications, make me the most patriotic candidate for this job.
Sincerely,
Sarah
But seriously, to those of us who actually appreciate the English language, isn't listening to Sarah speak similar to listening to a third grader practicing their recorder?  It is so PAINFUL for our ears!!

Remember in English classes, when we had to diagram sentences?  Diagramming Sarah would be a whole new level of hell.  Of course, someone has tried to do just that...
"The more the diagram is forced to wander around the page, loop back on itself, and generally stretch its capabilities, the more it reveals that the mind that created the sentence is either a richly educated one—with a Proustian grasp of language that pushes the limits of expression—or such an impoverished one that it can produce only hot air, baloney, and twaddle."
Guess which category I think Sarah falls under...

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

WTF has Sarah Palin done so far?

Besides run out on Alaska, make $12 million dollars, and go to Canada to use THEIR health care services?


This is what we wanted... now do we have the stones to support it?

Probably not.  Most cry out to reduce deficit... but as long as someone ELSE is impacted.  Don't cut our Medicare or our Social Security, don't raise our taxes or age of retirement, don't cut defense or other programs.

Well, welcome to the grown-up world, folks.  When we have to tighten our budget at home, we have to cut back on our expenses... our lattes, our nights out, our movie channels, our cuts of meat, our brand of food or clothing.  We have to increase our income... the second job (or third in some families), change jobs, go back to school.

In other words, it hurts.  Our egos, our energy, our fun times.

But that is the price we have to pay for our lack of planning, our overspending, our indulgences, our poor choices, and/or our neglect in observing that we were on a runaway train.



$4 trillion in deficit cuts proposed


UPDATE: I'm not saying that I want our Social Security cut... all I'm saying is that our debt is out of control and in order to make our country strong again, it's going to take all of us sacrificing together. Every adjustment is going to cost somebody. 

And, as cold as this sounds, WE are the ones who are responsible (even if we didn't vote for Bush or support the war or whatever) for the current debt... NOT OUR CHILDREN. We should be the ones who get our country back on track so future generations don't have to deal with the consequences of our apathy, our stupidity, our ignorance, our egos, etc. They deserve a strong America with a healthy economy.   This is America's "death tax" that we are expecting our children to pay?  I don't think so...

We broke it, we fix it.

Republicans Don't Care About the Deficit or Helping Unemployed Workers

Some of us saw this coming.  We call ourselves "Democrats".

After spending the past few months convincing the public of their grave concern for the deficit and the American people, what is the first thing the GOP goes to the mat for during the post-election legislative session? 
A deficit-funded $700 billion tax giveaway to the wealthiest of Americans. 
[Click heading for the full article.]


Tuesday, November 09, 2010

I would love it if someone could explain this to me...

If lowering taxes and eliminating regulations created jobs, then how come Bush, after taking account how long he’d been in office, showed the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records.  


Bush had the WORST PRIVATE SECTOR JOB CREATION IN 75 YEARS


And how come President Obama is kicking Bush's ASS in job creation with all of his "taxing" and "regulations"? 



Jobs Lost: Comparison between Bush and Obama


It's Official: More Private Sector Jobs Created in 2010 than Entire Bush Years


Payroll Expansion Chart, per President


I truly do not understand why some people want to return to the Bush level of "prosperity"...

Monday, November 08, 2010

Facts and information are just SO inconvenient, I know...

But I really really wish that those RADICAL EXTREMIST CONSERVATIVES would take the time to actually research Health Reform before they start regurgitating the vomit they are being fed by the notoriously inaccurate Faux Noise and the GOP handpuppets...


It's good enough for them, but not for the rest of America.

I think it's despicable that individuals making $170,000+ per year as well as receiving the BEST heath care program in the United States that pays for 75% of their premiums as well as providing on-site doctors and services at the taxpayer's expense will then declare war on the rest of America who are only asking for affordable access to something similar.

The insurance available to ME alone will cost about 20% of my paycheck and barely covers anything. I make less than $14,000 per year. When I broke my leg, I missed almost two months of work and have all of the medical bills still waiting for me (as I cannot afford the insurance program offered to me). I feel blessed that my boss held my position open for me when I healed.

This is NOT about pride or getting off the government TEAT. This is about being able to provide for me and my children, even in times of injury or illness.

Promises, promises...

It's easy to scam you if you let them frighten you...

When INCOME directs OUTCOME, Democracy fails.

Sunday, November 07, 2010

DeMint Says No Lifting Debt Ceiling Without Cuts

I almost feel sorry for the idiots who voted for DeMint and his partners in crime. I doubt these politicians even kissed them or bought them dinner before they screwed them, just a bunch of flowery promises. Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am. Don't look on the nightstand, and don't hold your breath.

I said I almost feel sorry for them. We tried to warn them that they were only being courted for their votes... not our fault they fell on their backs so quickly and easily.

DeMint Says No Lifting Debt Ceiling Without Cuts Then Can't Name Any Specifics Besides Earmarks | Video Cafe

What I wish the extremist radical conservatives would discuss...

...instead of calling names, changing subjects, or just ignoring the question altogether...

If raising taxes and eliminating regulations created jobs, then how come Bush, once taking account how long he’d been in office, showed the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records. ESPECIALLY compared to Clinton.

And how come President Obama is kicking Bush's ASS in job creation with all of his "taxing" and "regulations"?

More visuals...


 








Sometimes a picture can say more than an essay...









Wednesday, November 03, 2010

Republican Sex and Marriage Advice: Different Political Parties

"...since you are obviously not Republican..."

While some are patting themselves on the backs...

...do not fool yourselves into thinking that this was about the Republicans and that Americans have spoken.

This was not about how your plan was better (what f***ing plan??  It was a joke!).

This was not about President Obama ruining our country (even though many Americans with anal-cranial obstruction syndrome seem to slurp up the vomit you've been regurgitating for them).

This was not about a sincere desire to return to the glory days of Bush.

This is a testament to how successful the Republicans, the Mad Hatters--excuse me, TEA PARTIERS, Faux Noise, and all of those blathering idiots are at stirring up fear, hatred, and anger in the least informed of our citizens.  You want to keep them stupid and you succeeded.

So, if THAT is something to be proud of, then be proud.  Because that is what your victory is all about.  Ignorance, fear, and misplaced anger.   I hope your God is impressed because mine is not.

"An Open Letter to the White Right"

For all y’all rich folks, enjoy that champagne, or whatever fancy ass Scotch you drink.

And for y’all a bit lower on the economic scale, enjoy your Pabst Blue Ribbon, or whatever shitty ass beer you favor.
Whatever the case, and whatever your economic station, know this…
You need to drink up.
And quickly.
And heavily.
Because your time is limited.
Real damned limited.
So party while you can, but mind the increasingly loud clock ticking away in the corners of your consciousness.
The clock that reminds you how little time you and yours have left.
Not much more now.
Tick, tock.
Tick, tock.
Tick.
Tock.
I know, you think you’ve taken “your country back” with this election – and of course you have always thought it was yours for the taking, cuz that’s what we white folks are bred to believe, that it’s ours, and how dare anyone else say otherwise – but you are wrong.
You have won a small battle in a larger war the meaning of which you do not remotely understand.
‘Cuz there is nothing even slightly original about you.
There have always been those who wanted to take the country back.
There were those who, in past years, wanted to take the country back to a time of enslavement and indentured servitude.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when children could be made to work in mines and factories, when workers had no legal rights to speak of, when the skies in every major city were heavy with industrial soot that would gather on sidewalks and windowsills like volcanic ash.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when women could not vote, or attend any but a few colleges, or get loans in their own names, or start their own businesses.
But they lost.
There were those who wanted to take us back to a time when blacks “had no rights that the white man was bound to respect,” – this being the official opinion of the Supreme Court before those awful days of judicial activism, now decried by the likes of you – and when people of color could legally be kept from voting solely because of race, or holding certain jobs, or living in certain neighborhoods, or run out of other towns altogether when the sun would go down, or be strung up from trees.
But they lost.
And you will lose.
So make a note of it.
Tweet it to yourself.
Put it on your Facebook wall and leave it there so you’ll remember that I told you so.
It is coming, and soon.
This isn’t hubris. It isn’t ideology. It is not wishful thinking.
It is math.
Not even advanced math. Just simple, basic, like 3rd grade math.
The kind of math that proves how your kind – mostly older white folks beholden to an absurd, inaccurate, nostalgic fantasy of what America used to be like – are dying.
You’re like the bad guy in every horror movie ever made, who gets shot five times, or stabbed ten, or blown up twice, and who will eventually pass – even if it takes four sequels to make it happen – but who in the meantime keeps coming back around, grabbing at our ankles as we walk by, convinced that you’re really dead this time.
Fair enough, and have at it. But remember, please, how this movie ends.
Our ankles survive.
You do not.
Michael Meyers, Freddie Kreuger, Jason, and that asshole husband in that movie with Julia Roberts who tracks her down after she runs away and changes her identity – they are all done. Even that crazy fucker in Saw is about to be finished off for good. Granted, he’s gonna be popping out in some 3-D shit to scare the kiddies, so he isn’t going quietly. But he’s going nonetheless, as all bad guys eventually do.
And in the pantheon of American history, old white people have always been the bad guys, the keepers of the hegemonic and reactionary flame, the folks unwilling to share the category of American with others on equal terms.
Fine, so screw you then.
Because you’re a dying breed.
On the endangered list.
And unlike say, the bald eagle or some exotic species of muskrat, you are not worth saving.
In forty years or so, maybe fewer, there won’t be any more white people around who actually remember that Leave it to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Opie-Taylor-Down-at-the-Fishing Hole cornpone bullshit that you hold so near and dear to your heart.
There won’t be any more white folks around who think the 1950s were the good old days, because there won’t be any more white folks around who actually remember them, and so therefore, we’ll be able to teach about them accurately and honestly, without hurting your precious feelings, or those of the so-called “greatest generation” — a bunch of miscreants who saved the world from fascism only to return home and oppose the ending of it here, by doing nothing to lift a finger on behalf of the civil rights struggle.
So frankly, to hell with you and all who revere you.
By then, half the country will be black or brown. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Nothing, Senõr Tancredo.
Nothing, Senõra Angle, or Senõra Brewer, or Senõr Beck.
Loy tiene muy mal, hijo de Puta.
And by then you will have gone all in as a white nationalist movement – hell you’ve all but done that now – thus guaranteeing that the folks of color, and even a decent size minority of us white folks will be able to crush you, election after election, from the Presidency on down to the 8th grade student council.
Like I said, this shit is math, baby. And numbers don’t lie.
Bottom line, this too shall pass.
So enjoy your tax cuts a while longer.
Go buy whatever you people buy when your taxes get cut – a new car or two, a bigger house, an island – whatever.
Go back to trading your derivatives, engaging in rampant financial speculation that produces nothing of value, that turns the whole world into your personal casino. Whatever.
Play your hand, and for the love of God play it big. Real big. As in, shoot for the moon big. As in, try to privatize Social Security, and health care, and everything else. Whatever.
At least that way everyone else will be able to see what you’re really about.
We’ve been trying to tell them, but nothing beats seeing it with your own eyes, so “Go big or go home,”Bubba.
“Git ‘er Done.”
“Cowboy up,” or whatever other stupid-ass catch phrase strikes your fancy.
Just promise you’ll do more than talk this time.
Please, or as one of your celluloid heroes might put it, “make my day.”
Do whatever you gotta do, but remember that those who are the victims of your greed and indifference take the long view.
They know, but you do not, that justice is not for the sprinters, but rather for the long distance runners who will be hitting their second wind, right about the time that you collapse from exhaustion.
They are like the tortoise to your hare.
They are like the San Francisco Giants, to your New York Yankees: a bunch that loses year after year after year, until they finally win.
You have had this confidence before, remember?
You thought you had secured your position permanently after the overthrow of reconstruction in the wake of the civil war, after the elimination of the New Deal, after the Reagan revolution, after the Republican electoral victory of 1994. And yet, they who refuse to die are still here.
Because those who have lived on the margins, who have been abused, maligned, targeted by austerity measures and budget cuts, subjected to racism, classism, sexism, straight supremacy and every other form of oppression always know more about their abusers than the abusers know about their victims.
They have to study you, to pay careful attention, to adjust their body armor accordingly, and to memorize your sleep patterns.
You, on the other hand, need know nothing whatever about them. And this, will surely prove fatal to you in the end. For it means you will not know their resolve. Will not fear it, as you should.
It means you will take their greatest strength – perseverance – and make of it a weakness, called losing.
But what you forget, or more to the point never knew, is that those who lose know how to lose, which is to say they know how to lose with dignity.
And those who suffer know how to suffer, which is to say they know how to survive: a skill that is in short supply amid the likes of you.
You, who could not survive the thought of minimal health care reform, or financial regulation, or a marginal tax rate equal to that which you paid just 10 years earlier, perhaps are under the illusion that everyone is as weak as you, as soft as you, as akin to petulant children as you are, as unable to cope with the smallest setback, the slightest challenge to the way you think your country should look and feel, and operate.
But, surprise…they are not.
And they know how to regroup, and plot, and plan, and they are planning even now – we are – your destruction.
And I do not mean by that your physical destruction. We don’t play those games. We’re not into the whole “Second Amendment remedies, militia, armed resistance” bullshit that your side fetishizes, cuz, see, we don’t have to be.
We just have to be patient.
And wait for your hearts to stop beating.
And stop they will.
And for some of you, real damned soon truth be told.
Do you hear it?
The sound of your empire dying? Your nation, as you knew it, ending, permanently?
Because I do, and the sound of your demise is beautiful.
So know this.
If you thought this election was payback for 2008, remember…
Payback, thy name is…
Temporary.