I’m a Liberal. There’s a Reason.
Well, the tenor and tempo of fear and loathing on the campaign trail is ramping up. I know it’s going to get worse before it gets better because no one likes Mitt Romney. There’s only so much fertilizer available but plenty of money to spread it around.
Romney has asked for a pledge to leave not only his family but his business and taxes out of the campaign discussion. OK, I get it with family, but if you secure your party’s nomination by bragging about your business expertise, then your business is public business. Taxes? Every cabinet position filled by the president has to be confirmed by the Senate. Three years of tax returns are required. Why would a cabinet member have to undergo more scrutiny than the president?
No one likes Mitt. He’s hard to like. He’s awkward and steps in it every time he opens his mouth. Instead of defending the guy who drove 12 hours with his dog in a crate on top of his car, his supporters keep trying to prove Obama was born in Kenya.
If you listen to right-wingers, liberals, leftists and Democrats want to march in Socialism, Communism and Marxism at the same time, steal from the rich and give to the lazy, melt down your guns and cast a statue of Jane Fonda, denounce the baby Jesus in the manger, destroy straight marriage with gay weddings and eat birth control pills like Tic Tacs and carry an abortion punch card.
I’m a liberal. There’s a reason. I like solutions and progress. I don’t care to return to the Dark Ages. Liberalism is the political practice of What Would Jesus Do.
The outrage over Obamacare is just an excuse for hysterics and histrionics — outrage theater. If anyone should be infuriated, it’s liberals. The Democratic House and Senate and the Democratic president passed a health care bill, the Affordable Care Act, that was conceived by the arch-conservative Heritage Foundation and introduced in 1993 by Republican Bob Dole, and co-sponsored by Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski. Republicans insisted on the individual mandate that they are now using to villify Obama.
Really, Republicans should stop calling it socialism when it was their idea in the first place. Romney implemented it as governor of Massachusetts and he’s their guy. While visiting Israel last week, Romney lauded the Israeli health care system, noting that it costs just 8 percent of Israel’s GDP while ours costs 18 percent of a much larger GDP.
Romney said we should learn from it. I agree. Israel has universal, single-payer health care — an efficient government-run system.
Death panels? Shut up already. You got your plan — delivered by a Democrat — so I have to think it’s the Dem and not the plan you can’t stop bitching about. If you want to get rid of Obamacare, what will you replace it with? Funeral insurance mandates?
I read last week that liberals exaggerated the Great Depression to bring socialism to America. Yep, photo-shopping bread line pictures was tough, especially before computers. Chain emails are floating around saying we need to return to 1912 — no taxes. Brilliant! Do we also have to give up penicillin, the Hoover Dam and figure out that rickets isn’t a game played in India?
President Obama expanded gun rights. Heck, you can even take a gun into a national park now. George Bush confiscated guns during Katrina.
The most terrifying thing to a spiritually void, illiterate faux patriot with a gun fetish is a fighting liberal armed with facts.
The solutions presented by the GOP? Tax the middle class and the poor so they can give breaks to the rich. Ignore the obvious change to the climate and drill, frack and dump. What’s their environmental plan? The Rapture. Their health plan? If you aren’t born rich, don’t get sick.
True conservatives may have not left their party, but the party has left them for the greener pastures of greed.
Before you say, “Both sides are guilty,” just stop. No, they aren’t. One side is trying to make it harder for people to vote with a conspiracy theory called voter fraud. More people were killed by televisions dropped on their heads than pretended to be someone else at the polls.
One side thinks their Second Amendment rights trump other people’s right to not get shot while watching a movie or going to church. If you bring up the same assault weapons ban (now expired) brought about by the attempted assassination of President Reagan, you hate America.
One side is fixated on the vaginas of its fellow citizens. (Venus envy?)
One side mocks climate change while we watch it happen.
One side thinks the poor are lazy couch surfers, when the working poor put in longer days than most.
One side wants to regress this country back to the good ole days of plutocracy.
Which side are you on?
Here is the voter-base Mitt resonates with:
Take my neighbor for example. A nice guy, really. Well-meaning, helpful, cordial, hard-working etc. But he does believe that Obama is a Moslem immigrant and that his programs would ‘end America as we knew it’. Could I convince him otherwise? Probably not.
However, he must believe to ‘convert’ me by bombarding me with gobs of e-mails which ‘prove’ that liberals are the big problem in this country, and that this country should be run like WalMart execs run their corporation. If that is so, we would be buying most of our goods from China (I guess we are already), essentially raising our unemployment rates even more.
Others of his e-mails indicate how buying American-made-only is not very difficult and how that would employ thousand of Americans. Sounds good to me. But look what happened yesterday: Four kids riding on a brand-new ATV up and down our road (the good neighbor’s grand-kids). Asking them if their dad just bought it, they corrected me, saying it belonged to their grandpa. And wondering what brand it was, the oldest kid said it was a China-made ‘knock-off’ of a Honda (which I assume is much cheaper).
So there you have it, supporting the very candidate who would diminish the very social class they belong to while buying the very items they caution others not to buy. And we expect to come up with meaningful solutions in this country? Not at this rate.
I posted this on facebook as a comment on a friend’s antiObama tirade. She took down her posting. I’ll just post it on my line – or whatever it’s called. Thanks, Shannyn, for saying in much clearer language , what I’ve said for years. Only I say that sometimes it so hard to be a liberal because some people are so (expletive deleted optional here) stupid. Like the seniors that depend on Medicare and Social Security who are going to vote the republican ticket.
Many of the current Republicans are reminding me more and more of toddlers. They only think of their own immediate needs and have little or no empathy for others. The purpose of everything and everyone is to make their own tiny little world a happier place, and they don’t consider how their actions could hurt others.
The big difference it that toddlers will eventually grow and mature, and hopefully learn to consider how their actions affect other people and the greater world around them. Republicans KNOW how their actions will hurt others but they just don’t care.
American conservatives have baptized themselves
in the waters of hypocrisy.
Delusional and ignorant in their orgy of self righteousness
they are unable to hear the true message of Jesus.
Capitalism has wrapped itself in the robe of Christ
and promised salvation to those that will allow it
to continue unfettered by regulations.
Profit and obedience is the new sacrament,
the blood and the body of Christ.
They roll it around their tongues while
they desperately hope for the apocalypse to commence.
Masked by the sound of a gun shot you can still hear their prayer,
God Bless America and to hell with those not chosen.
Ivan Bacon
Ivan, that is so excellent.
Another tasty one on low-information voters, just chock full o’ juicy word raisins:
vacuous detestable vultures
“Who would Mitt Romney, one of the most vacuous, detestable vultures to run for president in memory, pick to be his running mate? Why it’s Paul Ryan, a slightly less vacuous, but equally detestable vulture. There was certainly no concern for ‘balance’ on the ticket. No, the Republicans want you ordinary people and minorities to know straight up that they hate you.
Get ready for unprecedented levels of dog whistle racism and whining about people who aren’t ‘Real Amercuns’ sucking lazily off the public nipple. Get ready to hear that ‘we just can’t afford’ any more coddling of the weak and less able among us. If you thought Ronald Reagan was a nasty piece of work, you ain’t seen nothing yet. “
However, time will tell if you’re correct.
I fear that a larger number of Americans actually DO buy the b/s which people like Mitt Romney et al are selling. Why else do voter results typically show a near fifty percent liking for either candidate? It is in THAT where I see the true degeneration of this country i.e. there is no longer a solid majority around to decide that snake-oil salesmen like Mitt are out to rip them off. Slowly but surely the Mitt-supporters of this land are increasing in numbers, education will be ever more cut, reducing the ability to make sound judgements to a level where advertisement alone garners votes. We’ve already seen the advent of keeping us in the dark – like mushrooms – and feeding us horse$hit. Keep it up America!
Found a good one in the comments to Charles Pierce’s article:
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“”Dems and progressive bloggers are licking their chops because they know Ryan’s numbers don’t add up.
And that’s their first and biggest mistake, because if the last 20 years have shown us anything, it’s that conservative voters in this country are barely illiterate and are certainly innumerate. Not that illiteracy or innumeracy matters because they reject all empirical evidence that disproves their beliefs. North Carolina just made the laws of physics (in re: meteorology and geology) illegal. Arizona has made the laws of biology irrelevant (in re: pregnancy’s legal beginning can be dated back to before the woman even had sex). Several states have not just criminalized doctors who tell the truth to their patients (in re: abortion & breast cancer, abortion & suicide) but gone so far as to *legally require doctor to lie*.
Meaning – talk about how it won’t work all you want, Dems. You will get NOWHERE with conservative voters. NOWHERE.
zombie-eyed granny-starver
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Guess we really should be working on out-voting them, right? Especially in Ohio? Getting people registered as Democrats, getting them to the polls despite restricted hours inconvenient for actual working people instead of conservatard retirees?
Yeah, I know, sounds like work.
Great screed, Shannyn! WC will steal your lines about fertilizer and money to spread it around.
The tougher, more pressing task is how to bring our badly fragmented country back to its senses.
/WC
I have long been unable to fathom how Republicans can hold the positions they hold and still love their children and grandchildren. I worry about the world we are going to leave them. It is in terrible disarray and the fault lies squarely at the feet of the political conservatives in this country who have whined and complained about taxes since the income tax was first begun, who have fought against Social Security and, in more recent decades, against Medicare, all the while benefitting from both programs. Under George W. Bush, they started two wars without having the decency to raise taxes to pay for them and they let the banks and investment firms run totally amok to the point of destroying the country’s economy.
Mitt Romney is all that the GOP stands for today. His company could have been a conservative Republican’s dream child – buy up companies, gut them, and throw away the employees. How many companies were “bained” by Mitt Romney; how many employees were “bained” by his greed? And then he has the unmitigated gall to shift his wealth out of the country to avoid paying taxes. And we should gift him the White House? No.
This country could do so much good for the world and for our own citizens. It is not impossible. President Obama has faced unprecedented intransigence by the Republicans in Congress since he took office. President Franklin Roosevelt dealt with the same kind of intransigence in the early years of his administration. But he did not have to deal with a people who were inundated with Fox Fake News all day and night. Nor did he have to deal with the racism unleashed by the GOP when they joined up with the Koch Brothers’ Tea Party.
We have to give President Obama and Vice President Biden four more years and we have to give them a huge Democratic majority in both houses of Congress.
Thanks for this. The exasperation I feel when contemplating the part of society that’s dragging the rest of us down like a giant ass tumor is beyond description. Is giving someone a wedgie considered assault?
“Shut up, fool” – maybe these are words we should be using ‘way more often? Why dignify the brain-dead by countenancing their spew?
Oh, and don’t miss ginandtacos today, it’s a winner, just like Shannyn’s essay above.
Dead Eyes, Cheap Suit, Can’t Lose
I don’t think they want a plutocracy- they want a theocracy that supports The United States of Corporations.
I’m guessing it is about time anger and passion start fighting back against rwnj bloviators. All of us need to beat these sonsabitches over the head with their own lies until they finally “get it”. No more Mr/Ms Niceguy.They want blood,let’s give them some of their own.
I’m voting Dr Jill Stein. 2020 is game over for the planet, both corporate parties have proven over the past 40 years that they are unwilling to address Global Warming. Yup it has been that long. I recall in the early 70s that the science was pretty sound that Global Warming was real.
I know if feels really good to “make a statement” with your vote, but be very clear about this: A vote for anyone other than Obama in the presidential election is a vote for Mitt Romney. Think about it.
I always vote who is best qualified to represent me, that is Dr Jill Stein. 2020 is game over for the planet, neither corporate party is going to address the biblical epic problem.
Voting for the lesser of two evils was probably coined by the 1 percenters. I vote my conscious and then I didn’t compromise and can sleep sound at night.
Voting your conscious is great. My conscious tells me that Obama is far from perfect. He is about as far to the left on many issues as Ronald Reagan. But my conscious also tells me Romney is far worse. Real people will suffer real hardship if he gets elected. The poor and middle class will pay so that he and his friends can have lower taxes. And when the economy crumbles around them, they will have gated communities, private guards to protect them, private jets to fly in, and private roads to drive on. Obama is unlikely to turn into an environmentalist or a liberal. But his policies will ease hardship for many real people. Life will be better for most if us in this world with Obama as president than if Romney is president. My conscious tells me that if there is a one in ten million chance that my vote will make a difference, than I’ll be damned if I vote for Romney.
If your conscious tells you to vote for Dr. Stein, go for it. Maybe that will make a positive difference too.
I was scared in 2008 that McCain would win because the idea of a 71-year-old four-time cancer survivor in the White House with Sarah Palin salivating at the gate terrified me. I had no respect for McCain but I believed that we could survive a McCain presidency (assuming he could as well) and emerge, battered and bruised but still standing, at the end.
However, I am even more frightened at this election because, if Romney/Ryan make it into the White House and Republicans take over the Senate, our nation will cease to be the kind of country it was created to be. There will be no opposition power in Congress or the SCOTUS to prevent the corporations from taking over and creating our worst economic and social nightmare. It will be a replay of the very worst moments of our nation’s history – robber barons controlling business and finance; rampant disease, pollution and poverty; decimation of civil rights; the reduction of our society into two classes – the wealthy and the poor.
It continues to astound me that so many of the Republicans running for election can put aside their basic humanity in their single-minded quest for power and money.
“Life will be better for most if us in this world with Obama as president than if Romney is president.” I agree, and I will do my best to make sure that the President is given 4 more years to fix the disaster he was given in January of 2009..
Vote your conscience (not conscious – well maybe it could be), if that is what you need to do. If you live in a totally RED state, then voting Obama might not make a difference. If you are in a swing state, then you might look at how important your vote might be, hold your nose and vote for the ticket that more closely (altho not perfectly) aligns with your principles.