Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
As a person looking in from a safe distance, I think it is extremely obvious what is going on, with U.S. politics and economics.
The rich have gained so much power that they effectively control virtually all aspects of society.
But I still have trouble understanding why the common man, the one getting no benefit from the Republican positions, can be so easily fooled into supporting them.
Maybe its me who is being fooled. The mainstream citizens claim to be concerned almost solely with jobs and the national debt. But to back the rightwingers who so clearly have no solutions for those important issues, doesn't make sense.
What does make sense is that Joe Average has been conned into being afraid.
Of black people, especially ones who are uppity enough to think they can be the President; of gays, who wish to destroy the concept of marriage; of college students, as the universities change normal kids into crazed liberals; of women, as everyone knows if you don't keep them barefoot and pregnant, they cause all manner of problems.
This manufactured bigotry is what fuels the masses, and has them crying out for a return to the olden days...even if it means a repeat of the failed policies of George Bush.
Well, one of the problems here in the US is that many ordinary people aspire to be rich. They have grown up believing that hard work makes a person rich. It is a fiction, of course, but one that has been urged upon people for generations now. Actually since the 19th century. We just had someone do some carpentry work for us. He's very nice and talented as a tradesman. He firmly believes that the rich deserve everything they have: "The 1% work very hard to be the 1%," according to him. So people who will never in their lives have anything have the utmost respect for the very wealthiest because they think, that if they try hard enough, they can join them. It's a kind of religion for ordinary people.
And Fox News and its ilk, with people like Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes fanning the flames, keep this myth alive. They and others like them control the media that most ordinary Americans read (if they read much) and watch on television. And fundamentalist Christian (not truly Christian but you know what I mean) further keep the myth alive.
It is very difficult to get ordinary Americans to vote in their own best interest when they go to the polls. For a while the labor movement in this country was able to educate workers about their rights and their best options for the future. Now the unions have less and less clout as manufacturing jobs have been taken away and sent abroad.
Hopes this helps to explain how mind oppression works in the US and why so many ordinary people are such stupid voters.
In my simplified explanation, I forgot to mention that fear is something that is fostered in ordinary Americans by the media they follow (Fox News), many fundamentalist churches and the Republican politicians who have honed the nasty underside of prejudice since the 19th century. In this country every group that is "different" is to be considered frightening and on the cusp of taking over. Back in the 19th century, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Catholics, Jews and freed slaves. The victims change with time but not the rhetoric.
It's not job creation they want, it's wealth creation. And I have to respectfully disagree with the "Rich 1 percent deserve everything they have" argument. If a craftsman came to my home, even if he was the best in the world, I wouldn't give him a cent of my hard earned money if he believes that argument. I vote with my vote AND my money. During the housing boom, everyone we knew "bought into" the "Money is cheap, interest rates are low, now's the time to buy a newer/bigger/ better/ more expensive house, because you can. Id' rather live in my modest home (or even a cardboard box by the road) and invest my money in my kid's education than to be a slave to my possessions. While the others bought bigger homes, we stayed put and paid down our mortgage. I consider myself content and rich in ways money can't define. We have one credit card, for "emergencies". If we need something, we save, if we put it on the credit card, we have the money aside to pay it off, just to keep our credit rating high.
I'm going to print it and take it to Kinko's, er, FedEx (whatever it is now) and have it laminated to carry in my shirt pocket all the time. This will especially help me translate RepubliSpeak when my office mates and I discuss politics at Happy Hour.
These goofy idjits, after a couple of drinks, start talking all this gibberish using words I recognize but giving them different meanings, and I can't get Siri on my iPhone to work fast enough to help me figure out in real time what the doofuses are trying to say, other than I'm a communist and a socialist and a fascist, too most of the time, and would I please buy them a round because they're usually either almost broke, or they don't want to have to explain to their wives why they pull out $50 bucks every week on Friday from the ATM at the Bnk of America branch located strategically across the parking lot next to the bar. Especially when they're supposed to be working late.
See, they're scared of their Republican wives, because of their chunky chicken soup can-throwing accuracy. Hell, I just call my wife and invite her to join us for an hour or so and then my butt is covered and then I don't have to worry about remembering a lie. Sometimes she'll meet us but usually she's bored of us talking shop and politics after the first glass of wine. But these Repugs, bless their hearts, they're gonna lie if they're still breathin'. Gotta love em.
Americans ... rich, white males Patriots ... Guns, God, and Bible Socialism ... anything the blah President does Anti-American .... anything the blah President does. Small Government ... shift tax payer monies from GOv't workers' salaries and citizen programs to Corporate welfare and entitlements. Christianity .... it's all about me and me getting mine!
Libertarians. Rand and Ron Paul. In other decades, they were called John Birchers. Now they're John Birchers with a different tea twist and tri-corner hats.
--- Teabagging. The tea taliban wants people to forget they chose their own name, first. Also, without researching the meaning of it.
Duh! Morans.
---
Socialism and Government Welfare: it's what Michele Bachmann and others in the elected tea taliban get per their lifetime perks and benefits.
Also when the rich get farm subsidies on technicalities, not that they really farm or farm much or they know the system so they get paid compared to small farmers who aren't getting paid to farm or not farm.
It's also what some get for a religious scam pretending to be mental health care and getting paid for doing so by the State of Minnesota and the US Feds. (Same with Bristol being the false Abstinence queen).
Ka-ching while they're in and also when they leave public service. Austerity for everyone else, yet no austerity for them.
Oh yeah, it's someone getting a Swiss passport and then rah, rah, wearing a USA lapel pin remembering, gosh, she's really more 'merican than that black guy in the White House.
Ahem, I want to see the long form that Michele really gave up her Swiss citizenship for too.
---
Gay: Any tea taliban (especially men) talking about gay, they're really desperate to get some man's parts or man on man anatomy yet don't have the balls to do it in a way that's affirming, self-empowering, clear, honest, being themselves. Instead it is their homophobia while trolling men's rooms, Craigslist, toe tapping in the men's toilets or hiring luggage lifters and more.
Tea taliban women talking about gay: they're probably regretting having married their ex-gay yet still gay husbands.
--- Live and let live: means, if you're a local, only white yet native born to the area, Christian (or their branch of it), straight (or assumed straight), etc.
The locals want you to leave them be and to be themselves, yet they'll be happy to tell you what's wrong with you since you don't fit into their profile of what's right (correct) or fits their tea right or their religious wrongly righteousness. Not as if they would look in the mirror first, before tossing out bible quotes and wagging their tongues and fingers at other people.
In other words, be happy if they let you live or live in peace.
--- Jesus: An unmarried man. Yet don't ask questions, they're not allowed in blind hero worship. Plus everyone knows that Jesus wasn't gay though he did have his male groupies and other followers.
During the 2010 mid-terms the GOP ran mainly on the platform of job creation and, as a result of such promises, the GOP gained the majority in the House of Representatives. As the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner made the welcome claim that the primary goal of the Republican Party was to increase employment in the U.S.
His exact words were: "We're going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs."
The following, therefore, is a chronological list of legislation by the GOP beginning 2-10-2011 that I created for my own amusement. That it has reached its current imposing length, without one anecdotal citation of new employment as a result of Republican legislation, is simply shocking. Shame on these useless hypocrites.
There are those who choose to place the blame for high unemployment on Mr. Obama's shoulders, but keep in mind that it's the House that enacts legislation and controls the governmental purse-strings, not the President. The Stimulus package passed by the Democrats in 2009 helped the economy but would have been more effective if the GOP hadn't limited it to little more than a package of more useless tax breaks for the rich.
Just looked at the "republicanjobcreation" site. Wonderful! What bozos. I gave up on our Rep. Dave Camp over a year ago. I'd send a serious email to him and receive an inane letter in the mail (his franking privilege at work, of course) some six weeks later about a totally different subject. The most I remember is that he is in favor of the "unborn." His letter used the expression "the unborn." Of course, he has consistently voted against the "already born," my word construction. And of course, the local branch of the OWS people would not go near his local office even though he chairs the House Ways and Means Committee because that would be partisan.
Mitt Romney delivered a curious speech in Iowa yesterday, presenting his thoughts on the budget deficit, the debt and debt reduction, which is worth reading if you missed it. We often talk about the problem of the left and right working from entirely different sets of facts, and how the discourse breaks down when there's no shared foundation of reality, and the Republican's remarks offered a timely peek into an alternate reality where facts have no meaning.
Even the topic itself is a strange choice for Romney. If the former governor is elected, he'll inherit a $1 trillion deficit and a $15 debt, which he'll respond to by approving massive new tax cuts and increasing Pentagon spending. How will he pay for this? No one has the foggiest idea.
In other words, the guy who intends to add trillions to the debt gave a speech yesterday on the dangers of adding trillions to the debt.
More importantly, though, Romney presented a vision of the last few years that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality at any level. Jon Chait had a good piece on the remarks.
War Criminals for Romney: Bush Hops Aboard Mitt’s 2012 Titanic
...It may have been fortuitous that George W. Bush endorsed Romney for president because it will remind Americans why the economy is struggling and how costly deregulation, unfunded wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy are to a healthy economy, much less one limping along. For many Americans, though, the idea of voting for an African American overrides any sense of self-preservation and despite knowledge that Romney will repeat Bush’s atrocious policies, they will choose the rich, greedy white guy over President Obama. What makes matters worse is the RNC advertising that a Romney presidency “would be like the policies of the Bush administration…just updated,” and their rush to return to an updated (read harsher) Bush presidency informs their plan to finish what Bush started.
It is curious why Romney’s campaign did not tell Bush to keep his mouth shut and avoid endorsing him at all costs because millions of Americans who lost their homes, retirement, and jobs because of Bush’s policies cannot forget why they are in the position they find themselves today. What Americans should remember most though, is that a convicted war criminal and arguably the worst president in history just endorsed his “updated” clone to be the next worst president in history.
Thanks, it's almost perfect. They forgot the "war on women", because women who use birth control are promiscuous, "loose", "Easy" and oversexed. Yet we see most of the Rethuglicans with huge families (they can afford other people to raise). Who are these promiscuous women having sex with? (certainly not other women, or they wouldn't need birth control). It's about controlling women so they can't work outside the home, outperform men, and get paid less for equal work.
Spot-on!!!
ReplyDeleteThat is BRILLIANT. I love it and plan to share it. Thanks for posting it.
ReplyDeletefrom: lianu@msn.com
ReplyDeleteGriffen: FYI for you an article I came across
FACT CHECK: Romney ignores a huge recession and other causes of nation’s mounting debt
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fact-check-romney-ignores-a-huge-recession-and-other-causes-of-nations-mounting-debt/2012/05/15/gIQAw8RVSU_story.html?tid=pm_pop
Forgot one:
ReplyDelete"American Exceptionalism" - Everything except the facts.
:-D
As a person looking in from a safe distance, I think it is extremely obvious what is going on, with U.S. politics and economics.
ReplyDeleteThe rich have gained so much power that they effectively control virtually all aspects of society.
But I still have trouble understanding why the common man, the one getting no benefit from the Republican positions, can be so easily fooled into supporting them.
Maybe its me who is being fooled. The mainstream citizens claim to be concerned almost solely with jobs and the national debt. But to back the rightwingers who so clearly have no solutions for those important issues, doesn't make sense.
What does make sense is that Joe Average has been conned into being afraid.
Of black people, especially ones who are uppity enough to think they can be the President; of gays, who wish to destroy the concept of marriage; of college students, as the universities change normal kids into crazed liberals; of women, as everyone knows if you don't keep them barefoot and pregnant, they cause all manner of problems.
This manufactured bigotry is what fuels the masses, and has them crying out for a return to the olden days...even if it means a repeat of the failed policies of George Bush.
Sorry, but there is no safe distance from this hot mess of a country -- we are all up shit-creek if the repubs get back in.
DeleteWell, one of the problems here in the US is that many ordinary people aspire to be rich. They have grown up believing that hard work makes a person rich. It is a fiction, of course, but one that has been urged upon people for generations now. Actually since the 19th century. We just had someone do some carpentry work for us. He's very nice and talented as a tradesman. He firmly believes that the rich deserve everything they have: "The 1% work very hard to be the 1%," according to him. So people who will never in their lives have anything have the utmost respect for the very wealthiest because they think, that if they try hard enough, they can join them. It's a kind of religion for ordinary people.
DeleteAnd Fox News and its ilk, with people like Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes fanning the flames, keep this myth alive. They and others like them control the media that most ordinary Americans read (if they read much) and watch on television. And fundamentalist Christian (not truly Christian but you know what I mean) further keep the myth alive.
It is very difficult to get ordinary Americans to vote in their own best interest when they go to the polls. For a while the labor movement in this country was able to educate workers about their rights and their best options for the future. Now the unions have less and less clout as manufacturing jobs have been taken away and sent abroad.
Hopes this helps to explain how mind oppression works in the US and why so many ordinary people are such stupid voters.
In my simplified explanation, I forgot to mention that fear is something that is fostered in ordinary Americans by the media they follow (Fox News), many fundamentalist churches and the Republican politicians who have honed the nasty underside of prejudice since the 19th century. In this country every group that is "different" is to be considered frightening and on the cusp of taking over. Back in the 19th century, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Catholics, Jews and freed slaves. The victims change with time but not the rhetoric.
DeleteGood post.
DeleteIt's not job creation they want, it's wealth creation. And I have to respectfully disagree with the "Rich 1 percent deserve everything they have" argument.
DeleteIf a craftsman came to my home, even if he was the best in the world, I wouldn't give him a cent of my hard earned money if he believes that argument. I vote with my vote AND my money.
During the housing boom, everyone we knew "bought into" the "Money is cheap, interest rates are low, now's the time to buy a newer/bigger/ better/ more expensive house, because you can.
Id' rather live in my modest home (or even a cardboard box by the road) and invest my money in my kid's education than to be a slave to my possessions. While the others bought bigger homes, we stayed put and paid down our mortgage.
I consider myself content and rich in ways money can't define. We have one credit card, for "emergencies". If we need something, we save, if we put it on the credit card, we have the money aside to pay it off, just to keep our credit rating high.
This is good. Thanks, G.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to print it and take it to Kinko's, er, FedEx (whatever it is now) and have it laminated to carry in my shirt pocket all the time. This will especially help me translate RepubliSpeak when my office mates and I discuss politics at Happy Hour.
These goofy idjits, after a couple of drinks, start talking all this gibberish using words I recognize but giving them different meanings, and I can't get Siri on my iPhone to work fast enough to help me figure out in real time what the doofuses are trying to say, other than I'm a communist and a socialist and a fascist, too most of the time, and would I please buy them a round because they're usually either almost broke, or they don't want to have to explain to their wives why they pull out $50 bucks every week on Friday from the ATM at the Bnk of America branch located strategically across the parking lot next to the bar. Especially when they're supposed to be working late.
See, they're scared of their Republican wives, because of their chunky chicken soup can-throwing accuracy. Hell, I just call my wife and invite her to join us for an hour or so and then my butt is covered and then I don't have to worry about remembering a lie. Sometimes she'll meet us but usually she's bored of us talking shop and politics after the first glass of wine. But these Repugs, bless their hearts, they're gonna lie if they're still breathin'. Gotta love em.
Americans ... rich, white males
ReplyDeletePatriots ... Guns, God, and Bible
Socialism ... anything the blah President does
Anti-American .... anything the blah President does.
Small Government ... shift tax payer monies from GOv't workers' salaries and citizen programs to Corporate welfare and entitlements.
Christianity .... it's all about me and me getting mine!
Libertarians. Rand and Ron Paul. In other decades, they were called John Birchers. Now they're John Birchers with a different tea twist and tri-corner hats.
ReplyDelete---
Teabagging. The tea taliban wants people to forget they chose their own name, first. Also, without researching the meaning of it.
Duh! Morans.
---
Socialism and Government Welfare: it's what Michele Bachmann and others in the elected tea taliban get per their lifetime perks and benefits.
Also when the rich get farm subsidies on technicalities, not that they really farm or farm much or they know the system so they get paid compared to small farmers who aren't getting paid to farm or not farm.
It's also what some get for a religious scam pretending to be mental health care and getting paid for doing so by the State of Minnesota and the US Feds. (Same with Bristol being the false Abstinence queen).
Ka-ching while they're in and also when they leave public service. Austerity for everyone else, yet no austerity for them.
Oh yeah, it's someone getting a Swiss passport and then rah, rah, wearing a USA lapel pin remembering, gosh, she's really more 'merican than that black guy in the White House.
Ahem, I want to see the long form that Michele really gave up her Swiss citizenship for too.
---
Gay: Any tea taliban (especially men) talking about gay, they're really desperate to get some man's parts or man on man anatomy yet don't have the balls to do it in a way that's affirming, self-empowering, clear, honest, being themselves. Instead it is their homophobia while trolling men's rooms, Craigslist, toe tapping in the men's toilets or hiring luggage lifters and more.
Tea taliban women talking about gay: they're probably regretting having married their ex-gay yet still gay husbands.
---
Live and let live: means, if you're a local, only white yet native born to the area, Christian (or their branch of it), straight (or assumed straight), etc.
The locals want you to leave them be and to be themselves, yet they'll be happy to tell you what's wrong with you since you don't fit into their profile of what's right (correct) or fits their tea right or their religious wrongly righteousness. Not as if they would look in the mirror first, before tossing out bible quotes and wagging their tongues and fingers at other people.
In other words, be happy if they let you live or live in peace.
---
Jesus: An unmarried man. Yet don't ask questions, they're not allowed in blind hero worship. Plus everyone knows that Jesus wasn't gay though he did have his male groupies and other followers.
During the 2010 mid-terms the GOP ran mainly on the platform of job creation and, as a result of such promises, the GOP gained the majority in the House of Representatives. As the new Speaker of the House, John Boehner made the welcome claim that the primary goal of the Republican Party was to increase employment in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteHis exact words were: "We're going to have a relentless focus on creating jobs."
The following, therefore, is a chronological list of legislation by the GOP beginning 2-10-2011 that I created for my own amusement. That it has reached its current imposing length, without one anecdotal citation of new employment as a result of Republican legislation, is simply shocking. Shame on these useless hypocrites.
There are those who choose to place the blame for high unemployment on Mr. Obama's shoulders, but keep in mind that it's the House that enacts legislation and controls the governmental purse-strings, not the President. The Stimulus package passed by the Democrats in 2009 helped the economy but would have been more effective if the GOP hadn't limited it to little more than a package of more useless tax breaks for the rich.
-------------------------------------------------------
Non-Job Creation Legislation of 2012:
http://republicanjobcreation.com/
Just looked at the "republicanjobcreation" site. Wonderful! What bozos. I gave up on our Rep. Dave Camp over a year ago. I'd send a serious email to him and receive an inane letter in the mail (his franking privilege at work, of course) some six weeks later about a totally different subject. The most I remember is that he is in favor of the "unborn." His letter used the expression "the unborn." Of course, he has consistently voted against the "already born," my word construction. And of course, the local branch of the OWS people would not go near his local office even though he chairs the House Ways and Means Committee because that would be partisan.
DeleteThanks for the link. The GOP anti-Obama second term was set before he took office.
DeleteHey Gryphen, I just found this little tool:
ReplyDeleteThe model predicts that Obama will win 58.4 percent of the time if the economic growth is 0 percent and his approval rating is 48 percent.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/2012-election-predictor/
A peek into an alternate reality
ReplyDeleteMitt Romney delivered a curious speech in Iowa yesterday, presenting his thoughts on the budget deficit, the debt and debt reduction, which is worth reading if you missed it. We often talk about the problem of the left and right working from entirely different sets of facts, and how the discourse breaks down when there's no shared foundation of reality, and the Republican's remarks offered a timely peek into an alternate reality where facts have no meaning.
Even the topic itself is a strange choice for Romney. If the former governor is elected, he'll inherit a $1 trillion deficit and a $15 debt, which he'll respond to by approving massive new tax cuts and increasing Pentagon spending. How will he pay for this? No one has the foggiest idea.
In other words, the guy who intends to add trillions to the debt gave a speech yesterday on the dangers of adding trillions to the debt.
More importantly, though, Romney presented a vision of the last few years that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality at any level. Jon Chait had a good piece on the remarks.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/16/11731503-a-peek-into-an-alternate-reality?lite
War Criminals for Romney: Bush Hops Aboard Mitt’s 2012 Titanic
ReplyDelete...It may have been fortuitous that George W. Bush endorsed Romney for president because it will remind Americans why the economy is struggling and how costly deregulation, unfunded wars, and tax cuts for the wealthy are to a healthy economy, much less one limping along. For many Americans, though, the idea of voting for an African American overrides any sense of self-preservation and despite knowledge that Romney will repeat Bush’s atrocious policies, they will choose the rich, greedy white guy over President Obama. What makes matters worse is the RNC advertising that a Romney presidency “would be like the policies of the Bush administration…just updated,” and their rush to return to an updated (read harsher) Bush presidency informs their plan to finish what Bush started.
It is curious why Romney’s campaign did not tell Bush to keep his mouth shut and avoid endorsing him at all costs because millions of Americans who lost their homes, retirement, and jobs because of Bush’s policies cannot forget why they are in the position they find themselves today. What Americans should remember most though, is that a convicted war criminal and arguably the worst president in history just endorsed his “updated” clone to be the next worst president in history.
http://www.politicususa.com/war-criminal-for-romney.html
Thanks, it's almost perfect. They forgot the "war on women", because women who use birth control are promiscuous, "loose", "Easy" and oversexed.
ReplyDeleteYet we see most of the Rethuglicans with huge families (they can afford other people to raise). Who are these promiscuous women having sex with? (certainly not other women, or they wouldn't need birth control).
It's about controlling women so they can't work outside the home, outperform men, and get paid less for equal work.
To quote Joe Biden, "They Don't Get Us"