This post is what happens though when I listen to too much NPR and dip just a toe back into the political blogosphere.
Republicians:
Until you accept responsibility for taking a budget surplus and creating a budget deficit from it, I’m not listening to a single word you say about fiscal responsibility
My fiancee has no health care not because she thinks she’s invincible, but because she can’t afford it. The problem doesn’t lie with how much she makes, but with how expensive health care costs are (like the $75 we were charged for a doctor to look at the results of a $300+ test, not to talk to her about it just to look at the paper sent back to him from a lab). Do something about that.
Back to the deficit for a minute, a big part of where it came from (since your memories don’t seem to go past last January) was the Medicare prescription drug plan you enacted and didn’t pay for. Sure Obama’s spending freeze will only affect a small percent of the deficit, that’s because the biggest part of it is health care related.
Right now, I’m still assuming you do want to do what’s right for the people, but based on all I’ve seen and heard from you, you don’t want the Democrats and specifically Obama to get any credit so you’re doing everything you can to drag your feet and ensure they fail so you can be back in power and then you’ll actually do something. No. We need you to act now.
Obama and the Democrats:
You weren’t elected to work with Republicans. You were elected because we didn’t like what they were doing and wanted to give you a chance. So do something already. Even if you lost eight more Senate seats you would still have a majority. Make them filibuster.
See what I said above about health care.
One one hand we hear Clinton proclaiming internet access a human right and on the other we have Music and Movie Industry Lawyers the Justice Department saying that even an accusation of online copyright infringement should result in being banned from the internet.
Repeal all the laws enacted over the past eight years giving the executive branch the power to violate our rights.
Nice job on the State of the Union, Obama.
Tea Partiers and Fox “News”:
Where were your protests when Bush and the Republicans created the deficit? Oh that’s right, back then questioning the president was un-American. Sure Obama has added to it, but part of that addition gave me (and most Tea Party attendees and probably none of the Fox “News” hosts) a tax cut. Yes, Obama’s evil stimulus package put more money in your pocket. Go back and check your pay stubs.
The census? Really? That’s how the government is going to gather information on you so they can round you up? Thanks to Bush and the Republicans, Obama has the authority to listen in on all of your phone calls and read everything you post online. He doesn’t need the census. If he hadn’t nixed it, he’d also have the power to declare you an unlawful enemy combatant, lock you up, and throw away the key and you’d have no recourse to challenge that decision. Fight that fight, not the census.
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I could go on and on, but I have better things to do (like write up my thoughts on the iPad).
To all our teabagging friends, where the f*** was your fiscal conservative outrage over the past 8 years as the president and congress you elected and re-elected took us from a surplus of $128 billion to a deficit of $1.8 trillion? And if you’re from Georgia and just voted to re-elect one of the two senators who helped drive the budget off a cliff, sit down and shut up, especially with all of this talk about “no representation”. I’m the one without congressional representation (now that I’ve moved out to John Linder’s district).
And where was your fear that your freedoms were being taken away when Bush decided, backed up by Congress, that the president could declare anyone, including you, an unlawful enemy combatant and then imprison you for life without recourse? When he decided that the Fourth Amendment and the laws enacted by Congress in support thereof can be ignored? When he decided that your First Amendment right could be curtailed and confined to special Free Speech Zones? When he decided that the military could be used as a police force in the U.S. without any regard to any restrictions in the Bill of Rights?
If Bush were still president he could have sent the military to your tea parties, declared you all unlawful enemy combatants and sent you to Gitmo for the rest of your lives. Not any more though. Bush restored posse comitatus on his way out the door and Obama has dismissed the unlawful enemy combatant designation. True Obama has continued to fight to keep the illegal wiretapping and surveillance laws. But then that doesn’t seem to be why you’re protesting.
In fact, why are you protesting? Is it because you make over $150,000 and so haven’t just gotten a tax cut? Is it because you slept through the election day last November and so missed out on your chance to vote (and don’t realize that there is another federal election next year)? Is it because you didn’t think to contact your representatives and senators and the president with an alternative plan to deal with the economic crisis?
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A mostly unrelated addendum. Cries are starting to go out about how if defense spending goes down, we will be less safe. Apparently the only way to keep us safe is to throw money at the Pentagon. Whereas every year public education is told that they don’t need more money or even the same money as the previous year, they just need to spend a smaller amount of money better. Because if public education spending goes down it certainly won’t make us less smart.
Here’s hoping it won’t be quite as long a walk home as expected. As Springsteen put it:
You know that flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we’ll do and what we won’t.
We may have lost our way, done some of those things we wouldn’t and shouldn’t do (such as forgetting that we were founded on the idea that all Men, regardless of nationality, are endowed with inalienable rights), but we’re about to take that first big step on the road home.
This should be big news as it comes in part from a former McCain advisor, but alleges possible election fixing in favor of Republicans, Senator Saxby Chambliss and Governor Sonny Perdue:
In discussions with RAW STORY, the whistleblower — who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation — said that he became suspicious of Diebold’s actions in Georgia for two reasons. The first red flag went up when the computer patch was installed in person by Diebold CEO Bob Urosevich, who flew in from Texas and applied it in just two counties, DeKalb and Fulton, both Democratic strongholds.