Monday, February 13, 2017

Protesters in Foxworld


In Foxworld, Soros and Obama are organizing violent protests and sabotage.
Also, Obama was a Muslim while in office.

Saturday, February 11, 2017

Legacy

Posted today on Facebook by David's Snarky Politics Place:

When a Facebook friend told Scott Mednick, "We suffered for 8 years. Now it’s your turn.” Scott wrote a brilliant response asking how exactly his friend, a Trump supporter, had suffered under Obama.
Scott's reply:
"I am surprised you would wish suffering upon me. That of course is your right, I suppose. I do not wish harm on anyone. Your statement seems to continue an ‘US v THEM’ mentality. The election is over. It is important to get past campaigning and campaign rhetoric and get down to what is uniting not dividing and what is best for ALL Americans.
There will never be a President who does everything to everyone’s liking. There are things President Obama (and President Clinton) did that I do not like and conversely there are things I can point to that the Presidents Bush did that I agree with. So I am not 100% in lock step with the outgoing President but have supported him and the overall job he did.
And, if you recall, during the Presidential Campaign back in 2008 the campaign was halted because of the "historic crisis in our financial system." Wall Street bailout negotiations intervened in the election process. The very sobering reality was that there likely could be a Depression and the world financial markets could collapse. The United States was losing 800,000 jobs a month and was poised to lose at least 10 million jobs the first year once the new President took office. We were in an economic freefall. So let us recall that ALL of America was suffering terribly at the beginning of Obama’s Presidency.
But I wanted to look back over the last 8 years and ask you a few questions. Since much of the rhetoric before Obama was elected was that he would impose Sharia Law, Take Away Your Guns, Create Death Panels, Destroy the Economy, Impose Socialism and, since you will agree that NONE of this came to pass,
I was wondering:
Why have you suffered so?
So let me ask:
Gays and Lesbians can now marry and enjoy the benefits they had been deprived of. Has this caused your suffering?
When Obama took office, the Dow was 6,626. Now it is 19,875. Has this caused your suffering?
We had 82 straight months of private sector job growth - the longest streak in the history of the United States. Has this caused your suffering?
Especially considering where he the economy was when he took over, an amazing 11.3 million new jobs were created under President Obama (far more than President Bush). Has this caused your suffering?
Obama has taken Unemployment from 10% down to 4.7%. Has this caused your suffering?
Homelessness among US Veterans has dropped by half. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama shut down the US secret overseas prisons. Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama has created a policy for the families of fallen soldiers to have their travel paid for to be there when remains are flown home. Has this caused your suffering?
We landed a rover on Mars. Has this caused your suffering?
He passed the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Has this caused your suffering?
Uninsured adults has decreased to below 10%: 90% of adults are insured - an increase of 20 Million Adults. Has this caused your suffering?
People are now covered for pre-existing conditions. Has this caused your suffering?
Insurance Premiums increased an average of $4,677 from 2002-2008, an increase of 58% under Bush. The growth of these
insurance premiums has gone up $4,145 – a slower rate of increase. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama added Billions of dollars to mental health care for our Veterans. Has this caused your suffering?
Consumer confidence has gone from 37.7 to 98.1 during Obama’s tenure. Has this caused your suffering?
He passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. Has this caused your suffering?
His bi-annual Nuclear Summit convinced 16 countries to give up and destroy all their loose nuclear material so it could not be stolen. Has this caused your suffering?
He saved the US Auto industry. American cars sold at the beginning of his term were 10.4M and upon his exit 17.5M. Has this caused your suffering?
The deficit as a percentage of the GDP has gone from 9.8% to 3.2%. Has this caused your suffering?
The deficit itself was cut by $800 Billion Dollars. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama preserved the middle class tax cuts. Has this caused your suffering?
Obama banned solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons. Has this caused your suffering?
He signed Credit Card reform so that rates could not be raised without you being notified. Has this caused your suffering?
He outlawed Government contractors from discriminating against LGBT persons. Has this caused your suffering?
He doubled Pell Grants. Has this caused your suffering?
Abortion is down. Has this caused your suffering?
Violent crime is down. Has this caused your suffering?
He overturned the scientific ban on stem cell research. Has this caused your suffering?
He protected Net Neutrality. Has this caused your suffering?
Obamacare has extended the life of the Medicare insurance trust fund (will be solvent until 2030). Has this caused your suffering?
President Obama repealed Don't Ask Don't Tell. Has this caused your suffering?
He banned torture. Has this caused your suffering?
He negotiated with Syria to give up its chemical weapons and they were destroyed. Has this caused your suffering?
Solar and Wind Power are at an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
High School Graduation rates hit 83% - an all time high. Has this caused your suffering?
Corporate profits are up by 144%. Has this caused your suffering?
He normalized relations with Cuba. Has this caused your suffering?
Reliance on foreign oil is at a 40 year low. Has this caused your suffering?
US Exports are up 28%. Has this caused your suffering?
He appointed the most diverse cabinet ever. Has this caused your suffering?
He reduced the number of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Has this caused your suffering?
Yes, he killed Osama Bin Laden and retrieved all the documents in his possession for analysis. Perhaps THIS caused your suffering?
From an objective standpoint it would appear that the last 8 years have seen some great progress and we were saved from a financial collapse. Things are not perfect. Things can always be better. We are on much better footing now than we were in 2008.
I look forward to understanding what caused you to suffer so much under Obama these last 8 years...
Share away

Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Snatched Quotes

Trump isn’t a real populist, he just plays one on reality TV... Why, then, does anyone consider him a “populist”? It’s basically all about affect, about coming across as someone who’ll stand up to snooty liberal elitists (and of course validate salt-of-the-earth, working-class racism.) - Paul Krugman


Part of the post-truth movement is the post-definitions phenomenon, which holds that words mean whatever the lying sack of shit who originally uttered them says they mean in retrospect.  - Betty Cracker


Providing health care to those previously denied it is, necessarily, a matter of redistributing from the lucky to the unlucky. And, of course, reversing a policy that expanded health care is redistribution in reverse. You can’t make this reality go away. - Paul Krugman

It’s not just that the winners fail to compensate the losers. It’s that they use their winnings to buy the politics and policies that further hurt the losers. When Trump and Bernie and even Hillary said “the economy’s rigged,” this is what they meant: the benefits of growth (including those from globalization) are going largely to the rich, who then use those resources to advance more inequality-inducing government policies (real time examples include ACA repeal and the big, nasty, regressive tax cut that’s coming). The fact that Trump pulled this message off may seem remarkable, but history is littered with carnival barking faux populists tapping this play. - Jared Bernstein

Saturday, January 7, 2017

Fashion Sense in Foxworld

In Foxworld, the symbol of treason, slavery, and white supremacy
is the equivalent of a bad fashion choice.

Sometimes The Comments...

    John Grey has a new post in his GBPOTUS blog, in which he itemizes some of the ways Liberals have made conservative lives better.  It was a pretty well written post.  It was reposted on Facebook by Wendy Olson, and subsequently by David's Snarky Politics Place, which is how I found it. 
    I've often said that "sometimes the comments are better," and one of Ms Olson's commenters did not disappoint:

[Another commenter's name], I don't know what rock you crawled out from under, but they never educated you while you were there. To start, if you want to reach people you do not begin referring to them as "yiu" citizens, or anything else. That implies that you believe they are different from you, and usually less of a human being than you, and you should never tell another person to "settle down," because that will illicit an escalation of whatever upheaval you perceive they are going through.  
Now to my big point. You obviously are a conservative Republican follower. I saw follower because you have bought their propaganda hook line and sinker. Having read your "posting" I now know that you are uneducated, or otherwise unorganized. I have waded through the propaganda drivel and have come to the conclusion you are 'he who doesn't understand.' 
The Constitution is the basis of law in this country, which is led by 538 Congressmen who are responsible for making law that is compatible with the Constitution, and the majority of those people, including those many who are lawyers, do not understand that document. There has been much discussion about the Constitution, not just in this election cycle, but for every decade of the nation's existence, because some in leadership don't want the people to have rights and freedoms because it doesn't fit their agenda of leading the country where they want to take it, or it threatens their desired goal of controlling of the citizens. The Republican Party has been seeking to change the Constitution to give them more control, first, of marginalized people, who are not in a position to fight back (i.e. the poor, elderly, and disabled, and ultimately women, who have been fighting for their rights forever.)  
The Republican Party ascribes to the idea that if you are not a Christian, white male, you shouldn't be able to lead a life with any respect or benefits, or be capable of making your own decisions. In this ideological framework, America is just as big a cesspool as other countries that allow women, children, the elderly , handicapped and poor to be murdered, raped, trafficked and dehumanizing. Therefore, you are backing evil people and providing support for those who one day will say, "Hey, there goes Joe. He's old now so he has become a leech on society because he can't meet the standards we expect from our people anymore, no matter how well he has served our purposes in the past." Let's see how long you survive without freedom, work, healthcare or anything else that humanity needs, should have, and which most earn and pay for themselves -- unlike our government officials who receive freedoms above the average citizen, like the freedom to board a plane and fly anywhere they want to go without submitting their possessions and bodies to a thorough search, and sitting for 2 hours in an airport before boarding a plane, or not even being required to accept a traffic ticket, or to answer questions from the police, or even getting his check attached by the creditors he didn't pay (including their unpaid child support).  
I could go on for hours but I am bored with people like you.  
[Edited for clarity.]


Monday, November 14, 2016

Processing the Election - A Letter To The Editor Of The Gazette

Processing the election
So, I took a day or so to process my feelings over the election. As many of my friends know, I posted a lot of political things over the last year. And yesterday morning, I woke up in tears. I was so sick to my stomach I couldn’t function most of the day. Some of you are probably thinking, “Come on. Seriously. Why all the drama?” Why should I be so upset, right?
You are obviously different from me. I read all the well-meaning and positive comments about unity and hope and praying for our new president (all of them, by the way, written by my white friends). I tried to put everything into perspective. I made a list of what I felt I had in my favor to feel hopeful for the future. I am a “past-her-prime,” deliriously happily married Christian white woman who doesn’t have to work for a living anymore, with a nice home, a healthy family, a few cars in my garage and the ability to travel and concentrate on my hobbies in a state so safe that a lot of people don’t even lock their homes. What do I have to be so worried about?
My ancestors either came to this country in the 1600s or were already here. I am as American as it gets. I mean, I’m not a Muslim who must now fear even more for her safety, but I have friends who are. I’m not African-American with all the social injustices that come with that, but my grandchildren are. I’m not in my child-bearing years, worrying about health care, but my daughters are. I’m not Mexican-American, but my grandchildren are.
The Second Amendment was never a worry for me. In fact, I have never known a single person in my 58 years that has had to defend his or her family using a handgun or automatic assault weapon. I don’t own any guns, but I watch the news every day wondering who will be the next victim of those who do have those weapons.
I’m not young and attractive, so I don’t have to worry much about sexual predators in safe little New Hampshire, but my daughters have to worry, especially now that they have a role model in the White House. I don’t have financial issues about health insurance, but my family does. I don’t live in an area threatened by a pipeline, but my Native American ancestors call me to care not only now but for the future of a planet they treasured. No one in my family serves in the military at this time, but I have four grandsons and two granddaughters who may someday have to fight in wars started by a president who claims to love war.
I was raised in an era where we were taught that Communism and the USSR (Russia, for those of you too young to remember) were our ideological enemies, a time when many people gave their lives during the Cold War to stop the spread, but now we have a president who adores their dictator.
I am not handicapped nor do I have children with disabilities, but I have family members who do and have to worry about a president who mocks those people on TV. I don’t have to depend on social programs, but I once had to depend on food stamps to feed my kids because I didn’t make enough money as a teacher in Oklahoma to take care of my family as a single mom, but I’m sure billionaire, white privileged, private-schooled Mr. Trump is going to correct that problem. With any luck at all, Social Security will only supplement our income, if it survives at all now in a totally Republican-controlled government, but my father counts on it. I could go on and on.
So, I guess, overall, I really shouldn’t be upset, right? The deck seems to be stacked in my favor. I mean, the Lord is in control, right? But the one thing all of us had better remember is that God gave us free will. When we make choices that run counter to His plan for us, we often suffer the consequences of the bad choices we make and the ones made by others.
I cry because I believe with all my heart that my family is going to suffer a great deal from the free will of white America, which decided that a man like Donald Trump should be the leader of the free world, a man whose every word points to a less free world for everyone different from me.
Julie Anderson, a former Edmond public school teacher New Hampshire

The Trump Effect Part 1

I'm pretty nervous about posting this - it's raw and sincere, and I worry it might get lost in the sea of post-election commentary that so many have categorized as "whining..."
But I have to explain why I'm struggling so much with the results of this election/the entire campaign season.
I can't forget - and I don't think we should forget - Trump's words.
...
Politics and policy aside entirely: from his mouth, we heard words that were charged with hatred. Things he even later acknowledged and didn't apologize for. Ways he talked about women. How he addressed people at his rallies, encouraging violence and hateful rhetoric. His campaign told people to be afraid if he wasn't elected. His campaign told people to be afraid in general.
And now that he's elected, I am afraid.
We're seeing the ripples of his words growing in intensity voiced by children in school to their peers who are different from them. I know people who have had slurs yelled at them from cars passing by. My own alma mater - a small Christian campus - has been rattled this week during what was supposed to be a reconciliation service by students intolerant to diversity.
A friend of mine, who happens to be a minister and a gay man, shared these words from his own heart with me:
"...it’s about knowing that 40% of those I think are my friends endorsed an administration that thinks I’m not worthy of the same rights they have. It’s about realizing that 40% of the people I THINK believe I’m a valid person really don’t believe that at all...If it came to it, would they be in the crowd chanting against me?"
Those of us speaking up are not upset by your difference in political opinion. Honestly, We value that difference - we need each other to find balanced and effective solutions.
What would make us less afraid? What would help me personally to trust Trump as a leader?:
He needs to speak out against the voices of his supporters who are terrorizing LGBT people in their communities.
He needs to denounce the KKK.
He needs to apologize to women for the specific horrible things he's said about them.
He needs to show humility and that he values and embodies compassion for the many lives he now represents.
None of this is to suggest I'm not without hope. Even though I don't necessarily see eye to eye with some of the people he has brought into his cabinet, I trust that many of them want the best for all people. I hope for his team to take quick action proving themselves trustworthy and unifying as an administration.
Until then, I will not forget who he has been, what he has said, the many people who have been affected, or the many who fear the effect his influence will have on their lives going forward.
The attached post (by a friend from my alma mater) speaks powerfully about all of this from her first hand post-election experiences. We can't ignore it. We have to demand him to challenge these and his own actions. - Emily Race