bumper sticker

I just saw this bumper sticker about an hour ago and I had to do a double take. I couldn’t believe how idiotic it sounded.

Does the right wing seriously believe health care is MORE expensive under the European/Single Payer system??

There’s a reason why every single person is covered under their system – even foreigners, tourists, and the like. Because everyone pays into the system, via taxes.

It’s not free – but it sure isn’t more expensive than our system, which will wipe you out within a matter of weeks or months, the moment you start receiving your bills. And that’s if you’re lucky enough to avoid getting canceled by your carrier.

I wonder what their bumper stickers would say if we didn’t have VA Medical Care, Social Security or Unemployment Insurance?

Democrats want equality for everyone.  That’s what our country is all about.

That’s not socialism.  It’s nothing more than being humanitarian.

Dems want fairness – not handouts.  Dems want those who work hard to be rewarded – not abused and kicked to the curb by taking away benefits, job protections and denial of health care benefits.

It’s not rocket science.  It’s common sense.

Here are some hard facts:

Republicans don’t want everyone to have:

• regulations, rules, laws that protect consumers
• health care for all
• advanced education for all
• fair, living wages with union protections and benefits for all
• clean air and water for all
• safe products for all
• human rights for all
• free speech for all
• fire and police protection for all
• everything else required to live a clean, healthy life for all
• equal rights for all
• gay rights for all
• proportionally fair taxes – the more you make, the more you pay

The only thing they want everyone to have access to is guns and ammunition. The very same things that take away life instead of preserving it.  Guns DO kill people – and so do the knuckle dragging idiots carrying them.

They love to play the “blame the victim” game, by insisting that the victims wouldn’t have gotten killed or hurt if they had used a gun, too.

They believe in letting people who can’t work die off so those of us who can work can take their jobs.

They don’t believe in competition between workers – They believe in creating competition between fellow workers to drive down wages and benefits.  This is where our country is at RIGHT NOW.

It’s a “kill or be killed” mentality.

And I think this country has had more than enough of it in the past decade.

Wow.

I used to make a couple of grand per paycheck. Now it’s 200 a week. Oooooh, ya got me there….I’m sooo livin’ it up on my big fat weekly check!!

I can always…ALWAYS…count on Republicans to come up with the biggest doozies to offend the thinking-class in this country.

Another favorite past talking point was “if you help the homeless and the poor, you’re helping to keep pan handlers, drug dealers and scam artists in business – they’ll never learn how to make a living on their own”. As if being homeless and poor wasn’t bad enough – you have to worry about being labeled a “scam artist” when you ask for help.

And, I especially love hearing them say “I don’t want my tax dollars going toward some bum who is gonna buy drugs with my money”.

So they’re totally fine with paying for wars based on lies and massive fraud and abuse by military contractors.  But helping the poor?  That just makes their blood boil with rage.

I really hate saying this, but…Republicans have ice water running in their veins. That’s all there is to it.  How can these people be so g-damned mean and evil when they are asked to help others? And then they are so blissfully happy when they are told about people across the globe dying from our bombs and military strikes?  Especially when it was all based on lies?  Why on earth is that sooo okay with them??

They talk about post-9/11 moments as if they were golden and beautiful. The only thing honestly beautiful that I can remember about it, which only lasted a month or so, was how everyone was united as a nation and as a global entity. Color and gender, nationality and language, race, stature, class, etc – none of that mattered. Everyone had their flags flying.

However, during that time – and ever since then – it’s been nothing but a paranoid freaky fear festival among Republicans — and we have all suffered ever since. It’s all about keeping people divided – and making sure no one trusts “the other” among us.

Republicans don’t love “unity” when it comes down to who we are as a nation or global force — they only love it when people are united against “the other”. When people are pitted against eachother, treated as if they must view eachother with suspicion and fear, it brings out the worst in all of us.

Republicans don’t want us united – they want us divided. Their motto really is “divide and conquer” – not “united we fall”.

So, going back to my original point…

Instead of helping eachother out, it’s all about fearing the poor, the foreigner, the unfamiliar cultures and lifestyles.

Being unemployed sucks. But I guess that’s not what they want to believe or try to understand. They want to view 10-20% of the country as “the other” – and still call themselves “compassionate conservatives” at the same time.

Oh, and one more thing…

If you’re wondering about why conservatives are all for giving tons of money to foreign countries. They’re not doing it out of love or compassion. They are doing for the exact same reasons a loan shark would do it: to kick you down when you can’t pay it back. Republicans and crisis are like insurance agents turned ambulance chasers. They want you to call them the hero – but you realize they are the bad guy when they demand 30% interest on that 90-day million dollar loan. Read “Confessions of an Econonmic Hitman” if you don’t believe this.  If you’d like to read excerpts of the book, read it here.  Here’s a Wikipedia summary on it.

Oh, and one more thing.  The most frightening thing to a Republican is an educated public.  This is why they’re rather have a bunch of uneducated goons filled with hate fighting their battles, instead of a civilized and educated public that will more than likely vote for a Democrat instead of a Republican.  If you haven’t heard yet, Kansas City just voted to shut down half their schools due to budget issues.  Instead of trying to cut corners on waste, they shut the schools down instead.  That should help them create more impoverished, uneducated goons to fight their battles.

Ugh…

The Republicans scream and yell the most dishonest, offensive, and outrageous statements, repeating them ad nauseum, even going as far as calling the mainstream media “liberal” whenever it tries to correct them on their lies. (The media is in fact right wing and extremely corporate-owned, which is why their lies constantly go unchallenged). Obama and the Democrats seem to simply ignore these screaming imbeciles as if they were nothing more than white noise, while the rest of us in the real world have to put up with the result of their lies. The results usually turn up in casual conversation with neighbors and friends repeating the lies as if it were doctrine.

Obama needs to take the Republicans in the back room and let the beatings begin.  There is absolutely NO excuse for allowing such unforgivable behavior from the right wing to continue.

On a side note…

The Dems need to cull the herd in their own party and start demanding real progressive action.

The Blue Dogs keep putting up with the lies from the right… and then they won’t take action until the damage has been done and corrective actions become laughably ineffective.

I don’t mean to be so rough on my beloved Dems.

Afterall, the Dems don’t have the power of a mainstream media to support their statements. The Republicans scrubbed all of the FCC regulations which once required news media organizations to actually tell the truth. Clinton helped the Republicans when he allowed giant media conglomerates to take over smaller media outlets – thus creating the stronghold that Fox News has today. We went from having tons and tons of independent media news outlets – like newspapers, radio stations, etc that were privately owned – to media outlets that are all owned by less than a handful of different organizations — ABC, NBC, Fox, etc. In the end, you end up with a vacuum where facts go to die – and info-tainment is the norm.

But back to my point… The Dems need to grow a set and help Obama find a spine…because you certainly can’t expect anything good to come from a screaming eight year old monster child Republican.

Just heard this on Ed Schultz…

It turns out, Evan Bayh decided not to run about a week ago, but waited tell Dem leaders, because he wanted to make sure they wouldn’t have time to pick a new nominee. Normally, if there isn’t a nominee, there isn’t primary, and the challenger wins by default, sort of.

Since there is no time to choose a nominee in this particular case, Evan Bayh’s senior inside blue-dog, anti-union / anti-labor co-horts get to pick the nominee. Normally, the new challenger/nominee needs to get at least 500 signatures in all nine districts of Indiana. But, again, since there isn’t enough time to do that, Evan Bayh – or rather, his people, will get to pick the nominee.

And we all know how much this guy just loves the conservatives…

These same kids grow up and crave power… They grow up to join a party that caters to people just like them. They are the wealthy elite. They are Neocon Republicans – Too rich to care, too big to fail.

And they love special interest groups. Special interest groups like big energy, oil, pharma, communications and industrial lobbyists and corporations who are seeking giant government contracts. These lobbyists donate huge bundles of cash to political groups and individuals in order to pursuade them to vote in congress their way. These government contracts end up doling out huge wads of cash to companies that don’t follow any kind of regulations or laws, won’t get audited for waste or fraud, and won’t provide jobs in the U.S. (because all their jobs have been exported to third world countries).

These government contracts make it extremely hard for U.S. small and mid-sized companies to compete with. They are receiving a giant handout from the government (can you say “Corporate Welfare”?), and the only people really profit from them are the CEO’s, who have no interest in the needs of U.S. employees. The last thing they want to preached to about is about providing necessary healthcare, following safe and fair labor laws, or about protecting the environment by not dumping toxic pollutants into the public air space or water.

Corporations want the rules to fit their ways of amassing the largest amount of profits imaginable. That means they don’t want to be told how much they have to pay you (min wage laws), how well they must treat their employees (safe work areas, reasonable hours, and respectful treatment), or how to respect the environment their factory is located in (dumping, pollution, unsafe storage of contaminants, etc).

Corporations have historically acted like they have the right to do whatever they want, break whatever laws they want, ignore public anger, and be treated like royalty because of their massive wealth and powerful influence. They use their branding and commercial contracts in every avenue imaginable – from sports to open spaces.

If you are a simple Joe Schmoe who wants to compete with them, you will be met with open hostility by every from lawmakers to the media, treated with doubt and suspicion, instead of like a hero who is trying invoke fairness, innovation, competition and higher quality standards.

We have been trained to treat each other with suspicion, and to treat corporations with unbiased trust, high regard, and a blind eye toward their past corruption scandals and disregard for health and safety.

The only solutions I can think of are:

- Boycotts
- Marches, Protests, Public Signage, Bumper Stickers, Blog Posts, etc

And most importantly:

- Ignore all political ads that target anti-corporate lefty politicians. Political Ads aren’t required by law to be truthful. They are allowed to basically say whatever is necessary to sway your opinion one way or another. Anc corporations now have the legal right to lie and say whatever they want – and they will definitely go after any politician who tries to go after their candidate or party.

Basically, this means you need re-evaluate the way you look at the media. Don’t passively absorb what is being said in the media.

Try to remember that you are being told the absolute bare minimum of what needs to be said.

Once again, just think of it like an 8-year old who broke an expensive vase. You won’t be told how it happened, when, or whatever. You will only be told for the sake of being told. You won’t be provided any answers to any questions – and if you demand answers, you won’t be able to avoid the screaming, crying, name calling and excessive fault-finding by the guilty who want to avoid punishment.

Today, on CNN’s Situation Room w/Wolf Blitzer, Jack Cafferty decided he should tell everyone what he thought about “celebrities who travel around in private gas-guzzling jets” while they “tell the rest of us how to live”.

He tried to explain that “it’s the hypocrisy” that makes him so unhappy with celebrities who travel in an “anti-green” manner.

Jack insisted that everyone should go to his website at CNN.com/Cafferty to read and respond to his piece.  I did – and I’ve copied my response below.

———————————————————————-

Mr. Cafferty, YOU ARE AN IDIOT.

The impact of a celebrity’s message always carries a lot of weight with the general public. The amount of energy required to power their transportation matters very, very little to me. Is it really such a big deal – or even a sign of hypocrisy? Especially when you use Al Gore as an example.

Jack, do I care about hypocrisy? Absolutely. But we’re talking about the environment – the very thing that needs a passionate voice in this country. And all you’re doing is being nit-picky and whiney. Honestly.

I was very disappointed to hear what you said and had to turn the TV off. You really sound more like you’re carrying water for your anti-green bosses than someone who is supposedly so concerned about hypocrisy.

Get real. The environment is in serious danger. And all you want to do is complain about what environmentalists are doing wrong.

——————————————

Please take a look at his article at the following link:

http://caffertyfile.blogs.cnn.com/2009/12/01/why-do-celebrities-who-travel-via-private-jet-tell-us-to-save-the-environment/#addcomment

—————————————————————-
Why do celebrities who travel via private jet tell us to save the environment?
Posted: 05:00 PM ET

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

The hypocrisy of some celebrities knows no bounds.

The London Times has a piece called “Taking the private jet to Copenhagen” – a reference to the upcoming international climate summit. This report highlights actors, musicians, politicians and other so-called “green” celebrities who have fleets of jets, multiple homes, and on and on – leaving carbon footprints as they travel through life that would put a dinosaur to shame.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow is pictured behind the wheel of an SUV.  (website)

For example:

* John Travolta has 5 private jets (including a Boeing 707). He once flew to London on one of them to encourage the British to fight global warming.

* Harrison Ford used to own a Gulfstream jet, but now makes due with a smaller Cessna Citation Sovereign eight seat jet, four propeller planes and a helicopter.

* Oprah Winfrey, who preaches about being environmentally friendly on her TV show, traveled in a 13-seat Gulfstream jet for years until she replaced it with a faster Bombardier Global Express.

* Tom Cruise has five planes, including a customized Gulfstream jet.

* As for the king of global warming preachers, Al Gore: It’s been estimated his Tennessee mansion uses 20 times the electricity of an average U.S. home. And he spends $500 a month just to heat his indoor swimming pool.

* Meanwhile recent owners of gas guzzling SUVs include Gwyneth Paltrow, Barbra Streisand and Cameron Diaz.

All of the above mentioned celebrities are active to a greater or lesser degree in urging the rest of us to fight global warming.

Here’s my question to you: Why do celebrities who travel around in private jets want to tell the rest of us how to save the environment?

Tune in to the Situation Room at 5pm to see if Jack reads your answer on air.

And, we love to know where you’re writing from, so please include your city and state with your
comment.