calimary
calimary's JournalYou should not have held your tongue, but you probably would speak with thoughtful, measured tones.
These people can think the way they do BECAUSE nobody else speaks out and sets the record straight. They think the way they do because they probably only get their "news" from Pox Noise and limbaugh and all his fucking selfish greedy CON clones. They think the way they do because they hear NOTHING from the opposing side or the opposing view - ie: REALITY. I think we NEED to speak out.
I've had arguments with two people who knee-jerkedly went straight to "Damn OBAMA! It's HIS fault!" And they get that because that's what they're exposed to in the media. Too many voices yelling and pushing THAT way, and virtually nothing in terms of pushback from OUR side, which has reality and truth and a few annoying things called FACTS on our side. I've had to talk them down from their seemingly firmly-held beliefs that it's all his fault, and NONE on the opposite side is at fault. FUCKING RIDICULOUS! And their reactions tell me that they haven't even HEARD about the evidence that I cite, or the statistics, or the - I hate to use that dirty word but here it is again - REALITY behind the situation. Benghazi, the AP, the IRS, the sequester, EVERYTHING. NO thought given to how we got here. When I told one friend about how the IRS independently, on its own, in 1959, changed the wording from EXCLUSIVELY to PRIMARILY, she hadn't even heard of this. OBVIOUSLY she'd only been watching Pox and CNN. And her response was - "interesting. Interesting." Yeah? Well, does that impact your opinion any? Probably not...
So it's okay to nickel-and-dime the seriously needy and devastated, whose needs are incredibly legitimate and utterly GLARING, because you have to stand by your stupid ideological budget "crisis" agenda - that YOU created in the first place while never letting the truth get in your way? And you still think you're Christians?????????
This is SO spot on that it's almost ridiculous.
And WHY can't we be repeating this high and low?
Welcome to DU, Stewland!
Glad you're here. They won't. And unfortunately, voters in a state like Oklahoma cannot be counted on to stop drinking the Kool-aid long enough to see the REAL reality as opposed to the finely embroidered fictional one that their "favorite" party serves them, day in, day out, around-the-clock.
But why can't we say so, out loud? Put that selfish ALLEGED "Christian" on defense.
Make him explain. Make him tell it to those victims and survivors who have nothing left but their lives - and THEY are the "lucky" ones. So far, unfortunately, there are no consequences for actions like these. And he'll surely get reelected the next time, too, I'm afraid.
And another +100,000,000!
Our teachers are our treasures. And they need to be protected and well-represented and well-paid. Your kid's life may depend on them. Many kids' lives already have.
LOVE these!!!
That asshole has been a blight on California for way too long. It's beyond my understanding that he keeps getting reelected.
The problem with taking the high road is - it too often takes you straight over a cliff.
At least in this political climate. Taking the high road just seems to disarm our side and let the other side run amok and take over the narrative and the noise and all the face-time on TV/cable.
I posted elsewhere another approach, and MAN am I getting lambasted for it. But everything else we've tried - even when giving the john boners of the world 98% of what they wanted - it's STILL not enough. Einstein is quoted as saying the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again, and hoping somehow for a different result.
So what's the solution then?
Welcome to DU, Pragdem! I'm very appreciative of all the comments, both pro and con.
Glad you're here! And thanks for weighing in. I WANTED comments because I wanted to know what people here thought.
Perhaps it's not a reasonable solution. But the problem I have is - we've TRIED all the reasonable solutions.
Compromise? Yeah, look how well THAT one has worked.
Stern words? Nothing happens. Maybe not stern enough? And those on our side, if they even utter stern words, do NOTHING to back it all up.
Meeting them halfway? Yeah, look how well THAT one's worked. john boner once said openly that he got 98 percent of what he wanted. And Obama got two percent? How is THAT a reasonable solution? Especially since even 98% wasn't enough for boner and his crowd.
Extreme? Well, in the last regime, they threw all kinds of crap at us, called us unAmerican, people lost their jobs for speaking out, people were ostracised and shunned and ignored for speaking out. NO ONE on the other side was given much credence, attention, face-time, voice time on the radio, the press was against us, and even our own reps were against us and wouldn't listen. Precious few stood up and spoke out and tried to stop it. And too many of our reps just fell in line like good little puppy dogs and didn't object or resist or try to make a stink or try to force their way onto shows like "Meet the Press" where it was wall-to-wall bush/cheney supporters with the drumbeat for war given a FULL pass and 100% of the attention and coverage.
Make them pay a political price? How? By getting them voted out? How's that working in the red states - especially those that are FIRMLY and resolutely still red? How does that work against jerrymandering and politicking and the mass media and talk radio and Pox Noise machinery that somehow ensures that people in those red states keep voting for the GOP even when it is SOUNDLY against their own best interests? When, by now, most of them have been brainwashed by resolute and repetitive propagandizing so they won't listen to reason now, in any case. WHAT political price? That doesn't seem like a very realistic option at the moment, at all. Look, when you have a candidate as bad and as damaged as a mark sanford, who's a PROVEN sleeze and a cheat and a liar and a deserter (not just of his wife and sons but his whole frickin' STATE to run off to Argentina to see his backstage girl), and a deadbeat dad - and he STILL gets elected over a very capable Dem - mainly because the constituents in that district are SO DEEPLY inculcated with the GOP belief system that they cannot see beyond it, no matter what - what can be done? When you give them facts and they still reject. When you warn them and they still don't listen. What's to be done? What will make them stop?????
Perhaps the "T-word" isn't the answer. Perhaps sedition isn't the answer. So what IS? I just think we consider playing real hardball and putting THEM on the defensive for a change. Making them stop and think for a moment before they go further? Assuming, of course, that it's even possible to do that. I mean, what keeps assholes like darrell issa at it, term after term after term? We don't seem able to get him voted out, here in California. He keeps heading back to Washington time after time, and what was everybody saying about him when the GOP took over the House? The speculation was on high about how soon he'd start investigating Obama's bellybutton lint as the CONS did with Bill Clinton. And sure enough, that's what he's doing now.
What's to be done? I'm looking for other options because I think we need to think outside the box, and do something uncharacteristic for Dems - and fight back with TEETH. NOT the Harry Reid way, trusting the GOP to be reasonable on a handshake. It just seems as though the options we have, the tools we have, and all the approaches we've been trying, haven't worked. I think we need a political 2x4 to smack them across the faces and make them stop. Or at least stop and think for a moment. I don't see anything else working. And you know what Einstein said about continuing to do the same stuff that gets you the same bad results, but you keep doing it just hoping you'll get some different results for a change. Einstein defined that as insanity.
And at least to me, this situation is untenable, and unsustainable. I think we need our own "shock & awe." We've taken the high road for years with this opposition, which has only gotten stronger and more forceful and better-financed, and metastasized like a cancer, and nothing helps. And we the people are not served. And the people's business and interests and needs are not being addressed. All because of politics. I just think the status quo is unsustainable. It simply can't go on like this. I think we have to figure out another approach. We can't just let things go on as they are. This shit has to stop. The persecution of Obama has to stop. Or else, it's just going to continue and get worse - simply for the joy of persecuting Obama and keeping him hobbled so he can't get the people's business done. I'll bet we're stuck with mitch mcconnell again next year, for another six years. How's THAT for reinforcing bad behavior?
I also know that the REAL solutions will be 30 to 40 years in the making, as our side finally wakes up to the realization that we have to fight the way the bad guys have - with this well-orchestrated and funded campaign that started back in the early 70s with the Powell Doctrine and others - to put corporate America firmly in charge of this country and everyone in it, via think tanks and foundations and groomings of new operatives and candidates and future "journalists" to the corporate way of thinking. It was in reaction to all the social justice that the 60's brought to America. There was a Bill Moyers post about it here on DU a few days back, and here's what it was talking about:
http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/
And if we resolutely go about that (assuming our Dems and progressive groups even have the wherewithal attempt this), then maybe in 30 or 40 years we'll dominate the national mindset again. Which would be great. But it does NOTHING to address what's happening at this moment.
I appreciate everybody for weighing in, even those who've dumped on me and insulted me. Because I think we need to start talking about this OPENLY. Maybe even the sheer fact of bringing it up might open a way to bring some sense to at least a FEW on the other side, to stop this madness. Or at least slow it down.
Ah, the old false-equivalency thing again. Not relevant here. Not by a long shot.
And btw - it's not the same thing. There was virtually NO effort at serious obstruction from the Democratic side against bush/cheney. NOTHING. NOTHING on the order of what we've seen now. NOBODY, as much as we despised bush and knew he stole the election, NOBODY set about to deliberately and actively, EN MASSE, obstruct. NOBODY on our side gathered in a little hotel conference room on the bush/cheney inauguration night to plot his political demise and how to shut him down. I remember very clearly. The media didn't. The Dems didn't. And those of us who were seriously upset about the hijacking that had just occurred (indeed, it was tantamount to a coup d'etat) had to find refuge in little groups here on the internet, and some grumbling in a few coffee shops here and there - among those of us to whom nobody listened.
There was no big uproar. There was no party-wide collusion to ruin that "presidency" OR a declaration of, okay, war if you will, that Job One for the Democrats was to make sure bush/cheney was a one-term president. NONE. Believe me, I searched! I WANTED to see this very badly because I thought it was just, and well-deserved. And there was NONE.
And we groused for several months until this one day in September 2001, when suddenly EVERYONE fell into line behind bush/cheney, and pretty much stayed that way, silenced, unquestioning, our side's leaders scrambling to find places to stand staunchly behind those two fiends. bush/cheney never EVER faced the kind of organized relentless pile-on opposition that President Obama has had to deal with - EVERY FUCKING MINUTE OF EVERY FUCKING DAMN DAY that he's been in office.
It's not a fair comparison you're making. Sorry.
TREASON. I think the GOP'ers relentlessly persecuting Obama are now guilty of it.
I posted this elsewhere here - but thought it might be worth its own thread. It was a response to rhett o rick who wondered if jonathan karl and his ilk might be guilty of sedition in cooked and concocted "news" coverage that passed off GOP-doctored talking points as the real thing from the White House. I think it smacks of flat-out TREASON. And I think we oughta start a drumbeat about it. Hit these bastards back HARDER than they hit us.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022872271
Bill Maher broached the subject last week with Michael Moore - wondering aloud whether all this obstruction was tantamount to treason.
Well, I think he makes a GREAT point, and WE ought to be repeating that meme and starting to bring it to life.
Consider:
At this moment, we still are a nation AT WAR. We presently have thousands of Americans IN HARM'S WAY, IN ACTIVE COMBAT, IN LIVE HOT ZONES. FACING ARMED AND RELENTLESS AND WELL-ARMED ENEMIES. RIGHT NOW. At this very instant. Afghanistan mainly. But ANYWHERE in the frickin' Middle East, their lives are literally on the line.
Now - when a President presides during wartime, that makes him a wartime president, does it not?
And what else is a President known as? How 'bout Commander-in-Chief of ALL United States Armed Forces? Yep, WHOEVER the POTUS is at any given moment, that's his OTHER title. That's what else our nation's Chief Executive is.
Now - what would you call obstructing the Commander-in-Chief of all United States Armed Forces DURING wartime? I think it just might be TREASON. Probably HIGH Treason, at that. Because like it or not, the United States of America is still at war.
So that means Barack H. Obama is not only the current President, he's also Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces. And at THIS time, he's a WARTIME President and a WARTIME Commander-in-Chief. Anybody willfully getting in his way and impeding and obstructing his job is, in effect, committing TREASON. After all, they're obstructing the Commander-in-Chief of all U.S. Armed Forces DURING A TIME OF WAR.
What do you think the republi-CONS would be doing now - if it was their guy in the White House, facing this much on-going opposition?
This whole mess needs to be reframed and renamed. And if they were blathering about the "I-word" then I think it's high time we started bringing up the "T-word."
It's time to fight these bastards with EVERYTHING WE'VE GOT. TREASON. That is what the GOP is now GUILTY of. They've even got the "G-for-guilty" in GOP already in place.
I'd like your take on this. I think it's messaging we should start circulating. Maybe it'll catch on.
What do you think?
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Gender: FemaleHome country: USA
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