Election Issues

[BJean 16]

BJean, I think you have hit the nail on the head.

I myself am an Independent voter so don't take this as a vote for the otherside, however...

If the message the Republican party is sending is causing Americans to "Embrace" it, all the while Democrats are being "disillusioned and Depressed" by their own party, then perhaps the direction that the nation should go is in the direction of the party that can garner the most votes...but then, thats the way it always goes, isn't it.

Well that's the way it went in the presidential election. But I have to disagree that the direction that the nation should go is in the direction of the party that can garner the most votes every time. Especially when there has been fraud perpetrated during an election - remember Florida, for instance in the 2000 election?

And when the party that garners the most votes has been putting out false information I don't think they should win. And when the party has done everything it could to keep from reaching across the aisle to work with the opposition party in order to solve America's problems and they have done so under false pretenses, then no, I don't think they deserve to win.

If voters have been given all the real information, not tricked out mumbo-jumbo, then whoever the majority elects is duly elected, fair and square. Nobody can argue with that.

But we seem to have really hard time in this country having truly fair elections. It's amazing to me that Jimmy Carter and his group have been tapped to monitor elections in other countries to ensure there is no fraud, but we don't seem to be able to have independent people come in and monitor ours. Why do you think that is?

[BJean 16]

kat, the tea party people and the ultra right wing of the Republican party have managed to work people up into a frenzy about the government. They are irrational in some cases and won't listen to the facts. They are already ready to shoot from the lip just like the nutjobs they listen to on so many different media fronts.

Everytime I turn on the radio I get some other ya-hoo spouting the extremist rethoric. Who do you think is paying for it? Can you spell Rupert Murdoch? He and the extremely wealthy other greedy ba$tards who stand to continue to lose the sweet deal they had with Bush in office, that's who.

Granny down the street who listens to it isn't paying for it. Neither is Joe the Plumber. And neither of them stand to gain a thing from voting Republican. But they will because they have drunk the kool-aide. It's a very sad state of affairs in America this coming election day.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

kat, the tea party people and the ultra right wing of the Republican party have managed to work people up into a frenzy about the government. They are irrational in some cases and won't listen to the facts. They are already ready to shoot from the lip just like the nutjobs they listen to on so many different media fronts.

Everytime I turn on the radio I get some other ya-hoo spouting the extremist rethoric. Who do you think is paying for it? Can you spell Rupert Murdoch? He and the extremely wealthy other greedy ba$tards who stand to continue to lose the sweet deal they had with Bush in office, that's who.

Granny down the street who listens to it isn't paying for it. Neither is Joe the Plumber. And neither of them stand to gain a thing from voting Republican. But they will because they have drunk the kool-aide. It's a very sad state of affairs in America this coming election day.

Except for the military the extremist republicans that are running for office (and that is almost all of them as the "moderates" lost the primaries) want to dismantle the federal government. They want to get rid of everything and privatize everything (that is republican speak for we want to reward our corporate donors).

The republican plan is called the "YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN PLAN"

-need help getting a job? - you're on your own

-unemployed? - you're on your own

-need help with college tuition? - you're on your own

-need help getting that mortgage? - you're on your own

-need health insurance? - you're on your own

-get dumped or denied by your health insurance? - you're on your own

-lose your job and can't buy food?- you're on your own

-need skilled nursing home care? - you're on your own

And the list goes on. It's easy to be against unemployment when you're employed. It's easy to be against health care reform when you have health insurance. It's easy to be dismissive of the least among us when you are part of the most among us.

And these smug tea partiers who thing they take care of themselves and "earned" everything they've got and are self-reliant and don't need the government can't even make it out of the house in the morning with the government touching their lives in many ways:

-the clean air they breathe

-the clean Water they showered and made their coffee with

-the safe medications they took

-the safely prepared Breakfast foods they ate

-the electricity and gas they used to cook their food

After they leave the house:

-the safe car that they drive to their private sector job (that probably couldn't exist without tax-payer funded contracts)

-the federally funded highways and bridges they travel over

-the police and fire service of their community

At work:

-the government workplace safety standards

-freedom to belong to a union and negotiate a fair contract (to level the playing field with those who hold all the power)

And then these people come home from work and listen to Fox News and bad mouth the government when they couldn't live one day without it. Stupid, hypocritical people.

[tmx000 0]

Cleo"s Mom,

Just how much should a hard working lower middle class American who is only just making ends meet pay so that someone else's kid can go to college when I cant afford to send my own, how much should I pay my neighbor because he doesn't have a job because he got laid off (his fault for moving jobs so often and no building up seniority for protection) and why should I help him get a job since it was his choices that put him in the situation to begin with. Just how Socialist and dare I say Marxist doest this country have to become to make people happy. The fact is that spending money to regulate industry is nessesary and money on infrastructure is welcome. I am talking about this movement toward what I consider to be a Robinhood mentality. The United States wasn't built on these principles and it shouldn't migrate to them.

Now, to the issue of Fraud in our elections, BJean is correct we need oversight in that area.

I can't say I know what the answer is, but I do know that as a Nation we are in trouble and I fear for all of our future.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

Cleo"s Mom,

Just how much should a hard working lower middle class American who is only just making ends meet pay so that someone else's kid can go to college when I cant afford to send my own, how much should I pay my neighbor because he doesn't have a job because he got laid off (his fault for moving jobs so often and no building up seniority for protection) and why should I help him get a job since it was his choices that put him in the situation to begin with. Just how Socialist and dare I say Marxist doest this country have to become to make people happy. The fact is that spending money to regulate industry is nessesary and money on infrastructure is welcome. I am talking about this movement toward what I consider to be a Robinhood mentality. The United States wasn't built on these principles and it shouldn't migrate to them.

Now, to the issue of Fraud in our elections, BJean is correct we need oversight in that area.

I can't say I know what the answer is, but I do know that as a Nation we are in trouble and I fear for all of our future.

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation (that workers pay into) have been around for a long time - but to listen to some - like the tea party - you'd think they just started under President Obama. And your neighbor's eligibility for unemployment would be based on his work record - length of time at job and salary.

Government backed student loans and eliminating the middle man (banks) running these programs (saving billions) is just one thing the government has done to help with college, not to mention financial support for public colleges. Those on the right would say that you can't afford to send your kids to college because you didn't plan well - you should have started saving and investing when they were born. So, it's your fault. You're on your own. Those who support the government programs, like me, would say that there has to be more done to make college affordable, including writing off loans if you go into a particular field (teaching in some areas, medicine) and making the payment terms easier (both of which the Obama administration did).

Their radical ideas from the right want to dismantle everything - eliminate the department of Education, the IRS, the 14th & 17th amendments, the minimum wage, go back to it being okay for a "whites only" sign in restaurants and even go so far as to shut down the government.

I want to know how much I need to pay so that millionaires and billionaires can get $100,000+ checks in the form of tax cuts? And who will we borrow the money from? And it will add $700 billion to the national debt.

All THESE things are scary to me.

[BJean 16]

And I think you SHOULD fear for our future!

My husband shares some of the sentiment that you exhibit, tmx000. But what neither of you and so many other middle class folks seem to be unwilling to admit is that allowing the wealthy to go unchecked and operate pretty much as they darned well please hasn't worked for this country.

We are suffering not because we taxed the wealthy, but we're in a jam because we didn't. We spent money that we didn't have on a Godless, inexplicable war, to the tune of sometimes over a billion a WEEK! And it didn't help you and me, it added big time to the wealth of some of the wealthiest companies and individual Americans. People died!!! Lots of people died. And it is obscene what we've done in the middle east. Just as obscene as what we did in Vietnam. Actually even more so because we had Vietnam as an example.

That's the America that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and people like my husband believe IS America at its' finest.

Ronald Reagan and other "great" Republicans think that taxing the wealthy harms the economy. So the Republicans do all they can to insure that the wealthy in America get huge tax breaks and they even go so far as to give breaks and incentives to the corporations that they make their enormous wealth from. This is in the guise that the working class, middle America and the poor will benefit from the wealthy being wealthy because they will employ Americans and buy American and keep you and me in good stead.

Unfortunately it has been proven over and over for decades now, that most of the wealthy that we're talking are who benefits from all this - not you, not me, not my husband. And certainly NOT America at large.

When we the people stop caring about the quality of life for all Americans, stop working toward the common good, stop caring whether ALL our children are educated, and become greedy like the wealthiest among us, then we are doomed because at some point SOMEBODY has to care about these things and take care of them if we are going to continue to be the best country in the world to live in. Right now, because of all the greed that has been perpetrated on us, unless we Americans are wealthy, we are hurting. And if you think that is what makes America great, and if you think that is what allows you to be able to afford to send your own children to school, you're sadly mistaken.

[Cleo's Mom 257]

2 Things You Can Do Today To Fight the Chamber Attack Ads

Sat Oct 16, 2010 at 01:46:16 PM PDT

This week, reporters found that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, an opponent of union rights, workplace safety, project labor agreements and Davis-Bacon, is now using foreign money from overseas outsourcers to fund political attack ads targeting members of Congress who voted to keep jobs in the United States.

• 
  While it tells the American public it cares about American jobs, the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce actually works to send jobs overseas on behalf of its corporate members, which include some of Asia’s top offshoring companies. As previously noted, the Chamber has repeatedly sent out issue alerts attacking efforts to encourage businesses to hire American workers rather than outsource to overseas destinations to India and China.
  

At a time when millions of Americans are without jobs, the Chamber of Commerce cannot be allowed to get away with this slap in the face to every single American who has lost a job due to outsourcing, is threatened by it, or has seen family members suffer because of it.

Stand up to the Chamber by doing two simple things:

Write a letter to your local newspaper using a simple Letter to the Editor tool which takes less than a minute to use and;

Tell your elected representatives in Washington to support an investigation into these shady attack ads.

The stakes are too hight to sit back and do nothing. If the Chamber is allowed to buy its own hand-picked Congress, any effort to create jobs here at home will be completely crushed and the outsourcing of our American jobs to the countries and companies funding these attacks will continue at an even faster pace.

find out who's sending jobs overseas from your community.

dailykos

[BJean 16]

I am totally unaware of the Chamber of Commerce's actions in this. It is shocking.

I am often surprised at the sources of money behind the most outrageous political campaigns. But not always. Usually you just have to follow the money trail and learn that all the bellyaching people do about America becoming "socialist" and "marxist" is steeped in the lies that are perpetrated by the richest among us.

When are people going to stop, look and listen and figure it out? When are they going to question what they're being told? I know they make things sound like if you don't believe that paying taxes is completely socialist then you're probably on welfare.

Do we really have to watch the country come crashing down on our heads before we figure out what's happening?

We bailed out the banks and those lousy stinking arses are refusing to make loans to regular Americans who can afford to buy houses. They're manipulating the housing market so they can continue to keep their money in their greedy little pockets.

Look around people... before you go out and vote, you better be darned sure that you know what you're getting!

[Cleo's Mom 257]

We need to see which foreign countries are giving money to the Chamber of Commerce (the most anti-american worker organization there is) to buy our elections because then we'll better be able to see where our jobs will be shipped in a quid pro quo.

[BJean 16]

Why should it surprise us that foreign countries are literally invested in our elections? We certainly have gotten ourselves involved in other governments' leadership. We've taught some of them everything they know about meddling. Don't you think?

[Cleo's Mom 257]

[BJean 16]

Purrfect! The cartoonist has hit the nail on the head with this one.

[BJean 16]

The Supreme Court's decision about campaign funding has certainly proven to reap what everyone feared. Who knows where all the money comes from!

I do know that an anti-government ad that is running in one northern state (in a local election) is the same ad with the same photos running in a southern state (in a local election) and only the names have been changed. That kind of machinery is really hard to beat. And if we don't get out and vote to reject the lies, the misinformation and the control they seem to have over us, then we're in a heap of trouble, Vern.

[peggycas 0]

This is a forum for weight loss, not election issues.

[BJean 16]

peggycas, I believe you're wrong about that.

This is the "Rants & Raves" area of the forum sections offered at Lap Band Talk. It is open for discussions about anything we have on our minds. If you're into politics or marital woes or kids or clothes or anything else, this is the place you can come to rant, rave, dicuss or argue about anything on your mind.

If you're uncomfortable with those kinds of open debate, it might be wise to avoid this area altogether and stick to the forums strictly reserved for lap band related issues.

You're not a Republican by any chance are you? :-)