Just Another Rant--

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Goehring? Really? Goehring? And people are listening to him? Really?

If the progressive movement--and liberals in particular--are so relentlessly evil and have consistently taken America down the wrong path, what about the myriad things that make all Americans' lives--liberal and conservative alike--so much better?

• minimum wages
• maximum hours
• civil rights
• women’s rights
• Voting Rights Act
• regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms
• Child Labor Act
• regulation of the stock exchanges
• labor rights – collective bargaining - at least before Reagan and WalMart
  
• National Parks and monuments -Death Valley, Everglades, Blue Ridge, Boulder Dam, Bull Run, Mount Rushmore, Cape Cod
• Tennessee Valley Authority
• Rural electrification
• the GI Bill providing education to thousands upon thousands of veterans
• Housing loans for vets
• FHA housing loans
• The SBA (Small Business Administration)
• Unemployment insurance
• legal alcohol
• Medicare
• Peace Corp
• Social Security
• National Endowment for the Arts
• health and safety on the job (just think, those 11 roughnecks and 29 miners who died, would be alive now, if safety regulations had been followed)

– Samuel Gompers-- "We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities which cultivate our better natures.”

Big business is not in the business of seeing human beings as anything more than interchangeable cogs in a machine to be used and discarded at will. The top 1% of the Have-Mores have wrung, and will wring, more and more blood out of those Americans who actually make things and make things work.

The Conservatives do not seem to be for anything. Think of John Boehner speaking from the floor of the House: They are the people of NO!
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Can't Let Honesty Be an Obstacle

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The Right makes up seemingly logical arguments about liberals wanting to punish hard-working Americans. This is not based in reality nor fact.

But the conservatives are not going to let honesty become an obstacle.

They have little expertise in health or economics, but much experience in distracting, misinforming and perennially, frightening the public

It's time we give the treasonous right the oppression they ask for.

Hope vs Fear

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The entire history of American political debate can, in one sense, be described as the argument between the hope of progressives and liberals for a better future vs. the fear of conservatives who want to protect the way things are now.

• Fear has been a staple of every generation of conservatives .... Fear of the democratic mob. Fear of the freed slave. Fear of the liberated woman destroying the traditional family. Fear of freethinkers destroying religion. Fear of communism. Fear of gays and lesbians. Fear of hippies, "free love," and the drug culture. Fear of the immigrant. In a bizarre twist, Social Darwinism gave us fear of the weak, and in the modern version of Social Darwinism, Reagan gave us fear of the poor on welfare. Post-9/11, you can now add in the ever-potent fear of terrorism. (from The Progressive Revolution by Mike Lux)
  

George Gerbner, who headed the Annenberg School for Communication for 25 years, noted:

• "Fearful people are more dependent, more easily manipulated and controlled, more susceptible to deceptively simple, strong, tough measures and hard-line postures. … They may accept and even welcome repression if it promises to relieve their insecurities."

How frightened and insecure do you have to be to deliberately choose the lowest mediocrity for your government?

It never ceases to amaze me that anyone would vote to vest the entire government in the hands of a group of people who don't believe in government and who do their best to see to it that government does not function well. And, that, my gentle snowflakes, means the conservative Republicans.

Remember, the great God of the conservative Republicans, Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem." Then Bush 43 came along and seemingly set out to prove just how badly government could function--Katrina for possibly the single most outstanding example.

So, I ask you, what drives people to embrace stupidity, aggression, recklessness, destruction and contemptuousness as national policy, especially when they have other choices?

Democrats/Liberals/Progressives know what wonderful, important contributions American can make when properly motivated. We are ready for hope - not fear - to be out guiding principle. For "What if?" - not "What happened?" - to be our next national question.

We know we all live here. We know we need a government that functions as well as possible with the least possible intrusions into any aspect of our lives. But, maybe most importantly, we know that we do need a government.

Bush (Jeb) & Michael Moore

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Oh, the nightmare just will NOT go away. Jeb Bush is considering running for the US Senate in 2010.

• Bush said conservatives should “do the math of the new demographics of the United States,” explaining that the Republican Party “can’t be anti-Hispanic, anti-young person — anti many things — and be surprised when we don’t win elections.”

Yep, ya gotta do the math if you are going to be a good conservative. Figure all the angles. See just how many of the people you can fool -- again. Heaven forbid that you should actually mean ANY of what say. (See my "rant" of 24 November.) What you actually stand for means nothing. Say anything and keep repeating it. The mob will believe you eventually.


Whew! I had to go find something to take the bad taste out of my mouth. Michael Moore has some ideas on what to do about the auto-makers.

• You could buy ALL the common shares of stock in General Motors for less than $3 billion. Why should we give GM $18 billion or $25 billion or anything? Take the money and buy the company!

• The Big 3 are, from this point forward, to build only cars that are not primarily dependent on oil and, more importantly to build trains, buses, subways and light rail (a corresponding public works project across the country will build the rail lines and tracks). This will not only save jobs, but create millions of new ones.

• This proposal will save our industrial infrastructure -- and millions of jobs. More importantly, it will create millions more. It literally could pull us out of this recession.

• ...yesterday General Motors presented its restructuring proposal to Congress. They promised, if Congress gave them $18 billion now, they would, in turn, eliminate around 20,000 jobs. You read that right. We give them billions so they can throw more Americans out of work. That's been their Big Idea for the last 30 years... But no one ever stopped to ask this question: If you throw everyone out of work, who's going to have the money to go out and buy a car? (Emphasis mine.)
  

And you thought that with the election over, I would have nothing about which to rant. ha
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