Driving Me to Democrats
Driving me to the Democrats 022011
Correct me if I’m wrong opinion from the Fringe
I really hate the damn Democrats. They’re constantly trying to save me from myself, which I don’t see as the role of government. They cling emotionally to language and values which distort a realistic view of things like the environment, and family relations. The democrats are consistently attempting to pad everything and everyone with packing bubbles. They are guided by a world view which can only be seen as “Barney aggressive.”
The Barneycrats learning about manners!
Stolen from PBS who’ll soon be out of business anyway.
The Dems are obsessed with how things look; they seem sure that if we’ll all just dress nicely and speak respectfully to each other, everything will work out fine.
So, say what you like about the Democrats (really, go ahead), but the Republicans have become so anti-democrat that they’ve become savagely dogmatic. Because they carried an off-season election, they feel like they’re back in power and can say and do anything.
The Republican Barney
Stolen from an ad for Land of the Lost, which every intellectual should see.
(“What do you know, this is one of those situations where pouring piss on your head is a BAD idea.”)
We value our many conservative readers; maybe one of you can write to the Prospect and correct our misconceptions.
Let’s start with the definition of “rape”. This has always been a tough one because it relies on the social interpretation of the moment by the participants. The definition has gone from “did he have a knife” to, in Sweden now, “was he wearing a condom.” Many types of rape are subtle. Take a powerful man and a much smaller woman, put them in a place of his choosing (some place a little remote), let him be insistent. What might not seem like rape to him might easily be forced sex for her, because she might feel so vulnerable in the situation that fear would cause her to engage in acts she wouldn’t have if she weren’t afraid. It’s a subtle variation of the “put out or walk home” strategy of decades ago. That wasn’t seen as rape then, but now it is “acquaintance rape”.
Likewise, it is now considered rape if you get a gal snockered on Southern Comfort and get in her pants. That used to be common because it was an unspoken rule that a decent girl wouldn’t have sex without the excuse of good liquor. Now, a guy has to have her sign a consent form before she blows .08 if they want to have great drunk sex. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many people have experienced “regret rape” where she was willing to the night before, but morning brings a different memory. There is very little defense against rape allegations where there is no physical evidence, and feminists who deny that men are victimized by false allegations of rape are disingenuous.
Even so, the Republicans have wandered into the Valley of Rape Definitions for a very sleazy reason: denying health care to women. They only want to provide hospital abortion services if the rape was “forcible rape”. Did he have a knife? Did you resist his forcing himself on you?
Always willing to protect the unborn at the cost of the born, Republicans are looking for ways to prevent tax payer dollars from going for a medical procedure: abortion.
Republicans imagine they have “deep moral values” which cause them to want to have the government force women to reproduce, even if the pregnancy was the result of forced sex. Here’s a news flash for you all: “deep moral values” are something you have for YOURSELF, not others. No where in the Bible does Jesus tell you to enforce your morals on others, indeed, He tells you “let him who has not sinned cast the first stone” which means, mind your own sins, not those of others. If you think abortion is wrong, all you Republican men in congress, then DON’T HAVE ONE. But, keep your twisted morals out of my (metaphorical) womb.
Personally, your garden mouse variety of Republican might have moral reasons against abortion, but most likely Republican decision-makers couldn’t care less. What’s in it for them is health care dollars.
Part of what is making Republicans seem so vicious is their naked greed. Health care is a great example.
In the first place, what passes for true universal health care in the U.S. is a pale and pathetic reflection of true universal health care, where a nation takes on the responsibility of good health for all citizens. The U.S. can’t even entertain a discussion on that kind of universal health care. Instead, under pressure from conservatives, we ended up with the “health insurance company full support” bill.
But, even that isn’t good enough for the T-Repubs. They simply don’t want poor people to get good medical care. Being well is the right of the rich; if you can’t afford health insurance it’s your own fault, and you should die.
There is a lot wrong, and even stupidly wrong, about this “ant and the grasshopper” view of health. For one thing, if you want people to toil at your mills they need to be healthy. True, right now there are more people than jobs, so you could let some of the poor die, but the problem is, many won’t die, they’ll just be too sick to get a job.
Further, illness and disease will become resident in the underclass, and when it’s perfected its resistance to the human immune system, it will come after the wealthy, as well.
There simply is no logical thought which makes denying health care to the poor a good social policy, except that Republicans don’t want money going to them which should go to the rich.
It’s pretty hard to make that look smart, or patriotic, or even “deeply moral”. Here’s one for hardcore Christian T-Repubs: should Jesus have refused to heal the sick of Gennesaret and Capernaum because they were poor? The leper said, “Lord, if it is your will, make me clean”; in your mind hear our Lord say “sorry, you really should have thought of this before you got leprosy. If you have the money I’ll see you Tuesday at 10:00.” Is it really a Christian thing to pray for the sick but not wish to contribute to their healing? Anyway…
Health care certainly isn’t the only place greed is a virtue for Republicans and conservatives of every color.
Under attack are Head Start, which provides early education and medical and dental monitoring for the poorest American Kids. The T-Repubs want to cut $1.2 billion from food subsidies for poor families. They want to drastically cut assistance to older people for meals and housing.
All the cuts suggested come to $60 billion, but the same people voted to protect the “war” in Afghanistan to the tune of $200 billion a year! We pay as much as $400 per gallon of fuel used there. It costs about $100 million for each Taliban member killed there. We can afford a meaningless war half a world away, but we can’t afford to educate little poor kids?
Finally, their naked greed and defense of big business over people is never more evident than when T-Repubs talk about “freedom”. I’ve come to understand that when a Republican says “freedom” he means “profits”. A great example: “Internet Freedom”.
To be very clear, conservatives don’t want YOU to have freedom on the internet. They want to poke and probe your emails and your browsing habits, and curtain sites which might show your things you shouldn’t see and have thoughts you shouldn’t have. Fatherland Security just closed down 84,000 sites by mistake and then bragged about it on their website. No, no, internet “freedom” is for corporations!
It literally means that corporations, using the “internet” as a resource held by the people, want to co-opt it by charging some users more (guess who!) and by simply ignoring many sites altogether. In the Republican vision of internet freedom, ATT is allowed to ignore your blog so no one sees it. They want to charge you more for email spam. They want a world where the internet, like good health, goes only to those who can afford it. Such freedom!
Finally, there’s PBS. What little real intellectual discussion we have in this nation doesn’t happen on the O’Reilly Factor, it happens on PBS. This editor has long been critical of PBS for its snobbery and excessive upper-middle classness, but there is no doubt that without government funded media, all we would have is the pseudo logic of the Ranting Right on Fox. Most other civilized nations have government sponsored television that produces fare which is superior to what commercial television generally produces. Only the U.S. should not support intelligent media?
In the interest of honesty, the Prospect is not a non-profit corporation, merely one which functions without profits.
I really don’t like the Democrats, and to be clear, they almost never use the word “freedom” which has come to sound a little “antisocial” to them. But, at least when they do use it they might actually mean “freedom”, as in freedom of choice, and free elections.
They’re both damn poor choices for political parties, and like two old people in the 50th year of a bad marriage, they’ve both become ugly caricatures of the opposite of each other.
Still, the T-Repubs are driving me to the Barneycrats.
I love you, You love me, We're best friends like friends should be, With a great big hug, And a kiss from me to you, Won't you say you love me too? –The Barney Song
Correct me if I’m wrong opinion from the Fringe
I really hate the damn Democrats. They’re constantly trying to save me from myself, which I don’t see as the role of government. They cling emotionally to language and values which distort a realistic view of things like the environment, and family relations. The democrats are consistently attempting to pad everything and everyone with packing bubbles. They are guided by a world view which can only be seen as “Barney aggressive.”
The Barneycrats learning about manners!
Stolen from PBS who’ll soon be out of business anyway.
The Dems are obsessed with how things look; they seem sure that if we’ll all just dress nicely and speak respectfully to each other, everything will work out fine.
So, say what you like about the Democrats (really, go ahead), but the Republicans have become so anti-democrat that they’ve become savagely dogmatic. Because they carried an off-season election, they feel like they’re back in power and can say and do anything.
The Republican Barney
Stolen from an ad for Land of the Lost, which every intellectual should see.
(“What do you know, this is one of those situations where pouring piss on your head is a BAD idea.”)
We value our many conservative readers; maybe one of you can write to the Prospect and correct our misconceptions.
Let’s start with the definition of “rape”. This has always been a tough one because it relies on the social interpretation of the moment by the participants. The definition has gone from “did he have a knife” to, in Sweden now, “was he wearing a condom.” Many types of rape are subtle. Take a powerful man and a much smaller woman, put them in a place of his choosing (some place a little remote), let him be insistent. What might not seem like rape to him might easily be forced sex for her, because she might feel so vulnerable in the situation that fear would cause her to engage in acts she wouldn’t have if she weren’t afraid. It’s a subtle variation of the “put out or walk home” strategy of decades ago. That wasn’t seen as rape then, but now it is “acquaintance rape”.
Likewise, it is now considered rape if you get a gal snockered on Southern Comfort and get in her pants. That used to be common because it was an unspoken rule that a decent girl wouldn’t have sex without the excuse of good liquor. Now, a guy has to have her sign a consent form before she blows .08 if they want to have great drunk sex. The situation is further complicated by the fact that many people have experienced “regret rape” where she was willing to the night before, but morning brings a different memory. There is very little defense against rape allegations where there is no physical evidence, and feminists who deny that men are victimized by false allegations of rape are disingenuous.
Even so, the Republicans have wandered into the Valley of Rape Definitions for a very sleazy reason: denying health care to women. They only want to provide hospital abortion services if the rape was “forcible rape”. Did he have a knife? Did you resist his forcing himself on you?
Always willing to protect the unborn at the cost of the born, Republicans are looking for ways to prevent tax payer dollars from going for a medical procedure: abortion.
Republicans imagine they have “deep moral values” which cause them to want to have the government force women to reproduce, even if the pregnancy was the result of forced sex. Here’s a news flash for you all: “deep moral values” are something you have for YOURSELF, not others. No where in the Bible does Jesus tell you to enforce your morals on others, indeed, He tells you “let him who has not sinned cast the first stone” which means, mind your own sins, not those of others. If you think abortion is wrong, all you Republican men in congress, then DON’T HAVE ONE. But, keep your twisted morals out of my (metaphorical) womb.
Personally, your garden mouse variety of Republican might have moral reasons against abortion, but most likely Republican decision-makers couldn’t care less. What’s in it for them is health care dollars.
Part of what is making Republicans seem so vicious is their naked greed. Health care is a great example.
In the first place, what passes for true universal health care in the U.S. is a pale and pathetic reflection of true universal health care, where a nation takes on the responsibility of good health for all citizens. The U.S. can’t even entertain a discussion on that kind of universal health care. Instead, under pressure from conservatives, we ended up with the “health insurance company full support” bill.
But, even that isn’t good enough for the T-Repubs. They simply don’t want poor people to get good medical care. Being well is the right of the rich; if you can’t afford health insurance it’s your own fault, and you should die.
There is a lot wrong, and even stupidly wrong, about this “ant and the grasshopper” view of health. For one thing, if you want people to toil at your mills they need to be healthy. True, right now there are more people than jobs, so you could let some of the poor die, but the problem is, many won’t die, they’ll just be too sick to get a job.
Further, illness and disease will become resident in the underclass, and when it’s perfected its resistance to the human immune system, it will come after the wealthy, as well.
There simply is no logical thought which makes denying health care to the poor a good social policy, except that Republicans don’t want money going to them which should go to the rich.
It’s pretty hard to make that look smart, or patriotic, or even “deeply moral”. Here’s one for hardcore Christian T-Repubs: should Jesus have refused to heal the sick of Gennesaret and Capernaum because they were poor? The leper said, “Lord, if it is your will, make me clean”; in your mind hear our Lord say “sorry, you really should have thought of this before you got leprosy. If you have the money I’ll see you Tuesday at 10:00.” Is it really a Christian thing to pray for the sick but not wish to contribute to their healing? Anyway…
Health care certainly isn’t the only place greed is a virtue for Republicans and conservatives of every color.
Under attack are Head Start, which provides early education and medical and dental monitoring for the poorest American Kids. The T-Repubs want to cut $1.2 billion from food subsidies for poor families. They want to drastically cut assistance to older people for meals and housing.
All the cuts suggested come to $60 billion, but the same people voted to protect the “war” in Afghanistan to the tune of $200 billion a year! We pay as much as $400 per gallon of fuel used there. It costs about $100 million for each Taliban member killed there. We can afford a meaningless war half a world away, but we can’t afford to educate little poor kids?
Finally, their naked greed and defense of big business over people is never more evident than when T-Repubs talk about “freedom”. I’ve come to understand that when a Republican says “freedom” he means “profits”. A great example: “Internet Freedom”.
To be very clear, conservatives don’t want YOU to have freedom on the internet. They want to poke and probe your emails and your browsing habits, and curtain sites which might show your things you shouldn’t see and have thoughts you shouldn’t have. Fatherland Security just closed down 84,000 sites by mistake and then bragged about it on their website. No, no, internet “freedom” is for corporations!
It literally means that corporations, using the “internet” as a resource held by the people, want to co-opt it by charging some users more (guess who!) and by simply ignoring many sites altogether. In the Republican vision of internet freedom, ATT is allowed to ignore your blog so no one sees it. They want to charge you more for email spam. They want a world where the internet, like good health, goes only to those who can afford it. Such freedom!
Finally, there’s PBS. What little real intellectual discussion we have in this nation doesn’t happen on the O’Reilly Factor, it happens on PBS. This editor has long been critical of PBS for its snobbery and excessive upper-middle classness, but there is no doubt that without government funded media, all we would have is the pseudo logic of the Ranting Right on Fox. Most other civilized nations have government sponsored television that produces fare which is superior to what commercial television generally produces. Only the U.S. should not support intelligent media?
In the interest of honesty, the Prospect is not a non-profit corporation, merely one which functions without profits.
I really don’t like the Democrats, and to be clear, they almost never use the word “freedom” which has come to sound a little “antisocial” to them. But, at least when they do use it they might actually mean “freedom”, as in freedom of choice, and free elections.
They’re both damn poor choices for political parties, and like two old people in the 50th year of a bad marriage, they’ve both become ugly caricatures of the opposite of each other.
Still, the T-Repubs are driving me to the Barneycrats.
I love you, You love me, We're best friends like friends should be, With a great big hug, And a kiss from me to you, Won't you say you love me too? –The Barney Song
