Barack Obama is a dream come true — too bad he'll never get elected.
As a hopeful Democrat, I’m so disappointed in Barack Obama’s recent stereotyping of working class, religious, rural, and small town people. In the small Midwestern town where I grew up, there are doctors, teachers, farmers, business owners, and lawyers. There are rich people and poor people, smart people and dumb people – pretty much like the west coast city I live in now, only with fewer places to hang out on a Saturday afternoon. I suppose that Obama shouldn’t be expected to know first hand what shapes the values of ordinary Americans, but even George Bush, who had the most pampered and privileged upper class upbringing possible, has a better intuitive grasp of it (or at least his speech writers and advisors do – maybe Obama could borrow one).…
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26 - Staci Schoff
Arch Conservative,
Yes, I know there are people who abuse the system (probably not as many as there are rich people and corporations who abuse the system to avoid paying their share of taxes, but that's another issue).
Welfare is not a solution, it's a band-aid.
The rhetoric that was created during the Reagan admin is the false assertion that those few people abusing the welfare system are taking up an inordinate amount of your tax dollars.
I'm not condoning their cheating of the system, I'm not suggesting they've made good choices, but what I'm saying is they do not suffice as evidence that the government of a civilized nation doesn't have an obligation to its citizens in need.
27 - Arch Conservative
"The rhetoric that was created during the Reagan admin is the false assertion that those few people abusing the welfare system are taking up an inordinate amount of your tax dollars."
One dollar spent on them is one dollar too much.
28 - Dr Dreadful
Which is why the welfare laws are now set up in such a way as to stop abuse. So you should be happy, Arch.
Or should there be no welfare at all?
You remind me somewhat of a character envisioned by a certain Mr Dickens...
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the Union workhouses ?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, " I wish I could say they were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I am very glad to hear it."
29 - Al Barger
Why yes, Dreadful, no government welfare at all would be best and definitely most fair - "abusing" the system is not the main problem. USING it properly within the legislatively determined parameters is what is mostly the problem. Plus, there is the gross injustice of taking money from people at gunpoint (taxes) to give it to other people.
Besides the utter immorality of government welfare, there is the practical bad effects. The more you're able to collect a check, the less incentivized you are to do for yourself.
But eliminating or severely curtailing government welfare would not eliminate help for the most truly needy, as there are lots of private charities of all kinds. Plus, if people 1)weren't paying the exorbitant welfare state tax rates and 2)knew that the government was handing out a lot less benefits, there'd be even much more private charity than there is now.
30 - Al Barger
I note that even the dreaded Arch Conservative has fallen into the classic liberal self-delusion than Ronald Reagan wasn't very bright. Ha! For being such an idiot, he messed up the Democrats little world for a generation, and re-shaped the whole ideological landscape of the country.
Reagan was highly intelligent and thoughtful. He just didn't strike a pretentious academic pose about it. Very much to his and the country's benefit, he didn't care a whit that the mindless trained monkeys of the Ivy League held a low opinion of him.
Was Ronald Reagan a dummie, or were his critics just too stupid to understand his brilliance?
RE: my own brilliance: there ARE (not is) the practical bad effects to welfare.
31 - Al Barger
Also, perhaps the DNC or such might consider putting Miss Staci on payroll. It seems like a rarity at this point to find a national Democrat with any sense at all. She sounds like a good Hoosier Democrat who would be open to reason and try to understand and accomodate the legitimate opinions of people she disagrees with. A Democrat who talks like she does here might could actually get elected.
32 - Baritone
The Conservative Position:
No welfare
No unemployment compensation
No social security
No medicare or medicaid
No section 8 or public housing
In a nutshell. No government aid of any kind. (Except, of course, tax breaks for high rollers.)
Oh, and we don't want to see homeless people on the street. Get thee be gone! Where? We don't care, just go away. Your presence is offensive. You stink!
What's left for these people? If they have any cohones, they might make it. Otherwise, it would really be best for society if they would just do the rest of us the courtesy of dying. If they can't help themselves, of what use are they? This country was built upon self-reliance. They are just an embarrassment worthy of nothing. I suppose the government could hire a few slackers to go around and pick up the bodies, dump them in a common grave and throw lime over their rotting carcasses. Good riddance!
B-tone
33 - Baronius
Al got it right. Democratic presidents have been bright and bragged about it; Republican presidents have been bright and humble.
Carter made sure that everyone knew how smart he was. Carter created the myth that he was too smart and too good for the presidency. Reagan wrote all his speeches and radio commentary before his presidency, but never felt the need to show off. (Odd that Baritone went on a Reagan tangent.)
Clinton, Gore, and Kerry have always kept their intellectual credentials in the fore. Bush Jr. realized that he can't talk like an adult, and wisely never contested the caricature of him as a moron. Political junkies will recall how successful Dan Quayle was at trying to reverse his reputation.
That instinct to respond hautily can kill you politically. Hillary and Obama have an air of superiority. The interesting thing is, although McCain isn't an intellectual snob, he does not like to be challenged. Any of them has the potential to alienate voters on a bad day.
34 - Arch Conservative
The dreaded" what's that all about.
No one said there should never be any form of welfare B-tone. What I was specifically trying to get at was that it should be provided sparingly and only as a last resort for those who made a concerted effort to better their lives but still met with difficulty.
That is the fundamental difference between conservativesa and liberals isn't it? Conservatives beleive in equality of opportunity and that the individual should provide for themself and only be provided with government aid when circumstances beyong their control have made it impossible for the individual to provide for themself. Liberals believe in equality of results without regard for individual effort or merit. They believe entitlements and completely absolving the individual from personal accountability but rather it is better to blame society. everyone is a victim of society and no one is a victim of their own shoddy decision making.
35 - Al Barger
Thanks Baronius. I might also add that a lot of these Democrat geniuses aren't nearly as smart as they like to think they are. Obama, for example, is a genius because he's a Democrat, for starters, and because he's a black guy with a degree who has managed not to pee on the carpet so far. At least, not much. But voters are starting to smell some urine in the corners.
For example, how smart could he be to have not seen that he was going to get the Rev Wright broke off up in him? His people can stamp their feet all day long about how unfair this supposedly is, but that means nothing. The day he decided to run for president maybe a couple of YEARS ago, he should have been shopping for a different church and distancing himself.
He's pretty, but he ain't the brightest bulb in the pack.
36 - Al Barger
Arch Conservative - I say "dreaded" with love, for you seem to be regarded as such by the lefties among us.
Still, Baritone has us rightwing nutjobs all figured out. Some dupes might think that conservatives love poor folk, but don't think that government welfare and bureaucracy is the best fair or effective way to help people. But Baritone knows that really we just hate poor people and want to kill them so we don't even have to look at them.
Obviously Baritone's nipples are leaking from the abundance of the milk of human kindness that swells in his breast. But of course a dirty rightwing bastard might take it that he simply likes himself very much, and likes to think how great and generous he is for proposing the stealing of other people's money to give to poor folks. After all, they're just helpless victims who couldn't get by without his gracious noblesse oblige.
37 - Baritone
Yeah, you guys are full of, well, not milk. Your characterization of liberals is no less bullshit than how you claim I described you. You think it's all pat. You've got all lefties figured out, that we are all witless, bleeding heart assholes.
The reality is that you ape your own bullcrap over and over in a vain attempt to reach the higher ground.
Arch, you say: "No one said there should never be any form of welfare B-tone." But you also stated: "One dollar spent on them is one dollar too much."
Which is it?
B-tone
38 - Arch Conservative
The "them" refers to the abusers not the people that deserve so those aren't actually mutually exclusixe statements B-tone.
As far as intelligence and accomplishments go. I think Mitt Romney has it all over Obama or any other candidate that ran this time around. Mitt Romney was born into an upper middle class home but he had what it took to go into the private sector and build himself a large personal fortune. He did it himself and yet he is villified by the American left who know nothing about him as a greedy fat cat corporate devil. yet what so many who toss this trite cliche out at him fail to realize is the good he has done in his carer for others. While it is true that while with Bain Capital he may have liquidated some business and caused some to lose their jobs in the process , this is not the sum total of his tenure there. Bain capital also took staples from a small outfit and made it into the magechain it is today that employs thousands of Americans and provides products to them as well. there's Domino's pizza....andmany other companies that Bain actually helped to create many many jobs.
It's too bad that someone like Romney, wo actually understandds the economy and business can't be president. instead wehave a dottering old man with a chip on his shoulder and two anti-market quasi socialists.
39 - Lee Richards
Al, If you ever need a break from stereotyping others and building strawmen, you might learn something instructive by actually looking up the definitions of 'liberal', and its antonyms.
Conservatives can be proudly liberal, too.
Or, you can just go on making up your own simplistic definitions to bully others with.
40 - Dan
"Or, you can just go on making up your own simplistic definitions to bully others with."
Or to answer a simplistic definition with a funnier one.
Baritone forgot to mention the methane gas extracors the conservatives would install at the site of the mass graves covered with lime.
41 - winghunter1
Sniveler: "The reality is that you ape your own bullcrap over and over in a vain attempt to reach the higher ground."
When children are routinely committing felonies only hardened criminals would think of doing; when we look at presidential candidates held up as "very satisfied" by the sniveling liberal base; when we see the liberal leadership trying to lose a war to win politically; when they see this didn't work despite their best efforts they switched to their old standby of "it's about the economy stupid" to pursuit the same depraved result. With these and countless issues more;
We don't have to "reach" for higher ground, you idiots HANDED it to us as if you were holding a hot rock!!!
42 - Baritone
Hmmm... Snivelers to the left; pompous self-righteous asses to the right. What a great fucking world.
B-tone
43 - Dave Nalle
Baritone forgot to mention the methane gas extracors the conservatives would install at the site of the mass graves covered with lime.
I've been advocating this for years. I think it's a tragic waste to just vent that methane and burn it off. I'd like to be able to run my car on it.
Dave
44 - Clavos
We could put "gas trap" bags on cows' rear ends, too...
45 - STM
How about harnessing all the hot air in Washington, London, etc, and the methane from all their bullsh.t.
World saved, alleged global climate crisis over.
46 - Baronius
"I might also add that a lot of these Democrat geniuses aren't nearly as smart as they like to think they are."
Yup, Al. I think this is one of the most interesting and unnoticed stories in politics over the last 20 years or so. There was a time when the intellectual geek was a Republican, and the Democrat was driven by emotions (according to the stereotypes). Now the Dems have the highbrow reputation and blind emotionalism is found in the red states (again, stereotypes).
47 - Al Barger
Y'all might note that my sarcasm about "the milk of human kindness" was NOT directed at or addressed to "liberals," who sometimes might have good ideas. I was specifically addressing the foolish Baritone.
RE: methane extractors on the mass graves: In my best imitation of the Russian ambassador from Dr Strangelove, "That's an astonishingly good idea you have there..."
48 - Carrie
As a Hawaii resident, I found the statement about how folks in SF don't give a whit about the mid-West and vice versa. We are So Far Removed from the mainland US, in both time and space, that HI residents also don't really give a whit on much that goes on in the big land mass. This doesn't defend Obama's comment, but it may explain a teeny tiny bit of it. Life on Oahu is different from both the midwest and the Coasts.