We have been told long enough that if you say the same thing over and over, pretty soon people will believe it. So I guess that means that you have to object to those messages ever time in order to try to prevent those words from becoming the perceived reality.
Like there is a constant drum beat that President Obama is not a citizen of the United States. The “Birthers” keep trying to deny his birth in Hawaii. Their advantage is that logically you cannot prove a negative. The producing of his birth certificate has not been adequate. But he is an American Citizen.
The rumor keeps circulating that he is a Muslim. Again he has claims to be a Christian. He attends Christian worship services. He has partaken in Christian sacraments. He describes his political agenda in terms of the Sermon on the Mount and other teachings of Jesus. He is a self affirming Christian.
The next level of repeated messages is that “we must cut the liberal spending.'” Never mind that Reagan and Bush, especially Bush with two wars that are not being paid for by taxes, added incredible amount to the deficit. Never mind that the Simpson-Bowles Commission has stated that there is no way to cut spending enough to effect the deficit. There are four major reforms needed to begin to reduce the deficit: social security- medicare which includes health care (which Obama tried, but which the Affordable Health Care Bill did not accomplish), total tax reform, military spending, and interest on the debt. All this talk about cutting the liberal spending is just blowing in the wind.
The opposition continues to talk about how poorly the economy is doing and what we need is jobs, jobs, jobs. What they do not say is that the economy is slowly recovering from the horrors that were happening under Bush. There has been steady job growth for the last two years, and there were steep job losses in the last four years of Bush.
The chant about jobs, jobs, jobs is disturbing because in North Carolina the Republicans in power have done absolutely nothing to promote or bring jobs to this state. They have caused the loss of a great number of jobs in Education and State government. They have done nothing to create jobs or to recruit industries to our state. Vance County knows directly that the State did not help in the effort to bring business to Vance County.
For the Party that wants to talk about less government, smaller government, get government out of our lives, the Republicans seem to be most concerned with getting government into our personal lives. They want to tell you whom you can love and how you can love them. They want to tell women what they can do with their bodies and how to conduct their sex lives.
The Republican agenda says that you will not be able to obtain or use contraceptives and birth control, you will not be able stop an unwanted birth that was the results of not having the contraceptive. They will not help you raise that unwanted child with any welfare help. Then they will build prisons for that unwanted child. Now that is really trying to control the private lives of individuals. For a party that was supposed to be for getting government out of our affairs that is a strange place for them to be. In our private sex lives.
If they keep repeating trying to “stay on message” we need to keep responding with the other side.
I guess you missed the part where Obama said he was going to fix everything and bring ‘change’ and yet he has continued a vast majority of Bush’s policies and accelerated spending on everything. Yep, you sure did miss that part.
Well Mister Brand, you are guilty of what you are preaching above. Beat an ol’ horse to death, same ol’ same ol’. It is the fault of President Bush. Don’t you get tired of that agenda?
Once this country went liberal is where we can find the downfall of this nation. You are my friend no better than the rest, jiggling the numbers around to suit your agenda. Politics at it’s best.
Indeed, there are many reasons to be disappointed with the Obama administration for the last four years. He has tried to be a mediator and compromiser with a Congress that has no interest in compromise. He has been abandoned by his own party a number of times. But the choice is still between his vision and the Republican vision for the country.
And I am happy to read that I have been able to express myself well enough that Mudball got it. If the Republicans are going to stay on message “cut spending, jobs” then I and other Democrats have to stay on message that focusing on “cutting spending” will not accomplish what is needed. (Simpson-Bowles) and nothing that the Republicans have done across this state and the nation have done anything for jobs.
Why should I get tired of my vision for this country when the opposition continues to play their one tired note?
There are lots of major issues upon which we should be having debates: immigration, comprehensive energy programs, international policies, international economics, and so many others and the country is being divided by a debate about who can love whom. That is the horror of politics at its best.
Nothing can ever be ‘fixed’ when the leadership is divided and one side refuses to compromise. It took far more than four years for our country to get into this mess. How can we expect that damage to be undone in four years? I agree that our nation is being flamboozled by all these personal freedom issues, keeping us distracted from what IS really important. Let’s take Medicare into consideration. Once a retired person reaches the age of 65 a portion of their social security is deducted for Medicare…for me that is one fifth of my check. Seems like Medicare should be self supporting. It makes no sense at all, given I paid into both SS and Medicare all my working life, and continue to pay both from my part-time income. The only ‘secure’ part of our population are our elected officials and those who have amassed a fortune.
Copper, you can’t keep supporting more and more people on social welfare programs, who are not contributing, and expect there to be anything left for those who put into it.
So how do you explain or justify our elite welfare program? Can we afford to give retired elected officials benefits they’ve not paid into? I wonder what that costs, per capita?
Here it is–plain and simple. Vance County has a high Public Assistance budget, Vance County has a huge amount of subsidized rental housing below standard in my opinion.
Our slogan seems to be ” Build it and they will come”–We are NOT thinking of the future indiustrial growth with the attitude now abounding here.
The US government seems to have the slogan “Make all Americans government dependent from cradle to grave”.
How very sad. Those dwindling numbers in the middle class are really getting the shaft.
I guess I’m on a discontent roll, but the middle class has always paid the price for the privileged and the poor. The so called middle class amounts to no more than the working poor. We elect corrupt liars to office and then wonder where our freedom has gone. We are so complaicent that we believe whatever our preferred party says. The ‘electorate’ is no more than those who can afford to pay for the privilege…those who can attend the special fund-raising dinners and conventions. How many on this blog can do that? Hell, we can hardly keep up with the cost of our daily lives. We need to wise up and see there is truly a class system operating in this once great nation. Only we can change it. Come to think of it, our nation was founded by the elite who had no idea what the common man faced. Yes, there are still those who want to live in the USA because they have been brainwashed into thinking this is the land of opportunity. We are flooded with dream seekers who have all the special benefits most of us cannot receive. Our education system has declined to the point that the majority of high school graduates can hardly write a cohesive paragraph, use proper grammar or have an employable skill.
Sorry Copper Rain, there are still plenty of immigrants who come here with nothing and by hard work become part of the elite class. It is our home-grown lazies who have the benefits of social welfare programs that do not even make it to lower middle class. Education has declined because of the liberal programs which have made it a joke.
I agree with you regarding our home grown lazies. I also agree there are plenty of immigrants who work hard and make something of their lives. I don’t think Henderson is the place where they become part of the elite, though. Not even hard working home grown citizens can become part of the elite here, when there are not enough jobs to go around. I don’t believe liberals are the only ones to blame for our devolving educational system, though. Education is one of the major issues we should be addressing, along with job creation and equitable taxation.
Why aren’t there enough jobs, Copper? Because the ‘powers that be’ decided to turn it into a Section 8 town. The businesses that are here, all cater to the low income community. The liberals are not doing the poor any favors with their liberal ‘feel good’ policies…it’s actually harming them. The old saying is true: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” Our social systems feed people for a day, and teach them how to be dependent. Henderson has the location and a beautiful lake that could make it a successful area — but the same people with the same bs have turned it into a cesspool that will not ever smell good.
Our retired elected ‘elite’ officials should be no different. Actually, politics should not be what it is today…a career… However, in terms of our wealthy self made ‘class,’ there would be no America without them, and certainly no jobs. That is what America is all about — land of opportunity — not the land of welfare that it has become. …
I am not arguing with you, Betterworld. I am saying, basically, both political parties have failed us. I am saying we have failed ourselves by being distracted by personal issues that cloud the essentials. However, if welfare and section 8 ended at this point, we would be flooded with homeless families. How would we deal with that?
I agree, both parties have failed, I think mostly because we have career politicians… If it were up to me, I would have to have a gradual (but not too gradual) dissolution of the welfare programs. While it would probably create great anger at me, I would go back to Children’s homes, such as the Masonic Home, and no longer pay families to foster children. Absolutely no more paying for babies! I think this is a simple answer, and a more complex solution would probably have to be developed…but I unfortunately don’t see it happening in my lifetime.
You and I are in total agreement regarding paying mothers for having babies. I’m stunned by the large number of very young women having baby after baby. No one would like my solution for this problem, which would include the fathers of these babies. I’m stunned by the number of grandmothers under the age of 35, who are on welfare and food stamps. Even more shocking are the number of girls who have babies by their own kin. Those babies are very often born with defects, mental and/or physical, who are receiving disability. Vance County has an outrageous rate of teen pregnancies and HIV. Instead of worrying about who marries who, we should be more concerned about who is not marrying.
I don’t care who is marrying who. All that would do is put even more people on the dole — just another way to steal money from the hard working people and give it to lazies who do not want to work. The babies being born are nothing to them except paychecks, baby daddy or no baby daddy, husband or no husband. One either works (unless absolutely developmentally disabled), and works hard, or one gets nothing.
This Republican believes in birth control!
So does this Democrat. You brought up a subject I hadn’t considered; married people on the dole. I had no idea married couples qualified for public assistance.
Betterworld, you must be having a time of it. Your chosen political party has been taken over by those total opposed to personal fundamental freedoms such as who you might love or want to live with and share property, or control ones one reproduction. Then again you said all that [marriage] would do is put even more people on the dole.
The world is not and has never been just one way or the other. There has always been right, wrong and everything else in between.
Actually I’m not having a time of it. My comment about marriage was not about marriage in general, but allowing people on the dole to marry and still retain benefits. There is a person running for office, as per an article in the Dispatch a week or so ago, that wanted to allow these women to continue to receive public assistance and also marry. That was what my comment was about, not marrying in general. As for personal freedoms, we have become way too concerned with personal freedoms to the detriment of Society. If I was given my choice, I would temporarily end reproduction as I think there are too many people in the world at this point in time. Unfortunately, that’s not possible.