The following was said on my forum today:
But if you want to keep the party in power that passed health care - is continuing to spend like a drunken sailor - just do what you are doing. Way to go - whatever.
This is called in psychological terms transference - and it's a bogus debating technique. In a formal debate class such a line of argument will get you "called out on points" - you'll lose, basically.
But in the court of public opinion and 30-second soundbites on TV, this is what we hear.
From both sides.
Let me tell you how I see it.
In 2007 and 2008 (and who was President then?) I was all over this issue. I wrote letters to our President, I wrote letters to John McCain, and I paid to attend a McCain campaign event - over $2,000 of my own hard-earned money - in Washington DC. Why? To press flesh with Governors Ridge and Keating, and hand them a DVD with a short video and outline of exactly what had happened.
What happened?
Nothing, of course. I'm a tiny fish in a damn big ocean. But if you want proof, go to that link right up there and browse through the Archives. Pay particular attention to 2008 and both who and what I was criticizing.
But it was John McCain that turned TARP into a campaign event, and guaranteed its passage by doing so. And let us not forget who his running mate was at the time:
Sarah Palin.
That was a douchebag act on John McCain's and Sarah Palin's part. A calculated political act that threw us all under the bus for the benefit of a handful of fat-cat bankers on Wall Street.
Yes, I know, they claim "we were going to have another Depression and we avoided it." Oh really? We avoided it eh? We're spending 12% of GDP on the federal credit card to avoid admitting it, but we in fact avoided exactly nothing in terms of economic outcome - we have 20 million Americans out of work and 40 million+ on food stamps.
But for government "handouts" there would be tent cities in every major population center in this nation right now, and there has been zero progress on reducing that dependency over the last three years.
ZERO.
Never mind that those who make such claims are asking you to prove a negative - which is almost always impossible. That is, you can't falsify their claims - which is damn convenient for them.
Then don't complain anymore - because you were part of the change that wasn't, isn't and will never be - because you deluded yourself into thinking you are the originator of something you weren't. Sending in tea bags is a totally different thing than people twittering, organizing into groups ( many different groups ) and the first one to utter tea parties probably did it as an insult, and the label stuck.
Bah. You've done nothing except support and promote those who pulled a train on your ass with an entire corral of wild Arabian Stallions.
Now you claim I'm getting screwed with health care? Well, yes - I'm getting ass****ed by the jackasses in power right now. But guess what - I don't even feel it, because that particular assault is small compared to the one that was served on me before. Hell, in my charitable moments I might even call the undulation that I'm taking exercise at this point; the stick in my teeth has long since ceased to be necessary. I'd sure like the assault to stop, but those on the Right asking me to support "their way" aren't giving me anything that makes me believe it will if I vote for them this time around - and I hear those Arabians neighing again! You want me to vote for that?
Now it's true that The Democrats haven't done a damn thing about cleaning this up either, and our Dear President has fellated Lloyd Blankfein and friends just as much and as often as did George W. Bush.
Indeed, he's raping every person who got sold a bubble house via some hinky OptionARM or Subprime mortgage deal just as much as Bush did, and I have been tireless in my commentary on that point.
But telling me that I'm voting to "fix things" if I go to the polls and vote Republican in a couple of weeks is a flat lie. I will get no such thing, as the standard-bearer for the Right-Side Party, Tea or otherwise, at this point is Sarah Palin who I remind you suspended HER campaign along with McCain's to blow Lloyd Blankfein and company in 2008.
There are those who say I am endorsing the Left with this. Nope. I most-certainly am not. President Obama and the Democrats had the opportunity to earn that endorsement. Indeed, they've had two full years with no opposition - a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and command of the House.
They could have repudiated the Standard-Bearers for the Right on the theft, fraud, financial******and screwing issues - that is, put back in place Glass-Steagall, break up all the big banks, close Fannie and Freddie, repealed the Bankruptcy Reform law (and put in place a special, one-time option so citizens could toss off their excess indebtedness on the people who recklessly lent without concern over repayment) and more. They could have declared fraud and theft in all it's forms a prison sentence instead of a wink and a smile, sent Bill Black into all the banks and issued thousands of indictments, starting with those at the top who have mercilessly screwed every American not once but twice in the last decade.
Instead they shoved mark-to-fantasy down the throat of FASB, put one of the chief architects of the******in charge of Treasury - a guy who is an admitted tax cheat himself - and have continued the policies of the Bush administration in exact goose-step when it comes to deficit spending and debt idiocy.
Then, to add whipped cream to the sundae, they just allowed a bank to withdraw 102,000 affidavits used to evict people from their homes that the institution admitted were not actually verified and attested as they claimed - that is, 102,000 counts of alleged perjury and injury to citizens in this nation - without a single finger being lifted to tender over an indictment.
The cherry was the statement from that very same Administration that the servicers would fix the problems with foreclosures whenever they feel like it.
Due process of law? What's that? I guess after 20 years of using The Constitution to wipe one's ass, yet another brown stain right across the 5th Amendment doesn't really matter very much.
It doesn't stop there, of course. Today we find out that students are graduating from college with record amounts of debt. Who hasn't acted on that - to stomp on the banks and colleges that are raping students and their families? That would be The Left, which could have, with a wave of a hand, stopped all of it by withdrawing the "special" non-dischargable nature of student loans. Poof! Out goes the money, down comes the cost. But the banksters wouldn't have that, would they? No, and neither would Obama and the Left - say much less the Right.
There are those on both sides of the aisle who don't like my rather-direct language. I'm sure I'll get more complaints after this column. That's nothing new. I'm both not running for office now and have no plans to do so in the future, never mind that I have a 20+ year record of saying exactly what I think on The Internet and elsewhere.
If you want me to stop using such metaphors for what government and Wall Street are doing to the people then stop treating the American people in such a fashion that they're the most-appropriate analogue that describes the insults!
This crisis happened due to millions of fraudulent mortgages. The lending industry extorted FASB and Congress. The Fed and Hank Paulson extorted Congress.
Where are the indictments - and the calls for them - from either party?
Missing, that's where.
If any political party wants my endorsement, say much less my vote, they're going to have to fix that.
Until then?
Ballot
When you just can't vote for the lesser of two evils any more.