December 11, 2023
From the front lines of the culture wars...
Don’t look in the mirror. You won’t like what you see.
To my generation, nobody ever wanted to grow up to be like mom and dad. Indeed, many of my girlfriends were majorly traumatized when they realized they’d grown up to be “just like Mother.” It appears this is what’s happening to us now as a nation. We’ve grown up to be the countries we were warned against. We’re starting to bear a strange resemblance to countries led by people with names like Stalin or Franco.
Guest Column
Hollywood and politicians have made strange bedfellows from back in the days of Charlie Chaplin whose independence sealed a lifetime beyond the cherished reels and busy work of the war lords consigning him to distant shores until the final redemptive days. You are either with us or against never upon us.
Lord Louis B. Mayer gave the Republican Party a say in the 1920s in building a solid propaganda machine. Edward G. Robinson fought Nazi’s–Ronald Reagan and George Murphy darlings of the high flying right served as presidents of the Screen Actors Guild. Depending on which side of the aisle you inhabited, politics of the day influenced the type of movies being made. We went from gun toting Vietnamese slayer John Wayne in The Green Berets to Jane Fonda’s Oscar win in the anti-war Coming Home.
The way I see it, we’re preaching to the choir. If you’re reading this, then you most likely somewhat agree with us, or you are at least tolerant of the our viewpoint. Unless you’re a trolling teabagger, then you’re here because you want to go slack jawed and slap yourself, so you can go on Facebook and post a link to our site and tell everyone how laughable we are.
If you’re the latter, you’re going to be disappointed. You’ll not find much fodder for your amazement here. The way I figure it, we’re all voting for Obama and Mitt Romney’s full of it. There’s no reason to belittle that point and keep repeating what a scumbag hypocrite he is. It just pisses off the right, and makes us feel smug enough that we risk forgetting that we have work to do. We need to be figuring out what it is we really want.
I can’t try to play to the middle anymore, because the middle is downright confused. All I can do is tell the truth as I see it; I can assure you that will usually be far from the middle.
Or will it?
Do we really see the middle? Most of the people I know think a lot like me, we share a wavelength even though we’re on different channels. We support Obama, kind-of-sort-of. We believe in offering our neighbors a helping hand when they need it, and think that would be good policy for our governments as well. So maybe I’m not so far away from the center as I think, it just seems that way because that’s what I hear. The Occupy movement has taught me there are still many people, young and old, who share my wavelength, so it’s not just that I’ve surrounded myself by like minded people.
Editor’s note: This photo was sent to us today and we thought it was too cool not to pass it on. We’re not sure where…
Radio talker Allen Hunt’s signature line is that his show “isn’t about right and left, it’s about right and wrong.” At first this sounds good, but after you listen to him for about fifteen minutes you realize his opinion is not much different than that of most of the other guys on AM radio, the right is right and the left is wrong.
As I was driving home from work the other night, he was doing his favorite schtick, which is bashing Obama. On this night, he was all over the president for sending his daughters to private schools while we working stiffs with limited income have to send our children to public schools. He thought all Americans should be able to give their children a private education, through that favorite program of the public school naysayers, the voucher.
If you’re wondering why Research In Motion (RIM), maker of the Blackberry, was loathe to cooperate with the authorities in Dubai and India when they demanded access to encrypted Blackberry calls, it’s because they knew no matter how little they cracked that door, it would eventually open wide. Need proof? Take a look at Monday’s New York Times in which we learn that the Feds want new regulations to force companies like RIM to design back doors into their offerings to allow easy wiretap access by law enforcement. It’ll be hard for RIM to say “no” to the U.S. when they’ve already said “yes” to other countries.
“Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct ‘peer to peer’ messaging like Skype – to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.”
When Clinton accepted the Democrats’ nomination in 1992, he promised the party faithful that getting health care for all U.S. citizens would be his number one priority. He gave the impression that he’d come up with a plan and if that got knocked down by the evil doctors and Republicans he’d come up with another plan, and if that got knocked down he’d come up with yet another plan until it was a done deal.
He wouldn’t rest until the United States had a health care system in place that was on par with the rest of the developed world. If necessary, he would twist every congressperson’s arm or do battle with any lobbyist or special interest group, including the all powerful AMA. If elected, we could sleep well in the knowledge that before he left the White House, Americans from rich to poor would have equal access to health care.
I live in North Carolina, and although we voted for Obama in 2008, it would be a mistake to consider this Obama Country. He still has a lot of support in the cities, but in working class neighborhoods and rural areas he’s seen with the same disdain as Jimmy Carter. Probably worse, since Carter had the good graces to be a southerner.
This morning Obama spoke to school kids across the country via television from Julia R. Masterman Laboratory and Demonstration School in Philadelphia. The address was about what you’d expect from any president on such an occasion, nonpartisan and motivational. He urged students to “dream big” and “stay focused” on their education. Pretty harmless stuff, which maybe a few students found moving and probably many more found boring, school kids being who they are.
To hear the conservatives tell it, our economy will nosedive if the rich are required to pay an iota in taxes more than they do now. Indeed, we are led to understand the rich already pay more than their fair share, that their taxes need to be lowered so the middle class and the poor can shoulder more of the burden.
It’s understandable why folks under 30 might believe this argument. If the tax rate on the rich, defined by the Obama administration as those earning more than $250,000, is rolled back to nearly 40%, the rich just might not have the money to invest in businesses and create the jobs our country so badly needs. Never mind the fact that the rich aren’t investing in businesses and creating jobs anyway, even though the tax rate for high rollers is historically low.
