Facebook Fallacies

I read this incredibly ignorant post on Facebook, and felt the need to respond.  The original post is in blue.


A lot is being said in the media about Mitt Romney not being "likeable" or that he doesn't "relate well" to people. Here is the 'Top Ten List' that possibly explains Mitt's "unlikeablility".

1. Too handsome with a gracious, statesman-like aura. 

Or in other words he is an old white dude.  Since when is being ‘too handsome’ a handicap or a qualification to be President?

2. Been married to ONE woman his entire life, and has been faithful to her, including through her bouts with breast cancer and MS.

Okay.  Our current President has been married for 20 years today to the same woman.

3. No scandals or skeletons in his closet. (How boring is that?)

I’ve got one for you.  How about the fact that he hides his money in secret offshore bank accounts to avoid paying tax?  Or that he had the balls to picket anti war protestors, yet dodged the draft by spending three years in France on a ‘mission’ to recruit people into his cult.

4. Can't speak in a fake, southern, "black Preacher voice" when necessary.

I’m not quite sure what to make of that comment, although I assume it to be thinly veiled racism.

5. Highly intelligent. He graduated cum laude from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School ... which by the way, his academic records are NOT sealed.

He attended an elite private school that costs $300,000 to send a kid there in today’s money.  With the benefit of that foundation; an education completely out of reach to most normal kids, how could he fail to get into a good college?  It's a little hard to fail when you are born into such unimaginable privilege.

6. Doesn't smoke or drink alcohol, and has never done drugs, not even in the counter-culture age when he went to college. Too wierd (sic) for today's America?

That’s because he is a member of a weird cult that believes even caffeine is evil and magic underwear is good.

7.      Represents an America of "yesterday", where people believed in God, went to Church, didn't screw around, worked hard,
and became a SUCCESS!

You mean the America where women couldn’t vote and black people had to sit at the back of the bus?  Institutional racism and sexism abound.  And the same good old days where Romney’s cult banned black people and other minorities from joining because they were not as important in the eyes of god as white people.

8. Has a family of five great sons....and none of them have police records or are in drug rehab. But of course, they were raised by a stay-at-home mom, and that "choice" deserves America's criticism.

I’m really not sure that anyone has critized him for having a loving family.  But is that really a qualification for President, or are you just clutching at straws to make your top ten?

9. Oh yes.....he's a MORMON. We need to be afraid of that very strange religion that teaches its members to be clean-living, patriotic, fiscally conservative, charitable, self-reliant, and honest.

Perhaps if you did any research on this cult you would be far less forgiving.  Have a look at exmormon.org and find out what real Mormons who escaped have to say about their lives in the Mormon church.  Heart breaking stories of cult like control and manipulation.

10. And one more point.....pundits say because of his wealth, he can't relate to ordinary Americans. I guess that's because he made that money HIMSELF.....as opposed to marrying it or inheriting it from Dad. Apparently, he didn't understand that actually working a job and earning his own money made him unrelatable to many American voters.

Dreaming.  What more can I say.  As I mentioned in a previous blog article, the guy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.  That’s how his father was able to afford the kind of elite private education for his kid in the first place.  And without that expensive education, financial support, and business and political connections of his father who knows where he’d be today.

Take Mitt Romney and raise him in a regular family with a state education, don’t give him the three year vacation in France that enabled him to dodge the draft, and you really think he would be as rich or running for President?

I completely reject the narrative that Romney is a self made man.  He got the money and power he has in life because of an accident of birth.  Now sure, he may have worked hard, but so does the baggage handler at the airport.

This election is the most surreal I have seen since I moved to America.  The right are painting this picture of an evil socialist dictator as President, while there guy worked his way from nothing to millionaire through his sheer business acumen and hard work.  Both stories are total bullshit.

Republican Balls

Say what you will about Republicans, but you kinda have to admire their balls.

As I listen to various Republicans in the media on the run up to the 2012 Presidential Election, the thing that astounds me is the lunacy of their arguments.

If we ignore the total dipshit stuff like the racism and birther shit, let's look at some of their other arguments:

1) Obama has not been able to wave a magic wand and fix the economy.

2) Obama's lack of foreign policy skills have left us vulnerable abroad as evidenced by the recent embassy killing.

3) Obama wants to punish rich people for success because he is an evil socialist who wants to redistribute wealth to welfare queens.

4) Obama is the food stamp president, because lots of people are currently on welfare.

I'd like to take a moment to address these bizarre accusations that I keep hearing.

First off, can we stop for a moment and discuss who the fuck destroyed the American economy in the first place?  That's right, the last REPUBLICAN president.  He led us into two wars that were not properly paid for, all while giving massive unfunded tax cuts to the richest people in America.  And despite ten years of Bush tax cuts, it seems as if the 'job creators' have not actually created enough jobs or trickled down their wealth as predicted.

Secondly, has every Republican forgotten 9/11?  While George Bush was on a six week vacation clearing brush on his ranch, intelligence memos were circulating in Washington talking about Osama Bin Laden trying to fly planes into the World Trade Center.  But apparently Bush wasn't paying attention, after all that pesky brush isn't going to clear itself is it?  So on his watch, while he was tasked with the role of Commander In Chief, we suffered the worst terrorist attack in the history of the world.  And then embarked on two unfunded wars in the Middle East which destabilized the region and provided propaganda for those who would wish to hate America.

If we are hated in the Middle East it is because our actions fuel that hate.  Terrorists are not going after Canadian embassies or Australians.  They come after us because we keep poking the hornets nest.  They are not mad at Obama, they are mad at America, and the actions of Bush in the Middle East cannot be downplayed.

As to point three, George Bush enacted two major tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003.  Rich people made out like bandits and the rich poor divide has widened.  We are doing such a bad job of raising revenue to fund our infrastructure that some cities in America have just ripped up street lights because they can't afford the electric bill.  A bit of a third world solution don't you think?  Yet when Obama talks about ending these tax cuts we can no longer afford (and never could afford actually), he is accused of socialism and class warfare.  Republicans would have us believe that we can't afford to pay teachers what they deserve, but we can afford to give tax cuts to millionaires.

And finally they love to attack the President for the welfare problem.  But again, this was created by Republicans!  As George Bush was ending his second term, the economy was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs.  In fact the final Bush year saw our country put 2.6 million people out of a job.  The biggest job loss this country has seen since 1945.

So how is it President Obama's fault that in three years he has not been able to fix all the damage they caused?  He promised us change, and he has given us change.  It could have been a lot better if Republicans had not stonewalled and filibustered everything he tried to do.  Mitch McConnell famously stated that his number one priority was to see to it that Obama did not see a second term.  Notice no mention of the economy, jobs, or doing the right thing for America.  Just a partisan attack strategy that is not in the best interests of the country.

And now we have Mitt Romney, the classical rich douchebag born with a silver spoon in his greedy little mouth, who is peddling the same old Republican crap that put us in this mess in the first place.  Tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, trickle down economics, and an admission that he doesn't give a shit about 47% of Americans.

Quite how anyone with a brain can support a guy like Romney is a mystery to me.  And how so many people can choose to ignore very recent political history is also amazing.  Let us hope there are enough smart people out there to save us from Romney and his dangerous Tea Party Congress.

America: Love Thy (Poor) Neighbor

I don't know what's going wrong in America, but somewhere along the way it has become okay to shit on poor people.

Recently a woman in Georgia was trying to buy groceries at Kroger for her family using her food stamp debit card.  Some kind of error occurred on the cash register and she was told she owed $10 because some of her food items were not eligible for food stamps.

The woman, Cindy Nerger, stood her ground stating that the items were in fact legitimate food stamp purchases.  A manager came over and fixed the problem, but then hurled insults at the woman essentially calling her a freeloader and loser, while reminding her that real Americans work for a living. Cindy was horribly embarrassed in front of the other shoppers and began to cry.  When she later called the customer service hotline to complain, the company offered to send her a $15 gift card as an apology (albeit the most insincere and almost insulting apology one could imagine).

The manager in question was not fired, but was transferred to another location.

The thing is, this is a country that identifies as Christian perhaps more than most other democracies around the world.  We pledge allegiance to the flag and God, we put God on our money, the Ten Commandments in government buildings and bemoan the lack of prayer in schools.  Yet when it comes to actually following Christian values taught by Jesus, we fall a long way short.

Among many Americans there is a horrendous attitude towards the poor.  Instead of treating them with compassion as Jesus instructed, we keep them as the objects of hate and ridicule.  But unlike racism, it is considered acceptable by many because of the false assumption that a good dose of hard work and all of life's problems are instantly solved.

Of course this is a total fallacy.  Numerous studies have now shown that upward mobility in America is stalling and becoming less and less likely, and as with so many other issues we are falling behind many European countries and other countries around the world.

As as for Cindy Nerger, she has kidney failure and has to spend 12 hours a day on dialysis but dreams of one day getting a transplant so she can return to a normal life and rejoin the workforce.  Her husband is a carpenter (like Jesus), but his income can be low in months when he doesn't land enough contracts for work.  And this is why this family need government assistance.

They are not lazy freeloaders, they are not scum, they are not stupid, bad or wrong.  They are Americans and deserve to be treated with the same respect and dignity as anyone else.

Part of the problem here too is the broken system of welfare.  Giving people special cards and letting the government determine what poor people are allowed to eat is humiliating and outrageous.  It's bad enough that people end up in this horrible situation of poverty as it is, without shitting on them from a great height and forcing them to advertise in public that they are not like us.

I'm from one of those terrible socialist countries Republicans like to warn us about, and in my homeland, if you are on government assistance, they just deposit money into your bank account.  You are then free to use that money as you see fit, just like every other free citizen.  But sadly here in America we like to make people feel guilty about their financial situation and have some misguided  belief that humiliating the poor will make them determined to work hard to change their situation.  The problem is; we are starting with the false assumption that being poor is always the fault of the person who is poor, and that they deserve to be punished for it.  I disagree.