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.

GOP Overachievers

One of the themes we keep hearing from Republicans is how through their own greatness and hard work they have become rich.  The message is essentially if you are poor, it serves you right.  You should have worked harder.

The thing that seriously annoys me is how people like Mitt Romney seem to conveniently forget the insane level of privilege that they were accidentally born into.  The fact is you could take any average white kid and give them access to riches, incredible education, power, and a stable family and there is a very good chance that they would be successful too.

Willard Mitt Romney was named after J Willard Marriott (millionaire hotelier), a family friend, and his father's cousin who was a quarterback for the Chicago Bears.  Mitt's father was CEO of American Motors and became a millionaire from his stock options.

That kind of money would probably explain how a family of four kids could afford to send Mitt to an elite boarding school whose current fees range from $22K-38K a year.  Or to put it another way, if you wanted to send your first grader to the school until they graduated it would cost you about $300,000 and that's not including expenses, inflation or the extra $35K it would cost if the child boards from the ninth through twelfth grade.

Romney then spent a year at Stanford, graduated from BYU, and then took a four year Harvard degree in law.  Between Stamford and BYU he dodged the draft by spending three years in France unsuccessfully attempting to recruit French people into his Mormon cult.  In three years he averaged one new cult member every three months.  But in all fairness convincing French people to give up alcohol cannot be that easy.

I think it would be fair to say that the cost of raising Mitt Romney from birth until he graduated from Harvard would have exceeded a million dollars in today's money.  Can you imagine how few families of four in the United States have that kind of money to throw at their children?

And this really is my point.  If Mitt wants to talk about having a successful career, that's great.  But it delusional to believe that it was nothing more than being smart and working hard.

By comparison, let's talk about Joe Normal.  He's a fictional guy born on the same day as Mitt Romney.  Joe Normal had to skip on the $300K schooling, so he didn't get to go to Harvard.  Joe Normal didn't have a rich family to pay for the three year vacation in France, so instead he got sent to Vietnam.  He comes back and uses the GI Bill to pay for community college, but has a hard time focusing because he has post traumatic stress disorder.  So he drops out of college, and ends up working for Walmart stacking shelves, although later he gets promoted to department supervisor where he makes $36,000 a year.

I could give you a million more examples of Joe and Anne Normal's working all over this country, busting their asses for the kind of money that wouldn't even pay for a year of fancy private school; even if they had no other expenses.

These people are not lazy or stupid.  They are normal every day people.  But they will never have access to the kinds of opportunities afforded to the rich and well connected.  It is this truth that Republicans want us to forget.

Now I am aware that there are many Republicans out there who were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and made it big, without a rich family.  That's great too.  But it does not mean that everyone else has the potential to achieve the same simply by working hard.  And this is why it is important to have social programs, quality education, and a safety net to protect the poor.  Sadly though Republican egomaniacs don't like that answer because it reminds them that they didn't "build that" alone.  In fact, they probably had help along the way that got them to the successful place they ended up.

And let us also not forget that Joe Normal working in Walmart for an average pay check is not a loser, or a failure.  He did what he could, and he worked hard.  He deserves health care, a reasonable standard of living, and to be respected.  And his taxes should not be paying for millionaires to get a tax break.

We Built It!

I have become so disillusioned with the state of American politics, I almost don't have the energy to blog about the election this year.

Republicans have been telling us for almost four years now how mad they are that Obama has not quickly fixed the economic catastrofuck that they created under eight years of George Bush, and so you would think that they would have a large cache of ammunition to use against President Obama.

But instead they chose to focus an entire rally around misquoting the President who merely remarked that everyone who has been successful in America owes a debt of gratitude to the infrastructure, roads, bridges, Internet, police, troops etc who created an environment in which these people could be successful.  It is a pretty simple concept, and is clearly true.  One finds it hard to imagine that Google would have enjoyed much success if its founders had been born and lived in China for example.  And I'm guessing Facebook would not have taken off if Mark Zuckerburg had been born in Iran.

America has long been famed as the land of opportunity, but now we are expected to believe that the 'job creators' are successful simply because they magically made it without any help from society or another human being.  That's a whole new level of arrogance right there, for sure.

Once again we face an election which is going to be tight.  An election where vote rigging in the name of 'preventing voter fraud' is rampant, as are the donations from the billionaires who can now use unlimited funds to buy an election, and presumably own the candidate if he is elected.

All over the country the racists, the poor, the sick, the under educated, and a slew of other people who stand to gain nothing from a Romney administration are lining up to vote for a man who represents the worst traits of a politician.  A smooth talking, old white dude, who will say anything to get what he wants.  This isn't a man of sound judgement (he is a cult member after all), with honest ethics and a clear vision for the future.   He is a shill for the Republican party.  A party that has moved to the extreme right of the political spectrum, is going after women's rights in an unprecedented way.  And in the wake of numerous killing sprees recently has reaffirmed their belief that the right to bear arms, authored in 1791 means open season for assault weapons with no limits on magazine size.

It is truly frightening that so many Americans are considering voting for a man who is promising to pursue the same failed economic polities of the Bush administration to include trickle down economics and tax cuts for the super rich, all while gutting important programs that protect the middle class.

Happy New Year 2012

2012 has already started well with the news that some of the scary bat-shit crazy presidential candidates have been forced to drop out of the race.

First Herman Cain stepped down, after giving stupid and ignorant answers (or simply yelling 9-9-9 - which rather aptly in the UK is the emergency services number like 911 in the States).

Now after Iowa, Michelle Bachmann found out the hard way that bat shit crazy wasn't enough to make it in politics.  And I'm not just harping on because I'm a liberal, this woman was so crazy, so stupid, and such a fucking bigot, there is no place for her thinking she can run for president of the free world.  I wouldn't trust her to run a gas station.

Also good news, Rick Perry, or George W. Bush II, got slammed, polling double what Bachmann managed; a measly 10% of the vote.  While he pledges to continue the fight, it's only a matter of time before that dumbass is kicked out of the race.

We've still got a VERY scary field out there, Mitt Romney; the cult member who will say anything or adopt any policy to get elected, and another bigot in the shape of Rick Santorum.

Since he came within 8 votes of beating Romney, I thought I'd share some of his world views:

1. Says he will annul all same sex marriages since gay marriage 'destabilizes' a society.
2. Says he will repeal all funding for birth control, and even allow states to ban the sale of birth control.
3. Says he will reinstate don't ask don't tell, and then made a bunch of homophobic statements about gay people in the military.
4. Claimed that because obesity rates are high in America, we should do away with food stamps.
5. Claimed that his child, who was born with a serious medical condition, would have died under socialized medicine.  Odd then that our infant mortality figures are in the gutter given how great our system is.
6. Back in August he said that poor people who 'whine' about affording health care should cut back on 'luxuries' like having a car or phone.
7. He sided with insurance companies who believe in charging more or denying coverage to people with 'pre-existing conditions.'

It scares me that some radical asshole like this can actually have a real chance at running for President.

I guess it's going to be an interesting and scary year.