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Tuesday, February 28. 2012
The Wrath of Santorum
This made my day last week. Rick Santorum said “… 62% of kids who enter college with a faith commitment leave without it.” The question is: how do we convert the other 38%?Well, that’s not Santorum’s view — making college students atheists. He’s become anti-higher education and wondered how the government could require public universities to be less secular — and thereby less liberal — and more faith-based. Or, as Santorum puts it: have more “intellectual diversity.”
Mr. No Rubbers For You was opining on the sad state of public education under President Obama. “I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely ... The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country.”
Good golly! Parents, close out those college accounts for your kids and go on the week vacation at Hedonism II that you’ve always fantasized about, but were never ready to take. You don’t want to waste money on your kids who will be brainwashed in college! Good grief!
If that wasn’t enough — and this just blows your mind, blew my mind — people who want to attend college or send their kids to college are snobs. He called the president a snob because the president believes everyone—and the nation—will be better off if everyone gets a higher education, if at least certification to get employed in the 21st Century. This from the guy who has three college degrees. Obama is a snob? Maybe Santorum is the ultimate hypocrite.The Ugly Catholic goes on … and on and on and on … in his quest for the nomination from his party. Just the other day he said John F. Kennedy’s campaign speech, the one in which Kennedy assured voters his religion would not rule his decisions as president, Santorum said that speech made him “throw up!”
Kennedy said he believed the separation of church and state was absolute, as the Founders intended. Well, that makes Santorum throw up. Santorum went on to say his faith would be a central tenant of his administration were he to become president. He believes the First Amendment gives him license to shove his religious beliefs down our throats. Well, we’ll see how that goes over in the general election with the so-called “Reagan Democrats.” John F. Kennedy is beloved by them. Yes, it makes me want to see Santorum win the nomination.Upping the ante, Santorum’s wife said that her husband’s run for president is “God’s will.” Predicated, she said, by the passage of the Affordable Care Act. If it weren’t for “Obamacare,” God wouldn’t have told her husband to run for president. America is sliding into a godless abyss and Rick Santorum is the only man who can save us!
No wonder Santorum has something burning down there. Makes you wonder though: do Mr. and Mrs. Santorum still fornicate?
Meanwhile, Ole Newt is telling anyone who will listen, every man, woman and child in America is in more danger than at any other time in U.S. history, all thanks to President Obama. My god! He apologizes when our troops burn copies of the Quran! If that isn’t a sign of weakness, what is?
Gingrich is all but out of the presidential race. He knows it, but he has his sugar daddy putting millions into his campaign so he keeps slugging it out with Mit Romney.
Aw Mit ... Do you think you can win the Michigan Primary? With its trees just the right height and all the lakes — not just the Great Lakes, but all the little lakes in all the state parks. With the Big Three American auto makers, the ones you said should be allowed to fail ... Mit, do you think you can win?Your home state, where your Daddy was CEO of General Motors and then governor — a very popular governor at that! The state where you grew up and went to high school. The primary you won by nine points in 2008!
Aw Mit, you might lose this one to Santorum! But that’s okay, you still have your homestead in La Jolla.
Saturday the John Ford classic The Grapes of Wrath was on TCM (Turner Classic Movies). You know the premise: Oklahomans get hammered by the Great Depression and then by a drought that creates the “Dust Bowl.” They lose their farms as banks foreclose on loans.Driven from their homes, the head to California where they are told they can find work picking the various crops. The “Okies” face hardships along the road to California and once there, they come up against bigotry and violence.
Tom Joad, played by Henry Fonda, is the main character. Just as he’s arriving home after getting out of prison, his family is packing to leave their Oklahoma homestead. Although “Ma,” played by Jane Darwell, appears to be the glue of the family, it’s really Tom, who leads the family and makes the decisions. Eventually he gets into trouble, killing a man who killed his friend, Casy, played by John Carradine.
Tom is often considered the hero of the story, but it’s really Casy, once a preacher, who inspires Tom to a higher calling: fighting for the rights of all the working poor.
The film ends quite a bit differently from the book by John Steinbeck so the film could have an upbeat, almost happy ending. But the gist of the story remains true to the book, so much so that Steinbeck was enthusiastic about the way the film was made.
But it got me to thinking, comparing the 1930’s to the present day. Millions of people are losing their homes to foreclosure, many of them through no fault of their own. The real estate market collapsed, dropping home values with it, and many of the people losing their homes found themselves on the unemployment line as well. That’s hardly irresponsibility on their part.
And just who is benefiting during this terrible times? Corporations. How is it this is the most profitable era in U.S (and world) business ever and we have unemployment hovering around 10% and families losing their homes by the thousands?It isn’t Barack O-fuckin-bama. This all started before he won the election in 2008. If anything, Obama’s policies have slowed the rate of decline. Real wages have been mostly stagnant for more than 30 years, with a slight bump in the late 1990’s — during the Clinton Administration.
The Republican plan is to continue the policies that brought on this mess. The Democratic idea, the Obama plan, is to have the wealthiest pay more in taxes. The fact that the “1%” pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes is not just absurd, it’s immoral. Obama wants to jump start the economy with infrastructure spending, fixing or building roads, bridges and buildings. Putting more teachers, nurses, firefighters and police officers to work. Doing what Mit Romney claims is his idea: broadening the tax base.
Romney’s plan for broadening the tax base though is to force the working poor to pay more in taxes, as if they’re not poor enough. Everyone should pay his or her fair share, according to what he considers “fair.”
The New Deal, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, along with collective bargaining, were all good starts on making and keeping this a prosperous nation. Then the so-called “Reagan Revolution” started the war on the Middle Class, the working class of America.
All of a sudden companies were getting away with destroying pension funds and getting paid to move their manufacturing facilities to foreign countries. American workers were told to lower their standard of living and now, after 30 years, the only reason was so that people who run those corporations could be exponentially wealthier. While the salaries of the Working Class flat-lined, those of the 1% quadrupled — or more.
So, here in Sandy Eggo there is a so-called crisis with the city employees’ pension and benefits package. The conventional “wisdom” being, “Why should city employees have a better pension and benefits package than those in the private sector?”
There was a time years ago when private employers paid better and offered better benefits than any government employers. Why work for the DMV when you could get a job in the private sector that offered more? Working for the government, city, county, state or federal, was either for those who wished to serve or for those who couldn’t get a job in the private sector.As the private sector employers began fucking over their employees, the various governments remained responsible to their employees. Now, in 2012, San Diego city workers are getting hammered simply for having decent pay with a nice pension and affordable, dependable benefits. Oh how times have changed.
Economist Martin A. Sullivan once said, “There may be liberty and justice for all, but there are tax breaks only for some.” The Grapes of Wrath, 21st Century style.
Just heard this on a TV commercial: “Those who think less is more are mathematically challenged.” Ha-ha-ha! LoL! Can’t remember what it was for and can’t find it on the Google, but it had me laughing.
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