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Monday, October 13. 2008
Here’s What I Say
Sunday I had the funniest thought while watching a CNN panel discuss race in this current election. “Discuss” is probably the wrong word. The panelists were often yelling at each other over Campbell Brown, the moderator. I remember when she was on MSNBC. I had such a crush
and then she married Dan Senor, formerly a senior aid to President Bush. She betrayed me.The thought was this: “Fuck You” is my way of saying “Fuck You.” That kind of thought is always my first reaction, which is why I would not be a good candidate to be a panelist on one of these news talk shows. As soon as one of those knobs started yelling, trying to talk down to me, I’d blurt out with the trusty “Fuck You!”
Ah yes … my Dear Mother always hated the Marine Corps because she was convinced the military had taught me to drink too much and curse like a Marine. She didn’t want to believe I was already drinking like a Marine before I got to the Marines, but she was right about the use of obscenities. In my years I’ve forgotten more chestnuts of obscene verbal abuse than most people know — and I’m not alone. Think of all the men and women who have been Marines and sailors — even though sailors weren’t actually in the military …
“D’OH” “My friends,” as Senator McCain likes to start all his speeches. “We all know the Navy is part of the military.”
Inter-branch rivalries are part of the fun of being a veteran.
Despite the tone of the program on CNN they were at least talking about race in American politics. My guess is there will always be people who will not vote for an African-American in any election, especially not for president. Racism — bigotry — will always be with us. There is still a large percentage of our populace that still teaches racism in their homes.
It’s also no stretch to assume there are people who won’t vote for McCain-Palin because the vice presidential nominee is a woman. It is still taught in this nation that a woman’s place is beside or behind, by five paces, her husband. Ironically, the political party that includes those people is the party of Governor Sarah Palin: the G.O.P. You gotta love the irony.
Are you wondering if she will ever be on one of the Sunday Morning talk shows? I haven’t seen any lately, but had she been on one it would have been news simply because Governor Palin doing interviews is news. If there is any reason not to vote for Palin, that would be it. She’s afraid to be interviewed and she has no knowledge of either domestic or foreign affairs. She is completely unqualified for the position.
Can she learn on the job? Yeah, but do we want someone so unprepared to be president just a heartbeat away from the highest office in the land? That’s a sobering thought when you consider Senator McCain is the oldest person to seek the office of president ever in the history of America. And he has health issues everyone is trying to avoid talking about in the campaign. He’s had cancer and just recently had lymph nodes removed from his face.
Many of the elderly will vote for John McCain simply because he’s elderly too. They think, erroneously, McCain has their best interests at heart, even though McCain voted against the prescription drug bill that the elderly depend on to meet the cost of their prescriptions. Even though John McCain opposes Medicare and Medicaid.During the Republican primary, McCain even campaigned on his promise to scale back Medicare, convinced that Part D of the plan, the prescription drug coverage, goes too far and covers too many people. McCain was one of the senators who participated in the filibuster to prevent the drug coverage bill from coming to a vote.
Senator McCain is also one of the people who would like to do away with Social Security. He and his ilk call it “privatizing,” but that “plan” essentially ends Social Security by putting your Social Security contributions into retirement plans controlled and managed by the very Wall Street bankers responsible for the current economic crisis.
This begs the reality of Social Security to be mentioned again: If the government wasn’t raiding the Social Security Trust to pay for the national budget, and hadn’t been for the past 20-plus years, Social Security would be the most successful government program in history.The problem for Republicans of McCain’s ilk is that Social Security smacks of socialism, as most of the New Deal does and that just doesn’t fit into their worldview. Regardless of how successful and beneficial a program may be, if it’s “New Deal” then it is bad.
John McCain wants to stop the government from supporting seniors and the poor. He won’t actually say that and when he campaigns in Florida, home to more than three million seniors, over half of whom use Medicare and Part D of the program, he carefully avoids any mention of Social Security and Medicare, lest anyone ask him to explain his opposition to the programs.
Whenever politicians talk about “privatizing” Social Security, doing away with the program, it boils my blood because I have contributed to the trust for most of the past 40 years and always — always — the Republicans who propose doing away with Social Security say they won’t touch the benefits of those already receiving it or are just five years away from receiving it. That leaves me out and means my contributions to Social Security — which I plan on using, if not depending on — when I reach age 62 would disappear and I would have to start, from scratch, building a retirement plan managed by fund managers who really don’t have much credibility these days.
Had the government not been robbing the Social Security Trust for all these years we could have expected the monthly payments to have risen with the cost of living all these years and we could look forward to having a nest egg, which is what Social Security was meant to do when it was created over 70 years ago.Senator John McCain does not have my best interests at heart. Not when it comes to Social Security and certainly not when it comes to veterans benefits. McCain has voted against veteran issues 80% of the time since Bush has been president. Two of the organizations that, just three months ago, posted the voting records of all senators, including John McCain and Barack Obama, no longer post those facts because John McCain, once such a darling of veterans organizations, has such a terrible record when it comes to vet issues. These organizations still want to support the old man simply because he is the most famous veteran in America.
The lack of funding for the Veterans Administration has already impacted my benefits — and those of millions of other vets — and the specter of John McCain as president, continuing the erosion of the Veterans Administration, is a scary, scary proposition.
Makes me want to say “Fuck You” John McCain.
See more funny videos at Funny or Die
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