To Hell with the Facts!

With the 2012 Presidential Election looming, the subject on your mind at this moment is probably the future of this country. Few elections have been this divisive or heated. And few elections have seemed so poised to determine the future of our country for the next fifty years or longer. On one side, there are the Republicans and their extremist friends, the Tea Party. On the other, you have Democrats. In-between, there are the Independents, but let’s be honest: no-one really takes them seriously when it comes to presidential elections. That leaves us with two distinctly different views and two possible futures for our country.

Four years ago, when it was announced that Barack Obama won the election and everyone was chanting, “YES WE CAN! YES WE CAN!” I couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for that charming man on TV with the compelling voice and beautiful wife. He would go down in history as the first black man to be elected President of the United State of America, and yet I already saw the vultures, circling over his head, waiting for their chance. His was not a position of glory in the eyes of our citizens or in those of the rest of the world. He had inherited a mess and we were all waiting to see how he would clean it up. If he failed it would be blamed on his race. If he succeeded, well, no-one really expected him to succeed; the primary item on the agenda was to let him have his one turn and get him out of office so we could get back to business as usual. Bush had done what he had promised them he would do: give them a war which enabled U.S. interests to claim vast amounts of oil while profiteering from the war, itself.

Unfortunately, there’s a troublesome little rule, somewhere, that states that one man may only hold the office of president for a maximum of two four-year terms, and that meant they had to accept a different president. McCain was their choice, but when Obama won, they already a plan in place: Wear him down. Make it impossible for him to enact any laws or regulations by shooting everything down during the ratification process, and when his four years are up, Obama will be happy just to be done with the whole ordeal and not put up much of a fight. The next was to introduce an ultra-conservative who could promise to fix the mess; someone who the people will gladly welcome with high expectations and will willingly accept his conservative views as the solution they’d been seeking, all-along. The Republicans almost succeeded, too. On September 12, 2012 The President admitted that he had learned that “You can’t change Washington from the inside.” But they underestimated him, and they underestimated the power of social media. Obama didn’t quit, and Facebook and Twitter lit up with questions people had for Romney.

Well, there are twenty-one days left before the election, and all we have, where Romney is concerned, are questions:

• Where are the rest of your tax records, Mitt?
  
• If you don’t plan to raise taxes on the middle class to facilitate more breaks for the 1% AND still pay off this enormous debt, how DO you plan to do it?
  
• What exactly is clean coal?
  
• These jobs you’re talking about creating, are any of them going to be something other than working in a mine or ruining ecosystems with fracking?
  
• How, exactly do you plan to effectively govern 100% of the country when you’ve already written off 47% of us?
  
• How is outsourcing jobs to China in any way supporting America?
  
• Why in the WORLD would you raise a flag of Communist China in front of your office on American soil?
  
• Just who the heck are you, and what did you do with the guy who was smiling and vowing to repeal “Obamacare” on the day it was signed in to law?
  
• When healthcare is reorganized into a voucher system, which of your buddies who own insurance companies is going to insure someone who is over 65 years old? And where are these people going to find the money to pay for their medical bills?
  
• When you eliminate Planned Parenthood and ban abortions, what sort of enforcement do you have in place to try to curtail the outbreak of coat-hanger abortions that will follow?
  
• Whose parents are we supposed to borrow from if we want to attend college? Mine are dead, but they certainly couldn’t have afforded to put me through college.
  
• Why aren’t men and women who have served in the Armed Forces in defense of our country entitled to a job, once they’ve come home?
  
• Why do you hate Big Bird so much? Or Elmo? Is the federal subsidy for PBS really a substantial part of the debt and a key to eliminating it, or are you perhaps just upset by the racial integration of the show?
  
• Why are you still behind by 30 points in your own home state of Massachusetts?
  
• You’ve said that you’d “like everybody to be in the 1%. This is a nice dream you’re selling. I’m sure that there are plenty of Americans who listen to your promises and dream of hobnobbing with you and your buddies as part of that elite group. The question is, who is going to be cooking your filet mignon? Who is going to serve it to you? I can’t really imagine that many billionaires would subject themselves to the kind of abuse and labor entailed with those jobs, not to mention working in a mine. Tell us, when our country is populated by billionaires, how much is the dollar going to be worth? Isn’t it maybe a bit unreasonable to truly believe in that dream or that that is something you’re really aiming for?
  

You ask us “Why do we hate the rich?” You claim that America is populated by lazy moochers who want nothing more than to live off of government assistance programs, and that we’re all just jealous. You may actually be right about one thing, Mitt: Jealousy IS playing a part in this drama: YOUR jealousy. As someone who was born into money and raised to believe that he is the “heir apparent” to all things luxurious, it must really chafe under your magic underwear that people can essentially be rewarded for failing. Failing can mean a lot of things. Born in the wrong place to the wrong family? You “failed” at being born into the “right” family. Dropped out of high school? You “failed”. Couldn’t afford the time or money to go to college? “Failed”. Don’t have money in your bank account to pay for Cadillacs or elevators to lower them into your garage, or to buy a dancing horse or to pay for emergencies? You failed to obtain a job which allowed you to make the kind of money which allowed you to save that money.

From where you’re sitting, it must seem to you that there is an awful lot of failure in this country, all of which is being “rewarded” by the government with free money. What you fail to recognize is that TANF and SNAP are not “rewards”: They’re programs that we’ve all paid into by way of federal income tax. Therefore, when it becomes necessary to turn around and take part in these programs, we have every right to do so. We don’t hate the rich, Mitt. I work in a casino, and I doubt that any of the people sitting in front of those machines or putting their money on my table, betting that they’ll beat me at black jack are hoping to not win. I doubt that anyone has ever bought a lottery ticket with the sole intention of contributing to the education system in California. “I LOVE the way I feel when I donate money to the schools. I just hope that my numbers aren’t picked in the lottery because I’d hate to wake up tomorrow morning and find that I’m like one of those snobs…” Said no-one. Ever.

Now, you might be wondering to yourself, How has this guy missed Obama’s failures? The truth is, I haven’t. Where Obama is concerned, however, I see only one question: Why is it that the unemployment rate and the national debt are so high when he promised us, four years ago, that he would cut them in half? These are promises that he sold us and we bought into it. Were the government a Wal-Mart, the White House would resemble the line on the day after Christmas, with everyone wanting a refund or exchange. The fact is that that ONE question has a two-part answer:

Obama fully intended to follow through with his promises. He worked HARD to fulfill them, but was constantly stonewalled by Republicans who essentially felt that it was more important to create the perception that he was a failure than it was for these promises to be fulfilled. It’s important because their whole agenda is get another one of their boys into the White House, where the most good can be done for those who are padding their pockets. Who am I accusing of padding their pockets, you may ask. Everyone who is responsible for the mess in which we, as a country currently find ourselves. The bank owners who want to go back to loaning money to unqualified customers and selling those loans to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae as “A-1” class, the business owners who are tired of being stopped from fracking and mining coal in areas where the environment will be affected or put at unreasonable risk. The war mongers who were making billions by selling guns, ammo and equipment to the government in order to facilitate our “search” for Osama Bin Laden and have been waiting on the edges of their seats for the next excuse to fire up the assembly lines. These are the people who are hoping that Romney is effective enough to sell his dream to the American people. They’re counting on your ignorance, America! They’re counting on your desire for things to be easy so that you’ll just vote for the “moral” guy: the man who claims to “hold his temple recommend in high regard. Romney and Ryan are not counting on you to notice the fact that there really is no “plan” to lower the debt; just a plan to make themselves and their friends richer while YOU foot the bill!