Stephen King says: Raise my f*cking taxes!
I guess some of this mad right-wing love comes from the idea that in America, anyone can become a Rich Guy if he just works hard and saves his pennies. Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-f–king-American, is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Gov. Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.
This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals. It’s a practical necessity and a moral imperative. Last year, during the Occupy movement, the conservatives who oppose tax equality saw the first real ripples of discontent. Their response was either Marie Antoinette (“Let them eat cake”) or Ebeneezer Scrooge (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). Short-sighted, gentlemen. Very short-sighted. If this situation isn’t fairly addressed, last year’s protests will just be the beginning. Scrooge changed his tune after the ghosts visited him. Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, lost her head.
Think about it.
Although Obama may be able to speak about upward mobility from experience, he’s hardly “one of us” little people. Sure, he USED to be a community organizer, and he USED to be a Constitutional scholar but NOW he’s President and has decidedly turned his back on all of us who got him elected by increasing the spying on us, continuing the TBTF bank/Wall Street oligarchy, continued the Bush wars and expanded them, gives free reign to the powers that be but keeps us down with his signing statements saying he can (in effect) have any of us disappeared with no recourse to legal council, trial by jury or habeus corpus. In fact he can have us KILLED if he deems us a threat to “national security” – no oversight, no review board of justices, NOTHING but his word. He’s not getting my vote (and neither is Romney). Obama has been a huge disappointment in my view.
The next president will institute marshall law at this rate.
Tom, along with all your other mistakes, that last line should read “martial law”. Now go back to school and learn something this time.
I saw that three different places today, slightly different, including the dead tree edition of the local rag. Tom cut and pasted from somewhere or the other and added that last line. And Tom, the reason it will be so easy for the next president, or this one, to declare Martial Law is your boy Bush made it that easy. While many of us have complaints about the O, none of us are ready to hand the keys to the trainwreck back to the engineers.
This has to happen if America is to remain strong and true to its ideals.
AMERICA…STRONG…TRUE…IDEALS…
You always lose me at this bullshit talk.
Stephen King lost me a long time ago.
On this day, thirty years ago, the Vietnamese overran Viet Nam.
We Americans still can’t quite cope with this fact, and wonder why we are punished by the simple laws of karma.
“being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Gov. Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism . . . .”
Eat that, Republican whiners!