Gone protestin'

Today's post will be delayed due to my attendance at an Occupy Lansing rally at Michigan's State Capitol. Words and photos later...

No More Abortion!

Rolling Stones - Start Me Up

My frustrating, heat-packing, McDonald's-loving, stupidity-hating diva friend

I'm not dumb enough to post her photo without permission

I have this Facebook friend in North Carolina whom I like a lot but who really frustrates the hell out of me.

I “met” her when I used to play Mafia Wars – before Anita told me I’d better spend more time trying to make money and less time trying to advance my criminal empire – and kept her on my friends list even after I quit because she’s...well, she’s one of a kind.

She describes herself as a Christian and a Libertarian but I debate with her anyway because she’s really smart, has a great sense of humor, and is one of those seemingly rare folks with whom I can disagree strongly and still look forward to seeing online. I actually like arguing with her, even as my blood pressure rises and my patience wears thin.

She's around 34, likes McDonald’s, hates beets, and claims red is her favorite color and stupidity her biggest pet peeve. She refers to her son as The Boy, her daughter as The Brat and her dog as The Beast (I don’t know their real names but I know the dog’s a German Shepherd), she owns a black Tennessee Walking Horse named Junior, and she’s a card-carrying member of the NRA.

In one of my favorite photos, she’s standing next to a mammoth Polaris all-terrain vehicle, holding its right handlebar and refusing to look directly at the camera because surely she’s got something more important to think about. She’s probably formulating some argument she’s going to have with someone. The picture is noteworthy, though, because of the Smith and Wesson .44 holstered at her right hip. This 5’10” diva means business; one of her nicknames is “Big Evil” and she admits to once punching someone right in the face.

We don’t have a lot in common.

Our latest online exchanges have been about the Occupy Wall Street movement; I support it and she ridicules it. I post essays and video clips that make the case for protest; she posts status updates and clips that make the protesters look like buffoons.

It’s true that the rallies, like any public event, are attracting those who are not the most articulate or dedicated to the cause. But to claim that the protests must be all about going barefoot and banging on bongo drums (as the idiot P.J. Rourke did on a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher) is to reveal either one’s ignorance about what’s happening out in the real world or one’s subconscious fear that perhaps the working class has finally been pushed too far.

As Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

Ironically, I’ve come across more than a few members of that class in recent days who don’t really want to understand OWS demonstrations or just want everything to go back to the way it was before September 17 when Wall Street was invaded. My friend in North Carolina seems to have less patience for the movement’s message to come together than I do. (Why the multi-issue Tea Partiers aren’t held to the same standards as the OWS folks in that regard is puzzling.) I’ve shared what I think the rallies are about more than once but apparently she needs to hear it from someone who’s unshaven, disheveled and sleeping in a park.

She threatened me in her last post, promising to “be back later to see what else I can do to raise the hair on your back.”

I’m a little afraid to tell her I don’t have any.

Jill Scott - Shame

The American Jobs Act and the Nefarious Party of No

So the President of the United States spends weeks barnstorming the country, from Dallas and Denver to Columbus and Cincinnati, giving barn-burning speeches about his magical elixir known as the American Jobs Act. His $447 billion jobs bill – designed to combat a national unemployment rate stuck above nine percent – is going to create two million new jobs, cut taxes, repair roads, schools and infrastructure, extend unemployment benefits and help local governments prevent teacher and police layoffs, he promises.

The GOP kills it anyway.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate, aided by turncoat Democratic senators Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Jon Tester of Montana, opposed a motion Tuesday night to advance the proposal, meaning now the White House has to shift gears and pressure lawmakers to pass smaller pieces of the package.

The proposal’s been sinking for weeks. One website I visited explained, “The bill included a 5.6 percent surtax on households earning more than $1 million as a way to pay for the package. Obama's bill originally proposed raising taxes on people with an annual salary of $200,000, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) upped the income level to bring reluctant Democrats on board with the offset.”

Yep, that’s right. Even as thousands of angry Americans are protesting class warfare and greed in lower Manhattan and over 200 other locations throughout the country, Democrats are still reluctant to raise taxes on the rich. Senator Jim Webb (D-Virginia), for example, said he wasn’t going to support the bill “because of its proposal to offset costs by raising taxes on the wealthy.”

I used to respect Webb, a Vietnam veteran who earned a Navy Cross, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart fighting for this country as a First Lieutenant in the Marines. Now he’s apparently decided to fight for the residents of gated communities and for the Party of No, which is dedicated to ending the Obama presidency no matter what it costs.

"Now it’s time for both parties to work together and find common ground on removing government barriers to private-sector job growth," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after the vote.

Government barriers to job growth? What might those be, exactly, Mr. Speaker? Republicans controlled both houses of Congress for most of the time between 1995 and 2007. Your guy, Dubya, was in the White House from 2001 to 2009. By the end of 2008, the U.S. had lost a total of 2.6 million jobs. Seems like the only government barriers to job growth are Republicans.

Now it’s back to the drawing board for the White House, which must map out which pieces of the proposal need to be broken out and voted on separately. I hope our 14 million unemployed Americans can wait a little longer for these political games to play out.

I’m no paranoid, tin foil hat-wearing conspiracy nut but it does seem like something nefarious is going on here. The votes are there to cut taxes for the richest Americans, which cost billions, but not for a job creation package that would benefit the middle class.

If I live long enough, I’ll be able to tell my grandchildren that I was watching as our country fell.


Sources: Huffington Post, Voice of America, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

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