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Thursday, April 25, 2013

Let's Take Back All the Debates
Posted by jurassicpork | 4:15 PM
     (A Brilliant at Breakfast Exclusive.)
     While your head server Jill Hussein's house gradually looks like a Grateful Dead museum during the 2013 Onslaught of the Bears, keeping her from posting for upwards of two weeks at a time, it falls to yours truly to try to keep the content semi-fresh and provide an exclusive instead of merely lazily cross-posting something you can find at my own site.
     It's obvious to anyone who's blind in one eye and has a cataract in the other that events of late as well as the results of the 2012 election that conservative talking points, lies, rumors, innuendos and what passes for principles have been thoroughly discredited. Don't look for your elected Democratic leaders to lead the pushback. As always, that's up to us.
     The first step is to thoroughly discredit the lies and to try to reverse the seemingly irreversible damage we'd inflicted on ourselves and the country in general by taking back the terms of the great debates and to replace the right wing talking points with facts and truth. Here's a list to get us started, although it ought to be said this list is hardly an exhaustive one:

  • "Background checks will not stop crime." Gee, ya think, genius? That's because background checks are not intended to stop crime any more than issuing drivers licenses will stop automobile accidents. The use of background checks is a starting point that's intended not to stop gun violence but to keep criminals from getting their hands on guns. Let's also get another thing straight while we're on this topic: The NRA isn't concerned in the least about your right to own a gun. They are not a gun owner's lobby. The National Rifle Association is a gun manufacturer's lobby.


  • "Marriage should be between a man and a woman because homosexuals can't procreate." Marriage was originally set up as a civil ceremony, not a religious one, to protect the property rights of widows and widowers, among other things. It was codified in the Middle Ages for purely pragmatic and secular reasons. Marriage is not nor should ever be about mere procreation. And if your argument were to hold any water, it would also exclude from marrying straight couples who might just be infertile or those who simply to do not wish to have children.


  • "Homosexuality as a lifestyle choice is morally wrong." Sexual orientation has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with either choice or morality. That would be like the LGBT community claiming you chose to be straight. Or that you're morally wrong for being a breeder. After all, you're the ones who keeping making gay and bisexual people. Plus, homosexuality, lesbianism and bisexuality should not be determined solely by sexual activity.


  •  "Pro choice people love death." Uh, excuse me? No, family planning and the like, unlike sexual orientation is about choice and not bringing an inert bundle of cells to full term when the mother knows for one reason or another that doing so would not be fair to the child. Plus, as with sexual orientation, pro choice advocates know the Roe v Wade Supreme Court ruling from 1973 is at bottom a privacy issue.


  • "Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare are entitlement programs that are killing the economy."  Really? Really?? You're actually putting Social Security on a par with welfare and food stamps (which, incidentally, are things to which needy people should be entitled if they can prove to the pertinent authorities they are). Social Security is paid through with weekly or biweekly payroll taxes, which is the number one reason why is does contribute even one penny to either the dent or the deficit. Medicaid and Medicare, also, are not free and are paid for by those receiving it. Besides, unless your name is Trump or Gates, chances are you'll need these "entitlements" as you reach your golden years, if you don't already.


  • "Immigrants don't pay taxes, don't want to become citizens or work and just want to get on welfare." Again, a specious argument. Approximately 70% of all welfare recipients are white and many immigrants, legal or otherwise, still pay withholding taxes out of their usually meager paychecks without receiving any of the benefits of citizenship.In other words, as you Tea Party favorites like to say, "Taxation without representation." They also kick into the economy like everyone since we all need food, clothes, goods and services. In fact, their low wages guarantees they're economic engines who are forced to immediately put their earnings right back into the economy to sustain life. 


  • "The free market should regulate itself." This is such a bottomlessly absurd argument it amazes me that a rebuttal should even be necessary. It's the kind of argument that can only be plausibly posited by someone on the inside of the Wall Street and corporate elite that every nanosecond of every day dream up new and creative ways to buttfuck the American public, including their very astroturfing apologists. The free market allowing itself to essentially regulate itself has resulted in: Millions of job being outsourced, corporations skipping paying taxes year after year, homeowners getting foreclosed on, sometimes illegally, sky-high rate increases in goods and services such as health care with no serious regulatory apparatus to keep their rampant greed in check, the slow death of virtually all pensions outside of the government sector, pollution not seen since the 60's, reckless speculation and outright fraud requiring an $11 trillion taxpayer bailout. They have also essentially bought the electoral process, meaning who gets to represent you.


  •  "Lower taxes means more jobs!" Seriously? Where's the evidence that that happened since Reagan slashed the income tax rate in 1981? Can you actually say more jobs were created when Bush slashed taxes for his Haves and Have Mores in 2001 and again in 2003? Here's what corporations did with that extra revenue: They socked the extra money away in offshore accounts away from the grasping hands of Uncle Sam or gave it to themselves in the form of lavish executive income, bonuses and perks. Then they outsourced your job to Mexico, China or the Philippines, anyway, because the minimum wage of $7.25 an hour was too much for them to withstand. Then they took away your pension, gutted your 401(k) plan, your health care, your vacation time, all in the name of "remaining competitive." Corporations are run by scum, period, and they will little note nor long remember your hoarse denunciation of liberal progressive taxation and the fact you ignorantly took their side just as an excuse to lambaste liberals. They will outsource your job, steal your home, your pension and pollute your well just as readily than as if you were one of us.


  •  "Obama is a liberal who just wants to steal your money!"
              These are just some of the most ridiculous talking points with which we have to contend because all  them decades ago liberals were stupid enough to allow the right wing to dictate the terms of the debate so they can impose their warped notions of order on the rest of us. So, while the right wing is now on bended knee, now would be a good time to raise our own knees into their noses and put them down for the count.
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    2 Comments:
    Anonymous KanaW said...
    Agreed. Extremely well put! So many idiocies now.

    Bit of a typo, here, though:
    which is the number one reason why is does contribute even one penny to either the dent or the deficit.

    Shouldn't that be "why it does not" rather than "why is does" ?
    4/25/13, 6:42 PM  
    Anonymous Syrbal/Labrys said...
    Thank you. Now, can we start tying idiots to chairs and making them write these 100 times until it sinks in? After all, THEY also think torture is ok, so they should be able to stand a bit of re-programming.
    4/26/13, 11:51 AM  
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