Motley Moose – Archive

Disclaimer: This is purely hypothetical. A true Tea Party “Patriot” would never apologize; they’d simply reload. They’d also have more typographical and grammatical errors if they did write anything. Still…

February 12, 2013

Dear Joanie,

Since we haven’t talked in so long, I was shocked to see you sitting in the very back of the church at Dad’s funeral last week. I wanted to see you, to hold you, to tell you so much, but by the time I got through the crowd, you were gone.  

After that last argument when you walked out after we thanked Fox News in our Thanksgiving prayer, I wasn’t sure I would ever see you and Jamal and the kids again. I know you probably still hate me and you probably don’t ever want to talk to me again, but please at least read this letter before you decide.

Now, with everything that’s happened, I can see why you did what you did. I am so sorry, more sorry than you will ever know, that I got involved with those Tea Party people. They seemed so patriotic. It was like they “got it”. Less taxes? Who wouldn’t want that? Get the government out of our lives? Well, at first I was kind of uneasy about that, with Dad working in the defense industry, but it turns out a bunch of them were in the same sort of situation or on Social Security or disability, and it didn’t seem like it was a problem for them.  

We were all just so worried that the country was going to hell in a handbasket, with all those people out of work and the government just spending and spending and spending. It was like people like us – good upstanding people who worked hard and paid our taxes just kept losing ground to people who were… well, you know.

The people over on Fox were the only ones who made sense out of it. Your Dad was the one who first started watching them he was home from work when he hurt his back. After I started watching it, I just got hooked. Glenn Beck was his favorite. He was the only person smart enough to figure out how all this politics and money and religion stuff was connected, and brave enough to say it. It’s too bad somebody silenced him. Hannity and O’Reilly and the others were okay, though, and after a while, we left the TV on Fox all the time.  

When you screamed at us that “you love Fox more than you love me and the kids!”, I am ashamed to say that you might have been right. I DO love you and Jamal and the kids (and Dad loved you guys too), but you were back east and we hardly ever saw you. I know it sounds stupid now, but Fox was our family.  

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.” -Warren Buffett to The New York Times, November 26, 2006

The Left constantly accuses the Right of favoring the economic elite at the expense of the rest of the country. It continually flummoxes those of us on the left why anyone who is not rich would support the Right’s attack on the middle and working classes. Yet they continue to do so in large enough numbers to keep the Greedy Ol’ Plutocrats (GOP) viable as a political force. It boggles the mind.

It’s not like the GOP makes a secret of its goals. When the “Masters of the Universe” otherwise known as the financial sector crashed the world economy the Right managed to convince their supporters that it was all the fault of minorities and the poor. While this analysis of the GOP report on the financial crisis doesn’t call out those evil black people in clear language it isn’t difficult to understand who they mean by “high-risk borrowers” who took out “weak mortgages.”

“While the housing bubble, the financial crisis, and the recession are surely interrelated events, we do not believe that the housing bubble was a sufficient condition for the financial crisis,” the document states. “The unprecedented number of subprime and other weak mortgages in this bubble set it and its effect apart from others in the past.” […]

Citing several government agencies, the document argues that “the government subsidized and, in some cases, mandated the extension of credit to high-risk borrowers, propagating risks for financial firms, the mortgage market, taxpayers, and ultimately the financial system.”

This was posted on the Moose in November, 2008. I decided to repost it after reading about today’s announcement of President Obama’s mandate on hospital visits. Hopefully, the scenario in the story will now be a thing of the past.

Friday, April 16, 2010

President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients’ choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.

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The Death of a Love Story

Life is often like a smooth flowing stream. Day follows day with only small ripples to disturb the surface and then, unexpectedly, a large rock breaks the current. Sometimes that rock is more like a surging rapid and at other times, it takes a sudden plunge over a waterfall. We have little control over the current. We can only ride out whatever the stream brings our way.

When Jim and Reggie awoke on that quiet Wednesday morning, life seemed tranquil and serene. As on any other weekday, Jim prepared for work while Reggie set the table for their shared breakfast routine. There was little to indicate that this day would be any different from the days that had come before it. Unfortunately, unknown to this loving couple, a waterfall loomed ahead.

Reggie, as a self-employed writer, spent the day in front of a computer while Jim went to work as an accountant at a large corporation. The two loving partners had played out this same routine for nearly thirty years. They both agreed that life had been good to them.