Why I Am A Liberal

Like Lawrence O'Donnell I too wear my Liberal label with pride. I am constantly confused about what makes a Tea Partier, far Right Winger and judgmental Evangelicals.

I mean there are a lot of non-sequiters here. For One, Tea Party people say they don't want big government but I am sure that many of them receive Social Security, Social Security Disability and/or Workmens Compensation. I am sure they have been through the mill with health insurance companies either for themselves or a family member. Yet they seem oblivious to the fact that those they endorse are endangering these very benefits they need as much as any struggling LIBERAL. Like Tea Partiers Right Wingers also decry big government and its involvement in our lives. Yet it was the paranoia of the extreme Right that brought about the Patriot Act, wiretapping of citizens and the potential for citizens to be arrested and detained indefinitely without the rights we all took for granted. As for Evangelicals well they certainly do not seem to live the love their own holy book preaches and, it seems if there is nothing hateful to promote they have little to say. So to say I am confused about what makes people like this be the people they are is an understatement. They will rush to the camps of Gingrich and Seamus's abusive owner (I said I would not dignify him by calling him by name, didn't I?) One camp espouses hatred and stereotypes and the other will say just about anything to make the one per cent and corporate greed acceptable. I just don't get it.

But, truth be told they probably don't get me either. They don't get why I just get riled when someone like Ron Paul says the Civil rights Act interfered with Property Rights. PROPERTY RIGHTS? How insensitive can anyone be? You mean to tell me that putting a stop to racist segregation and the disenfranchisement of the Black vote is about property rights? I shudder just thinking about this one. Supposedly because businesses could no longer tell Black people they couldn't come in for a cup of coffee interfered with their property rights! ...And people wonder why I am a Liberal!

I witnessed the violence against protesting students first hand and I remember the PENN STATE MASSACRE. It was MY college opposite of City Hall in NYC that suffered property damage in the millions because police endorsed violence by "Hard Hats" (a euphemism for the right wing back then) lurked in waiting with two by fours to attack students conducting a nonviolent anti war march down Wall Street as well as police violence against students and even people having lunch in City Hall Park. Police barged into the new building of Pace University and terrorized students to the point that male students ran downstairs to the girls' dorm to get them up and away from the police that were viciously attacking anyone in sight.

Although I did not participate in FREEDOM RIDES because I just too young I had teachers in junior high school that did and most of them had stitches as a result of being beaten down South marching with Dr. King.

I am a Liberal because my mom suffered a debilitating stroke when I was nine years old and, since she was speech impaired, as a result I had to become her advocate against adults who would make fun of her because of her speech. I had to argue with bus drivers who thought it was okay to close the bus doors on a disabled woman because somehow this wold make her move more quickly. As her caregiver, this led to my becoming a advocate and social service coordinator for the disabled helping disabled people, children and their families navigate a brutal system for the assistance they were entitled to. This is why I am a Liberal.

There's another reason. I am the product of an Irish/English American father and a dark skinned Puerto Rican mother. But for where I was born WE would have experienced the hatred Black people did. There are those saying that the Civil Rights Act was forced on a people that would have eventually changed their attitude.
Oh really?...And the South would have eventually freed the slaves many historians say. Why would the South have given up on its economic advantage: below par living conditions, horrible nutrition, women for the taking to say nothing of living a life of despair without the hope of ever living a different life. Now imagine knowing your children would endure the same horrors! ...And people should wait.

Although I choose to believe there is a lot of good about humanity I am not naive. I have come to see that if someone can get over by stepping on someone else he or she will do it in the name of religion or business or winning the vote. The campaigns GOP candidates are running give testament to this and THE major election will be a referendum on whether or not American people will vote for humanity or for bias.

THIS IS WHY I AM A LIBERAL!

Damon Rips Obama a New One

Please read this article first:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/21/matt-damon-slams-obama-democrats-one-term-balls_n_1162511.html?ref=mostpopular

There is a lot to what Matt Damon says in his criticism. I myself have screamed at the news "Oh stop with the negotiating already! Stand up. Have some brass ones!" And I am an Obama supporter! Although lately it has been ruefully. Constantly being snubbed by the GOP to meet with him or to have lunch hence insulting a President like never before was enough to make me fume.

I am not saying he was not the better person for choosing the higher ground and perhaps he was right in not giving Tea Partiers and the GOP wanted: a huge public retaliation. I admit I am not the better person Mr. President has proven himself to be. For example I would would have hauled Bush and his cronies up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in handcuffs dragged by horses! But since reason eventually takes hold in my radical brain I stepped back and looked at this whole matter more logically.

If he were a White President any anger expressed toward his detractors would have been acceptable. But he is our first Black President ans as such he would have been fodder for fools like Rush Limbaugh who would have used his limited vocabulary and called him "Uppity" among other coded and blatant epithets.

The truth is President Obama has had to walk a tightrope in order to not lose support. Let's be analytical here. He and media supporting pundits limit how many times they mention or reference the poor class. It is always a middle class attack. Granted as attempts to strip sub basic supportive services for the poor and disabled as well as proposing threats to Social Security ignoring the plight of the poor can no longer be brushed off the focus still remains on the middle class and how it is diminishing...a round about way of implying that the middle class is sinking into poverty but here again this must be handled delicately. You see if President Obama is not careful he will fall victim to racist right wingers who will harp on anything they can spin into his being a Black leftist radical.

So while I agree with Matt Damon's core argument the reality is a different matter altogether. I can only hope, as the GOP is in essence handing President Obama a second term, that he will prove himself to be a man of "brass."