The Attack on the Middle Class

.
   I found this in my favorites from 2 years ago and finally got around to reading it. It is Al Franken at the Netroots Nation in Minneapolis.
   I have always liked Al Franken. When he gt into politics I thought if he put the insight and intelligence into politics that he did on SNL that he would be able to do some good.
   That is if the obstructionists aka (The Grand Obstructionist Party) in Washington didn't continue with their way of voting NO on every thing that the democrats proposed. Especially if President Obama gave any inkling that he was for it.
   Most of the things that Mr. Franken talks about are as true today as they were then. As a matter of fact, many of the issues still haven't been addressed because of the way the GOP has continued to block, with filibusters or whatever type of stalling tactic that they can dream up.
   Well enough of my ramblings. Here is the link to his speech. In both text and video. With a couple of excerpts.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/6363-focus-al-franken--the-attack-on-the-middle-class

  

"This is the state that sent Hubert Humphrey, the middle-class son of a pharmacist, to the U.S. Senate, where he cheerfully waged - and usually won - great battles in the name of the young and the old, the poor and the vulnerable, the oppressed and the disenfranchised.

   This is the state where Walter Mondale - who, at the age of 20, had helped to organize Humphrey's first Senate campaign - rose to become the living embodiment of common-sense Midwestern progressive values.

   And this is the state where Paul Wellstone, a professor down at Carleton College in Northfield, became my hero - and the hero of a generation of progressives who believed, as he did, that we all do better when we all do better. We all do better when we all have health care. We all do better when we all can get a good education. We all do better when we all can earn a fair wage at a good job. We all do better when we all can find a good home and economic security and justice when we're wronged.

  Today, 100 years after Hubert Humphrey was born, nearly half a century after Walter Mondale began his legendary career in public service, and two decades after Paul Wellstone won his first race for the Senate, we gather in Minnesota to take stock.

  We all believe that we all do better when we all do better. The question is: How are we doing?

  And if we're talking about the fate of ordinary families, the answer is clear: We're losing.

>snip<

  The Republican agenda is a radical vision in which Medicaid is slashed to the bone - in which we start to balance the budget on the backs of, literally, our most vulnerable citizens. Say you have a parent who suffers from dementia and lives in a nursing home. If Republicans pass these Medicaid cuts, you'd better be ready to take that parent in. That is a radical change to our society.

  The Republican vision is one in which we cut billions from job training and education and infrastructure - the things that enable ordinary Americans to find good jobs, enable businesses to find the customers and trained workers they need to grow, and enable middle class families to build real economic security. All these cuts, just to fund more tax cuts for people who are richer than any people have ever been in the history of the world.

  It's a vision in which workers have no protections from their employers, ordinary Americans have no access to the courts when they're wronged, and big corporations control everything from our media to the Internet to our democracy.

>snip<

  The right wants America to be a nation of social Darwinism in which the powerful are protected by the government, and the rest of us are on our own.

  To achieve it, they'll say things they know aren't true, disown ideas they used to support, contradict themselves on everything from how the legislative process should operate to how weather works. They'll let the government shut down, let us default on our debts, bring our country to its knees to fulfill their ideological fervor.

>>>>>>>>>>>

   The republicans, The TEA Party, and right wing nuts don't care about the country. As long as President Obama is president it will be that way because as much as they say that they aren't racist many of theways that they act and things that they say are.
    That is why they get so upset when they are called out on it and start talking about "taking our country back" or "Obama isn't really American" or the ever popular "He wants to turn this country into a Muslim/socialist/communist/dictator/king/sharia law abiding nation".
   C'mon people, PICK ONE!!! It's like they don't know that almost all of those things are diametrically opposed to each other.
    So it's either that they don't know, don't care or they do know and don't care because they are truly racist assholes.