Well folks, I think we have learned all we need to know recently

[The Straight Story]

If you or I need help, it is because we are lazy and/or made bad decisions.

If we need health care it is because we don't have a job that provides insurance or we have not planned far enough ahead to pay for it ourselves.

If we hit a bump in the road and are out of work the most we might get is 6 months of unemployment, maybe $400/week at best give or take.

And we are made to feel bad about all this, like we are lazy, we are to blame because we made bad decisions, etc.

But if you are a big company or the government and do the same things...well then you should be bailed out and others should pay for it. And be compensated for it nicely with bonuses and stock options, etc.

If you are a corporation you are worth more than a person. You can rely on the people to bail you out, you can rely on us to pay more taxes on the things we buy just so you can keep the lights on.

You screwed up on your finances, spent more than you were taking in, made bad investments, made mistakes? It's all ok - you will be taken care of. Unless, of course, you are a person or family, in which case it is all your fault and you have it coming.

I have learned all I need to know recently. That the mistakes I make (or have made) can mess up my life (from credit score to whatever) while the people screwing people over day in and out can make mistakes and they will be bailed out by our government (our tax money).

I have learned that it is not all for one and one for all, but that it is all for the few and the few for the few.

I pay taxes on the things I buy and on my income so that we may all be better off, so that we can pool our resources and have a better life together in this country. In the end I see this money going more to those with more than those with less.

And that is a shame. The people that NEED it to survive are scorned, while the people that have it and waste it are rewarded.

Something is wrong with this picture.

If you expect people to suffer because they make wrong decisions, why are you rw thugs bailing out these big companies to the tunes of billions when they make the wrong decisions, and blowing off the little folk? Those rich folk have degrees and screw up, while people - like our veterans - who have less skills are shoved to the side, and yet you bail out the 'smart' folks while ridiculing everyone else.

Something is deeply wrong with this picture. You say you value life, yet you won't even do the most simple of things and provide food/shelter/health care to those that need it most.

Screw you.

[varkam]

1. "...while the people that have it and waste it are rewarded."

That sums it up for me.

K&R

[rosesaylavee]

2. What's it going to take for mass protests to start? n/t

[The Straight Story]

3. It is going to take

People going under and seeing the big corps/govt being bailed out. And they are starting to see this finally.

Which is why I am confident our dem nominee will win this November.

Let's just hope our nominee does the right thing while in office :)

[Mind_your_head]

8. Too bad that we can only "hope" that the Dem nominee does the right thing

Most of us feel it's not a "sure thing" that they will :-( *

*(acknowledging that whomever wins the election will be put under ENORMOUS pressures to NOT do the right and decent things ~ for actual people, ya know)

[screembloodymurder]

30. BTW

Who's that stunning redhead?

[angrycarpenter]

5. hunger

as long as most Americans can put a box of pizza rolls in the microwave there will be no mass protests.

[rosesaylavee]

9. I wonder if we will need to wait that long.

Perhaps we will reach a critical mass once its realized just how many of us ARE in trouble with getting food on the table and staying in their homes? I don't know. I would have thought there would have been more protests by now. I don't think we will have long to wait if the economy continues its downward spiral and energy costs continue to skyrocket. This summer should be interesting.

[angrycarpenter]

14. protest, half think it's useless

the other half thinks it's dangerous. We do not breed courageous people anymore. It will take a general attitude of nothing left to lose to get most Americans out on the streets. Even then many will cringe in fear at the thought of being locked-up.

[stillcool]

27. I think riots are more likely..

who can afford to protest?

[bobthedrummer]

4. "Inconvenient truths about the New Democrats, the Third Way, Democratic Leadership Council, etc."

link to an active GD discussion about a political machine founded and funded by the RW inside the Democratic Party decades ago that supports those same "policies"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2973191

[Mind_your_head]

6. Good point - and this is just not how our taxpayer money is being used AT ALL!

I pay taxes on the things I buy and on my income so that we may all be better off, so that we can pool our resources and have a better life together in this country. In the end I see this money going more to those with more than those with less.

These thieves are stealing the American people blind!

:mad:

[The Straight Story]

7. And when they steal from us, they make us feel bad about it

go fucking figure....

[Mind_your_head]

15. It's typical abuser/abusive pschology really

"If you weren't such a bad lover, I wouldn't have to cheat on you" (even though the abuser is drunk all the time and hence suffers from impotency problems, not to mention is just disgusting - who would want to make love to THAT)

"If you all could just pay your mortgage like you agreed to, then our banks wouldn't have insolvency/liquidity problems" (nevermind that they lent too much money to people who didn't have the ability to pay it back, all the while using this NEW loan money to create even MORE loans to people that couldn't pay it back")

-------------
If you haven't watched this video, it's a MUST SEE if you want to understand more fully what's going on with the banks right now and how it got this way. The best 47 minutes (run-time) that you will have spent in awhile. Watching this can be a "lightbulb moment" (the light in one's head turns on - at least it was for me):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

[lonestarnot]

10. fat pigs are not necesarily 'smart' folks.

"...and yet you bail out the 'smart' folks while ridiculing everyone else." Just say'n. :shrug:

[The Straight Story]

16. True

But that is the perception I see from some people :)

[TransitJohn]

11. chain email material.

We need more lefty chain emails :evilgrin:
Thanks TSS....love reading you.

[SalmonChantedEvening]

12. Sadly,when you own politicians, this is one of the perks.

We The People are We The Commodity, and are to be traded, treated and used with contempt.

Helluva post Brah :pals:

[Mike03]

13. This is the first post I ever recommended before I even responded to it.

The OP is so right on.

This is what it has come to. There's nothing I can add, except my passion for what the OP author is saying here.

[The Straight Story]

17. That means a lot to me

I am just frustrated right now with things, and am tired of having to feel bad while the RW makes corps feel good.

it is a messed up world we live in here now...

[dysfunctional press]

18. since this is a 'christian' country, we like to live by the 'golden rule'...

that is to say- the people with the gold make the rules.

[The Straight Story]

19. Which is why I am in favor of

Us little folks owning guns :) Gold can make rules, guns can as well :rofl:

(sorry if that was in bad taste)

[nashville_brook]

20. how did we all of a sudden become a nation of Ayn Rand-ians? I-got-mine-ians.

[The Straight Story]

21. It became that way when

The people who got theirs got it from our tax dollars, even when they failed, and then those same people called us welfare queens when we needed assistance.

As the dollar fails and the market crashes we will see more big companies (Like Bears N Stern, JPMC, et al) asking us to bail them out and we will do so - but when you and I fail they will tell us it is all our fault and we are losers.

At some point in time we became the bad guys because we did not plan well enough ahead and we did not make the right decisions, so we are to blame. And bailing us out in our time of need means helping the 'weak'. No matter that the dollar is in the dumps, that we worked hard like we were told to do, no matter that we did make right decisions and were screwed over by the big folks in corporations.

They are the victim. Or so they want us to think.

I ain't buying it though :)

[nashville_brook]

25. privatizing profits -- socializing risks -->>

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3014471&mesg_id=3014930

heh, i knew i'd use that phrase tonight!

[cornermouse]

22. You should add retiremment, social security,

and pensions to the list as well. If you're barely making enough to get by on a daily basis and cant afford to put money away for retirement, it's because you're lazy, dumb, and dependent. :shrug:

[Delphinus]

23. Reading this,

I immediately was reminded of just a few words from "Network":

"I am a human being, god dammit! I have value!"

But, that's the problem. We aren't valued.

[The Straight Story]

24. We may not be, but we offer others is

And they are like vampires, sucking the blood from us :)

[stillcool]

28. What a great movie that is...

My favorite part...
Arthur Jensen:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it, is that clear?!You think you have merely stopped a business deal - that is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples.There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians! There are no Arabs! There are no Third Worlds! There is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!

He pauses for a moment - and speaks normally with a question to Beale, but then continues:

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT and T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon - those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories and mini-max solutions and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by-laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime, and our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you to preach this evangel, Mr. Beale.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. Doncha know? Suffering is for the little people

The rich and powerful have all the right connections to insulate themselves from many of the ills that befall the rest of us.

(If it's any consolation, though, in my years as a grad student at an Ivy League school, I found that the students born into wealth had such incredibly screwed up family lives--alcohol, drug abuse, sexual abuse, messy divorces, mental illness, physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect, sort of like the street kids I knew years later, only with more money and being raised by uncaring servants instead of left in the car-- that I lost any regrets I had ever had about being born into a clergy family in the days when clergy were kept poor.)

[screembloodymurder]

29. So true.

Republicans call Social Security an entitlement program ... as if we weren't contributing the money. Now, they claim the fund is going bankrupt, but there's no shortage of money to guarantee loans for greed crazed speculators and predatory lenders. Fuck em. May they choke on their losses. We need more than an election, we need a revolution.