From HP:
The nation's ongoing economic downturn has sparked an odd response from a growing number of conservative and Republican leaders: a desire to blame the unfortunate and a demand for the poor to pay more...
Take Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who complained over the summer about Americans who escape federal taxes -- and worse, get help from the government.
"A majority of American households paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada. No income tax was paid by 51 percent of the households in America in 2009," Cornyn said with derision in a Senate floor speech.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) put it more bluntly.
"I hear how they're [Democrats are] so caring for the poor and so forth," Hatch said in the same July debate. "The poor need jobs! And they also need to share some of the responsibility."
This the new meme. Blame the poor. It's their fault, you know, that they don't have jobs. The fact is, they just too weak to live in this dog eat dog world. So let them die, and decrease the surplus population.
Republicans of the last 40 years are the bullies from our high schools. Shortsighted, angry, ignorant, conniving and lacking even the smallest modicum of human compassion. Republican politicians are the same, with the exception of being sharp enough to know how to twist words so that what's wrong is ALWAYS someone else's fault.
When did this country go from being people who bonded together during war (II), took care of their soldiers and helped their fellow man (Social Security and Medicare) and became heartless macho fucks who wish for the death of those who are too poor to afford healthcare, too much the victims of circumstance to have a job today, or too disabled or old to be worthy of any compassion short of a spit in the eye as they lie in the street. Today's republican party are these heartless people, and I for one don't know where they come from. When I meet and talk to one it's like talking to a sociopath who views the world in the most sterile terms. Logic has no place for these people. Facts are too inconvenient for their superior minds given that they know it all.
And they truly enjoy causing misery. They are the kind who, 70 years ago, told Roosevelt to keep out of Germany because the Jewish people should probably "fend for themselves" or perish. Not our problem. Survival of the fittest. They are the kind who cheer outside of prisons when death row inmates are given lethal injection. They are the one's who feel the Wall Street crowd that sank our country are heroes because they "got theirs" and chose the right profession for not sponging off the country. They are the people I remember, 20-something years ago, who thought Oliver North was a hero for telling our government (and, essentially us) to go fuck ourselves by being so damn righteous about his criminal activity during Iran Contra.
They are, in short, Ebenezer Scrooge, Leona Helmsley and Ted Bundy combined. The worst of every conceivable machination of human traits.
And they, somehow, have hijacked the "groupthink" of too many in this country.
I'm so fucking tired of these people. So fucking tired of heartless, cold assholes like Orrin Hatch and his pals. We how who and what they are. What I find disturbing is how readily they're still embraced, despite all evidence to the contrary in our current world.
People will never cease to amaze and also disappoint me.