Let's just admit it right now, They are all bullies.
That's exactly who they are, that's who they've always been. The Mean Boys.
It's not more complicated than that. That's who Paul Ryan is when his budget calls for seniors on a fixed income to somewhere find an extra few $1000 in the couch cushions to pay for forcibly privatized healthcare, instead of Medicare. Is that really all that much different than grabbing a helpless kid, slamming him to the ground and giving him a forcible haircut?
That's exactly what Conservatives want to do to the elderly.
"Hey Grandpa - you're looking a little raggedy in the healthcare dept.. here, let me give you a CUT."
They don't think they're doing anything wrong. They actually think they're Helping these people, and the thought of what it's like to be in that persons shoes either doesn't occur to them, or simply doesn't matter to them.
They don't really care about those people do they?
But when they really are put in those persons shoes - they cry and whine like cat with it's tail caught in a spinning bicycle wheel.
Watch here where Bill Maher attempts to address the Romney issue only to get push back from Grover Norquist and Republican Stepford Wife du jour that actually Romney is "very caring" (when someone rich like him is trouble), and that really Obama is the Bully because he cut the DC School Voucher program.
Oh,those poor kids. They no longer could go to private/charter schools because Obama held them down and cut their funds. Yeah, uh huh. I'm so moved by Grover Norquist's deep compassion for poor kids in the DC school system. Grover Norquist is trying to convince people that he Against Spending Cuts for Federal Programs that aid poor kids.
In point of fact he's talking about the 2013 Budget which hasn't been enacted yet. The funding wasn't actually cut so his crocodile tears about the "poor children" are wasted.
But it does prove the point. If it's one of their pet projects on the chopping block, Republicans whine and snivel even when they don't work. Just like a Bully whose finally been caught in the act.
A 2007 study of the program's first years found no statistical difference in test scores between students that took the tuition and those that remained in public schools, but parents' satisfaction and perception of school safety improved.
If it's something Democrats care about, well that's just
tough.
I only need to use one real example. Just look at Exhibit A: Allen West is a Bully.
He's threatened and insulted Con. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, then gone on to claim that 80 members of congress are Card Carrying Communists, without an ounce of proof - without a single card - and without the guts to name the names.
He said Liberals should "Get the Hell Out of America". Yeah because leaving America as a one-party state would be so much not like Communism. He's said that simply talking about "Equality and Fairness, Is Divisive", because I guess talking about peoples lack of equality and lack of fairness might make them want some - which of course makes little all the people benefiting from all that inequality have a sad and cry just like little baby Jesus.
He's called Food Stamps "Slavery" even though it's lifted millions of people out of poverty. (I suppose it was all those delicious free meals of hogs feet and pig intestines that kept the slaves from simply wandering away from the plantation into prosperity?) Maybe if we called them Starvation Vouchers, mm?
Food Vouches to prevent starvation and poverty for kids = BAD & Slavery! School Vouchers to help pad the profits of privatized schools without improving education quality = GOOD & Capitalism!
Cuts to Defense = BAD & Anti-Jobs. Cuts to Firefighters and Cops and School Teachers = GOOD, cuz who needs them anyway? We can just privatize all our firefighting and policing to the lowest bidding contractor can't we?
See how that works? Makes perfect sense.
This is the guy who was Kicked out of the Military for performing a Mock Execution of an Iraqi Prisoner. Text Book Bullying. We should just call him Allen "War Criminal" West from now on.
But more recently he's continued his ways, by sitting back and denying that LGBT persons get bullied and discriminated against in the workplace.
KEYES: What about something like a law that say that it’s illegal to hire or fire people because they’re gay?
WEST: That don’t happen out here in the United States of America.
KEYES: You don’t think people get fired because they’re gay?
WEST: Well, I don’t see that as being a big issue with small businesses. I sit on the Small Business Committee. You know what they’re concerned about? They’re concerned about onerous tax policy, regulatory policy, and lack of access to capital because Dodd-Frank is absolutely decimating small community banks.
It's not a big issue with small business? Well, I guess that depends on whether you happen to be a member of the LGBT community, for them it's a pretty big deal.
Between eight and 17 percent of gay and transgender workers have been fired or not hired because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; that rate more than doubles for gay and transgender people who have experienced workplace discrimination.
I suppose people like West figure they just need a little anti-gay haircut. Hold them down, and just
cut the gay away - that'll solve the problem right quick. Yep.
It's just "bad" to just let them go on Being Gay Like that. Better for them to get "fixed".
The entire concept of Austerity, of forcing those people who have no power and no voice to get held down and shaved so that the powerful and rich and just chuckle about it, then make them walk the halls in bald shame - is the way they see the world working.
They think that's compassion. Tough Love.
That's the "medicine" the wing-nut doctor ordered to get all those misbehaving poor people with their food stamps and welfare, all those union workers and public sector people with their pensions and healthcare to straighten up and fly right.
They think we need to take a Hair Cut. All of 'us.
And all they need is to get rid of all those Government Hall Monitors in the way, then everything would right itself in fullness time and just enough Darwinian/Randish Social Pixie dust.
Poof. Avada Cadabra We're all dead. Better now?
Yeah. But just don't try to take anything away from a member of the GOP. Then you get reactions like this, where poor Geraldo said the TSA "Manually Raped" Him.
“You know, there’s a lot of dysfunction in the TSA,” he continued. “I think there is a lot of merit in people who say it should be re-privatized. I don’t necessarily endorse that, but I tell you the last time I flew to Afghanistan I got manually raped by a guy who – the scanner wasn’t working.”
“Making sure is one thing. This guy, it seemed to me, was getting off on it. And the more and the tighter [sic] I got and angrier I got, and then he just wanted to be a little more intimate. I said, man-oh-man, if that was [Fox News host] Shep Smith there would have been a real blow out. You know, he — Shep has said don’t touch my, uh…”
“J-U-N-K,” Carlson spelled out for the viewers.
“My junk was junked,” Rivera concluded.
Well, good thing you weren't wearing a Hoodie at the time - or someone might have mistaken you for someone like this:
No, that is not an Act of Evil Photoshop, it's an actual gun range target that SOLD OUT in less than two days.
Many people have addressed the Martin case as an issue that has highlighted a Racial Divide as did this Ipsos/Reuters Poll, but few have been willing to note the political divide on this issue.
This is from that very same poll.
Tons of ink and millions of bytes have been spilled over what I've highlighted in blue. The 91/35% gap between Whites and Blacks on whether they that Trayvon Martin was "Innocent and Unjustly Killed." What hardly anyone has talked about is what I've highlighted in Red - the 65/27% gap between Democrats and Republicans on exactly the same question. The Black/White gap is 56 points, but the Dem/Repub gap is still 38 points. Even if you assume that some of this gap is because so many Black people are also Democrats, the difference isn't fully accounted for. (Only 219 of those polled were black out of 1,922 total - 752 of them were Democrats.)
On whether Zimmerman should be arrested and tried the Black/White gap was 87/44% or 43 Points - the Dem/Repub gap on the same question was 67/34% - or 33 Points. Even if you take all the back people out of it, I can't see that it would close a gap of 33 Points (using only 11% of those polled)
It gets real interesting on the question of whether Zimmerman had the right to defend himself. Black/White percentage is 34/47% for a gap of -13 points. Dem/Republican percentage is 35/60% for a gap of -25 Points., almost double the Black/White difference.
In the end, I strongly suspect that Black Republicans were more likely to side with Republicans in general rather than black people on this issue, but those details aren't included in the poll.
What is clear however, is that over and over again Republicans side with, rationalize and justify the actions of the aggressor over the impact it has on their targets.
They're bullies.
All of them.
Unless they think one of them is getting bullied or being put at risk, then they become the loudest crybabies around.
Vyan