Mittens Father Was on Welfare.- Page 2

[Kad]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:17am

Except, Yawper, the current Republican trend is "WE BUILT THAT!", with no help from the government. It was plastered all over their convention.

And Mitt Romney certainly made no distinction when he dismissed nearly half the population as moochers.

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:18am

Should I pass you some salt for that pretzel, or would mustard do.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:20am

There are millions who have received welfare and never considered themselves victims, and did not give up or quit to just live on that namely because even if you tried it would be impossible. Tell my grandma with eight kids that she could ever live on just assistance. She worked three jobs at one point and so did most of her children who were of age when she was on welfare. So much for paying for TVs and Cadillacs with those checks. She drove a cab in one of her jobs and had the cruddiest station wagon.

[Yawper]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:26am

Mitt specified a mindset - he didn't say it applied to ALL benefit recipients.

George Romney's success was achieved well before he ventured into politics. It wasn't based on "demonizing the 'welfare queens'."

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:29am

And you are comfortable accepting as "fact" that George Romney was not "greedy" and did not consider himself a victim, and that people in precisely analogous situations today ARE?

A political situation in Mexico forced George Romney to start over, and he took Government money to do so. Are the men and women who have lost their jobs as a result of the current recession somehow guilty of something that George Romney was not?

The men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, who don't pay taxes while they serve and who rely on Government subsidized programs when they get back--these are the folks who have "quit" and "given up"??

Or is it the men and women who have PAID INTO social security for their whole working lives and who now draw a monthly check and get subsidized health care--are THESE the selfish, lazy, entitled quitters?

Who are these greedy, lazy, selfish people, Yawp? And are they really so un-deserving of our compassion and support? And are they NOT citizens who deserve to expect the President of the United States to at LEAST "think about" them????????

Updated On: 9/21/12 at 12:29 AM

[Kad]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:33am

No one said it was.

It's on the cognitive dissonance of his son and his party demonizing anyone who accepts "government handouts", yet accept it themselves, or have close relations accepting it.

It goes back to "We Built That!" That notion that they did everything themselves and didn't need no stinkin' government aid. This idealization of a self-made man, free of help from his country, which none of them truly embody.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:37am

I was so offended by Clarence Thomas' denunciation of Affirmative Action programs when he was such a poster-child for those very programs. How can you be so full of condemnation for people wanting the VERY SAME handout that you've been given???? How do you look yourself in the mirror knowing that you are kicking down ladders that you yourself have climbed up?

How do people who can afford $50,000 a plate luncheons have the gall to want to deny people a chance to make a living? There is plenty of money to go around--we can BOTH get rich.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:40am

That mindset is that when somebody does well that is enough evidence to eradicate a system because there is proof of success and everybody else who didn't yet just failed or that person who succeeded is just better than you. But of course there is this evidence of people failing and is still being assistance- all the more reason to eradicate the system. The mindset that Mitt Romney subscribes to produces the exact same answers in the end as he and his party believe in the legitimacy of those systems and structures.

And I don't care if the Reagan era of 'welfare queens' happened after Romney. Reagan wanted to get rid of any legacy of the New Deal he could touch while still getting elected. So he gave the impression that welfare was just 'a black thing'. None of those people were voting for him anyway. Romney and other Republicans continue that rhetoric knowing they can get away with that for the same reasons.

[Yawper]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:45am

Why, during an election cycle, SHOULD Romney work to attract votes he knows he'll never get?

[strummergirl]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:51am

Addiso D.- Clarence Thomas' self-loathing on that subject at this point is a tragedy. He loathed Yale Law School, to the point some people who cover the SCOTUS think he should recuse himself from ever dealing with a case involving that university- only recently has he 'made up' with the university. He hates that his diploma was 'worth .15 cents' and he stored it in his basement.

I was actually relieved that Julian Castro, who gave the keynote at the DNC this summer, actually openly thanked affirmative action to get both he and his brother a foot in the door at their respective universities. It is an issue that I remember being incredibly divisive on my campus. My school was extremely socially segregated and incredibly incestuous, full of legacies who openly defended the fact they were legacies who largely got into school because their parents were graduates and major donors. I just found it so hypocritical that these were the same people who joked about the POC at the school all being AA cases or that the school is too obsessed with making the school 'look like a rainbow' in the college's pamphlets to prospective students. A lot of this came from self-described 'liberal-minded' people too.

[strummergirl]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 12:56am

"Why, during an election cycle, SHOULD Romney work to attract votes he knows he'll never get?"

I never said he should court the black vote, but my, oh, my did the RNC bring out every black Republican they could find to speak ill of Obama. What was the purpose of that if he and his party knows he is never going to get the black vote?

And finally, why should Mitt Romney divide people for the sake of getting voters to not only vote for him but to have those people resent their fellow man based on lies?

I'm done for the night.

[Plum]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 1:02am

The more racism gets rooted out, the vaguer and more symbolic conservatives have to be when they're trying to rabble-rouse. And the vaguer you get, the more people get caught in your net. You go from "n*s" to "welfare queens" to, well, 47% of the population and declare them the lazy, awful other, and where do you have left to go? If you seriously think half the country is made up of mooching ingrates what the hell are you doing trying to serve that electorate?

The answer, of course, is that it doesn't even occur to Romney that he'd be serving those of us who don't qualify for federal income taxation, because he has nothing approaching civic responsibility or public-spiritedness.

I like Michelle Obama's metaphor - the President doesn't want to close the door of opportunity behind him. Romney does, because he's convinced himself that being born on third base means he's hit a triple.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 1:06am

"Why, during an election cycle, SHOULD Romney work to attract votes he knows he'll never get?"

I'm not saying he should. I'm not offended by his campaign strategy. I'm offended by his ACTUAL world-view. I'm horrified by the KIND of Man that he IS.

I am saying that BECAUSE he feels so little empathy and respect for groups of decent, hard-working people that he is UNFIT to be President of the United States.

EDIT: I'm done for the night, too. Wait up, Strummergirl; I'll walk out with you...

Updated On: 9/21/12 at 01:06 AM

[Yawper]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 1:18am

I can understand the Clarence Thomas attitude - pissed off because Affirmative Action was necessary to get him in then, once in, pissed off with all the whitey patronization received due to the existence of Affirmative Action.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:40am

I'm sorry. I just cannot let this stand without a response. I want to, but I can't.

Yawper, do you see that when you reduce complex issues down to the level of "ni**er" vs "whitey" you completely obliterate whatever credibility you--and, by extension, your ideas--have??

Why do I suspect Republicans of congenital racism? Because they so frequently do things like put the cartoonish words of George Jefferson into the mouths of Supreme Court Justices of the United States, thinking that it's funny.

It's really NOT funny. It's hateful. It's destructive. And it makes you sound like a small-minded idiot.

Updated On: 9/21/12 at 10:40 AM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:56am

So, as per Yawper, Clarence Thomas' inferiority complex has damaged his objectivity. Clearly, he was never fit to sit on the Supreme Court.

[Yawper]

Posted: 9/21/12 at 10:18pm

It's more likely Clarence Thomas' anger that, thanks to racism, he couldn't get what he was legitimately qualified for without "the system" giving him a "benefit" he wouldn't need in a colorblind world.

I don't reduce everything to black v white but Affirmative Action IS all about prejudice. Affirmative Action wouldn't be needed without it and AA does get used to belittle and cut down those who have benefited from it.

FYI, I'm a left-leaning independent, not a tunnel-visioned party adherent.
Updated On: 9/21/12 at 10:18 PM

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 8:48am

Larkin Warren in today's NYT (the caps are mine):

"...Among those welfare moms were future teachers, nurses, scientists, business owners, health and safety advocates. We never believed we were “victims” or felt “entitled”; if anything, we felt determined. Wouldn’t any DECENT person throw a rope to a drowning person? Wouldn’t any drowning person take it?

Judge-and-punish-the-poor is not a demonstration of American values. It is, simply, mean."



'Taking Responsibility on Welfare'

Updated On: 9/22/12 at 08:48 AM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 11:44am

Trust me, I have plenty of issues with Affirmative Action - but you paint a picture of a supreme court justice who rules from anger and resentment rather than from objectivity.

Today, while race is still an issue, I believe socio-economic bias and limitations are far more problematic for the long term health of America. We are falling farther down the ladder in terms of social mobility, and policies that pool wealth with the rich (where it does not trickle down) only feed into the the further stratification. Romney's comment, his utter disdain for those without, is a glimpse into the entitlement mentality of the wealthy that I believe is destroying this country.

People are viewed as a commodity much like the cost of oil and gas - get them as cheaply as possible, and then get more when you need them. A lot of people work really really hard, and make very little money while senior management runs off with millions. If they are "victims" then the perpetrator are those managers (like Bain Capital) who have been allowed to gorge themselves on profits while claiming poverty to its workers.

There has been a redistribution of wealth these past 30 years - to the rich.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 12:16pm

YouWantitWhen???? is precisely Correct.

I spend all day with the Plutocracy of NYC. While they live among us, they truly do not live with us. They do not travel on Public Transportation, send their children to Public Schools, visit Public Hospitals when they are sick, rely on Public security for their protection, fly on 'public'--i.e. commercial-- airplanes or drink the water that comes out of the taps. When I comment on the hassle of driving to the East End of Long Island on a Summer Thursday, they get a frozen look on their face as though I'd said something indelicate or inappropriate. "Drive? Oh, Dear. No..."

As they become more and more insulated in their parallel universe, they increasingly resent being asked to spend their 'hard-earned' money on these unfamiliar and "un-necessary" public services. Insulation leads to a lack of empathy, lack of empathy leads to resentment, resentment leads to...Mitt Romney. Four years of a Romney Administration would be an unspeakable tragedy for America, Americans and the ideals on which this country was founded.

Updated On: 9/22/12 at 12:16 PM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 12:20pm

Addison, it feels like Bonfire of the Vanities, on steroids.

[Addison D.]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 12:29pm

Honestly, Tom Wolfe is on my list of Culprits. The whole "Greed is Good" canard is what gave this Gilded Age the go-ahead to "not beat themselves up" about being rich and selfish.

There have always been extraordinarily rich families in this country. But there was such a strong tradition of public service that went with that wealth. Now the motherf***ers just buy Mercedes panel vans and customize the interiors into living rooms so they don't even have to LOOK at the destruction caused by their greed and selfishness when they are being driven to Teterboro.

Updated On: 9/22/12 at 12:29 PM

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 2:31pm

That, and telling Americans after it was attacked to go shopping.

There was a moment for a reset, and it was completely lost, and instead, the obnoxious consumption for consumption sake encouraged to continue and grow.

[Plum]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 3:04pm

Ugh, that still bugs the **** out of me. I was sixteen in 2001, totally ready to do whatever my country needed, and I got nothing except growing politicization and cynicism about a national catastrophe. Again - no public-spiritedness, no sense of civic duty - I guess if all you want from your country is the right and opportunity to hoard as much capital as possible, thinking up something to do for your country is a bit beyond your mindset.

[Kad]

Posted: 9/22/12 at 3:06pm

Gone are the days of Carnegie's Gospel of Wealth. He'd be denounced and slandered by Republicans today. Instead, the Randian "sit on your pile of money" idea dominates.

There are exceptions, of course, like the Gateses. But they seem few and far between.