An Alaskan journalist's perspective on local and national issues

Posts tagged ‘Eric Cantor’

The Liberal Agenda that Needs to Exist

A common statement amongst the conservatives and the Libertarians is that there is a “liberal agenda.”  While this has been a very effective tool for the Tea Party and the Ron Paulites to exploit to death, it is a concept that simpy doesn’t exist in the world of modern political discourse.  The problem with politics these days is partly due to the fact that there is NO liberal agenda.  They really could use one.

The Tea Party and the people who pull their strings have a very simple agenda, and it is one of the reasons that the liberals are losing a very open culture war that is going on.  The right wing of this country has discovered a very clear and very effective tool to get whatever they want – total attack, total offense.  People will complain about the endless political battle, but what those who do fail to understand is that this is not just an isolated incident.  The Republican Party has realized that this strategy can work.  And it is working.  Every single day, the liberal side of this country is losing ground.  Every single “compromise” that Obama has made has been worth nothing.  It has been nothing but the liberals losing ground on the social progress front.

The Tea Party is actually deserving of some acknowledgement.  They are able to motivate their base in a way that the liberal side of politics couldn’t hope to.  This is one of the reasons that the liberals are losing the culture war that is happening right now.  Progress is stopped dead.  Their agenda is simple – keep us constantly defending, knowing that the left-leaning politicians are not strong enough to stand up and fight back.  Keep us constantly in retreat, and they will inevitably win.

Those who follow the Tea Party are viewed as laughable by some of the more scholarly political commentators, but it is not a laugh to me.  Their strategy is not only effective, it is very sinister.  In order to get elected, Republicans now have to please the Tea Party base.  They have to promise them whatever they want.  It has sunk a couple of political campaigns, like Sharron Angle and Christine O’Donnell.  But others have done very well, like Allan West.  The fact is that the Tea Party is being used by scum like Eric Cantor to completely eliminate all the moderates from the Republican Party.  As these racist and often impoverished white people scream about how the hispanics and the blacks and the gays are what is wrong with this country, the liberal community on the whole does nothing.

This is part of the real problem in America – the liberals need to, and pardon the frankness, grow some balls.  There is NO liberal agenda.  There should be.  There should be a very clear agenda that the liberals, not the most hardcore, but those who are left-leaning enough to be helpful, along with the moderates, should support.  Why support it?  Look at what the other side wants – to get rid of voting rights for minorities, and women.  They want to roll back a woman’s rights to her own body.  They want to take away a woman’s right to vote.  They want to make it illegal to be gay in this country, as many states already have laws in place to have.  They want a lock-step attitude toward the goal of taking away the freedoms of everybody who isn’t white.  They want to lower taxes to completely unsustainable levels.  They want to take away public education (Ron Paul, anyone?).  They want to get rid of America’s social safety net entirely, even though most of those ignorant Tea Party Republicans are using it.

So, what should be on this liberal agenda that people should actually be fighting for?  Well, that’s simple.  To start with, there needs to be an expansion of the social safety net, while cutting out the waste that we do have in it.  We need to have universal healthcare in this country.  We need to fix the education system that is absolutely a joke to the rest of the world.  We need to advocate for an education system that doesn’t teach that one side is right, the other is wrong.  Just give us the facts, and we’ll be the judges.  We need to leave the Middle East and slash the budget of a military that is outdated in the first world.  We need to increase taxes on the wealthy.  We don’t want to bleed them dry, but there is no reason that a guy who is making $5,000,000 a year can’t pay a little more.  That is just bologne.  We need to bring back secularism to how our country runs.  Even those who are religious should get behind this.  There is no reason that Christian doctrine should govern how America does things.  We need a police force that is actually working for the betterment of the common man, not as a machine of the state, and not as people who are continually busted abusing their power.

So, that is what our agenda should be.  You know what else we need?  We need to get rid of these politicians who are always advocating for compromise.  Obama was weak because he failed to realize that this strategy that the Republicans put into play was a very clever play to keep us always on the defensive, and every single “compromise” has screwed social progress.  The liberals get next to nothing, and in return, they give up nearly everything.

There was a time when it was not only considered good politics, but generally being a good person to compromise.  You give somebody some of what they want, they give you some of what you want.  That was a good way to do business.  But in this country, that isn’t how it works anymore.  It is now a mess of people using the system to drown out the voices who speak against them.  It is the Republicans very cleverly keeping the liberals doing nothing, and every day, we are losing ground.

So that is what our agenda should be.  They say only the bad guys have an agenda.  Well, as my favorite YouTube vlogger pointed out, they are right.  Only the bad guys do, because the good guys are too afraid to say that they have one too.

Peace out,



Republicans Say That People Can Just Die

There is a face that people need to learn.  They need to know this face in order to know what the true enemy is.  This is the face of a person who doesn’t care in the slightest about the people that are suffering right now.  This is a person who genuinely doesn’t care about all the hardship and pai nthat these people are facing, because it affects his bottom line negatively.  It is a chance to use to get more cuts that they want so badly, without even listening to those who say that all the cuts are pointless.  This is the face of a person who I seem to think genuinely hates the human race –

His name is Eric Cantor.  He is the current House Majority Leader.  He is a Republican, and he is the person who has said something that I honestly didn’t think that it was within the human vernacular to say after a disaster happens in America – that the government will not give disaster relief to these people unless the government decides to cut something else.

Unbelievable.  Absolutely, 100% unbelievable.  We have an elected official of this country actually saying that helping people is off the table unless they are given what they want.  This is the absolute worse case of hostage holding that has happened in this country in a very long time.  When the Bush Tax Cuts were up for debate, it happened.  When the budget for this year was up for debate, it happened, but this, this is worse on an entirely different scale.  this is bad in a way that Eric Cantor cannot hope to possibly explain in a way that doesn’t make him look like the absolute worse sort of monster who is sucking away at America’s heart.

What has happened in Joplin, Missouri is a tragedy.  The living and the dead are still coming out of the rubble.  This is a disater that it is genuinely terrible to write about.  Of course, the term disaster is thrown around a lot lately.  This is nothing like what has happened in Japan, but it is still a tragedy.  Tornadoes are a part of life that a pretty sizeable potion of this country has to live with.  It is a lot like Gulf states have to deal with hurricanes (don’t even get me started on how this government has failed the victims of Katrina).  So this isn’t exactly a new tragedy, but it is still awful.

But what Cantor has said is beyond heartless.  Heartless would be putting this in the nicest way possible.  It would be giving this person more credit than he could possibly deserve under the circumstances.  In these circumstances, this borders and mentally sick.  This borders on being twisted in a completely different way.  Nobody can say something like this and be kosher.  He even said, “We will not provide Joplin with disaster relief unless we cut something else.”  That’s it, plain as day.  No room for negotiation, no room for discussion, either you give us what we want, or we let people die.  And all of the Republicans who are joining this monster’s bandwagon are just as sick, just as heartless.

The last couple of years have seen a rather disturbing trend among the conservative elements of this country.  They seem to repeatedly, and without mercy, hold the middle and lower class of this country hostage in order to get their way.  They did that when the Bush Tax Cuts were up for renewal.  I remember when Obama finally caved on that.  I stand with Keith Olbermann is saying that I think he capitulated, and he shouldn’t have and didn’t have to.  But he did.

And the Republican Party figured something out – that they could hold the public hostage and get away with it.  Wht an absolutely twisted sentiment that is.  It is not only twisted, it is also sick.  It is just plain disgusting how this kind of brutal and thuggish tactic is used.  Lee Doren, a conservative mouthpiece, called the protestors in Wisconsin thugs, but look at what the Congressional Republicans are doing right now, and there you have real “thuggery” as Steven Crowder (a conservative “comedian”) said.

These Republicans, and the master that they serve (big business) don’t seem to care in the slightest about who they use, what they do, or the tactics they employ in order to get what they want.  And it is time for the Democrats to call them out.  The Democrats seem to constantly back down from a fight.  They never want to fight it out for the causes they supposedly believe in, because they believe that that is not what the government is supposed to be doing.  They are absolutely right, but the fact is that a fight is what they have.  A fight is what is happening right now, and it cannot be avoided.  If only it could be.  If only it were possible for modern government not to be a battleground, but it isn’t.  And these tactics are the ones that the supposed champions of the people are using to get their way.  That is all they want.

These little tantrums that Cantor throws are so hopelessly pathetic.  And Cantor himself, and all those who think like him, are mosnters, because they are pretty much saying that everybody can just up and die unless the Democrats will play by his rules.  You’re a terrible person, Cantor, and I wish you had the ability to understand just how awful a person you actually are.

Peace out,


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