I didn't add my voice to the Movement of the 99% beyond the facebook comments because it seemed blatantly obvious to all but the wilfully-blind and intentionally-ignorant that the times, they are a'changin. When corporations control the government, textbooks suggest you have the start of fascism, and I'll agree with that premise. There were many other voices crying out during the peak of the Occupy Movement, and in some ways the coordinated beating down of the various Occupy [YOUR TOWN HERE] will force a political maturation beyond the drum circles, three-word chants, and free food for the masses. Since I wasn't directly involved, I didn't feel my voice needed to be added to the commentary, and I couldn't really expound upon the subject any better than those actively involved within the movement.
So what drove me out of exile and back onto this platform? A couple things. First, the story that serial-cheater Newt Gingrich has signed a pledge forbidding adultery in his "defense of marriage," a very act that makes the audible sound "CHUTZPAH" when vocalised.
"Serial-cheater Newt Gingrinch has signed a pledge forbidding adultery"
*CHUTZPAH!*
Now, all of this is his (and a great number of culture fascists) belief that marriage is so weak, so fragile, that allowing two consenting adults of the same sex to wed, and get the benefits of such union, would make any of his multiple marriages less sacred.
If it weren't so serious a case of homophobic discrimination it would almost be laughable. I've got friends and family members who are gay, and I want them to have the same rights I'm entitled to if I ever get married. I see no difference between my hypothetical relationship, and any of their very real and loving relationships.
The fact that serial cheaters like Newt and Rush are the biggest proponents of this mythical idea that marriage is weakened by allowing gays to marry points to the very weakness of their argument, and proof that you just can't fix stupid.
Okay, topic one down, what was the second thing that brought me out of early retirement? Funny enough, it also involves Newt, who opined that, having not learned a bit about labor history, we should return to the days of child labor.
Not only that, but he's also advocating for a return to unpaid labor for corporate America -- a throw-back to the simple days of slavery, when people weren't paid for their labor, and corporate America profited.
Both ideas, not-so-oddly, were applauded and found great support amongst the audience, a point hammered home by Keith Olbermann.
So, the GOP has been reduced to the party of child and slave labor, the party that believes corporations are people, and that pizza is a vegetable.
Anything else?
Well, yes. Senator Ron Johnson, dumbass from Wisconsin, asserts that good workers don't make minimum wage, that essentially, good workers get promoted, or otherwise move on to high-paying (some might say, non-existant!) jobs that have magically flooded the market.
Senator Johnson, who married into a family with millions in their bank accounts, seems to miss the flip side of the argument -- that good companies don't pay their workers minimum wage, that instead a good company, feeling a part of the community in which they earn their profits, provide a living wage to their workers so that they can afford housing, food, health care.
Good companies don't force communities to subsidise their failure to provide a living wage to their workers by providing housing assistance, health care assistance, and other social welfare programs to people who work full or near-full time, like workers of billion-dollar corporations like Wal-Mart, who spend millions fighting labor unions fighting to empower workers, hiring lobbyists to court Democratic and Republican lawmakers. Good companies don't pay their executives millions in stock options and bonuses while declaring poverty, saying workers, and labor unions, have to sacrifice for the benefit of the company.
So this post comes full circle, an argument in support of the Movement of the 99%, Occupy Wall Street, and Occupy [YOUR TOWN HERE].
And lastly, in an effort to soften my image as extreme leftist, I provide this cute image of my childhood heroes, Bert and Ernie, my favorite gay couple on Sesame Street.
