Over 4,200 delirious fans (most chanting "Four more years!" ) filled the campus of Colorado College near downtown Colorado Springs yesterday, welcoming the standard bearer of the Democratic Party and putative savior of the American middle class, Barack Obama. Obama delivered a fine one hour speech and numerous people in the crowd were heard to scream "We're fired up!"Many others acknowledged it's one thing to see and hear him on the tube and quite another, in person.
The crowd was tight (despite a number fainting from the heat) and there were no interlopers or conservo yahoos interrupting their ecstasy, as they did a day earlier in Grand Junction, near the western border. There a group of maybe 100 yelled epithets at Obama supporters and screamed that 'The only reason you all want him is because he gives yuh WELFARE!"
Uh, not quite, dopes! Because who the heck wants to work so bad for $3.30 an hour in menial septic tank cleaning jobs just to get a few hours off each week. Or, clearing garbage out of city sewers for a welfare pittance to snag a day to cheer or protest? Not very many, I warrant. But see, this is how these fools think: a la Limburger who some two years ago bloviated that the reason the Dems always have so many protestors is that they "don't have to work". Where do these nitwits come from? Inquiring minds want to know.
The largest sector of Obama's rally yesterday was college students, for sure, and one hopes that after being "fired up" they got themselves to the nearest motor vehicles division outlet to secure a photo ID. Unless they have one come November 6, all the being fired up on earth won't help them get a ballot.
Obama himself was in high dudgeon, speaking for an hour on well -kown themes, including how the Reeps plan to torpedo women's health protections under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and how Mitt Romney's fiscal plan will be an unmitigated disaster for the Middle class. Referring to how Romney's solution will be to continue supply side hokum, Obama said:
“They tried to sell us this trickle-down tax cut fairy dust before. And guess what? It didn’t work,”
Well, unfortunately, it's only half true - since the trickle down fairy dust known as the 'Bush tax cuts" haven't yet been retired and are even set to possibly be revived again next year - though Obama said he wouldn't let that happen. (The "trickle down" part emanates from the repeated false claim that tax cuts are needed for jobs and economic viability when the exact opposite was shown in a Financial Times report from 9/15/10 concerning ALL the Bush tax cuts. In other words, none of them benefit any part of the economy.) But amidst all the media pressure about the bullshit threat known as the "fiscal cliff" - it will have to be a tough Obama and Dem Senate to finally put these damned cuts in their graves....ALL of them!
Obama offered that he'd dedicate himself to "lowering middle class taxes" to help the Middle class, but in fact that isn't the best way. The best way is to ensure the long term social insurance benefits - embodied by Social Security and Medicare- are there for both the Middle class and their kids. And this kids! All extended tax cuts do is dig us a deeper deficit hole, which then invites the siren calls of the austerity hawks (like Peter G. Peterson) and the bond traders....pushing to "cut entitlements". Even now as I write, as reported on the blog Smirkingchimp, a secret enclave of CEOs (the biggest pigs who feed at the public trough) has been meeting to plan a budget to gut Social Security and Medicare. Talk about mold and rot beneath the public commonweal. There you have it.
My take is that HERE is where the Middle class and its future must be defended, because let's face it without those social insurance protections the Middle class will cease to exist. Cutting Social Security in these parlous economic times will force oldsters to return to live with their offspring, who themselves have been struggling in a brutal job market. Getting rid of Medicare will also mean the oldsters will have to depend on their young charges for care and assistance, thereby eliminating all their former independence. Make no mistake, my friends, the current standing of the squeezed Middle class is predicated on those social insurance programs and the independence they confer. Take them away and everything goes down the chute.
Rather than tax cut pandering Obama needs to level with young and old alike that finally sunsetting the Bush cuts (which were originally only supposed to last nine years because of their enormous costs) will ensure a secure future .....as opposed to inviting the budget cutters and bond traders' knives.
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