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Progressive Answers to Stupid Conservatives

by Mina Nichols—Politics Ediotr for Novotopia5 May 2012

Lefty talking points

It may seem hopeless, but just the fact that the powerful are spending so much money trying to influence your vote, shows how valuable it is. Next time some crazy conservative has you speechless with anger, come back to this page and load up on a couple zingers to toss back at them.

You can also check out my comments on Ventura County Star.

Hope and Change

What is with the Republican contempt for Hope and Change? It's not like their cynicism and obstruction has done them any good.
How's that despondency and denial working out for you?
How's that fear and entrenchment working out for you?
How's that gay bashing and race bating working out for you?
They call us tax and spend liberals, but they're spending and spending without finding the revenue. At least the Democrats are responsible enough to find ways to pay for what needs to be done.
They call us tax and spend liberals, but they're they're madate on credit conservatives. They want to pile the regulations on for people (like deportations and border patrol), while throwing them off of corporations. It was the Bush appointees to the supreme court who tied the constitution into a doily in order to justify granting personhood to corporations, and now they want to take the right to unionize away from humans.

Gas Prices

The reason the price of gas is so high is that Bush convinced Congress that going to war would do more good than conservation.
How can you call Obama a socialist and then blame him for the price of gas? If you want the President to fix the price of gas then you better elect a socialist.
How can you call Obama a socialist and then blame him for the price of gas? If he were a socialist he would have fixed the price of gas already by nationalizing oil!

ObamaCare

Why are the Republicans are still fighting ObamaCare? They're so quick to send us to war and Mandate that we all pay for it – but heal people? Comfort the sick? Care for the Elderly? They'll do anything to stop that.
They fight health care but offer no decent alternatives. They attack every program that helps people live better lives and they protect wall-street, bankers and industrialists who pollute our country and sap it's wealth.
Does the Republican health care plan have a solution for people who are out of work but have a pre-existing illness? ObamaCare does.
Why won't they give ObamaCare a chance and focus on how we're going to pay off the job-crushing war debt Bush's unfunded wars racked up?
All the Republicans offer is cheers at the prospect of people dying in the streets for lack of healthcare!
ObamaCare provides alternatives for self employed that did't exist before.
What does the Republican plan do for people with pre-existing conditions and no job? It shuts down all options except Medicare. That is the most expensive way to handle it and they put it on the Taxpayer's account.
Letting people die in the streets is the only alternative the Republicans offer.
What does the Republican plan to save the Emergency Hospitals that are closing everywhere across the nation? Nothing. They don't even have a plan.
What does the Republican plan do to address the crippling shortage of nurses? Nothing.
They don't have a plan, they just attack this compromise that took years to work out and is indeed a huge step forward for the American people.
What does their plan do to address the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs? Wasn't that the Medicare Part D fiasco that just made it so complicated that seniors went without mediation because they couldn't figure out how it works. And they still haven't found a way to pay for it.
What do you think about ObamaCare's tax credits for small businesses that provide insurance to employees? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provisions/taxcredits/index.html
What do you think about ObamaCare's ending discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/index.html#event46-pane
What do you think about ObamaCare's 50% discounts on brand-name drugs for seniors in the Medicare “doughnut hole”? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provisions/prescription/drugdiscounts.html
What do you think about ObamaCare's allowing young adults under 26 to stay on their parent’s health insurance?
What do you think about ObamaCare's ending lifetime and most annual limits on care? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/provisions/limits/limits.html
What do you think about ObamaCare's providing tax credits to those who need help in buying insurance -- representing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history? http://www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/index.html#event43-pane
What do you think about ObamaCare's rules requiring health insurers to provide clear, consistent information about your health plan starting in 2012? http://www.healthcare.gov/news/blog/labels08172011a.html
What do you think about this one: Starting September 1, 2011, insurers seeking rate increases of 10 percent or more for non-grandfathered plans in the individual and small group markets are required to publicly disclose the proposed increases and the justification for them. http://www.healthcare.gov/news/factsheets/ratereview05192011a.html
“The nation’s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits… Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends.” -New York Times, “Health Insurers Making Record Profits as Man Postpone Care.” May 13, 2011.
Give Us OBAMACARE!!!

Obama

Let's elect Obama and A CONGRESS HE CAN WORK WITH!
It's congress that sets the course, the president only implements it.

The Economy

The 1% say more tax cuts for the wealthy will help us pay off the debt. Does that make sense?
The 1% say we should create jobs by laying off government workers. Does that make sense? All it does is reduce services and add to pension costs.
The 1% suggest raising the social security retirement age, but there are still no jobs; this just means now Grandma needs a job too!
Reducing minimum wage won't help the economy it will just mean people will need two or three jobs to get by.
Do you think McDonalds is going to hire one more person than the minimum they need to get your order out? They'd keep the same staffing if the minimum wage were 10 cents and hour.
For almost a century, the prevailing economic paradigm has held that when the private sector is in recession, and people aren't spending money, the public sector needs to step in and act as a “buyer of last resort,” running deficits to keep people working until the economy gets going again. While the fine details of “Keynesian” theory have been the subject of debate, in broad strokes, it remains the thinking shared by most economists across the political spectrum. But even as it remains the dominant economic paradigm, a network of deep-pocketed conservative donors has, to a large degree, successfully discredited that idea in the political realm, replacing it with the simplistic and a historical narrative that deficits "destroy jobs.” http://www.alternet.org/economy/151873/welcome_to_the_tea_party%27s_austerity_recession/
"Among other things, the House GOP plan calls for a reduction in individual tax rates and brackets. Instead of today's six brackets, with rates from 10% to 35%, it calls for just two -- 10% and 25%. The proposal would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, while dropping the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%." How is that responsible debt reduction? http://articles.cnn.com/2012-03-20/politics/politics_house-republican-budget_1_house-gop-medicare-budget-blueprint?_s=PM:POLITICS

Education

The more we cut teachers, the more we need prisons.
The kids in school today will be your doctors or muggers of tomorrow.
Invest in children now, or prisons later.

Jobs

If the Republicans refuse to ask the rich to pay their share of the debt, the only solution is to give jobs to the people who pay taxes. Give us all jobs and we can jump start demand and start paying off our debts.
Pass the President's Jobs Bill - If the Republicans refuse to tax the people with money, then the only solution to the debt problem is to give jobs to the people who pay taxes.
The Republicans have earmarked military bases, saying too many jobs depend on them, but at the same time they're laying off and furloughing teachers and firemen that we actually need.
Pass the President's Jobs Bill - If the Republicans refuse to tax the people with money, then the only solution to the debt problem is to give jobs to the people who pay taxes.

Immigration

So called "Illegals" are another right-wing non-issue distraction.
Conservatives demand that we send all the illegals home but they won't put up the money to make it possible.
They pretend that the savings in government services will more than make up for the cost, but that is simply untrue and all the more untrue when you consider the foolish details of how they would implement these plans. They freak out if the legislature even makes a move to find out more about who and where they are.
They live in a fantasy world where every Latino or person with an accent they meet is assumed to be an "Illegal" and lawless by nature. Even though California was Spanish speaking before it was English speaking, and many of the very people they're talking about were actually here first.
But the ultimate goal of the 1% of the right-wing that decide what they do, is to bankrupt the government so that it can no longer protect the people from big business.
The 1% are attacking immigrants and unions because they don't want puny individuals to have a fighting chance at a decent wage. They want corporations to have all the power.
They want you to be so desperate for a job that you'll take anything, do anything for a dime.

Republicans

The Republicans have been applying deregulation and tax breaks for the rich for years, and things have only gotten worse. Let's elect Obama and A CONGRESS HE CAN WORK WITH!
Remember how much better things were before we let the Republicans deregulate and destroy the fabric of America? We actually had a humming economy, a "tech bubble", and a surplus! We can still fix things but we have to stop them first. Get involved and lets put this country back on the road to prosperity!
It's the Republicans economic policies that are failed!
Tax break, after break, for corporations, and now we have to give up our old age benefits and double class room sizes so that – what? How is that supposed to help the Country?
They've scared you into believing that there's not enough, that the only way to get something is to take it from someone else, but that's not true. They got it dead wrong. Think about it - how did we get out of the great depression? Government spending on world war two did it. War was the one thing the conservatives are willing to spend on. It didn't work when Bush started his wars BECAUSE HE DIDN'T FUND THEM - instead he gave a tax break to the super rich!
The Republicans caused this economic situation and now they're using the ravaged economy as some sort of excuse to cheat people out of their old age benefits and collective bargaining rights.
Please reject the radical, regressive Republican notion that the only way to maintain sustainability is to cut every program indispensable to the American people.

The Budget

Why won't the Republicans listen to Standard and Poors? “The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policy making becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy. Despite this year's wide-ranging debate, in our view, the differences between political parties have proven to be extraordinarily difficult to bridge, and, as we see it, the resulting agreement fell well short of the comprehensive fiscal consolidation program that some proponents had envisaged until quite recently. Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures.” http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245316529563
Here's the real question we need to ask our candidates: "Do you think working-class families should be the only people sacrificing to help lower the deficit? Do you think the wealthy and powerful should pay their fair share to help balance the budget, or should we simply let their high-priced lobbyists shield them from their responsibilities?"
At every turn the Republicans are asking for more and more from the American middle class. From medicare, and social security, to collective bargaining rights, to pensions, to decent schools, to clean air, to safe working conditions, and more! It's time for us to start telling them what we demand! It's time for America to SPEAK UP!
The bottom line is that all the Republican candidates have the wrong prescription for the economy. They've been giving tax breaks, subsidies, and special favors to the rich for so long and they refuse to accept that this is exactly what has brought our economy to it's knees.
There's only one candidate for President of the US that has the right prescription to set things right – That's Obama!
Pay off the debt!
Raise the revenue - not the debt limit.
We need to keep the Payroll tax cuts and throw out the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
Deregulation is what caused the financial meltdown in the first place why do you keep demanding more?
This is like the sheriff recommending we remove traffic lights.
How are we ever going to pay off our debt without revenue?
The House GOP plan passed by a 228-191 vote, with 10 Republicans joining all 181 Democrats in opposition. No Democrats voted for it. It boosts defense spending by erasing the automatic cuts that went into effect after the failure of last year’s supercommittee; cuts from the rest of discretionary spending, which funds education, the environment and other basic domestic needs; and alters Medicare by making it compete with private plans that seniors could then choose from, with a cap on government spending. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/29/house-pushes-through-gop-budget/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS
Lets all put in a little time this weekend visiting the congressional FB pages
Contact the debt super committee and tell them what you think

Regulation

The 1% hate regulation for the same reason that criminals hate cops.
What does it tell you about Republicans that they are so in favor of any law the restricts individuals ans so against any law that restricts coroprations?

Military

It's shameful and disgusting that so many elected officials vote for military installations and abandon military personnel.

http://legiscan.com/gaits/text/630388

SPEND THE MONEY ON SERVICES TO RETURNING VETERANS, NOT BASES! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/16/us/...
While I especially despise Strickland, I should admit the the rest of the legislature went along with the earmark resolution, even though the Republicans have loudly vowed NO EARMARKS. At least the Democrats are willing to find the funding for it. The Republicans insist on keeping these bases alive by putting our seniors at risk and giving up on our children.
"Saving military bases" really means saving big contracts with big donors.
Conservatives make so much fuss about Obamacare spending taxpayer money on health when all they're willing to spend it on is killing.
I give deep heartfelt thanks to our fighting men and women who gave so much for America. I harbor profound disgust for the Republicans who started the war and refuse to provide funds for it.
Profound and heartfelt thanks to our fighting men and women who labored and who suffered to make the elimination of bin Laden possible. Obviously that doesn't include George Bush.
If you're still voting Republican, then you vote for closing VA hospitals, paid mercenaries, authorizing torture, sending kids to war without proper armor, and much more.
God damn George Bush who was too cowardly to ask for a draft and instead used multiple forced re-deployments to prosecute his ill conceived wars.
God damn cowardly George Bush who authorized the use of torture and then failed to back up the soldiers who carried out his orders.
God damn George Bush who authorized the use of mercenaries like Blackwater who were paid better than our troops but made their job much more difficult by giving locals lots of good reasons to hate America.
God damn George Bush who started two unfunded wars, then underfunded the Veteran's Administration.
Thank you Mr President for your 2/14/11 Veteran's Administration Budget Proposal, which includes a spending plan of $132 billion for 2012—nearly an eleven percent increase of 2010’s budget. Our Fighting men and women deserve at least that!
God damn the Republicans who let the Banks, Oil Companies, Wall Street, and Lobbiests, walk away clean while we pay their share, fight their wars, suffer the consequences of their mistakes and misdeeds.
When will Bush and Cheney pay for their war crimes? http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/bush-follows-cheney-admitting-war-crimes

9/11

Why does the Republican party spend so much energy celebrating Al Qaeda's greatest achievement?
If George Bush believed that Al Qaeda struck because they “hate freedom”, why did he respond with the “patriot act” which stripped Americans of basic civil rights? Wouldn't that make them “winners”?
I don't understand why we need to keep reliving this at all. I feel like all this 9/11 commemoration of the terrorists attacks really emboldens them. It gives the a bar to try to reach, makes them feel like they really did something significant. It's as much a recruiting tool for the Taliban as it is a way to keep Americans scared and an excuse for the erosion of our civil liberties.
They're selling us protection from their own attack dogs
they're raking in the money while we bleed and die
so people are scared and people are sad,
and they turn it on each other and they don't know why.
http://www.novotopia.com/articles/songs/lyrics_sap.html
Heaven is where you make it Heaven
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EunokLdz7BQ&feature=player_embedded
Maybe we should ask Mr. Bush what happened to the money - U.S. Defense officials still cannot say what happened to $6.6 billion, sent by the planeload in cash and intended for Iraq's reconstruction after the start of the war. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-missing-billions-20110613,0,4414060.story
Does anyone else here find it ironic that more Americans have died in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars than on 9/11, and under horrible beastly conditions, far from home? What about all the vets with Post Traumatic Stress? Will we care for them or toss them aside?
Capturing and trying bin Ladin would have shown our commitment to Justice and the rule of law. It would shown the fundamentalists (Islamic, Christian, etc) that lawful justice is possible. It would have been a true a blow to terrorism. Maybe someday America will understand he difference between justice and revenge.
Post-9/11 Defense Hikes Equal Five Times the “Medicare Gap” http://www.truth-out.org/five-eye-opening-facts-about-our-bloated-post-911-defense-spending/1306711409
Afghanistan Costs Alone Could Pay for 15.6 Years of Head Start http://www.truth-out.org/five-eye-opening-facts-about-our-bloated-post-911-defense-spending/1306711409

Taxes

Ryan's budget proposal calls for cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
How's that supposed to fix the deficit?http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax

Who do you think is going to have to make up the difference?

Fear of Revenue is holding our nation back.

We need to see that all the Republican candidates have it dead wrong. The only way out of this mess is to make the rich pay their share.

We can't balance the budget without their help.

Tax cuts don't spur the economy. We've been applying tax cuts for years and all they do is make things worse. Let try the Democrat's plan.

If tax breaks haven't stimulated the economy yet in all these years of trying it again and again, why should anyone think it would work now? Well, actually the 1% don't care if it works, they just want their tax cuts so they can plow the savings into buying more political influence.

So what subsidies are you willing to give up to balance the budget?

Are you willing to give up oil subsidies?

Oil companies have been making record profits.

Maybe they could pay for their own energy research; part of the cost of doing business?

Specifically, what corporate subsides would you be willing to cut? Or is only medicare and social security that you'd consider cutting?

You can't feed your family with tax cuts.

You can't pay your mortgage with tax cuts.

You can't pay your creditors with tax cuts.

NDAA and Indefinite Detention

If the Republicans all hate Obama, and many believe him to be unconstitutionally holding the office of president, why did they specifically grant him powers of indefinite detention of US citizens in the latest National Defense Authorization Act? http://nextgenjournal.com/2012/01/the-ndaa-debate/
Republicans wouldn't budge on one single job question, wouldn't even agree to let the Bush "temporary" tax breaks for the wealthy expire so we could pay off the job killing debt. They even vowed to make him a one term president. But they specifically authorized him to detain American citizens on Amercan soil when they passed the annual defense spending bill in December 2011. Why is that? http://rt.com/usa/news/us-ndaa-al-madhwani-gitmo-089/

Obama isn't responsible for the indefinite detention language. Congress wrote the NDAA. The Republicans rejected Senator Fienstien's amendment to remove the indefinite detention language.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/18/local/la-me-gs-national-defense-authorization-ruling-20120518
Thank God for the Independent Judiciary. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/indefinite-detention-blocked-ndaa-ruling_n_1522654.html
Why did the Republicans overwhelmingly reject Senator Fienstien's amendment to remove the indefinite detention language? http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=92cd1ac6-e756-4cd3-982c-ab34d1933d94
I think I differ from the president at the point where he says:
"Against that record of success, some in Congress continue to insist upon restricting the options available to our counterterrorism professionals and interfering with the very operations that have kept us safe. My Administration has consistently opposed such measures. Ultimately, I decided to sign this bill not only because of the critically important services it provides for our forces and their families and the national security programs it authorizes, but also because the Congress revised provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security, and liberty of the American people. Moving forward, my Administration will interpret and implement the provisions described below in a manner that best preserves the flexibility on which our safety depends and upholds the values on which this country was founded."
I want to restrict the president, and the government's right to wage terror under the guise of counter terrorism. Statement by the President on H.R. 1540 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/31/statement-president-hr-1540

Congressional Insider Trading

PROSECUTE CONGRESSIONAL INSIDERS!
STOP CONGRESSIONAL INSIDER TRADING!
“Sen. Richard Burr's vocal opposition to the STOCK Act raised some eyebrows in Washington this week, and with good reason. Burr, a North Carolina Republican who was one of just three senators to vote against the ban on congressional insider trading Thursday, owns investments in the natural gas industry that would benefit from legislation he co-sponsored offering tax credits for natural gas-fueled vehicles.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/04/stock-act-richard-burr-conflict_n_1253598.html
But the decision by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to exclude a provision that sought to monitor the flow of "political intelligence" — a relatively newly defined practice of selling Washington information largely to financial investors — puts the legislation on an uncertain path. The Senate bill required those who broker in political intelligence to register much the way lobbyists must do. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-insider-trading-20120210,0,1216565.story
Two of the “no” votes were by Reps. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and Rob Woodall (R-Ga.) http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72670.html#ixzz1n3zuoJ1G Rep Rob Woodall on Facebook

The Tea Party

I demand that the Tea party prove that their candidates were born on this planet!
Let 'em try! I'll never believe it, no matter what evidence you give me!
The Tea Party exists to make Mitt Romeny look sane. They play good cop / bad cop but they serve the same master.
The Republicans, and their sister brand, the Tea Party ™, are the ruling elite that has a strangle hold on America.
They're as genuine as the friendly cartoon face of Farmer John on the packaging of the world's largest pork producer.

Strategy

I'd like everyone here to know that every time you click on a political ad in an online newspaper the advertiser pays the news paper a few cents. Those big corporations won't pay their taxes but they have plenty of money to throw around for manipulation elections. Well I say we can make them pay more for their ads. Click away! Click, click, click those ads!

Encouragement

Yes, my dear, it's very disheartening, but it's not over and the people have won out over the ruling elite time and time again.
I think the fact that they care enough to buy our vote is actually very reassuring.
The good news is they care enough to influence your opinion. It means you have some power left. Now go out and find more people and get them to see that we can change things if we back Obama!
I Love you Mr President – but as hard as I work for you now, I will work that hard to replace you if you continue compromising with the Republicans! Every time you try to meet them half-way, the American people loose!
Imperfect Obama is our only hope.

California

If tax breaks spurred the economy we'd be a full tilt, but they don't. Tax breaks choke the economy. Quit the breaks and go back to investing in California.
Thank you Jerry Brown for creating the conditions where public servants who come forward with this kind of important information are listened to.
I'm sure over the coming weeks and months we'll uncover lots of skeletons the previous administration stashed in closets everywhere, as responsible employees finally have the support they need to come forward.
Seven years of Schwazenegger's sabotaging California's government is not going to be easy to clean up.

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