So Rush, is this the "failure" that you wanted?
Every time I go read comments on Newsvine I get pissed off. It pisses me off when an article breeds discussion and the topic is hijacked by somebody with an agenda of their own.
Take for example an article that appeared on MSN.com’s homepage today. It was a re-print of a New York Times article on a recent poll that was taken that reveals the depth and trauma of joblessness. The article illustrated what most of us have been going through during this period of economic hardship: having to borrow money from friends or family, not going to the doctor when necessary because we can’t pay the bill, going to food banks or getting food stamps just to eat, etc.
Now usually when I click over to read the comments made on articles such as this on Newsvine I find that there are one or two pertenaint comments to start out with. But sooner or later there will be someone who will want to blame everything on President Obama saying that he’s a Socialist and that we are all Liberals who deserve the screwing that we get. After that, the circus is on and the clowns start pouring out of the Mini-Cooper.
I know that I shouldn’t let it bother me and that I should be “bigger than them” when it comes to this kind of discourse, but sometimes I just can’t help myself. After hearing so much venom being spewed out of the mouths of the talking heads on FOX and seeing it come from the fingers of those Conservatives too ugly to be on TV, there comes a point where I just can’t hold it in anymore. I have to give in to that smack-talking side of my personality and spew some vitriol of my own as a release for fear that if I don’t I may choke to death on my own venom sack that has become blocked up for lack of use.
To that end, I left this comment on page 6 of the “discussion”, I apologize ahead of time to my readers who consider themselves to be “Liberal” or “Conservative” as I take shots at both of you at a point in the rant. Keep in mind, this is my frustration talking, and as some of you know and can attest to in your own lives, it is well-founded:
Everytime I come to read the comments on Newsvine it astounds me how many of you totally miss the point of the articles written. I keep hoping beyond hope that some of you will set aside your partisan and ideological blinders and not take an opportunity to point the finger of blame and dance on the graves of peoples’ future.
I know, that is waaaaaaay too much to ask for…
A little background – I was laid off from my last “real job” in December of 2002, the day after my 36th birthday. In that time I have applied to 1,082 different businesses trying to get work and have gone on 52 interviews. Yet I still have Conservatives calling me “lazy”, “deadbeat”, they tell me that I want the Government to take care of me and that I don’t really want to work. I would think that 1,082 attempts to support my family in the last 2,565 days would say otherwise. And for the record, my Unemployment benefits ran out in September of 2003, so I am getting nothing from my Government and they are not taking care of me. However there was a glimmer of hope a few years ago, because that was when I got myself a job…such as it was.
It was an outside sales job that was commission-based. Now sales is a tough enough gig, but when you are trying to sell a high-end product in a Red State that was starting to see the effects of a sinking economy before the rest of the country and you are trying to sell to people who may or may not have a job the next day – it was almost impossible to get in the door much less make a sales pitch. At the time there were a lot of companies and industries laying people off and as a result, there wasn’t much money to spend even back then. Since the job was commission-based I would only get paid when I made a sale. As a result i have had to deal with several people telling me that it wasn’t a “real job” since I wouldn’t get paid for the job I did. To them a “real job” is one where you go to work every day and then get paid for it no matter what. Because the economy went downhill, after a couple of years the job went with it and I have been trying to get work ever since.
Fortunately for us at the time my wife had an eBay business that enabled us to pay the bills and the mortgage. However that all changed when the national economy went in the tank in the summer of 2008. Her business dropped off dramatically, and we fought as hard as we could to keep the business afloat. It finally got to the point where it was costing us more money than we were bringing in to operate, so we lost the business after a few months of fighting. No income = unable to pay mortgage and buy food. During this entire time I had been sending out my resume for any job I was qualified for to no avail. I would apply to jobs and in some cases I would get a rejection e-mail, but mostly I would hear nothing but crickets. Wal-Mart and McDonalds have rejected me for being “overqualified”, J.R. Simplot rejected me for being “underqualified”, and DirecTV rejected me because my credit score wasn’t good enough for me to be their employee – but it was good enough to be their customer. WTF?!?!?!?!?
At this point our house is in foreclosure, we are getting 20 calls a day from debt collectors, we are trying to sell our house and move to Northern California to be with family before the bank takes it away from us, and we are trying to forestall the auction date so that we can buy more time so a sale can happen. On top of that we have to pack up what we can take and sell off the rest just to keep the heat on in freezing temperatures. Because of the stress we are under we are sick and tired (literally) all the time. I have injured my back and my wife has severely sprained her right arm and right leg. Because we have no income and no insurance we cannot go to a Doctor and get treatment because we cannot afford to pay the bill that will come our way. During this Holiday season of giving we cannot afford to buy presents for anyone – not even each other – and since we are trying to sell the house we cannot even decorate for Christmas. The only acknowledgement of the season is a Charlie Brown tree that we bought a couple of years ago. To say that things are bleak at our place right now is an understatement…
…that is what makes some of your posts and your attitudes so infuriating to someone like me…
The article in question was about how traumatic joblessness has been to those of us who – through no fault of our own – have been turned out, written off, and marginalized as absolutely worthless by the business community. AND ALL SOME OF YOU CAN WRITE ABOUT ARE YOUR OWN PARTISAN AND POLITIAL BELIEFS?!?!?!? ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS BLAMING “THE OTHER GUY” AND SCORING CHEAP DEBATE POINTS?!?!?!?!? YOU KNOW WHAT THAT SAYS TO PEOPLE IN MY POSITION?!?!? IT SAYS “SCREW YOU LOSER, YOU DON’T DESERVE TO LIVE, LET ALONE EARN A LIVING!!!!!”
I AM SICK AND TIRED OF HEARING MONEY-GRUBBING, BIBLE-THUMPING, BOOK-BURNING, DICK CHEANEY-WORSHIPPING, FOX NEWS-WATCHING, TAX-AND-SPEND-AND-WELCH-ON-THE-DEBT CONSERVATIVE FREAKS TRY TO BLAME EVERYTHING ON PRESIDENT OBAMA, CLAIM HE’S A SOCIALIST, CLAIM HE WASN’T BORN IN THIS COUNTRY (AS IF HAWAII WASN’T EVEN A STATE) AND NOT OFFER UP ONE SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEMS WE HAVE LET ALONE A JOB TO SOMEONE WHO REALLY NEEDS ONE!!!!!!! YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME WANT TO YAK!!!!! YOU BELIEVE THAT A JOB FOR SOMEONE IN MY POSITION IS THE EQUIVALENT TO A HOMELESS PERSON COMING UP TO YOU ON THE STREET AND BEGGING YOU FOR YOUR SPARE CHANGE. WHEN PEOPLE LIKE YOU SAY YOU WANT PRESIDENT OBAMA TO FAIL, YOU MEAN THAT YOU DON’T WANT PEOPLE LIKE ME TO GO BACK TO WORK AND SUPPORT OUR FAMILIES!!!! YOU WANT MORE JOB LOSS, MORE FORECLOSURES, AND MORE PEOPLE GOING HUNGRY AND BEING WRITTEN OFF WHILE YOU STAY WARM, DRY, FED, AND SATISFIED THAT “GOD HAS BLESSED” YOU BY MAKING YOU RICH.
AND DON’T THINK I’M LETTING YOU WHEAT-GRASS EATING, TYE-DYE WEARING, HUMMER-LOT BURNING, ALL-TALK-AND-NO-REAL-ACTION-ON HEALTH-CARE-REFORM-BECAUSE-YOU-DON’T-HAVE-A-SPINE LIBERAL FREAKS OFF THE HOOK EITHER!!!!!!! YOU ARE JUST AS MUCH TO BLAME FOR THIS MESS AS YOUR CONSERVATIVE COUNTERPARTS ARE!!!!!!!! YEAH YOU CAN COME UP WITH SOME REASONABLE SOLUTIONS, BUT WHERE ARE YOUR GUTS TO STAND UP AND SHOPUT DOWN THOSE CONSERVATIVE NOISE-MAKERS WHO ONLY WANT FOR THEMSELVES AND NOTHING FOR THE REST OF US, HUH?!?!?!? DO WE COMMON SENSE MODERATES HAVE TO TAKE ALL OF YOUR ACTION FOR YOU?!?!?!?!?
THIS IS WHY I AM AN INDEPENDANT – IT’S BECAUSE YOU PEOPLE ARE SO WRAPPED UP IN BEATING THE OTHER GUY THAT NOTHING EVER GETS DONE AND PEOPLE LIKE ME GET SCREWED!!!!! I HAVE BEEN A REPUBLICAN AND A DEMOCRAT AT VARIOUS TIMES OF MY LIFE ONLY TO LEAVE BOTH PARTIES BECAUSE I DID NOT LIKE WHAT I FOUND THERE. I HATED THE FACT THAT THE GOP HAD BEEN HIJACKED BY THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT, AND I HATED THAT DEMOCRATS DIDN’T HAVE A SPINE – SO A POX UPON BOTH OF YOUR HOUSES!!!!!!
PEOPLE OUT HERE ARE HURTING – YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE HURTING – AND ALL YOU CARE ABOUT IS MAKING NOISE!!!!!!!
YOU MIGHT WANT TO TRY PULLING YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR ASSES AND TAKING A LOOK AROUND YOU SO THAT YOU CAN SEE WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON!!!!!!!
NOT ONLY WILL YOU BE ABLE TO SEE BETTER, BUT YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY THE FRESH AIR BETTER THEN WHAT YOU ARE SMELLING RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!
Now I don’t expect to have my comments received very well over on that board as most of the people there seem to have their own agenda and don’t care for any contrarian viewpoint, let alone someone calling them out on it. I expect to hear Conservatives over there to tell me that I should “stop whining” and Liberals tell me that they eat sprouts and that they drink Wheat-grass.
I know that most of Conservatives and Liberals are not like the people who post on Newsvine. Really, I know that. I do believe that the people who post on Newsvine give Conservatives and Liberals a bad reputation. Like I said in my post it is frustrating to me to hear all of this squabbling going on about what’s wrong, who’s to blame for it and what should be done about it without any action being taken and the situation only gets worse. That is how I see this past year. I’ve seen Conservatives in Congress and in the media pouting like little children, throwing a year-long tantrum because a Black Democrat is sitting in the Oval Office. I have seen them take to the streets wearing tea-bags on their person trying to kill any attempt to put people back to work and get the rest of us access to a doctor when we need it. I have seen Liberals in Congress and the media talk about what needs to be done and attempt to do it, only to allow themselves to be bullied by those same tea-bag wearing yayhoos into doing nothing.
I don’t know about you, but I am sick and tired of it.
Literally, I am sick and tired all the time now like I said in my Newsvine post, and so is Wifey. Right now because of my back and her arm and leg we are not able to get any packing done, we’ve got about half of the house packed up and there is still more to do, however the walking-wounded are having a difficult time right now trying to hold themselves up much less carry the stretcher-cases. So in between bouts of packing we have to rest up and lick our wounds until we feel strong enough to do it again, which is why we seem to pack in spurts these days. It has gotten to the point where I come into the office and surf the net or practice some Mountain driving in the snow on rFactor rather then spend the day laying in bed with Wifey. Sometimes it gets very difficult having to watch her sway from side-to-side moaning in pain knowing that there is nothing that I can do about it. Talk about a feeling of helplessness – there is nothing like watching someone you love have to live in some form of pain knowing that there is nothing that you can do to help them. I know that eventually her sprains will heal but it is just difficult to deal with sometimes.
Now would someone in Congress or on FOX like to come live my life for a few days and tell me that we don’t need health-care reform in this country?
Actually, we need more than just health-care reform – we need political-discourse reform.
Badly.
And as for doing something to help people in my situation – it is good to see that there are people like those who run the Idaho Food bank helping those of us in need during this time of year. It is also good to see people like Keith Olberman not just talk about getting those of us in need some much-needed health-care, but actually taking some steps to provide it. The free health-care clinics that have taken place in New Orleans, Little Rock and Kansas City have been Godsends to those people there in need. How anybody, weather they be Conservative, Liberal or Moderate, not see that as a sign that our health-care system is broken is beyond me. I just can’t understand how someone can look at these free-clinics and say that they are a waste of time because they cannot possibly be sustained beyond the initial event. That is not the point – the point is that in the richest country in the world, this is what we have been reduced to – people begging for their lives.
I remember an episode of “The West Wing”, season 2 I believe, the episode entitled “In this White House” there was a fictional President of an African Nation being ravaged by AIDS, who had come to America to negotiate with American Pharmaceutical companies to bring AIDS drugs to his country. At one point, before he receives news that he has been overthrown by a coup, President Mumbala of Equitorial Kundu remarks “it is a terrible thing to beg for one’s life.”
Yes, it is a very terrible thing. If only some people out there would stop and realize that that is what we are all doing to some degree - begging for our lives and the lives of those we love.
Oh, by the way, I’m working on putting together a special year-end post that re-caps some of the events of the past year. Back when I was writing my column for PCFootball.net I would look back at the year that was at this time every year. It was a tradition that I would like to bring here much like my annual 9/11 column.
So get ready to see the 2009 edition of “The Good, the Bad, and the Downright idiotic” before Christmas. I usually cover sports and news events, but I might also cover some politics this year as well.
So get ready folks, this one’s gonna be a doozy…..
