[figment]

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to insure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained. Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.

Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

Its noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: “We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have”.

[literbike]

Very Nice!

[ER]

I understand the jist of what is being said in this post but there's a distinct line between a Government that holds reasonable standards and laws for life in the US and one that is invasive and seeks to control our lives. Wouldn't you agree? While I would hope everyone would agree that making sure that we have clean water to drink and clean (enough) air to breathe is a needed responsibility that the Government should bear, we shouldn't put the brunt of our personal responsibility onto it.

Several things to consider...

While saying that labor unions have paved the way to safer, better paying jobs, what's not being mentioned is that every time you force a for-profit company to pay a certain wage or offer a certain benefit, you directly affect the number of workers it can employ. If we're going to force every job to pay great benefits, vacation, and high salaries, then there will be no need to go to college or any sort of training to increase your skillset. At one time there was a definite need for this type of intervention in workplaces such as coal-mines. I am very interested in hearing a strong case for the need for unions today. I mean that sincerely and without any sarcasm. I ask because all I've seen are negative consequences from union strikes and holdouts where everyone suffers.

Are cars being built safer and safer because of increased political activity or because the public's demand for it has pushed car makers to design them that way?

Social Insecurity..enough said. It's hard to believe that anyone would have ever trusted the Government to plan their retirement for them, but it happened. Now our salaries are taxed to pay for the generations ahead of us, and most investors and financial advisors give the broken system another 15-20 years before it will stop producing any return at all. That's assuming, of course, that the Government doesn't raise the Federal retirement and collection age to 90 or something like that. By the way, if this money was supposed to be collected for a person's retirement, how come it's never paid back to their immediate family if they die before it's completely reimbursed?


Just a few random and misguided thoughts...

[Johnny Diablo]

There is a give and a take and yin and a yang a zig to every zag.

Democrats are a necessary evil to keep us Republicans something to fight against. Between the 2 parties we can strike a balance....sort of. I still dont think that the founding fathers would condone how Edwards made his millons or the level of taxation or the size the government has gotten to. This country was founded from the fight against a large out of touch (by an ocean and 7 months by ship) tyrannical, taxing (1700s British) government.

[luvtolean]

My first thought was to pick it apart line by line, but then, why? I'd spend more time analyzing the crap than it took to write. It's all fiction pure and simple, and done at a low brow level.

The liberal union stuff made me LOL. I know of more than a couple of Unions you would not walk out of if you sauntered into a meeting and told them they were all liberals.

[bwhip]

Wow - all I can say is thank goodness for liberals! They have done so many wonderful things for us.

Thank goodness they protected us from all of those evil conservatives that want filthy air and water, and want people to work 16 hours per day with no benefits. After all, what clear advantage could there be to some selfish evil corporation to actually want to be fair and kind to its workers? If not for unions, all employers, which are of course inherently evil, would not have to worry about providing proper wages and benefits for their employees. Everyone knows that there is no such thing as companies having to compete with other companies for employees.

And thank goodness they require car manufacturers to make better and safer cars for us all to drive. After all, without their intervention it's not like the car manufacturers would actually work to improve their vehicles due to some archaic capitalistic concept like competition. I'm sure that ALL cars would be like Yugos and Pintos without liberal intervention.

As a matter of fact, liberals have done so many great things that I think they should keep going. They need more of our tax dollars because the government clearly knows what's best for us.

100% health care benefits for all will surely be an efficient and cost-effective way to help us all live longer, healthier lives.

They should also raise the minimum wage to at least $15.00 per hour. This will give everyone lots more money, and cause no negative impact to small business whatsoever. How can people be expected to work for less than that, even if they have not worked to build any particular job skills? Conservatives are so mean, they just don't care about the little guy.

Thank goodness for liberals!

[figment]

Originally Posted by luvtolean

My first thought was to pick it apart line by line, but then, why? I'd spend more time analyzing the crap than it took to write. It's all fiction pure and simple, and done at a low brow level.

The liberal union stuff made me LOL. I know of more than a couple of Unions you would not walk out of if you sauntered into a meeting and told them they were all liberals.

I too could rip that post apart. what utter BS
Line by line and look up the laws and who voted for what Like Gore, the liberal invented the world

A day in the life of Dick Liberal:

Dick wakes up and goes to work, he packs his CCW which he is guaranteed by the second amendment but enforced by (you know who) He arrives at work safely despite the fact that he voted for shorter sentencing and against the three strike program. He rides his motorcycle despite the fact that he votes for more government laws against such frivolous, dangerous machines. He can afford the fuel he needs despite his vote for fuel taxes and increased restriction of oil development. He also has a job despite the fact that he's such a pansy that he voted to allow anyone with a temperature above 90 into the US and leach off our benefits gratis. When he goes to lunch he can speak freely and not have to worry about what he says despite the fact the he voted to reduce the armed forces which keep him safe and continue to keep him so despite his ways.

Man I could go on forever, this is just too easy.

[bwhip]

From a Google search for "Joe Democrat":

Bird's Eye
By Karl Zinsmeister

Goodbye "Regular Joe" Democrat

Democrats: the party of the little guy. Republicans: the party of the wealthy. Those images of America's two major political wings have been frozen for generations. The stereotypes were always a little off, incomplete, exaggerated. (Can you say Adlai Stevenson?) But like most stereotypes, they reflected rough truths.

No more. Starting in the 1960s and '70s, whole blocs of "little guys"--ethnics, rural residents, evangelicals, cops, construction workers, homemakers, military veterans--began moving into the Republican column. And big chunks of America's rich elite--financiers, academics, heiresses, media barons, software millionaires, entertainers--drifted into the Democratic Party.

The extent to which the parties have flipped positions on the little-guy/rich-guy divide is illustrated by research from the Ipsos-Reid polling firm. Comparing counties that voted strongly for Bush to those that voted strongly for Gore in the 2000 election, the study shows that in pro-Bush counties only 7 percent of voters earned at least $100,000, while 38 percent had household incomes below $30,000. In the pro-Gore counties, fully 14 percent pulled in $100,000 or more, while 29 percent earned less than $30,000.

It is "becoming harder by the day to take the Democrats seriously as the party of the common man," writes columnist Daniel Henninger. "The party's primary sources of support have become trial lawyers and Wall Street financiers. It is becoming a party run by a new class of elites who make fast money--$25 million for 30 days work on a movie, millions (even billions) winning lawsuits against doctors...millions to do arithmetic for a business merger."

Obviously both parties have their fat cats, but Federal Election Commission data show that many of the very wealthiest political players are now in the Democratic column. Today's most aggressive political donors by far are lawyers--who donated $98 million dollars to 2004 political candidates as of June. (By comparison, the entire oil and gas industry donated $13 million.) And rich lawyers do indeed tilt strongly Democratic: 71 percent of their contributions went to Democrats, 29 percent to Republicans.

Migration of the rich and powerful to the Democrats has been so pronounced that Democratic nominee John Kerry has actually pulled in much more money than sitting President George Bush this spring and summer. Kerry's monthly fundraising totals have routinely doubled or even tripled Bush's totals. And the money on the Kerry side has come much more from rich individuals, while Bush has relied on flocks of small donors. So which is the party of the people now?

John Kerry is in many ways a perfect embodiment of the Democratic Party's takeover by wealthy elites. Experts describe his genealogy as "more royal than any previous American President." There is a long line of blue blood and inherited funds in his family, and his life has been anything but typically American: Mom was an heiress summering at her family's resort estate in France when she met dad, a Phillips Andover/Yale/Harvard Law School alum who was passing his own summer of 1937 in France "as an apprentice in a sculptor's studio." John's early boyhood was spent in a grand house outside Boston bought with inherited money. At age ten he was packed off to a fancy boarding school in Switzerland, and "for the next seven years of his life, this would become routine: His parents would send him off to boarding school and he would adapt anew to a world of competitive boys from wealthy, privileged families," as Kerry's Boston Globe biographers summarize.

Kerry spent his high school years at St. Paul's prep school, with a rich aunt paying the bills. He described himself at that point as being "from Oslo, Norway" (where his father was then posted as a diplomat). At St. Paul's and then Yale, Kerry whirled through hoity-toity circles with Auchinclosses and Bundys and trust-funders of all sorts, and when it came time for marrying, he showed the darnedest luck at finding true loves with true money. His first wife was worth $300 million; his second is a billionaire.

Between heiresses, Kerry had to live on his own earnings, and the results were not pretty. His spending on high life exceeded his income to the point of functional bankruptcy. But most of his life has been grand: hundred-dollar haircuts by Christophe, Old Master paintings, and expensive toys of all sorts. His five current houses, one more achingly exclusive than the next--Beacon Hill, Georgetown, Nantucket, Fox Chapel, Sun Valley--could keep a producer for "MTV Cribs" filming and looking up synonyms for "fabulous" for most of a year. Yet of course politically, Kerry is a man of the left. National Journal rates his record the most liberal in the U.S. Senate (John Edwards is tied for second).

The term "limousine liberal" doesn't adequately capture how disconnected Democrats like John Kerry (and Jay Rockefeller, and Barbara Streisand, and Jon Corzine--there are now many such) are from everyday American life. They are more like "Learjet liberals," who literally pronounce their poxes on oil executives and cattlemen from leather sofas floating at 15,000 feet inside their personal jets (which consume 1,200 gallons of fuel every time they streak their enlightened owner to an Idaho skiing weekend or Cape sailing jaunt).

John Kerry is a man who will ignore his own car registration fees and parking tickets and dinner tabs, while cavalierly calling pharmaceutical scientists "selfish" and "irresponsible." He is a fellow who made no charitable donations for years on end, while excoriating other Americans for being "hard-hearted" and "greedy." Some tribune of the ordinary guy.

[fumbducker]

hmmmmmmmm