Hello everyone. My name is Yvonne and I'm a middle-aged single mom (of a grown son) and an MR/DD worker, stuck out here in the "dead zone" known as Ohio. I have written letters to the editor in my hometown for years but after some prodding from my son, would like to branch out a little.
I've had an interesting and unusually challenging run on this earth, so far. I believe I have much to offer in the way of having a unique and rich perspective on life. I hope you'll check me out...
I'm a political junkie. Whenever possible, I'm watching one of the cable news networks...except for Fox. I like my information to be fair and balanced.
I especially try to watch C-Span. There, I get to see our U.S. representatives in action. I wish that more Americans would tune in. They'd know what I've known for years...that the "family values" people are the Democrats.
Day after day, I watch as the Dems try, in vain, to fight for the average American. I see them pleading for a raise in the minimum wage, arguing to allow Americans to get cheaper prescription drugs from other countries, begging for better port security. But at every turn, they're voted down by the Republicans who are in the majority.
While jobs are moving overseas, the environment is collapsing, we have a mess in Iraq, gas prices are sky-high, and many tax-paying citizens have no health insurance, what are the Republicans concerned about? Gay marriage and flag burning. Has flag burning become such an epidemic in this country that we must deal with it before we seek medical coverage for all of our citizens? I'm nearly 50, and I've yet to see anyone burn the American flag. Maybe I just don't get out enough.
Middle-class Republican voters remind me of the battered woman who stays with her partner in spite of the abuse. She'll tell you how miserable she is and then she'll say, "But he says he loves me."
Talk is cheap. But political ads and campaigns are expensive...and effective. That's why the GOP always wins, They're funded by $2,000 a plate dinners and pharmaceutical companies. They know that most Americans are too lazy and apathetic to watch the votes. But, unfortunately, most of my fellow citizens do fall for the "sound bite". They're suckers for the slick, deceptive "stars and stripes", WWJD GOP political ads that run every five minutes, right before an election.
Tonight I was watching a PBS special from 2004. In it, Doug Wead, campaign advisor to George Bush Sr.'s 1988 presidential run stated that it was back then that our current president saw the power of the evangelical vote. Wead said about George W. Bush: "...and sometimes he'd mumble when we'd talk about the numbers and where they were, he'd just about salivate...'Wow, I could win the governorship of Texas with just the evangelical vote.'"
I'm guessing that's when he became "born again".
Please, America...wake the fuck up.
Climb out of your SUV's, take a day off from your pathological spending sprees at the mall, turn off "Fear Factor" and turn on the C-Span channels.
Thomas Jefferson once said that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance".
Believe it...before it's too late.