WASHINGTON — President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say. In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president’s demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations. Congressional Republicans have dug in against any new tax revenues after higher taxes for the affluent were approved at the start of the year. The administration’s hope is to create cracks in Republicans’ antitax resistance, especially in the Senate, as constituents complain about the across-the-board cuts in military and domestic programs that took effect March 1. — Social Programs Face Cutback in Obama Budget – NYTimes.com
Needless to say that the reaction in the progressive blogsphere has not been a good one. Personally, I think that the President has good intentions; but he is cutting the wrong things. I simply do not believe that our Nation’s seniors, like my parents; should be punished because the recklessness of people on Wall Street. We need to get rid of the pork that is laden in these bills that congress just keeps on passing. This will help with the spending problem.
Furthermore, I believe Obama might be doing some damage to the Democratic Party brand. I mean, this guy promised his base that he would actually stand up to the Republicans and what is doing? Capitulating. From what I have seen, this is not going over well with his base at all. The Democrats should be quite worried about this; this will cuase them problems in 2014, and could very well cause them some serious issues in 2016 as well. I mean, why would anyone get exciting about a Democratic Party Presidental candidate, when the last one folded like cardboard?
The World’s Greatest Christian Coward – Mike Huckabee
“And it’s not because there’s an anti-homosexual mood, and nobody’s homophobic that I know of,” he continued, “but many of us, and I consider myself included, base our standards not on the latest Washington Post poll, but on an objective standard, not a subjective standard.”…
“If we have subjective standards, that means that we’re willing to move our standards based on the prevailing whims of culture,” he said. “I think politicians have an obligation to be thermostats, not just thermometers. They’re not simply to reflect the temperature of the room, or the culture, as it were. They’re to set the standards for law, for what’s right, for what’s wrong, understanding that not everybody’s going to agree with it, not everybody’s going to accept it.”
You see, this is where I have always had my conflicts with the religious right. The idea that some religious group of some sort controlling the Republican Party burns my boots. I believe that no particular religious group should have no control of any of the two major political parties. Either respect them all, or respect none of them.
This is also where my Christian beliefs and Political positions differ. I happen to believe that America is not a “Christian Nation” Per se. What I am saying is this: Many on the Christian Right, happen to believe that America is a Christian Republic. This is not so. We are a Constitutional Republic, or at least we were founded as one. The United States of America was created as a Nation that respects ALL religions, races, colors and creeds. We have not always lived up to that standard in the past, but we are doing that now, very well.
I will say this — We are supposed to be a Nation that respects all Religions equally, but anyone with half a brain will tell you that America does show deference to a protected minority of a Religion, and I am referring to those who brought The Lord Jesus Christ to a rigged trial, had him crucified and then lied and said that his disciples stole his body. (and no, folks, I am not talking about the Romans either…) The real funny thing is, the supposed descendants of those very people are the ones who run this Country and the Republican party. Funny how all that works.
As for Huckabee, I believe that if he and his Evangelical friends do not believe that the Republican Party suits their agenda, then they should walk. I believe the worst mistake that ever happened in the Republican Party, was that Ronald Reagan and the GOP gave the Christians a place at the table. Because I simply believe that Religion and Politics should never be intertwined. When they do become intertwined, you get things like Sharia Law. Which is a fascist form of Government. I believe, if anything at all, Mike Huckabee and his evangelical friends should be, as the Bible calls it, “about their Father’s business” and not meddling the affairs of this fallen world’s Government.
Furthermore, I believe that when it comes to homosexuality, Huckabee is nothing more than a two-bit coward. Huckabee fails to call homosexuality what it truly is, and that is the sodomite lifestyle. The Bible in the Old and New Testaments forbids it. Mike Huckabee could have taken a stand for the Word of God and for Christian morality, instead, he offered a dishrag of a defense, which made him look like a bigger idiot than normal. To be clear, The Word of God, that being the King James Bible (*); offers the following on the subject of homosexuality:
Old Testament:
Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination. (Leviticus 18:22 KJV)
If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. (Leviticus 20:13 KJV)
New Testament:
Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-10 KJV)
9 Do you not know that the unrighteous and the wrongdoers will not inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived (misled): neither the impure and immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor those who participate in homosexuality,
10 Nor cheats (swindlers and thieves), nor greedy graspers, nor drunkards, nor foulmouthed revilers and slanderers, nor extortioners and robbers will inherit or have any share in the kingdom of God.
The people who were responsible for the Amplified Bible were under no illusion as what “Effeminate” meant to them. I am a King James Bible type of Christian, but I commend the makers of the Amplified Bible for pulling no punches on that scripture.
I only wish that people like Mike Huckabee were that bold, when it comes to issues of morality; as they are, about wanting to meddle in the affairs of the Government. Again, this goes back to being about “The Father’s Business.” In this department, Mike Huckabee and the Evangelical Christian World as a whole, is failing badly and America is now reaping the harvest of bad seed, sown many, many years ago.
* = There are some of you that might disagree with me on my position on the King James Bible; and that is quite alright, stupidity is not illegal. 😉 Click here to see my position on the King James Bible. Also too, please know, that I am not a fan of this man here, this is a PDF link. (Please Note: The link is not my site, but one of someone whom I very much respect.)
I write this letter on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War on behalf of my fellow Iraq War veterans. I write this letter on behalf of the 4,488 soldiers and Marines who died in Iraq. I write this letter on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of veterans who have been wounded and on behalf of those whose wounds, physical and psychological, have destroyed their lives. I am one of those gravely wounded. I was paralyzed in an insurgent ambush in 2004 in Sadr City. My life is coming to an end. I am living under hospice care.
I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.
[…]
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
I have, like many other disabled veterans, suffered from the inadequate and often inept care provided by the Veterans Administration. I have, like many other disabled veterans, come to realize that our mental and physical wounds are of no interest to you, perhaps of no interest to any politician. We were used. We were betrayed. And we have been abandoned. You, Mr. Bush, make much pretense of being a Christian. But isn’t lying a sin? Isn’t murder a sin? Aren’t theft and selfish ambition sins? I am not a Christian. But I believe in the Christian ideal. I believe that what you do to the least of your brothers you finally do to yourself, to your own soul.
My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.
This letter saddens me to my core. The Republican Party should read this, and really take stock of whom they choose for President of the United States of America. This above is why I started “The Populist” back in 2006. Because I knew what George W. Bush was doing in Iraq was simply wrong. Furthermore, I knew he was moving the goal posts on Iraq as well.
In 2007, my blog was hacked, either by Conservatives who didn’t like me or by hackers from another Country. Either way, by that time, I had began to feel that the Democrats had begun to lose it anyhow. So, I started “Political Byline” for two reasons. One, to continue where I left off with the earlier blog and secondly to go after some of the more idiotic elements of the left. What that blog became, however, was a “Tea Party” blog and sometimes, I sort of regret that. I fully admit, that at time, I got caught up in the furor of Anti-Obama’ism. At some point, I realized that I was not writing what I truly felt, and because of that; I backed away from the right.
In 2011, after President Obama declared, for all intents and purposes, the Iraq War over; I ended Political Byline’s tenure and put it into inactive status. I wrote there for from December of 2007 till October 2011. I fought the fight that I came to fight against. My politics did change a good deal. I never was much of a partisan at all, which was, most likely my downfall. Which might explain why this blog here, is not very popular at all.
I did, however, come to respect what Bush did, and why he did it and I also learned that a good deal of what the liberal left says about Iraq; this letter above being a perfect example of that — was and still is, a big lie. Some of it is true, and some of it; is nothing more than anti-war propaganda.
Still again, I believe that the Republican Party and the Democratic Party both, their leaders; need to read this letter above and really think long and hard about electing a Wilsonian Presidential candidate. Because this above ought to be a textbook example, of why the United States of America should never pursue an Wilsonian foreign policy agenda, ever again.
My thoughts and prayers go to this young man, may he find the peace and comfort; and yes, even rest, that he truly deserves.
I dedicate this video, to ALL of the Military people that we lost in a very, very unpopular war:
Whither assault weapons ban: “Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said on Monday that a controversial assault weapons ban will not be part of a Democratic gun bill that was expected to reach the Senate floor next month,” Politico notes. “After a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday, a frustrated Feinstein said she learned that the bill she sponsored — which bans 157 different models of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines — wouldn’t be part of a Democratic gun bill to be offered on the Senate floor. Instead, it can be offered as an amendment. But its exclusion from the package makes what was already an uphill battle an almost certain defeat.”
My first reaction was one of relief. The bill was idiotic at best. The reason why this bill died is because Democrats know what many of the rest of America know –that America is gun nation; it always has been and always will be. America’s freedom from the British was done at the hands of guns. Furthermore, the Democrats tried this once before, in the 1990’s and they paid a terrible price for it. Harry Reid might be a liberal Democrat, but he is no idiot; he does want to be reelected to office again.
The point is this; and even my own Democratic Party voting Mother believes this — that outlawing guns of any sort is not going to stop crime. Because the criminals are always going to be able to get guns, no matter what the Government does to try to prevent it. Because there is this thing, called the “Black Market” and it does not go empty very often. Especially seeing how we let some guns walk across the border. I would not be shocked to see some of those guns end up back in the States eventually and someone killed with them.
In closing: Everyone, including me, wants to see an end to shootings, of any sort. But, passing such idiotic bills, such as this one here, is simply not the answer to the problem. The answer is encouraging parents to be involved with their children’s lives. Another good idea, and as much as I know this is going to sound like a cliché; it is the truth —- getting children involved in Church is not a bad idea. It worked for me. I spent most of my young life in Church. If anything at all; it served as good alternative to the streets and the trouble that I could have gotten into in them in Detroit. I did have parents who were strict and involved in my life, but the Church was a big part of that too.
We just cannot legislate our way to an utopian society, it just does not work. It has been tried and it has failed every time.
Oh, by the way; check out Karl Rove’s lame ass response to the barb towards him. I hate to be the one to say this, but when you have to use the lame ass liberal talking point about Sarah Palin against her and you are a so-called “Conservative”, you have a very serious problem. The problem with Karl Rove is; well, besides the fact that he was actually born and still breathes —- is that he was lucky enough to win one Presidential election. The problem was, he helped elect someone, who was about as Conservative, as I am a Communist. Everything else that he has done, has been wrong. The dude needs to bow out gracefully, go back to Texas and get a real damned job.
Pat Caddell, the Fox News Contributor and Democrat pollster who engineered Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential victory, blew the lid off CPAC on Thursday with a blistering attack on “racketeering” Republican consultants who play wealthy donors like “marks.”
“I blame the donors who allow themselves to be played for marks. I blame the people in the grassroots for allowing themselves to be played for suckers….It’s time to stop being marks. It’s time to stop being suckers. It’s time for you people to get real,” he told the audience that included two top Republican consultants.
Caddell stole the show as a panelist in the breakout session titled “Should We Shoot All the Consultants Now?” He spoke with a fire and passion that electrified the room. When the session began the large room was half filled, but as word spread of the fireworks going on inside, the audience streamed in. By the end, it was standing room only.
Breitbart News spoke with Caddell prior to his talk, and he promised he would deliver a “brutal critique” of the Republican establishment and its political consulting class. He did not disappoint, pulling no punches with an unyielding evisceration of a small group of Republican consultants, the Romney campaign, the Republican National Committee, and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS Super PAC.
“When you have the Chief of Staff of the Republican National Committee and the political director of the Romney campaign, and their two companies get $150 million at the end of the campaign for the ‘fantastic’ get-out-the-vote program…some of this borders on RICO [the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act] violations,” Caddell told the crowd. “It’s all self dealing going on. I think it works on the RICO thing. They’re in the business of lining their pockets.”
“The Republican Party,” Caddell continued, “is in the grips of what I call the CLEC–the consultant, lobbyist, and establishment complex.” Caddell described CLEC as a self serving interconnected network of individuals and organizations interested in preserving their own power far more than they’re interested in winning elections.
In the years after the 2008 presidential election, and in particular, after my public chastisement of certain right wing sites for their having bought in to the establishment spin (as an aside, you don’t need to take my word for this, you can research it yourself: look at the number of links I received from the top-tier right-wing sites prior to Obama’s ascension and then afterward when I started turning my attention to the problems within the Republican Party and its strategy makers and mouthpieces, whom I called out by name), protein wisdom was very obviously relegated to some sort of networking black list; people who once linked me routinely today won’t even follow me on Twitter, much less link back to the site. Which is why I find the sudden return to a demand for conservative principles from some of those same sites who worked so determinedly to marginalize me both ironic and galling, and yet humorous in their cynical transparency. That is, for those who wish to naval gaze.
All of which I mention only as a prelude to what many of us can feel is happening right now within the GOP: a civil war, one in which the young TEA Party constitutionalists, far from backing down from the establishment old bulls (who are content to foist symbolic but feckless votes on us to “prove” they stand with us, while simultaneously surrendering their leverage in advance of every procedural battle in which they might actually affect change and slow down the march of progressive government growth and institutionalization), are actively — and, more importantly, publicly — challenging them.
[…]
Aside from a few people left on the network, FOX News is not a conservative outlet. It is the white-boarded symbol of GOP status-quo governance. Similarly, the suddenly red-meat conservative commentators popping up in the online opinion circles? I’d advise you go back and look at what they were writing in from 2008 before the TEA Party revolution, many of them having been caught completely off guard by it. I’d invite you to examine — regardless of the awards they are granted, or the incestuousness of the networking that keeps them extraordinarily influential — which types of Republicans they attack and which they support; if they have been pro-incumbent or pro-primary challenge; if they have counseled pragmatism or principle. If they’ve joined the chorus demeaning the “True Believers” and Hobbits and Visigoths, until such time as it became apparent to them that such people, and their message, is beginning to resonate with a revived and energized base.
Because these are the kinds of people who benefit from a perpetual state of political expedience, who blow with the political winds, as it were. They dislike being criticized, and they are perfectly happy to freeze out those who they believe muddle the communication strategy they have determined is the right one — often quite wrongly. They dislike debate and a free exchange of ideas, though they give lip-service to supporting it; they admire and seek to emulate the unified front of the Democrats, because they mistakenly believe that it is that unified front that secures Democrats electoral victories, when instead it is their own very determined decision to try to manage messages instead of fighting for principles that turns voters off.
And even now, many of them are trying desperately to cling to power, to maintain the status quo, because it is within the current broken system — the one that benefits politicians while screwing over their constituencies — that they thrive. And they’ll be goddamned if any presumptuous set of “citizen legislators” — that is, those who aren’t looking to make a career out of living inside the DC bubble and adapting to its tony ways — is going to come along and upset their well-stocked, perpetually refilled apple cart.
They are concerned only with themselves and their own perks and powers. And just because they wear an R behind their name, or sport a flag lapel pin and mouth conservative pieties from time to time, doesn’t mean they are at all on the side of the people, of the Constitution, of individual liberty and autonomy. In fact, the vast majority of them reject such antiquated principles and instead seek to have a more efficient Leviathan running the lives of the masses. And that’s deplorable.
I cannot say that I disagree with any of the above. I believe the Republican Party has two choices here; reform and change, or die. Hopefully, they will choose wisely.
It’s stuff like this here, that makes my blood boil about this Presidential Administration.
The Video:
The Story:
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been “told to be quiet” and feel they can’t come forward to tell their stories — as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.
The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that “the bottom line is they feel that they can’t come forth, they’ve been told to be quiet.”
The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on the surviving victims.
“I’m sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.
But Graham said he thinks the administration is “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold.
“The best evidence of what happened in Benghazi is not a bunch of politicians in Washington trying to cover their political ass,” Graham said. “This is the people who lived through the debacle, and I’m going to do all I can to get them before the Congress and American people.
I mean, this is not proof that Democrats cannot be trusted to run the Government, without royally screwing it up; I really do not know what is. I mean, with the Clinton’s it was the Waco Massacre and now this. To be fair, George H. W. Bush did not do very well at Ruby Ridge either; but Christ almighty, at least they were open about their screw ups.
The fact that this administration will not admit to any sort of cover up, and is pressuring the survivors to keep quiet, tells me that this Administration is in full on Nixon mode. They will do anything, include threaten people to keep their legacy. Which is why I refused to vote for this man at all. It is because he is a black racist; I believe that President Obama believes that the white people who were killed in Libya had it coming, because of what happened 300 years ago in this Country. I will believe that till the day that I die and nobody at all will ever be able to tell me any different. President Obama found those people to be expendable, and was willing to let them die.
The funny thing about this quote is how often his defenders and supporters would use this same argument during the election to protect him against criticism. Romney supporters often relied on his record as a famously unprincipled political weather-vane to defend him against any substantive criticism of what he said during the campaign on the grounds that he didn’t or couldn’t “really” believe it. Since Romney couldn’t be trusted, it was taken for granted that he never said what he “really” believed, and Romney supporters tried to make a virtue of their candidate’s worst character flaw. This was very often used as a way to get around his awful foreign policy views, but it was hardly limited to foreign policy. If Romney said something awful, it could be written off as mere pandering (which was, of course, simply more proof that he had no political principles that could not be compromised), and if he said something mildly sensible this was supposedly the “real” Romney coming through at last.
Of course, it never mattered whether Romney “really” believed what he was saying, because it became clear years ago that he would have said almost anything to win. In that case, it was a good bet that Romney was always more likely to lie to his audience than not, and for that reason he disqualified himself through sheer, overwhelming dishonesty. When in doubt, it was safe to assume that Romney was lying, and it was usually safe to assume the worst about his intentions. If there was a chance that he might cave in to hard-liners and ideologues in his party, there was no reason to believe that he would ever stand up to them. When the 47% remarks came out, it didn’t matter whether he believed what he had said, because he had been willing to say it and he had done so because he was so desperate to appeal to the worst elements in his party. As it was, everyone assumed that he didn’t believe what he was saying, but we attributed it to his unprincipled willingness to pander, which simply made his awful statements seem that much worse.
It was fairly obvious from the beginning that Romney had no principals or real ideology. He was driven by the belief that he was entitled to the presidency.
….and Barky Hussein in the White House was not? Please. 🙄
Boy… Between this liberal nitwit and the Jewish Right, I think I am going to have plenty to write about on this blog for a very, very long time to come.
Sorry, but this one gets up my nose a bit. How is it, that some Jew can sit and write a piece mocking the President of the United States, using the sacred text of Christianity; the Holy Bible, and in mocking terms, as using the King James Bible style of writing and nothing happens to him? How is that?
Check out this sloppy, nasty, and downright disrespectful tripe from this idiotic kike (Yes, I know that “kike” is offensive, it is intended to be, you want to disrespect my Religion, I am going to disrespect your Religion and your stinking ethnicity):
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of debt, I fear no bankruptcy, for Obama is my shepherd. He prepareth a table of food stamps before me, and maketh me lie down beside waters He hath cleansed and seas He hath made recede, even though the bad Republicans wisheth the earth to be burnt unto a cinder, and will not buy the electric car that is good, for it hath zero emissions, and receiveth its power from a power plant, which hath not zero emissions, but the ways of the President are mysterious.
If someone like me, took a sacred text from the Torah and used it in this sort of way, I would be excoriated from one end of the Blogosphere and Internet to the other. But, yet, this Jew can do this and nothing happens to him at all. It is the sick and terrible double standard that we have in this Country and it needs to change. Christianity should be considered OFF-LIMITSto this sort of thing. Now, I have to wonder, would this Jew use the Koran in this sort of vile way? I highly doubt that at all. Because if he did, every dad-blasted Muslim terrorist would want his little Jewish head on a platter. So, he uses Christianity — the softest target on the planet. How quaint. 🙄
I am starting to think that we Christians, especially we protestants; need to start getting a bit more proactive in our belief system and start really defending our beliefs to the point of risk going to jail for it. Because I tend to believe that if a couple of car loads of Christians showed up at someone’s house, like this guy here, and maybe taught this little screwball Jew a lesson, then maybe he and his fellow Jews would think twice about insulting a Religion that is the only way to Heaven. Hey, it worked for the Muslims. Because of 9/11, everyone in American now knows what Islam is truly about now. Maybe we Christians need to follow their lead and start telling people what they can and cannot get away with.
Just a thought, and I would hate to see it ever come to that at all. But, sometimes, when pushed into a corner, people lash out and I happen to believe that some lashing out, by we WASP’S is very, very, very much overdue in this Country.
Just my opinion.
Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day. (Matthew 28:11-15 KJV)
…and they’re still doing it to this day, not to mention what they are doing to our Country. The Federal Reserve Chairmen and Treasury Secretary being primary examples.
Update: Folks, after some thought and reflection, I decided to write an update. I wrote this, because, quite bluntly — I was mad. I am a Christian of 30 year vintage, and I take my Faith seriously. I don’t wear it on my sleeve and I am not much of Zealot about it. But, I know what I believe. I also removed a few lines that would be considered inflammatory. My point was to defend and bring up that fact that there is a double standard in this Country towards Christians; not to incite violence. I hope it made you think, that is my job as a writer and blogger; to make everyone think.
Thompson talks about the economic trends that spelled doom for JCP. I don’t know about economics, but I do know that it’s strange, in an emotional sense, for me to see so many of the iconic retailers from my childhood fall by the wayside. I couldn’t tell you the last time I shopped at Penney’s. Probably when my mom took me there as a kid. Sears was the big retail presence in our family’s life in the 1970s. I went to a Sears store for the first time in decades last fall, looking for a kid’s coat, and I was shocked by how depressing and low-rent everything looked. This is not a store that has life in it, I thought.
Montgomery Ward used to be a big part of my childhood too. It died a while back.
Low rent. Low Rent?!?! Seriously? 😯Is this the image that Rod Dreher wants to convey? As an snobby asshole, who thinks he is better than anyone else? I do not know the guy — but as someone who grew up in Southwest Detroit in the 1980’s, that little remark really tripped my “this guy is a racist, elitist asshole” alarm. Also too, I still have family, in the form of Cousins who still live down there, including the daughter of my Father’s kid sister, who works TWO jobs to survive down there. She also is a registered gun owner. Something that I just found out here recently. Needless to say, I was most impressed with that! 😉 😀 😛
JCPenney, Montgomery Wards, Sears are all relics of the past. They are pre-internet businesses that did well, when brick and mortar businesses ruled the world. K-Mart is having the same problems. But, K-mart learned to adapt to the changing business world. Sears and the others, have not been so smart about it and because of it, some have failed and others are coming close to failing.
But still, Low Rent?!?! Egad. 🙄 It just struck me as quite snobbish and bit racist. Why didn’t he just say that the place looked bad and had black people in it or something? It would have had the same effect. One thing I have never done is judged those who live in different situation as me; money-wise or whatever. Because I well know that I could very be in that place myself. I mean, I not might have the best circumstances, but things could be much, much worse for me. For that, I am very grateful. I have said that before and I try to keep it in mind.
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