Republican Party, Teabag Party and the Libertarian Party absolutely SUCK!

[Palehorse]

Community organizing is a qualification for becoming president?  Hell he wasn't even in congress long enough to do anything.  He was absent most of the time or voting present.  I suppose you think getting the Olympics back on track was nothing.

Okay, here we go folks, yet ANOTHER candidate for the outright lie topic.

How long does one have to serve in congress before being "there long enough to do anything"?

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004

I guess from a repugnican viewpoint 8 years isn't long enough now is it? Hell, they haven't done a damn thing but say no for the last 4 years!

When did doing drugs, skipping class and hanging out with the wrong kind of kids pass for normal? I would think that someone who put in as much work as college takes would be proud of that work and be willing to have it read by anyone. There are a lot of inconsistencies in President Obama's past and most could be cleared up by a little honesty or transparency as he likes to say.
. . .

Holy hell. Don't tell me you didn't hang out with the wrong crowd at any point in time in your formative years, nor experiment with drugs. . . Who are you, Mother Mary?   

[Anne]

Nope, I did not do drugs or drink or hang out with the wrong kids when I was in high school. I was not a perfect teenager but those things weren't part of my teenage years. My kids didn't do drugs in high school nor did they hang out with the wrong kids. Actually, I a was pretty average kid.

[me]

Okay, here we go folks, yet ANOTHER candidate for the outright lie topic.

How long does one have to serve in congress before being "there long enough to do anything"?

Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004

I guess from a repugnican viewpoint 8 years isn't long enough now is it? Hell, they haven't done a damn thing but say no for the last 4 years!

Holy hell. Don't tell me you didn't hang out with the wrong crowd at any point in time in your formative years, nor experiment with drugs. . . Who are you, Mother Mary?   

He was absent most of those years he was in congress was what I meant by not there long enough and he voted present to the issues when he was there most of the time so he didn't have to make a decision. 

Big deal on the Harvard Law Review.  He was chosen by classmates not professors it is independent of the school. 

He said he taught but do you remember anyone saying they were in any of his classes? 

He worked for a law firm but was that his apprenticeship which would have been required rather than actually "working" as an attorney? 

I did not hang out with the wrong crowd, drink, do drugs, skip school, or smoke.   

[Exterminator]

Nope, I did not do drugs or drink or hang out with the wrong kids when I was in high school. I was not a perfect teenager but those things weren't part of my teenage years. My kids didn't do drugs in high school nor did they hang out with the wrong kids. Actually, I a was pretty average kid.

If you're an Anderson native, you were probably knocked up by the time you were 14.

[The Troll]

If you're an Anderson native, you were probably knocked up by the time you were 14.

      She probably held her legs together as she held her lips together as she sat in the corner of the prom as a ugly wall flower.    Now she just another old bitter woman with her mouth wide open talking in tongues.  Let us pray for Annie.     

[Exterminator]

Why I'm voting for Barack Obama

To tell you why I'm voting for Barack Obama, I first have to explain to you why I'm a Democrat. I was very, very young when my mother explained the differences between the parties to me. It was 1983, and I was six. Walter Mondale was running against impossible to defeat incumbent Ronald Reagan. My class was holding a fake election, and we were asked to pick a candidate to support. I was eating at the kitchen table, my mother was doing dishes, and as I did with almost everything I didn't understand, I voiced my random concerns to her out of the blue.

"Mom," I asked, "Am I a Republican or a Democrat?"

"We're Democrats." She replied.

"Why are we Democrats?" I never had just one question. You know the sort of kid who asks one thousand questions a day about everything in the entire universe, until anyone within earshot wants to smack him or her with a whiffle ball bat? I was that kid.

"Because we're poor, and Republicans don't like poor people. Democrats do. Now finish your sandwich." Fair enough, I thought, and dutifully went back to my bologna and american cheese with yellow mustard on white bread.

Of course, that isn't the whole story. To imply that a single conversation cemented my political views would be overly simplistic. It was millions of things over the years.

In my family, we watched the news every night. Not a single weekday went by where Peter Jennings didn't explain the daily global happenings to us while we ate dinner. My mother insisted that we be informed, and I payed very close attention to everything. As I watched strings of impossibly grown up tie wearers discuss the events of the day, I began to develop the characters. Republicans were always trying to stop things, or to take things away from people, or say no to something. Democrats seemed to be trying to move us along, ineptly most of the time, but in earnest. They were trying to protect people, and fight for more rights rather than less, to watch out for the little guy, and no guys were littler than my family.

I was born into the middle class, with the ranch style three bedroom and the stay at home mom. All of that changed at age nine when my father emptied our bank account and disappeared. Abandoned, we went from a standard issue, Reagan-approved nuclear family, to one with tremendous debt, less than zero dollars, and absolutely nowhere to go.

Mom didn't work at my father's insistence, as she took care of myself and my two sisters, the house, and just about everything else. Her job was harder than most as she much of her time was spent caring for my severely mentally disabled sister, the middle child, who had Down syndrome, hadn't ever spoken in her life, was prone to self-inflicted violence, and required constant monitoring. Now destitute, we were forced onto welfare and moved into government subsidized housing.

There we were. A Republican's worst nightmare. Were we living in the sort of high rolling paradise of work free, taxpayer subsidized opulence smug GOP politicians, looking to sew a little quick public resentment like to describe? No. Not by a long shot. Our neighborhood was tough, and the government stipend was only barely enough to survive. Sometimes less than enough.

But it was somewhere other than the street, which was the only rung lower on the list of possible family options. We hated welfare, but had no choice but to accept it. Without it, we would have had nothing. My family had no wealthy grandparents, no Romney fortune and connections to tap into. We had each other, and the lifeline of public assistance. The first time I heard the phrase "Welfare Queens" I was eating government paid for food in a government subsidized home. I looked around and thought "Wow. Republicans have no idea what this is like. They aren't living in the real world. To call what is going on here fit for royalty is insulting." Do some people cheat on welfare? I'm sure they do. People cheat on their taxes too. The country is filled with all sorts of terrible people. But for those of us who absolutely needed it, it was the Democrats who were there for us, while all Republicans wanted to do was insult us and take our tiny, tiny lifeline away.
 
It took us over eight years to dig ourselves out of the hole we had been forced into, and our return to solvency was only accomplished through hard work and perseverance. In the end, when we looked back at our struggle and made a list of who was there for us, and who had stood in our way, all the rhetoric and bluster meant less than nothing. Democrats fought for the programs that kept our family alive. Republicans spent most of that time bitching about having to pay a slightly higher tax rate. My sympathy for them remains limited.

Then, as I grew older and came to the realization that I was gay, it was again Republicans playing the role of villain. I had Ronald Reagan allowing his bigotry to inform his public policy, while millions died of AIDS. That's something I can never forgive him for. I had the Moral Majority missing no opportunity to tell me how depraved I was. Know a lot of depraved 13-year olds? Apparently they do. It's hard to imagine now if you weren't there, but in the days before "Will And Grace" and It Gets Better and NPH, gay people were still painted as unhinged bridge dwellers, skulking parks in Freddie Mercury mustaches looking to, well, I'm not sure what, but believe me, Republicans made it sound horrible. Forget marriage equality, Republicans wanted to put me in jail, or mental institutions, or both, for being gay. I was to be run out of polite society forever. Barred from employment. Shunned. Shamed. Attacked with impunity. With every step made toward equality — steps not possible without the leadership of the Democratic party – a histrionic outcry from Republicans could be expected.

Only Democrats have a record of supporting those cast aside by Republicans. While Republicans whine about taxes, or proselytize about morality, the rest of humanity has to survive, and only the Democratic Party has been consistently trying to help. They fail all the time, no one fails better than a Democrat, but when they succeed, they literally save people's lives. Failures vanish. Do you have any idea how many different programs FDR tried before he landed on a few that worked? Loads. Democrats aren't afraid to try to help, and fail trying. Republicans just fail to help.

Once their working days were over, it was programs like Social Security and Medicare that allowed my grandparents to retire with some modicum of dignity. Do you work for a living? Then you have Democrats, and the unions they have for so long supported, to thank for OSHA and the 40-hour work week. When my mother was finally able to go back to work, after the Democrat supported mental health infrastructure came to help my family with my sister, who did we discover behind the effort to establish the minimum wage she got that made that transition possible? Democrats. When I went to college, it was Democratic Party championed Pell grants, and government subsidized loans that made it possible. Democrats made it possible for me to attend public school, and eat while I was there. They championed PBS, which helped teach me how to read, and helped foster my love of science. These are just a few examples, and every one of these things has been, or is being currently, opposed by the Republican party.

So why do I vote Democrat? Because I am grateful. Because they've earned it. Because it's the right thing to do. Without their leadership and endless push back against a Republican party that would have seen me jailed for my sexuality, my family broken apart and cast to the streets with no support whatsoever, and my grandparents reduced to abject poverty in their golden years, the details and quality of my life would be drastically different than they are today. I could go on. I really could.

So, why Barack Obama specifically? This one is easy.

Barack Obama is a great president.

[Exterminator]

Denial: not a river in Egypt.

[libby]

Why I'm voting for Barack Obama

To tell you why I'm voting for Barack Obama, I first have to explain to you why I'm a Democrat. I was very, very young when my mother explained the differences between the parties to me. It was 1983, and I was six. Walter Mondale was running against impossible to defeat incumbent Ronald Reagan. My class was holding a fake election, and we were asked to pick a candidate to support. I was eating at the kitchen table, my mother was doing dishes, and as I did with almost everything I didn't understand, I voiced my random concerns to her out of the blue.

"Mom," I asked, "Am I a Republican or a Democrat?"

"We're Democrats." She replied.

"Why are we Democrats?" I never had just one question. You know the sort of kid who asks one thousand questions a day about everything in the entire universe, until anyone within earshot wants to smack him or her with a whiffle ball bat? I was that kid.

"Because we're poor, and Republicans don't like poor people. Democrats do. Now finish your sandwich." Fair enough, I thought, and dutifully went back to my bologna and american cheese with yellow mustard on white bread.

Of course, that isn't the whole story. To imply that a single conversation cemented my political views would be overly simplistic. It was millions of things over the years.

In my family, we watched the news every night. Not a single weekday went by where Peter Jennings didn't explain the daily global happenings to us while we ate dinner. My mother insisted that we be informed, and I payed very close attention to everything. As I watched strings of impossibly grown up tie wearers discuss the events of the day, I began to develop the characters. Republicans were always trying to stop things, or to take things away from people, or say no to something. Democrats seemed to be trying to move us along, ineptly most of the time, but in earnest. They were trying to protect people, and fight for more rights rather than less, to watch out for the little guy, and no guys were littler than my family.

I was born into the middle class, with the ranch style three bedroom and the stay at home mom. All of that changed at age nine when my father emptied our bank account and disappeared. Abandoned, we went from a standard issue, Reagan-approved nuclear family, to one with tremendous debt, less than zero dollars, and absolutely nowhere to go.

Mom didn't work at my father's insistence, as she took care of myself and my two sisters, the house, and just about everything else. Her job was harder than most as she much of her time was spent caring for my severely mentally disabled sister, the middle child, who had Down syndrome, hadn't ever spoken in her life, was prone to self-inflicted violence, and required constant monitoring. Now destitute, we were forced onto welfare and moved into government subsidized housing.

There we were. A Republican's worst nightmare. Were we living in the sort of high rolling paradise of work free, taxpayer subsidized opulence smug GOP politicians, looking to sew a little quick public resentment like to describe? No. Not by a long shot. Our neighborhood was tough, and the government stipend was only barely enough to survive. Sometimes less than enough.

But it was somewhere other than the street, which was the only rung lower on the list of possible family options. We hated welfare, but had no choice but to accept it. Without it, we would have had nothing. My family had no wealthy grandparents, no Romney fortune and connections to tap into. We had each other, and the lifeline of public assistance. The first time I heard the phrase "Welfare Queens" I was eating government paid for food in a government subsidized home. I looked around and thought "Wow. Republicans have no idea what this is like. They aren't living in the real world. To call what is going on here fit for royalty is insulting." Do some people cheat on welfare? I'm sure they do. People cheat on their taxes too. The country is filled with all sorts of terrible people. But for those of us who absolutely needed it, it was the Democrats who were there for us, while all Republicans wanted to do was insult us and take our tiny, tiny lifeline away.
 
It took us over eight years to dig ourselves out of the hole we had been forced into, and our return to solvency was only accomplished through hard work and perseverance. In the end, when we looked back at our struggle and made a list of who was there for us, and who had stood in our way, all the rhetoric and bluster meant less than nothing. Democrats fought for the programs that kept our family alive. Republicans spent most of that time bitching about having to pay a slightly higher tax rate. My sympathy for them remains limited.

Then, as I grew older and came to the realization that I was gay, it was again Republicans playing the role of villain. I had Ronald Reagan allowing his bigotry to inform his public policy, while millions died of AIDS. That's something I can never forgive him for. I had the Moral Majority missing no opportunity to tell me how depraved I was. Know a lot of depraved 13-year olds? Apparently they do. It's hard to imagine now if you weren't there, but in the days before "Will And Grace" and It Gets Better and NPH, gay people were still painted as unhinged bridge dwellers, skulking parks in Freddie Mercury mustaches looking to, well, I'm not sure what, but believe me, Republicans made it sound horrible. Forget marriage equality, Republicans wanted to put me in jail, or mental institutions, or both, for being gay. I was to be run out of polite society forever. Barred from employment. Shunned. Shamed. Attacked with impunity. With every step made toward equality — steps not possible without the leadership of the Democratic party – a histrionic outcry from Republicans could be expected.

Only Democrats have a record of supporting those cast aside by Republicans. While Republicans whine about taxes, or proselytize about morality, the rest of humanity has to survive, and only the Democratic Party has been consistently trying to help. They fail all the time, no one fails better than a Democrat, but when they succeed, they literally save people's lives. Failures vanish. Do you have any idea how many different programs FDR tried before he landed on a few that worked? Loads. Democrats aren't afraid to try to help, and fail trying. Republicans just fail to help.

Once their working days were over, it was programs like Social Security and Medicare that allowed my grandparents to retire with some modicum of dignity. Do you work for a living? Then you have Democrats, and the unions they have for so long supported, to thank for OSHA and the 40-hour work week. When my mother was finally able to go back to work, after the Democrat supported mental health infrastructure came to help my family with my sister, who did we discover behind the effort to establish the minimum wage she got that made that transition possible? Democrats. When I went to college, it was Democratic Party championed Pell grants, and government subsidized loans that made it possible. Democrats made it possible for me to attend public school, and eat while I was there. They championed PBS, which helped teach me how to read, and helped foster my love of science. These are just a few examples, and every one of these things has been, or is being currently, opposed by the Republican party.

So why do I vote Democrat? Because I am grateful. Because they've earned it. Because it's the right thing to do. Without their leadership and endless push back against a Republican party that would have seen me jailed for my sexuality, my family broken apart and cast to the streets with no support whatsoever, and my grandparents reduced to abject poverty in their golden years, the details and quality of my life would be drastically different than they are today. I could go on. I really could.

So, why Barack Obama specifically? This one is easy.

Barack Obama is a great president.

Exterminator, I've not been posting here long enough to know much about you, but after reading the above I would like to say that is a very touching and interesting story. At first I thought you'd quoted somebody, but after reading it again think you're telling your own story. If that is correct, consider yourself getting hugged.  By me.

[Henry Hawk]

 

[The Troll]

Why I'm voting for Barack Obama

To tell you why I'm voting for Barack Obama, I first have to explain to you why I'm a Democrat. I was very, very young when my mother explained the differences between the parties to me. It was 1983, and I was six. Walter Mondale was running against impossible to defeat incumbent Ronald Reagan. My class was holding a fake election, and we were asked to pick a candidate to support. I was eating at the kitchen table, my mother was doing dishes, and as I did with almost everything I didn't understand, I voiced my random concerns to her out of the blue.

"Mom," I asked, "Am I a Republican or a Democrat?"

"We're Democrats." She replied.

"Why are we Democrats?" I never had just one question. You know the sort of kid who asks one thousand questions a day about everything in the entire universe, until anyone within earshot wants to smack him or her with a whiffle ball bat? I was that kid.

"Because we're poor, and Republicans don't like poor people. Democrats do. Now finish your sandwich." Fair enough, I thought, and dutifully went back to my bologna and american cheese with yellow mustard on white bread.

Of course, that isn't the whole story. To imply that a single conversation cemented my political views would be overly simplistic. It was millions of things over the years.

In my family, we watched the news every night. Not a single weekday went by where Peter Jennings didn't explain the daily global happenings to us while we ate dinner. My mother insisted that we be informed, and I payed very close attention to everything. As I watched strings of impossibly grown up tie wearers discuss the events of the day, I began to develop the characters. Republicans were always trying to stop things, or to take things away from people, or say no to something. Democrats seemed to be trying to move us along, ineptly most of the time, but in earnest. They were trying to protect people, and fight for more rights rather than less, to watch out for the little guy, and no guys were littler than my family.

I was born into the middle class, with the ranch style three bedroom and the stay at home mom. All of that changed at age nine when my father emptied our bank account and disappeared. Abandoned, we went from a standard issue, Reagan-approved nuclear family, to one with tremendous debt, less than zero dollars, and absolutely nowhere to go.

Mom didn't work at my father's insistence, as she took care of myself and my two sisters, the house, and just about everything else. Her job was harder than most as she much of her time was spent caring for my severely mentally disabled sister, the middle child, who had Down syndrome, hadn't ever spoken in her life, was prone to self-inflicted violence, and required constant monitoring. Now destitute, we were forced onto welfare and moved into government subsidized housing.

There we were. A Republican's worst nightmare. Were we living in the sort of high rolling paradise of work free, taxpayer subsidized opulence smug GOP politicians, looking to sew a little quick public resentment like to describe? No. Not by a long shot. Our neighborhood was tough, and the government stipend was only barely enough to survive. Sometimes less than enough.

But it was somewhere other than the street, which was the only rung lower on the list of possible family options. We hated welfare, but had no choice but to accept it. Without it, we would have had nothing. My family had no wealthy grandparents, no Romney fortune and connections to tap into. We had each other, and the lifeline of public assistance. The first time I heard the phrase "Welfare Queens" I was eating government paid for food in a government subsidized home. I looked around and thought "Wow. Republicans have no idea what this is like. They aren't living in the real world. To call what is going on here fit for royalty is insulting." Do some people cheat on welfare? I'm sure they do. People cheat on their taxes too. The country is filled with all sorts of terrible people. But for those of us who absolutely needed it, it was the Democrats who were there for us, while all Republicans wanted to do was insult us and take our tiny, tiny lifeline away.
 
It took us over eight years to dig ourselves out of the hole we had been forced into, and our return to solvency was only accomplished through hard work and perseverance. In the end, when we looked back at our struggle and made a list of who was there for us, and who had stood in our way, all the rhetoric and bluster meant less than nothing. Democrats fought for the programs that kept our family alive. Republicans spent most of that time bitching about having to pay a slightly higher tax rate. My sympathy for them remains limited.

Then, as I grew older and came to the realization that I was gay, it was again Republicans playing the role of villain. I had Ronald Reagan allowing his bigotry to inform his public policy, while millions died of AIDS. That's something I can never forgive him for. I had the Moral Majority missing no opportunity to tell me how depraved I was. Know a lot of depraved 13-year olds? Apparently they do. It's hard to imagine now if you weren't there, but in the days before "Will And Grace" and It Gets Better and NPH, gay people were still painted as unhinged bridge dwellers, skulking parks in Freddie Mercury mustaches looking to, well, I'm not sure what, but believe me, Republicans made it sound horrible. Forget marriage equality, Republicans wanted to put me in jail, or mental institutions, or both, for being gay. I was to be run out of polite society forever. Barred from employment. Shunned. Shamed. Attacked with impunity. With every step made toward equality — steps not possible without the leadership of the Democratic party – a histrionic outcry from Republicans could be expected.

Only Democrats have a record of supporting those cast aside by Republicans. While Republicans whine about taxes, or proselytize about morality, the rest of humanity has to survive, and only the Democratic Party has been consistently trying to help. They fail all the time, no one fails better than a Democrat, but when they succeed, they literally save people's lives. Failures vanish. Do you have any idea how many different programs FDR tried before he landed on a few that worked? Loads. Democrats aren't afraid to try to help, and fail trying. Republicans just fail to help.

Once their working days were over, it was programs like Social Security and Medicare that allowed my grandparents to retire with some modicum of dignity. Do you work for a living? Then you have Democrats, and the unions they have for so long supported, to thank for OSHA and the 40-hour work week. When my mother was finally able to go back to work, after the Democrat supported mental health infrastructure came to help my family with my sister, who did we discover behind the effort to establish the minimum wage she got that made that transition possible? Democrats. When I went to college, it was Democratic Party championed Pell grants, and government subsidized loans that made it possible. Democrats made it possible for me to attend public school, and eat while I was there. They championed PBS, which helped teach me how to read, and helped foster my love of science. These are just a few examples, and every one of these things has been, or is being currently, opposed by the Republican party.

So why do I vote Democrat? Because I am grateful. Because they've earned it. Because it's the right thing to do. Without their leadership and endless push back against a Republican party that would have seen me jailed for my sexuality, my family broken apart and cast to the streets with no support whatsoever, and my grandparents reduced to abject poverty in their golden years, the details and quality of my life would be drastically different than they are today. I could go on. I really could.

So, why Barack Obama specifically? This one is easy.

Barack Obama is a great president.

  Who wrote this letter?  I thought you were living with a real smart well off woman who loved you very much.  I didn't take this letter as one that you wrote.  Right?   

[Locutus]

  Who wrote this letter?  I thought you were living with a real smart well off woman who loved you very much.  I didn't take this letter as one that you wrote.  Right?   

A man named Benjamin Phillips wrote it.

http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/why-im-voting-for-barack-obama/politics/2012/10/27/52029

[libby]

Uh oh. I just looked again at what Exterminator posted, and this time I saw the quotation mark at the beginning.

[Locutus]

Uh oh. I just looked again at what Exterminator posted, and this time I saw the quotation mark at the beginning.

I'm sure he'll forgive you. 

[me]

If you're an Anderson native, you were probably knocked up by the time you were 14.

Well, I'm not and I wasn't and you personally attacking me doesn't change the fact you're trying to avoid talking about which is Obama's high school and college records and why he's so insistent about not letting them be released.

[Palehorse]

Well, I'm not and I wasn't and you personally attacking me doesn't change the fact you're trying to avoid talking about which is Obama's high school and college records and why he's so insistent about not letting them be released.

That is about retarded. The tax records your candidate refuses to release are absolutely on target.