My Substitute Reality -You're just jealous cause the little voices only talk to me-

Sunday July 29, 2012

Where Were You in ’62?

Filed under: Life — don @ 12:30 pm

This is an article by Bill O’Reilly. You can see it here.

Fifty years ago, in the summer of 1962, America was a far different place from what it is today. President John Kennedy was presiding over Camelot, and despite fouling up the invasion of Cuba, his approval rating hovered at around 80 percent. Unemployment was 5.2 percent with the average family income at $6,000 a year.

Most Americans did not have much money but made do. Millions bought Elvis Presley’s record “Return to Sender” and went to see “Lawrence of Arabia” in movie theaters. At home, “Wagon Train” was the top TV show.

Years later, the film “American Graffiti” featured the ad campaign “Where were you in ’62?” Well, I was on Long Island, hanging around. During the day, we swam at the Levittown pool and played stickball in the street, and in August, my father took us to a lake in Vermont. Also, we went to Jones Beach and baked in the sun without block while secondhand cigarette smoke engulfed us on the blanket.

My folks had little disposable income, certainly not enough for air conditioning or a color television set. But again, there was little whining in my working-class neighborhood. We had fun with what was available. Most everybody worked. Nobody was on welfare.

In fact, just 6 percent of Americans received welfare payments in 1962. Now that number is 35 percent. More than 100 million of us are getting money from the government, and that does not count Social Security and Medicare, programs workers pay into. This is a profound change in the American tradition.

Also, we now have close to nine million workers collecting federal disability checks. In 2001, that number was about five million. Here’s my question: Is the workplace that much more hazardous than it was 11 years ago? Is our health that much worse?

The answer is no. What we are seeing is the rise of the Nanny State.

Self-reliance and ambition made the United States the most powerful nation on Earth. But that ethic is now eroding fast. Instead, many Americans are looking to game the system, and the philosophy of “where’s mine” has taken deep root. About half of American workers pay no federal income tax, leaving the burden to be shouldered by the achievers. As The Edward Winter Group once sang: “Come on and take a free ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Presiding over and joyously encouraging this societal shift is the purveyor of social justice President Barack Obama. His entire campaign is now built around making the rich “pay their fair share.” And where will that money go? To those in need, of course. And those legions are growing larger every single day.

Fair-minded people do not begrudge a safety net for Americans who, through no fault of their own, need help. A compassionate society provides for those battered by life. But what is happening in this country is far beyond a helping hand. We are creating a dual society. In one corner: Americans who work hard to succeed. In the other corner: folks who want what you have.

And the second corner is the growth industry.

Thursday July 12, 2012

Things that make you go “Hmmmmmmm”

Filed under: Life,Politics — don @ 7:25 pm

I found this here.

BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY
NOTE: All answers are “b.”

1. What Party was founded as the anti-slavery Party and fought to free blacks from slavery?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

2. What was the Party of Abraham Lincoln who signed the emancipation proclamation that resulted in the Juneteenth celebrations that occur in black communities today?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

3. What Party passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

4. What Party passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting blacks protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, and was the Party of most blacks prior to the 1960’s, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

5. What was the Party of the founding fathers of the NAACP?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

6. What was the Party of President Dwight Eisenhower who sent U.S. troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools, established the Civil Rights Commission in 1958, and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

7. What Party, by the greatest percentage, passed the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950’s and 1960’s?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

8. What was the Party of President Richard Nixon who instituted the first Affirmative Action program in 1969 with the Philadelphia Plan that established goals and timetables?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

9. What is the Party of President George W. Bush who appointed more blacks to high-level positions than any president in history and who spent record money education, job training and health care to help black Americans prosper?

[ ] a. Democratic Party

[ ] b. Republican Party

BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY

NOTE: All answers are “b.”

10. What Party fought to keep blacks in slavery and was the Party of the Ku Klux Klan?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

11. What Party from 1870 to 1930 used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks their rights as citizens?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

12. What was the Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry Truman who rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

13. What was the Party of President Lyndon Johnson, who called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “that [N-word] preacher” because he opposed the Viet Nam War; and President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator, then as president opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after becoming president and the FBI investigate Dr. King on suspicion of being a communist?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

14. What is the Party of the late Senators Robert Byrd who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Ernest “Fritz” Hollings who hoisted the Confederate flag over the state capitol in South Carolina while governor, and Ted Kennedy who called black judicial nominees “Neanderthals” while blocking their appointments?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

15. What was the Party of President Bill Clinton who failed to fight the terrorists after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, sent troops to war in Bosnia and Kosovo without Congressional approval, vetoed the Welfare Reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

16. What is the Party of Vice President Al Gore whose father voted against the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s, and who lost the 2000 election as confirmed by a second recount of Florida votes by the “Miami Herald” and a consortium of major news organizations and the ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that blacks were not denied the right to vote?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

17. What Party is against school vouchers, against school prayers, and takes the black vote for granted without ever acknowledging their racist past or apologizing for trying to expand slavery, lynching blacks and passing the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that caused great harm to blacks?

[ ] a. Republican Party

[ ] b. Democratic Party

Tuesday July 3, 2012

For Daryl

Filed under: Funny — don @ 6:26 pm

Monday July 2, 2012

Pay no attention to the liar behind the curtain.

Filed under: Politics — don @ 7:21 pm

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