A Letter for Blue Voters Living in a Red District

Cross-posted from The Swash Zone by (O)CT(O)PUS:

The following letter was written in response to a request by fellow blogger, Nance, of Mature Landscaping. Having received favorable reviews in cyberspace, I decided to make this letter available to anyone who lives in a red state or red district and wants to send a message to their local Tea Thug. Please feel free to copy it, modify it, and send to the Republican reprehensible of your choice:


Dear Representative Posey (R-FL),

You and your Tea Party colleagues seem to suffer from one fatal flaw: A callous disregard for one of our founding documents that clearly states:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …”

How does your no compromise, hostage-taking approach to governance square with these words? It does not. Like a bad marriage to an abusive spouse who violates personal boundaries, you and your Tea Party Republicans fail to distinguish between YOURS, MINE, and OURS. The United States is not just YOUR country; it is also MY country. It spends not only YOUR tax money; it spends MY tax dollars too. A public debate without compromise and consensus is not my idea of “consent of the governed.” The key word in this debate should be ‘OURS,’ not ‘yours.’

I have paid into the Medicare and Social Security system my entire life. It is MY money, not yours. And I resent your support of legislation that will gut or eliminate MY benefits. Tantamount to THEFT, you have no right to dismantle the social safety net that generations of my forbearers struggled for ... and died for!

I resent paying higher marginal tax rates than your billionaire benefactors who refuse to pay their fair share of the burdens of civilization ... thus creating a wealth gap at MY expense.

I resent the credit worthiness of MY country being held hostage by a minority fringe group that have demonstrated more anger management pathology than common sense or common decency. When you took your oath of office, you promised to uphold the U.S. Constitution which clearly states:

"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

For some unfathomable reason, you think Grover Norquist’s No Tax Pledge holds more legal authority than your obligations as set forth in the U.S. Constitution.

I resent the atmosphere of character assassination, bullying, and fear engendered by you and other Tea Party Republicans who have defamed and vilified every good citizen with whom you disagree.

No, Mr. Posey, you have disrespected us, verbally abused us, and now threaten to steal from us. No longer do you deserve the consent of the governed. Most of all, you have defiled our democracy. At election time next year, I want a DIVORCE!

THE KRAUTHAMMER DOUBLE LIE:

From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

The Krauthammer Double Lie

"It's sitting right there in today's column. The first is this absurd notion:

Obama won a great victory in 2008 that he took as a mandate to transform America toward European-style social democracy.

Piffle. His record in office has been remarkably moderate.

From a stimulus loaded with tax cuts to an accession to leaving the Bush tax cuts in place in 2010, from winning the war on al Qaeda that Bush and Cheney were losing to managing the bank and auto company bailouts without losing vast amounts of public money, Obama is a moderate Republican. His health insurance plan is identical to one from the Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, and to the right of Nixon and Clinton; his attempt at financial deregulation was modest and has been torn apart by lobbyists since. These truths are obscured in order to make this point:

Obama faces two massive problems — jobs and debt. They’re both the result of his spectacularly failed Keynesian gamble: massive spending that left us a stagnant economy with high and chronic unemployment — and a staggering debt burden.

This is so grotesque a lie it needs a correction. The vast bulk of the debt was inherited by Obama and created by the GOP under Bush and both parties before then; much of the rest is a function of a stimulus that prevented total collapse and the revenue implosion caused by the Great Recession. To pin the current unemployment rate and accumulated debt to Obama alone is so false, so misleading, so gratuitously disingenuous it belongs on Fox."