Call Them on Their Hypocrisy

I was washing the car today and my neighbor stopped his yard work for a chat.

Now, as a rule, I don't engage in political talk in my neighborhood because it is filled with Republicans, conservatives, Mormons, and conservative Republican Mormons. Basically, most of them think of me as the freaky Communist liberal, because I voted for Kerry.

But this particular day, my neighbor let loose with the phrase liberals have to deal with 10 times a day in the press: "You know what your problem is? You define yourself by what you're against, not what you're for. You'll never win anything being anti-Bush."

Fighting the urge to pick up my bucket and dump grimy water on his head, I just stared dumbly for a moment and decided dousing him wouldn't be very neighborly.

"You are kidding, right? My position is "a problem", because I'm against Bush? Tell me, Scott; would you consider part of your core beliefs that you are anti-abortion, anti-taxes, and anti-gay? What are you for besides no taxes?"
(He said "the war.")

I'm for a lot of things: I believe in civil rights, so I'm for consenting adults being able to marry and a woman having final say over her uterus. I believe in fairness, so those of who benefit more from our infrastructure (the elite) should pay more -- and our kids shouldn't pay for a budget more busted than a drunken King's wild weekend in Vegas.

Funny how this works, Scott, but if I disagree with Bush on a particular issue I'm going to be "against" him. Certainly no red-blooded Republican in this country would ever pass up a chance to be against the Clintons, would they?

The media is even worse with this bullshit, repeating Mehlman talking point #5: Democrats can't win, because they have no plan. News flash: the Republicans have a death grip on the executive (taking extra-Constitutional powers, it appears;) the Congress is safely Republican and completed neutered by boot-licking Republicans and Democrats scared to death of a corporate media slanted to the right; and the mother of all neo-Victories: a Republican-packed judiciary.

Short of gifting Cheney an M2 machine gun and inviting half of Congress on one of his famous domestic-raised "game" hunts, the Democrats can't implement a damn thing. I've heard 100 Democratic plans: plans to get us off Middle East oil, to save the Iraq disaster, to fix the budget disaster, etc., etc. Democrats have plenty of plans; and (in honor of my former Red State) those plans are as helpful as tits on a boar, because they have no power.