Dime Store Philosophy

There’s no shortage of pundits, amateur shrinks and our own friends and neighbors who like to tell us what’s going on in America. I have my personal ideas that are based on nothing more than my own personal observations. That’s a departure from what I’ve accustomed to because I’ve always relied on stats, studies, polls and opinions of people I trusted.

It’s in the middle of August, it’s very hot, the economy is struggling and it looks as though no one cares.

If you are on the right, you will never understand how anyone could be stupid enough to give President Obama a second term. You are also frustrated because there’s not any evidence out there that will lead to impeachment. The so-called scandals have fizzled out.

Despite the Affordable Care Act being unpopular, about 51% do not want the law repealed. The anger these people have will hinder any chance of them listening to reason. They actually think shutting down the government will lead to defunding Obamacare. You have 15 Republican senators misleading their constituents by saying that voting for a continuing resolution that funds Obamacae means you are for keeping the current health care law. The Affordable Care Act falls in the mandatory spending category because the law is considered an entitlement. Democrats are silently hoping that the radical right pushes their leadership into a giant mistake that will doom them in the 2014 elections and beyond.

Conservatives take the spoken word literally, and they do their own interpretation. Liberals and Democrats are more nuance. For example, when the president said the old al Qaeda (the ones who attacked us on 9/11) had been weakened, we knew he meant that we destroyed the old havens and leaders; we never thought that al-Qaeda was finished. Then again, we weren’t scouring over the speech looking for words and meanings that we could exploit politically.

It’s relatively easy to read the frustration some conservatives have experienced the last two presidential elections. They blame the low information voters who are naturally less intelligent than they are, a nonexistent voter fraud problem, people yearning for free government handouts, and that their candidate was not conservative enough. It can’t be their policies or rhetoric wasn’t that appealing because Romney won several Texas counties by double digits. It’s like Governor Rick Perry bragging that Forbes's magazine had Texas as home to 7 of the top 10 best cities for future job growth without mentioning that those cities have mayors who are Democrats. Bill Clinton pointed out the fact that in the fifty-one years since President Kennedy, the GOP had twenty –eight years in the White House and the Democrats had twenty- three. In that period, the economy produced 66 private sectors million jobs -42 million under the Democrats, 24 million under the Republicans.

Last but certainly not least is the racial hatred that is worsening for President Obama and people of color. A racist does not want to own that label because they will be shunned by the people they presume to represent. The “N” word has been effectively taken away from them, so they will say the president is not one of us, they don’t like his white half either, he's also a Muslim, Socialist, and then use voter suppression laws to make it more difficult for his kind to vote. Just last week, the president was met with several racial hate signs in Arizona where he was making a speech. When all that doesn't work they would like to scare you into thinking that we are becoming a third-world country. The United States is among the most successful countries pulling out of their financial doldrums. For some, it’s a last stand of sorts for what they see as traditional conservative America. These are the people favoring state nullification laws which stems from their Civil War mentality.