Monday, February 27, 2006

To a poster on the Mike Malloy board


Conservatives also believe that poverty and social marginalization are serious maladies, for which some external assistance help is needed. But, unlike liberals, conservatives believe personal decisions, rather than external forces, play a greater role in determining one’s circumstances. Consequently, instead of government largesse, they believe government should do all it can to grow the economy, so that more people have employment opportunities and the educational ones that follow from it. They also believe in a value system that encourages personal responsibility and making good decisions that will lead to a more successful life. Believing as they do, conservatives look at liberal philosophy and find it wanting because it would enable people, who purposefully and consistently make bad decisions, by giving them money to dig themselves out of the hole that they, themselves have dug.


Yes, we all know how much tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans have helped the economy compared to raising taxes on the wealthy in the 90s. Wouldn't it make sense that money that comes back to the wealthy in this form isn't really put back into the economy but rather put away into savings accounts or invested?

personal responsibility?! HAHA, OMG! Maybe some of you conservatives do believe in that, but you don't believe in personal responsibility when it comes to businesses and corporations. You don't believe in personal responsibility when it is applied to the rich and the powerful. A factory who pollutes the environment around it should not be held accountable because that would get in the way of profits. You only look at fraud when it's supposedly committed by those on welfare while ignoring corporate fraud which costs the American people much more. A corporation who does not pay its taxes should not be held accountable while those who "run up" credit card bills and file for bankruptcy should. Forget the person may have had a medical emergency. He should pay up while the corporation goes scot free. Why do you conservatives stay silent when we point out that BILLIONS of dollars have been lost due to corporations taking the "personal responsibility" of evading their tax responsibilities?

You think the poor are lazy because they make personal choices to spend time bar-hopping and running up credit card bills not intending to pay them, right? They piss away their money on gambling, right? They piss it away on booze, right? You buy into the myth of the welfare queen that Reagan viciously put into the media, now proven that his welfare queen with the Cadillac did not exist (although there are examples of those who abuse welfare and commit fraud, but they aren't the overwhelming majority as conservatives would love for you to believe). Tell the person who works a full-time job at Walmart and STILL has to apply for food-stamps. You tell them to their FACES that they're lazy and shiftless. You tell those who work for the minimum wage fulltime so they can support their families that they're lazy. You tell them that they made a choice to work at Walmart when our economy is in the shitter that thousands flock to newly-opened Walmarts because they need a job.

Look throughout American history and you'll see that it's not only the poor who take welfare. Corporations have always cried out against government regulation but have had no qualms taking government assistance in the form of subsidies. Yet corporations try to duck their responsibility as taxpayers through tax shelters overseas in the Cayman Islands. Isn't that similar to what you claim people on welfare do?

Look throughout history and you'll see that conservatives always use the myth of the lazy, shiftless whatever to justify keeping those at the top of the economic ladder at the top. This is where the myth of personal responsibility is blown apart. Isn't a part of the personal responsibility myth where it says that through hard work and determination, you can strike it rich too and that must mean you do not have any personality defects.

Take for example, slaveholders in the South. I mean they were rich, weren't they? So it must mean that they worked really hard to earn an honest living, right? Dream on. Many of them thought if they didn't enslave these people, their slaves would just idle away their free time and not work. I found it ironic that slaveholders even while their slaves continued to toil and sweat tears on their plantations deemed their slaves to be lazy and inclined towards being idle while they themselves did nothing compared to the slaves.

Conservatives opposed confiscating the estates of the slaveowner aristocracy and distributing it to the freedmen. Why? They justified it by using the rhetoric of the handout, much like how you conservatives do the same when it comes to welfare. The argument is the same. The slaves need to work for the land instead of having it handed out to them. If we hand out the land to them, they won't work it because they'll just expect more from the government. Ironic isn't it? Those who toiled the land who felt that they rightfully had ownership of the land their blood and sweat and tears made were now being told they had to work for it! In vain did the Radical Republicans point out the obvious fact that these slaves had worked YEARS to earn it. It's simple. Conservatives then feared taking away assets from the economically powerful, those who were more likely to sympathize with their ideology. Now, it's if you give people welfare, they'll expect to get rich. I hear you can make more money on welfare than earning an honest wage through a job!

We have to institute Black Codes or else the slaves will just wander around and do nothing. Never mind that newly-freed slaves wandered around the South to look for their families, a fact that was lost on the family-values people of the day. If we don't have these people work in our sweatshops, they'll just go to the saloons and get drunk. People on welfare abuse the system hoping to strike it rich. You use the term personal responsibility to justify the rich exploiting the poor in a roundabout way. Do you know WHY the Black Codes were instituted? It's because the former slaveholders wanted to tie down the freedmen to the land, not because the blacks were "innately lazy." The myth of the lazy and shiftless, cowardly slave was used to justify a form of slavery in all but name.

You conservatives always promote the Horatio Alger myth. If we work hard, we can pull ourselves out of the working-class and then become millionaries too! YAY! Unfortunately, that dream never existed for the majority of working-class Americans. Once you're born in the middle class, you're more likely to stay there. You use this to delude the working class to vote against their economic interests. How many freepers oppose tax increases on the wealthiest Americans believe they hold on to the delusion that they'll move into the ranks of the top 20% of income-earners?

Take the bankruptcy bill. Those who crafted it used the same rhetoric of personal responsibility that you conservatives do to justify it. The people who file for bankruptcy are lazy and shiftless, charging up credit cards on luxury items like HDTVs and computers while filing for bankruptcy to get out of paying it. You think personal responsibility is the solution to everything? Tell the person who had to file for bankruptcy due to a medical emergency that he or she did not take the personal responsibility of not getting sick. Tell the person who did not have insurance but was involved in a car accident that he or she should have taken the personal responsibility to avoid the freeway if she didn't have insurance.

In fact, let's take this further. Let's tell a woman who was raped that she didn't follow the teachings of personal responsibility. For every priest or minister who orders a raped victim to go do penance, let me ask you this. Was it a choice for the woman to be in a situation that she could be raped? Did she ask for it? Do you think that she should have taken the personal responsibility not to put herself in that situation? Think I'm being asinine? I've had a personal experience dealing with this bullshit and traditionally the clergy have viewed rape as sexual, which leads some of them to cast blame on the victim.

Married (heterosexual) people (43% very happy) are a good bit happier than unmarrieds (24%) and this too has been a consistent finding over many years and many surveys.


Did the poster add the heterosexual or was it actually included in the report? Could this be an attempt to spin the report so it fits his worldview?


Yet there is no better poster boy for liberal neurosis than Mike Malloy. Every day, he broadcasts nothing but negativity and criticism about the current administration. He does this even though he rarely has any facts to back up his claims about the so-called “failures” and “illegality” of the alleged Bush “crime” family. Not once in the numerous times that I’ve listened to him does he speak about anything positive or provide any ideas of his own on how to run the country, even if Bush were to step down. Instead, it’s just a constant, uninterrupted drone of unwarranted and unsubstantiated negativity that he verbally vomits on to the airwaves every week day evening.


At least he is honest and says he isn't here to offer solutions. Perhaps he wants us listeners to come up with our own solutions rather than to have people like Rush decide how all of you are going to think. Perhaps he wants us to be independent thinkers instead of followers. Perhaps, Mike respects his listeners enough to allow them to judge for themselves unlike Rush who respects his listeners that he tells them to suspend all thought and just listen to what he says.

you don't have anything to say about the negativity emanating through right-wing talk radio today. Do you have anything to say about Rush always harping on liberals much as Mike always does to conservatives? Wouldn't that be the same thing? How come one gets condemned while the others don't? In fact I'll take negativity over the "accidental" slip-ups of racism that right-wing talk show hosts spew. ("Take that bone out of your nose and call me back")

Indeed, given the findings of the Pew Research study and his own broadcasts, Mike Malloy is undoubtedly the Crown Prince of Prozac, the Deacon of Depression, the Marquis of Malevolence, the Caliph of Criticism, and the Imperial Emperor of Ill-Will, all rolled into one! In fact, if Mike and Kathy Malloy truly love their daughter, Molly (which I’m sure they do), they’ll spare her the blue-state blues and raise Molly to become a bconservative!


I'm happy as a liberal and a Catholic. Unlike what you conservatives would like me to think, I feel comfortable being both. I feel assured that I won't be going to hell because I'm a liberal. I'll be going to hell because of other things that I don't care to discuss. If there is anything to be depressed about, it's the fact that our so-called president is a disaster in leadership. I'm sure you don't find his handling of the Katrina disaster a failure in leadership. I'm sure you're fine with his misleading the American people to go to war in Iraq. I'm sure you're fine with all that misleading that led up to the Medicare bill. How much did the administration say it was going to be? $400 billion? What's the cost now? $700 billion?

It takes someone who is a follower, who believes everything the media tells them to be happy in a country which is heading towards bankruptcy, which now is condemned for the hypocrisy of its human rights rhetoric, which is being led slowly into a dictatorship in all but name. It takes someone who has the sheep mentality to see that maybe having an ALL-POWERFUL executive branch not accountable to anyone is a good thing. It takes someone who is happy and content to forget all the things being done in the name of the American people like torture. (btw, when does torture work?) It takes someone who is content to see that Bush is a Man of God who can do no wrong just because the churches or the liberal media tell him so.

I would love to see your justification in not helping the least among us. For an ideology which has followers that spout out Jesus as if they owned him, you surely do not have anything to say about charity. You do not help the poor, but rather you spit upon them by pointing out so-called defects in them. Am I to believe that it is only the wealthy who deserve the gates of Heaven? Are corporate crooks like Ken Lay saints while every other crook is exactly, that, a criminal? Sure, you can accuse me of pushing my religious beliefs on you but you do the same. You use Jesus to justify discrimination against gays and lesbians even though there's no reference by him on homosexuals. You use him to justify your platform. Many of you conservatives falsely attribute the quote about give a man a fishing pole and he'll fish to him so you can justify your personal responsibility talk.

But we have charities, you say. Charities can discriminate. What's to prevent a charity tied to the fundamentalist movement from denying someone who happens to be gay assistance? What's to prevent one from denying assistance to people they deem not worthy? Do you think faith-based programs that receive OUR taxpayer dollars have the right to discriminate when they hire against those they deem worthy of hell like gay people?

Why is it that conservatives always complain about how their taxpayer dollars are used as if they are the only ones who pay taxes?

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