The Mandelbear's Musings

I want my country back, and the only way to get it back is to vote for a Democrat in every damned election I'm qualified to vote in.

The Department of Health & Human Services moves to define "contraception" as "abortion".

I live in California. Our initiative process has made it entirely clear that any small, cynical group of greedy bastards can cobble together enough special-interest votes to get almost any hare-brained scheme that benefits them passed by a simple majority. The Bush administration and their puppet masters have done that on an even larger scale; the entire Republican party has been turned over to the religious right as a way of keeping a small group of extremely rich, extremely cynical people in power. This latest move is a blatent attempt to drag mainstream Catholics into the conspiracy, and it may very well succeed.

One more term with a Republican in office, and there will be a right-wing nutcase majority on the US Supreme Court. DO YOU WANT THAT? If you have to think hard about it, I'm not sure I want to know.

I am old enough to remember people driving across state lines to get abortions. To buy contraceptives. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when Jews and Catholics, as well as African-Americans (as we call them now) were routinely discriminated against in jobs, housing, and college admissions. When restrooms, drinking fountains, and schools were segregated. When Jewish kids like me were routinely teased -- if not worse -- at school. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when a divorced-and-remarried relative couldn't go back home to Italy for fear of being arrested for bigamy, because divorce wasn't legal there. DO YOU WANT THAT HERE?

Think about whether you want the bad old days back before you vote Republican, because that's what you're going to get, and worse. Much worse.

We are one Supreme Court justice away from a right-wing religious dictatorship. If that. It may already be too late, because the ones pulling the puppet strings aren't necessarily tied to the religious right. That's just where they can get the votes now. If that coalition falls apart, they'll start to cobble together a different set of single issues. We may only have one or two terms to root them out. They already have a head start.

I am also old enough to remember when Richard Nixon was considered by many to be a corrupt right-wing nut case, and to remember that he was somewhere to the left of most of today's Democrats. I am old enough to remember when "liberal" was considered middle-of-the-road. I am old enough to have been proud to call myself a radical.

I am old enough to remember when the US had a middle class. When most rich people paid their fair share of taxes. When we learned the Bill of Rights in school, and knew that our government was there to enforce it and not to undermine it.

I am old enough to have learned the Pledge of Allegiance before a Republican administration added the words "under God" to it, and I still say it as I learned it.

DAMN IT, I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

Thanks to this post by snobahr, this post by kyburg, and this post by ravan. Planned Parenthood has an online petition.