I agree with Molly Ivans, we did not start this war, the entitled elite did. Perhaps there is a mistaken realization that the people who leave the middle class are going up the financial ladder, when in reality they are sinking. Perhaps this hope that they are someday going to get rich, is why they bought the demonization of people in poverty in the 1990s, I don’t know.

When the poor tried to convince the middle class they were next during the Welfare Reform debate (and other similar attempts during local and national legislation), they were consistently marginalized and ignored. This disenfranchisement has caused deep pensiveness and reluctance within the lower classes to feel much of the middle class’s pain. After all they were warned, yet they joined in with the elite and bought the “welfare queen” stories. They refused to see that class warfare on the poor was code for race warfare as well ~ and if that worked then elitists would try other “codes” or framing. There are more whites on welfare than other nationalities, yet a welfare family is always considered and depicted as black, for instance.

Now the middle class is alarmed and aware they are next as they watch their numbers diminish. I would like to extend a hand to them as a somewhat bitter advocate because they have *no* idea the misery and disconnect from mainstream America that is in store for them, thanks to their avid assistance, but I am also wondering how I can help as well as how I can get over my own pensiveness and well, shoedenfraude, which I struggle with but also have to admit I possess. Because, one positive thing about their dwindling numbers is that they are beginning to see what the poor were trying to fight ~ not only for themselves but for ALL Americans to have entitlements and support.

I am not sure they will listen to us when we say, “what happens to the least of these people will happen to you’ and ‘the strength of society is within their weakest link …’ I would not wish poverty on my worst enemy and I want to help, but I am not sure how. Because after I overcome some of the pain and bitterness of disenfranchisement perhaps then I can wholeheartedly join the concerns of my fellow Americans even if they did ignore ours. Do you have any suggestions as to what to read, organizations, etc., who are struggling with these issues?

Thanks for your time
Cat In Seattle

DiFi

Let’s strand her on the other side of the wall too….

Now for a chat about water and lawns and DiFi’s $23 billion secret giveaway deal to 500 wealthy Central Valley farmers.

Well maybe now we know where the bodies are buried.

behindthefall @ 174

Oooh, awkward! Question to certain candidates: Why did you vote to erect a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and not along the U.S.-Canada border? Verrrry quiet audience, lotsa rictus in the smiling: don’t think Hill was expecting that one.

I support a north-south wall running along California’s eastern border, and I also support sticking the governator on the eastern side of it

Ecotopia rising emerging!

We’ve seceded? woo-hoo!

Now for a chat about water and lawns and DiFi’s $23 billion secret giveaway deal to 500 wealthy Central Valley farmers.

DiFi wants to give them the $23 billion …’cause the farmers owe the US Treasury – that’s us – $500 million.

That’s right – DiFi and the Bushie Bureau of Reclamation want to give a handful of failed farmers already in hock for half a billion dollars almost fifty times their debt.

Where do we sign up for deals like that?

Hey DiFi – can I get fifty times my student loans back as a check from the Treasury?

It’s easy, even for me, a Viet Nam vet, to ignore, really ignore, the U.S. troops in Iraq.

I wish we had a draft.

So some fucking rag would put up the pictures of Americans killed each day, each week, or each month.

No one cares about the casualties, really.

Because they aren’t the kids we knew.

And because, after all, they signed up for this shit.

If there was a draft that would of given Bush even more troops at his disposal to do whatever aspirations he might of been dreaming of in the Middle East (some of us right here right now could be viewing this blog from Iran)…

Taking into consideration to what all of us here has seen regarding the “I’m the decider” (so f*ck everybody else) personality traits of our commander-in-chief do you really think that pictures of those unfortunate American military personnel who died for his Iraq debacle in a newspaper would make a damn bit of difference in the direction of this ill-fated campaign?

We, the unwashed masses, have the voice and the will to change the direction of the war. But only through our election officials can we make this happen.

Yeah, both have “wealth” and “belief” in the one sentence, but that doesn’t make them the same sentence.

I think you’re right… and this evangelical weirdness of hosting thousand-person prayer meetings where they openly pray for tokens of material wealth is just perverted. If this was ancient Greece of Mosaic Canaan, they’d all have been struck down with lightning bolts then and there. Poof.

Cujo359 @ 160

Americans seem to be way out in front of their “leaders” on this issue. I wonder how many more such spectacles it will take to convince Democrats, at least, that it really is time to start withdrawing.

I’m having to depend on my wife to summarize the answers, but I’d have to say that all the candidates said get out of Iraq, apparently only one (”one with gray hair”) said do it more gradually than immediately. That being said, Kucinich STILL got the loudest applause (to my ears), which tells me that he translated well, spoke well, and wasn’t “too short”.

I was referring to Congressional Democrats, also. Should have been more clear. I suspect the grey-haired one was Biden. Richardson’s stance has been similar to Kucinich’s on this issue. I’m surprised he didn’t do better, but he has been surprising me that way a lot lately.

In any case, there seems to be a real reluctance on the part of certain Presidential candidates still serving in Congress to really confront Bush on this issue, which is what it’s going to take to get a withdrawal started prior to 2009.

Big Mitch–

Calvinists believed that God rewarded the righteous (or the elect) with material wealth. If you doubt me, google it.

That is vastly different than the 20th C belief that because you’re rich, God must be rewarding you.

Both sides of my family have very strong Calvinistic streaks. Being prosperous is a duty. Not something to be enjoyed or flouted or dwelt upon or proud of.

Yeah, both have “wealth” and “belief” in the one sentence, but that doesn’t make them the same sentence.

Oooh, awkward! Question to certain candidates: Why did you vote to erect a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border — and not along the U.S.-Canada border? Verrrry quiet audience, lotsa rictus in the smiling: don’t think Hill was expecting that one.

I support a north-south wall running along California’s eastern border, and I also support sticking the governator on the eastern side of it, without a passport.