2008: All of a sudden W. is out of office, McCain loses, and they scream tyranny. [View all]

[EEO]

Just forget that W. oversaw one of the largest expansions of the government ever, paid for wars on Chinese credit, and played his part in nearly bringing us into another Great Depression. The "party of personal responsibility" is full of overgrown babies and whiny bitches. You cannot remain a first rate power and a first world society in a postindustrial world with libertarianism. It is the lack of socialism and the ignorance of what socialism actually is that is destroying this country, and rotting it from the inside out. Some of what has happened to our country in the last two or three decades truly is ignorance, but it is undeniable that we have a group of Americans out there who are willing to screw themselves over to prevent other groups from getting anything (healthcare, basic civil liberties, etc.).

My cousin is a very confused conservative. He'll say thing like "the Post Office is failing because of all the junk mail they are sending." And when he is told they get paid to send that "junk mail" and their financial woes are a direct result of it having to prefund pensions decades in advance he goes quiet.

When I say every American citizen should be entitled to healthcare he'll say something like "well I don't want some illegal to get healthcare that I have to pay for." When he is asked how we got from healthcare to immigration he goes silent, and I add that he is more than happy to screw himself, his wife, and his daughter over just to keep others from benefiting too. More silence.

When we discuss prisons in America and I bring up how we have one of the highest rates of imprisonment in the whole world I say it is a direct result of mandatory sentences and for-profit private prisons, which rely on inmates to stay open and remain profitable. My cousin will say something like "well some people just want to go to prison to get free cable and healthcare," and he even cited an example of a homeless man in Portland who "robbed" a bank for $1 to get access to healthcare in prison and my cousin said he was "disgusted." When I replied "yes, just throw him back out onto the streets and remind him he is an American who is free to die from not having healthcare," he goes silent.

Despite all my efforts, his silence does not seem to be a sign of deep contemplation but of digging his heels in and being as stubborn as a mule in the face of the effects of his bankrupt political views...