Alert Stalking Hillary Supporters???

[nolawarlock]

22. Thank you, Athena

That means a lot and I'm not surprised given you chose your name from the Goddess of wisdom.

I have my snarky side with the best of them but I try to have fun with it. If I am a tiny tad insulting on occasion, it's meant to be the fun of the moment, not the anger of it. My commentary could have been considered a little edgy in places but it's meant to be in fun.

I'm successful entrepreneur. No matter who wins this election, I'm going to win some things and lose others. I support more progressive social policies. I also support more progressive economic policies, not out of desperation or anger but because I think they're fair. I grew up dirt poor but I don't forget what it took to make it. While I will never support dictatorial socialism, I believe we should encourage and enable people to pursue their success. I am very concerned over global warming also. I like many of Bernie's policies and many of Hillary's. When I took the isidewith.com test, I was, if I recall correctly, 94% Hillary, 92% Bernie.

I supported the Clintons on welfare reform. I do not believe that a safety net should mean inaction. I grew up on welfare and I saw first-hand how it created a sense of apathy. We frequently cite FDR as having created all these programs but let us not forget that he gave us the Works Progress Administration. I don't believe that just handing people checks makes anything better. However, I also do not believe, like most on the Right, that we can just let people starve either. Heck, I've done work-at-home jobs before. I'm sure there's something folks could do that the government needs. I think we should do whatever we can to encourage a strong work ethic in our populace as well as a strong ethic for responsibility to the home we live in, meaning the environment.

Does all that make me a fiscal conservative? Not at all. Those bastards would let people starve on the corner. I think we can afford all sorts of safety net programs if we stopped giving so many tax cuts to the mega rich and stopped spending so much on stupid wars. That said, I do think we need a strong defensive military because the world is a dangerous place, but we had that with Mr. Clinton. The only big conflict I recall us being involved in during Bill's candidacy was the Bosnian War and that was for a good cause ... protecting people from human rights atrocities. But, I think if we're going to invest in our people, we must do so in a way that encourages the productive. I'm no limousine liberal. I grew up on welfare and I saw the impact of people who received just enough to get by but not enough to want to strive harder. I put my entire will into not staying in that mindset and I sometimes wonder if the very idea of that kind of baseline is to keep the poor from revolting.

Finally, I nearly always vote social issues and my marriage to my husband matters most to me. I'd never call myself a one-issue voter but since my marriage became legal here in red-state Louisiana, I've gotten a lot more defensive about it and I get very irritated with the Bernie or Bust types who have the luxury to throw away what some of us weren't able to have access to for so long. Yeah, Hillary might have been late to the game publicly but, let's face it, politicians take the steps they can get away. Obama would probably still be against it if Biden hadn't stuck his foot in Obama's mouth. But either way, Obama is one of my favorite presidents ever, even if the Congress has stopped him.

Prior to the Pope situation (which compelled me to finally post here), my one real issue with Bernie was the minimum wage hike, not because I don't think there should be a higher living wage, but because I think it has to be handled carefully. I don't think you can pull only one lever and expect not to cause a systemic maelstrom of some kind. I am no economist but my hope is that this is done in a way that keeps the small business in mind. I'm a small business owner. I'm a damn good one so I might actually be able to weather an immediate shift like that but many small businesses couldn't that quickly. I have seen it callously said by Bernie supporters that, "well they shouldn't be in business if they can't afford $15 per hour." Well, that all sounds well and good on the surface but consider what that statement really means. If Bernie supporters think that small businesses, who struggle more than any businesses do, should be sacrificed at the altar in order to express their rage at corporations, we ultimately end up with fewer small businesses ... and more corporations. Talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy. I think if you take small businesses down in an attempt to bring the corporations to heel, the corporations will just use their wealth to juggle. My husband was a retail manager for a mall chain in Washington State. When they went to $15, the corporation he worked for didn't pay a single dime more in budget. They cut hours. They cut benefits. They required greater production output. Small businesses do not have the power to juggle like that and so they run the risk of collapsing altogether. And, in another element to consider, my market is in spiritual products. There is no corporate version of what we do and if our small businesses were all to collapse under changes made too quickly or radically without care, the fastest growing religion in America would no longer have access to some of the products that serve its spiritual needs. Now, I'm all for a $15 an hour wage. I just think it needs to be done in a way that adjusts other levers as well, perhaps with tax incentives for small businesses versus large corporations, to help us juggle and actually keep all the people we employ off the unemployment lines.

Now, with this Pope situation, I'm truly concerned. To me, Bernie is basically criticizing the influence of wealth and power in politics while manipulatively seeking tacit approval from the leader of one of the wealthiest and post powerful institutions on Earth, that is also the oldest existing foreign nation. And yes, he says it's not an endorsement. The pope says it's not an endorsement (and it does sorta seem like the pope may have tried to avoid all this). But by hosting a candidate for election at a major Vatican conference, there absolutely is tacit approval. And it annoys me further because, clearly, while so many Bernie supporters have said we're just jealous because Hillary wasn't invited or we're just butthurt, they prove my point by virtue of the fact that I've seen dozens of Bernie supporters on here gloat about the potential gain in the New York Catholic vote. If this wasn't a tacit endorsement, why would he gain any Catholic votes at all? I don't want the Church determining our elections anymore than I want corporations doing so. Not that I believe this pope is actually that liberal in the sense of U.S. liberals because I don't think you can put his pro-poor, anti-death-penalty, anti-abortion, anti-gay, sexist views in any one box of U.S. politics, but his focus has been more on the poor and, while that is encouraging, he could drop dead the day after we sell our political souls to the influence of the Church and we could end up with another Benedict. I call that the Department of Unintended Consequences™, which also include the Religious Right's lawsuit for after-school bible studies [thankfully] giving us gay-straight alliances and North Carolina's stupid bathroom law resulting in hairy butch trans-men using the ladies' room. Do we really want to hand the Vatican influence over our elections only to watch them use that influence in ways we didn't anticipate? No, I'm not butthurt, nor am I jealous. I would be just as irritated if they'd invited Hillary. Heck, I was irrupted at the Liberty University visits and never really liked Bill's incessant preaching from the pulpits of churches. This issue sets a dangerous precedent I don't want to see set. And the Sanders supporters who say this is all a mountain from a mole hill should look to the many of their brethren gloating over the potential gain of the Catholic vote. Clearly, those individuals see this for the tacit endorsement that it was. I can only hope that the Pope was hoodwinked into this by Msgr. Sorondo, and I suspect that he was.

And now we have this cult-like behavior of alert stalking, this determination to silence all opposition or disagreement any way possible. I have trouble supporting any candidate that inspires that kind

So yeah, I'll pull that lever for Bernie because he'll protect my marriage and supports many issues I care about, but I will do so begrudgingly.

Sorry for rambling. I started going and I couldn't stop. :-D