Nope, I couldn’t do it. I could not go 24 hours ignoring the news, this morning when I woke up, I automatically turned on NPR as I do every morning to wake up. Let’s just say by the time I remembered I was taking a hiatus from the news, I had already listened for at least 20 minutes…oh well.
However I was listening to coverage from a McCain rally in some town and nearly fell out the bed when I heard a woman state that she felt that most people were economically just as well off now as they were eight years ago when Bush took office therefore she was a McCain-Palin woman because we didn’t need Obama’s socialist ways. Um…. are there really people that silly that they live in a vacuum where they don’t realize that economically most of us are beyond fucked.
I don’t know about you but eight years ago, the spousal unit and I had amazing jobs that paid well, we had great health insurance that didn’t even cost us $100 a month yet we had medical/dental and vision coverage. The mister and I used to take weekend jaunts, had no problem paying our bills and overall were leading a pretty charmed life financially speaking that is. Let’s see in the last eight years, I have obtained a masters degree and expected my earnings to go up instead compared to where we were eight years ago, we have lost an estimated $40,000 since that time…yes, you read that. We have lost $40,000 compared to where we were eight years ago. Oh, did I mention that we had no debt eight years ago.
I suspect we are not the only people who are suffering under the Bush regime, nice middle-class Americans who have one foot dangling in the middle class box but slowly spiraling into the lower class despite all the guarantees that education used to bring that one would be financially sound.
See, I am a news junkie and I know Americans are hurting and it scares me that there are folks voting who seem to not give a damn that their fellow Americans are in dire straits, you know good hard working folks who work hard but no longer get ahead.
I just don’t get why people fear the idea of many of us having access to health insurance, or the idea that if one earns $250,000 or above that you should pay more in taxes. A fellow blogger, OG spoke at length about this the other day, but to me it should be only common sense that if I have more than enough that I can spare a little to help out my fellow man. The irony being that many of the folks yelling the loudest about wealth redistribution claim to be Christians and well if they had actually read their bibles they would know that Jesus was all about helping folks out. I won’t claim to know the mind of Jesus but I suspect if he was here with us, I don’t think he would be too happy with these tight asses who would deny their fellow man access to basic needs.
So while I broke my promise to myself to watch the news, maybe its important to stay tuned less I become one of the idiots wandering our countryside living in a bubble oblivious to the plight of others.