It baffles me. Not only the rhetoric, but the willingness to believe by those so close to being Mitt’s maligned “47%” just how razor thin the line is between “I got mine” and “I need some”. I work hard. I make a good living. My parents worked long careers as public servants in our country’s schools to give me what they could. I did not come from much. I “made it” on  my own. I am, symbolically, the person who should love this message. But I recognize that I am also infinitely lucky. And I know that I am one illness, one bad decision, one accident, one turn of the economy’s screw away from needing help from someone else. That’s why I give what I can to those who aren’t as lucky as I am. Those who do need that assistance. Those who are not “lazy” or “freeloaders” but for reasons beyond their control (and beyond my need to rationalize), not as lucky. Not because I expect to “get mine” if it happens to me, but simply because that is what living in a society is about. Without that, we are nothing.  We are “a zero-sum game. We’re the state of nature. We’re animals, gobbling down as much as we can, as fast as we can, swatting away the weak.”*

*From Greg Knauss’s excellent “Bugged” - http://www.eod.com/blog/2012/09/bugged/

Yes, Mitt, you lost me long, long ago.  In fact, you’re party lost me long before they picked you.  I’m part of the 47% who are completely committed to President Barack Obama and have no intention whatsoever for voting for any Republican for anything.  Why because like you, your party has abandoned rationality and decided the truth is as irrelevant as logic.  You’ve undermined reason and democracy by inventing an alternative universe controlled by madmen who blame the President for your own failures and portray him ironically as what you actually are—out of touch with real Americans and out of ideas for the future.  It amazes me how many times you and the GOP have accused the President of a failure of leadership when your Republican Congress has in fact made it a policy to vote in lockstep against anything the President is for, attempting to sink the US economy as deep as you can in order to label the President with the failure your party itself created.  Sadly, the people who suffer most from this obdurate, inconsiderate, uncompassionate obstructionism are the 47% of moochers and freeloaders you have already written off as out of your reach.  That’s where you and the Republicans have put them, Mitt.  Out of reach. But on election day, you will feel their reach, along with your 1% billionaire buddies, your Citizens United cronies, your Fox News lackies and your neoconservative bullies.  Yes, I’m part of Obama’s 47%. Funny thing is, I do work, make a lot money, pay a lot of taxes, and give whenever I can to those candidates who are interested in helping that other 47% climb back on the cycle of prosperity.  Turns out, they’re always Democrats.  

“Boca Raton” means the “rat’s mouth.” Mitt’s vile mouth revealed what most wealthy and powerful Republicans/Tea Party nuts think and say behind closed doors but not in public: they view the working poor and the middle classes as parasites while they, the “job creators” are the oppressed and  down trodden by taxes and regulations.

Their vitriole, their revulsion, for the working classes is laid bare: “I got mine so screw you. I eat butter but may save a pat for you. You beg my favor and maybe I will help pay for some of your soup. I pay for everything good that  and you consume it. You are vermin — I choose not to exterminate you because I am good.”

They, the son’s and daughter of the Rat’s Mouth Country Club  are the true parasites. They dodge taxes like rats dodging light, careening through slick, wet tax loopholes won through the scabrous works of vermin infested law firms fighting hard for their right suck from their hosts. The richer they get, the more tax they avoid, and the more they avoid the more they have to pay their vermin brethren to lobby and gin the system so that they get more and eat for free. They are shameless.

Redistribution of wealth? That happened already.

My middle class mother died on medicare and social security in a nursing home subsidized by Medicaid that Rush, Mitt, Sean, etc. claim in the food of parasites. 

Her ending was not her dream. It was not the American Dream. But it was, is, for many of the 47%, the New American Reality.

were raised in middle class America
went to public schools
received (and repaid) federal loans for college and grad school
have fathers who served in the military
moms who raised us while working jobs

pursued the American dream with help from our parents, our community, the private sector, and our government

teach our children to take responsibility for everything they do and every consequence they face

and to practice compassion and share what they have

we pay income taxes and will vote for Barack Obama

in support of, among other things, a (rigorously examined) safety net for those who need the help… or, if the case may be, for those who consider themselves victims and don’t ‘care for their lives’

policy isn’t judgement

they (the 3% ?) are Americans too

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/jon-stewart-tears-apart-romneys-assertions-about-the-dependent-47-percent/

For me, this isn’t complex or even political. It’s a matter of what it means to be human. And it’s one of the simplest lessons my kids learn in preschool every day: if you’ve got some, share some. If you’re lucky enough to have what you need, it’s your responsibility to make sure your neighbor does, too. Real prosperity is shared. Real progress includes everyone. Real communities look out for one another. And Romney’s right: It’s not just his job to care about “those people.” It’s all our jobs. Because we’re all people, we’re all family, and we’re all in this together.