Soapbox

   Now I want to go to those friends and neighbors and ask "Really?"  I get it that you aren't crazy about Obama's policies, but exactly what aspect of the Republican party in 2012 do you support? Please explain this to me, because it doesn't make sense.

   Is it the part where the Republican party does not believe that people like me should be allowed to VOTE? Because that's about the most anti-democracy, un-American thing I can think of. The belief that, in the voting booth, we are all equal is kind of what this nation is founded on. So when your party intimidates, obstructs and out-and-out cheats to stop people who don't think like you from voting, they are saying they no longer want this to be a nation of the people and for the people, but instead, a nation for their people. Are you in favor of that?
    Maybe what keeps you loyal to the GOP is the part where they want to deny veterans decent jobs and health care, and to repeal child labor laws? Or their position that hungry children have lazy parents- so we should stop feeding their kids? As you clean up debris from Hurricane Sandy, do you really think we are better off electing people who simply make it illegal to teach inconvenient truths, as if that will stop the storms and the droughts? That what will make America strong is denying science, outlawing critical thinking and taking away our rights in the name of their religion? If not, then what is it about the Republican platform that makes you willing to overlook all those things?
    Do you actually prefer a president who is a serial liar and an economic succubus, draining American businesses dry and tossing away the livelihood of the workers like useless husks? You would vote for a man who doesn't believe that women are worth as much as men, doesn't believe that our gay sons and daughters are equal citizens and can not *wait* to send YOUR son off to another war that his sons will never fight? Who believes that your own grandchildren, beautiful and bright as new pennies, should spend their lives toiling for minimum wage mowing the lawns of the wealthy if their parents can't afford college tuition? That poor women should not have access to prenatal care at Planned Parenthood and that your daughter should die from a pregnancy rather than be allowed to end it?

    Please don't tell me that you disagree with some of these positions but you're still voting for Romney and his "forcible rape" running mate because of "economic reasons." Almost every economist and economic study out there has said, unequivocably, that Romney's tax and jobs plan is smoke and mirrors. And as for your Republican representative: he vowed 4 years ago that his #1 priority was to stop Obama from getting re-elected.  So if you plan to vote for someone who believes that putting a Republican in the White House is more important than creating jobs, regulating the banks which destroyed our pensions and stopping the outsourcing of jobs– then you obviously are Not concerned about the economy!

    Do you seriously believe that the way to renew America is to take money out of your wallet and deposit it in the offshore accounts of Mitt Romney, Donald Trump and the Koch Brothers? Because you simply CANNOT vote for this gang of thieves and cutthroats without voting for all of those things- and more.
    Don't fool yourself. A vote for the GOP in 2012 is a vote for continued dependence on oil and worsening climate change, a vote for more outsourcing, more tax cuts for the rich that pile, like stones atop the middle class until they gradually have all the strength and life squeezed out of them.
    The proof of that statement is all around you- well, everywhere but on FOX News. If you don't accept that this is true, despite all the evidence-  then you are deliberately ignorant, fools and cowards. And if you DO accept that this is what you are voting for but you're doing it anyway- then it means you support all those things: the oppression, the exclusion, the us vs them mentality.
    I don't care how much time you spend in church listening to sermons about Jesus careing for the poor or if you personally would give a stranger the shirt off your back: if you vote for a man whose policies would treat that stranger like less than an equal citizen– then you have no compassion.
  
    And you are not the good and decent people I thought you were.