The things that Facebook drives me to do...

Ran across a post by one of my friends on Facebook that I laughed at, and mostly agreed with....but much of it focused on irritations rather than facts. It's easy to knee-jerk react to things, especially given the state of the nation. But even the most jaded of us (me included) should be skeptical enough of "simple facts". So with that I'll offer some comments to his post, and add a few at the end. ;)

Sorry Dean....Not really picking on you...I just like it when people make me think and work for it. :)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•You can get arrested for expired tags on your car but not for being in the country illegally.

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(comment: You can get arrested for both, you just have to get caught. A tag has a clear date on it, but an illegal immigrant doesn't glow in the dark. I've had illegals arrested before, so it's fairly straightforward when you encounter the situation)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more of our money.
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(comment: This is a non-argument that assumes an economy is a simple first grade math problem. Of course you cant spend and money-print our way out of debt. But we MUST spend billions (and more) on our aging infrastructure. Here's a neat tidbit. We spent more on AIR CONDITIONING in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 than we did NASA. Every economist worth their salt agrees the only way for our country to get itself out of debt is to grow the economy. It's the only way out. Investment in infrastructure and future technologies are vital. Think our 50 year old electric grid can handle a transition away from fossil fuel, given it can barely handle...summer??!?)

I LOVED THIS ONE.


You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•The Supreme Court of the United States can rule that lower courts cannot display the 10 Commandments in their courtroom, while sitting in front of a display of the 10 Commandments.

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(comment: The 10 Commandments are displayed nowhere in the Surpreme Court building. It is alluded to in artwork on and in the building, but so is the Code Of Hammurabi and the Magna Carta. Seperation of church and state is IMPORTANT, and a founding principle of our country. Ask Thomas Jefferson...and try to not take his utter dislike for Christians as an insult. )

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Children are forcibly removed from parents who appropriately discipline them while children of"underprivileged" drug addicts are left to rot in filth infested cesspools.


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(comment: No arguments here, though it's still "too simple". I have no love for DSS though, or the hell they put my kids through whilst feeling sorry for my irresponsible ex-wife and her now felon husband.)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Working class Americans pay for their own health care (and the health care of everyone else) whileunmarried women are free to have child after child on the "State's" dime while never being held responsible for their own choices.

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(comment: and yet we refuse to teach our kids responsible sexual behavior. Any parent who thinks "just say no" is working is an idiot, and yet it's been a federal mandate in sex ed programs for decades....the decades where our teen pregnancy rates skyrocketed to the worst among western nations. Coincidence?)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Hard work and success are rewarded with higher taxes and government intrusion, while slothful, lazy behavior is rewarded with EBT cards, WIC checks, Medicaid and subsidized housing.

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(comment: a sad fact to be true, but it's not the entire truth. Working in grocery retail almost 30 years I've seen government benefits skyrocket to now represent roughly 25-30% of our income in my business. And very few (VERY FEW) of these people are slothful lazy deadbeats. They're people who cannot survive on minimum wage. No one can, and yet more and more Americans are forced to settle for it, whilst CEO pay skyrocketed 725% between 1978 and 2011??)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•The government's plan for getting people back to work is to provide 99 weeks of unemployment checks (to not work).

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(comment: The government is providing 99 weeks of unemployment because the economy would stall without the spending power it gives people who cannot find a job. It's a bandaid for a far larger problem)

I LOVE OUR ELECTED OFFICIALS, TOO


You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Politicians think that stripping away the amendments to the constitution is really protecting the rights of the people.

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(comment: Most of that stripping in recent memory has been performed by a conservative dominated Supreme Court and the fear mongering after 9-11 that led to the evil Patriot Act)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•The rights of the Government come before the rights of the individual.

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(comment: Agree with this one. :D)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Parents believe the State is responsible for providing for their children.

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(comment: though there are horror stories to be sure, the real issue in my experience (having spent 30 years trying to feed people) is that parents who cannot make ends meet and take care of their families will do ANYTHING THEY CAN. The other options are crime or starvation and we have shameful amounts of both.)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...My personal favorite, plus declaring bankruptcy.
•You pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big screen TV while your neighbor defaults on his mortgage (while buying iphones, TV's and new cars) and the government forgives his debt and reduces his mortgage (with your tax dollars).

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(comment: many dumb and naive people bought into the "American Dream" idea of home ownership. It's a uniquely American concept, because home ownership isn't such a big deal pretty much everywhere else in the world. Deregulation of banking and securities industries drove us off this cliff. A lot of people got filthy rich, the entire world is stuck with trillions of dollars of fractional reserve leveraged debt (roughly 44 times the actual value of any of the property involved in the crash) in perhaps the worst financial rape of middle class and lower middle class Americans in history. And we've still not seen the bottom of it, not by a long shot.)

You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•Being stripped of the ability to defend yourself makes you "safe".

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(comment: I still have my weapons. No one has taken them away, and getting a CWP is childs play in South Carolina...not sure what this one is about)

LOVED THIS ONE TOO


You know you live in an Upside-down Land if...
•You have to have your parents signature to go on a school field trip but not to have your unborn baby MURDERED, aka; get an abortion.

(comment: 41 states require parental consent for an abortion. Though Roe vs. Wade is a Federal court decision, administering abortions is a states rights issue. So talk to the nine states that don't require it)

......

Some of my own points in closing...


You know you live in an upside-down land if
- You think increasing taxes on the lowest 50% of the population will have any effect on our debt, given that they only posess 2.5% of the wealth, whilst the top 1% control 42%

You know you live in an upside-down land if
- You think our healthcare system doesn't need a complete overhaul, given the fact that we're the most expensive system in the western world by far, with falling life expectancy rates and worse infant mortality rates than Brunei, Croatia, or Cuba....CUBA!!!?!?!??!?! Do nothing is hardly an option.

You know you live in an upside-down land if
- You forget that the largest economically expansive period in our history was marked with...far higher progressive taxes on wealth, strong labor unions, and proper health insurance (not the fee-for-service system we have now, thanks to Richard Nixon and his cronies).

You know you live in an upside-down land if
- You wonder why we have the highest teen pregnancy rates in the western world (and even higher than some impoverished nations), given that we have "Just Say No" mandated in all funded sex education classes, and are terrified to distribute condoms. Sex is not a moral issue, it is a quality of life issue and a health issue. A condom (even Cleopatra knew what birth control was) makes sex about as dangerous as eating ice cream in a room made out of Nerf®