MICHAEL Moore tells it like it is in this piece from HuffPost. To all you left wing liberals (like me) out there, now is not the time to pout about what we didn't get in Pres Obama's first term. Continue the fight by getting involved with the campaign. Contribute whatever you can in money and time (and let me say here whatever amount of time you have to give, even a couple hours every week or so is a big help), talk to your family, friends, coworkers. Make sure everyone you know that supports Pres Obama is registered to vote, if they aren't get them registered and remind them to vote on 6 NOV 12! All the money being spent will not decide who wins in November, turnout at the polls will determine if we celebrate Pres Obama's reelection or have to learn to say pres romney. Get up, get involved, stay ever hopeful and work to make the republican's worst nightmare, Pres Obama's second term, come true!!!!!!!!
In two months we Americans will go to the polls once again to decide who
the president will be for the next four years. We will not be allowed
to vote on those who wield the true power in this country. On November
6th we will not vote for the chairman of ExxonMobil or JPMorgan Chase or
Citibank or the Premier of China. That day will come, but not this
year.
Now, I know there are a goodly number of you out there
who believe there's not a snowball's chance in Kenya that Barack Obama
will not be re-elected to the White House. And why would you believe
otherwise? After the incredible Democratic convention this week, with
the best rock-em-sock-em speeches I've heard from a Democrat's mouth
since ... since, I don't know when. You can't help but not have a
contact high after this past week if you are of the sort who believes in
economic justice, peace, and a five-dollar latte. Right now, with the
buzz on, you are sitting there thinking that your fellow Americans will
turn out in massive numbers, either because they want to continue the
Obama era or because they're scared shitless of the barbarians at the
gate -- or both. You're convinced that the Republicans have blown it
with all their talk of the lady parts they want to control even though
we now know that they have no idea where those parts are, what they are,
or how they work.
Yes, it certainly looks like the voters will
reject this obscenely wealthy man called Romney -- Romney of
Michigan/Massachusetts/New Hampshire/Utah/Zurich/Grand Cayman -- this
man who will not explain exactly how all his wealth was obtained, where
he keeps it, or how much taxes he pays on it. He wants to turn the clock
back to the '50s -- the 1850s -- and he refuses to offer any specific
plan about what he'll do about anything. He wants to run the country
like a corporation but he can't even control one 82-year-old actor on
his own convention stage, a Hollywood legend who, in the matter of ten
and a half minutes went from Good (walking onto the stage) to Bad
(talking to a chair) and then to Ugly (the chair started ... swearing?).
It was better than the best cat-flushing-the-toilet video on YouTube
and it was a gift to all of us who know that Romney is doomed come
November.
Or is he?
Last week, I said on the HuffPost Live webcast
that we had all better start practicing how to say "President Romney"
because, living in Michigan, I can tell you that there's trouble here on
the two peninsulas and it's not just because Romney is a native son or
that we like to watch kids from Cranbrook chase down gay kids and chop
their hair off. One recent poll here showed Romney leading Obama by four
points! How can that be? Didn't Obama save Detroit?
No, he didn't. He saved General Motors and Chrysler.
"Detroit" (and Flint and Pontiac and Saginaw) are not defined by the
global corporations who suck our towns dry and then split town to make
more money elsewhere (except, of course, they continued to design and
built crap cars, so eventually they didn't make the money at all). These
cities in Michigan are about the people who live here, and in
the process of "saving Detroit," Mr. Obama had to fire thousands of
these people, and reduce the benefits and pensions of those who were
left. There's a lot of pissed off people in Michigan (and Wisconsin and
Ohio), people who weren't saved even though the corporation was. I'm
just stating a fact, and those of you who don't live here should know
this.
The other problem facing us this election (spoiler alert
-- angry white guys may want to stop reading right now) ... is race. We
all fear there's probably a good 40% of the country who simply do not
want a black man in the Oval Office. In fact, in 2008, Obama lost the white vote. He lost every white age group
except young people (18-29). And yet he still won by 10 million votes!
The optimistic secret the Obama people know is that only about 70% of
the voters in November will be white. So if he can win just 35-40% of
them, and then get a massive majority of people of color, he can win
re-election. There is no question in my mind that Obama is more popular
than Romney and if everyone could vote from their couch like they do for
American Idol, Obama would win hands down. As I have said before, we
live in a liberal country. The majority of Americans (who do not call
themselves "liberal") now support most of the liberal agenda -- they're
for gay marriage, they're pro-choice, they're anti-war, they believe
there's global warming, and they hate Wall Street for what it has done
to them and their neighbors. The Republicans know this: that we, the
majority, will have sex when we want and with whom we want, will read
and watch whatever we want when we want, will use marijuana if we want
and if we don't want to then we certainly don't want our friends who do
to be throw into prison. We are sick and tired of being poisoned, by
chemicals or propaganda, we think the Palestinians have been given a raw
deal and we want our friggin' jobs back! The Christian Right (and
their Wall Street funders) know this all too well -- America has turned,
and there's no going back to not loving someone because of the color of
their skin or expecting women to cede control of their bodies to a
bunch of Neanderthals. So, what's a Rightie to do now that we've turned
the joint into Sodom and G? They have to suppress the vote! They have to
stop as many liberals from voting as possible. So they've passed many
voter suppression laws to make it hard for the poor, the minorities, the
disabled and students to vote. They honestly believe they can pull this
off -- and they just may. The only "positive" thing about this is that
their need to have such laws in order to win the election is an
admission on the part of the Republicans that they know the U.S. Is a
liberal country and that the only way they can now win now is to cheat.
Trust me, if they believed that America was a right-wing country they'd
be passing laws making it so easy to vote you could do it in the
checkout line at Walmart.
But the voting on November 6th will
not take place at Walmart or on any potato's couch. It can only happen
by going to a polling place -- and, not to state the obvious, the side
that gets the most people physically out to the polls that day, wins. We
know the Republicans are spending tens of millions of dollars to make
sure this very thing happens. They have built a colossal
get-out-the-vote machine for election day, and the sheer force of their
tsunami of hate stands ready to overwhelm us like nothing we've ever
seen before. Those of us in the Midwest got a taste of it in 2008.
Traditionally Democratic states -- all of which voted for Obama -- saw
our state legislatures and governor seats hijacked by this well-oiled
machine. We didn't know what hit us, but these new Republicans wasted no
time in dismantling some of the very basic thing we hold dear.
Wisconsin fought back -- but even that huge grassroots uprising was not
enough to stop the governor bought and paid for by the Koch brothers. It
was a wake up call, for sure -- but have we really woken up?
It's been a great week in Charlotte, and I'm getting ready now to watch
Barack Obama give his speech. It's OK for us to take a couple days to
high-five each other, but I cannot stress enough to you that unless you
and I are doing something every day for the next 60 days to get
people out to vote, then there is a chance we will all be saying
"President Romney" come January. Don't think it can't happen. Hate, sad
to say, at least in America these days, is a far greater motivator than
love and feelin' groovy.
For those of us who believe that the
history of the Democrats and the Republicans is to do the bidding of the
1% (Obama's #1 private contributor in '08 were the people at Goldman
Sachs), and that while the Dems are a kinder/gentler bunch, they are
also just as quick to want to take us to war and sell us out to the
corporate interests (and, yes, Obamacare is a $$ gift to the insurance
companies; only a single-payer system will stop that), this election is a
bit of a bitter pill. We were hugely disappointed when President Obama
didn't charge out of the gate after his inauguration and undo the damage
that had been done (as FDR did in his first hundred days) -- and only
when Wall Street stopped writing him the big campaign checks this past
year did he get his mojo back and start fighting the fight that needs to
be fought. He's a good and decent person (when he's not sending in
drones to kill Pakistani civilians or prosecuting government
whistleblowers), and his election four years ago was a high point of
such emotional intensity I just couldn't get over how hopeful I was that
this country had changed and we had found our moral footing. Reality
set in a few weeks later when he put Tim Geithner and Larry Summers in
charge of economic policy and then he changed his mind about closing
Gitmo.
OK, so people like me, just once in our lifetime, would
like to get our way all the time! Is that too much to ask? Of course,
there is a different question that is in the air now -- shall we give
the country back to the crowd who gave the country to the 1%? I think
not. So let's join in with our liberal majority and be fierce and
relentless in these next two months. Let's spend this time educating
people what we mean when we say things like "single-payer" and
"Blackwater." Politics and the fate of the nation (and the world --
sorry, world) are on the front burner and those of us who want to
wrestle control of our society out of the hands of the few can take
healthy advantage of these coming weeks. Don't sit it out. Don't try to
convince anyone Obama has magically transformed us -- just tell them
four years is simply not enough time to undo all the hurt caused by
biggest economic crash since the Great Depression and the biggest
military blunder/lie in our history.
I'm going to go with my
optimistic side here (sorry, cynics, you know I love you) and imagine a
Second Term Obama (and a Democratically-controlled Congress) who will go
after all the good that our people deserve and put the power of our
democracy back in our hands. There's good reason why the Right is
terrified of a Second Term Obama because that is exactly what they think
he'll do: the real Obama will appear and take us down the road
to social justice and tolerance and a leveling of the economic playing
field. For once, I'd like to say I agree with the Right -- and I
sincerely hope their worst nightmare does come true.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/president-romney-how-to-p_b_1863818.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=090712&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief
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