Trey's Days No. 22
Southern Progressive Takes on the Old South- A True Story.
Mississippi Southern Belle: I'm sorry, but I don't feel that this [the Obama] administration has done all that much for the middle class at all. Speaking from experience as middle class single Mom working two jobs.......
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Belle 2: I know how you feel, Belle.
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Southern Progressive: When Obama took office we were losing 800K jobs a month; how quickly we forget how bad it was in January of 2009, and the Rep. controlled House has refused to pass the President's job bill and the veteran's jobs bill, and then they have the audacity to complain about the recovery not being fast enough. Seriously!
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Beau: [rides to the rescue] Another misguided soul you are, Progressive!!
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Belle 2: When we work two jobs, all the current admin thinks about is how they can get their hands on the income we make at our second job!
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Progressive: Isn't it ironic that the very states that benefit the most per capita from federal spending on things like roads, Pell grants, verteran's benefits, Medicare and Medicaid, Social Security, etc. are most likely to vote for candidates who TALK about cutting the federal budget? On the flip side, states with the highest per capita personal income and education levels are more likely to vote to use federal tax dollars to help those poor states. Meanwhile, the reality is Republican presidents throughout the 20th century have presided over the biggest deficits, BOTH stock market crashes, 1929 and 2008, and only TALK about reducing the size of government. The only balanced federal budgets in our lifetimes were under President Clinton! Rural voters in America have been duped by the GOP. Fortunately, they are a minority!
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Belle 1: Considering the largest deficit in the history of the US is being overseen by a democrat president I will have to disagree
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Progressive: When Pres. Obama took office, the economy was in free fall. It was scarey. Remember? The policies of President Obama are putting us back on a track that we were on in 2000, when we had budget surpluses and were paying down the debt. Remember? Bush II decided to put both wars and tax cuts on the credit card, adding hugely to the debt and crashing the economy. This isn't THAT difficult. Our problem is not Democratic policies. It's wars that were not paid for. Never in our history until Bush II did we simultaneously wage two wars and cut taxes. Arithmetic. It can't be sustained. What do Mississippi Republicans think caused the crash of 2008? It was eight years of Republican policies. For six years the Republicans controlled the White House and both Houses of Congress. To us outside it looks so obvious. It's hard to imagine how the GOP continues to convince a certain type of voter that somehow all that mess didn't happen. And don't even get me started on the war in Iraq. What a huge mistake!! The main beneficiary of that war is Iran!
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Belle 2:...that's the mentality I was talking about last night....if
these rich liberal states actually took a look at their "poor" they'd
be voting GOP, too! As it stands, they prefer to let someone else do
the dirty work....shameless!
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Progressive: It's telling that you would put the word poor in quotation marks. And yes, Miss Beau, there are roles for the private sector, the cities and counties and the states, in fighting poverty. But that does not answer the fact that states like New Mexico, North Dakota, Maine, Arkansas and others where the per capita income is well below the national average benefit the most from federal spending, and it is ignorant at best and perhaps cruel to suggest that the federal government should ignore the abject poverty and disease that is rife in these poor states.
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Belle 1: I'm "poor" by what the gov defines as living below the poverty level but I don't qualify for any gov assistance. These very "poor" drive better cars, get their hair and nails done every week, have nicer clothes and cell phone plans...
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Belle 2: Then people say well they can't afford to go to school and get an education. So they can find a good paying job. They cut the pell grants. I have an idea, get a student loan like I did and get a job and pay for your education so you don't have to be in the governments hand out list.
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Belle 1: Bush didn't leave us with a 16 trillion dollar deficit. Obama has done that. Yea unemployment is down to 8 percent. Why, because people have exhausted their benefits and are no longer on the "unemployed" list. They still don't have jobs so they are still unemployed!!! Lets see what the numbers are after the harvest season is over and those jobs are gone.
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Belle 2: They only talk about cutting Medicare and all the fraud that goes on there. Have you ever spent any time at a hospital and seen the fraud that is committed by people with Medicaid? Not everybody is guilty and some people really do deserve that service You would not believe what people in the medical field see every single day. It will literally make you sick. And yes, I have every right to complain because I am a tax paying citizen.
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Belle 1: [striking a conciliatory note] For the record I am a Republican, but not conservative on all issues. I am pro choice, have many gay friends that I love dearly and respect them for who they are as people and really don't care who they love. I'm a Christian, but have many friends from all religious beliefs and don't think they are going to hell because they don't believe as I do. I'm a grandaughter of veterans, one of which died in WWII defending our very freedoms we fight about. I'm proud to be an American. I think prayer and corporal punishment should be put back in schools. And leave my guns alone!
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Belle 2: Heck yeah!!
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Belle 2: And you know...Medicaid is the gateway welfare...get on it and almost automatically are guaranteed all other benefits! And I'm poor, too, but I'm brazen enough to work for something!
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Belle 2: Er...you need to look at Mississippi closer....we have balanced our budgets every year we've had GOP governors ....but the 4 years we mistakenly voted in Muscgrove...he nearly killed us!
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Progressive: Ah Mississippi, beautiful Mississippi. I remember riding down from Memphis to Hattiesburg regularly as a child, being waited on hand and foot by my grandmother's maid, who spent twelve hours a day, six days a week, keeping my grandmother's house while she raised three children of her own. I remember in Memphis when the sanitation workers went on strike and MLK came to negotiate with the city for higher wages and better working conditions, and my father told me on the night MLK was assassinated , he's was a trouble maker, and now there's gonna be a lot 'a trouble. I remember. The legacy lives in me. But fortunately for me, God made me a member of one of those minority groups you have heard about, and got me out into the world so I could learn how it is that the legacy that is the history of Mississippi slowly gets corrected. You know there's a secession movement in the country that was started somewhere in Yankee land. They're for the secession of the deep south and their slogan is "Better Off Without Them." I don't feel that way, and still treasure my Southern Heritage, but have learned to see it a little differently.
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Belle 1: [being diplomatic] The last time I checked Arkansas is also
in the south. Thank goodness we live in a free country where we are
allowed to have different opinions.
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Belle2 : The north is more than welcome to seceed, then we can punish them they way they've punished MS since 1865 because we seceeded first. It's the biggest part of our problem...we're STILL being punished...and when they do...I hope they take the lazy bums they created, because they're killing the rest of us who work for a living!!! BTW...there's also a movement to make work at will states illegal because the mindless unions can't compete with us...true story! As for the maid...that was her choice to work for your mother. CHOICE! Liberals like to confuse that with the word "mandatory" when it suits them.
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Progressive: I beg all 'a y'all's pardons for expressing views you may not be accustomed to hearing. Living as I do in Arkansas, I'm used to being surrounded by southern progressives whose views differ dramatically from those which are dominant in Mississippi. I heard a story on NPR (that's National Public Radio) about a Democratic organizer in Meridian and bless his little heart, he said he didn't talk politics much with his friends! True story! I suspect that from here any further political discussion gets personal for y'all, maybe a little energized, so, again with my apologies for rufflin' y'all's bob white feathers, I wish you all the best.
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Belle 1: [calls for a truce] To me it's called a difference of opinion. Which we are all allowed to have. Peace man!
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Belle 2: [fighting to the bitter end] Its not your opinions that
ruffle my feathers, its your attitude that says you're right and we're
wrong. The liberal smugness that says you're smarter than us....tell
me this..in Mississippi "progressives " throw almost TWICE as much
money per student in Oktibbeha County as they do Webster County
schools, yet Webster county schools are high performing and Oktibbeha
has been taken over by the state....oh yeah, 99% of students are free
lunch...."poor". That's what ruffles my feathers.
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Progressive: [exhausted] Peace!
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Belle 2: I know how you feel, Belle.
