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Winston Smith is an ex-Social Worker. I worked in child welfare, and in medical settings and in homeless settings. In the later our facility was geared as a permanent address for people to apply for welfare. Once they received that we could send them to facilities in which their welfare paid the bill and provided enough for a meager existence. We also referred people to vocational rehabilitation services. Many of the people who came to us were people who were clearly emotionally ill, but Reagan's slashing of the services for these people caused them to become homeless. One woman I dealt with-St. Jane, believed she was in direct communication with God, urinated freely without using the facilities and she had 47 bags of trash which were prized possessions. She got welfare and was sent to a facility were she could survive. The rule was that our facility could be used 1 time only as we had too many people who thought that the services that we provided we would lift them from the dire straights that they were in. Well, we provided our services for St. Jane around Thanksgiving. On Christmas Eve she was back with her 47 bags of trash and wanted to stay at our facility. I informed my superior of this situation, but we declined to provide services for St. Jane. She slept in front of our facility in a snowstorm. The local rag took the picture and excoriated us for what we did. The local welfare department asked her where she would like to live. St. Jane said Chicago because she liked the wind. She knew on one there. She and her 47 bags of trash of were carted onto a train for the windy city and never of again. The local welfare department was glad to get shed of her. Social welfare in the mid-1980's was geared to blame the victim. Ill people were sent home from hospitals were no one was going to help them because social welfare budgets were slashed by Reagan. Bush 41's â"thousand points of lightâ" was just another way to shaft the weakest in our society. Bush 43's faith based initiative was just another attempt to reduce social welfare services. Reagan's â"Just say Noâ" was the pinnacle of hypocrisy. No services for those who desperately needed them under the guise of tough love.
Obviously I became burnt out by too much indifference regarding our weak and weary. I couldn't look at desperate people and could not get myself to say that what I could offer them wouldn't really help themâ"it would only get them out of my office to be another person's problem, until the local welfare department carted them away.
I had little interest in politics until the illegal Iraq War started. Growing up in the 1960's caused me to understand that the GOP used war to attract right-wing extremists to vote for them. When â"Tricky Dick'sâ" secret plan to end the Vietnam War unfolded into elongating our presence there for 8 years I knew that I would never believe a GOP war-monger again. I dislike Obama's plan to escalate our presence in Afghanistan and see it as a craven attempt to placate the GOP. Maybe he'll reduce the GOP's attacks against him, but it will at the expense of alienating his base.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 What will happen as a result of town hall riots?
Olbermann might be this generations' Nostradamus. Some suggest that Nostradamus predicted events in history while others suggest his words were vague and could match many scenarios. Olbermann is specific here. These GOP propagandists are smirking as 50 million US citizens' tenuous grasp on the American dream gets conflated with hatred of a black man.
Friday, January 16, 2009 Beyond a shadow of a doubt the Iraqi dissident was paid to throw his shoes at W. (2 comments)
We never thought anything would rival "Mission Accomplished" until we got the shoe throwing. Having Muntader al-Zaidi throw shoes at W in this Herr Karl scheme to get sympathy is exactly the type of scam these experts of the "Ministry of Love's Room 101" do. When we see the shoes in flight we get feelings of hatred towards W, but also conflicting hatred at a
Tuesday, June 17, 2008 Typical war-mongering, hypocritical, GOP model.
McCain's politics mirror Cheney's. They can flip-flop along seamlessly telling different packs of lies to different packs of rubes. McCain was against tax cuts for the rich, until he signed up for them. He was adamantly against allowing the US Military torture detainees, but thought that the CIA could. He is mumbling that our forces could be in Iraq a hundred years and is as radically incompetent as W is.
Friday, May 23, 2008 Bought and sold.
All of this big bro 43 and McCain posturing as the only ones who can protect us from the undefined "those who are against us" is about the upcoming elections also.
