The thankful list.

Field, name ten things you are thankful for:

1. Conservative pundits- The comic relief they provide is priceless.

2. Blogging- Being able to share my thoughts on the Internet with those who      agree and disagree with me never gets old.   

3. Family and friends.

4. Artists -living and dead- who left their mark for us to enjoy.  

5. Lark Voorhies before her meltdown.

6. Lionel Messi's football skills, Jeffrey Wright's acting skills, and Usain Bolt's speed.

7. The First Amendment.

8. South Louisiana and Jamaican cuisine.

9. People who care more about the human race than their own.

10. Mrs. Field.


I am not a big fan of this particular holiday, but enjoy the day with your family.
   

Food and pardons.

*

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and in order to give thanks, Americans are going to eat like the Mayan folks were right about the world ending. (I am quite sure that most of you will be here on December, 22nd.)

Anyway, some random thoughts about food.

I was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, and, as a result, I never ate shrimp. Now sadly, after getting this picture from a twitter mate, I am afraid that I might have to revert to my SDA ways. (Yuk!)

Honestly, you folks are doing some things with food out there that will cause a brotha to reconsider this meat eating thing. (Shout out to all my vegan friends.) Turducken?* Seriously? Although, I must confess, if the pilgrims had stumbled on some wild goats- and not turkeys- I would be one Thanksgiving celebrating fool. That curry goat and roti is no joke. (Sorry vegans, it was fun while it lasted.)

Then there is this Twinkie turkey combination, thing. America let the Twinkie go! It's over! Stop trying to delay the inevitable by incorporating the Twinkie into an important American holiday. It's never going to happen. Unless we are talking about chicken and waffles meat and sweet does not go together.

Finally, staying with the food theme; I see that his Oness pardoned a couple of turkeys at the White House on Wednesday. Good for Cobbler. Now if O could only be as generous with his pardons for humans as he is with turkeys we would be on to something.

"People don't usually think of the president as a part of the justice system. Typically that world includes judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers — not the chief executive. But George Lardner, a former investigative reporter who's now writing a book on the history of presidential pardons, says the Constitution actually makes the president a key part of this web.

In the past, "there was no such thing as probation or parole," Lardner says. "If you wanted to get out of prison before your time was up, you had to get a pardon."

Many people did. But that was long ago. Recent presidents have barely used their clemency power. And Obama is more frugal than any of them, says P.S. Ruckman Jr., a political scientist at Rock Valley College who studies pardons.
"He's granted 22 pardons and one commutation of sentence," Ruckman says.
He says no president since John Adams has shown so little leniency.

White House spokesman Matt Lehrich responded to an inquiry with this statement: "President Obama takes his constitutional power to grant clemency very seriously, and each recommendation received from the Department of Justice is carefully reviewed and evaluated on the merits." [Source]

Stop it! O, cut the nonsense and start setting some brothas convicted during this silly war on drugs, free. They would appreciate it much more than Cobbler.


    

Two turkeys!

"Glenn Beck paid a visit to his old stomping grounds on Tuesday night, talking to Bill O’Reilly about the election. Beck recalled his prediction that Mitt Romney would win and offered an explanation of why he ended up being wrong. Part of the problem, he said, is disillusioned voters.

“What happened there that you weren’t anticipating?” O’Reilly asked.

“I anticipated actually people coming out, you know,” Beck replied. “We actually went down in some numbers.”

When O’Reilly noted that the turnout was more than enough for Romney to win, Beck offered his take on the problem. “The parties have gotten to the place to where I don’t think anybody believes either side,” he said. “They just don’t see a difference.” People, even in his own family, Beck added, don’t believe one side will be better for the country than the other.

But that simply isn’t true, he said, noting that the 2012 election was “most stark choice” the country’s had. O’Reilly agreed.

He then asked Beck about the conservatives, including Beck himself, who predicted a Romney victory — noting their surprise when Romney actually lost. Beck said he’d gone to bed feeling confident the night before, telling his wife he couldn’t wait for Romney to win so “we can relax a little bit and our life will settle down.”

Asked if he sees the outcome as “a divine providence situation,” Beck said everything will work out. The pair agreed: It’s all going to work out, but there’s “a lot of pain” coming."

Sorry fellows, like all the other turkeys this time of year, your pain has already come and gone. Now it's time for the rest of us to just enjoy you.

Straight Outta Cuba, and a nutty candidate.

Now that we know Marco Rubio vibes to NWA and Pac, will he still be as popular with his friends in the GOP? Marc, when republicans said that they had to do more minority outreach after their last beating by Obama, I doubt this is what they had in mind. But still, it's nice to know that you are human, and, more importantly, that you are honest. You could have lied and said that you listened to Duran Duran back in the day.

Speaking of  the GOP, the finger pointing at  Mitt continues. This time it's Newt's turn to take shots at the Etch A Sketch man.

"Newt Gingrich had harsh words Sunday for GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's suggestion that he lost the election because President Barack Obama offered "gifts" to African-Americans, Hispanics, and young voters.

"I just think it's nuts," Gingrich said on ABC. "I mean, first of all, it's insulting."

"The job of a political leader in part is to understand the people. If we can't offer a better future that is believable to more people, we're not going to win," said Gingrich, who launched blistering attacks on Romney last spring while seeking the presidential nomination himself.

Revelation of Romney's comments drew criticism from others within his own party, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal - who said a winning strategy does not involve "insulting (voters) and saying their votes were bought" -- and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who said, "Rhetoric like this keeps digging a hole for the Republican Party." [Source]

I love how all of a sudden Mitt is the most hated person in GOP-land. What happened to all the love? It's amazing how losing causes folks to run away from you isn't it Mitt? All the money in the world can't buy you friends these days.

Still, I think all your fellow republicans throwing darts at you are full of it. They agree with everything you said. They are just mad at you because you lost to the Kenyan Socialist.

Take it away Kevin Drum:

"..Far from a gaffe, Romney’s remarks reflected both a long-standing belief among conservatives that the nation faces a “tipping point” in which growing dependency will create an insurmountable electoral majority for big government — and Democratic candidates. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Romney’s running mate, has delivered similar arguments for years. “We risk hitting [a] tipping point in our society where we have more takers than makers,” he said recently. “President Obama’s policies are feverishly putting more people into the column of being takers than makers ... being more dependent.”

The conservative Heritage Foundation, in the latest edition of its “Index of Dependence on Government” likewise concluded earlier this year: “Perhaps the greatest danger is that the swelling ranks of Americans who enjoy government services and benefits for which they pay few or no taxes will lead to a spreading sense of entitlement that is simply incompatible with self-government.”

Conservatives believe that liberals are intent on creating a welfare state that saps initiative, leads to moral decay, makes voters more dependent on government, and helps cement the Democratic Party's hold on power. They've been saying this forever. But when Mitt Romney says it in slightly blunter terms than we're used to, they practically barrel over each other running for the exits.
Poor Mitt. Conservatives never liked him in the first place, so he tried hard to say all the things they wanted him to say. But once he lost, he was an instant pariah. He was saying the stuff they wanted him to say during a campaign, not realizing that the rules had changed. Once the campaign was over, that exact same stuff was a rather too blunt admission of what conservatives believe. He was betraying the cause, not helping it. The price he'll pay is a banishment from the conservative movement even more thorough than George Bush's.

Conservatives are not kind to their losers. [Source]

But will they be kind to candidates who listen to NWA?




      

For Allen, the jigging has stopped.

Poor Allan West never thought that his jigging would ever stop. Now, unfortunately for him, the music seems to have stopped playing. Sadly, though, he is still hearing it.

"MIAMI (Reuters) - Tea Party-backed Republican U.S. Representative Allen West said he was still not ready to concede defeat on Sunday, almost two weeks after the November 6 election, when the clock ran out on a partial recount in South Florida.

Results showing West trailing Democratic challenger Patrick Murphy by 1,900 votes were expected to be turned over to the state Division of Elections to be ratified on Tuesday.

West was granted a recount of early ballots in St. Lucie County during the weekend, but officials were unable to complete the process before time ran out at midday on Sunday.

"Today at noon, it became clear Patrick Murphy will be officially certified as the next congressman from the 18th Congressional District," said Murphy's campaign manager, Anthony Kusich. "It is beyond time to put this campaign behind us."

Under Florida law in the event of an incomplete recount the original returns are automatically submitted for certification. St. Lucie County officials went ahead and completed the recount later on Sunday, extending Murphy's lead to 2,100 votes.

"This election is far from over," West's campaign manager, Tim Edson, said in a statement that called the results "highly suspect."

"We will continue to fight on behalf of all voters in District 18 to ensure a fair and accurate count of their votes," he added, without saying how the campaign planned to challenge the result. [Source]

I guess there is still hope for the American people. If the people of Florida's 18th Congressional District had sent this man back to Washington I would be seriously worried.

This defeat is hard for Allen West to accept because he made the wrong calculation about selling out. Like Artur Davis and others, he thought that being a sell out would guarantee him a place in Washington as long as he wanted it. Fortunately the people (black and white) who vote in his district were able to see him for what he really is: A charlatan who made outrageous statements to appeal to a far right group of people who are out of touch with the rest of the country. The GOP outspent Patrick Murphy 17-1 and their boy still lost.That ought to tell you something about Allen West.

Still, the GOP infighting continues;  tea party types like Mr. West on one side, and the GOP establishment on the other.

"...conservative columnist Michael Barone told an audience at Hillsdale College's center in Washington that the tea party, while bringing some talented politicians to the fore, also brought some "wackos and weirdos and witches." [Source]

He forgot to mention jiggers.


*Pic from hinterlandgazette


   

No to Obama but yes to the Twinkie.

You republicans are such sore losers. There really isn't any need for this type of behavior on your part. I know that it was tough to see Obama get reelected, --especially when everyone was telling you that he would lose-- but honestly, you have got to let those hard feelings go.

"The owner of the Southwest Shooting Authority took out a full page ad in a local Pinetop, Ariz. newspaper that read "if you voted for Barack Obama you're business is not welcome."

Just to make sure the point got across, owner Cope Reynolds also posted a sign on the store's front door.

"If you voted for Obama, please turn around and leave! You have proven you are not responsible enough to own a firearm."

My choices of places to visit in America are getting smaller every day. Please count Arizona as another state that I will only be looking at  from an airplane window in the future. America needs a serious IQ upgrade.

Now, to be fair, you dems have been rubbing it in a little too much on my repub friends as well. There is no reason for these types of videos showing O giving haters "the gas face". You dems need to learn to win with some class.    

Finally, some of you have been lamenting the death of the Twinkie after many years on the American scene. You are blaming the unions for Twinkie's owner shutting down and putting over 18,000 Americans out of work. You are even calling for a "Twinkie bailout". So I have to ask, is this really such a bad thing? Just one less product in the market place to clog your arteries and give you Americans a heart attack. I mean look what Twinkies did to poor Governor Christie for crying out loud. The poor guy is still mad about that.
 

"Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie declined talking about it in a press conference Friday. The Republican governor told reporters he didn’t even want to mention the word.

“I am not answering questions on Twinkies,” Christie said, as reported by NorthJersey.com. “It’s bad that I even said the word Twinkies from behind this microphone.”

No more Twinkies. But, don't worry America, the last time I checked, there was still a Dunkin Donut and Krispy Kreme store on every corner.




 








 

Roger the comedian and Charlie has a Negro problem.

It's hard to cut and paste this next article because I am laughing so hard. But I am going to give it a try.

"Fox News President Roger Ailes spoke to TVNewser about the network’s election night coverage on Friday — also going on to elaborate on their self-proclaimed “fair and balanced” approach. While no one seems to agree with him, Ailes said, the network has “no agenda.”

Asked how the next four years will play out, Ailes told TVNewser, “It’s day-to-day for us.”

“We don’t — I know no one believes it — we have no agenda,” he added. “If he (Obama) runs into a burning building tomorrow and saves four kids, he’s gonna be the biggest goddamn hero Fox News ever saw. But if he leaves four guys behind on the battlefield but can’t explain it, then he’s gonna have a problem with Fox News.”

“I don’t mind praising the guy, and I don’t mind questioning the guy,” Ailes said. “It’s day to day.”

Doubtlessly, many are bound to disagree.

" But if he leaves four guys behind on the battlefield but can’t explain it, then he’s gonna have a problem with Fox News.” Hmmm, I wonder why W didn't "have a problem with Fox News". 

I really want to give Fox the benefit of the doubt when I see stories like this, but we all know the real deal about Roger and company. Fox is not a real news organization. Fox is to the left what MSNBC is to the right: a news station to be avoided at all costs. 

Finally, speaking of Fox News, their number one anchor seems to have a problem with how we vote here in Philly.

"Bill O’Reilly brought on Megyn Kelly tonight to react to the surprising news that Mitt Romney received zero votes at fifty-nine Philadelphia voting divisions (about three percent of its total divisions) in last week’s election. O’Reilly found it… odd, to say the least.

O’Reilly said Romney should have gotten at least one or two, but Kelly explained the same thing happened to John McCain four years ago. Kelly disputed the idea that any “shenanigans” were going on, saying that the divisions with the unanimous Obama votes have large black, inner-city populations.

O’Reilly said the odds are just too high to imagine this being mere circumstance, but Kelly continued to insist that there was nothing particularly odd about that. She pointed to precincts in Utah that ended up having unanimous Romney support, even though there were only a few dozen voters in that instance." [Source]

Unfortunately for Bill he doesn't seem to get out much. There is nothing unusual about a ward in Philly going almost 100% D. If wingnuts weren't so caught up in listening to winngut radio and watching Fox News in the run up to the election, they would have realized that Philly got 600,000 votes for O back in 2008, and that the the dems were mobilizing hard on the ground here.

As for that story from Maine, I am not going to touch this one. I personally don't know any black folks in Maine, (shout out to my favorite Maine blogger) so when Charlie Webster says that you black folks were cheating because he saw black votes from rural Maine I have to just leave it alone.

"Maine Republican Party chairman Charlie Webster is doubling down on his suggestion that there were "improprieties" at the Maine polls last week, insisting he received complaints from candidates in small towns across the state that "new people came to vote" and "I believe that that's questionable."
 
Webster has been the source of some controversy after suggesting in an interview with WCSH-TV this week that "In some parts of rural Maine, there were dozens, dozens of black people who came in and voted on Election Day."
 
"Everybody has a right to vote, but nobody in [these] towns knows anyone who's black," Webster told WCSH-TV's Don Carrigan. "How did that happen? I don't know. We're going to find out."
 
Reached on his cell phone by CBSNews.com, Webster refused to provide details regarding the specific towns in question, the number of "new" voters to whom he was referring, or the percentage of those people who were African-American. Megan Sanborn, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Charlie Summers, told CBSNews.com the office had not received any complaints or accusations of voter fraud from the past election, and that there had been no noticeable uptick in African-American turnout in the state."  [Source]

Come on Charlie, we need names.


 

Where is my "free stuff"?

Mitt Romney likes to talk about Obama and his peeps liking free stuff. But honestly, it's Mitt who likes to give Obama free stuff. Mitt is the gift that just keeps giving. Once again he was caught telling his big money people how he really feels about other people in America. (BTW, he is not alone. His running mate has been talking crazy as well.)

 

In Mitt's world the only reason O beat him is because he promised us minorities and women "free stuff". (O, I am still waiting on that Audi R8.)

 

I bet even a lot of you white folks are glad Mitt didn’t win right about now. I mean this guy is seriously out of touch.

 

"Mitt Romney told his top donors Wednesday that his loss to President Obama was a disappointing result that neither he or his top aides had expected, but said he believed his team ran a “superb” campaign with “no drama,” and attributed his rival’s victory to “the gifts” the administration had given to blacks, Hispanics and young voters during Obama’s first term.

Obama, Romney argued, had been “very generous” to blacks, Hispanics and young voters. He cited as motivating factors to young voters the
administration’s plan for partial forgiveness of college loan interest and the extension of health coverage for students on their parents’ insurance plans well into their 20s. Free contraception coverage under Obama’s healthcare plan, he added, gave an extra incentive to college-aged women to back the president.
Romney argued that the Obama’s health care plan’s promise of coverage “in perpetuity” was “highly motivational” to those voters making $25,000 to

$35,000 who might not have been covered, as well as to African American and Hispanic voters. Pivoting to immigration, Romney said the Obama campaign’s efforts to paint him as “anti-immigrant” had been effective and that the administration’s promise to offer what he called “amnesty” to the children of illegal immigrants had helped turn out Hispanic voters in record numbers.

“The President’s campaign,” he said, “focused on giving targeted groups a big gift—so he made a big effort on small things. Those small things, by the way, add up to trillions of dollars.”

Mitt, dividing the country is not a good look for you or your party. As the current leader of the republican party you cannot afford to play us against them in our country right now. Even your fellow republicans are calling you out.

"Gov. Bobby Jindal – the newly elected chair of the Republican Governors Association and a frequent subject of 2016 presidential speculation – reiterated Thursday his irritation at Mitt Romney's comments explaining his defeat in the presidential election.

Romney was recorded telling donors on a conference call that President Barack Obama won votes by offering "gifts" to African-Americans, Hispanics and young voters.

on "The Situation Room." "This is not where the Republican Party needs to go. If you want voters to like you, the first thing you've got to do is like them first."
The Louisiana governor's comments were similar to remarks he made Wednesday in Las Vegas, where he and other governors are attending a meeting of the Republican Governors Association.

During his CNN interview on Thursday, Jindal linked the latest Romney comments to the candidate's remarks at a closed door fund-raiser in May, when he argued that 47 % of Americans were "victims" dependent on government and would never vote for him.

"I don't think we advance this discussion or debate by insulting folks," Jindal said. "Look, the Republicans need to stick to our principles, but we need to treat other people with respect. Even those we don't agree with, we need to show them we respect them and their beliefs. We can disagree without being disagreeable. Republicans said a lot of dumb things. We need to condemn the remarks." [Source]

I think that Mr. Jindal is getting ready for 2016. But, I must admit, he is right about this one. Treating "other people with respect" is always a good thing. Somehow I don't think that Mitt respects the "beliefs" of others.

America's latest obsession, and some last words for president Obama.

Let me jump in on this Petraeus mess. A partner of mine told me that he went on double date with the whistle blower's twin (they are from South Jersey) but the other dude was a no show and he was stuck with a huge bill from Morton's. He had some other things to say about girlfriend but I am going to leave that gossip stuff alone. (I see you SK) Let's just say that the twins always knew how to work the social circuit.

Anywhoo, girlfriend's sister hooked up with a doctor and they moved to Florida for the good life. Now, unfortunately, she (the sister) is all over the news with this Petraeus affair. I feel for all the players in this latest American tragedy. Why can't folks just get their freak on in peace? Americans just can't get enough of the salacious. Throw a couple of top generals in the mix and you have a 24 hour news parade. *shaking head*

Anyway, Henry Hamilton won't have to live through this craziness. Why? Because poor Henry is dead. It seems that Henry just couldn't take four more years of Obama and so he decided to take his own life. (Gee, I wonder why a certain radio host couldn't have followed his lead.)

"He warned his partner weeks ago: “If Barack gets re-elected, I’m not going to be around.” And he followed through on that declaration.

Henry Hamilton, a 64-year-old owner of Tropical Tan in Key West, Fl., was found dead shortly after Election Day, with the words “Fuck Obama!” written on his will and two empty prescription bottles near his body.

The Miami Herald reports that the man’s partner Michael Cossey told the Key West police that Hamilton was “very upset about the election results.”
The Herald report continues:

A friend of Hamilton had been worried about him and had a standing request to police to make welfare checks. Officer Pablo Rodriguez did just that and when he went to the condo, he woke up Cossey, prompting the discovery of Hamilton’s body in the bedroom.

Dykes reported finding two empty prescription bottles, one for Xanax and one for Seroquel, used to treat anxiety and schizophrenia, respectively.
Cossey told police Hamilton “has been very stressed about his business,” and the last time they had spoken was “when we watched the election results” on Nov. 6." [Source]

Do these wingnuts realize that there will be another election in four years? Listen up people, running down your spouse and taking your own life, kind of puts you deep in the sore loser camp.

The S word.

Oh my! Now that Obama has once again become the leader of the free world it seems that some of his fellow citizens just do not want to be ruled by him.

"In the wake of last week's presidential election, thousands of Americans have signed petitions seeking permission for their states to peacefully secede from the United States. The petitions were filed on We the People, a government website.

States with citizens filing include Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Oddly, folks from Georgia have filed twice. Even stranger, several of the petitions come from states that went for President Barack Obama.

The petitions are short and to the point. For example, a petition from the Volunteer State reads: "Peacefully grant the State of Tennessee to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government." Of all the petitions, Texas has the most signatures so far, with more than 23,000.

Of course, this is mostly a symbolic gesture. The odds of the American government granting any state permission to go its own way are on par with winning the lottery while getting hit by a meteor while seeing Bigfoot while finding gluten-free pizza that tastes like the real thing.

An article from WKRC quotes a University of Louisville political science professor who explained that these petitions aren't uncommon. Similar petitions were filed following the 2004 and 2008 elections. Still, should the petitions garner 25,000 signatures in a month, they will require an official response from the Obama administration." [Source]

Well it's refreshing to know that this is not a first. But still, the fact that the great state of Texas already has over 25,000 petitions might force the White House to respond... wait....

"A petition for Texas to secede from the union, submitted to the White House, reached the number of signatures needed to draw comment from the Obama administration today.

The petition appeared on a section of the White House website called "We the People" that invites users with a U.S. zip code to submit or sign petitions about policy changes they would like to see. A petition must reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days for the administration to comment on it.

The petition to "Peacefully grant the State of Texas to withdraw from the United States of America and create its own NEW government," was submitted on Friday of last week. Just three days later, it zoomed past the 25,000 mark at 3:22 p.m. today and kept going." [Source]

O let me help you with that response:

Goodbye Texas, and take the stinking Cowboys with you.

Relax field, the Governor himself says that this is not happening.

"Texas Gov. Rick Perry won’t be joining the roughly 77,000 people who have signed a petition calling on the White House to allow his state to secede from the Union.

Perry has famously joked in the past about his state breaking away from the United States of America, but his spokesperson said he doesn’t approve of the Internet campaign that has swelled to include secession petitions for more than 35 states.

“Gov. Perry believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it,” Perry spokesperson Catherine Frazier told The Dallas Morning News. “But he also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government" [Source]

Not yet.

Finally, this is getting ridiculous, you employers have got to stop taking out your hatred for Obama on your employees. You lost! Get over it! The next time you will just have to spend more money. Just don't let Karl Rove come along and steal take millions from you again.

Free stuff, and the sad days of Beth Cox.

I just read two interesting articles dealing with conservative consternation about the "Kenyan Muslim" winning four more years in office and throwing their beloved country into a tailspin.

The first one was by Jonathan Cohn, and he wrote about conservatives and their latest meme about "free stuff". Yes America, conservatives work, and all of us other stiff just want "free stuff". Let's forget, for a minute, that most of these billies live in the poorest areas of the country that depend on a lot of "free stuff" from our government. These are the folks Mitt Romney was talking about when he referred to the 47% but they are just too dumb to realize it.

"Frustrated conservatives have a theory for why their ideas didn’t win more support on Election Day: They can’t compete with the offer of “free stuff.”
As this argument goes, President Obama and the Democrats won by promising their constituencies government goodies, but without asking those constituencies to pay for them. Women got free birth control. Latinos got more open immigration policy. The poor got food stamps. Tons of people got subsidized health insurance. And so on.

It’s basically another version of the 47 percent argument—i.e., that 47 percent of the country is dependent on the rest of the taxpaying public. It was kicking around in conservative circles even before Mitt Romney invoked it at that now-infamous Florida fundraiser. And judging by recent commentary, it’s going to keep kicking around for a while longer. Last week, National Review’s Kevin Williamson concluded that “offering Americans a check is a more fruitful political strategy than offering them the opportunity to take control of and responsibility for their own lives.” Just today, Washington Post conservative writer Jennifer Rubin wrote that the Democratic Party won by “feeding its base cotton candy.

But sometimes the argument about free stuff has a more insidious meaning—and you don’t have to strain to hear it. During the Fox News broadcast on Election Night, Bill O’Reilly declared, “It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.” In case the reference to “traditional America” was too subtle, O’Reilly went on to talk about Obama’s strong support among blacks, Latinos, and women.

And O’Reilly was simply saying the same thing plenty of other conservatives and Republicans had been saying, not least among them Romney himself. Months ago, after giving a highly touted speech to an African-American audience, Romney told a smaller audience of supporters he’d gotten a chilly reception because he’d said that, unlike Obama, he wouldn’t be giving out free stuff. We can debate whether Romney and others invoking the same line were tapping into racial stereotypes, consciously or subconsciously. But the idea that conscientious, hard-working “makers” were subsidizing shifty, lazy “takers” was—and obviously still is—an article of faith for many on the right." [Source]

I am willing to bet that these conservatives get more "free stuff" than the rest of us, but here in America we are to believe that "free stuff" is reserved for only certain people. Do they work harder? No. Do they pay more takes? No. Did they do anything special (such as serve in the armed forces) for our country? No. So why do they believe that they have the right to say these things? That was a rhetorical question. We all know the answer.

The second article was by Eli Saslow writing for the Washington Post.
This one focused on a Tennessee woman by the name of Beth Cox (poor Beth) in the aftermath of the 2012 presidential elections.

"She arrived early to take apart the campaign office piece by piece, just as she felt so many other things about her life were being dismantled. Beth Cox wore a Mitt Romney T-shirt, a cross around her neck and fresh eyeliner, even though she had been crying on and off and knew her makeup was likely to run. A day after the election, she tuned the radio to Glenn Beck and began pulling posters and American flags off the wall.

Her calendar read “Victory Day!!” and she had planned to celebrate in the office by hosting a dance party and selling Romney souvenirs. But instead she was packing those souvenirs into boxes, which would be donated to a charity that sent clothes to South America. Instead a moving company was en route to close down the office in the next 48 hours, and her friends were calling every few minutes to see how she was doing.

“I will be okay,” she told one caller. “I just don’t think we will be okay.”
Here in the heart of Red America, Cox and many others spent last week grieving not only for themselves and their candidate but also for a country they now believe has gone wildly off track. The days after Barack Obama’s reelection gave birth to a saying in Central Tennessee: Once was a slip, but twice is a sign....

 
...She had devoted her life to causes she believed were at the heart of her faith and at the core of her Republican Party. She counseled young married families at church, spoke about right to life in area schools and became a stay-at-home mom with two daughters.

Now, in a single election night, parts of her country had legalized marijuana, approved gay marriage and resoundingly reelected a president who she worried would “accelerate our decline.”...

“I’m worried we won’t see another Republican president in our lifetime the way it’s going,” a GOP volunteer said.
“What country would want more years of this?” asked the newly elected alderman.

Cox shrugged back at them. “I don’t know anymore,” she said. “What the heck happened to the country? Who are we becoming?”...

...Everything in her version of America had confirmed her predictions: the confident anchors on Fox News; the Republican pollsters so sure of their data; the two-hour line outside her voting precinct, where Romney supporters hugged and honked for her handmade signs during a celebration that lasted until the results started coming in after sundown. Romney’s thorough defeat had come more as a shock than as a disappointment, and now Cox stared at the actual results on her computer and tried to imagine what the majority of her country believed.

“Virginia went blue? Really?” she said. “Southern-values Virginia?”
“And Colorado? Who the heck is living in Colorado? Do they want drugs, dependency, indulgence? Don’t they remember what this country is about?”...

...She could sense liberalism creeping closer, and she worried about what Red America would look like after four more years. Nashville itself had gone for Obama, and 400,000 more people in Tennessee had signed up for food stamps in the last five years to further a culture of dependency. The ACLU had sued her school board for allowing youth pastors to visit middle school cafeterias during lunch. Some of her friends had begun to wonder if the country was lost, and if only God could save it...

..She closed her computer. “God put us in the desert,” she said. “We are in the desert right now...” 

...She came back into the Romney office again the next morning. The moving truck was waiting outside.

“It’s so depressing,” she said, walking into the office. “Let’s just get it done.”
They threw out yard signs, hauled office supplies into storage and donated some furniture to Goodwill. Cox swept the floor and then came outside to watch the mover climb on top of his trailer to take down the “Sumner County Republican Party” banner that had hung on the front of the building. Four months of dedication and work — the sale of 1,600 signs, 500 bracelets, 1,200 buttons and a few hundred hats — reduced to nothing in 48 hours...

...She stood in the cold and stared at the two-story building. It had belonged to a doctor’s practice that had closed, and then to a newspaper that had downsized, and finally to a campaign that had failed to win office based on its vision of America.

 She took out her phone and snapped a picture.

“So that’s it,” she said. “It’s all gone...”

..."What the heck happened to America? Who are we becoming?" [Source]

Americans?!