To Voters This Fall: Go Get Em Guys!

A little background info on a story I wrote that ran in the Middletown edition of the Sunday New Haven Register today. This story was especially painful to cover but fun to write because I was provided with shameless one-liners from people who willingly gave me their names to attribute for the story. Phrases like "our crack-smoking, illegal alien president" is sheer comic gold, except these people were dead serious. They hate Obama, which is fine, 'cause there are legitimate reasons to, but the reasons these people gave had no rationality behind them.

From afar, I immediately thought the IMPEACH OBAMA stand was a bunch of Tea Party people, and didn't feel like repeating in print what a gang of government-hating white Republicans who were probably collecting unemployment checks had to say. This stand, run by two dudes who have been traveling around the country setting up shop on UPS properties, was inline with one-time presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, an economist who remained politically active even while serving six years in jail for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and tax code violations.




Defenders of LaRouche say he was victimized by the government. He's been a part of the Labor Party and the Democratic Party, and has been criticized for being too far left and too far right, which is pretty strange and cool. Chris, the guy who was taking donations for the LaRouche Pact and getting people to sign up, said he does not side with any political party. We had a good conversation, though he seemed to think the Tea Party movement is a legit grass-roots phenomenon, and not the Koch Industries-funded, trickle-down fakery that it is.

He was able to talk about the issues, but when you post up a picture of Obama looking like Hitler with a sign that says IMPEACH OBAMA, you're gonna get a lot of disgruntled people who will agree, but can't talk about any issues of substance if their life depended on it.

Like the Tea Partiers, these people really think Obama is a coked-up asshole-socialist who was bred in an Indonesian terrorist cell and then given a Maserati convertible as a cover to run for political office here in the states. But Chris was bringing up some legitimate issues that the people who I saw while standing there didn't care to talk about: the Wall Street bailout and the recent passing of the pathetic Financial Reform Bill.

This is why some people who actually choose to exercise their right to vote make me want to try shooting heroin sometimes. When there is a real problem, we can't talk about it. We vote out of hate. The unprecedented taxpayer bailout of the banks and the Obama Administration's un-willingfullness to really put strict regulations on them is something everyone -- not just Republicans or Democrats -- should be concerned about. And anyone who calls Obama a socialist for overseeing something so pro-corporate/bank happy as this weak reform might be mentally retarded.

Instead, the guy I talked to, really thought Obama was an illegal alien. He did not think he was an American citizen. Same with another guy who thought he was born in Indonesia. We should be worried that a quarter of Americans really believe this. They hate Obama cause they hated him from the start. It didn't matter what the man was gonna do.

I had no shame putting those quotes in the story because I wanted people to see how stupid and funny people are. Two woman who approached the stand out of curiosity couldn't really articulate why they disliked Obama, even though there is a whole screed of legit reasons one can point to.

The bank bailout, how stupid it is that the Mosque situation by Ground Zero is even an issue right now, are real grievances for voters to talk about. But the people who came to sign up couldn't hold a conversation about real issues if they were reading it right off a script -- they just came for the hate fest.

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