Some of us can`t afford to be patient. [View All]

[democrank]

The "throwing so many people under the bus" complaint around here got me thinking. Some folks here and elsewhere can`t afford to sit around four...or eight more years waiting for the change we were promised. Our desperation prohibits the patience many of you preach about. Our kids are eating Ramen Noodles and our elderly parents are cutting their pills in half, just to survive another day. Many of us are out of work. Not lazy, just jobless. And we can not understand the reckless taxpayer-funded giveaway to gargantuan corporations while a chunk of our neighborhood is in foreclosure. We can`t even nod sweetly and send the DNC the money they asked for. Mostly because we don`t have it but also because they don`t deserve it.

We were told things were going to change but here we are a year later and Washington is still bought and paid for by the same people playing the same game. There`s nary a word uttered about people living under bridges or freezing on park benches because those folks don`t count, any more than the rest of us do who sell a little bucket of scrap metal just to pay for bread and milk or who sweep out the laundramat every other night after closing just to keep a phone in case the manager of 7/11 calls. These are the folks who can not afford to be patient another minute. You may not know one, but believe me, they`re out there...and so are their precious children.

What we have settled for is a shell of what should be. We`ve excused every broken promise and every wrong-headed idea. We can stand up and preach for hours about who`s too big to fail and yet not utter a single word about a soldier on his third or fourth tour in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can uphold being forced to buy into an insurance monopoly but keep a zipped lip when a $4.00 bottle of pills costs us $53.00. It`s amazing what we`re willing to put up with...and call progress.

Some of you who are shocked at which well-heeled politician is under the bus tires should save some of that shock for unemployment lines, empty food pantry shelves, homeless children, boarded-up factories and empty oil barrels. If politicians have enough money for bonuses for banksters, they ought to be able to cough up enough to save the home in foreclosure for a National Guard member in Wisconsin. We`re creeping closer and closer to a one-party, save-the-pinstripes system. It`s honestly time for the little guy, no matter how sick, no matter how poor, no matter how discouraged, to stand up and say, "YOU`RE FIRED."