Even I have friends who happen to be Republicans, and the woman who sent me this is one of them. My stuff is in red, hers in black. This was a fwd e-mail from one of her friends, so both got a copy of this. I live for this stuff!


An American Dream?
My own thoughts... ^ | 02/18/2005 | DoughtyOne
Posted on 02/18/2005 9:21:47 PM PST by DoughtyOne
… As I said, what my specific American Dream is, is not all that important. We all have our own version. Mine is good for me. Yours is good for you. But as time goes buy, I have begun to realize that parts of what is coming to pass, has nothing to do with what most would consider the American Dream. And that is something we need to address. It was addressed by the Progressives, beginning in about 1900.Did your American Dream go something like this? When I grow up I’d like to live in a town where few people speak English. That’s your choice; in America, you can live where you wish. I’d like the area I live in to have homes with bars on the windows. I’d like to live in a land where there is enough money to pay a police force large enough to keep in prison those who force people to put bars on their houses. I’d like tall fences around every home in my area. No problem there. I’d like to see businesses without signs that I can read. You want signs you can’t read? I’d like to be able to go inside of businesses and not be able to find anything because the signs are not in English. Then don’t go in those business; the fact that they don’t have signs you can read probably means there’s not much you’d want to buy so they don’t want you as a customer- which is their choice. The reason others shop in that store is because it does stock the stuff they want to buy, and besides, they can’t read the signs in the stores at which you shop.Did you dream of driving down the roads you’d been driving since you were young, that would look more like a foreign nation, than your home town. Did you dream of rotting roadways… no, I dreamed that the taxes I pay in the cost of gasoline, tires, DMV fees, etc, will be used exclusively to repair those highways …clogged chuck full with millions of uninvited guests? Not clear as to what you mean. Most of the illegals you seem to be referring to don’t drive- they can’t get driver’s licenses, thank God. Those that are here legally can drive, and they pay the same proportion of taxes everyone else does. Did you dream of owning your home, providing for your own health insurance needs, but skip the part about financing the dwellings and healthcare of others? I never dreamed it would be so difficult for 43 million American citizens to obtain health insurance, and to find it so hard to make a living that our society would have to help them. And I would rather help them put a roof over their head than have them live under a freeway underpass somewhere. Did you dream of your child getting the same type of education you received from the public school system, only to find that by the time your kids were school age, the public schools system was unfit to teach them? My question is: how come the 6th largest economy in the world ranks 47th among the states for money invested in public education? When you were a kid, California was in the top ten states for dollars spent on education. You get what you pay for.
Did you dream of starting to pay tuition for your children’s education from the first grade on? Because we live in America, that is your choice. Did it even enter your mind that your child wouldn’t be able to attend the nearest public school, because they’d spend a third or more of their day reading,in California, devoting nearly 1/3 of the day to reading-related activities is a required part of the state standards… while the children of foreign nationals got 100% of the teacher’s attention? As a high school teacher, I can tell you that this is patently not true. But let’s address it: with an average 40 students in a classroom, and 55 minutes in a period, each student would receive only a little over a minute, anyhow- assuming that’s the way teacher’s work in a classroom- which it isn’t- and assuming your original statement had any credibility at all- which it doesn’t.
Did you dream of your local school system providing 75% (Los Angeles), 80% (Santa Ana) or 90% (Fresno) of the lunches for the students that attend, because the parents know that you will foot the bill? Did I ever dream that wages in America would be so incredibly low that such a system would be required? By the way, these are also the children of Wal-Mart employees, too; that great American institution of predatory capitalism gives their employees the forms necessary to qualify for the free lunch programs in their area at the time they are employed, along with forms for subsidized housing. I guess Wal-Mart wants you to subsidize lunches and housing for their employees’ children so they don’t have to pay them a living wage. Ain’t welfare a grand thing?Did you dream that over 90% of the babies delivered in your county hospital, would be the children of foreign nationals? Whatever the ratio, that makes them American citizens under the Constitution, doesn’t it? Did you dream that over 75% of the other services at those hospitals would be provided to foreign nationals? Since you do not source your statistics, they may or may not be accurate, but what I would never have believed is that we as a nation have no better way of taking care of the sick in our country than this. I guess the alternative is to simply let them die. Did you dream of seven hospitals in your area closing because there were so many poor people and foreign nationals demanding services, that they couldn’t stay in business? What I find pathetic is that there is no alternative to this system. Did you dream that the services provided by the other hospitals in your area, would deteriorate so noticeably due to unfounded services they must provide? I’m not sure what you mean by ‘unfounded’? Is it the illness or the service that is unfounded? Or did you mean that services were unfunded? That is, indeed, something of which I would never have dreamed- that there was not enough money in the wealthiest nation on earth to pay for the hospital bills of people without enough money to pay for health services out of their own pocket.Did your dream include roughly 35% of the schools in your state failing the President’s No Child Left Behind mandate, mostly because they were full of children who couldn’t speak English? Again, as a teacher, I know this to be patently false. The reasons NCLB shows so much failure is because 1) there is only one test used to show success; and 2) the federal mandate puts 75% of the cost directly onto the states’ budgets- it’s and unfunded mandate. Let me give you an example of what I mean by a single test to determine success. Bonnie, you sell mutual fund investments, so here’s the new law: No Investors Left Behind- NILB. You can only sell mutual funds from fund families that provide a dividend of at least 4% and capital growth of at least 8%. There can be no variation from year to year, good performance one year cannot be averaged into the next, and if one fund within the entire fund family does not perform at least that well, the entire fund family is subject to take-over by the SEC, and you will be terminated from selling funds. Now, go sell mutual funds. Did you dream of your local public school system being inundated by so many new students each year, that they simply could not humanly build enough new schools, fast enough, to house them all? Would I have ever believed that the governor of California who promised to return $2.3 billion to the schools for their help in solving a budget crisis dating back to the last Republican administration, backed off his promise the following year? He calls it ‘renegotiating’ but most others call it ‘lying through his teeth’. Could I ever have believed that California gets back 80 cents for every dollar it pays in federal taxes, and that in 2003, 75% of that 20 cents Californians didn’t get back was refunded to people making over $300,000 a year? Would I believe that $200 billion would be spent on wars instead of new schools, teacher education, hospitals, highways, and important infrastructure here in the United States? No, all of that is pretty much beyond belief. Did your dream include your state’s jail and prison system having to house roughly double the illegal aliens by percentage, compared to U.S. citizens? Would I have ever dreamed that a prison guard with a high school diploma would be making more as a rookie guard than a teacher with a BA and 3 additional years in college to obtain their credential? Would I have ever believed that schools passing 94.9% of their students in compliance with NCLB would be deemed ‘failures’ and subject to takeover by the state, while a system that has less than a 50% success rate would not be subject to sanctions?Did your dream include citizens of a foreign nation becoming involved in your nation’s elections? These people should be thrown in prison, but according to virtually all secretaries of states, such actions are incredibly rare, accounting for less than 1 voter per 250,000 nationwide. What I never dreamed, however, was that registered voters would have to stand in line for 10 hours in one part of a city, while those in other, more affluent parts would have to wait in line but a few minutes. What I also never dreamed is that one political party consistently does not want all votes counted.Did you ever dream of your fellow citizens having to lock themselves inside their homes, essentially becoming a prisoner there, while citizens of a foreign nation rifled their belongings each night, killing pets, stealing anything not nailed down? Yes, I guess the citizens of Iraq do have some complaints, too- but I really don’t believe our soldiers kill pets and steal stuff. Did your dream envision a time when by 2015 60 to 75 million foreign nationals would have flooded onto your nation’s soil? I think that’s probably how the Native Americans felt when we started exterminating them as we moved west. Payback is always a bitch.Did you dream of a time when kids would have a hard time finding those entry level jobs you and I did? Did you dream of a time when fellow citizens would be unable to find jobs, due to the employment of foreign nationals? I never dreamed that entry-level jobs like those I found would not be available because they had been moved out of America completely. I never dreamed that the only jobs available for our high school and college grads are those low-skill labor jobs in which Americans are in competition with foreign nationals.Did your dream include handing all this off to your children, grandchildren and future generations? You mean, like the $200 billion war, the trillions we incurred in debt so that the richest 3% of Americans could get back 94% of the taxes refunded? Like trying to pass on another $2 trillion in debt so that my grandchildren can be guaranteed less than 50% of the benefits I will receive when I retire? No, I never dreamed of that.I mentioned my background earlier, because there’s one thing about me that I want people to know. I’ve seen it in a lot of other people too. Don’t shuck and jive me about the positive effects of illegal immigration. And this is where we really agree- we should do something about illegal immigration. There’s still apart of the country boy in me, and those folks can spot a pile of manure from quite a ways away. And I can sure spot a pile of it here…
Did you ever dream, that your elected officials you mean the Republicans who control all three branches of government? I didn’t elect them… in Washington, D.C., would seek every way possible to facilitate this? Some of us have been telling you it was going to happen since 2000. Did you ever dream that folks claiming to be conservatives, the ones you should be looking to for help with this issue, would instead seek to force this dream upon you? Oh yes, I did dream that and I usually woke up in a cold sweat! So now at least we have something upon which we can agree. The President and the Republican-dominated Congress’ solution is to make most of those people about whom you are so xenophobic American citizens, and they are forcing this dream on you. But is solves the illegal immigration problem: if they’re all citizens, then they’re not illegal. Then the problem would no longer be illegal aliens, would it? And the Wal-Marts and Tyson Farms and Hormel Meats will then have plenty of cheap labor.
Was this your American Dream? No Well, for many people, the American Dream has become to a varying degree, an American Nightmare. It’s been that way for me since 2000 Sadly, this nightmare is different than every other nightmare you’ve had. No, it’s exactly the nightmare I had. I am sad to say to you my fellow citizens of the Republic of the United States of America; this one won’t end until others wake up. Your chance to wake up passed on November 2, 2004. Your Party gave you a sleeping pill called homophobia and you swallowed it. You’ll have another wake-up call in ’06; get rid of some of the lying liars then. Until then, don’t blame me for this nightmare- I voted Democrat.