It’s Change! Alright

Hillary for President in 2012. Accept no substitutes.

Three years ago, I was a gainfully employed scientist designing oncology drugs.  I had a modest townhouse, a used car, a small pension and an lousy 401K.  I based some of my projected retirement salary on my social security benefits and medicare.  Now, through no fault of my own, I join the ranks of the highly skilled, educated unemployed, along with tens of thousands of similarly blighted R&D professionals.  I paid into the social security trust fund since my first days on the job in 1986.  I paid into the surplus fund because we babyboomers “are too meny”.  We were guaranteed to not die in poverty if we paid up in advance.  Well, I guess that only applies to the older babyboomers.  Those of us under 55 are screwed.  Those of us caught between Gen X and the tailend of the babyboom are doubly screwed.  We’re supposed to find jobs paying the salaries we had before but no one wants to pay for that expertise.  But we’re considered too old to learn new stuff, which is not only untrue (because I’ve actually done it) but leaves us wondering what the f^&* we’re supposed to live on until the age of 85.

And now, the Lightbringer, the agent of Change!, has decided that this is the time, the once in a lifetime opportunity to screw those of us who fall below that 55 year old line and anyone else who might be too poor, too old or too female to be a winner in this country’s new economy:

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

At a meeting with top House and Senate leaders set for Thursday morning, Obama plans to argue that a rare consensus has emerged about the size and scope of the nation’s budget problems and that policymakers should seize the moment to take dramatic action.Republicans showed new signs of flexibility to break a budget impasse Wednesday, but the White House raised the ante, pushing for more deficit reduction and casting the GOP as defenders of corporate tax giveaways.As part of his pitch, Obama is proposing significant reductions in Medicare spending and for the first time is offering to tackle the rising cost of Social Security, according to people in both parties with knowledge of the proposal. The move marks a major shift for the White House and could present a direct challenge to Democratic lawmakers who have vowed to protect health and retirement benefits from the assault on government spending.“Obviously, there will be some Democrats who don’t believe we need to do entitlement reform. But there seems to be some hunger to do something of some significance,” said a Democratic official familiar with the administration’s thinking. “These moments come along at most once a decade. And it would be a real mistake if we let it pass us by.”

Know what, Obots?  I don’t ever, EVER want to hear that Hillary wouldn’t have done anything differently.  We told you what Obama was.  You had the chance to reject him.

Words cannot describe how angry I am.  I am now stuck trying to make a living in this economy at a time when I have to put a kid through college.  (By the way, I’d like to thank whatever angels are out there who have realized I haven’t exaggerated the kid’s talents and have gone out of their way to offer her opportunities she might not otherwise have.  It helps.) The salary is gone. The health insurance is gone. The pension is decades away and the 401K is dormant. I have to pay a mortgage in a very high tax state on top of paying COBRA and there are no jobs, guys.  NO JOBS.  Did you get that John Aravosis?  A drug designer with experience in computational chemistry and structural biology can’t find a job finding and designing cancer drugs or HIV protease inhibitors or anti-psychotic drugs.  I will have to design them myself and find someone to make them and test them and solve their structures.  And I’m supposed to do this with what exactly?  Magic ponies??  By the time I go through my savings, I’ll have nothing left to retire on but Social Security.  Social Security was supposed to be an insurance policy for those of us who had tried and didn’t quite end up in the bonus class, eating what they kill.

You people who supported Obama after we begged and pleaded with you to not do it, to consider what you were doing to the “old coalition”, who tried to tell you he was not who you thought he was, you people have lost all credibility.  Do you get it?  No one is going to listen to you anymore.  No one wants to hear about Howard Dean or Dennis Kucinich or Russ Feingold or whoever your latest cerebral but impractical choice of a presidential candidate is.  If you don’t, right this moment, thoroughly and completely abandon and repudiate Obama and immediately embrace the only legitimate Democrat who can turn this ship around, you’re finished.  You will fade into the crazy, elite, lunatics who ruined the working class by shoving a weak, Republican in disguise down our throats. Your unhinged rantings about Bill Clinton’s “triangulating”. ie, performing politics in the face of a overtly hostile Republican Congress and media, will fall on deaf ears. People will remember your detached wails about “welfare reform” and NAFTA when they’re searching desperately for jobs that aren’t being shipped off to Germany, France and Chindia. They will remember when Bill Clinton drove down unemployment to 4% and taxed the rich. They’ll remember that your Messiah didn’t do any of those things.  And don’t ask for any help from us to protect you from the Republican Scourge in 2012 because we’ll remember Obama capitulating to the Republican Scourge in 2011. We don’t want more of the same and it’s about time our votes meant something.  In any case, we’ll be too busy killing ourselves to make a living to want to lift a finger to help Obama inflict any more Change!™ on us.

It’s Hillary or no one for the Democratic presidential campaign in 2012.  I’d rather vote for an obscure third party candidate than either major party candidate.  It’s up to the Democrats to decide if they really want to lose in 2012 and go down in history as the most hated version of the Democratic party in American history.  No one should reward this level of greed, powerlust and incompetence.  If the Republicans win in 2012 it will be because the Democrats walked away from their responsibility to do the right thing.  Blaming the voters is unacceptable and vile.

If you Obots don’t join us and push Obama out in favor of the true Democrat, be prepared to be the most loathed people in the country.