are technically parasitism.

And if we are going to use ecological terminology within political discussion I think we have to deal with the possibility that we are not really parasites but much more like grass. What we produce is regularly chewed away by retailers and financiers, and the remainder gets shat upon, as if somehow we needed crap laid down on us to invigorate us.

Who is much smarter than I am. I heard that I was dependent on government for my food, health care, and housing. An organism (me) that's wholly dependent on another organism and gives nothing back (symbiosis in the form of an income tax) is a parasite, yes?

Oh, and I don't matter. So don't trouble yourself with the type of ecological life form I may represent. If I'm grass I exist solely for the pleasure of the wealthy to picnic upon.

If the host isn't presented with any cost of your presence you can't be a parasite.

Within the American economic system, the host (the 1%)???? are provided with super-numery mitigations that protect them from the blood-sucking lower classes. I can't help but think the feedback loops provided by the harvesting of the 1% on the 99% more than balance this circumstance in their favor. And as such I am left with something like a consumer-producer relationship that isn't truly parasitism.

You get where I'm goin' with this, and I know you're with me because you're on DU. Romney called nearly half the nation "dependent" on "government." How you want to parse that is up to you, but the way I see it, he called me a freeloader, or a parasite, or a useless eater, or some other rich guy term for "undeserving scum."

Yeah, so pardon me if I'm just a little miffed by the whole matter. If it were not for the judicious and timely assistance of government, I might not be alive.

End of story.

Rather than being parasites we seem more like a herd of cattle not being very well kept by herdsman who have lost interest in their fathers' work.

It's the capitalist financial pirates that are forever harvesting the people's productivity and turning it into piles of money that aren't spent on keeping up the place. And it's the ordinary people's productivity that put the rich in their big houses, gave them garages with elevators, and allows them to have the best medical care and expensive hobbies. This is backwards for us to be parasites. When our grandparents submitted to their harness, our flesh and blood made things great for the ownership class and we were bent to serve them under the yoke or via the slaughter house.

And although they had it very good, to make even more money, they're kids quit maintenance on the out-buildings and tractors, and are refusing to pay the taxes that allow for farm inspections that insure the herd is maintained humanely and gets veterinary care. The barns have gone wobbly, the machinery no longer works and the gas under the pasture is worth more than everything, so we are drinking polluted water and eating weeds.

The owners just figured they'll sell off or slaughter we members of the herd to cut costs. They've already got resources to eat fancy Asian beef produced off-shore so they don't need us bot-infested lil doggies anymore. They still pretend to be ranchers, but they're just play acting cowboys prancing around on dancing horses and calling us burdens and looking for someone, anyone, to take us off their hands for hamburger. If they can't find someone soon, their plan is to just leave us to starve and feed the buzzards.

When we figure out that we aren't analogies to parasites or cattle, maybe we will live like it's July 14th.

There are some fortresses I wouldn't mind storming.

don't eat undercooked pork, seriously.

Oh, and Federal Direct Guaranteed Student Loan, here. for 3 degrees. Don't ask how much, I never got the job that would have paid for them. Overqualified? Oh yes. But thank God I finally did get a job that keeps me (barely) out of poverty. I'm not one of the 47%, tho. I have to pay taxes on my office job salary.

Great economy we have here Mr Romney, thanks to your kind and their greed. So easy for us parasites to get off the host and into some kind of independent existence--when nobody has been hiring or raising wages since before Reagan took office.

When the man I lived with for 11 years had the utter gall to die suddenly from a brain aneurism, I found myself without a job, in the boonies with 3 teenagers, no car, and little money. We weren't married, and he died in debt, leaving us with little, and I found my worthless self having to start life completely over at age 40. So for a time we were on the dole for food. Complete bloodsuckers we were. It was my own fault for bad planning--I should have planned for a sudden brain hemmorhage, or at the very least, chosen to have wealthy parents.

Now my paycheck comes from Tokyo. At least someone is paying me!

and was back to canned green beans. (I've since gotten a better job!)

Didn't pay taxes on them either since I road a bike.

(Well, technically I paid the part of road building and maintenance that isn't covered by gas taxes but you get my point)

now I am collecting on it.

Oh I had a job. I have a BA in Communications. I lost it all and the help that should have been there was not, thanks to the 8 year drain of the Bush administration.
After the tornado I was living LARGE! Sleeping in tents in 32 and lower temps, shelters, back of building, living off $200 in food stamps a month (btw, if you have to by pre-made food due to the lack of a kitchen, that goes in about two weeks, if you find a cheep place to buy), walking everywhere to find help (they are not located close together), and always the never ending hunt for a bathroom.


P.S. Renters check your insurance plan for a "Move Clause". It cost me everything.

checking in.

got a couple of grants in college, but it was an evil soshalist land grant university so that was especially egregious as I attended for 8 years total.

My greatest offense against America has been keeping my very small business going during this recession, earning so little I haven't paid federal income taxes in a couple of years. Because perseverance is as bad as being a parasite.

ETA: Please forgive me. I forgot those federally guaranteed student loans in college, that I paid back in full MANY YEARS before they were due.

I am so ashamed. I am lower than pond scum.

I receive a pension for a 70% disability rating for PTSD from the VA. It's worth about $1,520 a month tax free plus medical care relating to my PTSD is covered.

I made the mistake of joining the Army when I was 17 years old thinking that I would actually be doing something good in the world. I went to basic training between my junior and senior year of high school and served in the Army reserves while I was in college. I received an Army ROTC sholarship and switched over to active duty in 2002 as an Infantry Officer. I busted my ass in the Army and gave my all and went through Airborne School and Ranger School. I arrived to unit a few months they were getting ready to deploy to Iraq in Feb 2004 and I spent 13 months in Iraq as an Infantry Platoon Leader. I went on patrol and gave everything I had for a war I never agreed with at least 6 days a week. In fact, There were only 2 patrols that my platoon went on without me the whole time I was in Iraq - and one was because I was sick as hell and the other was because we had a standing policy in my platoon that you weren't allowed to go on patrol the day before you go on your two week leave (bad luck). I led my platoon through numerous large and small scale combat events resulting in a confirmed 46 enemy killed (which appauls me, but that is the topic for another thread).

I honestly don't know how I came home alive. In one incident I had a hand grenade blow up no more than 15 feet in front of me and in another incident I had bullets hitting the ground next me while I was crossing the street (the rest of my patrol ran for cover, but I was crazy and kept walking because I was looking to die rather than come home). 5 of the 46 Soldiers in my platoon were killed on 24 JAN 2005 when I lost a Bradley Fighting Vehicle.

I've never told anyone in person this, but I almost commited suicide while I was in Iraq. I felt hopeless and the last thing I wanted to do was come back home. To this day I still don't know why I'm still around. If I didn't have kids and I didn't know that they'd be devastated if I weren't around, I probably wouldn't be alive right now. I'm completely stuck in the war even though I've been out of it for almost 8 years. I just can't move on and it pervades itself into every aspect of what remains of my life. Honestly, other than my kids, there isn't a thing I give a f**k about or live for.

I go on periods of time when I get fired up and I just want to get back to the war. If I could drop everything and be back in Iraq tomorrow, I would. I miss the feeling of holding a rifle in my hand, the danger, and ther murder. As aweful as it sounds, fighting in war is a feeling that you can't beat.

I hate being a shadow of what I was when I was in the Army. I was capabe of leading a platoon in combat! Now I can hardly even go to public places like McDonalds without turning into a bumbling idiot. I can't get around to paying my bills on time (even though I have the money) and I can hardly hold a job if it wasn't for the charity of my boss and my employer and their sense of duty for helping guys like me.

I work for the federal government. If I didn't have a huge veteran's highering preference, I would have never gotten the job that I have now. Basically, you need to be really messed up to one-up me on the hiring list. Not to sound sorry for myself, but I'm pretty bad off.

Yup, I'm a mooch and a drain to us all. I should have died in Iraq like I wanted to.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

Sorry for posting immages of my awards from Iraq. I'm not that full of myself. I just like to prove that I am who/what I claim to be. I'm not looking for sympathy or thanks for my service. It's just more of a point of the type of scumbag that makes up the 47% that Romeny despises.

You are a brave man. Not just for you service, which speaks for itself, but for putting yourself out there for others to understand what you have been through. I say "understand," but there is near to no understanding. I hope that you will find peace. I wish I could guide you.

On DU, you are valued.

PM me anytime for a pep talk.

Even though I loved the military and the people I worked with, I hated the war. Granted, I did completely volunteer for military service. However, I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what war was really all about until I experienced it first hand. I'm appauled by what I saw in Iraq and I want to do everything I can from preventing something like this from happening again. And that is the reason I post stuff like I posted above.

It also doesn't hurt that I was drinking a little last night and that helps me get the words out...

People need to know the truth and how much war affects you after you make it home. They need to abandon the idea that war is glorious and the only people who are killed are the people who fight in it. I like how we acknowledge and remember our veterans with memorials and monuments, but at the same time I hate seeing monuments because I see them as a tool used to present war as glorious. Instead of building monuments to the Soldiers, we should build monuments to the widows and children of the Soldiers as well as the civilian victims of war. Memorial day and Veterans day should be days of national mourning for the pain of wars inflicted on both sides of battle.

I don't want to see a memorial for the war in Iraq with statue of a bunch of American Soldiers holding weapons looking proud and ready to kill. I think it'd be much more appropriate to have a woman in a burqa holding her child and crying at the side of her dead husband and/or a statue of an American woman and her child standing next to a shattered and decrepit veteran. We need to be shown that wars break people in our memorials. Not immages of strength and power. In a local town around here there is a memorial that I love. There is a Soldier standing next to a big granite stone (with names on it) stooped over and crying. It's very powerful to me and it chokes me up most times I drive by it.

don't do enough when they come home.

Mitt Romney displays the lowest form of humanity.

To attribute humanity to Mitt Romney.

You survived for a reason. Maybe to teach people like me, and others, about what war does to a man's soul. Plus, as you said, your kids need you.

I hope you are in intensive therapy, plus, have you thought about meditation, stuff like that?? That has helped me a lot, as I had PTSD from 9/11.

Best, and hey - I am so glad you are here.

Peace.

and my wife got me into a meditation program that is helping too.

PTSD is PTSD. It doesn't matter where it comes from. Everyone thinks that it only aflicts people in war.

Anyways, thanks.

my dad is considered over 100% disabled from his viet nam service. I am not sure how one can be over 100% disabled, but I think that makes my family super-moochers.

I'm glad you didn't kill yourself and it pains me that so many folks are still getting deployed to Afghanistan.

Because of my SSI check.

You see, I won a scholarship from the evil government that paid all my tuition and expenses through nursing school. Now I'm doing two years of service in a disproportionate share hospital which is a fancy way of telling you that my community is poor and underserved.

Not only am I a parasite, I take care of parasites and advocate for them every day.

I fear there is no hope for me . . . . .

For what can be worse than a parasite who cares for more of them? Feeding them, comforting them, keeping them safe and tending to their medical and psychological needs all the while helping them procure the resources that may be available to them? Clearly, we are the lowest of the low.

Checking in!

Shudder!! When my husband lost his job last year---we went on unemployment for three months.

I know...I know...we're disgusting, self-defined victims who don't care about our lives. We think we're entitled to food. Especially Cheetos and monster cookies.

We are nothing but big, giant vampire leeches--sucking the decency and humanity out of our entire country.

We're sorry. Now pass the Cheetos. The free Cheetos I mean. The ones that government damn well owes us!

(Whatever, Mitt)

Yippee, I sucked off the government teat to get three degrees.

of course, my mom and dad were major mooches.
WIC
Pell Grant
Medicaid
SSDI
Medicare\
VA
Tricare For Life

When will the madness end?

employing two people, but my husband was disabled by 9/11, so we are the worst kind of parasites. Mooching off fellow Americans. God, I hate myself.

except for the $5000 in student loans I had a paid back, and my oldest son got almost full financial aid to an Ivy League school, so I am really teaching my kids to be moochers, also. It is a family thing, see???

pension, health care, and GI bill was available to us kids for college. Also Pell grants and student loans for grad school.