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Obama would enable a nation of Julias
The Columbia Daily Tribune ^ | May 7, 2012 | Rich Lowry

Posted on 05/08/2012 6:24:01 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

In the competition for the creepiest campaign material of 2012, we might already have a winner. It is "The Life of Julia," the Obama re-election team's cartoon chronicle of a fictional woman who is dependent on government every step of her life.

The phrase "cradle-to-grave welfare state" originated with Clement Attlee's socialist government in post-World War II Britain. Back then, it was meant as a boastful description of a new age of government activism.

Subsequently, it became a term of derision for critics of an overweening government. In the spirit of Attlee, the Obama campaign revives the concept of "cradle to grave" as it highlights Obama-supported programs that take care of Julia from age 3 to her retirement at age 67.

Julia begins her interaction with the welfare state as a little tot through the pre-kindergarten program Head Start. She then proceeds through all of life's important phases, not Shakespeare's progression from "mewling and puking" infant to "second childishness and mere oblivion," but the Health and Human Services and Education Department version: a Pell grant (age 18), surgery on insurance coverage guaranteed by Obamacare (22), a job where she can sue her employers for more pay thanks to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (23), free contraception (27), a Small Business Administration loan (42) and, finally, Medicare (65) and Social Security (67). (In a sci-fi touch, these entitlements are presumed blissfully unchanged sometime off in the 2070s.)

No doubt, the creators of Julia — imagine a dour and featureless version of Dora the Explorer who grows old through the years — weren't seeking to make a major philosophical statement. But they inadvertently captured something important about the progressive vision.

Julia's central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health care provider, venture capitalist and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn't worry about paying taxes. It doesn't enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences.

She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world.

A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a Web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked.

Her life is framed to show she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her Web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family's income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans inveighing against the trend. These examples don't suit the campaign's purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn't delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia's birth-control pills free.

The point of view of "The Life of Julia" is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture. This view's infantilizing tendency is captured by Obamacare's insistence that, for purposes of health insurance, young adults are children who belong on their parents' policies until the age of 26. It devalues self-reliance and looks at us less as independent citizens than as drab Julias, bereft without the succor of our life partner and minder, the state.

No thanks.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: democrats; julia; obama; taxes
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Indeed.
1 posted on 05/08/2012 6:24:03 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

And the Republicans won’t do a damn thing about it.


2 posted on 05/08/2012 6:28:20 AM PDT by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Everyone knows the Term "Ward of the State"

Now we have
"June of the State"

Ward of the state refers to a person who is under the legal protection of some arm of the government......Being someone’s ward means being under someone’s care. The ward of the state is essentially under the state’s care through one or more of its agencies.

3 posted on 05/08/2012 6:32:01 AM PDT by libertarian27 (Check my profile page for the FReeper Online Cookbook 2011)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
All of the Julias want to live in or near Waashington DC and date a gov't employee like Ward, of the State Department.

(This assumes that Zachary doesn't have two moms.)

4 posted on 05/08/2012 6:32:21 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: dfwgator

Happy 67th Birthday Julia. Here’s your Blue Pill. Or is it the Red one?


5 posted on 05/08/2012 6:32:31 AM PDT by massgopguy (I owe everything to George Bailey)
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To: libertarian27

See #4.


6 posted on 05/08/2012 6:34:40 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: massgopguy

Ask Alice...


7 posted on 05/08/2012 6:36:05 AM PDT by Eric in the Ozarks
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Julia :Obama is getting desperate, This one is next!
8 posted on 05/08/2012 6:37:05 AM PDT by sickoflibs (Romney is a liberal. Just watch him closely try to screw us.)
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To: libertarian27

A ward of the state is someone who is INCAPABLE OF CARING FOR THEMSELVES and has no other person who can/will do so either.

This is how the left sees most people.
I have a benchmark lib that I talk to here and there...
She said that “60% of people are incapable of making their own decisions”.

It was funny, later, when she was talking about making a decision, I said “remember that 60% statistic? Odds are... :)”.


9 posted on 05/08/2012 6:38:01 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter knows whom he's working for)
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To: Paladin2

HA! Same thought

Maybe it will catch on....

“June of the State”
or
“Julia of the State”

(I like ‘June’ better :)


10 posted on 05/08/2012 6:39:33 AM PDT by libertarian27 (Check my profile page for the FReeper Online Cookbook 2011)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

One big problem with “julia”.

The ozero campaign is assuming that she would escape the womb alive first.


11 posted on 05/08/2012 6:40:33 AM PDT by Texas resident (Hunkered Down)
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To: libertarian27
Everyone knows the Term "Ward of the State" Now we have "June of the State"

To be followed by "Wally of the State" and "The Beaver of the State."

12 posted on 05/08/2012 6:48:03 AM PDT by dfwgator (Don't wake up in a roadside ditch. Get rid of Romney.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

What gets me is that Julia is such a caucasian name. Why not Shanequa? Or Sh-Quan? Or Trayvon?

As much thought, polling and roundtables that go into everything associated with BO, they had to come up with the whitest name out there.


13 posted on 05/08/2012 7:16:50 AM PDT by Cowgirl of Justice
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To: sickoflibs

I ain’t going to 0 bummer’s site to give it any hits (or get tracking cookies), but that is the most juvenile cartoon I’ve seen so far. There are run-on sentences that make no sense, misused words, but what else could 0 bummer expect from his gub’mint schreweled supporters.


14 posted on 05/08/2012 7:32:53 AM PDT by Arrowhead1952 (It's time to take out the trash in DC.)
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To: Arrowhead1952

I haven’t seen the original, but I am pretty sure that’s a spoof. Need to tune yer sarcasometer.


15 posted on 05/08/2012 8:04:20 AM PDT by douginthearmy (Obamagebra: 1 job + 1 hope + 1 change = 0 jobs + 0 hope)
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To: Arrowhead1952
RE :”I ain’t going to 0 bummer’s site to give it any hits (or get tracking cookies), but that is the most juvenile cartoon I’ve seen so far

It sounds like Julia cannot do anything without Mommy governments help. You think she is heterosexual?

Norton scan removes tracking cookies but it's good to clean out all cookies every-so often.

16 posted on 05/08/2012 8:21:06 AM PDT by sickoflibs (Romney is a liberal. Just watch him closely try to screw us.)
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To: massgopguy

Eat.... your peas.


17 posted on 05/08/2012 8:34:57 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: sickoflibs

Try Ghostery.


18 posted on 05/08/2012 8:35:54 AM PDT by Paladin2
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To: sickoflibs

I'm NOT Julia!

19 posted on 05/08/2012 11:30:53 AM PDT by Baynative (Please check this out - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFIcZkEzc8I)
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To: Cowgirl of Justice
What gets me is that Julia is such a caucasian name. Why not Shanequa? Or Sh-Quan? Or Trayvon?

Hey that is my daughters name and yes she is white. But she changed it to Jules, so even she does not like it. but unlike the fabricated Julia, my Julia is nothing like this one. College graduate, owes only $6,000 more after 4 years out of college, earns $70,00 a year and has never been on any government subsidy.

And the best news, she recently told me that choice is before you have sex and even if she was raped she would not seek an abortion!!

20 posted on 05/08/2012 1:34:37 PM PDT by thirst4truth (www.Believer.com)
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