Yesterday, following her short screed on Sandy, Broke-Ass received a for real, important Facebook message. Here it is:

BAG -

As someone who loves your articles, I’m glad you moved from the Rancho before Sandy hit, glad you posted and are physically OK after the storm roared over Philly .. even if you are a little shaken & pissed off.

After the trauma of Katrina & Sandy, the devastating floods in Pakistan, the fires and droughts in Texas & the drought with crop loss in the midwest, the overwhelming fires in the west, food shortages in Russia, freak-freezes in Europe followed by freak heatwaves, and signs the jet stream is slowing — I agree, denial of climate change is unforgivable.

Please stay safe in the next storm — but please stay mad in your writing to give voice to the voiceless fighting to survive the economy, and now Sandy.

Tia

Wow. Tia’s frank and awesome message caused BAG to wonder just why she has been so quiet during this election season. She has stayed quiet, even though an extraordinarily smug asshole–born to wealth, made more, spawned five spoiled, peevish kids with an equestrian wife (horses being the best way to lose money even if you are rich, as BAG’s late, deadbeat dad discovered when he married his third wife, who flushed money down a giant toilet by buying her own goddamned horse farm in New Hampshire)–is running against a hardscrabble genius who mucked his way through outrageously complex and difficult circumstances to become one of the most clear-eyed, fair-minded leaders of the free world.

In short, she is ashamed. Why has Broke-Ass been so quiet, when it is her custom to be so blabbermouthy?

A couple of things. Moving, for one, has proved a pretty tricky adjustment: The schmushkies have had a rather wild ride of it, and, thus, has Broke-Ass. If the personal is the political, Broke-Ass diplomacy has been overextended on the homefront.

But another thing is: Mitt Romney? For fucking real? A guy who has made a killing from killing companies and profitting from the ensuing misery and unemployment? A guy who’s running on values, who not only flip-flops on “values” as the political weather vane directs, but also whose only clear, evident value is the primacy of the free market–which is to say, making as much money, at whatever human cost? Mitt Romney wouldn’t know the middle-class if it smacked him with a two-by-four. Which it should. This guy does not give a rat’s ass about you. He’d shut down your place of employment if he could make a 100 grand off it and sleep at night, dreaming of his eternal bond with his horse-riding wife. And lots of liquid assets.

If Mitt Romney wanted to help women and the middle class, he should take on all working, middle class mothers as autonomous sister-wives. Broke-Ass could give a shit about horses. In fact, she hates horses only slightly less than cats because horses are very big, stupid, skittish, expensive, dangerous, and one of her childhood friend’s mom was kicked in the head by one and died. (Broke-Ass also sprouts another ulcer thinking about the fucked-up racist and socio-economic implications involved in uttering “you people,” but that’s the head wife’s cross to bear, or whatever they bear in the Mormon Church.) But she sure as hell would like to stop waking up in a panic about how to fund her family. Broke-Ass would be the easiest sister-wife in the world. So would most of we working- to middle-class moms: Can we just cover our monthly expenses, Husband? Don’t worry about the conjugal visits, honey–you have enough on your plate already. We’re fine. No, really. We are. Just stay where you are.

President Obama has personal knowledge of and experience with virtually every issue he has worked on during his term and on which he has been campaigning. He knows what shit health insurance is like. He knows what it’s like not to have enough money in his family. He knows how expensive college is and how ruinous debt is. He knows what it’s like to live in unstable overseas situations. He knows about racism. He knows about deadbeat dads. He knows women’s issues. He knows values. Real values. Working- and middle-class values. He also knows how to act as a solid Commander in Chief during one of the most tenuous, unstable periods of American history. Mitt Romney knows about none of these things. None. And when he’s behind closed doors, he openly says that he doesn’t give a shit, either. Please, do not float the notion that his words were taken out of context. That room is Mitt Romney’s context. Everything else he says, in front of anyone not in his income bracket, is out of context.

Unless you have a soaring portfolio, vote Obama. Unless you are fooled into thinking that Romney’s conservative values mean anything other than making money off working people and wrecking their lives, vote Obama. No one can fix the shit-storm Obama walked into in four years. Clinton needed eight.

The personal is political. If you are struggling at all, vote Obama. Thank you, Tia.