The Red Line

Ever since this war in Syria has escalated, the right has been ridiculing President Obama for sitting back and doing nothing. They have called him weak for allowing Assad to slaughter his own people without stepping in and doing something. They said, how could the greatest nation in the world stand idly by and allow this atrocity to continue?

Obama said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line. It may have taken a while (maybe they wanted to confirm without a shadow of a doubt that it actually happened after the whole Iraq WMD debacle, maybe there were second thoughts, I don't know), but it seems that Obama is now prepared to offer some sort of support to the rebels. And what is the response to this decision?

"Biggest F'ing mistake by the Admin so far. I don't want American blood, sweat, or tears, spent on anything to do with either side in this civil war. Let the EU handle it if they must, but keep us the hell out of it."

"we need to take our own country back.
this is NOT what the American people want."

"Do they remotely care about the American people want?!! We need to stay out of this! This is a sectarian, civil war. There are atrocities on both sides. Neither side is our friend. If the Syrian people want this war to end, they simply have to stop shooting at each other. This isn't our concern!"

"The US decides to arm terrorists once again?"

"More of our boy's [sic] being sent to a place we don't belong to fight a fight that's not our own."

(Quotes taken from the comment section of this Yahoo! article.)

I'm pretty sure that these comments mostly come from the same side of the isle condemning Obama for ignoring Syria.

I understand that Obama has made mistakes, I am more than willing to admit that. No one is perfect. But how can someone possibly succeed when EVERY option is apparently wrong?

Taxes Are Not Evil

This is addressed to all those conservatives who seem to think taxes are evil.
I actually wonder if the people who complain about paying taxes have any clue what they're talking about. How else is the government supposed to function? Funding for roads, schools, farms, Congress, etc., has to come from somewhere.

I'm not saying that many tax dollars aren't misused. There are a LOT of places where tax dollars could be used more effectively, and we should be actively trying to make sure the dollars are used in the best way possible. But "I don't like the way that dollar was used, therefore I shouldn't pay taxes at all" is NOT a valid argument. No person is ever going to agree with everything the government does, it just isn't possible. Get over it.

I see a lot of people who get angry with the "poor people" who get upset about rich people and companies dodging taxes. I saw someone comment that we "shouldn't get mad because the rich know how to play the game". These same people ridicule the poor for getting away with not paying taxes. This doesn't make sense to me; if you applaud the rich for doing whatever they can to avoid taxes, shouldn't you also have to applaud the woman who has 9 kids just to collect the government benefits and avoid paying taxes? I don't personally agree with either situation; I'm just saying it seems a bit hypocritical to support one and not the other.

Rich people seem to have such a hatred of the social programs. Some people misuse them, and we should do all we can to identify these people; however, the majority of people are on these programs because it is legitimately needed. Do you really believe that everyone who is on government assistance is "living the good life" without having to work? Is this REALLY how you envision the life of someone who is on public assistance? If so, I encourage you to visit a family who needs this help. I encourage you to try to live on the amount of money these people have to live on. There are many HARD working people who need assistance because their full-time job doesn't give them enough money to live on.

Furthermore, many "patriots" love to complain about how countries like North Korea, Russia, Cuba, etc. let their people starve because of the way their government operates. The comments, though, would seem to prefer that we do the exact same thing with our people here in the USA. I, frankly, would not stand for it. I don't live on public assistance; at the same time, I'm a student who works very hard to get by. The fact that I am more likely to give a couple bucks to a person in need than someone who makes millions of dollars a year is very saddening to me.

I find it amusing that these are the people who claim to be bigger "patriots" than everyone else. These are the people who claim to love America the most, who say that America is the best country on the planet. These are the people who say that the liberals and the Democrats are trying to destroy America. Yet, they'll leave the country and denounce their citizenship in a snap if it means saving a few bucks? I guess what they really mean is that they love America, as long as they, and ONLY they, can benefit from it. Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable calling a country that lets its citizens and poor children starve to death the greatest country on the planet. And somehow, this is precisely what these people want. They just don't realize that if they let the poor and middle class all die off, their stream of income would stop. Whose hard work are you going to ride to the top if there isn't anyone left who needs to work for a living? Who's going to buy your products if the only people left already have everything? Who's going to be left on a "lower" level than you to give you that feeling of superiority that you so DESPERATELY need?

Forward.

Election Day has come and gone. President Obama has been reelected.

In the end, the election wasn't even close in terms of the Electoral College tally. Voters in every swing state (except North Carolina, for those who consider that one) broke for the President. In an election that any GOP pundit told us was about jobs and the economy, America spoke: they decided that they just trusted President Obama more than they did Governor Romney.

It would be nice if we, as a country, could go forward from here. Obama will face no more presidential elections; there are no political points to be scored through obstructionism and attempting to make him look bad. The hope is that the two sides can come together and compromise, though it already seems that that may not be realistic.

For example, anyone may look up Donald Trump's Twitter rant (I refuse to link to such nonsense here) on election night. The same night, a Republican CNN contributor remarked that Obama should give in to 80% of the House's demands. Now, I don't think Obama should be handed the world on a silver platter, but considering that the American people did just reelect him, it seems to me that basically putting the Republicans in charge is not only unwarranted, but is ignorant of the will of the people.

Speaker Boehner of course still opposes raising taxes on those making over $250,000. Honestly, "raising taxes" doesn't seem to be the correct phrase; all indications are that the Bush tax cuts were to be temporary, considering that that's how they were written. President Bush cut taxes to an extremely low level, and when the expiration date of his legislation comes, suddenly "Democrats want to raise your taxes". Very clever indeed. The arguments for keeping the break for the wealthy are dwindling: they don't seem to need the tax cuts at this point (did they ever?), and the CBO released a report stating that a tax hike for the wealthy won't kill growth. At this point, the fight to keep the cuts for everyone seems to be more of an ideological struggle from the GOP than it is a practical point. 

The fact that the GOP still refuses to come to the bargaining table over something which would seem to have minimal practical impact is disturbing. The hope was that the days of "we don't care if we don't have a valid reason, we're gonna oppose you just for the hell of it" were over with the election, but reality may be setting in. The GOP still seems unwilling to compromise, and it would be ignorant for the President to not fight for his positions, considering that he has the will of the majority of the American people behind him.

We may be in for a bumpy four years.

Obama Isn't Cooking The Books

So, I was just poking around the internet and started to get interested in saying something about this. During this election cycle, we hear an earful from the GOP about how the unemployment rate is "actually much higher than the 8.2% number that the government reports". In one of Mitt Romney's latest appearances, he said that "the true number... is probably 15 percent".

Now, we can argue until the end of time about what is the best way to compute this, and other, statistics. What I have an issue with is the seeming implication of many in the GOP, leading to belief by many Americans unable to think for themselves, that President Obama is somehow manipulating the unemployment numbers to appear more favorable for himself. The fact is that Obama is using the same numbers that have been calculated for decades, and the last major change of any kind that would affect the statistic came in 1994, when the questionnaire was last significantly changed.

There are multiple measures of unemployment, which FactCheck.org has conveniently explained in this article. President Obama is doing nothing wrong or different by reporting the U-3 number; it's the same number the last President Bush reported as well. And back then, I don't recall Republican congressmen saying that it was important to change the way unemployment is calculated, as has seemingly become so important to them in this election cycle.

Even so, it is noteworthy that while the GOP touts that states with Republican governors are doing better with unemployment, they use the U-3 number to do so, which is the same number they criticize the President for reporting.

So much hypocrisy... though I'd be lying if I said I were surprised at this point.

GOP Fanatics Are Only Hurting Americans

By now, I'm sure the whole country is aware that the Supreme Court of the United States has (more or less) upheld the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. This isn't stopping Republicans from fighting it; if anything, they have only been invigorated in their efforts to kill the ACA.

Many GOP leaders have redoubled their efforts to deny health care to the masses. In this article, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell said that the decision "marks a fresh start on the road to repeal". Senator Rand Paul goes as far as to question the validity of SCOTUS's decision, saying "just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be 'constitutional' does not make it so". It's interesting that when the decision goes their way, the GOP seems to believe that the Supreme Court's word is absolutely unquestionable. Clearly their opinion has changed.

Even more harmful than rhetoric, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal refuses to implement Obamacare even after the ruling by the Supreme Court. The ACA does allow until 2014 for states to set up health care exchanges, even though people desperately in need of health care obviously would like their state to move more quickly than that. Instead of going forward with this, Governor Jindal has decided to put his efforts into making sure Mitt Romney is elected to repeal the law. Clearly, this is not helpful to the citizens of Louisiana. Jindal, along with many in the GOP, has decided to completely abandon any semblance of trying to make economic progress in this country in order to launch a full scale assault on Democrats in the fall. This not only affects those in need of health insurance, but the country as a whole that needs the full attention of all its leaders at this critical economic juncture.

Certainly, this will be the GOP's excuse for not getting anything done until the election. They are "putting their efforts into a full repeal" even though it is clear that that just isn't possible at this time. This means that they will accomplish absolutely nothing, and the GOP's base will absolutely eat it up. I suppose one could view this as a genius move by the Republicans, though the only reason it can work is because it is what their base wants. To get rid of Obama and his signature piece of legislation at any cost, even it it means completely paralyzing the country until at least November.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/06/29/3682585/kentucky-sen-mcconnell-vows-to.html#storylink=cpy

Kansas Bans Islamic Law

......really?

Really?


Sam Brownback, the Republican governor of Kansas, has signed a bill that "makes it clear that Kansas courts will rely exclusively on the laws of [their] state and our nation when deciding cases and will not rely on the laws of foreign jurisdictions".

I'm sure Kansas, like most of the country, has its own share of pressing issues facing it. I would guess that an alarming amount of judges suddenly choosing to throw out the US Constitution and abide by sharia law isn't one of them. This is nothing but pandering to the Islamophobic segment of the GOP base; what else could make the lawmakers think that this was really necessary?

Did it really need to be made clear that the US abides by US law? I think not. This law can only be harmful. The only time sharia law is allowed to be referenced now is in very special cases, such as divorce cases between Muslims, where both parties consent to sharia law being used. This is no different than prenuptials going around what the law would normally require and acting out the agreement that was consented to by both parties.

This reeks of racism and hatred. Now, some members of the GOP will probably call me "un-American", or say that I would "choose Muslims over Americans" or something ridiculous like that for taking this position, but that's hardly surprising. If the GOP wants people to stop viewing them as racist, maybe they need to stop doing things like this.

Taxmaggedon

First, a quick thought; why is everyone spelling it as "Taxmaggedon" rather than "Taxmageddon"? Strange.

Anyway... does this song sound familiar to anyone? Congress can't seem to figure out what to do about the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, automatic spending cuts, and expiration of the payroll tax cut that are all scheduled for the end of the year. Pulling from the tried and true playbook of GOP rhetoric, Republican senators sent a letter to Senator Reid stating "...President Obama and Congress have spent much of the past year advancing misguided redistributionist policies in the name of fairness".

It's starting to get tiresome that every time a tax increase on the wealthiest is mentioned, or even just letting previous tax cuts on them expire, we are suddenly talking about Obama's socialist wealth redistribution policies. I don't think anyone is really talking about collecting all of the money in the country and equally dividing it among all citizens. That would be redistributionism. Are the rich going to even notice it if their taxes go up by letting their tax cuts expire? Well... of course they will, because they notice every penny as if it will be the last they ever see. But I hardly think they would be adversely affected by paying an amount more consistent with their income.

I do find it surprising that the idea of fairness is such a disgusting thing to the GOP. Again, when Democrats say "fairness", they don't mean equal distribution of wealth. They just mean that everyone pays a reasonable amount in taxes. America is a great country, but clearly some people have benefited more than others from being here, and I don't think asking a fair (not exorbitant, but fair) amount in return is unreasonable.

The GOP politicians know this, but it doesn't fit their message. So they go to the "Obama is a socialist" rhetoric, all but saying it at every opportunity. Which is unfortunate because, as it seems it always is with them, the middle class suffers because of it. When it comes to taxes, the GOP version of compromise is "give us everything we want, and then we can talk". And the Democrats have been doing it because, in the end, they recognize the stakes for the average citizen. It's just too bad that, while they may be able to keep the ship afloat like that, no progress can truly be made under these conditions.

Let's Ignore The Issues... That We Keep Bringing Up

Mitt Romney, campaigning in Colorado, stopped for an interview with CBS Denver. After being asked about a variety of issues, Romney made it quite clear that the only thing he wanted to discuss was the economy. He answered questions about marriage equality, but a question about marijuana was just too much, apparently:

“Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about? ...The economy, the economy, the economy. The growth of jobs. The need to put people back to work. The challenges of Iran. “We’ve got enormous issues that we face, but you want talk about, go ahead, you want to talk about marijuana?"

This sentiment seems to be echoing throughout the GOP politicians in the House and Senate. When asked for comment, Speaker Boehner said "The president can talk about it all he wants. I’m going to stay focused on what the American people want us to stay focused on, and that’s jobs."

So I suppose the GOP wishes the Democrats would stop bringing up social issues in legislation across the country. Except... the GOP themselves are the ones that tend to keep bringing it up. Earlier this week, the GOP-led North Carolina government was successful in adding Amendment 1 to the state constitution, defining marriage between one man and one woman as the only legal partnership. Also, the state of Tennessee, with a Republican governor and majorities in both the state House and Senate, Friday signed into law a bill that says teachers can no longer condone so-called "gateway sexual activity", whatever that means.

Time and again, it seems that the Republicans are the ones who are trying to legislate social issues; the ones trying to tell people by what values they should live their lives. If Romney and Boehner want the focus of the party to be on the economy, maybe they need to tell the other lawmakers in their own party first.

Going Backward

There are many reasons I weep for America, but I think this may jump straight to the top of the list.

On 5/8/12, the state of North Carolina voted to amend the state constitution to say that the only valid "domestic legal partnership in the state is marriage between a man and a woman". 


This is troubling for many reasons. We have:


- A majority voting to deny equal rights to a minority,
- Religious arguments (mostly erroneous and misquoted even if we accept the Bible as truth, by the way) being the basis for laws/amendments,

among other issues. These are just the two flagrant violations of the founding principals of America that immediately come to mind. I thought that we had done away with both of those long ago, but apparently not.

As a side note, I continue to be amused at the hypocrisy of those that use the Bible to condemn gay marriage because it is convenient for their belief system based on hate, but completely ignore the parts of the Bible that are bothersome for them (i.e, the people that have been divorced 2 times. Go see what the Bible has to say about that.)

Sigh... every so often I get my hopes up that this country may finally move into the present day in terms of social issues. It seems so simple... equality. One word... about as simple as it gets. However, Americans demonstrate time and again their inability to grasp even the easiest concepts. This episode has pretty much knocked down my hopes again, and all I can do is wonder what it would be like to live in a country that doesn't openly condone hate.

GOP Is Stuck In The Past

I suppose the title of this post is very vague; the GOP is stuck in the past on so many issues.

Today, I'm talking specifically about their opinion on homosexuals. Mitt Romney recently appointed Richard Grenell as a national security and foreign policy adviser for his campaign. Unfortunately, Mr. Grenell is openly gay. As one might guess, that did not sit too well with social conservatives. Because apparently, even having a gay man as an adviser is an affront to all that is right with humanity.

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association tweeted "Romney picks out & loud gay as a spokesman. If personnel is policy, his message to the pro-family community: drop dead."

I cringe every time I hear that pro-family nonsense. Since when are gay people "anti-family"? How does the fact that gay people exist tear families apart? The only thing I can think of is that these families spend far too much time concerning themselves with what homosexuals are doing, and don't put any effort into their own family life. I'd have to say that's something they need to learn to deal with themselves. Sounds like some deep-seated issues there.

Mr. Grenell voluntarily removed himself from the Romney campaign, stating that he was becoming too much of a distraction. However, I think we all know the real reason, and I can't blame him: who wants to be criticized for just existing? My political leanings notwithstanding, I'm sure Mr. Grenell is a perfectly competent adviser. The fact that he was driven out of his position by people like Bryan Fischer and the AFA, in 2012, is sickening. These people should all be ashamed of themselves, and I am embarrassed for America that we still condone such behavior.

Maybe some good can come out of this... maybe Mr. Grenell will be able to see the GOP for what they really are and come over to the light side.

Why The Right Thinks The Main Stream Media Is Biased

Sometimes it's nice to be able to sum something up into a nice little package, in just a sentence or two.

Why do those on the right think the MSM is biased? I think much of the main stream is pretty fair (with the obvious exceptions of places like Fox News and MSNBC). It's just that it is those on the right, Republicans, religious extremists, etc, that tend to say more ridiculous and newsworthy things than anyone else.

You want the media to stop focusing on you? Stop saying and doing crazy things.

Smaller Government Is Better... For Those We Agree With, Anyway

This is one big contradiction that I just can't seem to wrap my mind around. For the most part, republicans preach less government, less government, less government.

Until, of course, it comes to an issue that they don't agree with. Take gay marriage, for example. All of the sudden, we want to pass laws or even make amendments to the Constitution telling homosexuals that they cannot do something? (I'll save why I believe they should be able to marry for a later post.)

A quote in this article on the Huffington Post says "Even though [Santorum] would not personally vote for a ban on sodomy, he said, he thinks states should legally be able to pass them, because sodomy is not a constitutionally protected right." (He holds a similar position on contraception in this article.) So while he says he would not personally ban sodomy (which I wouldn't hesitate to guess is solely for political purposes), he thinks states can ban it because it "is not a constitutionally protected right". So... the states have the power to ban anything that isn't specifically spelled out word for word in the Constitution? Whether or not this is legally true doesn't really interest me (as far as this particular train of thought goes, anyway); but it sure doesn't sound like "smaller government" to me. 


I guess I just find it amusing that the party of less regulation and the party of "you have to act this way because the Bible says so" are one and the same.