Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Manny, Manny, Manny….

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Well…I just have to comment on the column done by one of my favorite idiots that write for the Detroit News, Manny lopez…in his column today, he takes Governor Granholm to task for a puff piece that was done to “revise history” as Manny puts it. He goes on and on about how big of a failure the Granholm administration was and that it is the height of hubris for her to try to put a positive spin on what I agree has been a terrible 8 years here. But, I think he is serious when he finds fault with this type thing when he was one of the biggest cheerleaders of the failed Bush presidency, and then completely agrees with the revising of history that the repubs have made an art form…as evidenced by the new Bush memoir that again plays fast and loose with the facts. Now, what is it Manny? Are you a faith based person or do you belong to those of us that believe that facts are facts; and no amount of spin changes them?

This egregious changing of facts is now reaching a fever pitch with the repubs, led by commentators like Manny and abetted by politicians like Haley Barbour who, last week, said that the civil rights struggle in his home state of Mississippi was “not that bad” and that local governments of the time prevented discrimination….anyone with even a little knowledge knows that that is just not true. it took the federal government to break down the institutional racism that was the south of the time. Nice try Haley…

But, these are just miniscule attempts by small politicians compared to the wholesale attempts to re-write the reasons for the civil war that are taking place in Virginia and other southern states to closely match the new repub talking point of “states rights” and remove the continuation of slavery as the real reason for the war. So, Manny…if you are going to bitch about revising history…take your own party to task first…they are the experts at it after all. Geez…

Politics

Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy…

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Well…if you’ve read any of these, you’ve see the well documented hypocrisy that runs through the repubs in the federal government on almost any issue, freedom, equality, taxes…you name it and they have been hypocrites…I think it’s in their DNA and that bad batch of DNA and it’s resultant hypocrisy has now made it’s way into our state of Michigan. Following politics here over the last 8 years, you have undoubtedly seen the consistent repub opposition to raising taxes of any kind..even when the budget deficit hit almost 2 billion dollars..even to mention that it would be fiscally responsible to do so always came with a loud cry from the repubs that socialism was taking over the state and comrade Granholm was leading the charge.

But now, when the repub governor elect mentions that there would have to be tax increases along with spending cuts to balance the budget, the repubs are praising him as a pragmatic leader who is making the hard choices to get the state moving again. If these choices are so good now, where were the repubs when the very same things were proposed last year and the year before? If there is one thing I can’t stand it’s politicians who put their party ahead of the citizens of our state…and stand there with a smile as the hypocrisy drips from them…but I think most of them are too dumb to see it…or just don’t care…

Politics

DADT…there goes another wedge issue….

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Well…I think last Saturday’s Senate vote to repeal DADT will go down as a great leap forward in the cause of civil rights here in America. It’s about time that institutionalized discrimination in any form is eliminated from our society…I’ve lived through the slow march for civil rights here and I can say that as I was watching the vote live, I was again proud of the US…and I will give a hearty thanks to the 8 brave Republicans who let their sense of fairness override their party’s pressure to vote no. But the day was marred by the pathetic display from John McCain who has found that his voice for prejudice is being left behind by our society….I think the majority of the repubs were just livid since one of their wedge issues, that has won them elections in the past, is no longer effective….what do they have left? They have lost taxes as an issue with Obama’s compromise, they have lost DADT and other civil rights as issues to be used to divide the country, and I think when people start to see what their plans are for dividing country by changing the constitution for their narrow views of what the country can be, they will lose that issue as well.

All I have to add to the repubs is: enjoy the next two years…I think it will be your last….unless you can step up and be adults governing with the dems for the benefit of all Americans, not just the right-wing screamers and business….

Politics

Here’s the scary part….

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Well…read an interesting article in the Washington Post today that tries to get a handle on the explosion of the security apparatus that has been built in America since 9/11. One of the the scariest parts of the whole domestic spying program is that no one knows how many people or dollars are being spent on it….no consistent oversight, no protections for you and me anywhere to be seen; things that would have not been thinkable 15 years ago…and our whole world has been changed without our permission to resemble a high tech Soviet Union…so that all economic activity that anyone in this country now does is recorded in huge databases that are regularly mined by federal, state, and local authorities for any reason…but you and I can’t find out the reasons since they are no longer required to tell you when you are being “seached”…in clear violation of the 4th and 5th amendments to the constitution.

But, that is not even the most scary part….you can get swallowed up by these databases just because “someone” thought you looked “suspicious”…..yep, you heard it right, no probable cause, no rights….just “someone” (who can remain anonymous) thought you looked suspicious because you come and go at odd hours, because you take pictures in some city, or because you just looked “different” than the rest of the people in the neighborhood. And, you have no right to look at you file…EVER. I can’t even count the
ways that this stuff has been abused to control people that belonged to a targeted group…can you say “driving while black”?

We, as a people, need to say stop…no, scream stop at our government…watching American citizens is no way to prevent terror attacks…but it can and has been used to chill political discourse and participation by an overzealous government in the past….and I predict it will be again. Geez….

Politics

Let’s get some perspective…

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Well…read a little tidbit of information in the newspapers this morning that I hope will put his whole “terrorists are everywhere” and the biggest threat to our way of life nonsense to a rest once and for all. There were 250,000 people killed in natural disasters around the world this year…..and that number is more than the people killed by terror attacks in the last 40 years combined. Yep, all of the attacks, in all of the countries, across the globe added together for the last 40 years and mother nature kills more than that in a year. So, why the heck are we so afraid of terror attacks? It can’t be because they can’t be predicted. Or that they are of a larger scale than a hurricane, typhoon, or earthquakes. Then, what is it?

My answer is a short and sweet one…because the repubs made both political and monetary profit from keeping the scare machine going…who are the people that got the contracts for the new body scanners….repubs that came out of the revolving door of government and industry and used that incestuous relationship cynically to profit from keeping everybody scared. Aren’t you tired of being scared? If you are, it’s up to you, me and the rest of America to stand up and say that life has risks, but protection from this greatly overblown risk is not worth giving up the freedom that defines America…I hope with the DADT vote and others that have been delayed by the fear and smear tactics of the repubs, we have started to see through the fear; and have started to reclaim the innate fairness and good that is this country. We can hope…

Politics

Just a quick question…

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Well…I don’t know if you’ve been following the first rulings in the lawsuits that have been filed against the new healthcare law, but I see a troubling thing happening; that the two judges that upheld all provisions of the law were appointed by Dems while the one that recently struck down the individual mandate portion of the law was appointed by a repub. I was always taught that judges were supposed to be impartial arbiters of the law, using precedence as a guide, that were blind to political pressures…it was even one of the founding principles of this country…that an independent judiciary was necessary to rein in both the passions of the populace and as a check on the legislatures reflecting those passions. When did judges abdicate their responsibilities to be fair and impartial? One of the most egregious of these is the supreme courts overturning of a hundred years of precedence in the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the same rights to political speech as flesh and blood Americans; which the right wing majority knew would tip the political scales in favor of the repubs. But, don’t think I reserve my scorn for only those on the right, any judge that abdicates his responsibilities to be fair and objective, and follow the law, whether they lean right or left should be removed from office.

That said, the repubs who shout all day about following the constitution are the ones who expect judges to strike down laws they don’t like…just because they don’t like them, and they don’t fit their narrow view of what America should be. To those folks I say: please get a copy of the constitution and read it….the judiciary is not another political toy for you to play with…there is great danger to what you want judges to do…geez…

Politics

If you had any doubt….

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Well…it didn’t take long for my predictions on the impact of the November elections to begin to be seen….we have all of the tea partiers that were elected hiring lobbyists as their chiefs of staff along with bellying up to the trough to see how much money they can grab from business and lobbyists…nevermind that their primary reason for being elected was to “change” the way things are done in Washington…yep, they changed it alright…from one pocket to the other. Do you feel betrayed yet tea partiers? And, all of this is happening even before they take office…do you think there won’t be strings attached to this money? How is that changey thing working out for you folks? This is identical to what the repubs did to the Christian right in the 90′s…they mobilized them to get elected and then just ignored them; just another piece of evidence that these repubs are a bunch of two-faced liars that will say anything to use their constiuents to get elected and then kneel to their real masters….business and the rich.

We can see this philosophy easily and starkly in the statements of the incoming chair of the House financial committee, Spencer Bachus, who stated: “Washington and regulators are there to serve the banks”….just remember what this kind of thinking did to the country over the last 10 years… but that is the problem…no one remembers who it was that championed the business take all strategy….it was the repubs folks…and you think it was bad before….this next two years is going to make the meltdown look like kindergarten….geez….

Politics

Simplistic thinking….

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Well…I think I’ve fallen into the trap of thinking in sounds bites and prejudices which has taken me away from the resonableness that I have been espousing. Some of it is a hangover from the “I hate Bush” syndrome that I regretfully admit had me in its clutches for quite a while and some of it is was caused by the growing demise of the middle class and my situation in particular. It is really difficult to watch the people who are still doing well in their 500 dollar gloves and new Mercedes when that used to be an attainable aspiration for me and it no longer is. What makes it even more difficult is that I know it’s not something I can correct…there is no way I know of to make myself not be 57 anymore; to be 35 again with prospects….I may have let these facts color the way I see the world and has led me to see that any compromise in a complex political situation was a defeat, was a failure of Obama to stand up and support those that supported him.

So, on that note, I am going to try to be more objective in my thinking starting now….as the tax bill is parsed and studied, I think it may be a better deal than I thought and it could be the start of grownups looking at real solutions for the terrible recession…after all, there are stimulative measures in the bill that will help get the economy going and we did get the extension of UI benefits…now, if we could just teach the rich that they have enough and giving some back to help continue the country’s success is in their self interest, things might be able to get better…..we can hope anyway….

Politics

Obama just doesn’t understand…

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Well..this one just came to me a few minutes ago and I thought I’d try to see if I can make sense of it….looking at the political maneuverings going on over the tax bill I’m struck by one consistent theme, that Obama won’t take on a fight unless he is sure that he can win…even when he constantly disappoints his supporters with what looks like compromise for it’s own sake. What kind of a win is it when you just fold up? Does that make sense? I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are times when taking on a fight because it is the right thing to do is a much nobler thing than compromising your principles and allowing something you know is wrong to continue. I think this is one of the reasons the left is so frustrated with Obama right now; he doesn’t seem to think anything, any principle or goal is immune to compromise when it is clear that saving the middle class is worth a fight, that repealing DADT is worth a fight, that keeping the repubs from stacking the deck against us is worth a fight. This is the time when we need a fight, even one for a losing cause so we can hold our heads up and say “we tried”.

I’ll end this with one question for Obama, “what IS worth fighting for?”..geez…

Politics

Thank you, Bernie Sanders…

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Well…there are stirrings of revolt in the middle and on the left about the bastardized compromise that Obama has fashioned on the tax cuts…he gave away the store to the thugs and extortionists without getting one thing that will help get the budget back under control without doing it on the backs of the middle class. The most sickening thing that I have heard out of the repubs is that we “all” have to sacrifice to make this happen…I have to ask, “what have the rich sacrificed?” Not a damn thing..but they right wants us to take cuts in UI, social security, and every other program that helps the little guy while making sure that their buddies won’t have to sacrifice a thing..in fact they can just keep saying more, more, more…and steal what little is left of the American dream.

That brings me to Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont who has promised to filibuster any bill that gives the store away to the rich…at least someone understands that this is not a county of, by, and for the rich and connected. Thanks Bernie, keep up the good fight…geez…