Cosmic Irony

How many times did the Republicans vote to raise the debt ceiling for President George W Bush? How close are they and their Tea Party radicals to defaulting on the nation’s debt or cutting Medicare, Social Security and other vital spending so much that it would stall all the progress of the rebuilding of our economy just because they want to use the debt as a talking point in 2012? How is this good for the US?

The GOP and Tea Partiers have done nothing in eight months to rebuild the economy, create jobs or curb spending. They’ve accomplished nothing they promised their base, from ending abortion to stopping health-care reform. They’ve done nothing the Independents and the political middle wanted them to do, nurture the slow growth out of recession and stop the bickering and fighting in Washington.

If our nation can forget in the two years from 2008 to 2010 why they voted for Democrats and then put 33% of Tea Party candidates in office, they will soon forget why they voted for those idiots in 2010. The Tea Party is tearing the Republican party apart and you can see the death throes of a sad, outdated movement toward staunch conservatism as even libertarians are tired of the religious right wanting to use political offices to beat people over the head with their own ideas of morality.

Best case scenario, Congress and the White House raise the debt ceiling with a real solution rather than Bohner’s politically-motivated crap bill and we move on, scarcely averting disaster. Worst-case scenario, they screw it up, the economy grinds to another halt and we can thank Republicans for putting politics ahead of people as we go into the next election cycle.

A real solution would be to rework the Constitution so that this pathetic, outdated system of Government that allows this two-party bickering is finally thrown out for a more sensible solution, but that’s just wishful thinking. Considering the Constitution an unchangeable, infallible document (which was not what the writers intended) has created a situation in this country where the document itself will be the downfall of the country.

The Bill of Rights and Amendments, I would keep, but there is nothing liberating about the way our partisan system is set up, nothing inherent in our governmental bodies that actually ensures anyone’s freedom. In fact, all it protects these days are rich people and corporations who don’t pay taxes and whose subsidies are bleeding the middle class dry. If I rewrote the Constitution, I’d include in the Bill of Rights an amendment that states that corporations are not people and should not have the same rights as an individual. It would be written into the document that the government’s job is to protect the people from these greedy fucks that break health and safety laws, hire people below living wages and send jobs overseas without paying a cent to the country that made them billions of dollars. That’s just dreaming though.

This is in response to an email circling called, “Why I Voted Democrat,” which provides nothing but weak Straw Men arguments to the issues and does a really great job of not getting the facts right, but is funny and witty to the people who wouldn’t bother looking these things up. So here goes:

1. I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies raising gas prices while lowering production so that they can rake in a record 53,000,000,000 dollars is insane.

2. I voted Democrat because I believe that paying fair taxes will afford our children an education and a future brighter than our own. I also believe that most of the Tea Partiers against “taxes” are middle to lower class and got a tax break under the Obama administration.

3. I voted Democrat because Freedom of Speech is absolutely necessary, and that Republicans burning books and trying to control the content on the internet are just small examples of censorship in the name of “decency” that the Right Wing partakes in.

4. I voted Democrat because I know that mandatory education is important for an armed citizenry and that our country, with the most lax gun laws in the Western World, also has a higher rate of gun deaths per year than any developed country, by the thousands, and that needs to be addressed. I also appreciate the mandated waiting periods in my state that prevent people just being released from a 5150 from buying guns. I also appreciate that people with guns might think they are protecting themselves and others, but in a crowd or during a grave misunderstanding, vigilante justice might just take the lives of innocent people because they are not cops and they are not trained to handle such situations.

5. I voted Democrat because I know the difference between a meteorologist and a climatologist and that the people telling me it won’t rain on friday AREN’T the same as those with Master’s degrees and PhD’s that study ocean currents, ice layers, tree rings, and a thousand other sources that tell us that yes, the earth is warming.

6. I voted Democrat because I know that abortion will not end at the overturning of Roe V Wade, but that reducing the number of abortions in this country requires a solution that involves education, prevention and readily available contraception. I also believe that before a group of cells are viable, it is not up to the state to tell people to believe those cells have a “soul” even if I believe it. I also know that anti-abortion groups consider ALL hormonal birth control as “abortifacient” because it “might cause a fertilized egg to not implant” even though 50% of fertilized eggs don’t implant, hormones or not, which is why the definition of “conception” is the implanting of a fertilized egg, not the moment the sperm touches it.

7. I voted Democrat because I think that health care is a right, not a privilege for the rich and that there are enough laws that bar illegal immigrants from benefits. I also believe that every time I walk into a clinic and see a dark person speaking Spanish, I don’t have to assume they are “illegal.” I also don’t believe that scapegoating 12 million illegal immigrants for the problems of 350 million people is productive or meaningful.

8. I voted Democrat because I believe that business should give back to the communities and the workers that made them filthy rich in the first place. I also know that a 35% corporate tax rate is one of the lowest this country has ever seen and that during the “Golden Age” after WWII, when the US was a master of manufacturing and had the highest quality of life and education in the world, the corporate tax rate was as high as 52%. I also know that the percentage of total tax revenue from corporations in this country amounts to about 2% of the GDP.

9. I voted Democrat because I believe in the Constitution that says all people have equal protection under the law, torture is illegal, and that your freedom of religion ends where my freedom FROM your religion begins.

10. I voted Democrat because I think that it’s better to find safe, clean, alternative forms of energy while oil companies allow 33,000 leases of 600 acres or more in the US to sit and rot while we buy oil they got from rabid dictators in the Middle East.

11. I voted Democrat because I know I live in one of the greatest countries in the world, but I would never gloss over it’s mistakes and flaws in sake of “patriotism” because I know that we can always, always do better. I also know that “when fascism comes to America it will be carrying a cross and wrapped in a flag.” Blind allegiance is useless to my great country.

12. I voted Democrat because I’ve weighed both sides of the issues, investigated claims, researched the topics and have come to my own conclusions rather than just repeating talking points I hear on the news. I also know that the entertainment news business believes that a scared viewership is a loyal viewership and I’m just not going to fall for that.

Apparently, the US and allies have decided to lend support to the rebels in Libya this weekend. I’m glad there is help, but also feel torn. The West shouldn’t be world police, but the fact that we’re there to take down an autocrat instead of prop up a dictator is a different step for us and I’m glad. Where this will go or how this will turn out, who can say? Hopefully, only the people of Libya. The West needs to keep an even hand, but be careful not to tread on the newfound freedom of the Libyan people.

I’ve made a post with ideas for donating to secular relief agencies here at my other blog.

I remember in my Christian days the youth group leaders would tell us that we might face persecution as Christians (even though we were the largest demographic in America and had all the privileges of being the majority group), and it was instilled in us that that was just the price we had to pay to follow Christ. None of this so-called persecution happened, of course, but I was fully ready to lose friends at school. School children can be mean and impulsive.

It isn’t middle school anymore, however, and I thought that people were a bit more grown up than my youth group leaders made them out to be. It’s not Christianity, however, that is leading to the loss of friends or the flinging of harsh words. No, it’s my non-belief that attracts the abhorrence of so-called friends. The details are explained in this post on my other blog. Sad that people who are supposedly adults sinking to the level of seventh graders on the school yard under the guise of religious oppression.

All I did was state my opinion. Obviously, the person I thought was my friend was never my friend in the first place. He has to live with his own hypocrisy. I feel bad for him.