I was having a discussion with someone the other day about Vizio TV’s. I love Vizio, because their corporate office and call center are in Irvine, California. The guy asked me if they manufactured the TV’s here and I said “No, we don’t manufacture ANYTHING here anymore.” Not strictly true, but so close to true as makes no odds compared to how we did in the past. He commented on what a shame that was, and how he’d like to see it changed. In an attempt to remain neutral, I said “Well, I have hope. One of the presidential candidates has promised to close the tax loophole for corporations who outsource American jobs.” He said “Oh? Which one?” Well, since he asked… “Obama.” “Ah.” He said. “I’m on the other side.”
Other side?
Are there really two sides for Americans to be on when it comes to our jobs and our economy? I mean don’t we all want America to return to it’s place of stability as far as our economy goes? He certainly seemed to. But I guess that he’s afraid that, being a republican, his party will spank him if anyone finds out that he said anything about Obama other than “He’s obviously a Muslim. And black.”
Look, guys… how about this? Pretend that there WERE no political parties and just look at the two candidates, damn it. Look at what they say. Look at how what they say compares to what they’ve done in the past. RESEARCH. So that when McCain say’s he’ll “cut taxes” and his opponent will “raise taxes”, realize that 85% of McCain’s tax cuts impact the wealthiest 5% of Americans, and 100% of Obama’s tax increases impact the exact same 5%.
Now here I’m going to say something that will get me lynched by my liberal brothers and sisters. Trust me, conservatives, when it comes to ostracizing people who don’t agree with you, you guys are PIKERS compared to liberals. Once a conservative, always a conservative, but liberals will boot you for life for putting the wrong brand of organic tofu on your kale salad. Having said that…
I think that an America with McCain as president and a strong enough democratic majority in the house and senate to override his vetoes would be a pretty damned good America. We haven’t had a true balance of power in this country for eight years, and for four years before that we had a very narrow ideology running the house and senate with one hope: to ruin Bill Clinton in any way possible. And president Clinton, unfortunately, seemed hell-bent on the same thing.
Honestly, the dems took control of the house and senate in 2006, and I don’t see how they could possibly screw up increasing their majority in both chambers in 2008. Of course, they’ve surprised me before.
Now, the other major fly in that ointment, aside from the democrats messing up a big enough majority to override presidential vetoes, would be the death of John McCain. If Sarah Palin rose to the Oval Office because of McCain’s death, I can’t imagine a good outcome for America. Again, if you just disregard parties and just look at the woman and listen to what she says, I can’t imagine how anyone would want her a heartbeat away from the presidency.
Guys, last time I looked, we did not have two sides in America… we had one: AMERICAN. I know gay republicans and republicans who support a woman’s right to choose a safe and clean abortion. I know fundamentalist Christian democrats and democrats to this day who will argue for the necessity of invading Iraq. None of them can tell me what winning in Iraq looks like, sadly, just like the republicans who still support it.
When we vote in a presidential election, the LAST thing on our minds should be which “side” we’re on, and instead should be voting for the candidate that seems most to be on America’s side.
Oh, one more quick note on a tangential topic. I’ve heard a lot over the last weekend and first couple of days of this week about how much Barack Obama said “Senator McCain is right” in the debate. Everything from snide jokes about what he apparently REALLY doesn’t understand is the meaning of the word “debate” to cracks about what a great campaigner for McCain he is.
Let me be clear about this. First off… I realize that this is a concept foreign to many modern Americans, but it’s called COURTESY. When someone’s right about something… no matter how hard it is for you to admit it… you DO admit it. Personally, I make it a point when someone is right about something that I’m not, to go to them and say “You’re right and I’m wrong.” This is not difficult at all for me to say, as it seems to be for a lot of Americans. I wonder how many more delegates, for instance, Hillary Clinton could have achieved by simply coming to us who opposed the unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq and said “Hey, on that whole Iraq war thing? You were right, and I was wrong” instead of whining that she was misled. Secondly, take a mental trip back to eighth grade debate, if you didn’t sleep through the class. This is a debating tactic. I can’t remember if my debate teacher, Mr. Boyer, gave it a name or not, but it is simply a matter of admitting that your opponent is right about something, and then offering a laundry list of how they’re wrong about other things. And in every case, as far as I can remember, Obama did exactly that. So can we just admit that Senator Obama is right about this and any of you who didn’t understand what he was doing were wrong? Thanks.
Peace.
Randal
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
Vote Pro-Life
As I was walking to the grocery store last night, I saw a yard sign that someone had up that said simply “VOTE PRO-LIFE”. Thank God for some common sense, I couldn’t agree more.
I mean the disgusting, reprehensible, unchristian, morally bankrupt practice of capitol punishment has to be put to an end. Although neither presidential candidate in this election has spoken about capitol punishment, the democrats have a longer record of opposing it than the republicans, so I assume that the owner of this yard wishes us to vote democrat.
I oppose capitol punishment as a Christian. It kind of confuses me when people say things like “I’m a Christian, so, of course, I support capitol punishment.” Must be reading a different scripture than the one that I have. The one that I have (King James Version) says that we are to forgive people who do us wrong. It says that we are not to judge one another. And it says, time and time again, that we are not to kill. And yes, I’ve heard the argument that by letting the state kill in your name absolves you of responsibility, but I don’t believe that. What Would Jesus Do? He’d oppose a state that executed, I think.
Or perhaps this person instead was referencing abortion, in which case I agree again. The rights of a woman to terminate a pregnancy in order to protect her own life must be defended at all costs. Again, it seems that this person is encouraging us to vote democrat as part of a “pro-life” platform, because the republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, has stated that she believes that abortion is intolerable in every case, including when the life of the mother is threatened. That strikes me as being singularly ANTI-life.
Except… while I’m on the subject of abortion, there is a group out there that opposes abortion that calls themselves “pro-life”, right? Of course, even a cursory examination of their beliefs show that they aren’t really “pro” anything… they are just “anti” a whole lot. Of course, back in the day when they presented themselves as “anti-abortion” they had a harder time gaining and keeping adherents, because the prefix “anti” is seen as negative. THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS NEGATIVE! I hate to break it to those folks, but simply changing the phrase “anti-abortion” to “pro-life” doesn’t really change the basic anti-life platform.
Most of these “pro-life” people unabashedly, unthinkingly and unswervingly support the state-sanctioned murder that we’ve come to think of as “capitol punishment”.
Several leaders of the “pro-life” movement are spending their lives behind bars for murdering employees of women’s clinics, both by shooting and by bombing the clinics. You know, the same kind of tactics that they’re currently scolding the militant Muslims for. I guess that, like so much else, if THEY do it, it’s terrorism, if WE do it, it’s okay.
And this doesn’t even take into account the QUALITY of the life that they are supposedly saving.
They’re forcing a child into a family that, for whatever reason, doesn’t want it or doesn’t feel like they can handle it. Personally, I know a woman, a friend who I helped council on this issue, who went through a very long struggle about five years ago over whether or not to have an abortion. She and her husband worked hard to create an ideal environment for a child. She worked part-time, no health benefits, and basically put all of her money into a savings account. Her husband worked for a seemingly solid company. He was making money hand over fist. He was provided full health insurance. He had an amazing retirement account. The company that he worked for was tied to Enron. When Enron went down his job disappeared, so did the health insurance and the retirement fund. Suddenly they were trying to live on her part-time income and savings account while he looked for another job. And at the same time that all of this went down, SUCCESS! She finally took pregnant.
She had the abortion. Last I heard from these folks (about two years ago), the husband had worked his way back up to a decent living, and they had replenished most of their savings. But, as much as they both want a child, they are hesitant to try again.
Or let’s say that you and your partner get pregnant, and then you find out from your doctor that you and your parents suffer some sort of genetic illness that you will, more likely than not pass on to your child. A loved one of mine with MS had her tubes tied when she was young specifically so that she would NOT be faced with the choice of either bearing a child who would develop MS or have an abortion.
And do me a favor, folks, don’t drag God into this argument, okay? I maintain again that God is a big boy and can take care of himself. Also, if he has a gripe with the people who HAVE abortions or the people who PERFORM abortions, they’ll have to answer to him, not to you. Also, the Bible doesn’t mention abortion. ANYWHERE. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the drivel about the slaughter of the innocents, but honest to Him, folks, I could make the same argument about the Iraq war and the tens of thousands of innocents who have died there.
And where do I stand on this issue? Well, for those interested, I’ll tell you. But do me a favor, if you’re going to read my opinion, read it all the way through. Don’t assume that you understand it after the first line or two, because I believe it’s a complicated issue with no easy answers.
Personally? I find abortion abominable. If I could wake up tomorrow morning in a world (or even an America) with no abortion, I would be a happy camper. We cannot do that by illegalizing abortion, however. My arguments with Roe Vs. Wade have to do with the fact that it doesn’t address the father’s rights AT ALL – it addresses the father as a sperm donor, nothing more.
The way to eliminate abortion is manifold, but it starts with recognizing that our kids are human beings, and human beings really start becoming sexual beings around the age of fourteen, not eighteen or twenty-one. It continues by recognizing that in order to avoid abortions, especially among teenagers, we first have to avoid pregnancy. In order to avoid pregnancy, we have to be able to teach our kids CLEARLY what pregnancy is, how it happens, and how it can be avoided.
That’s the first step.
Then we have to shore up our health care system so that it’s not tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to bear a child, versus a couple hundred bucks to have an abortion.
Then we have to institute regulations on corporations to prevent messes like the Enron failure from affecting the common employee so deeply.
Once all of that is done, and only then, should we entertain an argument over whether or not abortion should be legal, once that is the only remaining question on the subject. Not before.
Peace.
Randal
I mean the disgusting, reprehensible, unchristian, morally bankrupt practice of capitol punishment has to be put to an end. Although neither presidential candidate in this election has spoken about capitol punishment, the democrats have a longer record of opposing it than the republicans, so I assume that the owner of this yard wishes us to vote democrat.
I oppose capitol punishment as a Christian. It kind of confuses me when people say things like “I’m a Christian, so, of course, I support capitol punishment.” Must be reading a different scripture than the one that I have. The one that I have (King James Version) says that we are to forgive people who do us wrong. It says that we are not to judge one another. And it says, time and time again, that we are not to kill. And yes, I’ve heard the argument that by letting the state kill in your name absolves you of responsibility, but I don’t believe that. What Would Jesus Do? He’d oppose a state that executed, I think.
Or perhaps this person instead was referencing abortion, in which case I agree again. The rights of a woman to terminate a pregnancy in order to protect her own life must be defended at all costs. Again, it seems that this person is encouraging us to vote democrat as part of a “pro-life” platform, because the republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, has stated that she believes that abortion is intolerable in every case, including when the life of the mother is threatened. That strikes me as being singularly ANTI-life.
Except… while I’m on the subject of abortion, there is a group out there that opposes abortion that calls themselves “pro-life”, right? Of course, even a cursory examination of their beliefs show that they aren’t really “pro” anything… they are just “anti” a whole lot. Of course, back in the day when they presented themselves as “anti-abortion” they had a harder time gaining and keeping adherents, because the prefix “anti” is seen as negative. THAT’S BECAUSE IT IS NEGATIVE! I hate to break it to those folks, but simply changing the phrase “anti-abortion” to “pro-life” doesn’t really change the basic anti-life platform.
Most of these “pro-life” people unabashedly, unthinkingly and unswervingly support the state-sanctioned murder that we’ve come to think of as “capitol punishment”.
Several leaders of the “pro-life” movement are spending their lives behind bars for murdering employees of women’s clinics, both by shooting and by bombing the clinics. You know, the same kind of tactics that they’re currently scolding the militant Muslims for. I guess that, like so much else, if THEY do it, it’s terrorism, if WE do it, it’s okay.
And this doesn’t even take into account the QUALITY of the life that they are supposedly saving.
They’re forcing a child into a family that, for whatever reason, doesn’t want it or doesn’t feel like they can handle it. Personally, I know a woman, a friend who I helped council on this issue, who went through a very long struggle about five years ago over whether or not to have an abortion. She and her husband worked hard to create an ideal environment for a child. She worked part-time, no health benefits, and basically put all of her money into a savings account. Her husband worked for a seemingly solid company. He was making money hand over fist. He was provided full health insurance. He had an amazing retirement account. The company that he worked for was tied to Enron. When Enron went down his job disappeared, so did the health insurance and the retirement fund. Suddenly they were trying to live on her part-time income and savings account while he looked for another job. And at the same time that all of this went down, SUCCESS! She finally took pregnant.
She had the abortion. Last I heard from these folks (about two years ago), the husband had worked his way back up to a decent living, and they had replenished most of their savings. But, as much as they both want a child, they are hesitant to try again.
Or let’s say that you and your partner get pregnant, and then you find out from your doctor that you and your parents suffer some sort of genetic illness that you will, more likely than not pass on to your child. A loved one of mine with MS had her tubes tied when she was young specifically so that she would NOT be faced with the choice of either bearing a child who would develop MS or have an abortion.
And do me a favor, folks, don’t drag God into this argument, okay? I maintain again that God is a big boy and can take care of himself. Also, if he has a gripe with the people who HAVE abortions or the people who PERFORM abortions, they’ll have to answer to him, not to you. Also, the Bible doesn’t mention abortion. ANYWHERE. Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard the drivel about the slaughter of the innocents, but honest to Him, folks, I could make the same argument about the Iraq war and the tens of thousands of innocents who have died there.
And where do I stand on this issue? Well, for those interested, I’ll tell you. But do me a favor, if you’re going to read my opinion, read it all the way through. Don’t assume that you understand it after the first line or two, because I believe it’s a complicated issue with no easy answers.
Personally? I find abortion abominable. If I could wake up tomorrow morning in a world (or even an America) with no abortion, I would be a happy camper. We cannot do that by illegalizing abortion, however. My arguments with Roe Vs. Wade have to do with the fact that it doesn’t address the father’s rights AT ALL – it addresses the father as a sperm donor, nothing more.
The way to eliminate abortion is manifold, but it starts with recognizing that our kids are human beings, and human beings really start becoming sexual beings around the age of fourteen, not eighteen or twenty-one. It continues by recognizing that in order to avoid abortions, especially among teenagers, we first have to avoid pregnancy. In order to avoid pregnancy, we have to be able to teach our kids CLEARLY what pregnancy is, how it happens, and how it can be avoided.
That’s the first step.
Then we have to shore up our health care system so that it’s not tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket to bear a child, versus a couple hundred bucks to have an abortion.
Then we have to institute regulations on corporations to prevent messes like the Enron failure from affecting the common employee so deeply.
Once all of that is done, and only then, should we entertain an argument over whether or not abortion should be legal, once that is the only remaining question on the subject. Not before.
Peace.
Randal
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Another Pointless E-mail Forward
I received an e-mail the other day from someone that I otherwise love and trust. In her defense, she didn’t originate the e-mail, she simply forwarded it without looking into the non-issue that it represented.
Here’s the e-mail…
REFUSE NEW $ COINS
This simple action will make a strong statement.
Please help do this...refuse to accept these when they are handed to you. I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead. The lady just smiled and said 'way to go' so she had read this e-mail. Please help out...our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S. Government to Release New Dollar Coins
You guessed it
'IN GOD WE TRUST'
IS GONE!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!
DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE
Together we can force them out of circulation.
Please send to everyone on your mail list!!!
I have several issues with this e-mail.
First off, these “new” dollar coins have been in circulation for about three years.
Second off, really… isn’t our world in enough trouble without us sweating stuff like whether or not a phrase is included on a coin? How spoiled are we if this is the most worrying thing in our lives.
Third off – “In God We Trust” was not added to our money until after the civil war – a time when the country felt SO pulled apart, that we had to trust in God to hold us together because – let’s face it – we were doing a really piss-poor job of it ourselves.
And there’s also a group of us out there who would prefer our God and our money to be kept SEPARATE unless we are doing something good FOR our God WITH our money. Honestly, folks, we don’t live in a theocracy – Christian or otherwise – and THANK GOD FOR IT! I’ve tried to stress to narrow-minded Christians out there that the people who want a “CHRISTIAN” America won’t be satisfied when all of the Atheists, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc., are gone. Next they’ll go after the Jews. I know that you’re working together now, but let’s face it guys – YOU KILLED CHRIST! As “The Passion of the Christ” and the furor surrounding it demonstrates, we’re not going to let you get away with that forever! Next comes the Catholics… or, as the bigots called them when I was a kid (and a Catholic) – the “papists”. You guys worship statues, revere iconography and consider God a triumvirate! Can’t have that!
What then? When all that’s left in “God-fearing” America are a bunch of Protestants, what comes then? Well, then I suspect that they’ll come after people like me who pray in our homes instead of in the streets and the temples. And don’t forget that there are plenty of different sects to go after each other.
Look, guys – I’d just as soon see “In God We Trust” disappear from every coin, from everyTHING that the Government touches. It was not governmentally mandated that a new president say “So help me God” – George Washington did that of his own accord, and it’s been TRADITION every since, not REQUIRED.
Lastly… and probably most importantly when it comes to stopping this balderdash e-mail… is that IT SAYS IN GOD WE TRUST ON THE STUPID COIN! It’s engraved around the edge, along with what many of us feel is our true national motto – the one that REALLY exemplifies the spirit of American diversity and acceptance that has made us the great country that we are – “E Pluribus Unim”. “From many – one.”
So please… if you get this pointless e-mail, DON’T forward it. Stop it in its tracks, and let the person who forwarded it to you know that they DO say “In God We Trust”.
Peace.
Randal
Here’s the e-mail…
REFUSE NEW $ COINS
This simple action will make a strong statement.
Please help do this...refuse to accept these when they are handed to you. I received one from the Post Office as change and I asked for a dollar bill instead. The lady just smiled and said 'way to go' so she had read this e-mail. Please help out...our world is in enough trouble without this too!!!!!
U.S. Government to Release New Dollar Coins
You guessed it
'IN GOD WE TRUST'
IS GONE!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!!
DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE
Together we can force them out of circulation.
Please send to everyone on your mail list!!!
I have several issues with this e-mail.
First off, these “new” dollar coins have been in circulation for about three years.
Second off, really… isn’t our world in enough trouble without us sweating stuff like whether or not a phrase is included on a coin? How spoiled are we if this is the most worrying thing in our lives.
Third off – “In God We Trust” was not added to our money until after the civil war – a time when the country felt SO pulled apart, that we had to trust in God to hold us together because – let’s face it – we were doing a really piss-poor job of it ourselves.
And there’s also a group of us out there who would prefer our God and our money to be kept SEPARATE unless we are doing something good FOR our God WITH our money. Honestly, folks, we don’t live in a theocracy – Christian or otherwise – and THANK GOD FOR IT! I’ve tried to stress to narrow-minded Christians out there that the people who want a “CHRISTIAN” America won’t be satisfied when all of the Atheists, Muslims, Bhuddists, etc., are gone. Next they’ll go after the Jews. I know that you’re working together now, but let’s face it guys – YOU KILLED CHRIST! As “The Passion of the Christ” and the furor surrounding it demonstrates, we’re not going to let you get away with that forever! Next comes the Catholics… or, as the bigots called them when I was a kid (and a Catholic) – the “papists”. You guys worship statues, revere iconography and consider God a triumvirate! Can’t have that!
What then? When all that’s left in “God-fearing” America are a bunch of Protestants, what comes then? Well, then I suspect that they’ll come after people like me who pray in our homes instead of in the streets and the temples. And don’t forget that there are plenty of different sects to go after each other.
Look, guys – I’d just as soon see “In God We Trust” disappear from every coin, from everyTHING that the Government touches. It was not governmentally mandated that a new president say “So help me God” – George Washington did that of his own accord, and it’s been TRADITION every since, not REQUIRED.
Lastly… and probably most importantly when it comes to stopping this balderdash e-mail… is that IT SAYS IN GOD WE TRUST ON THE STUPID COIN! It’s engraved around the edge, along with what many of us feel is our true national motto – the one that REALLY exemplifies the spirit of American diversity and acceptance that has made us the great country that we are – “E Pluribus Unim”. “From many – one.”
So please… if you get this pointless e-mail, DON’T forward it. Stop it in its tracks, and let the person who forwarded it to you know that they DO say “In God We Trust”.
Peace.
Randal
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Notes on the 9/26 Presidential Debate
First off, a couple of general notes.
I want to congratulate the audience that attended the debate. I think that they behaved magnificently. One of my gripes with state of the union addresses and other public appearances by politicians is how rowdy and out of line people behave. The audience at this debate behaved like a group of grown-ups, which was amazing.
I heard a lot of griping after this debate that the candidates didn’t talk more about the current financial crisis. Two thoughts on this… one is that this debate wasn’t ABOUT the economy, the next debate will be. I commend Jim Lehrer for remaining on-topic and recognizing that the role of the president is larger than simply working out our finances.
One thing that I noticed is that, after the debate, when the vice-presidential candidates typically say a word or two, Sarah Palin was conspicuously absent. Instead, the republicans had Rudy Guiliani talk instead. How little confidence must they have in this woman? Is she just a young, pretty face to counter-balance John McCain? (Okay, relatively young – she’s my age.)
After the debate, I watched Real Time with Bill Maher. One of his guests was actor Tim Daly, who asked… get this… “What exactly is “victory” in Iraq?” I LOVE IT! I’ve been asking that question for two years – maybe now that a celebrity is asking it, more people will start. I really want an answer to this.
Also, I noticed that Senator Obama is wearing an American flag pin, whereas Senator McCain was not. I wonder why Senator McCain hates America? Will the conservative arm of the media crucify him like they did Senator Obama for not wearing one at other public appearances?
One final note before I move on to the debate… Jim Lehrer, the moderator, stressed to the two candidates that it was not only okay but preferable for them to speak directly to one another. Like a marriage counselor trying to get a bickering married couple to communicate. After a while, Obama did that. He started addressing comments and questions directly to McCain. McCain, on the other hand, refused to even LOOK at Obama. Tom Brokaw, in the wrap-up afterward, commented that it seemed like something about Obama bothered him. THAT bothers me. I think that we need a more courteous country, but if our leaders don’t show courtesy, I don’t think that the rest of us will.
Round one of the debate was about the current financial crisis, including the bail-out bill now before Congress. Bear in mind that neither of the candidates have had time to read the wording of the bill. Both candidates stated a bunch of generalities, neither one really said anything concrete, so I consider that round a wash.
Round two was when Jim Lehrer asked about fundamental differences between the two candidates’ financial plans. John McCain commented that the biggest problem with our economy was runaway government spending. He picked out some $932 million dollars in earmark spending that Obama asked for. I didn’t research those, but I do know that earmark spending, representatives “pet projects”, equaled 18 BILLION DOLLARS in last year’s budget. Obama pointed out that 18 billion is a lot of money, but when you compare it to a seven hundred billion dollar bank bailout and ten billion dollars PER MONTH for the unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, it’s basically a drop in the spending bucket.
Senator McCain also commented that he wanted to reduce the corporate tax burden from 35% to 25% so that American companies will stay here and create American jobs. All I can say is that with all of the loopholes in the corporate tax laws that Senator Obama points out, American corporations pay among the LOWEST tax rates in the world. And it hasn’t worked so far. Doing more of what’s not working won’t suddenly start working.
Round 2 to Senator Obama.
Round 3 was a question of what would they give up as President in order to pay for the financial rescue plan. Senator Obama said he didn’t know what the federal budget would look like next year, but he would probably have to delay some of the programs the he wanted to implement, but stressed the importance of pursuing energy independence, health care, and becoming competitive in education. An understandably vague answer.
Senator McCain commented again on the importance of cutting government spending. Then he fell back on the old conservative standby and called Senator Obama “liberal”, as if that’s a bad thing. Now, once he got past that, he talked about eliminating corn biodiesel subsidies (which I agree with) and “cost-plus” contracts, such as the contracts that we have in Iraq with Halliburton.
Round three to Senator McCain. He didn’t so much say what he would give up, as to say what he would change about what we’re doing now, but at least that’s something. I would like to remind my readers, though, that this runaway spending (including ten billion dollars per month in Iraq) has happened under Senator McCain’s watch.
Senator McCain also used round three as an opportunity to scare Americans about how Senator Obama’s health care program would turn medical decisions over the federal government. I’ve gotta tell you, brothers and sisters, I haven’t seen that in Obama’s health care plan. I encourage you to look at his website and judge for yourself.
Round four asks what lessons will we learn from Iraq? Senator McCain took this opportunity to talk about how great we are doing in Iraq and how we’re now WINNING in Iraq. Whatever THAT means. Same old bullshit conservative rhetoric.
Senator Obama asks the question that so many of us have asked – should we have gone into Iraq to begin with. He also uses this as an opportunity to comment that we “took our eye off the ball” in Afghanistan. He said that the lesson to be learned is that we must use our military strength to help keep peace in the world, but that we must use it WISELY.
Round four to Obama, which makes the overall score so far Obama two and McCain one, with one draw.
Also, Senator McCain comments about something that happened “Two fourths of July ago”. Would that be a half of a July? Guys, there IS no holiday called “Fourth of July”. The holiday is called “Independence Day”. Just a side note.
Senator McCain also comments that Senator Obama voted to cut spending for the troops. Nasty accusation. Thank God, Senator Obama, being a liberal with BALLS, commented that they have EACH voted against troop spending – him in a bill attached to no time limit in Iraq, and Senator McCain attached to a bill that HAD a time limit.
I’m also tired about hearing the misnomer “troop surge”. What we had last year was not a surge, it was an escalation. A surge eventually recedes.
Round five was whether or not we need more troops in Afghanistan. Obama says yes. McCain said that he wasn’t going to repeat the mistake that we made in the eighties which was to remove the dominant force (the Russians) and then providing no backup support. Frankly, we already did that so that we could move into Iraq, with Senator McCain’s approval. Then he attacked Senator McCain’s comments about how he would attack Pakistan if need be. (I encourage you to research this comment if you’re interested… the question was phrased in such a way to back Senator Obama into a corner on it.) But the round was not about Pakistan.
So round five to Obama. Obama 3, McCain 1.
Round six was a question as to whether or not Iran poses a real threat in the world. McCain says yes. Obama says yes. It’s a wash.
Senator McCain also used this as an opportunity to follow the F-word News network’s example of mispronouncing the name of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Let’s be clear here, shall we? The inability to pronounce a foreign leader’s name does not make you a better or more patriotic American – it makes you an inarticulate moron. Four years ago, we elected a man president because he seemed like “one of us”, like someone we could “have a beer with”. Let’s not make that mistake again. Let’s elect a guy with a brain instead – one who actually shows the respect to foreign leaders that MAY restore our standing in the world.
Strangely enough speaking of F-word News, a really excellent article about fact-checking the debate can be found here: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/27/fact-checking-the-presidential-debate/
Round seven was a question of how do the candidates view Russia? Both view Russia as potential partners, but a threat if they don’t behave. Wash.
They both also mentioned the Russian invasion of Georgia from a while back. The problem is that all that we could do at that time was threaten and talk, largely because of our troop commitment in Iraq. Bush and Rice both commented that the aggression wouldn’t be tolerated, but ultimately we did all that we could do – we sat back and watched until Russia decided to leave. Our military has been so undermined by the mess in Iraq, that we CAN’T help our allies in these cases. Senator McCain said that Senator Obama didn’t understand what a threat that invasion posed. I think that he understood it, but recognized that we were powerless to do anything about it.
Also, kudos to Senator Obama for correctly using the phrase “We’ve got to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.” I’m sick and tired of hearing people say that people should “walk the talk”. I DARE you to walk a talk. I don’t think that it’s physically possible.
Now we’re up to round eight, the last round. At this point, in my opinion, Senator Obama has effectively won the debate. The best that Senator McCain can do at this point is a 3 – 2 loss.
Round eight was a question of whether or not America could suffer another 9/11 type attack. Senator McCain said that America was safer… BUT STILL NOT SAFE! Have to get that little jab in to keep the fear up. Vote for him, folks, only he can keep you safe. He also commented that “most” of the 9/11 commission recommendations, upon which both he and Senator Biden sat, have been implemented. I would point out that most of those recommendations had been BLOCKED by the republican congress, and not passed until the democrats took control in January, 2007. They have made implementing most of these recommendations a priority.
Both agreed that another 9-11 type attack was possible, so it’s a wash.
In my opinion, this debate was a 3-1 victory for Senator Obama.
Obama for President.
Peace.
Randal
I want to congratulate the audience that attended the debate. I think that they behaved magnificently. One of my gripes with state of the union addresses and other public appearances by politicians is how rowdy and out of line people behave. The audience at this debate behaved like a group of grown-ups, which was amazing.
I heard a lot of griping after this debate that the candidates didn’t talk more about the current financial crisis. Two thoughts on this… one is that this debate wasn’t ABOUT the economy, the next debate will be. I commend Jim Lehrer for remaining on-topic and recognizing that the role of the president is larger than simply working out our finances.
One thing that I noticed is that, after the debate, when the vice-presidential candidates typically say a word or two, Sarah Palin was conspicuously absent. Instead, the republicans had Rudy Guiliani talk instead. How little confidence must they have in this woman? Is she just a young, pretty face to counter-balance John McCain? (Okay, relatively young – she’s my age.)
After the debate, I watched Real Time with Bill Maher. One of his guests was actor Tim Daly, who asked… get this… “What exactly is “victory” in Iraq?” I LOVE IT! I’ve been asking that question for two years – maybe now that a celebrity is asking it, more people will start. I really want an answer to this.
Also, I noticed that Senator Obama is wearing an American flag pin, whereas Senator McCain was not. I wonder why Senator McCain hates America? Will the conservative arm of the media crucify him like they did Senator Obama for not wearing one at other public appearances?
One final note before I move on to the debate… Jim Lehrer, the moderator, stressed to the two candidates that it was not only okay but preferable for them to speak directly to one another. Like a marriage counselor trying to get a bickering married couple to communicate. After a while, Obama did that. He started addressing comments and questions directly to McCain. McCain, on the other hand, refused to even LOOK at Obama. Tom Brokaw, in the wrap-up afterward, commented that it seemed like something about Obama bothered him. THAT bothers me. I think that we need a more courteous country, but if our leaders don’t show courtesy, I don’t think that the rest of us will.
Round one of the debate was about the current financial crisis, including the bail-out bill now before Congress. Bear in mind that neither of the candidates have had time to read the wording of the bill. Both candidates stated a bunch of generalities, neither one really said anything concrete, so I consider that round a wash.
Round two was when Jim Lehrer asked about fundamental differences between the two candidates’ financial plans. John McCain commented that the biggest problem with our economy was runaway government spending. He picked out some $932 million dollars in earmark spending that Obama asked for. I didn’t research those, but I do know that earmark spending, representatives “pet projects”, equaled 18 BILLION DOLLARS in last year’s budget. Obama pointed out that 18 billion is a lot of money, but when you compare it to a seven hundred billion dollar bank bailout and ten billion dollars PER MONTH for the unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq, it’s basically a drop in the spending bucket.
Senator McCain also commented that he wanted to reduce the corporate tax burden from 35% to 25% so that American companies will stay here and create American jobs. All I can say is that with all of the loopholes in the corporate tax laws that Senator Obama points out, American corporations pay among the LOWEST tax rates in the world. And it hasn’t worked so far. Doing more of what’s not working won’t suddenly start working.
Round 2 to Senator Obama.
Round 3 was a question of what would they give up as President in order to pay for the financial rescue plan. Senator Obama said he didn’t know what the federal budget would look like next year, but he would probably have to delay some of the programs the he wanted to implement, but stressed the importance of pursuing energy independence, health care, and becoming competitive in education. An understandably vague answer.
Senator McCain commented again on the importance of cutting government spending. Then he fell back on the old conservative standby and called Senator Obama “liberal”, as if that’s a bad thing. Now, once he got past that, he talked about eliminating corn biodiesel subsidies (which I agree with) and “cost-plus” contracts, such as the contracts that we have in Iraq with Halliburton.
Round three to Senator McCain. He didn’t so much say what he would give up, as to say what he would change about what we’re doing now, but at least that’s something. I would like to remind my readers, though, that this runaway spending (including ten billion dollars per month in Iraq) has happened under Senator McCain’s watch.
Senator McCain also used round three as an opportunity to scare Americans about how Senator Obama’s health care program would turn medical decisions over the federal government. I’ve gotta tell you, brothers and sisters, I haven’t seen that in Obama’s health care plan. I encourage you to look at his website and judge for yourself.
Round four asks what lessons will we learn from Iraq? Senator McCain took this opportunity to talk about how great we are doing in Iraq and how we’re now WINNING in Iraq. Whatever THAT means. Same old bullshit conservative rhetoric.
Senator Obama asks the question that so many of us have asked – should we have gone into Iraq to begin with. He also uses this as an opportunity to comment that we “took our eye off the ball” in Afghanistan. He said that the lesson to be learned is that we must use our military strength to help keep peace in the world, but that we must use it WISELY.
Round four to Obama, which makes the overall score so far Obama two and McCain one, with one draw.
Also, Senator McCain comments about something that happened “Two fourths of July ago”. Would that be a half of a July? Guys, there IS no holiday called “Fourth of July”. The holiday is called “Independence Day”. Just a side note.
Senator McCain also comments that Senator Obama voted to cut spending for the troops. Nasty accusation. Thank God, Senator Obama, being a liberal with BALLS, commented that they have EACH voted against troop spending – him in a bill attached to no time limit in Iraq, and Senator McCain attached to a bill that HAD a time limit.
I’m also tired about hearing the misnomer “troop surge”. What we had last year was not a surge, it was an escalation. A surge eventually recedes.
Round five was whether or not we need more troops in Afghanistan. Obama says yes. McCain said that he wasn’t going to repeat the mistake that we made in the eighties which was to remove the dominant force (the Russians) and then providing no backup support. Frankly, we already did that so that we could move into Iraq, with Senator McCain’s approval. Then he attacked Senator McCain’s comments about how he would attack Pakistan if need be. (I encourage you to research this comment if you’re interested… the question was phrased in such a way to back Senator Obama into a corner on it.) But the round was not about Pakistan.
So round five to Obama. Obama 3, McCain 1.
Round six was a question as to whether or not Iran poses a real threat in the world. McCain says yes. Obama says yes. It’s a wash.
Senator McCain also used this as an opportunity to follow the F-word News network’s example of mispronouncing the name of Iranian President Ahmadinejad. Let’s be clear here, shall we? The inability to pronounce a foreign leader’s name does not make you a better or more patriotic American – it makes you an inarticulate moron. Four years ago, we elected a man president because he seemed like “one of us”, like someone we could “have a beer with”. Let’s not make that mistake again. Let’s elect a guy with a brain instead – one who actually shows the respect to foreign leaders that MAY restore our standing in the world.
Strangely enough speaking of F-word News, a really excellent article about fact-checking the debate can be found here: http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09/27/fact-checking-the-presidential-debate/
Round seven was a question of how do the candidates view Russia? Both view Russia as potential partners, but a threat if they don’t behave. Wash.
They both also mentioned the Russian invasion of Georgia from a while back. The problem is that all that we could do at that time was threaten and talk, largely because of our troop commitment in Iraq. Bush and Rice both commented that the aggression wouldn’t be tolerated, but ultimately we did all that we could do – we sat back and watched until Russia decided to leave. Our military has been so undermined by the mess in Iraq, that we CAN’T help our allies in these cases. Senator McCain said that Senator Obama didn’t understand what a threat that invasion posed. I think that he understood it, but recognized that we were powerless to do anything about it.
Also, kudos to Senator Obama for correctly using the phrase “We’ve got to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.” I’m sick and tired of hearing people say that people should “walk the talk”. I DARE you to walk a talk. I don’t think that it’s physically possible.
Now we’re up to round eight, the last round. At this point, in my opinion, Senator Obama has effectively won the debate. The best that Senator McCain can do at this point is a 3 – 2 loss.
Round eight was a question of whether or not America could suffer another 9/11 type attack. Senator McCain said that America was safer… BUT STILL NOT SAFE! Have to get that little jab in to keep the fear up. Vote for him, folks, only he can keep you safe. He also commented that “most” of the 9/11 commission recommendations, upon which both he and Senator Biden sat, have been implemented. I would point out that most of those recommendations had been BLOCKED by the republican congress, and not passed until the democrats took control in January, 2007. They have made implementing most of these recommendations a priority.
Both agreed that another 9-11 type attack was possible, so it’s a wash.
In my opinion, this debate was a 3-1 victory for Senator Obama.
Obama for President.
Peace.
Randal
Friday, September 26, 2008
Hey Buddy - Can You Spare Seven Hundred Trillion Dimes?
Seven hundred billion dollars.
Just numbers, right? They don’t actually mean anything, do they? Like five hundred and eighty three billion dollars so far to pay for our unjustified invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. Just numbers. They don’t reflect anything tangible…
Except…
We live in a country where the same politicians who are now deciding whether or not to spend this money are telling us that we don’t have adequate money for decent education, or health care. We’ve watched cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, offending the least capable of taking care of themselves so that we won’t have to borrow the FULL amount of the unjustified invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq from our kids and grandkids.
That’s another thing. What would your response be if someone came up to you right now and said “Oh, I need a million dollars – your grandmother borrowed it and promised that you’d pay it back”? That’s exactly what we’re doing to our kids and our grandkids with both the money that we’re pissing away in Iraq and this bank bail-out.
You know what I say? Fuck ‘em. I realize that common people will be hurt if we don’t bail the banks out, but let’s face it – this entire mess is precipitated upon the fact that they’ve been demanding that there be no oversight or regulation. Now they’re reaping the rewards of that, dubious as they may be. Fuck ‘em. And maybe they’ll learn a lesson.
I guess that the million dollar question is “what have we learned”? Have we learned enough about republican fiscal policy to kick these guys out of office until they clean up their acts? Of course not. Because Mr. Bush is on the news insisting that this has been a long time in the making. Not HIS fault, of course. Which is true – but going back over the last twenty-eight years, (and I’m including Bill Clinton in this) you see pro-business, republican fiscal policy ruling America. So what have we learned? Nothing, I fear.
So let’s put this in perspective…
Even at current health insurance costs, costs which would be greatly reduced under a national health insurance plan, seven hundred billion dollars would provide healthcare for every man, woman and child in America for six months. And yet, health care is too expensive, whereas bailing the banks out is not.
For seven hundred billion dollars, every gas station in America could be retrofitted for hydrogen as well as gas, and every household in America could be either assisted in the purchase of a hydrogen fuel-cell car, or have one purchased for them. (12 billion to retrofit the gas stations, as one estimate has it, would leave six hundred eighty two billion for the purchase of vehicles.) But we must remember when we read this that changing from our fossil-fuel based economy is too cost-intensive, whereas bailing out the banks is not.
For seven hundred billion dollars, we could pay the entire cost for seventeen million, five hundred thousand young Americans to get a bachelor’s degree. (Approx. $40,000 per degree X 17,500,000 unless my math is wrong.) But of course education to strengthen our future economy is not as important as bailing out republican’s rich buddies after they’ve gotten themselves into trouble, is it?
I guess that what this comes down to, brothers and sisters, is that these numbers MEAN something. Our slide into fiscal hell began when President Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. Our money is now, quite frankly, valueless. The result is that the government feels like it can just print up as much money as it wants and pump it into the economy and everything’s groovy. The problem is that if there’s nothing buttressing the value of the paper, then more paper doesn’t help.
Get outraged, okay? Think of how much money you make per year, and then figure out how much their talking about. For instance, this amount of money is more than seventeen million times what I make in a year!
GET OUTRAGED! Ask your lawmakers where this money is coming from, and don’t let them bullshit you into accepting generalities. Specifically, where is this seven hundred BILLION dollars coming from?
I’m going to write a letter to my congressman right now and ask that question. Here’s where you go to do that, I encourage you to do the same - https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Dear Rep. Smith,
I have a question about the proposed bank bail-out scheme currently being considered by Congress.
Specifically, where is this money coming from? I am actually growing a little tired of our congress and Mr. Bush throwing our money around as if the figures don't actually represent anything, so i'm wondering - specifically, what do these numbers represent? Are we talking about cuts to social programs? You are, if i remember correctly, a democrat, and so should be fighting tooth and nail to prevent cuts to social programs. Are we talking about increased taxes? If so, upon whom? Are we talking about securities taken out against future taxes? If so, when will these securities come due, and what is the plan to pay for them? Are we talking about selling more of our Federal assets (IE dollars) to foreign governments, such as the Chinese? If that is the case, then i strongly discourage you from doing that.
Thank you for your attention to this issue.
Sincerely, Randal Schaffer
Peace.
Randal
Just numbers, right? They don’t actually mean anything, do they? Like five hundred and eighty three billion dollars so far to pay for our unjustified invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. Just numbers. They don’t reflect anything tangible…
Except…
We live in a country where the same politicians who are now deciding whether or not to spend this money are telling us that we don’t have adequate money for decent education, or health care. We’ve watched cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, offending the least capable of taking care of themselves so that we won’t have to borrow the FULL amount of the unjustified invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq from our kids and grandkids.
That’s another thing. What would your response be if someone came up to you right now and said “Oh, I need a million dollars – your grandmother borrowed it and promised that you’d pay it back”? That’s exactly what we’re doing to our kids and our grandkids with both the money that we’re pissing away in Iraq and this bank bail-out.
You know what I say? Fuck ‘em. I realize that common people will be hurt if we don’t bail the banks out, but let’s face it – this entire mess is precipitated upon the fact that they’ve been demanding that there be no oversight or regulation. Now they’re reaping the rewards of that, dubious as they may be. Fuck ‘em. And maybe they’ll learn a lesson.
I guess that the million dollar question is “what have we learned”? Have we learned enough about republican fiscal policy to kick these guys out of office until they clean up their acts? Of course not. Because Mr. Bush is on the news insisting that this has been a long time in the making. Not HIS fault, of course. Which is true – but going back over the last twenty-eight years, (and I’m including Bill Clinton in this) you see pro-business, republican fiscal policy ruling America. So what have we learned? Nothing, I fear.
So let’s put this in perspective…
Even at current health insurance costs, costs which would be greatly reduced under a national health insurance plan, seven hundred billion dollars would provide healthcare for every man, woman and child in America for six months. And yet, health care is too expensive, whereas bailing the banks out is not.
For seven hundred billion dollars, every gas station in America could be retrofitted for hydrogen as well as gas, and every household in America could be either assisted in the purchase of a hydrogen fuel-cell car, or have one purchased for them. (12 billion to retrofit the gas stations, as one estimate has it, would leave six hundred eighty two billion for the purchase of vehicles.) But we must remember when we read this that changing from our fossil-fuel based economy is too cost-intensive, whereas bailing out the banks is not.
For seven hundred billion dollars, we could pay the entire cost for seventeen million, five hundred thousand young Americans to get a bachelor’s degree. (Approx. $40,000 per degree X 17,500,000 unless my math is wrong.) But of course education to strengthen our future economy is not as important as bailing out republican’s rich buddies after they’ve gotten themselves into trouble, is it?
I guess that what this comes down to, brothers and sisters, is that these numbers MEAN something. Our slide into fiscal hell began when President Nixon took us off the gold standard in 1971. Our money is now, quite frankly, valueless. The result is that the government feels like it can just print up as much money as it wants and pump it into the economy and everything’s groovy. The problem is that if there’s nothing buttressing the value of the paper, then more paper doesn’t help.
Get outraged, okay? Think of how much money you make per year, and then figure out how much their talking about. For instance, this amount of money is more than seventeen million times what I make in a year!
GET OUTRAGED! Ask your lawmakers where this money is coming from, and don’t let them bullshit you into accepting generalities. Specifically, where is this seven hundred BILLION dollars coming from?
I’m going to write a letter to my congressman right now and ask that question. Here’s where you go to do that, I encourage you to do the same - https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtml
Dear Rep. Smith,
I have a question about the proposed bank bail-out scheme currently being considered by Congress.
Specifically, where is this money coming from? I am actually growing a little tired of our congress and Mr. Bush throwing our money around as if the figures don't actually represent anything, so i'm wondering - specifically, what do these numbers represent? Are we talking about cuts to social programs? You are, if i remember correctly, a democrat, and so should be fighting tooth and nail to prevent cuts to social programs. Are we talking about increased taxes? If so, upon whom? Are we talking about securities taken out against future taxes? If so, when will these securities come due, and what is the plan to pay for them? Are we talking about selling more of our Federal assets (IE dollars) to foreign governments, such as the Chinese? If that is the case, then i strongly discourage you from doing that.
Thank you for your attention to this issue.
Sincerely, Randal Schaffer
Peace.
Randal
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Just Words, Part 2
Okay, on with the Bill of Rights. Thanks for your patience.
The second amendment is the one best-known to all conservatives, at least by it’s abbreviated name. They may have a hard time naming any of the other amendments, but if you say “What’s the second amendment?” they’ll almost always answer “RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, BABY! HOO-AH!” Or something like that.
Personally, I prefer the right to bare breasts. But I digress.
But what does the amendment ACTUALLY say? It DOESN’T say “you have the unlimited right to bear arms”. What it DOES say is “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
First off, to anyone who thinks that this amendment guarantees you the unregulated right to own any gun at any time, I will point out the phrase WELL REGULATED to you. Gun control is built right into the amendment. The founding fathers didn’t want nutjobs running around with whatever the 18th century equivalent of AK-47’s any more than we do.
Next, a little history lesson.
The founding fathers did not want America to have a standing army. It was state militias who secured our freedom from the British and state militias who battled each other in the war between the states. George Washington spoke eloquently of the danger of having a federally-controlled army turned against the government’s subjects, like they were against him and his co-conspirators in revolution.
So why are we guaranteed the right to bear arms? Well, for the sake of a militia, as the act states, of course. Also because King George DENIED American colonials the right once it became clear that revolt was in the air. What did that mean to the colonists? In a time when there were no centralized police agencies, it meant that they couldn’t protect their homes and families. In a time when, if you wanted meat, you went out and killed something that they couldn’t kill anything.
And by the way… a quick note to conservative alarmists… NO PRESIDENT HAS EVER TRIED TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, AND NONE EVER WILL. IT WOULD TAKE AN ACT OF CONGRESS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, AND THEY AREN’T GOING TO DO THAT! They may take away your assault rifle, and God bless ‘em for that. You want pistols, even hand-cannons? Great. Personally, I’m partial to the Israeli Arms Desert Eagle air-cooled .44. Fired that baby once – amazing. I won’t rest until I have one. Shotguns and rifles for hunting? No problem. You want something that fires a hundred and fifty rounds per minute? Too bad. It serves no purpose other than killing a lot of people very quickly and you don’t need it. On a side note, both of our last two Democratic presidents (Clinton and Carter) were country boys, hunters, and card-carrying members of the NRA. I think that Obama isn’t, but that’s okay, too.
The third amendment says “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Fairly self-explanatory, and solid as houses. So far as I know, no president has ever tried to violate this one.
The fourth amendment reads “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In other words, no representative of the government can enter your home or search your belongings without a very specific search warrant, authorized by a court. The Bush administration has freely flouted this amendment, mostly because too many Americans do not realize how important it is or what it means.
This has grown more complex in the electronic age. Do these rights extend to telephone conversations? E-mails? Internet searches? I would say that these things fall into the category of “papers and effects”, but the point is, as the Bush administration has shown, debatable.
The fifth amendment reads “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
This is another amendment freely disregarded by the Bush administration. Where is the due process that the people in Guantanamo were supposed to get? Personally, I think that the fact that the Bush administration HASN’T given these people due process means that they don’t really think that they’ve got a case. Secret prisons where people are swept away to in the middle of the night without a Grand Jury indictment or due process is a problem, folks. “They can be locked up indefinitely because I say so” is a very, very scary proposition in a supposedly free society.
Probably the two best-known clauses of this are the double jeopardy clause and the self-incrimination clause. These mean basically that if you’ve been acquitted of a crime you can’t be tried again for the same crime and that you can’t be forced in court to provide testimony that will incriminate you. Whenever someone “pleads the fifth”, it’s a pretty safe bet that they’ve done something wrong. But famously in America, you are innocent until proven guilty, so even if you plead the fifth, the state still has to provide evidence of your guilt before you can be lawfully convicted.
The sixth amendment says “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.” Again, completely disregarded by the Bush administration.
The seventh amendment states “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.” Again, fairly self-explanatory I think, and again, according to the Bush administration, non-existent.
According to the eighth amendment, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” You know… like water-boarding, or threatening with dogs, or being smeared with menstrual blood… ALL of which have been done to the people interred in Guantanamo. The Bush administrations “out” on this? “Well some punishments may be cruel… and some may be unusual… but none are cruel AND unusual.” Riiiiiiiiight.
The ninth amendment is where they start getting a little murkier. “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In other words, nothing in the Constitution can be used as an excuse to take other rights away from you. Trust me – this is deep. Scholars have been arguing over this one for two hundred years. My take on this amendment and the tenth is that they are kind of cover-alls. The founders wanted us to have almost unlimited liberty, constrained within a reasonable legal system.
The last amendment was proposed by the slave-holding states, afraid that the non-slave-holding states would use the Constitution to come in and take away their slaves. It says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” In other words, any power not given to the federal government by the Constitution EXPRESSLY would be up to the states to enforce.
Okay, Americans. Those are your rights. Know them. Live them. Fight for them.
Peace.
Randal
The second amendment is the one best-known to all conservatives, at least by it’s abbreviated name. They may have a hard time naming any of the other amendments, but if you say “What’s the second amendment?” they’ll almost always answer “RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, BABY! HOO-AH!” Or something like that.
Personally, I prefer the right to bare breasts. But I digress.
But what does the amendment ACTUALLY say? It DOESN’T say “you have the unlimited right to bear arms”. What it DOES say is “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
First off, to anyone who thinks that this amendment guarantees you the unregulated right to own any gun at any time, I will point out the phrase WELL REGULATED to you. Gun control is built right into the amendment. The founding fathers didn’t want nutjobs running around with whatever the 18th century equivalent of AK-47’s any more than we do.
Next, a little history lesson.
The founding fathers did not want America to have a standing army. It was state militias who secured our freedom from the British and state militias who battled each other in the war between the states. George Washington spoke eloquently of the danger of having a federally-controlled army turned against the government’s subjects, like they were against him and his co-conspirators in revolution.
So why are we guaranteed the right to bear arms? Well, for the sake of a militia, as the act states, of course. Also because King George DENIED American colonials the right once it became clear that revolt was in the air. What did that mean to the colonists? In a time when there were no centralized police agencies, it meant that they couldn’t protect their homes and families. In a time when, if you wanted meat, you went out and killed something that they couldn’t kill anything.
And by the way… a quick note to conservative alarmists… NO PRESIDENT HAS EVER TRIED TO TAKE AWAY YOUR RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS, AND NONE EVER WILL. IT WOULD TAKE AN ACT OF CONGRESS TO AMEND THE CONSTITUTION, AND THEY AREN’T GOING TO DO THAT! They may take away your assault rifle, and God bless ‘em for that. You want pistols, even hand-cannons? Great. Personally, I’m partial to the Israeli Arms Desert Eagle air-cooled .44. Fired that baby once – amazing. I won’t rest until I have one. Shotguns and rifles for hunting? No problem. You want something that fires a hundred and fifty rounds per minute? Too bad. It serves no purpose other than killing a lot of people very quickly and you don’t need it. On a side note, both of our last two Democratic presidents (Clinton and Carter) were country boys, hunters, and card-carrying members of the NRA. I think that Obama isn’t, but that’s okay, too.
The third amendment says “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” Fairly self-explanatory, and solid as houses. So far as I know, no president has ever tried to violate this one.
The fourth amendment reads “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” In other words, no representative of the government can enter your home or search your belongings without a very specific search warrant, authorized by a court. The Bush administration has freely flouted this amendment, mostly because too many Americans do not realize how important it is or what it means.
This has grown more complex in the electronic age. Do these rights extend to telephone conversations? E-mails? Internet searches? I would say that these things fall into the category of “papers and effects”, but the point is, as the Bush administration has shown, debatable.
The fifth amendment reads “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
This is another amendment freely disregarded by the Bush administration. Where is the due process that the people in Guantanamo were supposed to get? Personally, I think that the fact that the Bush administration HASN’T given these people due process means that they don’t really think that they’ve got a case. Secret prisons where people are swept away to in the middle of the night without a Grand Jury indictment or due process is a problem, folks. “They can be locked up indefinitely because I say so” is a very, very scary proposition in a supposedly free society.
Probably the two best-known clauses of this are the double jeopardy clause and the self-incrimination clause. These mean basically that if you’ve been acquitted of a crime you can’t be tried again for the same crime and that you can’t be forced in court to provide testimony that will incriminate you. Whenever someone “pleads the fifth”, it’s a pretty safe bet that they’ve done something wrong. But famously in America, you are innocent until proven guilty, so even if you plead the fifth, the state still has to provide evidence of your guilt before you can be lawfully convicted.
The sixth amendment says “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.” Again, completely disregarded by the Bush administration.
The seventh amendment states “In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.” Again, fairly self-explanatory I think, and again, according to the Bush administration, non-existent.
According to the eighth amendment, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” You know… like water-boarding, or threatening with dogs, or being smeared with menstrual blood… ALL of which have been done to the people interred in Guantanamo. The Bush administrations “out” on this? “Well some punishments may be cruel… and some may be unusual… but none are cruel AND unusual.” Riiiiiiiiight.
The ninth amendment is where they start getting a little murkier. “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” In other words, nothing in the Constitution can be used as an excuse to take other rights away from you. Trust me – this is deep. Scholars have been arguing over this one for two hundred years. My take on this amendment and the tenth is that they are kind of cover-alls. The founders wanted us to have almost unlimited liberty, constrained within a reasonable legal system.
The last amendment was proposed by the slave-holding states, afraid that the non-slave-holding states would use the Constitution to come in and take away their slaves. It says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” In other words, any power not given to the federal government by the Constitution EXPRESSLY would be up to the states to enforce.
Okay, Americans. Those are your rights. Know them. Live them. Fight for them.
Peace.
Randal
Monday, September 22, 2008
Just Words Part 1
I don’t like talking down to people. Simply because I don’t like being talked down to myself. Big pet peeve. So I try not to do it. I don’t always succeed – I am over six feet tall and have kind of a nasally voice due to a deviated septum, and so have been told that I sometimes come off as arrogant. It surprises me, frankly, how rarely this happens.
Because of this dislike of talking down to people, when I am in a conversation with someone I proceed from the assumption that they know everything that I know. I’m not talking about beliefs here. Beliefs are the way that you INTERPRET knowledge, not knowledge itself.
A co-worker asked me today if I was “leaning” toward one presidential candidate or another. I expressed my enthusiasm for Barack Obama. Honestly, in my adult life, Obama is the first candidate that I’ve really felt like I can support without reservation – not because he’s the best of a bad lot, but because he could actually do some GOOD for this country.
As we discussed this, another co-worker who leans conservative came over. For some reason, God knows why, she enjoys asking me questions and listening to me talk. I constantly challenge her because I believe that she has rather a narrow view of Christianity, like so many modern Christians do, and that is (as it should be with a Christian) the start of her worldview. Maybe that’s why she enjoys listening to me – I’m not sure.
At any rate, she expressed enthusiasm for the “ideas” of Sarah Palin. Personally, I think that Sarah Palin is a woman-hater. If she were a man with the views that she has, she’d be labeled a misogynist. Primarily, it turns out, this coworker supports Ms. Palin because of Ms. Palin’s views on abortion. She said that she believed a president should try to make their “beliefs” into law. I responded “The first amendment to the Constitution says that Congress shall make no law either respecting the practice of religion or restricting it’s free practice.”
She honestly didn’t understand what I meant, and she had to go back to work (and I was on my way out the door) so I didn’t have time to explain.
I think that this just exemplifies one of the main reasons that America is allowing itself to be led around by the nose by Mr. Bush and his cronies… even if we know the words of the Bill of Rights, that’s all that they are to most of us… words. Disconnected from any real meaning, disconnected from our lives. Just words. As a matter of fact, two republican White House staffers resigned, alleging that they were too upset to work for Mr. Bush when they overheard him refer to the Constitution as “Just a God-damned piece of paper.”
So let’s start with an explanation of what, exactly, the Bill of Rights is. Put simply, it is the first ten amendments to the constitution. Kind of the American “Ten Commandments”. The Constitution was ratified in 1787, but not to everyone’s delight. There were problems with the document. Things that it hadn’t addressed. We were an America trying to find our footing, redefining ourselves after kicking out a monarchy, and we didn’t want to be replaced by another one. America was brand spanking new, and already the fragile young country was falling apart over the very document that defines WHO we are. So the Congress collected input from the citizens as to what they thought needed to be amended, and hammered out the bill of rights – basically a way to protect us from our own government.
So what are these “just words” and what do they mean? Well, let’s take a look at each of them and what they might mean.
The first Amendment, number one with a bullet, covers most of the basic rights that we were deprived of under the rule of mad King George. (No, not the one in the White House – the one who ruled England at the time of our independence.) It reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Because so many of our basic rights are enumerated here, we’ll take these one at a time.
The first portion of this, commonly referred to as “freedom of religion” is probably the most important. We have to remember that the first immigrants from England came here to escape religious persecution. The people were taxed to support the state religion and the religious institutions were in turn taxed for the government. If you held some religious belief that was no sanctioned by the British crown, you either had to meet in secret, or allow yourself to be forced into ghettos like the Jews and the Catholics. To this day, one of the many titles for the queen is “Her Protestant Majesty”. Since the days of King Henry the Eighth, the king or queen of England is generally accepted to be the head of the Church of England, and Americans were sick of it. We wanted our state free from the influence of any church, and our churches free from state influence.
What this means, basically, is that churches do not pay taxes and are, therefore, exempt from an active role in our political system, and that the state may not have any say in the way that churches are run. In other words, no law can be passed simply because you believe that it is what God wants, and you get to worship God in your own way without government interference.
The first part of this explains why protestant conservatives are having such a hard time denying homosexuals the right to marry. Marriage in America is a civic right, not strictly a religious right. It also explains why Roe Vs. Wade has proven so bullet-proof to attacks from the religious right. Arguments against both of these boil down to “that’s the way that God wants it.” Religious groups keep trying and failing to couch these arguments in secular terms, but as these secular arguments are gunned down one after the other, it always comes down to the religious argument, which is Constitutionally invalid.
Part of the reason that we’re still having arguments about the first half of this amendment is because of the success that conservatives have had in violating the second half. Mormons and Hassidic Jews, for instance, are denied their (in their view) God-given right to plural marriage by American anti-polygamy laws. Native Americans and Rastafarians are denied their rights to use peyote and marijuana respectively by American drug laws. I will not extend this argument to a Satanists right to human sacrifice, because by sacrificing someone you are depriving them of their rights, whereas neither of the first affect the rights of another in any significant way.
Look, personally, I am a Christian. Do I think that God wants us to have abortions? I would argue from my personal belief structure that God does not. Does God want us to be gay? Who knows. But in both of these cases, it boils down to the same thing… these people have their own reckoning with God, not with me. I cannot tell others how to live, just as they cannot tell me how to live.
The next portion of this is what is commonly called “freedom of speech”. That means that, in America, you get to say what you what, how you want, when you want and no one can interfere with that, and, more importantly, you cannot be jailed for your speech. A coworker who had been “written up” for expressing a political opinion while they were on a register, asked me if this right extends to the workplace. Believe it or not, the answer is “No, it doesn’t” for the simple reason that when you accept a job, you agree to play by the rules set forth by your employer while you are “on the clock”. If your speech upsets a customer, then the company is perfectly within their rights to reprimand you. They cannot, however, call the cops.
This is a right that has required some refinement over the years. Probably the first time that any refinement was taken to this right was when Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes declared it a criminal act to scream “fire” in a crowded theatre, with the explanation that your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. In other words, if your words cause direct and immediate harm to another, then you have to accept responsibility for that harm.
A more recent debate over free speech has erupted over so-called “virtual” child pornography. We all want to protect children, (all of us except predators, that is,) and so the question becomes “at what point does this desire to protect children infringe upon an individual’s right to free speech?”
For those who don’t know, “virtual” child porn is a depiction of sexual contact with a child, where no actual child was involved.
For me, this comes down to one simple maxim… no virtual crime is prosecutable in an American court. Agree with it or not, like it or not, it is not prosecutable. Hasn’t stopped courts from prosecuting it, mind you, but to me these prosecutions are amazingly unconstitutional. Another quote attributed to Justice Holmes is that the truest test of free speech is when you can defend speech that you yourself find reprehensible.
Every week on television, we see a crime drama that involves kidnapping. How many of these producers, writers, directors and actors have been brought up on charges of “virtual” kidnapping? Zero.
Our popular culture revels in virtual depictions of murder. One of my favorite crime dramas is the Showtime series “Dexter”, about a serial killer who works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police department. Almost every week, Dexter kills someone. How many “virtual” murder charges have been leveled against Michael C. Hall or the other creators of Dexter? None.
Same goes for depictions of rape, incest, or any other form of mayhem. The laws should be concentrating on protecting REAL children, not virtual children.
As a matter of fact, an argument can be made that fantasy material may actually go some way toward PROTECTING children because it gives people who may otherwise harm an actual child an outlet that prevents them from doing so. I wonder how many potential killers have been kept from murdering by the simple expedient that they can experience this vicariously by re-renting “Friday the 13th”?
This does not, however, cover actions. Several child pornographers… I’m talking about people who actually produce photographs and films of children involved in sexual activity… have tried to argue that their prosecutions violate the first amendment. This is untrue for the same reason that Satanists cannot sacrifice humans and you cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. They are causing clear and immediate harm to another human being.
The next portion of this, and arguably the most important for a free democracy, is the so-called “freedom of the press”. This means simply that the government cannot shut down an outlet of the media or jail the creators simply because it expresses an opinion that the government does not like.
The final portion of the first amendment, the portion covering “freedom of assembly”, means simply that the government cannot take action against you for peaceable protests, or for writing to your representative.
Again, some finessing has been required on these rights over the years. If, for instance, your protest stops traffic, then it can pretty easily be stated that you are creating an immediate hazard to the lives and health of others. This is why, when a demonstration erupts in violence, you hear the question “what precipitated the violence?” If the protestors started the violence by writing or clubbing policemen, as is claimed happened in Seattle’s WTO riots, then police have the right to shut the demonstration down. If, however, first blood was drawn by the representatives of the government, as happened so often during America’s civil rights struggles, then the interference is deemed unconstitutional.
It was my intention to approach the entire bill of rights in this entry, but as I realize that I have spent four pages simply discussing the first amendment, and my eyes are starting to cross, I realize that this is an unrealistic expectation, both upon myself as author and upon you as readers. I will, therefore, call a moratorium on further discussion until tomorrow night and go rest my eyes and fingers. I will just close this one, as well as tomorrow night’s with the simple plea of “Know your rights”. If you know them, then they are much harder to take away from you.
Peace.
Randal
Because of this dislike of talking down to people, when I am in a conversation with someone I proceed from the assumption that they know everything that I know. I’m not talking about beliefs here. Beliefs are the way that you INTERPRET knowledge, not knowledge itself.
A co-worker asked me today if I was “leaning” toward one presidential candidate or another. I expressed my enthusiasm for Barack Obama. Honestly, in my adult life, Obama is the first candidate that I’ve really felt like I can support without reservation – not because he’s the best of a bad lot, but because he could actually do some GOOD for this country.
As we discussed this, another co-worker who leans conservative came over. For some reason, God knows why, she enjoys asking me questions and listening to me talk. I constantly challenge her because I believe that she has rather a narrow view of Christianity, like so many modern Christians do, and that is (as it should be with a Christian) the start of her worldview. Maybe that’s why she enjoys listening to me – I’m not sure.
At any rate, she expressed enthusiasm for the “ideas” of Sarah Palin. Personally, I think that Sarah Palin is a woman-hater. If she were a man with the views that she has, she’d be labeled a misogynist. Primarily, it turns out, this coworker supports Ms. Palin because of Ms. Palin’s views on abortion. She said that she believed a president should try to make their “beliefs” into law. I responded “The first amendment to the Constitution says that Congress shall make no law either respecting the practice of religion or restricting it’s free practice.”
She honestly didn’t understand what I meant, and she had to go back to work (and I was on my way out the door) so I didn’t have time to explain.
I think that this just exemplifies one of the main reasons that America is allowing itself to be led around by the nose by Mr. Bush and his cronies… even if we know the words of the Bill of Rights, that’s all that they are to most of us… words. Disconnected from any real meaning, disconnected from our lives. Just words. As a matter of fact, two republican White House staffers resigned, alleging that they were too upset to work for Mr. Bush when they overheard him refer to the Constitution as “Just a God-damned piece of paper.”
So let’s start with an explanation of what, exactly, the Bill of Rights is. Put simply, it is the first ten amendments to the constitution. Kind of the American “Ten Commandments”. The Constitution was ratified in 1787, but not to everyone’s delight. There were problems with the document. Things that it hadn’t addressed. We were an America trying to find our footing, redefining ourselves after kicking out a monarchy, and we didn’t want to be replaced by another one. America was brand spanking new, and already the fragile young country was falling apart over the very document that defines WHO we are. So the Congress collected input from the citizens as to what they thought needed to be amended, and hammered out the bill of rights – basically a way to protect us from our own government.
So what are these “just words” and what do they mean? Well, let’s take a look at each of them and what they might mean.
The first Amendment, number one with a bullet, covers most of the basic rights that we were deprived of under the rule of mad King George. (No, not the one in the White House – the one who ruled England at the time of our independence.) It reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Because so many of our basic rights are enumerated here, we’ll take these one at a time.
The first portion of this, commonly referred to as “freedom of religion” is probably the most important. We have to remember that the first immigrants from England came here to escape religious persecution. The people were taxed to support the state religion and the religious institutions were in turn taxed for the government. If you held some religious belief that was no sanctioned by the British crown, you either had to meet in secret, or allow yourself to be forced into ghettos like the Jews and the Catholics. To this day, one of the many titles for the queen is “Her Protestant Majesty”. Since the days of King Henry the Eighth, the king or queen of England is generally accepted to be the head of the Church of England, and Americans were sick of it. We wanted our state free from the influence of any church, and our churches free from state influence.
What this means, basically, is that churches do not pay taxes and are, therefore, exempt from an active role in our political system, and that the state may not have any say in the way that churches are run. In other words, no law can be passed simply because you believe that it is what God wants, and you get to worship God in your own way without government interference.
The first part of this explains why protestant conservatives are having such a hard time denying homosexuals the right to marry. Marriage in America is a civic right, not strictly a religious right. It also explains why Roe Vs. Wade has proven so bullet-proof to attacks from the religious right. Arguments against both of these boil down to “that’s the way that God wants it.” Religious groups keep trying and failing to couch these arguments in secular terms, but as these secular arguments are gunned down one after the other, it always comes down to the religious argument, which is Constitutionally invalid.
Part of the reason that we’re still having arguments about the first half of this amendment is because of the success that conservatives have had in violating the second half. Mormons and Hassidic Jews, for instance, are denied their (in their view) God-given right to plural marriage by American anti-polygamy laws. Native Americans and Rastafarians are denied their rights to use peyote and marijuana respectively by American drug laws. I will not extend this argument to a Satanists right to human sacrifice, because by sacrificing someone you are depriving them of their rights, whereas neither of the first affect the rights of another in any significant way.
Look, personally, I am a Christian. Do I think that God wants us to have abortions? I would argue from my personal belief structure that God does not. Does God want us to be gay? Who knows. But in both of these cases, it boils down to the same thing… these people have their own reckoning with God, not with me. I cannot tell others how to live, just as they cannot tell me how to live.
The next portion of this is what is commonly called “freedom of speech”. That means that, in America, you get to say what you what, how you want, when you want and no one can interfere with that, and, more importantly, you cannot be jailed for your speech. A coworker who had been “written up” for expressing a political opinion while they were on a register, asked me if this right extends to the workplace. Believe it or not, the answer is “No, it doesn’t” for the simple reason that when you accept a job, you agree to play by the rules set forth by your employer while you are “on the clock”. If your speech upsets a customer, then the company is perfectly within their rights to reprimand you. They cannot, however, call the cops.
This is a right that has required some refinement over the years. Probably the first time that any refinement was taken to this right was when Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes declared it a criminal act to scream “fire” in a crowded theatre, with the explanation that your right to swing your fist ends at the tip of my nose. In other words, if your words cause direct and immediate harm to another, then you have to accept responsibility for that harm.
A more recent debate over free speech has erupted over so-called “virtual” child pornography. We all want to protect children, (all of us except predators, that is,) and so the question becomes “at what point does this desire to protect children infringe upon an individual’s right to free speech?”
For those who don’t know, “virtual” child porn is a depiction of sexual contact with a child, where no actual child was involved.
For me, this comes down to one simple maxim… no virtual crime is prosecutable in an American court. Agree with it or not, like it or not, it is not prosecutable. Hasn’t stopped courts from prosecuting it, mind you, but to me these prosecutions are amazingly unconstitutional. Another quote attributed to Justice Holmes is that the truest test of free speech is when you can defend speech that you yourself find reprehensible.
Every week on television, we see a crime drama that involves kidnapping. How many of these producers, writers, directors and actors have been brought up on charges of “virtual” kidnapping? Zero.
Our popular culture revels in virtual depictions of murder. One of my favorite crime dramas is the Showtime series “Dexter”, about a serial killer who works as a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police department. Almost every week, Dexter kills someone. How many “virtual” murder charges have been leveled against Michael C. Hall or the other creators of Dexter? None.
Same goes for depictions of rape, incest, or any other form of mayhem. The laws should be concentrating on protecting REAL children, not virtual children.
As a matter of fact, an argument can be made that fantasy material may actually go some way toward PROTECTING children because it gives people who may otherwise harm an actual child an outlet that prevents them from doing so. I wonder how many potential killers have been kept from murdering by the simple expedient that they can experience this vicariously by re-renting “Friday the 13th”?
This does not, however, cover actions. Several child pornographers… I’m talking about people who actually produce photographs and films of children involved in sexual activity… have tried to argue that their prosecutions violate the first amendment. This is untrue for the same reason that Satanists cannot sacrifice humans and you cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theatre. They are causing clear and immediate harm to another human being.
The next portion of this, and arguably the most important for a free democracy, is the so-called “freedom of the press”. This means simply that the government cannot shut down an outlet of the media or jail the creators simply because it expresses an opinion that the government does not like.
The final portion of the first amendment, the portion covering “freedom of assembly”, means simply that the government cannot take action against you for peaceable protests, or for writing to your representative.
Again, some finessing has been required on these rights over the years. If, for instance, your protest stops traffic, then it can pretty easily be stated that you are creating an immediate hazard to the lives and health of others. This is why, when a demonstration erupts in violence, you hear the question “what precipitated the violence?” If the protestors started the violence by writing or clubbing policemen, as is claimed happened in Seattle’s WTO riots, then police have the right to shut the demonstration down. If, however, first blood was drawn by the representatives of the government, as happened so often during America’s civil rights struggles, then the interference is deemed unconstitutional.
It was my intention to approach the entire bill of rights in this entry, but as I realize that I have spent four pages simply discussing the first amendment, and my eyes are starting to cross, I realize that this is an unrealistic expectation, both upon myself as author and upon you as readers. I will, therefore, call a moratorium on further discussion until tomorrow night and go rest my eyes and fingers. I will just close this one, as well as tomorrow night’s with the simple plea of “Know your rights”. If you know them, then they are much harder to take away from you.
Peace.
Randal
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Freedom Isn't Free
We’ve heard that a lot over the last several years, haven’t we? Especially in an attempt to guilt us into supporting the unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq. But what does it mean, really?
Well, my speculation is that it hasn’t really applied to military action since WWII. If you wanted to stretch it, you could apply it to both Korea and Viet Nam, because of the aggressive policy of the Soviet Politburo. However, since we didn’t “win” either of those engagements (the Communists are still in charge) and our freedom hasn’t been lost thirty and fifty years later, I would say that that IS stretching it.
The Argentineans trying to take the Falkland Islands back from the British empire didn’t threaten our freedom, nor did Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. And the Iraqis certainly didn’t threaten our freedom this time.
So just what DOES “freedom isn’t free” mean?
Here’s what I think…
Freedom isn’t free. It costs vigilance.
When Congress passes laws that clearly violates the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments to the Constitution (the so-called “U. S. A. P. A. T. R. I. O. T (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) Act), it is up to us to express our displeasure to the Congress, and to vote against those representatives who passed it (including Hillary Clinton).
Freedom isn’t free. It costs knowledge.
If we KNOW what those amendments say, and in what ways the “Patriot Act” violates them, we remain free. If we know the situation in the Middle East that led, at least in part, to the attacks on America in 1993 and 2001, then we are better-equipped to avoid such attacks in the future.
And, yes. Freedom isn’t free. It costs a military capable of protecting us from unexpected natural disasters and foreign invasion.
As anyone who knows me knows, I am exceptionally proud of our men and women in uniform. I come from a military family myself. I even attempted to volunteer during the Gulf War of 1991, only to discover that the same health issues that prevented me from joining the Navy out of high school would prevent me from joining again. Right now, our military is so heavily focused on attempting to quell the response to our unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq and a severely reduced enlistment to serve in this unjust war. Why, for instance, did it take our National Guard (purpose – to guard our nation) five days to respond to Hurricane Katrina? Because the Guard units best able to respond were all in Iraq and had to be called home.
Freedom isn’t free. It costs a vote.
Peace.
Randal
Well, my speculation is that it hasn’t really applied to military action since WWII. If you wanted to stretch it, you could apply it to both Korea and Viet Nam, because of the aggressive policy of the Soviet Politburo. However, since we didn’t “win” either of those engagements (the Communists are still in charge) and our freedom hasn’t been lost thirty and fifty years later, I would say that that IS stretching it.
The Argentineans trying to take the Falkland Islands back from the British empire didn’t threaten our freedom, nor did Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991. And the Iraqis certainly didn’t threaten our freedom this time.
So just what DOES “freedom isn’t free” mean?
Here’s what I think…
Freedom isn’t free. It costs vigilance.
When Congress passes laws that clearly violates the first, fourth, fifth, sixth and eighth amendments to the Constitution (the so-called “U. S. A. P. A. T. R. I. O. T (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) Act), it is up to us to express our displeasure to the Congress, and to vote against those representatives who passed it (including Hillary Clinton).
Freedom isn’t free. It costs knowledge.
If we KNOW what those amendments say, and in what ways the “Patriot Act” violates them, we remain free. If we know the situation in the Middle East that led, at least in part, to the attacks on America in 1993 and 2001, then we are better-equipped to avoid such attacks in the future.
And, yes. Freedom isn’t free. It costs a military capable of protecting us from unexpected natural disasters and foreign invasion.
As anyone who knows me knows, I am exceptionally proud of our men and women in uniform. I come from a military family myself. I even attempted to volunteer during the Gulf War of 1991, only to discover that the same health issues that prevented me from joining the Navy out of high school would prevent me from joining again. Right now, our military is so heavily focused on attempting to quell the response to our unprovoked invasion of the sovereign nation of Iraq and a severely reduced enlistment to serve in this unjust war. Why, for instance, did it take our National Guard (purpose – to guard our nation) five days to respond to Hurricane Katrina? Because the Guard units best able to respond were all in Iraq and had to be called home.
Freedom isn’t free. It costs a vote.
Peace.
Randal
A Note to My Sisters...
Women… Sarah Palin is NOT your friend.
I can’t tell you how many former Hillary Clinton supporters I’ve heard say that they will now vote for John McCain because of Sarah Palin.
Let me be perfectly clear that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton could not be more different unless Sarah Palin were actually George W. Bush.
Let me be blunt here for a moment do demonstrate to you what your life may be under Sarah Palin…
You are abducted from your parking garage as you walk to your car and are repeatedly raped. Raped by several men. You have a bag over your head, so you can identify NONE of them.
When you are released, you stagger to a phone and call 9-1-1. You are taken to a hospital, where what police call a “rape kit” is performed on you. This is what they use to collect evidence. You are not given the option of “emergency contraception” because it has been banned by law. (Hospitals are already, under the Bush administration, discouraged from giving these out in the case of rape.)
As you leave the hospital you are handed a bill for $1200 to pay for the rape kit. (Sarah Palin instituted this law in Wasilla, Alaska when she was Mayor to “save the taxpayers money”.)
Two months later, horrors are multiplied when you discover that you are pregnant by one of your attackers. Do you want to have this baby? Of course not. Not only would it remind you every day of your attack, but a child would totally disrupt your job, your life and your finances. But you have no choice. You are required by law to either bear this child or seek a dangerous back-alley abortion. (Sarah Palin opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.)
Please, please, PLEASE women… do not vote for Sarah Palin simply because you share the same reproductive organs. She is not your friend… she is not going to protect your rights… she is going to destroy them.
Peace
Randal
I can’t tell you how many former Hillary Clinton supporters I’ve heard say that they will now vote for John McCain because of Sarah Palin.
Let me be perfectly clear that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton could not be more different unless Sarah Palin were actually George W. Bush.
Let me be blunt here for a moment do demonstrate to you what your life may be under Sarah Palin…
You are abducted from your parking garage as you walk to your car and are repeatedly raped. Raped by several men. You have a bag over your head, so you can identify NONE of them.
When you are released, you stagger to a phone and call 9-1-1. You are taken to a hospital, where what police call a “rape kit” is performed on you. This is what they use to collect evidence. You are not given the option of “emergency contraception” because it has been banned by law. (Hospitals are already, under the Bush administration, discouraged from giving these out in the case of rape.)
As you leave the hospital you are handed a bill for $1200 to pay for the rape kit. (Sarah Palin instituted this law in Wasilla, Alaska when she was Mayor to “save the taxpayers money”.)
Two months later, horrors are multiplied when you discover that you are pregnant by one of your attackers. Do you want to have this baby? Of course not. Not only would it remind you every day of your attack, but a child would totally disrupt your job, your life and your finances. But you have no choice. You are required by law to either bear this child or seek a dangerous back-alley abortion. (Sarah Palin opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest.)
Please, please, PLEASE women… do not vote for Sarah Palin simply because you share the same reproductive organs. She is not your friend… she is not going to protect your rights… she is going to destroy them.
Peace
Randal
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Boldly Going Backward
Thirty-odd years ago, America was in a hell of a fix. We had oil and gas prices through the roof. Monopolies were running all of the major industries, driving competition (and with it competitive pricing and servicing) through the ground. We were in an economic pickle that was driving many American families to desperation. Our environment was threatened by corporations freed from any type of government oversight.
Now, on the other hand, we have oil and gas prices through the roof, monopolies are running all of the major industries, we’re in an economic pickle and our environment is threatened.
I gotta tell you, folks… corporatism happened, and the one thing about the classic republican platform that I’ve NEVER liked is their ties to Corporate America. Of course, since Reagan, corporatism has gone from being a plank in the republican platform to being about 50% of the platform (God Hates Fags is roughly the other 50%).
You young whipper-snapper republicans who didn’t know Nixon or Ford or Ike don’t have any idea how great the republican party can be. (Yes, I said Nixon, don’t lynch me – the guy did some terrific stuff as president. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but let’s give him his due, okay?)
President Eisenhower saw a growing threat in our country, and that old soldier gave it a name: “The Military-Industrial Complex”. The idea was that when we became financially dependent on war, we would be looking for reasons to make war. Kennedy and Johnson came along next and fried different fish from the growing concern of the MIC. One of those fish was Viet Nam, which some say President Johnson escalated to help boost America’s flagging economy – exactly the kind of thing that President Eisenhower warned about.
Then came Nixon. Ah, yes, Nixon. President Nixon will go down in history, I believe, as our most complex and layered president. The man was a devout Quaker who swore like a sailor. He was able to resist so many of the demons that politicians fall victim to – sex, money, drugs – but was ultimately laid low by his own paranoia. Out of concern for America’s safety, he opened new lines of communication to China – which has ultimately led to the outsourcing of so many American jobs to China, and become a threat to America’s safety.
Nixon also came into a country run by the corporations that Ike warned us about. So he set about instituting reasonable regulations on these corporate entities to stop them from polluting our air, water and land. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He took steps to make endangerment of American jobs more difficult to help with the tough financial times that we were still in, despite the war in Vietnam. Oh, he also ended THAT mess. He was the first president to carry forty-nine of fifty states in his re-election bid – a feat that has only been duplicated once, by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Then he promptly fell into the Watergate mess and beat impeachment by resigning.
A side-note here… a lot of republicans my age (mid-forties and later) who had role models like Ike, Nixon and Barry Goldwater feel abandoned by the modern republican party. You’ll see why when I get to the eighties, nineties and new millennium.
He was followed by his second-term vice president, Gerald Ford. Ford, for all of the malignancy aimed at his presidency, actually continued the positive policies of Nixon.
Then came Carter, who faced some of the toughest challenges of any modern president. An Arab oil embargo. A radical change of thought in the middle-east that led to the overthrow of the American-installed Shah of Iran and a return to Muslim fundamentalism across the middle east and the taking of 52 American diplomats as hostages in Iran. But domestically, he instituted higher taxes on gas-guzzling “luxury” vehicles, emissions and gas mileage standards for cars on America’s roads, and continued the good work of breaking up the monopolies that were running and ruining America’s economy. Probably the largest and most famous of these was the disintegration of American Telephone and Telegraph, AKA “the telephone company”, AKA Ma Bell.
Unfortunately, the international turmoil overshadowed Carter’s domestic policy, and by the time that he ran for re-election in 1980, Americans were feeling tired, dispirited and beaten.
Along came a man who we felt could change things. He was a strong, persuasive, charismatic former actor who charmed an entire nation: Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Reagan won 44 states for a huge landslide victory. And thus were the seeds of our current economic ruin planted.
It is said that no one-term president ever sees the repercussions of his policies. So as the policies of Jimmy Carter took root and blossomed in Regan’s first term, things started looking rosy for America again. Since we don’t realize that we weren’t seeing the results of Regan’s poisonous policies yet, we credited him for the success. We loved Ronald Reagan, and re-elected him with 49 states in 1984.
So the “Reagan Revolution” took a look around at an improving economy and environment and said “Look, everything’s fine. We have nothing to worry about. So let’s start doing things the way that we were before.” Perhaps the best indicator of this attitude was Reagan’s removal of the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof to heat the water used by the president’s residence. (George W. Bush has since reinstalled them.)
What followed, under Reagan, President Bush, Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush has been twenty-eight years of deregulation. In this day and age, corporations are again allowed to run rampant over America, poisoning our soil, air and water and driving far too many of America’s jobs overseas. And so we are back where we started in the seventies. It’s almost as if Nixon, Ford and Carter never existed. We are having the same debates about outsourcing American jobs and protecting America’s environment (and, by extension, the world’s environment) that we had then.
How can we fix this? Well, knowing our history would certainly help.
Simple THOUGHT would also help. If, for instance, a major American corporation came before the American people and said “I’d like to make more money by ignoring America’s minimum wage, child labor and fair labor laws, is that cool?” Would we allow them to? Hell no. And yet that is exactly what we allow corporations who operate overseas, outside of American jurisdiction to do. Is enslaving Chinese kids for a dollar an hour, twelve hours per day any less evil than doing that to American kids?
I think that the answer, if you have a conscience or follow the Christian God has to be “no”.
So here we are again. Back where we were. Facing yet another presidential election.
One candidate is young, relatively untried but with great ideas and vision for America. The other is older, has been a part of the political machine for my entire adult life, and is saying “We need change, so re-elect the party that you’re trying to get away from.”
And, for any of you who think that three years in the Senate makes Obama too inexperienced to be president, I remind you that a man known as one of our better Presidents, John F. Kennedy, was only in the senate for eight years before he was elected president. And Abe Lincoln was only in the senate for two years, eleven years before he was elected president.
Guys, can we NOT vote this time for the guy with whom we’d like to have a beer, and instead, vote for the guy that we think can REALLY fix our problems?
Peace.
Randal
Now, on the other hand, we have oil and gas prices through the roof, monopolies are running all of the major industries, we’re in an economic pickle and our environment is threatened.
I gotta tell you, folks… corporatism happened, and the one thing about the classic republican platform that I’ve NEVER liked is their ties to Corporate America. Of course, since Reagan, corporatism has gone from being a plank in the republican platform to being about 50% of the platform (God Hates Fags is roughly the other 50%).
You young whipper-snapper republicans who didn’t know Nixon or Ford or Ike don’t have any idea how great the republican party can be. (Yes, I said Nixon, don’t lynch me – the guy did some terrific stuff as president. It doesn’t excuse what he did, but let’s give him his due, okay?)
President Eisenhower saw a growing threat in our country, and that old soldier gave it a name: “The Military-Industrial Complex”. The idea was that when we became financially dependent on war, we would be looking for reasons to make war. Kennedy and Johnson came along next and fried different fish from the growing concern of the MIC. One of those fish was Viet Nam, which some say President Johnson escalated to help boost America’s flagging economy – exactly the kind of thing that President Eisenhower warned about.
Then came Nixon. Ah, yes, Nixon. President Nixon will go down in history, I believe, as our most complex and layered president. The man was a devout Quaker who swore like a sailor. He was able to resist so many of the demons that politicians fall victim to – sex, money, drugs – but was ultimately laid low by his own paranoia. Out of concern for America’s safety, he opened new lines of communication to China – which has ultimately led to the outsourcing of so many American jobs to China, and become a threat to America’s safety.
Nixon also came into a country run by the corporations that Ike warned us about. So he set about instituting reasonable regulations on these corporate entities to stop them from polluting our air, water and land. He created the Environmental Protection Agency. He took steps to make endangerment of American jobs more difficult to help with the tough financial times that we were still in, despite the war in Vietnam. Oh, he also ended THAT mess. He was the first president to carry forty-nine of fifty states in his re-election bid – a feat that has only been duplicated once, by Ronald Reagan in 1984. Then he promptly fell into the Watergate mess and beat impeachment by resigning.
A side-note here… a lot of republicans my age (mid-forties and later) who had role models like Ike, Nixon and Barry Goldwater feel abandoned by the modern republican party. You’ll see why when I get to the eighties, nineties and new millennium.
He was followed by his second-term vice president, Gerald Ford. Ford, for all of the malignancy aimed at his presidency, actually continued the positive policies of Nixon.
Then came Carter, who faced some of the toughest challenges of any modern president. An Arab oil embargo. A radical change of thought in the middle-east that led to the overthrow of the American-installed Shah of Iran and a return to Muslim fundamentalism across the middle east and the taking of 52 American diplomats as hostages in Iran. But domestically, he instituted higher taxes on gas-guzzling “luxury” vehicles, emissions and gas mileage standards for cars on America’s roads, and continued the good work of breaking up the monopolies that were running and ruining America’s economy. Probably the largest and most famous of these was the disintegration of American Telephone and Telegraph, AKA “the telephone company”, AKA Ma Bell.
Unfortunately, the international turmoil overshadowed Carter’s domestic policy, and by the time that he ran for re-election in 1980, Americans were feeling tired, dispirited and beaten.
Along came a man who we felt could change things. He was a strong, persuasive, charismatic former actor who charmed an entire nation: Ronald Reagan. In 1980, Reagan won 44 states for a huge landslide victory. And thus were the seeds of our current economic ruin planted.
It is said that no one-term president ever sees the repercussions of his policies. So as the policies of Jimmy Carter took root and blossomed in Regan’s first term, things started looking rosy for America again. Since we don’t realize that we weren’t seeing the results of Regan’s poisonous policies yet, we credited him for the success. We loved Ronald Reagan, and re-elected him with 49 states in 1984.
So the “Reagan Revolution” took a look around at an improving economy and environment and said “Look, everything’s fine. We have nothing to worry about. So let’s start doing things the way that we were before.” Perhaps the best indicator of this attitude was Reagan’s removal of the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House roof to heat the water used by the president’s residence. (George W. Bush has since reinstalled them.)
What followed, under Reagan, President Bush, Bill Clinton and Mr. Bush has been twenty-eight years of deregulation. In this day and age, corporations are again allowed to run rampant over America, poisoning our soil, air and water and driving far too many of America’s jobs overseas. And so we are back where we started in the seventies. It’s almost as if Nixon, Ford and Carter never existed. We are having the same debates about outsourcing American jobs and protecting America’s environment (and, by extension, the world’s environment) that we had then.
How can we fix this? Well, knowing our history would certainly help.
Simple THOUGHT would also help. If, for instance, a major American corporation came before the American people and said “I’d like to make more money by ignoring America’s minimum wage, child labor and fair labor laws, is that cool?” Would we allow them to? Hell no. And yet that is exactly what we allow corporations who operate overseas, outside of American jurisdiction to do. Is enslaving Chinese kids for a dollar an hour, twelve hours per day any less evil than doing that to American kids?
I think that the answer, if you have a conscience or follow the Christian God has to be “no”.
So here we are again. Back where we were. Facing yet another presidential election.
One candidate is young, relatively untried but with great ideas and vision for America. The other is older, has been a part of the political machine for my entire adult life, and is saying “We need change, so re-elect the party that you’re trying to get away from.”
And, for any of you who think that three years in the Senate makes Obama too inexperienced to be president, I remind you that a man known as one of our better Presidents, John F. Kennedy, was only in the senate for eight years before he was elected president. And Abe Lincoln was only in the senate for two years, eleven years before he was elected president.
Guys, can we NOT vote this time for the guy with whom we’d like to have a beer, and instead, vote for the guy that we think can REALLY fix our problems?
Peace.
Randal
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A Note to My Gay Brothers and Lesbian Sisters...
First off, a note on syntax. When I use the word “we” here, I am simply including myself in the class of “heterosexual Americans” – we is just shorter. I do not mean to imply that I have any agreement at all with the views that I am expressing – simply that they are the views expressed by heterosexual Americans. Are we clear? Tough love. Ready?
MY GAY BROTHERS AND LESBIAN SISTERS, HEAR ME.
We are not going to grant you the right to marry, at least not without a fight and not for a long time, okay? You are a threat to our marriages! The fifty percent that WE are not a threat to, that is. I mean, it’s never been proven that homosexuals are a threat to ANY marriage that does not have a closeted homosexual partner, and one of the five states with the LOWEST divorce rates in the country, Massachusetts, has legalized gay marriage. Forget all that. You’re a threat, okay? DEAL WITH IT! Besides, you’re not even fighting all that hard, you pansies.
Also, you have to remember that God has picked you out for special punishment above all other sinners, a statement that can be easily (dis)proven with even a casual examination of the Bible. And we have to speak for God because he’s obviously incapable of speaking for himself. Except to George W. Bush.
And besides, you really don’t think that we should grant you the same “special” rights that WE have do you? I mean, really. If I have them, that’s because I’m a tax-paying, heterosexual American. If you get them, they’ll be “special” rights. One might even say “fabulous” rights.
So, here’s what I propose…
1) FIGHT! That’s right – get out there and fight for your rights. I’m not talking about protesting in the streets here. I’m talking about going to court. Fight this religious prejudice in the one place in the country where religion is not allowed to affect the outcome! The courts!
2) And speaking of the courts… would any gay lawyers out there please go to bat to get the individual states’ Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage overturned on the basis of the 14th amendment? It reads, in part, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Yes, it was written to prevent slave states from overturning the Emancipation Proclamation in their states, but it applies here. Your privilege of being lawfully married is being abridged. Therefore, the state amendments are unconstitutional on a federal level. You’ve got your marching orders, now go.
3) CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Stop paying your taxes. FIGHT IN COURT for your right not to pay taxes to a system that is AS A MATTER OF POLICY, proudly discriminating against you. We don’t want to treat you as citizens, by God, don’t act like citizens. Act up.
4) Circumvent the stupid laws. Gay male couples: find a couple of lesbians that you simply adore, a couple that you think are fabulous, and marry them. Then you can all four live together. Splitting the bills. Splitting the housework? Be sure to make an agreement on kids BEFORE you get into this. It could be convenient for that, but if one couple wants and the other doesn’t, that would be sad. And think of that lucky kid, growing up in a house with TWO mommies and TWO daddies. The neoconservative, religious-nutheads insist that one of each is terrific for a kid – how much better would TWO of each be?
There you go, my gay brothers and lesbian sisters. This crap has gone on long enough and is serving the nutjobs as a distraction from the real issues. Get out there and fight, will ya? I can’t fight for you. As a matter of fact, although I have been thanked by two of my gay brothers for fighting on your behalf, I have also been told by several of them that my attentions are not welcome since I am not “one of you”. My argument is that I am one of you (male, American, sexual, living day-to-day, middle class) in many more ways than I am NOT one of you (sexual orientation, blandness of dress and vocabulary). K? K.
Peace.
Randal
MY GAY BROTHERS AND LESBIAN SISTERS, HEAR ME.
We are not going to grant you the right to marry, at least not without a fight and not for a long time, okay? You are a threat to our marriages! The fifty percent that WE are not a threat to, that is. I mean, it’s never been proven that homosexuals are a threat to ANY marriage that does not have a closeted homosexual partner, and one of the five states with the LOWEST divorce rates in the country, Massachusetts, has legalized gay marriage. Forget all that. You’re a threat, okay? DEAL WITH IT! Besides, you’re not even fighting all that hard, you pansies.
Also, you have to remember that God has picked you out for special punishment above all other sinners, a statement that can be easily (dis)proven with even a casual examination of the Bible. And we have to speak for God because he’s obviously incapable of speaking for himself. Except to George W. Bush.
And besides, you really don’t think that we should grant you the same “special” rights that WE have do you? I mean, really. If I have them, that’s because I’m a tax-paying, heterosexual American. If you get them, they’ll be “special” rights. One might even say “fabulous” rights.
So, here’s what I propose…
1) FIGHT! That’s right – get out there and fight for your rights. I’m not talking about protesting in the streets here. I’m talking about going to court. Fight this religious prejudice in the one place in the country where religion is not allowed to affect the outcome! The courts!
2) And speaking of the courts… would any gay lawyers out there please go to bat to get the individual states’ Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage overturned on the basis of the 14th amendment? It reads, in part, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Yes, it was written to prevent slave states from overturning the Emancipation Proclamation in their states, but it applies here. Your privilege of being lawfully married is being abridged. Therefore, the state amendments are unconstitutional on a federal level. You’ve got your marching orders, now go.
3) CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE. Stop paying your taxes. FIGHT IN COURT for your right not to pay taxes to a system that is AS A MATTER OF POLICY, proudly discriminating against you. We don’t want to treat you as citizens, by God, don’t act like citizens. Act up.
4) Circumvent the stupid laws. Gay male couples: find a couple of lesbians that you simply adore, a couple that you think are fabulous, and marry them. Then you can all four live together. Splitting the bills. Splitting the housework? Be sure to make an agreement on kids BEFORE you get into this. It could be convenient for that, but if one couple wants and the other doesn’t, that would be sad. And think of that lucky kid, growing up in a house with TWO mommies and TWO daddies. The neoconservative, religious-nutheads insist that one of each is terrific for a kid – how much better would TWO of each be?
There you go, my gay brothers and lesbian sisters. This crap has gone on long enough and is serving the nutjobs as a distraction from the real issues. Get out there and fight, will ya? I can’t fight for you. As a matter of fact, although I have been thanked by two of my gay brothers for fighting on your behalf, I have also been told by several of them that my attentions are not welcome since I am not “one of you”. My argument is that I am one of you (male, American, sexual, living day-to-day, middle class) in many more ways than I am NOT one of you (sexual orientation, blandness of dress and vocabulary). K? K.
Peace.
Randal
Monday, September 15, 2008
The ILLUSION of Safety
We have heard the republicans talk a lot in the last national elections as well as this one that we are now “safer”, but are we really? I think that what we’re dealing with here is not safety, but the ILLUSION of safety. When I made that comment to one friend, she said “Isn’t that better than nothing?” Well, let’s see…
If you drive your car on to the illusion of a bridge over a thousand foot deep crevasse, rather than an actual bridge, is that better than nothing?
If the person about to remove a tumor the size of a walnut from near your brain stem is the illusion of a doctor, rather than an actual doctor, is that better than nothing?
And if your fourteen year old daughter presents the illusion of not being pregnant, rather than actually NOT being pregnant, is that better than nothing?
No. The illusion of safety is not better than nothing. It is very, very dangerous.
First off, I’ve said before and I’ll likely say again that I do not buy the world as the “dangers around every corner” place that the republicans want to sell it to me as. I think that, as a whole, the world is a pretty darned safe place. What we DO need to recognize, is that, after no terrorist attacks on American soil between 1941 and 1993, we have experienced three in the last fifteen years. This is only counting the first WTC attack, the Murrah Federal Building attack and the 9/11 attacks, not things like the Columbine school shootings, the Virginia Tech massacre or the Olympics bombing several years ago. I am only counting those acts CLEARLY terrorist in nature.
So why do I say that it’s only the illusion of safety? Well, let’s start by asking ourselves what things have changed between 1941 and 1993 that may be inciting these attacks. Yes, yes, I know, I’m “blaming America first”. Personally, I think that part of the problem, at least internationally, is that not only do we not really “blame America first”, we don’t even “blame America when appropriate”. We continue blithely supporting the corrupt Al Saud royal family in Arabia, although the people of that country are clearly dissatisfied with the royal family. We even have troops in what the Muslims call “The Land of the Two Holy Places”, Mecca and Medina, preventing a democratic overthrow of the royal family. We now have the amazing “Bush Doctrine” in place that allows us to beat up anyone at anyplace at any time simply because we want to, more or less. We continue to support whatever little penny-ante regimes that will help us beat up on the people that we want to beat up on and/or give us cheap oil without thought to how corrupt that regime is. See Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Not to mention, in their times, Mohammar Khadaffi, Saddam Hussein, and yes, Osama Bin Laden. We continue to allow our corporations to enslave the residents of foreign countries in violation of US law, including children, to make our cheap shit for us so that we can continue living a life of relative luxury from their toil and sweat.
Brothers and sisters, until we make an effort to truly BE a Christian country and correct these injustices, we are always going to be in danger of attack. People don’t like what we’re doing, and they’re going to continue doing their best to stop us from doing these things that they don’t like.
The next stanchion of this illusion is airport security.
I do not fly anymore, although I truly LOVE to fly. This is not because I am afraid of terrorists. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist are roughly the same as your odds of being struck by lightning while standing on one foot and holding the winning lottery ticket. I do not fly because I find the “safety precautions” put in place after 9/11 to be kind of an inconvenient joke. When I commented about this to a loved one of mine, she said that she would fly because she didn’t “feel the need to protest” the balderdash airport security. Let me be clear… I do not fly for the same reason that I do everything in my power not to be on a freeway at rush hour. It is not a protest, it is simply something that I do not enjoy, so I do not subject myself to it. NOTHING that we are doing now vis a vis airport “security” would have stopped what happened on 9/11. NOTHING. You are no safer flying now then you were on September 10th, 2001.
The next leg of this rather shaky, illusory bridge is the “war on terror”. According to republican politicians, this “war” is not only working, it is making us safer.
Killing terrorists does not reduce the number of terrorists in the world… it increases it. Let’s say that we kill one middle eastern terrorist, right? If that terrorist has any sons, they are now HONOR-BOUND to try to kill us back. As are any sons of his sisters. The bond of nephew and maternal uncle in Muslim societies is very strong. I heard one Muslim once refer to his maternal uncle as his “second father”. So now THEY are honor-bound to kill us back. So even if he has one of each (unlikely in a society where men are permitted multiple wives and expected to reproduce with each of them) then we have created TWO shiny new terrorists.
So what do we need to do? We need to examine and change our foreign policy so that it looks beyond the convenience of tomorrow to the safety, security and compassion of a year from now. We need to STOP making me arrive at the airport three days early for my flight and making nursing mothers drink their own breast milk to prove that it’s not acid. And we need to stop any military action in the name of a non-existent “war” on terror and actually start doing things with and for these countries that will bring them peace and security. We need to reduce our oil consumption so that we can get our troops the hell out of the middle east permanently. We need to elect politicians who will strike down the Bush Doctrine.
Think about it. That’s another thing that it would benefit us to do more of… THINK.
Peace.
Randal
If you drive your car on to the illusion of a bridge over a thousand foot deep crevasse, rather than an actual bridge, is that better than nothing?
If the person about to remove a tumor the size of a walnut from near your brain stem is the illusion of a doctor, rather than an actual doctor, is that better than nothing?
And if your fourteen year old daughter presents the illusion of not being pregnant, rather than actually NOT being pregnant, is that better than nothing?
No. The illusion of safety is not better than nothing. It is very, very dangerous.
First off, I’ve said before and I’ll likely say again that I do not buy the world as the “dangers around every corner” place that the republicans want to sell it to me as. I think that, as a whole, the world is a pretty darned safe place. What we DO need to recognize, is that, after no terrorist attacks on American soil between 1941 and 1993, we have experienced three in the last fifteen years. This is only counting the first WTC attack, the Murrah Federal Building attack and the 9/11 attacks, not things like the Columbine school shootings, the Virginia Tech massacre or the Olympics bombing several years ago. I am only counting those acts CLEARLY terrorist in nature.
So why do I say that it’s only the illusion of safety? Well, let’s start by asking ourselves what things have changed between 1941 and 1993 that may be inciting these attacks. Yes, yes, I know, I’m “blaming America first”. Personally, I think that part of the problem, at least internationally, is that not only do we not really “blame America first”, we don’t even “blame America when appropriate”. We continue blithely supporting the corrupt Al Saud royal family in Arabia, although the people of that country are clearly dissatisfied with the royal family. We even have troops in what the Muslims call “The Land of the Two Holy Places”, Mecca and Medina, preventing a democratic overthrow of the royal family. We now have the amazing “Bush Doctrine” in place that allows us to beat up anyone at anyplace at any time simply because we want to, more or less. We continue to support whatever little penny-ante regimes that will help us beat up on the people that we want to beat up on and/or give us cheap oil without thought to how corrupt that regime is. See Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan. Not to mention, in their times, Mohammar Khadaffi, Saddam Hussein, and yes, Osama Bin Laden. We continue to allow our corporations to enslave the residents of foreign countries in violation of US law, including children, to make our cheap shit for us so that we can continue living a life of relative luxury from their toil and sweat.
Brothers and sisters, until we make an effort to truly BE a Christian country and correct these injustices, we are always going to be in danger of attack. People don’t like what we’re doing, and they’re going to continue doing their best to stop us from doing these things that they don’t like.
The next stanchion of this illusion is airport security.
I do not fly anymore, although I truly LOVE to fly. This is not because I am afraid of terrorists. Your odds of being killed by a terrorist are roughly the same as your odds of being struck by lightning while standing on one foot and holding the winning lottery ticket. I do not fly because I find the “safety precautions” put in place after 9/11 to be kind of an inconvenient joke. When I commented about this to a loved one of mine, she said that she would fly because she didn’t “feel the need to protest” the balderdash airport security. Let me be clear… I do not fly for the same reason that I do everything in my power not to be on a freeway at rush hour. It is not a protest, it is simply something that I do not enjoy, so I do not subject myself to it. NOTHING that we are doing now vis a vis airport “security” would have stopped what happened on 9/11. NOTHING. You are no safer flying now then you were on September 10th, 2001.
The next leg of this rather shaky, illusory bridge is the “war on terror”. According to republican politicians, this “war” is not only working, it is making us safer.
Killing terrorists does not reduce the number of terrorists in the world… it increases it. Let’s say that we kill one middle eastern terrorist, right? If that terrorist has any sons, they are now HONOR-BOUND to try to kill us back. As are any sons of his sisters. The bond of nephew and maternal uncle in Muslim societies is very strong. I heard one Muslim once refer to his maternal uncle as his “second father”. So now THEY are honor-bound to kill us back. So even if he has one of each (unlikely in a society where men are permitted multiple wives and expected to reproduce with each of them) then we have created TWO shiny new terrorists.
So what do we need to do? We need to examine and change our foreign policy so that it looks beyond the convenience of tomorrow to the safety, security and compassion of a year from now. We need to STOP making me arrive at the airport three days early for my flight and making nursing mothers drink their own breast milk to prove that it’s not acid. And we need to stop any military action in the name of a non-existent “war” on terror and actually start doing things with and for these countries that will bring them peace and security. We need to reduce our oil consumption so that we can get our troops the hell out of the middle east permanently. We need to elect politicians who will strike down the Bush Doctrine.
Think about it. That’s another thing that it would benefit us to do more of… THINK.
Peace.
Randal
Sunday, September 14, 2008
An Apology (of Sorts)...
I guess that I owe an apology of sorts to Mr. Westmoreland of Georgia.
When I wrote my blog entry “KICKING… AND… SCREAMING…” on the ninth of this month, I was proceeding from the assumption that my experience of only hearing “uppity” applied to black people was the universal experience. It has been made clear to me that it is not. Several people whom I’ve queried, black and white, southern and northern, have said that they have heard “uppity” applied to both races. Now I will say this… my black loved ones from the south predominantly say that they have heard the word used either MOSTLY or EXCLUSIVELY against black people. Another loved one of mine, a black yankee, explained that it is now used among black people to describe snobs. To me, that actually goes a long way toward proving my thesis – that it has been co-opted like the dreaded “N” word to reduce or remove it’s power to hurt.
This same loved one, knowing me well, discouraged me from phrasing this apology as, as he put it, a “double-edged sword”. Although it is not my intention to offer anything less than a sincere apology for saying that his use of the phrase HAD to be racially-motivated, I would also like to maintain that it was PROBABLY racially-motivated.
Look, I love my Southern brothers and sisters (literally, in the cases of one of my sisters and two of my brothers, not to mention my mom and dad and more than a few aunts and uncles and cousins and myself up to the age of 8), but let’s face it – the further that you go south, the greater racial suspicion grows. And it is not simply whites suspicious of blacks, it goes both ways.
I think that a reason for this is that, especially under rule of the republicans who these people consistently vote for, the south is dying. The agriculture upon which they relied so heavily (the “family farm” has been relegated almost entirely to large, corporate-owned “factory farms”. The industry that Sarah Palin praised so highly has been outsourced wholesale to Mexico and overseas. And, although I’m a liberal and therefore not possessing the deathly fear of immigrants that my conservative brothers and sisters have, I also recognize that a lot of the jobs that are left are given by corporate giants to illegal immigrants for whom they do not have to provide health care or pay what Americans consider a living wage.
So, yes – when white people see a job that they might have given to a black person, or black people see whites given preferential treatment for a job, I can understand how resentment can grow on both sides.
That doesn’t make it okay. We need, as a nation, to move past that. Let’s face it – the Ku Klux Klan was founded in the south, and maintains its strongest chapters there today. And, speaking of the Klan, if we as a nation are going to engage in a “war on terror”, shouldn’t we really start by battling domestic terrorists such as the Klan?
So, Mr. Westmoreland, if you are reading this, I apologize for saying that your use of the term “uppity” MUST be racially motivated and change that to “I believe that your use of the term “uppity” was racially motivated based upon your history and my personal experience of the south.
Peace.
Randal
When I wrote my blog entry “KICKING… AND… SCREAMING…” on the ninth of this month, I was proceeding from the assumption that my experience of only hearing “uppity” applied to black people was the universal experience. It has been made clear to me that it is not. Several people whom I’ve queried, black and white, southern and northern, have said that they have heard “uppity” applied to both races. Now I will say this… my black loved ones from the south predominantly say that they have heard the word used either MOSTLY or EXCLUSIVELY against black people. Another loved one of mine, a black yankee, explained that it is now used among black people to describe snobs. To me, that actually goes a long way toward proving my thesis – that it has been co-opted like the dreaded “N” word to reduce or remove it’s power to hurt.
This same loved one, knowing me well, discouraged me from phrasing this apology as, as he put it, a “double-edged sword”. Although it is not my intention to offer anything less than a sincere apology for saying that his use of the phrase HAD to be racially-motivated, I would also like to maintain that it was PROBABLY racially-motivated.
Look, I love my Southern brothers and sisters (literally, in the cases of one of my sisters and two of my brothers, not to mention my mom and dad and more than a few aunts and uncles and cousins and myself up to the age of 8), but let’s face it – the further that you go south, the greater racial suspicion grows. And it is not simply whites suspicious of blacks, it goes both ways.
I think that a reason for this is that, especially under rule of the republicans who these people consistently vote for, the south is dying. The agriculture upon which they relied so heavily (the “family farm” has been relegated almost entirely to large, corporate-owned “factory farms”. The industry that Sarah Palin praised so highly has been outsourced wholesale to Mexico and overseas. And, although I’m a liberal and therefore not possessing the deathly fear of immigrants that my conservative brothers and sisters have, I also recognize that a lot of the jobs that are left are given by corporate giants to illegal immigrants for whom they do not have to provide health care or pay what Americans consider a living wage.
So, yes – when white people see a job that they might have given to a black person, or black people see whites given preferential treatment for a job, I can understand how resentment can grow on both sides.
That doesn’t make it okay. We need, as a nation, to move past that. Let’s face it – the Ku Klux Klan was founded in the south, and maintains its strongest chapters there today. And, speaking of the Klan, if we as a nation are going to engage in a “war on terror”, shouldn’t we really start by battling domestic terrorists such as the Klan?
So, Mr. Westmoreland, if you are reading this, I apologize for saying that your use of the term “uppity” MUST be racially motivated and change that to “I believe that your use of the term “uppity” was racially motivated based upon your history and my personal experience of the south.
Peace.
Randal
Saturday, September 13, 2008
What McCain Said...
As promised, here is Senator McCain’s acceptance speech. Except for the shout-outs at the beginning, which I deleted from all four, the speech is intact.
I won’t be making nearly as many comments on Senator McCain’s speech as I did Governor Palin’s, mostly because, in looking it over, I found far fewer outright lies. I also found in Senator McCain’s speech respect and emotional maturity, which I did not find in Governor Palin’s.
You know, I really supported John McCain, once upon a time. As the scion of a military family who lost my Godfather in Viet Nam, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man’s military service and his years of captivity. (Any Republicans who think that torture can be used to any good means, by the way, should ask Senator McCain about it – he may educate you.) When he was running for president in 2000, against Mr. Bush for the republican nomination, I was really pulling for him. I would have voted for him over Vice-President Gore in a heartbeat.
The problem? As the brilliant Arianna Huffington put it, “The John McCain that we all fell in love with in 2000 is dead.” The conservative magazine The New Economist featured a cover story about Senator McCain’s “Sudden lurch to the right”. Suddenly, he seems to adopting all of Mr. Bush’s views, including those that he voted against in the senate. He’s been put in the unenviable position of saying that, as President, he would have vetoed legislation that, as Senator, he introduced. So, sadly, we cannot judge Senator McCain by his record as we can Senator Obama, because Senator McCain has invalidated his record. We can only judge by his promises to be more like Bush than McCain. His promise to keep us in Iraq for another 100 years. His promise to continue raping God’s creation in the name of profit. (And any Christians who support that need to review the Gospels. Jesus said “Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou relish the things that are of man, and not the things that are of God.”)
As before, I will set my commentary apart
(Like this)
because, unlike the conservative branch of the media, I believe that commentary should be clearly distinct from fact.
Here’s the speech.
Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.
(I wanted to include this to give props where props are due to Senator McCain. If more republican politicians comported themselves with this sort of élan, they would find more support among moderates and, yes, even liberals.)
But let there be no doubt, my friends, we're going to win this election. And after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace.
(Sadly, I have seen nothing from Presidential candidate McCain to support this. His tax cuts are for the wealthiest 5% of Americans, and he has said nothing about stopping the tax cuts for corporations who outsource American jobs, as Senator Obama has. He seems to want to “make this government” continue screwing you in the name of corporate profit.)
These are tough times for many of you. You're worried about keeping your job or finding a new one, and are struggling to put food on the table and stay in your home. All you ever asked of government is to stand on your side, not in your way. And that's just what I intend to do: stand on your side and fight for your future.
And I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington,
(He’s had more than twenty years to “shake up Washington” and has, on occasion, done so. Not recently, mind you, when political expediency has put him in the position of supporting Mr. Bush’s worst policies so that he could curry his party’s support for this election.)
Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She has executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and Independents to serve in her administration. She's the mother of five children. She's helped run a small business, worked with her hands and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries.
She knows where she comes from and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down. I'm very proud to have introduced our next Vice President to the country. But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd:
(Including himself in that assessment, I assume?)
change is coming.
I'm not in the habit of breaking promises to my country and neither is Governor Palin. And when we tell you we're going to change Washington, and stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it. We've got a record of doing just that, and the strength, experience, judgment and backbone to keep our word to you.
You know, I've been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.
I've fought corruption, and it didn't matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and had to be held accountable. I've fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment. I've fought to get million dollar checks out of our elections. I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses.
I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn't a popular thing to do. And when the pundits said my campaign was finished, I said I'd rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.
(Do you think that Senator McCain can explain to me what winning in Iraq is? Or are these more of the empty words that he rails against. If anyone is reading this who is close to the Senator, please ask him to explain what victory in Iraq is to me and to the American people. To what end are you spending our money and asking our young people to die?)
Thanks to the leadership of a brilliant general, David Petreaus, and the brave men and women he has the honor to command, that strategy succeeded and rescued us from a defeat that would have demoralized our military, risked a wider war and threatened the security of all Americans.
I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way. In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.
I fight for Americans. I fight for you.
(As you read this speech, replace the word “you” in your mind with the words “Americans who make more than $350,000 per year – that’s who he’s fighting for.)
I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. Bill got a temporary job after he was out of work for seven months. Sue works three jobs to help pay the bills.
I fight for Jake and Toni Wimmer of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Jake works on a loading dock; coaches Little League, and raises money for the mentally and physically disabled. Toni is a schoolteacher, working toward her Master's Degree. They have two sons, the youngest, Luke, has been diagnosed with autism. Their lives should matter to the people they elect to office. They matter to me.
I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfboro, New Hampshire, who died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to, remains safe from its enemies.
(This is really a rare example of balderdash in his speech. America is, by all estimates except the estimates of republican politicians LESS SAFE now than before we invaded Iraq, not more.)
I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.
(I’m not sure what bill he’s speaking of here. Senator McCain has stated CLEARLY that he doesn’t want to tax the additional windfalls of oil companies over the last several years, and wants to DECREASE the corporate tax burden from 35% to 25%. His actions seem to disavow his words.)
We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.
We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children and we're all Americans.
We believe in low taxes;
(for corporations and the wealthy)
spending discipline,
(for the rest of us)
and open markets.
(which means “continued tax cuts for established corporations while strangling small business out of existence with taxes and paperwork.)
We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.
We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.
We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.
I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them.
(I ask you to review both candidate’s tax plans – I outlined them in Senator Obama’s speech. This statement is true only insomuch as he wants to keep taxes low and cut them where he can for the wealthy and corporations. He’s not touching our taxes, and Senator Obama wants to “raise taxes” on corporations and the wealthiest Americans and cut them for the rest of us. 85% of Senator Obama’s tax cuts will affect 95% of Americans – those of us who make less than $350,000 per year.)
I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.
My tax cuts will create jobs.
(ANYONE who believes that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will create more American jobs is delusional. Those tax cuts go right into CEO’s pockets, not into reinvestment into America as they might once have.)
His tax increases will eliminate them. My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
(The health care issue is a very complex one. As near as I can tell, NONE of these statements are true, but I allow that a lot of that depends on interpretation.)
Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas. Doubling the child tax exemption from $3500 to $7000 will improve the lives of millions of American families.
(And encourage further overpopulation of an already dangerously overpopulated planet. We need to figure out a way to reward people for keeping families small, not for having MORE kids.)
Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit. Opening new markets and preparing workers to compete in the world economy is essential to our future prosperity.
I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch. My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away.
(These comments puzzle me. The unemployment insurance, created as part of the New Deal, was an attempt to stop unemployed people from falling into abject poverty. That can happen as easily or more easily NOW then it could in the nineteen fifties. And as near as I can tell, Obama doesn’t want to “wish away” the global economy, simply force American corporations to bring more jobs back to America, where they have to play by the rules.)
We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities. For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.
Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
(Although I have heard excellent arguments on both sides of the school voucher issue, so many excellent arguments that I now fall in the “undecided” category on it, don’t let him fool you. The school voucher program was created to allow Christian fanatics to keep their kids from being exposed to the “heresy” of evolution and the idea that a condom may, in fact, prevent pregnancy.)
Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.
My fellow Americans, when I'm President, we're going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much.
(Like Iraq?)
We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.
(Brothers and sisters, offshore drilling won’t have a significant impact on what you pay at the pump for YEARS. Even if we started drilling tomorrow, we wouldn’t see the results until into the next decade. Please don’t fall for the idea that McCain or anyone else can really effect the cost of gas as long as we are so dependent on it. Oil is a LIMITED, NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE. There’s so much of it under the Earth, and THAT’S ALL. As Governor Palin once said, and oil magnate T. Boone Pickens has said many times, this isn’t a problem that we can drill our way out of.)
Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power.
(I don’t know Seantor Obama’s ideas about nuclear energy, but he supports off-shore drilling as a stop-gap for a much larger energy plan. He does not oppose it. I don’t like lies or liars.)
But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and to restore the health of our planet.
(Let’s be absolutely clear here… the vast majority of the damage to our economy that we need rescue from is the billions of dollars per month being pointlessly pissed away on this mess in Iraq – NOT rising oil prices.)
It's an ambitious plan, but Americans are ambitious by nature, and we have faced greater challenges. It's time for us to show the world again how Americans lead.
(Wait a sec. Didn’t he call America a nation of “whiners” recently? Whiners are not ambitious, nor do they lead. They follow and then bitch about the results. Again, his words now seem at odds with his earlier words. In other words, brothers and sisters, he realizes that he’s hurt our feelings and now he wants to kiss and make up. Are we stump-dumb enough to fall for that?)
This great national cause will create millions of new jobs, many in industries that will be the engine of our future prosperity; jobs that will be there when your children enter the workforce.
Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach. But we must see the threats to peace and liberty in our time clearly and face them, as Americans before us did, with confidence, wisdom and resolve.
We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years.
(Sadly, we haven’t. Since Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush moved our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Taliban and al Quaeda have made a comeback there and are, according to every expert except republican politicians, stronger and a greater threat than ever.)
But they are not defeated, and they'll strike us again if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power,
(Russia’s leaders are republicans? Who knew?)
have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers.
(Damned good thing that they didn’t need our money or our military support, ain’t it?)
As President I will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.
We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them.
(Again with the “dangerous world” balderdash. In other words, “Be afraid, stay afraid, because if you’re afraid you’ll make bad decisions and let us continue to do whatever we want with your money and your rights. And if you start to question it, we’ll remind you to be afraid some more!)
I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.
(By staying in Iraq for another hundred years?)
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day.
(Oh yeah? I can trump that. My grandfather was a housepainter in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He said that it shook the ground so hard that it knocked him off of his scaffolding. He enlisted the next day. My mom and her siblings rarely saw him during his enlistment, but I guess that he was stronger than Pop McCain, because he lived into the 1980’s.)
In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me. I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination.
(Must be why he wants to put another five generations of American kids through it.)
I'm running for President to keep the country I love safe, and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has. I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military and the power of our ideals -- to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.
In America, we change things that need to be changed. Each generation makes its contribution to our greatness. The work that is ours to do is plainly before us. We don't need to search for it.
We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.
The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you.
Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That's how I will govern as President. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.
Instead of rejecting good ideas because we didn't think of them first, let's use the best ideas from both sides. Instead of fighting over who gets the credit, let's try sharing it. This amazing country can do anything we put our minds to. I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.
We're going to finally start getting things done for the people who are counting on us, and I won't care who gets the credit.
I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I have been her servant first, last and always. And I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege.
Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.
On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.
Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.
I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.
If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.
(If you’re disappointed with the “mistakes” of government (read as: screw you – our rich buddies are all covered, and they don’t think that we’re making mistakes), THEN VOTE OUT THE PARTY THAT’S BEEN IN POWER FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME! Do not re-elect that party into office!)
Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.
I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.
Fight for what's right for our country.
Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.
Fight for our children's future.
Fight for justice and opportunity for all.
(Offer for justice and opportunity at all does not include anyone who we wish to throw in jail without a trial and torture until they tell us what we want to hear. Give me a break.)
Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.
(If he’s talking about Iraq here, I remind you that we were NOT defending our country from Iraq.)
Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.
Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.
Thank you, and God Bless you.
End of speech.
Brothers and sisters, it is not with rancor or partisanship that I say this, but with sadness… John McCain would make a terrible president. His regurgitation of Bush’s words, his cribbing of so many of Barack Obama’s statements from HIS acceptance speech, and lately even stealing Obama’s catch phrase for his campaign ads (“That’s not change – that’s more of the same”) Obviously John McCain has become a feeble old man who is incapable of thinking for himself.
And, Senator McCain? I understand that you were a POW in Viet Nam and that it was terrible. My Godfather’s blood was spilled in that God forsaken war, and he, unlike you, did not return. He lay dead at the age of 19. You know what? As much respect as I have for what you went through, it does not qualify you to be president. You need to stop talking about it here. I am reminded of watching the Murrah Federal Building bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh. Witness after witness was brought forward, and they all said “It was a terrible thing.” It was a terrible thing – which has no place in a room where a man is standing trial for his life. It did nothing to prove Timothy McVeigh’s guilt or innocence. And your years of captivity do not belong in this presidential campaign, they have no bearing on your ability to be president.
And one more quick note here. Over the last ten days I have heard over and over again that Sarah Palin should not be held to the same standards as Obama and McCain, because she is not running for President, she is running for Vice-president. I’m going to put this bluntly, and I’m sorry in advance for anyone that I offend, but no one has ever accused me of being too subtle. If John McCain wins the presidency, he will be 72 years old when he is inaugurated. The average life span for a white man in America is just under 73 years. He has had treatment for a form of skin cancer that proves fatal to 34% of people who contract it within ten years (he had the melanoma removed in 2000). If you vote for John McCain for President, there is a better than good chance that Sarah Palin will be our first (albeit unelected) female President. Are you… and is America… REALLY ready for President Palin?
Peace.
Randal
I won’t be making nearly as many comments on Senator McCain’s speech as I did Governor Palin’s, mostly because, in looking it over, I found far fewer outright lies. I also found in Senator McCain’s speech respect and emotional maturity, which I did not find in Governor Palin’s.
You know, I really supported John McCain, once upon a time. As the scion of a military family who lost my Godfather in Viet Nam, I have nothing but respect and admiration for the man’s military service and his years of captivity. (Any Republicans who think that torture can be used to any good means, by the way, should ask Senator McCain about it – he may educate you.) When he was running for president in 2000, against Mr. Bush for the republican nomination, I was really pulling for him. I would have voted for him over Vice-President Gore in a heartbeat.
The problem? As the brilliant Arianna Huffington put it, “The John McCain that we all fell in love with in 2000 is dead.” The conservative magazine The New Economist featured a cover story about Senator McCain’s “Sudden lurch to the right”. Suddenly, he seems to adopting all of Mr. Bush’s views, including those that he voted against in the senate. He’s been put in the unenviable position of saying that, as President, he would have vetoed legislation that, as Senator, he introduced. So, sadly, we cannot judge Senator McCain by his record as we can Senator Obama, because Senator McCain has invalidated his record. We can only judge by his promises to be more like Bush than McCain. His promise to keep us in Iraq for another 100 years. His promise to continue raping God’s creation in the name of profit. (And any Christians who support that need to review the Gospels. Jesus said “Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou relish the things that are of man, and not the things that are of God.”)
As before, I will set my commentary apart
(Like this)
because, unlike the conservative branch of the media, I believe that commentary should be clearly distinct from fact.
Here’s the speech.
Finally, a word to Senator Obama and his supporters. We'll go at it over the next two months. That's the nature of these contests, and there are big differences between us. But you have my respect and admiration. Despite our differences, much more unites us than divides us. We are fellow Americans, an association that means more to me than any other. We're dedicated to the proposition that all people are created equal and endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights. No country ever had a greater cause than that. And I wouldn't be an American worthy of the name if I didn't honor Senator Obama and his supporters for their achievement.
(I wanted to include this to give props where props are due to Senator McCain. If more republican politicians comported themselves with this sort of élan, they would find more support among moderates and, yes, even liberals.)
But let there be no doubt, my friends, we're going to win this election. And after we've won, we're going to reach out our hand to any willing patriot, make this government start working for you again, and get this country back on the road to prosperity and peace.
(Sadly, I have seen nothing from Presidential candidate McCain to support this. His tax cuts are for the wealthiest 5% of Americans, and he has said nothing about stopping the tax cuts for corporations who outsource American jobs, as Senator Obama has. He seems to want to “make this government” continue screwing you in the name of corporate profit.)
These are tough times for many of you. You're worried about keeping your job or finding a new one, and are struggling to put food on the table and stay in your home. All you ever asked of government is to stand on your side, not in your way. And that's just what I intend to do: stand on your side and fight for your future.
And I've found just the right partner to help me shake up Washington,
(He’s had more than twenty years to “shake up Washington” and has, on occasion, done so. Not recently, mind you, when political expediency has put him in the position of supporting Mr. Bush’s worst policies so that he could curry his party’s support for this election.)
Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska. She has executive experience and a real record of accomplishment. She's tackled tough problems like energy independence and corruption. She's balanced a budget, cut taxes, and taken on the special interests. She's reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and Independents to serve in her administration. She's the mother of five children. She's helped run a small business, worked with her hands and knows what it's like to worry about mortgage payments and health care and the cost of gasoline and groceries.
She knows where she comes from and she knows who she works for. She stands up for what's right, and she doesn't let anyone tell her to sit down. I'm very proud to have introduced our next Vice President to the country. But I can't wait until I introduce her to Washington. And let me offer an advance warning to the old, big spending, do nothing, me first, country second Washington crowd:
(Including himself in that assessment, I assume?)
change is coming.
I'm not in the habit of breaking promises to my country and neither is Governor Palin. And when we tell you we're going to change Washington, and stop leaving our country's problems for some unluckier generation to fix, you can count on it. We've got a record of doing just that, and the strength, experience, judgment and backbone to keep our word to you.
You know, I've been called a maverick; someone who marches to the beat of his own drum. Sometimes it's meant as a compliment and sometimes it's not. What it really means is I understand who I work for. I don't work for a party. I don't work for a special interest. I don't work for myself. I work for you.
I've fought corruption, and it didn't matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans. They violated their public trust, and had to be held accountable. I've fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment. I've fought to get million dollar checks out of our elections. I've fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes. I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon. I fought tobacco companies and trial lawyers, drug companies and union bosses.
I fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn't a popular thing to do. And when the pundits said my campaign was finished, I said I'd rather lose an election than see my country lose a war.
(Do you think that Senator McCain can explain to me what winning in Iraq is? Or are these more of the empty words that he rails against. If anyone is reading this who is close to the Senator, please ask him to explain what victory in Iraq is to me and to the American people. To what end are you spending our money and asking our young people to die?)
Thanks to the leadership of a brilliant general, David Petreaus, and the brave men and women he has the honor to command, that strategy succeeded and rescued us from a defeat that would have demoralized our military, risked a wider war and threatened the security of all Americans.
I don't mind a good fight. For reasons known only to God, I've had quite a few tough ones in my life. But I learned an important lesson along the way. In the end, it matters less that you can fight. What you fight for is the real test.
I fight for Americans. I fight for you.
(As you read this speech, replace the word “you” in your mind with the words “Americans who make more than $350,000 per year – that’s who he’s fighting for.)
I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. Bill got a temporary job after he was out of work for seven months. Sue works three jobs to help pay the bills.
I fight for Jake and Toni Wimmer of Franklin County, Pennsylvania. Jake works on a loading dock; coaches Little League, and raises money for the mentally and physically disabled. Toni is a schoolteacher, working toward her Master's Degree. They have two sons, the youngest, Luke, has been diagnosed with autism. Their lives should matter to the people they elect to office. They matter to me.
I fight for the family of Matthew Stanley of Wolfboro, New Hampshire, who died serving our country in Iraq. I wear his bracelet and think of him every day. I intend to honor their sacrifice by making sure the country their son loved so well and never returned to, remains safe from its enemies.
(This is really a rare example of balderdash in his speech. America is, by all estimates except the estimates of republican politicians LESS SAFE now than before we invaded Iraq, not more.)
I fight to restore the pride and principles of our party. We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptations of corruption. We lost their trust when rather than reform government, both parties made it bigger. We lost their trust when instead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties and Senator Obama passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies. We lost their trust, when we valued our power over our principles.
(I’m not sure what bill he’s speaking of here. Senator McCain has stated CLEARLY that he doesn’t want to tax the additional windfalls of oil companies over the last several years, and wants to DECREASE the corporate tax burden from 35% to 25%. His actions seem to disavow his words.)
We're going to change that. We're going to recover the people's trust by standing up again for the values Americans admire. The party of Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan is going to get back to basics.
We believe everyone has something to contribute and deserves the opportunity to reach their God-given potential from the boy whose descendents arrived on the Mayflower to the Latina daughter of migrant workers. We're all God's children and we're all Americans.
We believe in low taxes;
(for corporations and the wealthy)
spending discipline,
(for the rest of us)
and open markets.
(which means “continued tax cuts for established corporations while strangling small business out of existence with taxes and paperwork.)
We believe in rewarding hard work and risk takers and letting people keep the fruits of their labor.
We believe in a strong defense, work, faith, service, a culture of life, personal responsibility, the rule of law, and judges who dispense justice impartially and don't legislate from the bench. We believe in the values of families, neighborhoods and communities.
We believe in a government that unleashes the creativity and initiative of Americans. Government that doesn't make your choices for you, but works to make sure you have more choices to make for yourself.
I will keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them.
(I ask you to review both candidate’s tax plans – I outlined them in Senator Obama’s speech. This statement is true only insomuch as he wants to keep taxes low and cut them where he can for the wealthy and corporations. He’s not touching our taxes, and Senator Obama wants to “raise taxes” on corporations and the wealthiest Americans and cut them for the rest of us. 85% of Senator Obama’s tax cuts will affect 95% of Americans – those of us who make less than $350,000 per year.)
I will open new markets to our goods and services. My opponent will close them. I will cut government spending. He will increase it.
My tax cuts will create jobs.
(ANYONE who believes that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will create more American jobs is delusional. Those tax cuts go right into CEO’s pockets, not into reinvestment into America as they might once have.)
His tax increases will eliminate them. My health care plan will make it easier for more Americans to find and keep good health care insurance. His plan will force small businesses to cut jobs, reduce wages, and force families into a government run health care system where a bureaucrat stands between you and your doctor.
(The health care issue is a very complex one. As near as I can tell, NONE of these statements are true, but I allow that a lot of that depends on interpretation.)
Keeping taxes low helps small businesses grow and create new jobs. Cutting the second highest business tax rate in the world will help American companies compete and keep jobs from moving overseas. Doubling the child tax exemption from $3500 to $7000 will improve the lives of millions of American families.
(And encourage further overpopulation of an already dangerously overpopulated planet. We need to figure out a way to reward people for keeping families small, not for having MORE kids.)
Reducing government spending and getting rid of failed programs will let you keep more of your own money to save, spend and invest as you see fit. Opening new markets and preparing workers to compete in the world economy is essential to our future prosperity.
I know some of you have been left behind in the changing economy and it often seems your government hasn't even noticed. Government assistance for unemployed workers was designed for the economy of the 1950s. That's going to change on my watch. My opponent promises to bring back old jobs by wishing away the global economy. We're going to help workers who've lost a job that won't come back, find a new one that won't go away.
(These comments puzzle me. The unemployment insurance, created as part of the New Deal, was an attempt to stop unemployed people from falling into abject poverty. That can happen as easily or more easily NOW then it could in the nineteen fifties. And as near as I can tell, Obama doesn’t want to “wish away” the global economy, simply force American corporations to bring more jobs back to America, where they have to play by the rules.)
We will prepare them for the jobs of today. We will use our community colleges to help train people for new opportunities in their communities. For workers in industries that have been hard hit, we'll help make up part of the difference in wages between their old job and a temporary, lower paid one while they receive retraining that will help them find secure new employment at a decent wage.
Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.
When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.
(Although I have heard excellent arguments on both sides of the school voucher issue, so many excellent arguments that I now fall in the “undecided” category on it, don’t let him fool you. The school voucher program was created to allow Christian fanatics to keep their kids from being exposed to the “heresy” of evolution and the idea that a condom may, in fact, prevent pregnancy.)
Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.
My fellow Americans, when I'm President, we're going to embark on the most ambitious national project in decades. We are going to stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much.
(Like Iraq?)
We will attack the problem on every front. We will produce more energy at home. We will drill new wells offshore, and we'll drill them now. We will build more nuclear power plants. We will develop clean coal technology. We will increase the use of wind, tide, solar and natural gas. We will encourage the development and use of flex fuel, hybrid and electric automobiles.
(Brothers and sisters, offshore drilling won’t have a significant impact on what you pay at the pump for YEARS. Even if we started drilling tomorrow, we wouldn’t see the results until into the next decade. Please don’t fall for the idea that McCain or anyone else can really effect the cost of gas as long as we are so dependent on it. Oil is a LIMITED, NON-RENEWABLE RESOURCE. There’s so much of it under the Earth, and THAT’S ALL. As Governor Palin once said, and oil magnate T. Boone Pickens has said many times, this isn’t a problem that we can drill our way out of.)
Senator Obama thinks we can achieve energy independence without more drilling and without more nuclear power.
(I don’t know Seantor Obama’s ideas about nuclear energy, but he supports off-shore drilling as a stop-gap for a much larger energy plan. He does not oppose it. I don’t like lies or liars.)
But Americans know better than that. We must use all resources and develop all technologies necessary to rescue our economy from the damage caused by rising oil prices and to restore the health of our planet.
(Let’s be absolutely clear here… the vast majority of the damage to our economy that we need rescue from is the billions of dollars per month being pointlessly pissed away on this mess in Iraq – NOT rising oil prices.)
It's an ambitious plan, but Americans are ambitious by nature, and we have faced greater challenges. It's time for us to show the world again how Americans lead.
(Wait a sec. Didn’t he call America a nation of “whiners” recently? Whiners are not ambitious, nor do they lead. They follow and then bitch about the results. Again, his words now seem at odds with his earlier words. In other words, brothers and sisters, he realizes that he’s hurt our feelings and now he wants to kiss and make up. Are we stump-dumb enough to fall for that?)
This great national cause will create millions of new jobs, many in industries that will be the engine of our future prosperity; jobs that will be there when your children enter the workforce.
Today, the prospect of a better world remains within our reach. But we must see the threats to peace and liberty in our time clearly and face them, as Americans before us did, with confidence, wisdom and resolve.
We have dealt a serious blow to al Qaeda in recent years.
(Sadly, we haven’t. Since Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush moved our troops from Afghanistan to Iraq, the Taliban and al Quaeda have made a comeback there and are, according to every expert except republican politicians, stronger and a greater threat than ever.)
But they are not defeated, and they'll strike us again if they can. Iran remains the chief state sponsor of terrorism and on the path to acquiring nuclear weapons. Russia's leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power,
(Russia’s leaders are republicans? Who knew?)
have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power. They invaded a small, democratic neighbor to gain more control over the world's oil supply, intimidate other neighbors, and further their ambitions of reassembling the Russian empire. And the brave people of Georgia need our solidarity and prayers.
(Damned good thing that they didn’t need our money or our military support, ain’t it?)
As President I will work to establish good relations with Russia so we need not fear a return of the Cold War. But we can't turn a blind eye to aggression and international lawlessness that threatens the peace and stability of the world and the security of the American people.
We face many threats in this dangerous world, but I'm not afraid of them.
(Again with the “dangerous world” balderdash. In other words, “Be afraid, stay afraid, because if you’re afraid you’ll make bad decisions and let us continue to do whatever we want with your money and your rights. And if you start to question it, we’ll remind you to be afraid some more!)
I'm prepared for them. I know how the military works, what it can do, what it can do better, and what it should not do. I know how the world works. I know the good and the evil in it. I know how to work with leaders who share our dreams of a freer, safer and more prosperous world, and how to stand up to those who don't. I know how to secure the peace.
(By staying in Iraq for another hundred years?)
When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house. A Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I rarely saw my father again for four years. My grandfather came home from that same war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day.
(Oh yeah? I can trump that. My grandfather was a housepainter in Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed. He said that it shook the ground so hard that it knocked him off of his scaffolding. He enlisted the next day. My mom and her siblings rarely saw him during his enlistment, but I guess that he was stronger than Pop McCain, because he lived into the 1980’s.)
In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home with me. I hate war. It is terrible beyond imagination.
(Must be why he wants to put another five generations of American kids through it.)
I'm running for President to keep the country I love safe, and prevent other families from risking their loved ones in war as my family has. I will draw on all my experience with the world and its leaders, and all the tools at our disposal -- diplomatic, economic, military and the power of our ideals -- to build the foundations for a stable and enduring peace.
In America, we change things that need to be changed. Each generation makes its contribution to our greatness. The work that is ours to do is plainly before us. We don't need to search for it.
We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington.
The constant partisan rancor that stops us from solving these problems isn't a cause, it's a symptom. It's what happens when people go to Washington to work for themselves and not you.
Again and again, I've worked with members of both parties to fix problems that need to be fixed. That's how I will govern as President. I will reach out my hand to anyone to help me get this country moving again. I have that record and the scars to prove it. Senator Obama does not.
Instead of rejecting good ideas because we didn't think of them first, let's use the best ideas from both sides. Instead of fighting over who gets the credit, let's try sharing it. This amazing country can do anything we put our minds to. I will ask Democrats and Independents to serve with me. And my administration will set a new standard for transparency and accountability.
We're going to finally start getting things done for the people who are counting on us, and I won't care who gets the credit.
I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years. But I have been her servant first, last and always. And I've never lived a day, in good times or bad, that I didn't thank God for the privilege.
Long ago, something unusual happened to me that taught me the most valuable lesson of my life. I was blessed by misfortune. I mean that sincerely. I was blessed because I served in the company of heroes, and I witnessed a thousand acts of courage, compassion and love.
On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn't any worry I wouldn't come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules, and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure; my own pride. I didn't think there was a cause more important than me.
Then I found myself falling toward the middle of a small lake in the city of Hanoi, with two broken arms, a broken leg, and an angry crowd waiting to greet me. I was dumped in a dark cell, and left to die. I didn't feel so tough anymore. When they discovered my father was an admiral, they took me to a hospital. They couldn't set my bones properly, so they just slapped a cast on me. When I didn't get better, and was down to about a hundred pounds, they put me in a cell with two other Americans. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't even feed myself. They did it for me. I was beginning to learn the limits of my selfish independence. Those men saved my life.
I was in solitary confinement when my captors offered to release me. I knew why. If I went home, they would use it as propaganda to demoralize my fellow prisoners. Our Code said we could only go home in the order of our capture, and there were men who had been shot down before me. I thought about it, though. I wasn't in great shape, and I missed everything about America. But I turned it down.
A lot of prisoners had it worse than I did. I'd been mistreated before, but not as badly as others. I always liked to strut a little after I'd been roughed up to show the other guys I was tough enough to take it. But after I turned down their offer, they worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me.
When they brought me back to my cell, I was hurt and ashamed, and I didn't know how I could face my fellow prisoners. The good man in the cell next door, my friend, Bob Craner, saved me. Through taps on a wall he told me I had fought as hard as I could. No man can always stand alone. And then he told me to get back up and fight again for our country and for the men I had the honor to serve with. Because every day they fought for me.
I fell in love with my country when I was a prisoner in someone else's. I loved it not just for the many comforts of life here. I loved it for its decency; for its faith in the wisdom, justice and goodness of its people. I loved it because it was not just a place, but an idea, a cause worth fighting for. I was never the same again. I wasn't my own man anymore. I was my country's.
I'm not running for president because I think I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save our country in its hour of need. My country saved me. My country saved me, and I cannot forget it. And I will fight for her for as long as I draw breath, so help me God.
If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them.
(If you’re disappointed with the “mistakes” of government (read as: screw you – our rich buddies are all covered, and they don’t think that we’re making mistakes), THEN VOTE OUT THE PARTY THAT’S BEEN IN POWER FOR THE MAJORITY OF THE TIME! Do not re-elect that party into office!)
Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.
I'm going to fight for my cause every day as your President. I'm going to fight to make sure every American has every reason to thank God, as I thank Him: that I'm an American, a proud citizen of the greatest country on earth, and with hard work, strong faith and a little courage, great things are always within our reach. Fight with me. Fight with me.
Fight for what's right for our country.
Fight for the ideals and character of a free people.
Fight for our children's future.
Fight for justice and opportunity for all.
(Offer for justice and opportunity at all does not include anyone who we wish to throw in jail without a trial and torture until they tell us what we want to hear. Give me a break.)
Stand up to defend our country from its enemies.
(If he’s talking about Iraq here, I remind you that we were NOT defending our country from Iraq.)
Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America.
Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.
Thank you, and God Bless you.
End of speech.
Brothers and sisters, it is not with rancor or partisanship that I say this, but with sadness… John McCain would make a terrible president. His regurgitation of Bush’s words, his cribbing of so many of Barack Obama’s statements from HIS acceptance speech, and lately even stealing Obama’s catch phrase for his campaign ads (“That’s not change – that’s more of the same”) Obviously John McCain has become a feeble old man who is incapable of thinking for himself.
And, Senator McCain? I understand that you were a POW in Viet Nam and that it was terrible. My Godfather’s blood was spilled in that God forsaken war, and he, unlike you, did not return. He lay dead at the age of 19. You know what? As much respect as I have for what you went through, it does not qualify you to be president. You need to stop talking about it here. I am reminded of watching the Murrah Federal Building bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh. Witness after witness was brought forward, and they all said “It was a terrible thing.” It was a terrible thing – which has no place in a room where a man is standing trial for his life. It did nothing to prove Timothy McVeigh’s guilt or innocence. And your years of captivity do not belong in this presidential campaign, they have no bearing on your ability to be president.
And one more quick note here. Over the last ten days I have heard over and over again that Sarah Palin should not be held to the same standards as Obama and McCain, because she is not running for President, she is running for Vice-president. I’m going to put this bluntly, and I’m sorry in advance for anyone that I offend, but no one has ever accused me of being too subtle. If John McCain wins the presidency, he will be 72 years old when he is inaugurated. The average life span for a white man in America is just under 73 years. He has had treatment for a form of skin cancer that proves fatal to 34% of people who contract it within ten years (he had the melanoma removed in 2000). If you vote for John McCain for President, there is a better than good chance that Sarah Palin will be our first (albeit unelected) female President. Are you… and is America… REALLY ready for President Palin?
Peace.
Randal
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