For Whom The Bells Toll

It seems that Michele Bachman just couldn’t see herself ever getting anywhere with only a meager 6 percent total vote in Iowa last night. And without any question she has officially called it quits. Despite her win in the Ames Straw Poll last year, her scorching anti-liberal rhetoric calling President Obama a socialist who’s trying to turn the country into the next European Union overpowered her strong socially conservative standing. Of course, she has promised not to stop fighting Obama’s continuing reign of socialism, calling his every legislation a form of socialist propaganda dozens of times in her concession speech this morning. But as a woman whose set of religiously anti-social beliefs supports a more subservient view of women in society, she had no chance of getting enough support from the people who believe in the same thing.

Although Bachman’s loss was not a surprise (although her concession speech this morning was a bit surprising), Rick Santorum’s loss to Mitt Romney by only 8 votes was quite a surprise, as scary as it was. In his speech last night he was strangely restrained from his usual balls-to-the-wall public appearances. He did compare his grandfather’s suffering under Mussolini’s 1920’s fascist Italy to Obama’s first term in office, which by all standards is one of the worst sociopolitical comparisons of his campaign.

The reality of Rick Santorum’s presidential aspiration is that his near win in the closest caucus vote ever means nothing at all. He doesn’t stand much of a chance of eventually winning the Republican nomination because his diehard socially conservative stance is polluted by his overzealous views. Yes, he almost won in Iowa because of his continued no-retreat stances on gay marriage and abortion, but with that stance comes his inability to realize when to stop. His belief that abortions should be constitutionally banned even in the cases of rape and incest defies social ethics, while his promise to invalidate already legal gay marriages lacks any sense of humanity. Why should legally bound couples who love each other be forced to suffer because a hardline religious belief says it’s wrong? That is in direct defiance of one of the basic founding principles of the country that he continues to mention in his speeches, and that is the right of the people to be happy.

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Compared to Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney is almost a saint. But he as well doesn’t realize that many of the promises he has made cannot be kept. He can’t repeal Obama’s healthcare initiative on his first or second day in office because there is a process that must be followed before he can ever touch it. His claim during his speech last night that Obama has created more deficit than his predecessors is an outright lie, because before Bush was in office we had an actual surplus. By the time Obama came to office, the country was in a financial sinkhole that could only be gotten out of with bipartisan handholding which, as we all know, the Republicans are incapable of doing even with the country’s economy on the line.

Both candidates have called Obama’s economic strategies “entitlement programs.” Santorum has claimed that income inequality is something that should be embraced with open arms, while Romney has proudly stated that he will run the country like a multimillion-dollar corporation. And the fact is that compared to the European countries these candidates so despise, our economy just plain sucks. One big difference is that none of these countries have an entitlement-based economy. They all have exactly what the Republicans love: merit-based opportunities.

Unemployment numbers in some European countries, including Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, are at least 2 percentage points below our average. This is in part from a combination of government intervention and a worker/management cooperation not seen in American corporations. With the help of the government to retrain workers and help relocate then in the job market, Scandinavia helps workers create new innovative enterprises. And in Germany, many CEO’s salaries average only 11 times that of their workers, allowing many unions to agree to hold their wages flat (which are still much more than their US equivalent). Compared to the American CEO’s average salary, which is between 200-300 times that of their workers, we can clearly see why our economy has taken a dive.

Whether Santorum, Romney, or even Newt Gingrich become president, they don’t realize that only finding ways to create jobs will not bring the economy out of the tank. Without some government intervention, like the help of food stamps, Medicare and other entitlement programs, hundreds of thousands of people might end up without food on their table or any way to treat a medical condition. These are necessary to support a healthy economy when those who work hard to make enough money just to feed and cloth their family are seen as lazy, compared to those who sit in an office and make millions with the twitch of a wrist.

If the Republican candidates want to create a fully merit-based society, they need to do their homework and look at the European countries they so despise. The European countries that have merit-based societies also have more entitlements and higher taxes than we do, which combine to help keep their economy balanced and push their workers to be competitive. The Republican Party has strayed far away from the party of Regan in whose footsteps they all claim to follow. They need to realize than some government involvement in the economy and in society along with a steady decline in the excessive income inequality that exists today, will help bring the economy back to a fighting stance.

Will The (Impracticable) 44th President Please Stand Up

Today the new American crusade officially began in the form of a supposedly all-important first vote made by only 100,000 people in a state whose population is almost purely Caucasian. This minute percentage of the population is voting for a Republican candidate for president who will turn the country around and roll back the clock in our centuries-long attempt to truly idolize the most important aspect of our country’s world-renowned stance as the land of opportunity and freedom. And that is the freedom we give to all of our citizens no matter what race, gender or religion; the freedom to a life of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

But this freedom is being strangled by the highly conservative rhetoric of these candidates and their promises to pursue their paths of social injustice that they believe they should impose upon every citizen. They believe that everyone should follow their system of beliefs no matter what the consequence. Women will not allowed to have control over their own bodies, even if they are raped and impregnated by either a complete stranger or a family member; they would be legally bound to bring children to term because the law will state that the fertilized egg in a woman’s own uterus is a person starting at the moment of its conception. People will be incapable of marrying the one they love because that person is of the same sex. All of this because these Republican presidential hopefuls feel that it is their divine right as the potential future leader of the world’s strongest country to turn us into the Christian equivalent of Saudi Arabia.

The social views of the candidates have ranged from moderately conservative (Jon Huntsman) to religiously dogmatic (Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman). But in the bid for the vote of only 3 percent of the total population of the state of Iowa, the candidates with more moderate views on the most heated topics of abortion and same-sex marriage have moved farther to the right just so they can get votes. They are willing to vow that they will constitutionally deny same-sex couples the right to marry, ban abortion no matter what the circumstance, including rape and incest, and create a supposed constitutional “personhood amendment.”

Mitt Romney recently claimed that President Obama was keeping the nation "from being one nation under God." Newt Gingrich has been quoted comparing being gay to choosing to be celibate. Rick Santorum has not shied away from his strong religious-conservative stance on everything anti-gay and anti-abortion, recently claiming that Obama should be pro-life because he is black and stating that in addition to a federal ban on same-sex marriage, he would invalidate any now-legal same-sex marriages under another constitutional ban. He even went so far as to blame the Obama administration of refusing to end what he calls "sexual promiscuity" while setting aside “Christian values” to promote the idea that all beliefs are equal. If I didn’t know the First Amendment, I might just consider Santorum a religious bigot.

The fact that all of the Republican presidential candidates would purposefully ignore the First Amendment by constitutionally instilling their religious beliefs onto every citizen of the country has become everyday news. What continues to amaze me though is the candidates’ persistence in stating ambitions that they are either legally incapable of pursuing or are outright stupid.

Last month Gingrich continued to state that, if elected, he would abolish the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has been labeled by almost all of the candidates as a “liberal” court and by some, including Gingrich, as an “anti-American” court. The 9^th Circuit Court covers the west coast states and also includes Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona, Alaska, Hawaii, The Northern Mariana Islands and Guam. The candidates’ various attacks against the 9^th Circuit Court stem from the fact that the majority of the court’s rulings tend to lean to the left of the political spectrum. Gingrich has called the judges who believe that the phrase "One nation, under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the separation of church and state are "radically Anti-American"

Despite how irate conservatives may become when the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals is mentioned in conversation, there is no legal way to abolish the court without reengineering the entire judicial system. You can’t just say, “You judges are too liberal and ‘anti-American,’ so we’re just going to remove you from your seat as a federal judge and your court will now have no power whatsoever.” Not to mention that the 9^th Circuit is so large that it includes four separate courts in three different states.

For a bit of history, the pledge we say today is not the original one that was written in 1892 by the Christian Socialist Francis Bellamy and formally adopted by Congress in 1924. The words “under God” were not even in the Pledge until it was rewritten for the fourth time in 1954. Previous rewrites include the addition of the words “of the United States,” in reference to the flag, in 1923, and the words “of America” after the previously stated addition.

And when it comes to plain stupid ambitions, Rick Santorum has taken the prize for worst foreign policy. While most of the candidates have stated that Obama has been too lax on his foreign policy, with Romney and Gingrich claiming Obama has been following a policy of appeasement, Rick Santorum recently stated that if elected he would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities if they were not opened to international arms inspectors. Even Israel, one of Iran’s most hated enemies, has refrained from attacking Iran, believing that any preemptive attacks would be catastrophic to any potential rapprochement between Iran and the rest of the world.

Tonight’s vote in Iowa is the first stepping stone on a path to a conceivable collapse of a growing social transformation that this country hasn’t seen since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s. The past few years have seen unprecedented changes in the minds of everyday people, despite differences in race, religion and sociopolitical views, to name a few. With the election of the first African-American president, the growing list of states legally granting same-sex couples the right to marry, and the continuing fight for a woman’s right to have an abortion if so desired, the American people are pushing the country into a new age of freedom, ambition and the ability for every citizen to live a life of liberty and happiness.

The Republican Party continues to drift farther to the right and farther from the mainstream social belief system that they all claim to be fighting for. While national polls have shown that more than half of the country supports legalizing same-sex marriage, the candidates still claim that the country does not want to legalize same-sex marriage. The Republican Party needs to take into account that all of their false opinions and open lies can be fought with irrefutable facts.

Reality—The State of Things As They Actually Exist

In the past week Republicans have shown that they are even more out of touch with reality than we once thought. Maybe they don’t know that people pay attention to the fact that they are wrong or maybe they just don’t care. But what they don’t realize is that whatever they say is read and seen by millions of people. And that can come back at them.

From Rick Santorum’s recent attack on Obama calling his belief in income equality a policy of Marxism, to Representative Allan West’s invocation of the notorious Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, it seems that here is almost nothing that congressional Republicans are willing to say against Obama and congressional Democrats.

But the kicker comes not from any Republican in Washington or one of the GOP presidential candidates, but from a failed Tea Party politician in California. Jules Manson didn’t call Obama a socialist or accuse him of class warfare, but rather called for the assassination of Obama and his daughters. Not only did he openly advocate for the assassination of the President of the United States and his daughters, he did it on his own Facebook page.

Deliberately comparing the Democrats to one of the worst politicians in modern history and calling for the assassination of the president and his children go beyond dirty politics. While West’s comparison of the Democrats to the Nazis is purely disgusting, Jules Manson’s call for open season on the president and his family was just one of the stupidest things anyone could ever say, let alone post on their own Facebook page for the entire world to see.

The Knights Templar of the 21st Century

The range of anti-gay rhetoric among the GOP candidates spreads from Ron Paul’s not-quite-equal rights to Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman’s belief that they’re just basically animals. While they all rant and rave in interviews and at forums and debates, Rick Perry is the first to put out a blatantly anti-gay ad.

While religion plays a major role in many peoples lives especially, it seems, in those of politicians, it should not be used as a political tool as it so often is here in America and around the world. Because of the variety of beliefs among world religions, social policies cannot be tied to a specific religious belief. For example, in Perry’s new ad he says, “But you don’t need to be in a pew every Sunday to know that there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military, but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.”

Despite the fact that almost 75% of the country supported the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” kids here can openly celebrate Christmas. Listen to how many Christmas tunes are on the radio, in the car, in stores, everywhere. What about Hanukkah songs? The only one I can think of is Adam Sandler’s “The Chanukah Song,” a comedic song that’s really kid friendly. And the fact that children cannot pray in school is not an issue at all, because it cannot be an issue. The First Amendment strictly prohibits the government involving religion in the public sector.

While Perry, along with Michele Bachman and Rick Santorum, are working to garner more support from the evangelical conservatives. But while Perry is more the standard patriotic God-loving American, Bachman and Santorum are more Bible thumping, stone throwing believers. This puts them in a harder vantage point when it comes to religious voters, because not all voters who consider themselves evangelical believe in the hate-driven rhetoric of these two.

And then there is Newt Gingrich. He says he’s tough on anti-gay legislature. But  does he really believe everything he's saying? While the other three have brandished their Christianity as a sort of divine right to the presidency. But can a man who has had 3 wives be as religiously devote as the other three, or is he using the religious angle for his own politics? His lesbian half-sister, along with many politicians and political strategists, believe that he’s just looking for votes and that he isn’t really as vigilant against gay rights as he says he is.

But with the influx of religious contenders comes an increase in religious individuals who truly believe that the government is infringing on their religious rights. A recent video aired on Al Jazeera English talks about how the religious right has come to take control of the Iowa caucuses. "Our Constitution was designed for religious people, it was designed by religious people, and the principles of our law and our Constitution come directly from Moses and his system of government. And that information's not taught anymore," said Rev. Cary Gordon.

The religious right has also been forcing its hand directly into the public when the conservative group, the Florida Family Association, demanded Lowes Home Improvement to remove its ads from the TLC show "All-American Muslim." The group complained that the show was "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda's clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values." Last time I checked the Crusades were done and over with, and the Christian armies failed to accomplish their goal of seizing Jerusalem from the “infidels.” It seems that religious bigotry is also a prominent feature on that side of the political spectrum.

This growing idea that the country was founded as a Christian nation based on Christian beliefs has gotten out of hand in the past few years. People are being taught false history for the purpose of political benefit. This trend of morphing religion into politics to influence every aspect of society may more dangerous than we may know.

A Marathon of Idiots

What it takes to run a 2012 GOP presidential campaign

Every election year there are a few very disconcerting candidates who run for president. 2012 seems to be a special year though, bringing out candidates whose views span right of center to the far ends of the right-wing political spectrum. But the one thing they have in common is their connection with reality, or lack thereof.

THE FIGHT FOR THE RIGHT

Yesterday, Rick Perry brazenly attacked Obama’s decision to require US agencies working internationally to promote equal rights for gays as a "war on traditional American values." Perry is further quoted saying, “This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many [Americans] of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong. President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles.”

In reality, between 2010 and 2011, more than half of Americans expressed support for legalizing same-sex marriage, with increases not only among Democrats and liberals, but also among Republicans, conservatives (if only a small increase) and those aged 55 or older, according to a Gallup poll in May of this year. In November, over 70 major companies, including Google, Microsoft and Xerox, filed a brief in court in support of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), complaining that it forces them to discriminate within their companies.

Michelle Bachman recently got the wind knocked out of her by an 8-year-old at a book signing in South Carolina. "My mommy -- Miss Bachmann, my mommy's gay but she doesn't need fixing," said 8-year-old Elijah. Even elementary school kids know that her husband’s “reparative therapy,” also referred to as the “pray the gay away” theory, is a load of crap. And little Elijah is a perfect example of how the conservative view on same-sex parenting is wrong.

While Bachman gets the award for most awkward goof, Rick Santorum got a more, shall we say, viral award back in 2003. Due to his fire-breathing rhetoric on gay rights, sex columnist and gay-rights activist Dan Savage asked his readership to associate “santorum” with a subsequently offensive sexually based definition. Savage then created a website promoting the definition, which remains the first search result for Rick Santorum’s name on several search engines.

All three have said at different times that gay rights are not civil rights. But given the fact that civil rights refers to the rights of every human being, they are all, once again, wrong. Civil rights consist of a vast range of universal rights: the abolition of slavery, voting rights for women and the destruction of anti-black voting laws, the downfall of lawful segregation, legalizing interracial marriage and many others. So why should gays and lesbians not be given the rights of everyone else now that we have successfully given all genders and ethnicities equal rights.

It seems that to be part of the GOP one must reject today’s society as reality and instead become a believer of the dogma that is handed down to you by the GOP. Fox News will become your staple news source. Legalizing same-sex marriage will destroy our country from the ground up and will mistakenly teach our children that being different is acceptable. Climate change is a myth and the wealthy are still not wealthy enough. And “no” is always an appropriate answer.

“I REJECT YOUR REALITY AND SUBSTITUTE MY OWN”

Perry, Bachman and Santorum hold the strongest connection between religion and society. They all denounce Obama and Democrats in Congress as waging a war against “traditional” and “family” values among the population. But what they fail to do is to take into consideration the facts about what this country is supposed to stand for: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The writers of the Constitution explicitly noted in the First Amendment that, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or the free exercise thereof,” therefore separating government from involving itself in religious affairs.

While the definition of these words spans dozens of interpretations, Thomas Jefferson further clarified the separation of religion and government in a letter to the Danbury Baptists stating the first amendment creates “a wall of separation between the church and State.” This separation has allowed the country to become the religious melting pot that it is, guaranteeing everyone the freedom to express his or her own religion.

America prides itself as “the land of the free,” where anyone can come and earn a living and enjoy more freedoms than any other country in the world. In reality, we are not as free as we so proudly tout ourselves to be, because not everyone has the same rights. And the lack of these rights restricts everyday people from living a life of liberty and happiness.  

The Red Muppets

In a previous posting I mentioned reported on a recent poll finding viewers of Fox News to be less informed and more likely to be given false information. 

During last weeks program, “Follow the Money,” commentator Eric Bolling rolled back the clocks to the Cold War when he proclaimed that the new "Muppets" movie was the latest in Hollywood’s supposed liberal-agenda. Joined by Dan Gainor from the conservative Media Research Center, things got pretty interesting.

"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message," said Gainor. "They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry." He continued giving more examples, including Oscar winners “Syriana” and “There Will Be Blood,” and of all things, the kids movie “Cars 2.”

All of this “liberal-media” steam blowing stemmed from the fact that the textbook kids movie bad guy’s name is Tex Richman, an oil baron out to destroy the Muppet’s theater. But despite the fact that there is no mention what-so-ever of big oil companies, environmentalism or anything else above the comprehension of toddlers and young kids, the blowhards from Fox News will find anything that they think smells remotely of a liberal-agenda in the most random of places.

Republicans Support Taxes? Oh, Wait, Never Mind.

While Republicans in Congress have been constantly stating their stonewall opposition to any sort of tax increase they have surprisingly agreed to Obama’s plan to extend the payroll tax cut. But while they agreed that it should be passed, the agreement comes with a caveat, per today’s GOP standards.

While the Democrats would like the tax cut to be funded by adding a 3.25 percent surtax on those making $1 million or more a year, the Republicans would like to put all of the weight on middle-class federal workers. Their plan would incur a pay freeze until 2015 on all federal workers and would slowly reduce the overall federal workforce by 10 percent, effectively putting over 200,000 people out of work just so millionaires could keep some pocket change.

While the Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently stated that the unemployment rate has dropped to a 2-½ year low, down from 9% to 8.6% with an additional 120,000 jobs added, the Republicans in Congress would rather continue to put more people out of work.