democrats

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Political Identity Crisis


For my entire adult life I have been a registered Democrat.  I am not certain what in my childhood pushed me in that direction as both my parents were registered Republicans.  I loved my parents.  Politics was never discussed in our house so that was not an influence.  But I know my parents supported Eisenhower and Nixon.  In 1968 when Nixon was elected president I was in the army but I did not trust him for reasons I am not certain of.  I was not of age to vote but I remember having strong negative feelings about him, even though I was already in the military.  Those feelings did not change some years later when he was responsible for a huge increase in our military pay.

I bring up my military background because I have very strong feelings about the military.  I am very proud of my service and feel very protective towards it when I see anyone threaten any part of their existence.  That is, I have never fully embraced the base closures and reductions that started under the first Bush and have continued to this day.

Among conservatives, it seems to me, there is a belief that if you are a registered Democrat you are not strongly in the military’s corner.  Nothing could be further from the truth for me.  I guess that means that my beliefs about the military are extremely Republican.  I have no desire to change that in the least.

Then there is my somewhat strange stand of being anti-abortion but pro-choice.  For me there is nothing conflicting about such a stand.  I think abortion to be morally wrong, reprehensible.  But since I view it as a moral issue I also believe in the idea that each person must have the right to make a decision about the morality, or lack of morality, associated with abortion.  Every woman must be given the right to decided if having an abortion is the right thing to do.  Were I to be asked by such a woman, I would always tell her that I think she should not have an abortion, regardless of the condition that made her pregnant or of any implication of the state of the child upon birth.  I simply believe that upon conception there exists a human life.  We as a society decry the taking of a human life and I extend that to mean “at any stage of life.”  To differentiate is to abrogate responsibility.  This, quite sadly, includes cases of rape, incest, and where it is reasonable to expect that a live birth will result in a child with substantial physical and/or mental problems.  I am also against the death penalty for the very same reasons.  I believe in consistency and I think it inconsistent to believe in one but not the other.

I think that we as Americans have a responsibility to the unfortunates of our society.  That includes programs such as welfare and other such government sponsored programs.  But that said, I also think we have gone beyond the point of reasonableness in the administration of these programs.  We have made it easier for some to continue on such welfare programs than it is desirable for the individual to remove themselves from its roles.  The size of social programs need reduction, desperately.

We are one of the most violent nations in the world.  We want all deserving Americans to be afforded the right to possess the fire arms of their choice but we are unwilling to take the responsible task of clearing each person for their right to possess any single arm.  It seems to me reasonable that any law-abiding person would not mind a background check to ensure they have not at some point in their past given up the right to legally possess a fire arm.  I do not think there should be any restriction, with a very few exceptions, on the type of fire arm a person might purchase, just on how that comes to pass.  Any reasonable person who truly desires to have responsible purchase and sale of fire arms necessarily wants safeguards in place to restrict the criminal element from gaining access to such arms.  That does not exist in America today.  That means Americans, right now, do not mind criminals purchasing fire arms since they refuse to allow reasonable background checks.

In that same vein, Americans are also unwilling to provide for the proper incarceration of criminals, particularly violent criminals.  America’s laws in the prosecution of violent criminals can vary greatly from one state to the next.  A criminal can commit a murder, admit to it, and walk free because of certain deals that prosecutors make.  If we are ever to get a substantial reduction in our crime rate we must do several things.  One is a more uniform sentencing criteria from one state to the next.  Part of that would include a universal minimum sentence requirement in all states, to include cases where a criminal makes a plea deal.  Minimum sentencing would eliminate any criminal from getting “a walk” on a serious crime because of his help in prosecuting another criminal.  But this also means we are going to have to build more facilities to accommodate the increased prisoner population.  We also have to increase the size of our police forces and their budgets of course.

There is no place for God in our American government.  God is a purely religious concept that has as many variations as there are people in the United States.  To allow God into the government, regardless of the level, necessarily requires definition.  The creates the problem of what definition is accepted, and ultimately, how is that definition fair to all the people of the United States.  To be fair, there are millions of people, other than atheists, who do not believe in God as the Judeo-Christain concept goes.  Ultimately those people are opted-out when such a definition is decided upon.  Our government must be better than that.  It is better that all religious definition be removed from our government than to allow even an amalgam in.

I believe in my state that my district US representative and both my state’s US Senators have failed us.  The are more concerned with political expediency that constituent desires.  I have heard nothing out of the Elizabeth Warren camp in her opposition to Scott Brown, the incumbent Republican.  My tendency now is to vote for Brown even though I am a Democrat because I think the arrogance of the Democrat party in Massachusetts has resulted in too much failure.  I can only think Warren is displaying some of that arrogance now, thinking Massachusetts Democrat tendencies will propel her come November.  She will be surprised if she continues to think that way.

I am disillusioned with America’s Republican and Democrat political parties because I think it painfully obvious that each has allowed PACs to rule its positions, to select its candidates in some cases, and to ultimately become insensitive to the needs of its constituency.  Each party has with lies, which it euphemistically calls spin, to justify positions it takes.  Each party uses various fear tactics to reel in voters to the positions they desire, even when such positions are at the peril of the very voters they represent.  As Pogo said so eloquently, and so long ago, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

 

 

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Our Politicains Are Brainwashing Us


Please note, I did not assign this to any particular political party, and that is because both major political parties are equally guilty.  This is not anything new either.  Political parties have been trying to do this forever.  It is not anything new.  The new part is their use of the media to convince people of the righteousness of their position.  At this point you are  probably saying that that is what they are supposed to do.  The response to that is an emphatic no!

In the early 19th Century there was a large portion of our country that was illiterate, and an even larger portion that had something less than an 8th grade education.  As time passed that changed, but political parties approach to the average American has not.  The Whigs, the Bull Moose, the Republicans, and Democrats have each partaken in a manipulations of the truth and outright lies all in an effort to ally people to their way of thinking, the right way according to them.

Democrats love to use the absolutism that green house gases are causing a global warm and they make sure you are looking at industrialists to take the blame.  The fact is, plant life itself causes greenhouse gases.  Democrats love to give that portion of the truth that bolsters their take on global warming.  What needs to be given is the whole truth along with what is in doubt and unknown.

Right now the Republican party is saying that taxing the upper 1% is being unfairly targeted for a tax increase.  Gov. Romney showed in his 15% tax rate that their statements are rather disingenuous.  They claim that it will stifle those who create jobs from doing that.  Really?  You mean they will no longer desire to make money so they are going to withdraw from all market, because that is exactly what you are saying since that 1% has little effect of creating jobs.  Companies create jobs and as long as any company desires to make a profit it will create more jobs to do just that but only as the market bears.  Thirty years ago that same 1% paid triple in taxes, or more, than is demanded of them today.  It was also a Republican idea to have a minimum tax.  Why have they run from that now?

Democrats are famous for their gun control moves.  Their problem is, they have never offered gun owners anything that resembled a guarantee that the individual’s right to own such weapons will not be impeded.  They would be better served by coming up with a system whereby those guilty of violent crimes spend a lot of time in jail and are properly monitored upon their release.  That done, then maybe they can offer ideas on gun control.  But if they do, they had better have an ironclad guarantee along with it.

Republicans chafe at the idea of increased regulation of anything.  Their claim is that we are overregulated as it is, and that government is interfering in people’s private lives.  They say they want government out of our lives.  Last thing first, you cannot get government out of your life.  It is a fact of life that has nothing to do with the type of government but rather mankind’s desire to live in a society.  Orderly society have rules and regulations to live by.  The more freedom demanded for the individual the more extensive the rules and regulations regarding those freedoms.  One of the purposes of those rules and regulations is to protect us from ourselves.  Humans can be extremely greedy, lazy, gluttonous, and other things that have the possibility of hurting others.  That is where governments come into play to protect the individual from the shortcomings of others.  It is that simple.

Today’s politicians take the current issues and become rigid in their position.  They do this successfully because they have convinced their constituents that theirs is the only correct position and to move away from that position, even slightly, is just wrong.  They take issues where 75% of Americans feel one particular way and because they are in the other 25%, and in power, they pay millions of dollars in advertising to change the thinking of the average American so it lines up with their thinking.

Politicians are also giving the appearance of being at the beck and call of the PACs that fund their reelections campaigns.  Again, these PACs do not have the public’s interest at heart, even when they say they do, but have the ideals of their contributors front and center.  Politicians allow themselves to be bought off by such special interest groups.  God forbid they should stand up to one of their sacred cows to stand with the people who elected them.

I find it incredible that the house and senate both to have ethics committees.   I see no proof that any of them have any understanding of ethical behavior.  One of the prime ideals of ethical behavior is that you do not give even the appearance of unethical behavior.  Senators and congressmen regularly not only give the appearance of unethical behavior, they flaunt unethical behavior.  For example, they should never accept any gifts from any corporation vying for government contracts, government approval, or any other government action that they have sway over.  But such action happen daily.  They allow corporations to wine and dine them at a rate well above the $25 a civil servant is allowed.  They take ride in corporate jets, get seats in very expensive corporate booths at sporting events, take gifts of all sorts and supposedly they claim that such gifts do not affect their participation in events that corporation has in the government.

The bottom line is, we as Americans need to do more thinking for ourselves.  We cannot allow ourselves to be swayed so much by the politically motived ads that pollute the airwaves at election time.  We must be willing to investigate the truth of any and all claims made by every politician, and when they do not line up with the truth, we need to make that known to the politicians involved.

Right now the Republican candidates for president are making all sorts of claims of what Obama did or did not do.  What they do not offer is how they were complicit in things not happening that should have or vice versa.  They are not the least bit forthcoming in their own failings.  And when the time comes, the Democrats will practice the very same less than honest portrayals of the Republican presidential candidate.

Americans need to understand one thing very clearly.  The president cannot make a single law, only congress can.  And while presidents make lots of claims of what they intend on doing, without the cooperation of congress, none of it will happen.  Quite simply this means, if you do not like where we are right now, look to congress as the problem, and then at yourself, to find the root of all our problems.  We do not live in a dictatorship and the influence of any president is rather limited.  Do not allow all the various candidates to convince you otherwise about the president or any other person they are running against.