Republicans and Tea Baggers have figured out a new way to encourage their beliefs in the sanctity of marriage. Their latest assault on programs that are trying to combat the effects of unemployment has had a secondary effect. Married couples throughout the country, but especially in Michigan and Florida, states that have especially high unemployment, have been forced to forego divorce simply because they can’t afford it. In most middle and low income families the principal financial asset is the home, but with the destruction of the real estate market and the glut of homes for sale, divorcing couples aren’t able to sell their homes in order to divide their holdings and are therefore forced to stay together. Good for you Republicans, I’m sure you think God is on your side in this one too.
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Sara Palin is at war with Planned Parenthood. This is understandable, as Sara believes neither in planning nor in parenting.
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The Death Penalty is back in the news because of the short supply of the drugs needed to kill those sentenced to death. It’s almost funny, listening to various officials who have a log on the fire, speak about the humane qualities of this or that drug. As one who has had a number of surgeries, I can tell you that once they knock you out it doesn’t matter what they do to you. You feel nothing, so it really doesn’t matter what drug they use to kill you. They could cut off your head and you wouldn’t know it.
The real argument, especially considering the many convicted felons who have now been exonerated, or for whom DNA technology was too late in arriving, should be whether or not to execute at all. I have always been a firm believer in an eye for an eye but to make that work you have to be absolutely sure, whose eye you’re poking out. Existing evidence states firmly, that we as a nation have been pretty pathetic in getting that one right. So until we can come up with something better than beyond a reasonable doubt, I think we should drop the death penalty all together.
It’s not that reasonable doubt isn’t a great criteria in concept, it’s just that in reality it often isn’t applied very skillfully. Just like, humans are imperfect and sometimes, commit murder, members of their same imperfect species are sometimes judges, juries, prosecutors and lawmen and they too, sometimes, are subject to human faults and some poor innocent bastard hangs for it. Better we should let every criminal due to be executed, rot in jail, (no walk in the park) than we should execute one innocent man.
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Quiz of the week: Can you name the Republican Congressman responsible for this delicious quote?
“The conflict in Libya is threatening to explode into Africa.”
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Chris Christie looked like a real old fashioned American leader when he burst on the scene in New Jersey telling it like it was and taking no guff from anyone. That’s great, everyone likes the John Wayne approach but it only goes so far when you back it up by making really horrendous decisions about essential programs that effect the way the people in the state lead their lives.
In the first place, none of the states in this country are going to go bankrupt. That’s just another Republican smoke screen to allow them to succeed in their small government agenda. They want this because small governments only need small minds to run them, which would mean that the likes of Sara Palin, Haley Barber and Michelle Bachman would be acceptable as a president. Big government needs big minds to run it, which would cut the Republican/Tea Party field down to almost zero.
But back to Christie: Balancing the state budget is certainly important but you just can’t do it over the bodies of your kids. In his determination not to tax his rich supporters the chubby governor has cut the money going to the Clinton school district 38%. That’s criminal. No, it is. It’s in violation of state law in New Jersey to cut school funds below a certain plateau. Christie has done this and if the State Attorney General had any stones he would be indicting Christie even as I write this.
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Ann Coulter, one of the Right Wing blonde bimbos and a shill for Stansbury and Associates seems to be upset about our action in Libya, whining that the Left didn’t want us to attack Iraq when they were oppressing their own people, or Iran now that they are oppressing theirs. She fails to notice that neither the Iraqis nor the Iranians revolted so they didn’t give us a chance to help them. She also fails to remember that our attack on Iraq was based on non-existence of WMD’s and the futile hope that we would get oil from them, neither of which was true, not a request for help from the anti-Saddam ticket. Her memory is about as far reaching as her ability to think straight.
She searches in vain for a description of some American interest in supporting the rebels in Libya. She would, because like most of her greedy ilk she only sees a virtue in what she can get for herself. The idea of keeping a bunch of people from getting murdered only appeals to the Right if they can make a serious profit from it.
Coulter, like the rest of her fellow travelers, can see no advantage in supporting the people of Libya against an insane dictator. That’s because she’s not bright enough to see that helping Arabs is better medicine against terrorism than killing them.
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I find the Right’s attacks on the mainstream media kind of funny. When you think about it, the mainstream media is all owned by huge corporations whose interests are more Right than Left. I’m speaking principally about TV because to say that the Far Right has an opinion about newspapers, which you actually have to read, (frightening word) would be to say that they have an opinion about something they know absolutely nothing about, and we’d never want to accuse them of that. The fact is, that all the TV and most of the magazines, newspapers and radio, are owned by people who vote Republican and whose financial interests are best served by the Republican Party. So why is the Right attacking its own?
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Mike Murphy finally said something I agree with. He thinks high oil prices are a good thing. He feels that nothing will be done to get us off the oil tit as long as gas prices are low enough for us to afford to joy ride. I agree 100%. The biggest argument against non-fossil fuel energy is the cost. The solution; make gasoline cost more than the alternative. Do it by taxing the hell out of it and using the money to replace our infrastructure. There is a new roadbed currently in the development stage that would not only give us better roads but would, if used only for non-urban road bedding, supply all the energy need for the entire country and give us a surplus that could be sold off to our neighbors. That’s how money should be spent. That’s how you eliminate a deficit.
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I have finally found someone who should be the Republican Party’s next presidential candidate. Actually he’d be better in 2016 because it would be a shame to waste him now. His name is Mike Rogers, ® Michigan, on, the House Energy, Commerce and Intelligence Committees. He’s smart, straight to the point and logical. He should not be allowed to debate the other Republican candidates. The kind of stupidity expressed by the likes of Palin, Bachman, Armey, Angle and Sessions, must be contagious.
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Speaking of Jeff Sessions. He really went out of his way to show how little he actually knows about how things work when he was on Meet the Press, with Chuck Schumer last week. Schumer was explaining that an oil subsidy put in place when oil was selling for $17 per barrel had no place in our budget now that oil is selling at $100 per barrel and oil companies are making money faster than they can count it. Sessions actually disagreed with him showing that either he is a shill for the oil companies or that he is completely brain dead.
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No wonder we have budget problems. We shell out over $460M a year in grants to Somalia. That’s so they can buy bullets to shoot down our Blackhawks. We send 80 thousand tons of food to them every month. This is a country where the birthrate is 6.1 kids per woman. Maybe we should include a ton of condoms in every hundred or so tons of food.
This is a country where 58% of it imports come from UAE, 20% from Yemen and 4% from Saudi Arabia. And they are importing that stuff with our money. I know we feel that helping poor countries makes them feel good about us and I certainly don’t oppose most foreign aid but I don’t think it’s working in Somalia.