Just Say Why

Are we witnessing the demise of the Republican Party, just like the demise of the old Republican Party called the Wigs (Whig) Party? The Whigs were the Republican Party of th 1850s.

Has Bush put the final nail in the coffin of the Conservative Party?

This really is two questions. The Republican Party is struggling for its life and is rejecting the ultra-conservative slash-and-burn philosophy which benefits nobody but the ultra rich. Even the Conservatives are screaming for the removal of the Neo-Conservatives from the ranks. The ultra-conservatives that have taken over the White House is the same party taken over by America’s religious fanatics.

Will the Republican Party be able to get the religious freaks under control while silencing the destrictive force of the slash-and-burn conservatives? If not, it won’t survive.

Too bad, too. A one party system is not good for America.

Have you given any thought to what you plan to do after the next terrorist strike?

There’s really no question any more that the Bush Administration bungled big time when they let 9/11 happen. We don’t know if they really wanted it to happen or not. There’s plenty of speculation and evidence to make one wonder.

However, there’s no doubt that nothing has been done to make us any safer. Nothing. But — there has been plenty done to expand the reach of hatred of America. The smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud is really the mushroom cloud of ever expanding American hatred. The number of terrorists has mushroomed since we invaded Iraq.

So, let’s do the math — more terrorists, more hatred, less security. Is someone just waiting for the next attack?

And, when it happens, will Bush declare Martial Law? Of course he would. Why not.

Imagine the awful really happening. Imagine all the right-wing America haters swearing up and down that we need a Hitler to protect us. “Let’s flush our rights and freedoms, quick!” Just like Hitler’s Germany.

And, what will America’s press do? You think it was despicable what they did the first time, just imagine what they’ll do the next time.

And, what will little Georgie do? There really should be no doubt in anyone’s mind.

Are you prepared? If you wait till it happens, it’ll be far too late to stop it.

Remember that America’s Congress is a reactive community. They will only do something about little George if you make it necessary. Otherwise, it is easier for them to just ride it out and hope nothing bad happens.

Are you ready?

There has been a noticeable increase in the rumblings for impeachment. Yet, you hear all the arguments over and  over about how much worse it could be with Cheney in Charge.  There’s also the “promise” from grandma Pelosi about not pursuing impeachments.

Then, there’s the incoherent right-wing talking point about how nobody the president appoints can be impeached. Of course, just the knowledge that it’s a right-wing talking point makes it pretty much unbelievable so I’ll leave this one for my readers to ponder if they believe it.  But let’s talk about the impeachment of Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.

There has been an endless stream of crimes coming from the Republican White House, some as grave as treason. Maybe every one of these cases can be shrugged off as just a gross misunderstanding by the press or the people. However, without anyone able to investigate, all we can do is assume guilt. An innocent White House would he expediting the investigations.

So, using this simple litmus test, it’s obvious that something stinks.

Pursuing impeachments will have the right-wing nuts claiming that it’s retribution, reciprocity, and revenge. Maybe we can’t just dismiss every right-wing talking point as a lie, but we sure don’t need to spend much time in serious contemplation. If a crime has been done, America NEEDS to exact fair and reasonable consequences. Failure to do so will destroy this country as any future tyrant will be free to push the limits even further, and not fear the consequences.

Yes, indeed, we need to consider the consequences of our actions, but no action at all will be worse than the worst we can imagine, even with Cheney in charge of the country. Impeachment is necessary for this country to heal. Pardoning or ignoring the transgressions is a sure path to further crimes from future administrations.

We need to stop the nonsense, here, and now. The buck stops with us.

Impeach Bush, Cheney, and Gonzales.

We’ve all heard the phrase, power corrupts. However, it’s easy to forget exactly how corruptible it is.

I’ve witnessed a marked increase in the amount of power corrupting our local governments.

Has anyone complained about all the cameras pointing in every direction on every street corner in America. Some poor fool probably thought this would be good to help protect our citizens, but never spent a moment considering how extremely dangerous this is to our privacy and safety.

All it takes is a suspicion that you’re working for the Evil Terrorists and you will disappear forever. What if you’re car is seen in the proximity of suspicious events? With the license-plate recognition software available and in use, today, your police can track every move you make in your vehicle.

You have no way to know that this information isn’t being abused, or sold. We need to demand to be informed what this information is being used for and if it’s really necessary.
Throughout America, there has also been a notable increase in the number of unmarked police cars. A hidden and covert police force is not in our best interest. Sure, each force needs a few unmarked cars, but to avoid a Police State, we need to be able to watch and restrict the powers of our police forces.

There are many similar examples all around us every day. We need to stop and take notice, and write letters to the police chief, and the newspaper, expressing our concerns over this encroachment on our privacy and our loss of control over the power of our local police force.

What is the problem with America? Are we so self-centered that we don’t care what happens to our country? Do we just not care if it’s Bush’s Dictatorship? Do we just not care enough to think about it?

Get outraged!

Bush is following in lock step, the steps Hitler took to destroy Germany. Doesn’t that matter to you?

Bush’s latest move to marginalize Congress is exactly what Hitler did right before declaring himself The Decider.  In fact, the Republican party is hell-bent on turning America away from Congress and Bush will have an easy job of saying the Congress is worthless, and disband it. Exactly like Hitler.

Maybe this is Bush’s (and the Republican Party’s) plan, and maybe it’s not, but that doesn’t matter. We can’t let it get to this point where a president could anoint himself Supreme Leader, or The Voice of God. We have three co-equal branches of government, each designed and sworn to balance the others.  Three legs of a stool. Without any one of them, the stool falls, as does our country.

Where’s the outrage?

Why aren’t we marching in the streets to protect our country? Why are we so silent while these barbarians take over our country from within? If we don’t wake up soon, it will be too late.

We can’t wait till 2008!

For those who have been keeping track, this has been the most obstructionist congress in the history of America. Obviously I’m talking about the minority party since the majority has no reason to obstruct their own bills.

You can read these facts in the news only, most news channels report it as a general failure of the congress, not a Republican campaign to harm America.

The plan was to obstruct every piece of legislation they can. Then, start a multi-million dollar smear campaign to blame it on the Democratic party. Of course, Americans wouldn’t be so stupid as to fall for this, now would they? Would they? Huh?

Now, we Americans need things to get fixed and we need them fixed right now. We don’t have time for these political games at the expense of the country. What kind of people would actually play games with the needs of the country just to arrange for a smear campaign? Do people really vote for these traitors?

We all think of Religious Murderers as the fanatics who flew planes into our buildings trying to kill as many innocent people as possible. Sick, real sick. That one act took 3,000 lives.

That is horrific, but, that is peanuts in comparison!

Religious zealots are knowingly killing many times more than that every year, right here in America. But, we seldom hear about it.

Let’s take a simple example. 73,000 Americans died of Diabetes in 2005, and the number is skyrocketing. Many of these are children who have done nothing wrong, but being born.

What if we could flip a switch and save all these 73,000. It would be pretty immoral to just let them die. It would also be considered murder, and rightfully so.

Stem Cell research may have already cured this disease if we were allowed and encouraged to research it. The vast majority of Americans want us to aggressively pursue this research. However, a small number of religious fanatics in our government have hijacked our country and our tax dollars and are refusing to flip the switch.

No matter how you look at it, 73,000 Americans die each year because blindly-religious zealots are preventing us from doing the research we want to do.

Are these people murderers?

Are we complicit by letting them do it?

Speak up. Say NO to America’s zealots.

Don’t let the wealthy, in charge of our media, tell you that you’re not under attack. Class warfare is in full swing in America.

That, my dear reader, is why the wealthy are getting insanely rich while the rest of us are doing with less and less. Don’t listen to the fools that try to sell you the zero-sum-game nonsense. Some would argue that the rich can get richer without taking away from others. This is just plain nonsense.

It takes no more than a sliver of common sense to know that the owners are becoming multi-billionaires while those jobs they provide are receiving far less than comparable jobs in other companies. Too bad the other companies are no longer in business. The rich are getting richer at the expense of the rest of us.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the ruthlessly greedy aren’t content to just take from the rich. They take from anyone they can. Kill a needy patient, save a buck.

Does a poor person in America benefit from being an American any more than if they were a citizen in a 3rd world country? Obviously, poor is poor, no matter what country you live in. The poor do not benefit from living in America nearly as much as the wealthy do. Of our tax dollars, the very poor might get $1,000 worth of benefit, but a multi-billionaire receives billions because he lives and works in America.

Who should be paying the highest taxes?

The ignorance of the “Trickle Down Theory” is amazingly deficient. If you have one million poor people with $100, they’ll be spending $100 to survive. Give that same hundred million dollars to a muli-billionaire and he’ll spend absolutely no more than he would have spent without it.  Zero dollars trickle down. Zero dollars are put back into the economy. Trickle-down is a fallacy.
The American dream of making it rich is a wonderful dream that America needs to keep alive. The dream to be a multi-billionaire at the expense of the poor and the middle class is immoral.  Income needs to be taxed based on a combination of net worth and income. If you’re a multi-billionaire, and you make $100 of income, you should be paying 90% tax.

You wouldn’t have made a dime if it wasn’t for the rest of American.

Millionaires are good for America, billionaires are bad. Hence, our tax rates should be something more like:

First 0-$20,000 income, 2% tax
First 20,000 - 50,000, 5% tax
First 50,000 - 100,000, 7%
First 100,000 - 500,000, 14%
500,000 - 1 million, 20%
1 million - 2 million, 40%
2 million - 100 million 75%
100 million and above, 90%.

This means you can make $50 million in 50 years and never  pay more than 20% tax. That’s good for America!

Is the American Conservative party suffering from a treatable illness?

This isn’t a joke or a slam against a political party, but an honest and heart-felt concern. With all the new books on the market every day, it’s easy to miss valuable information. There have been quite a few books lately regarding the question of whether or not conservatism is an illness. The symptoms certainly point to a curable and avoidable condition.

For a little insight into the issue, I suggest you read, among other books, Glenn Greenwald’s A Tragic Legacy, John Dean’s Conservatives Without Conscience, and Dr. Bob’s The Authoritarians (online only).

The symptoms are quite obvious and at the same time frightening. Imagine someone so blinded by the convictions of their beliefs or decisions that they actually refuse to see and believe the facts to the contrary. Though it may be related, I’m not talking religion, but just simple personality definitions. Hitler, at his low point, still appreciated support from over 30% of the people. How could this possibly be? It can happen easily when the 30% are unable to believe what they’re seeing, or believe that they’re wrong.

Who are these stuck-in-the mud conservatives? Why can’t they realize they’re wrong? Why do they continually lie or appear to lie to defend their positions?

It not a lie. They really believe that up is down and black is white if that’s what’s necessary to avoid admitting they’re wrong. Now, sometimes this is the sickness you see with TV and Radio talk show hosts spewing disproven lies and misinterpreting polls, but most often, these sick people suffer from greed, more than conservatism, and they’ll quickly switch to spewing the lies out the other side of their mouths if that’s where the money is.

These Conservative symptoms are not attractive and are not successful in a society. They do not improve the odds of producing offspring. In cave men, this was a good survival trait. In a civilized society, it’s being cleaned from the gene pool. However, occasionally, it rears its ugly head, especially under times of social stress such as hard economic times or times of war.

This particular sickness tries to spread itself much like a disease. Conservatives want to kill or repress or stifle or export everyone who doesn’t agree with their twisted views. Do the Crusades and the Dark Ages ring a bell? Do you know any well known conservatives that have this attitude? A better question would be, do you know any that don’t?

Some self-proclaimed liberals have these same traits, but if they had made the wrong decision to believe the wrong interpretation, they’d be just as dogmatic about retaining that perspective as they are at retaining their self-proclaimed liberal prospective. The symptom of a Liberal is their willingness to learn and adjust to new facts.

Are conservatives doomed to be stuck in their make believe world the rest of their lives? Of course not. Just look at how many have finally realized that they can no longer bend the facts to continue their support of the Bush Debacle. Often a lesson as hard as this is enough to wake them from their stupor of infallibility. Unfortunately, though, the next spell of hard times and they’re right back in the pot.

Conservatives may need our help getting out and staying out of the pot. Education is usually a good antidote but it’s not a cure-all. Children raised in conservative environments generally carry forward the sickness and continue to try to spread it to others when they become adults. Some kids even try to spread it in schools, but that’s another story, entirely.

So, how do we save mankind from this sickness? Here’s my list of suggestions:

1. Require and provide free higher education to everyone
2. Screen teachers in all schools for this inability to assimilate facts when they contradict the teacher’s inherent prospective.
3. Remind people that it’s a sickness, not necessarily a choice.

Having written Ensign and asking him to help restore Habeas Corpus, I received the stupidest reply I would ever expect from anyone who knows what Habeas Corpus meant. Perhaps he just doesn’t.

We all know that the Bush administration has been arresting Americans here at home and kidnapping suspects in foreign countries and stealing them away to be tortured, all without allowing the accused the common sense of a right to defend themselves in a court of law. Someone (an angry neighbor?) reports you as a terrorist and you are never heard from again. IT IS HAPPENING IN AMERICA.

So, we ask our representatives to stop the criminal behavior; Ensign replies:

I do not believe that these terrorists should be afforded the same rights as civilians or military personnel who have committed crimes. These are not common criminals, nor are they soldiers. These are savage individuals who have rejected civilized society and ignored the rules of war.

Say what? Is he retarded? Does he really think that we are only kidnapping the guilty? Of course he knows better. But why would he even say something as stupid as this?

I can only come up with two possible explanations:
1. He’s mentally retarded, or
2. He knows that Nevadans are too stupid to know any better and they voted for him knowing what he was up to.

Which do you think it is? Is Ensign stupid or is Nevada? Based on the many other brain-dead replies others have posted from his office, I’m suspecting the first.

Recall Ensign! Now!

Ensign the Obstructionist

By now, I’m sure most of Nevada knows that Ensign stayed up late last night to obstruct the vote in congress. He has no evidence that he wants to share with us as to why we should stay in the war, even though it’s doing more harm to America than any other mistake we’ve ever made. Yes, he continues his school boy crush on Bush and is determined to defend him to whatever depths it takes, no matter what harm to the country.

Ensign is not representing Nevada and he’s not representing our country.

Recall Ensign! Now!