November 7, 2012

And Also...Rational Minds Prevailed

Obama was re-elected.  Love won out in three states and hate was defeated in a fourth state.  Women won and white male right wing nuts lost.  Pot won, too.  I'm predicting job growth just based on the last one...like maybe addiction centers will open across the street from Pot Shops.  So, in that respect, some states won economically...especially since regulations will also provide tax revenue.  I suppose though, it's a mixed bag...dime bag?  Heh.

But seriously, I told my mom on Sunday that I thought Obama would still win even if it was a close race.  Am I his biggest fan? No.  I was a delegate for Hillary the first time around.  I would love to see her run again in 2016, but frankly that's four years away and I'm not so sure she'd want to by then.  In the meantime, I do believe that now we will see some decent improvement in Congress.  The Republican agenda will shift in order to be more relevant to the younger generation.  Will they continue to be very conservative fiscally? Yes. Is that all bad?  No.  Will they get their way and cut important social programs.  Maybe some will get cut back, but I doubt all of them will.

I think we'll see the Republicans move in a more Libertarian direction.  Ultimately, they will still want small federal government and more control at the state level.  But perhaps they will come to realize that smaller government means in all ways, not just fiscally.  They can not ask for less intrusion by the federal government except when they decide that government needs to intrude on the private lives of their constituency.  Really, Republicans, you can not have it both ways because you want to bully others who do not look like you, act like you, or think like you.  Democrats do still need a stronger backbone, but at least Democrats have proven that caring about the needs of the many counts as much as caring for the needs for the few.  Thankfully, they have enough of what it took to win.  And also...rational minds prevailed.


August 13, 2012

The Unholy Alliance of Right Wing Corporatists and Religious Wing Nuts

ARI EZRA WALDMAN posted on Towleroad a blog post suggesting that a small amount of progress is being made in the Republican party as they appear to be taking their anti-gay rhetoric underground.  I responded in the comments that I almost wish the Republican party would hang on to it's overt anti-gay strategy...it was just starting to work to our advantage.  But yes, the shift is now towards anti-union as the new state by state strategy (which is really an anti-education message in the sheep's clothing of an anti-tax message).  Imagine the US of A as a third world country with really nice resort locations for the rich and powerful.  The working poor in what will become affordable domestic corporate factories and the very rich living their golden years basking in the sun on resorts that no one else can afford to use.  That is what the corporate loving politicians want.  Because they will be the last ones in the US of A with pensions and free healthcare (THEY would never vote against their own best interests).  So they, too, will bask in the sun on resorts with the very rich in their waning years.  These politicians have tied their personal interests so tightly to the corporate purse strings that even I am left wondering if most of those on the Democratic side of the aisle aren't also so similarly tied.  I do believe some of our elected officials start out with the good of the people in mind...at least the non-republican sorts.  But the seduction of money and power leads to political blindness and ultimately corruption.

Now we have the right wing corporatists continuing their assault on the general public by systematically feeding them messages of how horrible not only taxes are, but how horrible unions are for demanding "high" pay and pensions for public sector workers, which then, of course, results in "high" taxes.  It's a message that is becoming so well ingrained in the public psyche that people will literally vote against their own best interests because they are either too easily led astray or too lazy to do their own research.  What are their own best interests?  Well, a free quality public education so that their kids and grand kids can also find work and maintain a decent healthy standard of living and contribute to the standard of living of our FREE society.  Not interested?  How about having a well maintained system of streets and highways (don't let the chuck holes fool you, our roads need work but they are far superior to those in a third world country).  Don't care about that either?  How about when you're old and need assistance?  No more social security or medicare, even though you've paid into them your entire working lifetime?  Still don't care?  Then, probably no one will care about you or your comfort in your last years on this earth.  The privatizing of all of these and other "public services" will result in third world living conditions.  There will be the HAVES and the HAVE NOTS.  There will NOT be a middle class.  This will happen because people are generally VERY short sighted (of course there are exceptions, duh, but not enough of a voting block).  It's a known fact that people generally tend to focus on the here and now and have much difficulty thinking about or planning for the future.  Having worked in finance for over 20 years, the most common issue I see is buy now on credit because I want it now and I don't have the ready cash.  Even when put on a plan, people don't save easily, especially in the last 30 years.  Couple that way of thinking with the indoctrination of "NO" or low taxes, which is so insidious, that the remaining members of the middle class are willing to vote against their long term best interests to "save" a few bucks now on taxes.  They do this not knowing or somehow not believing that they're giving away their future security to line the pockets of corporate thieves.

So why do these money grubbing corporatists align themselves with the religious right wing nuts?  Don't the churches minister to the people after all? Well religious institutions are the best way to get the biggest cache of resources, of course!  Corporatists think in terms of resources and, in particular, how to exploit resources to line their own pockets.  Religious institutions are a very, very, very large source of voters in a captive audience.  For one thing, they congregate weekly to hear messages (purportedly from God, but that's another rant for another day).  Why not plant a message of corporate interest in the minds of so many voters all at once.  Just start giving donations to churches, etc. and tell them how much you agree with their "holier than thou" messages and while scratching their backs plant the message of how many more sheep will flock to them if they scratch the corporates' backs.  And so the unholy alliance of money grubbing corporatists and religious wing nuts was born.  Then when the younger generation grew up and began to question the validity of anti-gay stances, the corporatists moved on to their main agenda.  Anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-women, etc. messages were just the BAIT to hook a huge voting block.  The main goal is and always has been accumulation of money and thus power.  The religious right wing nuts are just a means to an end.  It's the corporatists and their politician puppets that will attempt to undermine society as we know it, knew it, and hoped it would become.  My hope is that the general public will get their collective heads out of the sand and come together to say no to being brainwashed by these messages.  Pay attention to the history of mankind.  It's always been about power (money being the symbol).  Those who threaten the power base are the enemy...especially if they are "different" than those who see themselves as the ones in power.  In the US of A, being a person of color, a woman, a homosexual, a financially poor person, an old person, a disabled person, a person of not the predominant faith (or similar in faith)etc. is a threat to the power base if allowed to combine their numbers.  So divide and conquer.  Pit one against the other and ALWAYS keep your eye on the power (i.e. the money).

May 28, 2012

The War on Women...and Education

Yeah, I haven't been posting in a long while.  I've been terribly busy with my education and the education of others.  But my employer (a conservatively run school district with a very conservative right wing nut BOE and their hand picked superintendent) has been waging an insidious war on teachers and related educators this year, so I feel the need to say something.  They're out to destroy the district by destroying the union and chasing away great experienced teachers.  They're doing this all in the name of "reform."  But really it's the corporate greed monster that feeds them.  The board of education for this district is almost all right wing nuts whose campaigns were funded directly and indirectly by organizations like ALEC.

Meanwhile, there has also been a War on Women being waged by generally the same right wing nuts.  Dorothy Snarker put it well today in her blog.  As I hope my 3 remaining readers know, there is a concerted effort by the republican party to take away women's rights over their own bodies that has become much more focused and actually has gained some traction even though a majority of people probably think these ideas will fade away if they just ignore them.  I'm sorry, but I'm pretty sure at this point the right wing nuts are HOPING people will ignore them long enough for them to revoke our freedoms.  So below is my response to Dorothy Snarker's blog post:

Might I add that concurrently there is also a War on Education! I think there is a HUGE correlation between these two "planks" of the right wing nuts. There is a lot of money behind these so called movements...or as I like to call them "bowel movements." Ignorance begets more ignorance which begets a serious loss of freedom! I do not think the middle of the road average American is really aware of this because the right wing nuts have them focused on the almighty tax dollar and how many they could be losing. Of course, if they REALLY understood money they'd realize that the lack of a good free education leads to LESS income and LESS freedom. And it appears that the right wing nuts see women's rights as the biggest roadblock to the dumbing down of the American society...hmmmm. Come to think of it, education is one the largest employers of women. After all, if you keep women uneducated and pregnant you'll end up with a huge source of cheap dumb labor...and much larger profits. But seriously you stupid right wing nuts, who really wants to live in a country with no creativity, no arts, no intellectual advances, and no real freedom? I mean, do you really want the USA to become a rather large third world country?