Month: September 2011

Republican Solution To Jobs Crisis: Promote Importation Of Dangerous Snakes, Including The Burmese Python, Already A Major Threat To Everglades!

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In the midst of the jobs crisis in America, members of the House of Representatives Republican majority are holding hearings trying to prevent an end to the transportation and importation of nine varieties of snakes, including the Burmese Python, Boa Constrictors, and Anacondas, that have become to inundate the Florida Everglades, posing a risk to other species, and ultimately, to humans! We have the report of a Burmese Python swallowing a live alligator whole and then exploding from the effect of doing it!

A snake breeder testified that the ban proposed by Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson and Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar, would interfere with the right of snake owners and snake breeders to purse their hobby and livelihood, and prevent them from moving interstate!

Are we living in an insane society, which already allows the abuse of gun ownership, to the detriment of thousands of innocent victims every year, by saying that there should be allowance for BREEDING of snakes that are dangerous to all of us, and come from tropical climates in Asia, Africa and Latin America? Is it necessary for one to pursue his hobby or livelihood in an “industry” which already is laying havoc in the Everglades, killing various species and threatening Floridians who go into that national park?

It is guaranteed that the snakes, particularly the extremely dangerous Burmese Pythons, which number 100,000 in the Everglades by reckless breeding and escapes from captivity, will start to spread not just through all of Florida, but eventually be a threat all over the United States!

This is a clear and present danger to our security, and yet the Republicans latch onto this insane proposal as an interference to job growth! It makes one wonder about their ethics, their sense of right and wrong, their understanding of human needs!

We do NOT need to engage in such dangerous “commerce” in order to revive our economy, and if such a law passes by some looney reasoning that it is necessary, President Obama needs to veto it and send it into the dustbins of history, making the Republicans who sponsored it look as what they are: CRAZY LUNATICS!

The Urgent, Dire Need Nationally For Public Works Projects!

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During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the federal government, under the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, invested in public works projects of all kinds, through the WPA (Works Projects Administration), PWA (Public Works Administration), the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps), the NYA (National Youth Administration) and other government agencies.

Improvements and expansion of bridges, tunnels, canals, highways, national parks, national forest land, schools, libraries, hospitals, post offices, military and naval bases, city and state public buildings, and support of historical projects, artistic work, music, theater, and other creative activities, all gave hope to millions of Americans and improved the quality of life in America!

Here we are 80 years later, and the same challenges beckon us, as there is a terrible crisis of work NOT done on transportation, conservation, education, health care, homeland security and a myriad of other activities that need public investment and support!

What are we waiting for? How can we remain competitive if we do not invest in the future of our nation?

This is not the time for politics, but action!

Student Loan Forgiveness As Method To Revive The American Economy!

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A proposal by Moveon.org to have the federal government pass legislation promoting student loan forgiveness as a method to revive the American economy is a great idea that needs to be strongly considered and acted upon!

We have millions of American students who have been saddled with thousands of dollars, sometimes tens of thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands in debt, in the pursuit of their education to acquire a bachelors degree, a masters degree, a doctoral degree, a medical, law or dental or other professional degree.

The advancement of these young people toward their educational accomplishments is not just good for them as individuals, but for the entire nation, as we NEED more educated people, and more professionals in all fields!

But by burdening them with onerous debt that many cannot pay, or cause them to struggle to survive economically, we undermine the growth of the economy, as this makes it difficult for these students to buy homes and cars, spend money on consumer goods, and generally to add to the economy because of the heavy debt payments, which only enrich greedy financial institutions who have no concern about the “slavery” they are imposing on the future generations!

There is no better cause than to liberate the future generations, and allow them to contribute positively to the economy of the future!

So instead of having millionaires and billionaires continue to acquire wealth and not give a damn about their country, let’s invest in the young, the future, and do what other countries do–fund education beyond high schools, see education as the most important job of government along with health care, and in so doing, revive the American Dream that we hear so much about, but do not do anything to advance!

The Total Hypocrisy Of Evangelical Christian Minister Pat Robertson: Divorce Mate If He Or She Has Alzheimers Disease!

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Evangelical Christian Minister Pat Robertson has long been a leader in the Christian Right Movement, having been involved in the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition groups in the 1980s and 1990s. along with others, including the late Jerry Falwell.

Robertson has long been controversial for his statements and actions, regarding liberals, environmentalists, feminists, gays and other groups. And he also ran for President in the Republican primaries of 1988, claiming that God was behind him.

He has always emphasized “family values” on his Christian Broadcasting Network, and continues to have millions of followers, despite his controversial stands on many issues.

Now 81, he made the controversial statement after the Mid Atlantic Earthquake in August that it was caused by people who “act gay”. He had earlier blamed September 11 on the various groups mentioned above.

He has been known for statements far greater in number than the above, all of which would make anyone wonder about his sanity and his ethics!

But now, in the latest controversy, he suggests that IF a person has a mate who has Alzheimers Disease, it is proper to divorce and find someone else!

Imagine that: forget the vows one takes in marriage regarding being there in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Instead, pursue one’s own selfish interests, and give up all morals and ethics, as long as you put yourself first!

What kind of a religious leader would preach such outrageous ideas to his followers, many of whom are young, and already live in a society where marriage is not valued, and divorce is looked at as something to be expected?

Pat Robertson should give up his ministry and his television network and stop speaking out, as everything he professes is simply poison, hate, and insanity!

And one has to wonder if he has the early signs of Alzheimers Disease himself! What a disgraceful “good Christian” this man is, an embarrassment to the concept of Jesus Christ and religion!

Rick Perry: Dangerous For The Republican Party And America’s Future! He Must Be Stopped!

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Texas Governor Rick Perry may have flubbed a bit in his debate performance in Tampa on Monday, but he remains the front runner for the Republican Presidential nomination as of today, and it is looking more likely that he really could end up as the nominee of the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan!

This is dangerous for the party and the nation, as Perry has many shortcomings, as well as dangerous aspects in his background and viewpoints!

For the party, Perry represents a threat to the Establishment Republicans, the middle, the mainstream of the party in the past, and gives power to the extremists of the Tea Party Movement!

With Jon Huntsman apparently floundering, even though the author feels he came across very well in the past two debates, the only hope in the field of candidates is Mitt Romney, with all of his shortcomings and faults, but it will not be easy to overcome the Tea Party takeover of the party!

One could say that if the party nominates Perry, they will lose, and that will be, therefore, only their problem as to how to recover from a disastrous defeat in 2012.

But with the economy so bad right now, the idea is starting to develop that maybe, just maybe, Barack Obama COULD lose in 2012, giving us President Perry, and possibly a Tea Party Congress, enough to make one hysterical and give one nightmares, and the purpose here is NOT to joke, but be very serious!

Were Perry to win, we would face the following, with and without a Tea Party majority in Congress:

1. We would have a President who is not very smart, not very curious to learn, not open to new ideas, very rigid in his right wing beliefs, unwilling to compromise, arrogant, cocky, with a swagger about him, and not willing to be transparent in his activities in the White House!

2. We would have a complete takeover of right wing conservatism, leading to total deregulation, cutting of taxes even further on the rich, attempts to destroy several government agencies or make them ineffective in their work, and resulting in widespread corruption due to “cronyism”!

3. We would have a President who would be arrogant toward the outside world, create crises and possible interventions in other countries, and boast about “American exceptionalism”, undermining relations even with our allies and friends around the world.! The neoconservative view of foreign policy would dominate.

4. Civil Liberties would be violated worse than any President in modern times, and civil rights enforcement for Latinos, African Americans, women and gays would end!

5. We would see a theocracy develop, as Rick Perry would constantly invoke Jesus Christ, talk about God and religion more than any President, including Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush, and promote as much combination of church and state as one can imagine might happen.

6. The economy would NOT get better, and instead we would have more poverty, deprivation, and human suffering, similar to the reality in Texas under Governor Perry.

7. War would be declared on environmentalists, and scientists, in the name of industry and religion, undermining our education system nationally, as well as our health care programs.

8. Justice and fairness in the law would be undermined, as capital punishment would become a virtue, and the courts, including the Supreme Court, would become the most right wing in American history since the Gilded Age of the late 19th century.

9. The goal of a Perry Administration would be the destruction of Social Security, Medicare, and all other social safety net programs, and basically the repeal of the Progressive Era of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Great Society of Lyndon B. Johnson, and the other reforms under Richard Nixon in the early 1970s.

10. Fundamentally, America would go back a full century to the Gilded Age, with the total or near total repeal of the 20th century, which made America the envy of the free world!

This is serious stuff here, no joking, and all efforts must be made in the Republican Party to defeat Rick Perry, and if that fails, and even if it succeeds, do everything necessary to reelect Barack Obama as the only hope for moving forward in the second decade of the 21st century!

A Leading Senate Race For 2012: Senator Scott Brown Vs. Elizabeth Warren In Massachusetts!

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It is clear that one of the leading Senate races of 2012, and one of the best hopes to regain a Republican seat, is the potential match up of Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Harvard Law School Professor and consumer rights advocate Elizabeth Warren!

Warren helped Barack Obama to create the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but so antagonized Republicans that it became clear that she could not be approved by the Senate to become its head, and the GOP is working very hard to weaken the new agency!

Warren is an inspirational reformer, but it will be hard to win the seat from Brown, who has come across as moderate and mainstream more than any Republican Senator with the exception of the two Maine Republicans, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins! Brown has worked hard to gain support from the normally liberal Democratic constituency of Massachusetts politics.

Warren, being an intellectual, might have trouble convincing blue collar Democrats to vote for her, and additionally, she faces up to six opponents for the Democratic nomination, which is far from guaranteed. The primary takes place a full year from now, and therefore, allows less than two months from winning the primary to the fall election against Scott Brown, who will face no opposition in the Republican Party statewide or nationally, just happy to have another Republican vote for organization of what might be a majority GOP Senate in 2013!

The Loss Of The Anthony Weiner Congressional Seat In New York: Its Meaning

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The 9th Congressional District in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, was represented in the past decade by an aggressive, outspoken Democrat named Anthony Weiner, who was noticeable for his fighting spirit against conservatives, the Tea Party Movement, and the Republican Party. He made a lot of news with his confrontations on the floor of the House of Representatives in the past few years.

But Anthony Weiner also had a fatal flaw, not unique to him among politicians, and that was his private sexual drives, which led to him putting text and pictures of his naked body on Facebook and Twitter, erupting in a scandal which forced him to resign in June of this year.

Now, as a result of his antics and stupidity, a district which was Democratic controlled since 1923, has gone to the Republican nominee, and it is being interpreted in different ways.

Let the author point out that this district was the one in which he resided for 15 years before his move to Florida in 1989, and he lived specifically in the community known as Fresh Meadows in the Flushing area of Queens County.

The thought that MY district is now represented by a Republican is hard enough to take, but the issue is its meaning!

Some would say it is an aberration, and a reaction against Anthony Weiner himself, as a similar situation with an upstate New York district, traditionally Republican for a very long time, went to the Democrat a few months ago after a similar sex scandal.

It should also be pointed out that this district will disappear due to the mandated change in district lines for all members of the House of Representatives after reapportionment of seats with census results now in, and therefore, the whole district will be divided among others, with New York losing two seats in the House of Representatives. So the new Republican, as much as if the Democratic candidate had won, is unlikely to be able to stay in Congress more than one year. In fact, since Weiner was personally not well liked in the New York delegation, he probably would have been thrown into a primary against a fellow Democrat in a newly established district, with a good chance of being defeated, without the scandal which unseated him!

Having said all that, some see the defeat as a repudiation of Barack Obama on the economy.

Others see it as a repudiation of the stand on Israel and the Palestinians that Obama and his administration have promoted, seen at least by Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, a large portion of the Jewish population of that district, as anti Israel.

Still others see it as a repudiation of the Democratic nominee, who while Jewish, supported gay marriage in the state legislature, something that Orhodox and Hasidic Jews loathe with passion!

Does this mean that the general Jewish population is ready to abandon Barack Obama and the Democrats nationally?

The answer is who knows, but while it seems highly doubtful that large numbers of Jews will vote Republican, it is certainly a warning to Obama and the Democrats to work hard to convince Jews that Obama is NOT working against Israel’s interests, that they will fight for more jobs, and at the same time, NOT back off on gay marriage and gay rights!

Orthodox and Hasidic Jews have the right to be against gay marriage, as much as many Catholics and evangelical Christians, but that does not mean that their personal prejudices should deny equality in all ways to gay and lesbian Americans! This needs to be seen as a civil rights issue!

Since the percentage of Jews who are Orthodox or Hasidic is small, and since most Jews believe in the New Deal and Great Society programs that continue to be defended by Barack Obama and his party, this election, most likely, is simply an aberration!

Defending Rick Perry Against The Tea Party Movement?

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Texas Governor Rick Perry is so wrong on so many issues, and would be a horrible choice for the Republican Party and the country for the office of President of the United States!

However, although he is wrong on most issues, last night’s debate actually demonstrated that he was correct on at least two matters for which he was booed by the heavily Tea Party Movement audience.

On the issue of allowing in state college tuition rates for the children of illegal immigrants, which is permitted in Texas, Perry justified it courageously and properly, rather than taking the short sighted, narrow minded, bigoted view of the Tea Party activists who are well known to be nativists, as well as in many cases, racists, when one looks at their behavior and actions!

Also, the debate over the HPV virus vaccination of 11-12 year old girls, who could get cervical cancer if they have sexual intercourse, while dropped in Texas after original enforcement with an opt out for parents, brought up an important issue of public health. Perry said he would always defend life, and was booed by the audience, which cheered Michele Bachmann for her denunciation of taking away the right from parents on this matter of vaccination.

While parents should certainly have a say on matters involving their children, it is a requirement that all children take certain vaccinations before they can attend school, as otherwise, they could spread serious diseases that have become insignificant because of the required vaccinations.

And, no matter what parents might feel, the public safety is more important their individual rights to make decisions that might affect other children’s health!

Many parents these days are far from paragons of virtue in using good judgment for their children’s welfare, and to believe that no girls at a young age will engage in sexual intercourse, when it is clear that many do, regrettably as that is, is living in a dream world! So to protect against the HPV virus is the responsible thing to do!

So at least on these two matters, Rick Perry took the proper stand, but it will likely hurt him with many Tea Party activists! Whether it will dampen his chances for the GOP Presidential nomination, we shall see!

Poverty And Health Care Denial: The Disgrace Of American Democracy!

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New statistics show that America, the ideal democracy in many people’s minds, has the horrific record of all time highs in number of people mired in poverty, and the number of people who lack health insurance coverage.

The Census Bureau reports that 15.1 percent, the highest since 1983, are in poverty, with a large percentage of these being children.

46.2 million, up 2.6 million since 2009, are in poverty, the number increasing because of the Great Recession.

Meanwhile, 49.9 million, an all time high, lack any health insurance coverage.

The concept that about one out of six Americans are in poverty and lack health care is a disgrace on American democracy!

How can we talk about American “exceptionalism” with such statistics?

How can the Republican Party act as if there is no crisis in America, and that instead they condemn those who are down and out to perpetual poverty, and yet they can sleep at night?

And how can a nation where so many talk about being “religious” can we see the hard hearted attitude of so many Right Wing Christians toward these poor people, and see cheers in the debate last night over the idea that a person without health insurance should NOT be given necessary health care, that it is not the responsibility of all of us to help those in need, and instead let that person die? And this from those who fight against abortion rights, and yet accept and cheer capital punishment!

The hypocrisy of so called “religious” people in the midst of poverty and deprivation is mind boggling!

The Debate Audience In Tampa: What Are We Becoming? Shame Over Their Behavior!

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In watching the CNN-Tea Party debate in Tampa, Florida, last night, beyond the points made by the potential GOP Presidential candidates, one characteristic stood out, a very ugly characteristic!

The audience at the debate demonstrated just how nasty, mean spirited, self centered, and lacking in humanity the Tea Party crowd have become!

It has become a disease in America, if one wants to believe that the Tea Party movement is spreading far and wide, which the author hopes is NOT the case!

Witness the following:

1. When Rick Perry brought up the idea of Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke being treasonous, the crowd cheered wildly.
2. When the subject of a 30 year old male who chose not to have health insurance coverage and then is in the hospital for six months, the reaction of the audience is to applaud the idea that he should not be put into intensive care to save his life, that he should die, that there is no responsibility for others in medical crisis.
3. The hatred of the audience toward illegal immigration, and readiness to destroy Social Security and Medicare was obvious.
4. The refusal of the audience to consider that Ron Paul had some good points about our foreign policy causing a lot of our woes financially, and instead booing him, was disturbing.
5. There were many other moments of poor behavior by the crowd, too numerous to list here.

But beyond all this, the fact that the audience at the Reagan Library debate last week cheered and applauded the fact that Rick Perry had been responsible for the execution of more prisoners than any governor in history, was also very disconcerting, as if the death penalty is the answer, when it is well known that mistakes ARE made and have been made in Texas and elsewhere, with denial of new evidence, refusal to recognize that some testimony against some defendants is unreliable, and that the death penalty is unevenly utilized against minorities as compared to whites!

If this is the country we are becoming, the equivalent of the Tea Party mentality, this nation is in deep trouble, and we have lost our common decency and humanity!

But the thought is that this is a minority view, which demands full commitment to fight and defeat this poison, this cancer, in our society, before it becomes endemic!