Day: June 15, 2014

Fathers Day And Dads’ Responsibilities To The Family Unit

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The role of dads in their children’s lives has dramatically changed in the past half century!

Today, more than one out of five families with children under five years of age with a working mother has his or her dad as the primary caregiver, many of whom also work.

In the last 25 years, the number of stay at home dads with a working mother has doubled.

In the past 30 years, the number of father only families have more than tripled, and almost all are working dads.

Seven percent of families with children are father only families.

Dads are doing nearly an hour more childcare and housework a day than fifty years ago.

62 percent help with housework; 65 percent read to their children; and 95 percent bathe and diaper their children.

Yet, 30 percent of both moms and dads do not have access to either paid or unpaid leave for the birth of a child, and suffer negative career outcomes, due to family responsibilities.

It is time for updating the attitude toward families, on the part of companies and employers, way behind other advanced industrial nations in Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand!

Did Veiled Anti Semitism Help To Defeat Eric Cantor In His Congressional District?

Ronald 2 Comments

Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader, lost his party’s nomination to an opponent who constantly talked about his Christian faith, and credited his victory to God!

Cantor is the ONLY non Christian Republican officeholder in Congress, a proud Jew of the Conservative (moderate) brand of Judaism, and a very strong supporter of Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He managed to win public office in Congress, and earlier in the state legislature, despite his being jewish in an area around Richmond, where the Jewish population is only one fourth of one percent!

Since only 65,000 people voted in the GOP primary, in an area with many rural voters, many of whom have never interacted with Jews, it makes one wonder if anti Semitism may have played a role in his defeat. The margin of victory, about 6,500 votes, makes that scenario a possibility!

This is not an assertion that Eric Cantor lost for this reason, as his arrogance and cockiness, and lack of contact with much of his district, spending an inordinate amount of time in nearby Washington, DC as second ranking Republican, certainly played a major role in his defeat. His stand on immigration reform may also have undermined him, plus the opposition of right wing talk show hosts Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin (himself Jewish).

But since there is a right wing Christian element of anti Semitism out there in the population, particularly in rural areas, even the thought or possibility of Cantor’s religious beliefs playing a role in his defeat, is very disturbing!

It is certainly of concern, in any case, that the Republican Party in Congress now is all white (except for appointed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina), all Christian (much of it extreme right wing), and heavily male and Southern or Great Plains.

This is not representative of America now, or its long range future!

Eric Cantor Not Only Congressional Leader Defeated For Re-election

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The defeat of Eric Cantor, the House Majority Leader in his Congressional primary in Virginia by David Brat, was stunning and shocking, but not the first time that a Congressional leader was defeated for renomination or reelection.

Other prominent cases include:

Senator Richard Lugar, former Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, of Indiana in 2012 by Richard Mourdock

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota in 2004 by John Thune

House Speaker Tom Foley of Washington State in 1994 by George Nethercutt

Former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois in 1994 by Michael Flanagan

Congressman Emanuel Celler, House Judiciary Committee Chairman of New York, in 1972 by Elizabeth Holtzman

Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas of Illinois in 1950 by Everett Dirksen

Senator Robert La Follette, Jr of Wisconsin in 1946 by Joseph McCarthy

Notice that ONLY Cantor, Lugar and La Follette, Jr. were Republican officeholders defeated, while the others listed were all Democrats.

So it is newsworthy and highly unusual for Congressional leaders and prominent members to lose reelection!

Joe Biden View Of Iraq Correct: Three States, Not One!

Ronald 4 Comments

Vice President Joe Biden, as a US Senator and Presidential candidate in 2008, projected that the best future for Iraq was for the three warring, contending groups to become separate states, as the Iraq created by the British and French after World War I was unsustainable.

Biden was ridiculed and attacked for his statement and view, but it now looks more than ever, with sectarian violence among the Shiite and Sunni Muslims, along with the national ambitions of the Kurdish people in the Northern part of Iraq, that the best hope might well be a three state solution.

The only problem now is that extremist terrorist groups in Iraq and neighboring Syria, where a civil war has raged for more than three years, endangers not only such a scenario, but also the whole Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, as well as American interests.

Since the Shiite and Sunni branches of Islam have been at war for more than a thousand years in the Middle East, the best that can be hoped for is such a three state solution, with the hope that the extremism and terrorism can be contained and lessened.

This is all the outgrowth of the unnecessary, unwise, inexcusable war initiated by the George W. Bush–Dick Cheney–Donald Rumsfeld administration on Saddam Hussein, who despite his horrible regime, was not a direct threat to the United States.

Now the Biden idea, with a quelling of the terrorism aspect, is the best hope for the future, so let us salute Joe Biden for, once again, more than one realizes, being perceptive in foreign policy.

We could do far worse than Joe Biden as our potential 45th President of the United States, as the man has great knowledge, vision, and perceptions that make sense in foreign policy!