Tag: democracy

Throw the bums out.

When you listen to Rand Paul, Chuck Grassley, Chuck Schumer, et al in these hearings, you get an overwhelming sensation that we are long, long, long past the time for term limits. This men’s club is corrupt beyond measure. They are partisan, politically or financially corrupt and out of touch. I do not agree with everything Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says or supports, but clearly she is more plugged in to the reality of our everyday difficulties. Whether or not she has the solutions is unimportant because until you grasp the problem you cannot craft the solution. (Kinda like a pandemic)


I never feared a sole political leader in the past because I was raised with the notion of checks and balances. Now I have learned what can happen when the entire government capitulates to the president. Now we are seeing the complete surrender of obligations by the ruling party and how much it resembles foreign authoritarian governments. Especially where the “strong man” consistently and persistently derides the opposition and encourages violence against his own citizens who oppose his rule.

Time to revisit life in the USA. Politics in the USA and the allowance of bought and paid for politicians being allowed to rule over us for years on end. I am okay with the suppression of the political parties especially to the degree that governance returns to the governed. I favor rule by coalition allowing for more political parties. I do not believe in social engineering by legislation. I do not believe that items beyond the scope of national concern can be subject to the whims of the party in power. I abhor the drug laws which criminalize and demonize addiction. I support the right to choose but I believe we have never spent enough money and time curbing unwanted pregnancies.
I love my guns but I also support the right to life as pertains to the health safety and welfare of school children, concert-goers and worshippers. If I must compromise my gun rights, so be it if it will help make it more difficult for the mentally-ill and prohibited possessors in securing a firearm. And every fucking gun owner with half a brain knows that there is an open market in Texas and other states which allows free access to guns by persons who would not be allowed to purchase under federal law from any licensed seller.

So no one is going to compromise or bend in today’s environment of which trump remains the pivotal figure from both sides. So it is clearly time to start over with a government that works for both (many) sides. Many repel at the idea of compromise and cling to the illusion of God Given rights and obligations. I also repel at certain compromises such as caging children, even illegal children. I believe in the sanctity of school children and their right to be free from men with AR-15s who are set to slaughter them.

So I hope we can agree on just this one item. Term limits. Run out the rascals. Then we can sit at the table across from each other via young, smart partisan legislators who will be unable to legally take lobbyists dollars and will know how to craft legislation which addresses the needs of the greatest good.
The Congress was invented to find compromise in legislating. That concept has been abandoned. So I am good with the destruction of the republican party. I never would have advocated that before but recent events over the past 12 years have convinced me that our government is more fragile than I knew. I do not have to advocate the elimination of the democratic party, the republicans are already well on their way to that. But we must not let the victor have the spoils. Deprive both sides of a stranglehold/foothold over our government.

I am and always have been a citizen of the USA. I have and always will support the health, safety and welfare of our military, especially our combat veterans. I do not support rioting and looting but I absolutely support a transformation in policing. Change the training paradigm, the caliber of recruits and the policies around use of force especially as pertains to the mentally-ill.

Oh my I have gone on far too long. God bless the REAL America. Not this trump perpetrated hoax and pox upon us.

Debate is dead. Long live the King!

Let us no longer debate the merits of the trump presidency. The evidence of his lies is overwhelming and those of my friends who support him have not undertaken to challenge his integrity despite overwhelming evidence in the actual interview and tweets of his own making. You cannot ask of anyone, to hold Clinton or anyone else accountable as a substitute and diversion of trump’s lies. You embarrass yourselves to continue to defend the lies. Today, he claims $91 billion went to Puerto Rico relief. In fact, $11 billion has been sent to the island so far — far less than the more than $120 billion the federal government has spent (and continues to spend) in response to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina.
 
How can I defend or debate his presidency when not one of you will acknowledge a single lie much less the plethora of lies he drools out from his mouth. He sickens the populace that engages in fact checking.
 
I have been friends and colleagues with Puerto Ricans my entire life, unlike the president. I actually know where PR is and most important, I know what it is. A US territory. Not a separate country or place. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/02/gidley-puerto-rico-country-1249076
 
If you are going to remain unwilling to engage in a dialogue that recognizes and acknowledges his lies, there can be no debate. Debate at its finest is an educational process where viewpoints supported by facts are presented. The antithesis of debate is the reliance upon lies and character assassination to prevail. Thus since you will not resort to the legitimate tools of debate I must drown trump in invectives and vitriol.
 
Ultimately, my dear conservatives, issues like gun control will be implemented without your input because the decision-makers will find it fruitless to discuss an issue which is devoid of facts.
 
From the pro-trump conservative website The New American, “Trump has accused top FBI officials of “treason.” Among other individuals excoriated by Trump, former FBI boss James Comey was dubbed a “terrible guy,” and former CIA boss (and an admitted supporter of the Soviet-controlled Communist Party USA in the 1970s) John Brennan was slammed as a “sick person.” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, meanwhile, was slammed by Trump as a “criminal,” while the chorus in Congress and beyond demanding his resignation continues to grow. Trump has also lashed out repeatedly at what he calls the “criminal Deep State.”
 
Perhaps more importantly, following the end of Mueller’s investigation, Trump again said there was “treason” — potentially a capital offense — going on in what had transpired. “There are a lot of people out there that have done some very, very evil things, very bad things — I would say treasonous things — against our country,” the president told reporters, without specifying exactly who he was talking about. “And hopefully people that have done such harm to our country — we’ve gone through a period of really bad things happening — those people will certainly be looked at. I’ve been looking at them for a long time.”
I wish I could be counted amongst the enemies of trump who will be investigated and denounced and perhaps tried for treason. I wish my voice were loud enough, influential enough to be a candidate for such an attack. I would welcome the forum of a trial where a jury of fellow citizens would be forced by oath to hear “FACTS” and dispense with prejudice and decide who has the greater credibility. I would prevail!.
Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to rid the country of his enemies andt opponents by red-baiting them.  He was initially embraced with enthusiasm by the small-minded. But eventually, enough Americans realized that efforts to purge/silence the country of its own neighbors was really an evil effort, lacking in morality and void of integrity. So too shall trump come to know that whatever blood he causes to be shed or persons to be harmed by neighbors or government, he himself will fall in the battle he wages against truth and justice.
King trump will continue to damage the very fabric of our culture and society. But ultimately if truth gets the final say, he will be exposed as the emperor without the clothes of decency and integrity and certainly and figuratively his presidency will bleed to death of a thousand cuts of his deceit.

Is integrity in trouble?

Abraham Lincoln’s reputation will endure the tides of time because he was consistently referred to as a man of integrity and intellect. He warned of a destructive force from within.

During a speech in 1838 he asked his listeners:
“Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia, and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us; it cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen we must live through all time or die by suicide.””he staked his career on the premise that reverence for the law should become the political religion of the nation.”

He warned that whenever the vicious portion of [our] population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing-presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure and with impunity, depend upon it, this government cannot last. By such things the feelings of the best citizens will become more or less alienated from it, and thus it will be left without friends, or with too few, and those few too weak to make their friendship effectual.

Lincoln warned that a tyrant could overtake the U.S. political system from within. “Is it unreasonable, then, to expect that some man possessed of the loftiest genius, coupled with ambition sufficient to push it to its utmost stretch, will at some time spring up among us? And when such an one does, it will require the people to be united with each other, attached to the government and laws, and generally intelligent, to successfully frustrate his designs. Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm, yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.”

The antidote, the prophylactic, there was a need to cultivate a “political religion” that emphasizes “reverence for the laws” and puts reliance on “reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason.”

Trump shall not his reputation endure well. He will be a moment of disgrace in a country long proud of its heritage as a union and as one bound together by laws. All the mistakes we have made as a country, under democrats and republicans will pale in comparison to the viciousness and pettiness of this president.Would that you could see ahead to the mistake we call trump and sadly,
” A fool too late bewares when all the peril is past.” Elizabeth I