Tag: Politics

Sometimes it seems that the NRA is a police force who forces “their” laws on the rest of us. They have such a strangle hold on so many politicians as to get their way even when it is opposed by a vast majority of our citizens. Realizing that we have more gun violence in a day than Great Britain has in a year should be sobering to those in DC but somehow they simply ignore it and the obvious solutions. When will we finally get representatives who actually represent us in the nation’s capital? That answer is totally up to us if we just have the guts to do it….

Just another afternoon snippet about my recent header work of late.  I added a “politics” box to the header with a sub title “Because it matters”. That sums it up for me. Yeah, I agree that politics is a very dirty business and taints everything it touches but it is so critical to the future of our country and the world that we all need to get involved.

Climate change is one of those issues that one of our political parties has decided to deny its existence even though 98% of the scientists are on the opposite side of that party.  Do we let politics determine if we are to reach the tipping point where it becomes unstoppable?  Do we doom future citizens of the world to the consequences of our political system?

Like it our not our government has the task of doing the people’s business where none of us as individuals can accomplish it.  We depend our our representatives to do what is good for the country.  When they don’t we have to step in and institute change.

The major threat to our democracy is that there are so many low-info voters and so many non-voters in our populace now. Thomas Jefferson said over two hundred years ago that a democracy depends on an informed electorate. I fear we are losing that as a country right now.

Too many seem swayed by harsh rhetoric putting it above common sense.  It is up to each of us to hold our noses and look out for the well being of all of us citizens of this earth.  If those yahoos in Washington won’t do it then it is time for them to go…

Like it or not Politics matters, it is as simple as that….

There is the sentiment that we can let the victims and families know we’re sorry for their loss, but those words fall on grieving, frightened and mostly, deaf ears. I am sorry about the loss of human life anywhere, but saying it to the internet has all the veracity of signing an office sympathy card, accompanied by those trite phrases we use, so that we don’t look like assholes. You’re in our thoughts. Wishing you comfort. Our prayers are with you. I don’t want to fill the air with my nothingness.

The voices of outrage come out in full force, relentless anger directed at them, at us, at anything that’s a moving or easy target. Presidential candidates fall over themselves trying to prove how many people they’d kill in response to this nightmare. Political ideologues and bigots of every persuasion grab hold of the pain and anxiety in vain attempts to support their own version of hate.

This is not my story. This is not my opportunity. This is not my moment on the stage. This is my time to listen, to learn, and to try to comprehend other people’s stories. I don’t stay silent because I don’t care. I stay silent because, at this moment, nothing I say will make as much difference as listening.

Source: A Wish for Peace…and Quiet | The Green Study

I wondered how I was going to do a post about Paris. I didn’t want to join all the hot-heads demanding immediate revenge. From past history I know that seldom works. We just get ourselves mired down in something that accomplishes little. I didn’t want to be part of that crowd.

Then I came across the post above on one of my recent Feedly feeds from The Green Study. I have to admit that I am envious of the way the blogger has wisdom beyond her years and even mine. The Green Study refers to the paint on the walls where she blogs. How simple can you get.  Here is a little about her from her “About” page:

I’m Michelle, a midwestern, middle-aged, middle manager of average height and IQ. I’m ex-Army, ex-Republican, ex-Seventh Day Adventist, ex-smoker and an ex-girlfriend several times over, with an obsolete college degree.

Yes, this is a time to just quietly sit by and give our condolences. Ranting accomplishes little except maybe for the GOP presidential wanna-be’s who are out in force trying to appease their base.

Thanks Michelle for showing me the way….

Then there are Biden’s recent statements staking out a more conflicted position on abortion than one expects to hear from such a prominent Democrat. This places him far closer to the consensus position on the issue than most leading members of his party and may indicate that he would cultivate more of a working-class, middle-American sensibility than we’ve seen from a Democratic presidential candidate…

Biden should only jump into the race if he can persuade Warren to change her mind and take the leap with him, forming a complete ticket before the first votes are cast this winter, with the senator from Massachusetts serving as a running mate and senior domestic policy adviser in waiting. Take Biden’s everyman charisma, foreign policy chops, and extensive experience as a senator and vice president, and combine it with Warren’s firey, whip-smart, left-liberal populism on domestic policy and you’d have a hell of a ticket. It would be one straight out of Hillary Clinton’s nightmares — and one perfectly poised to poach support from Sanders with the message, “I get why Bernie appeals to you, but we will do it better — and we can win this thing.”

Source: Anybody but Hillary? The case for Biden-Warren 2016

A Biden/Warren ticket!!  Wow wouldn’t that be something.  I must admit that Biden has never excited me much but he is probably more a “real” person than all those others seeking that office and maybe that is what we need in the White House right now.  Lord knows that none of those folks for president in the GOP are “real”. There is just too much pandering to their bases by all of them.   I suspect if Biden were to be president he would be known as “President Joe” to most of us now and into perpetuity.

I am almost sure that I will be voting on the Democratic side this time and personally I would like to be offered an alternative to Hillary.  Yes, if she can keep the hounds off her she would probably get some important things done but she just seems to have a sense of entitlement now that kind of turns me off.  Would I be saying the same thing if she were a man?  I don’t know..  We in this country had a revolution centered around our disdain for a monarch and that is kind of like how I see this Clinton/Bush thing now.

Lets put Joe in the Oval Office with a promise to only have one term in office.  Doing that he could actually get some things done as he wouldn’t have to worry about gathering up the billions needed for a second run. He is so old it will probably happen anyway. Elizabeth Warren says she is not ready for the presidency but with four years under her belt as vice-president she should be more than ready for 2020. Maybe by that time we will have driven all the “anti” nuts out of congress so she could actually get something done.  In my mind she would definitely be a people’s president.

I try, at least in my later years, to be an optimist about things…. Go Biden/Warren….

Win or lose, Sanders seeks to transform his party and redeem American politics through an epic battle against some of the wealthiest powers in human history. “A lot of people have given up on the political process, and I want to get them involved in it,” he tells TIME. “In this fight we are going to take on the greed of the billionaire class. And they are very, very powerful, and they’re going to fight back furiously. The only way to succeed is when millions of people stand up and decide to engage.”…

It’s all about the movement, Sanders admonishes in the deep bass voice that he reserves for one-on-ones. What President Obama didn’t understand when he took office is that you have to keep your movement alive. “Barack Obama ran one of the great campaigns in American history. The biggest mistake he made is that the day after the election, in so many words, he said, ‘Thank you very much, but I will take it from here,’” Sanders says.

Then he paints one of his word pictures. Imagine President Sanders facing a vote in Congress on free college tuition paid for by a tax hike on the wealthy. He’d have to persuade Speaker of the House John Boehner to help him pass the bill. That’s where his army of activists comes in. “How do I convince John? Is my personality that much better than Barack Obama’s?” Sanders says. “The answer is to say, ‘Hey, John, take a look out your window. Because there are a million young people there that are in support of the legislation. They are voting. They know what’s going on. If you refuse to make college affordable, they’re going to vote your people out of office.’ That’s the offer you can’t refuse.”

Source: The Gospel of Bernie | TIME

I like the way Bernie Sanders thinks. He is definitely a forward looker whereas most in the other party are primarily looking backwards. But I guess that is the primary difference between the two parties.  One is conservative and wants to keep everything like it is or maybe was in the past.  They fear change will disrupt things and cause it all to collapse.  The other party is progressive. That is they think that we must always be moving forward to better future.  One party looks forward and the other looks backward.

Bernie, being from Vermont, is all about town halls and power to the people. That is the history of that area of the country.  I traveled through Vermont on a couple of occasions but never spent enough time there to get the feel of the people. But I know from my history lessons that they practiced a very basic form of democracy where each person had a say in things.  That seems to be the way Bernie sees it.  I like his bolded quote above about Barack Obama.  His “I’ll take it from here” attitude is where he got it wrong. He simply did not keep that gigantic coalition active enough.  Bernie says he will.

Being a realist I know that the odds of the country quickly turning to socialistic principles is a long shot but maybe Bernie’s presence on the national political stage will at least nudge us a little closer to every citizen having power in our society.