The Christmas list

It’s the holiday season, and I figured that if I could give a gift to any celebrity, I’d give them the following:

1. The Duck Dynasty creator Phil Robertson: A calendar so he knows what year it is.

2. For Tony Romo, well, for his teammates anyways posters of how to perform the Heimlich maneuver. For when he chokes at crunch time

3. Pope Francis: For your wisdom and shunning the excess of your papal office to be pass down for generation.

4. Alec Baldwin. Better Judgment

5. Sarah Palin: Do we give her a brain or a soul….I’m open to suggestions

6. Tea Party supporters: A basic knowledge of the US Constitution and history.

7. CNN:  A set of balls, which they currently lack.

8. Glenn Beck: Give him what he wants, his own little island so he can spread his insane rhetoric to the animal life

9. Jacoby Ellsbury: To be at bat, in a clutch moment, and to deliver a knockout blow that keeps the Boston Red Sox out of the play offs.

And finally, perhaps the most important gift of all:

10. To Michael J. Fox. Quite simply, a cure.

Kennedy: 50 years later

Fifty years ago, during a trip to Dallas, Texas, John K. Kennedy, the 35^th president of the United States, was felled by an assassin’s bullet. Just a few years prior, Kennedy had defeated Richard M. Nixon in a bid for the White House.

There are very few points in history that you can point to, and remember exactly where you were. I being born 13 years after Kennedy was assassinated actually two of these moments. The first was the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986. I was in music class, sitting in row one, fifth seat back. Many of our music classes prior weren’t really focused on the subject, they were focused on the upcoming NASA space launch, and the fact that Christina McAuliffe, a school teacher, was going to be the first citizen in space. When the announcement of the explosion came over the loud speaker, I just buried my hands in my face, in total shock. My other moment that I remember where I was is the events of 9/11.

I have always been fascinated with the Kennedy assassination. Even as a child, I had doubts that a lone gunman shooting form the sixth floor of a building could have pulled it off. Up until then, the previous assassination had always been at close range. Garfield, McKinley, Lincoln, all felled by disillusioned sorts all seeking to right what they felt was a wrong. Charles Guiteau (Garfield), Leon Czolgosz (McKinley), James Wilkes Booth (Lincoln) all gained their place in history by murdering the commander in chief.  Guiteau had sought a place in Garfield’s cabinet, and had been turned down for the position of consul general to Paris. Guiteau used a .442 Webley revolver. Guiteau had been waiting, getting his shoes polished, looking forward to Garfield’s arrival. Garfield’s assassination led to the Pendleton Act which would forever base appointments on talent and seniority. McKinley was felled by a 32 caliber Iver John Revolver by Czolgosz, which Czolgosz had just purchase 72 hours prior. Czolgosz got close enough to McKinley to shake his hand. So far, we’ve had two assassins, none of whom really had a plan of escape. They simply may have been looking to make some sort of statement by the assassin.

And that brings us the first assassination of the US President, Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Wilkes shot Lincoln with a Derringern as part of a three tier assassination plot that was to have destroyed the Union government if it had been fruitful. It failed, and Lincoln was the only one felled.

And therein lies why Kennedy’s assassination was so different. Booth, Czolgosz, and Guiteau were all public about their assassinations. Wilkes jumped onto the stage and declared “Sic Semprer Tryannis”, meaning “Thus always to the Tyrants.” And as you’ve read above, neither Czogosz nor Guiteau really made any attempt to hide who they were. Why all of a sudden, would someone shoot Kennedy in the most public manner possible, and try to hide who he was? That’s what makes Kennedy’s assassination so intriguing.

If Lee Harvey Oswald was really what he was painted to be, a man angry about what happened in Cuba, the Pay of Pigs fiasco, why would run? And ever wonder why he would assassinate the president from the 6^th floor of the building he worked at?

However, enough about the question regarding Kennedy’s assassination, time for a different topic. . John F. Kennedy was bringing new fresh ideas to the White House, because up until 1960, the previous presidents had been recycled products from the same machine. Outside of when Harry S. Truman desegregated the US troops, no one had done anything to change the same ol’ same of race relations. He even addressed this issue in January of 1961, citing that Americans should not be denied constitution rights based on their race.

Kennedy was doing a lot to change the American Landscape, and for some it may have been too fast, too soon. Kennedy was looking to eliminate the CIA. He managed to starve off nuclear destruction at the hands of the Soviet Union. Who knows what Kennedy might have done during a second term in office? And it is a given that he would have had a second term because of his high approval ratings, and the fact the Republicans really didn’t have a strong candidate to run against him.

At least with the three prior executions, we have some knowledge as to the why. Since Oswald was felled by Jack Ruby before anything really came to light, much of the truth died with him. Who knows if there was a CIA or Mafia connection to the assassination? Why kill the assassin? As of 2011, 67% of Americans feel that there was a conspiracy into the assassination of John F. Kennedy. I count myself among them.

However, here we sit, 50 years later, and the questions still remain. And we are still fascinated by the man himself, and what he represented. Would the race riots in Detroit have ever happened if Kennedy had never been assassinated? What about such events as the Vietnam war, Watergate? They never happen if not for those bullets on that fateful day 50 years ago. And I say bullet because even as a kid, I thought the idea of the magic bullet was utterly insane. To expect full grown adults to accept that notion of the assassination to me seems pretty insulting.

I plan to re-read the Warren Commission report. When I saw that the book was available through the History Book club several years ago, I pounced on the purchase. I put the book half way down because much of it was written to the point of confusion, and the plot holes glaring. Maybe a second reading (and not expecting much in the way of logic) will be better. And for those who don’t know what the Warren Commission was, they were appointed to find out the how’s and why’s of the assassination. It is rightfully maligned as a product of wishful thinking.

In 2017, all of the records regarding the assassination of Kennedy would have been released by the National Archives. Thus, this ensures that if there was an in house assassination of the commander and chief, the main principals would have been long dead by the time their involvement comes to light. Now, if the sealing of records and hiding aspects of the assassination of the president doesn’t make you question if or if not there was an conspiracy into the assassination of John F. Kennedy, then what will?

Healthcare.gov and Education vs Military Spending

Welcome everyone to the newest installment of Randall’s rant. This week is going to be two main topics that I want to touch on. In this week’s edition, we are going to look at the issues with www.healthcare.gov website, and how the US would benefit from less spending on defense, and more spending on education.

We are going to start off with the healthcare website fiasco. Got to give the GOP credit for this one, they actually have a section of voters convinced that websites never have tech issues. Granted, many of these people are most likely over the age of 75, and maybe another portion of them live off the grid. You know, they kind of people you see on those reality shows about people who are survivalist, The ones that live where the power lines don’t exactly reach. Now, most of us are aware that websites have glitches. Look at Facebook for example, which seems to have weekly, if not daily glitches. However, the GOP has managed to convince through fear that the new Affordable Healthcare Act website doesn’t work, don’t bother logging on, you’re just going to get booted, and so on. And that is what they’ve rolled out each and every night, well, not when they are digging up Benghazi every five minutes.

Now, I could join the whole conspiracy crowd, and mention on how Verizon, which host the site, is a major contributor to GOP campaigns, but I won’t. Fact is that websites are like roads. A road can only handle so much traffic before other vehicles aren’t going to be able to get on. And so many people wanted to sign up that it caused issues with the website that caused it to crash. The other notion that has been ignored by media on both signs of the coin is the one of systems. It could be that some people have an outdated browser program, or lack the proper Java updates to be able to log on to the website.  This was an issue we had at the Attorney General’s office until we were able to get newer computers that were compatible with the newer browsers.  Updated browsers, and all of those issues with crashes and whatnot went away. To expect millions of people to log on to a website without the site having issues is foolhardy.

 

Congrats to the federal appeals court that stepped in and informed the state of Texas that the abortion law they were trying to ramrod through was highly unconstitutional. It still find it amusing that the people who want government out of their lives, don’t mind if that said  same government sets up shop in a woman’s uterus. The way the GOP is trying to take over a woman’s reproductive rights reminds me a rather fitting quote from former President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson was staunchly giving women the right to vote, once saying “I doubt highly the intelligence of a woman to decide on such matters of government. Giving them the ability to vote will only burden them to make decisions they are not properly informed on.” I cannot figure out why conservatives are so worried about a fetus. It’s not like they care about it once it becomes a born child. Food stamps, money spent on education, funds for the free breakfast in the poorest of districts, are always the first thing that they want to cut funding from. They call these  programs entitlements, and they use fear to get the funding cut. But hey, go after some of the waste that goes to defense spending, and all of a sudden, they are like Amanda Bynes after you empty her liquor closet. The go insane, they pout, say that we’re leaving this country to be over taken. Which is far from the truth, because we spent in one month more on defense than some nations gross in an entire calendar year.  Technology cannot be changing that quickly that the billions we spent the year before all of a sudden went to outdated weapons. However, defense spending has become a business more than anything else.  Companies like Lockheed-Martin bid to build fighter Jets, and they in turn, contribute large sums of PAC money to whatever elected leader helped insure that more money went to defense spending. So of course they are going to flip out when someone suggest cutting defense spending. Ronald Reagan in his 8 years never once cut defense spending. He cut education spending, he cut funding for health care agencies like the CDC, but never once did he ever cut defense spending.  In the 1980’s, it was becoming quite clear that the USSR was about to collapse because they were being outspent on defense. But what the American people were fed was the line that Russia was stocking all of these arms and could attack us at any moment, which 30 years later we’ve learned wasn’t really true. Who are we trying to outspend now, North Korea?  Who is are next opponent?

We don’t need to spend all of this money on fighter jets. Let’s spend a little more on education, let’s catch up to the other nations in intelligence first. The reason that all of these other nations are able to “develop” nuclear warheads is because they stress education, with an emphasis on math. In the states, you’re lucky if you can find someone who can figure the answer to 5 x 5.  That’s how some of these nations to use the words of Republicans “Have passed us in military power.” They didn’t create newer fighter jets, they just used the resources of the heavy funding of education to get to achieving the weapons they have now.

I’ll make it clear that I view any cuts to education as a damaging blow to the nation, and anyone who even suggest cutting education does not have the best interest of the nation at heart. Besides, imagine the amount of money who could save if we could just force some of these elected leaders to take a pay cut.

Okay, that is going to do it for this weeks’ edition of Randall’s  Rants.

The GOP Rerun

Years ago, well before Hulu, DVRs, and the Internet, people used to sleepwalk through their summer television viewing. Summertime used to be filled with re-runs and the only new shows were second tier fillers summoned to replace failed TV shows. And people used to complain and complain that outside of these shows. Even today, people get annoyed when they want to watch their favorite show, and it turns out to be a re-run.

And a re-run was what went the American people just went through. For those reading this that may be too young to remember the late 1990’s when Newt Gingrich was behind the government shutdown, what we went through this past week was just that, a re-run.

Only this time, the Republicans seemed to ratchet up a notch. This time, they opted to take the Affordable Healthcare Act and use that as leverage to hold the American people hostage. And despite how conservative news outlets like Fox News and CNN may have tried to play it off, it were the republicans that tried to hold the US hostage.

Let’s now take a look at what the GOP temper tantrum cost us. $24 billion dollars. Yes, 24 billion, billion with a B. So the party, who claims their hallmark is smaller government and less spending, just cost this country 24 Billion dollars. Federal parks lost revenue because of the shutdown. Retail stores like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Kmart lost money because people were afraid to spend money, especially those folks on SNAP. Consumer confidence waned, and with the debt ceiling default looming, the US credit was downgraded to a AAA with negative rating, meaning, in a sense, the money was still good, however, tread lightly.

Now thankfully, the furloughed workers are getting back pay, despite Ted Cruz, Lindsay Graham, and David Vitter, all republicans, fighting the measure, saying that since the workers were not actually working, they did not deserve pay for those two weeks. And yes, you did read that right, they actually fought to keep them from getting money for lost work hours they had no control over losing.

However, considering that we may face this all over again to start 2014, it is no wonder that consumer confidence is going to slowly in its rebound. Our government is becoming so unstable that people are now afraid to spent money.  Especially those people who are on food stamps.

Now, before anyone goes off thinking that people on food stamps don’t contribute to the economy, let’s clear up that thinking. Food stamps work like credit cards. Each month, an individual on food stamps gets an established credit or food stamp limit. They then go to the store, spend money on food, and use that food to feed themselves and their families. If you take these food stamps away, these people aren’t going to the store, and instead will have to lean on food kitchens instead. What that means that the food they would have purchased in stores, stays on store shelves. That means those stores, and the makers of the products they would have purchased, lose money in loss of sale. It’s that simple. So forget the Ayn Rand bullshit that these people are takers. They are, in fact, functioning members of society who contribute to the local economy. By the way, I could insert a joke on during the waning years of her life, that Ayn Rand collected those social security checks that she’d spent a lifetime bashing, but that’s just too easy of a target.

Now, let’s shift out focus back to the political landscape. This morning, I was re-reading (maybe for the zillionth time) a book called Secret Lives of the US Presidents by Cormac O’Brein. I was reading the chapter on Benjamin Harrison. Harrison was a rather mundane president, not really a memorable guy. Some of his exploits include marrying his late wife’s niece, and when his children objected to the union, he not only cut them out of his will, but he also cut them out of his life, refusing to ever speak to them again. Known as the human iceberg for his cold personality, Harrison’s administration also saw wild spending. Known as the Billion Dollar Congress, the Republican dominated congress spent money like it was going out of print. It would lead to his downfall and ouster as president.

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that is where we are right now. The GOP, who claim to be the penny pinchers and calorie counters, now have a 7% approval rating the lowest ever since polls were first recorded. They cost this nation dearly, in stature, economic status, worldview, and it may have led to the downfall of their own party. They got into bed with the Tea Party radicles, and now they may pay for it. As we circle this back to the afore mentioned President Benjamin Harrison, we look at how the GOP ignored the wishes of the American people, got drunk with power, and it led to their ouster during the following round of elections. And ignoring the will of the American people has been what the party, along with its Tea Party radicals, has been doing for the last few weeks. The American people do want to take the new health care law for a test drive. And if it fails to catch on, guess what happens, it ceases to be. And for all of those talking about website glitches, citing that as a reason why the new health care is “failing”, that is a red herring talking point. Web sites crash all of the time. How many times have you attempted to log onto Facebook or Twitter only to have an error message appear? Every website can only take so much traffic before it causes a crash, hell, I’m sure any hacker could tell you that.  So don’t let them use “website crashes” as a reason not to visit the page.

And that has been the GOP calling card for much of 2013, fear and terror. And then finally, despite the fact that the highest court in the land up held the law, and the fact that they ran on their own health care law platform, and lost badly, the GOP ignored the wishes of the American people, took them hostage, took the US economy hostage, and nearly utterly derailed this nation. Keep that in mind, when you go to the polls come election time.

 

Government Shutdown, Health Care reform, and puppet strings

And here we sit, the Government still in a shutdown, the Republican Party still acting like a bunch of spoiled brats. It is amusing to hear them say that no one in America wants the Affordable Healthcare Act (though Americans are signing up by the thousands). Now we are staring at the debt ceiling issue, and will the Republican party actually risk destroying the value of the American dollar simply over Americans being allowed to have health care.

Now, before anyone goes on a rant saying it’s not fair to blame the GOP for the shutdown, well, you’re wrong. Here’s the deal. The Republican’s ran on a platform that included a different health care plan, one that would allow Americans to have vouchers. That plan, along with many Republicans, was defeated, most notably, in the bid for the White House, in which the voters overwhelming rejected the Paul Ryan/Mitt Rommney plan.

So, now that the voters rejected them, the GOP decided they were going to go the route of the Supreme Court. The court, upheld the law. Now the GOP was left with very little choice. They get either go along with the law for now, hope it fizzled, and use that to regain the White House, or they could take more drastic measures. Now, twenty years ago, they would have gone for option A. That was then, this is now. Now the GOP has been corrupted by the Tea Party Extremist. The Tea Party folk want to roll back women’s rights, such as control over their own reproductive organs. They want to roll back civil rights, as they have done everything but get the amendment that bans poll taxes (Amendment XXIV for those playing at home) repealed.  The Tea Party extremist have also said that the want to get rid of certain parts of the Federal Government, such as FEMA, the FDA, EPA, BOE, FBI, and the CIA. All very vital, if sometimes flawed parts of the Federal Government.  And these are the same ones that are actually looking forward to America to be unable able to pay her bills for the first time in history, thus throwing the world market into a spiral, and perhaps, devaluing the US currency to a point with it would carry little value worldwide.

Now, for those watching Fox News, you’d think that raising the debt ceiling allows the federal government to spend more money. That is 100 % incorrect. It’s a flat out falsehood, and it used to be that if a news agency with intent ran a false story like Fox is doing with the Debt Ceiling, there would be serious repercussions.

“From the Treasury dept. official website:
The debt limit is the total amount of money that the United States government is authorized to borrow to meet its existing legal obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments. The debt limit does not authorize new spending commitments. It simply allows the government to finance existing legal obligations that Congresses and presidents of both parties have made in the past.   

Failing to increase the debt limit would have catastrophic economic consequences. It would cause the government to default on its legal obligations – an unprecedented event in American history. That would precipitate another financial crisis and threaten the jobs and savings of everyday Americans – putting the United States right back in a deep economic hole, just as the country is recovering from the recent recession.   

Congress has always acted when called upon to raise the debt limit. Since 1960, Congress has acted 78 separate times to permanently raise, temporarily extend, or revise the definition of the debt limit – 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.  In the coming weeks, Congress must act to increase the debt limit. Congressional leaders in both parties have recognized that this is necessary. Recently, however, a number of myths about this issue have begun to surface”

Need more proof:

http://www.treasury.gov/initiatives/Documents/Debt%20Limit%20Myth%20v%20Fact%20FINAL.pdf

As you can clearly see, the raising of the debt limit does not give the federal government the power to spend more money and raise more debt.

I still remain fully confident that an agreement will be reached, and that all of the furloughed workers will be back to work. However, with approval ratings at an all-time low, the Republican Party may never recover from this. They could very well join such political parties such as the Whigs and the Know-Nothings in the history dust bin. Just another political party that after years of glory, faded away because it refused and was inflexible when it came to changing with the times. We are seeing perhaps, the splitting in two of the party, and from the ashes, out comes the Tea Party. Then again, considering that it is mainly tea party supported government shutdown, which has led to the mess we are in, maybe they will fade away as a fringe group, not unlike the Bull-Moose party from over a hundred years ago. I’m not sure, but we could see a major shift in the balance of power in the political landscape of America.

As I type this blog, the powers in Washington continue to have meetings, and the give and take game continues to be played. Some people get upset when the GOP is blamed for the inaction in Washington. Well, simply put, it is the truth. Maybe it’s because I watch a lot of C-Span and I get to see it live, that I don’t fall under the spell of what CNN and Fox News “Report”. The GOP was told countless times to table the issue of the Affordable Health Care Act, and put forth a budget. They refused to listen, and that’s how we ended up here. The GOP has spoken of website crashes as a ploy to keep people from signing up or thinking they won’t be able to at all. Here’s a little news flash: All websites crash.  A website is like a highway. Once the highway is jammed up with traffic, no one else can use it. The system simply can’t take any more users until someone gets off. How many times has Twitter or Facebook been unavailable because of high usage? Plenty and that is all that happened to the Affordable Healthcare Act URL. So next time you hear Louie Gormert, or John Boehner talk about website crashes, see through the BS and know they are grasping at straws.

By the way, there is a very simple cure for what is going on in Washington. Do not vote for anyone with ties to the Koch Brothers or the Tea Party.  They are the true cause for what is going on, they are the ones pulling the strings of the GOP, causing the party to have a fall from grace. It’s that simple.

Government shut down and Health Care

Well, it is time to set and get a few things straight. Now I know that everyone was worried about the Government shut down.  It does not look like there is going to be a government shutdown. Now, to make things clear, the government never really “shuts down”. Social Security checks still go out, and hospitals still get their Medicare and Medicaid payments, don’t let any talking heads fool you.

And the shutdown has nothing to do with the budget, not in a real sense. It is because the GOP upset that their voucher idea was turned down by the voters, are fighting the voters now to defund Obama’s new health care law. And during this mix, they have to raise the debt ceiling so we can make our payments, and not default on the bonds that we have sold to make money. By the way, the TSA employees aren’t going anywhere, because Federal Law will not let them, because they perform a job that is essential to national security.

Getting back to the point of the new health care laws, here’s a little food for thought. Have you ever wondered why every other single industrialized nation has a form of “Obama Care”? It’s simple. In America, we have an entire market system called health care insurance. Companies that sell these policies have shareholders and CEO’s to answer to if they don’t turn a profit. In the simplest of terms, there is an entire market out there dedicated to making sure people stay stick so that their they keep paying those premiums, and keep buying those pills, which funds big Pharma, which happens to be the second biggest lobbyist group next to Gun Rights activist (IE the NRA). Many of these companies fund campaign donations of conservative groups, which fight to make laws like having $5,000 vouchers for a person to spend in one year on health care. By the way, anything past that and the money comes out of the pocket of the policy holder.  Now, let’s take a quick look at pills. There are medicines that cost $5,000 alone before insurance kicks in, and pay a portion of the price. Ever wonder why a tiny little bottle cost more than some new cars? Because there is a profit to be made by these companies. Insurance, big Pharma are all for profit businesses. Relating back to what I said before: There is an entire market that needs to keep people sick in order to make a profit. Let’s repeat that, it seems very important: There is an entire industry that needs its customers to remain sick, and only get health care in nibbles and bites to be assured that it will continue to turn a profit.  There seems to be something wrong with that line of thinking.

And before you try and pull that “Well, if the government gets involved, they will tell you what doctor you can go to.” Well, that’s a crock. And not only is it a crock, the system we have now tells you what doctor you can see. There are coverage plans that a doctor may or not be a member of that particular network. Meaning that well, you’d like to see that doctor, but your insurance company will only allow you to see Doctor X. Oh, and if you need a better example of government types that want to control what medical assistance one gets, just take a look at the GOP and their drive to end abortions. They don’t care if a woman has been raped, cannot deliver due to health issues, they don’t care. They want that baby born. After the child is born, well, they lose all interest in him or her. They don’t care if their school is well funded, they really don’t care if the child gets educated enough to get a job, they just want the child educated enough to go to college, get a loan, pay high interest on the loan, which helps feed the Wall Street monster. And since there are no jobs out there (because the GOP refuses regulation that will keep companies from exporting jobs at their slightest whim), those new college graduates, many of them, take two jobs to pay off the loan they get out from under, and forget getting a job in the field they went to school for, because those jobs have already been taken.

There is nothing wrong with having a single payer system. I’m sure there are advantages to having a government funded health care system. However, what we have now, sucks, it’s shameful. Why the hell can’t we have a sound health care system that assures that everyone who is sick gets health care? Any system that allows several millions of people live without health care.  Don’t you think that if those people didn’t have to pay for health care and the crazy over the top prices they are charged, that they will have more money to grow the economy? I worked retail, which taught me a lot about the spending habits of people. Give them more free money, and they are going to spend it.

Want a nice stable economy? It’s simple, and can be done over-night! The more money the consumers have, the more they are going to spend.  This will lead to plenty of income for the counties and states in the form of sales taxes. The companies whose products are being purchased are going to make profits, which will allow them to hire more people, which will bring in a whole new slew of people who will become tax payers. You can tax these companies on their profits, which the government can spend on education, fix roads, pay of the national debt, etc.  Rich people have a smaller effect on the economy, than the right will have you think. It’s the middle class that always has, and always will drive the economy.

But that will never happen, because the system is broken, and people profit from it being broken, so it will stay that way.  That’s reality, people.

 

Syrian Food for Thought

There are people who want to bomb Syria because over 1,000 people, men, women, and children were gassed to death. And there are some who feel that it is not our business to get involved, and that it is simply a civil issue. I don’t get why we should even get involved, because hell, if we went after every nation that either gassed, or executed its citizens, well, then we’d be invading or bombing perhaps a dozen more countries that commit these acts. 

Now, if Bush was still in office, we’d already be in war. He and his cronies would have manufactured some excuse for the need to bomb Syria. Maybe Bush would have said that Syria was a new Al Qaeda stronghold. Maybe he would have said that Syria was behind 9-11 all along, and has WMDs. Who knows, but as sure as I’m sitting here, typing these words, if this had happened under Bush, we’d already have troops on the ground.

Let’s be blunt, any nation that would capriciously kill its own citizens  in that matter is run by heartless people. In some nations, they simply don’t put much value on human life. And before anyone says that America puts a high value on human life, you might want to check your facts at the door. If we really valued human life, we would not cut the legs off from the funding that goes to programs like food stamps, head start and free lunches in schools. We would not cut off funding to assist veterans returning home from war, nor would we cut off funding to help homeless people seek the help they need. Yeah, we don’t gas people, but many people sure as hell fall into the trap of class warfare in which they are forced fed the Ayn Rand philosophy of the poor being nothing more than leaches who don’t belong in society.

It feels that we’ve been down this road before. We entered Vietnam because we were told that the communist movement would spread and that we’d have another enemy.  It always seems that when something goes wrong in another country, the other nations all look at us and say “Do you job!” as if we are supposed to take the leader, do all of the dirty work, and let them come along for the ride and share the credit. We do we always have to do the dirty work? Can someone please explain why Great Britain or Russia can’t get involved and do something? But then again, the last time that Russia was involved with what was going on with a Middle East nation, President Reagan oversaw the funding and military training of a group of rebels, which included a man by the name of Osama Bin Laden. Because tensions with the Soviet Union were so high that we had to get ourselves involved in a boarder war.

I’ve heard how folks like Rush Limbaugh have been critical that Obama has surrendered the standing of the US as the number one nation to Russia, which makes no freaking sense. Listen, there is no BCS type poll that ranks every nation in the world. Every country’s citizens think their nation is better than everyone else. It’s called National pride. Anyone who says that the “US is surrendering its position as number one,” is a talking head looking to raise the ire of the people who don’t like that Obama is president.

So what, who cares if Putin talked the Syrian leaders into surrendering the chemical weapons that only 72 hours prior they claimed not to have? Shouldn’t it just matter that the task is getting done? Yeah, we have to hold our nose because the task is getting done by a man who invaded Georgia (the country, not the state) without UN approval, enacted hate laws, and imprisoned anyone who spoke against him and the country in general. We’re talking global politics, and very few of these cowboys wear white hats.  

Do I think we should get involved with what is going on in Syria, I have to say no. Right now, we have so many issues that have crippled us, that maybe it’s time we called time out, let someone else pitch hit, and use that time to get ourselves stronger. Of course, that is all going to be delayed because we have a political which has openly stated that their mission isn’t to govern, it is to stop the president from governing. And that could delay our recovery just a slight bit.

So, in closing, It’s time that we swallow a little bit of national pride, and let someone else take the credit for fixing one of the world’s ills, even if it ironically is a country led by a repressive leader looking to take the weapons out of the hands of another nation led by a repressive leader.