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.

A Culture of Thoughts

Yeah, it’s been a while since I last blogged. It always seems that I struggle to find time as of late.  That and I always hem and haw about which topic I want to talk about.

I’ve come to the realization that I see the world a hell of a lot differently than others. I don’t allow myths and cultural prejudice dictate what I think of someone, nor do I allow some invisible super being do to the same. And now, I don’t pay much attention to a somewhat rambling book written thousands of years ago, a book that has more plot holes than a Tom Cruise action movie.

However, when I look at our media, I see that there is this little game they like to play. I use the TV show Cops as my prime example.  I used to watch this show in my teens, until something suddenly dawned on me. Why, unless they are living in a trailer park, are there hardly any white people being arrested on that show. And before someone tries to say “there were a few.” Let me point out that the overwhelming majority were either hot heads who hit their wives, drunks behind the wheel, or someone who looked like they just walked out of a Tim McGraw concert. Not to mention the occasional prostitute. However, any time there was a robbery, a B & E; it was usually a black man or a Latino man committing the crime. So after a while, I began to watch the show on more or less of an anthropological basis. It then occurred to me that a few weeks had gone by, and there wasn’t a single non-white shown committing a crime like Grand Theft, Breaking and Enter, or plain simple Robbery. I began to think about what type of cultural image this was projecting to those in the suburbs who may or may not, interact with Latinos or Blacks on a daily basis. And I came to the conclusion, stating the obvious, that it would create a negative one.

As I got older, I began to pay more and more attention to the nightly news, and the stories they covered.   Once again, the only whites they seemed to focus on would be those who decided to drive drunk, crash their car, and possibly kill someone. However, it seemed to me that there was a purposed focus on reporting inner city crimes, and once again, shifting then those in the suburbs to have a negative view point about other cultures.

Why do we do this? Do we do it because we have some stunted emotional and intellectual growth that we don’t seem to be able to grasp? Could it be in out DNA to consistently focus on what makes us different from others?  Maybe, perhaps, despite all of the technological advances our intellect has help to create, we still can’t simply before the mental task of understanding that we are, quite simply, all the same. Unless we were created in some test tub in a lab, we all arrived here in the same fashion. We all bleed the same color, need oxygen to live, and we all enter this world the same way.

Could it be that the answers that we seek are for a more complex question that we haven’t evolved to rationally ask yet? Or is the complexity of our species going to prevent us from asking those needed questions until we remove some security blank we cling to, like Linus from Peanuts?

What inspired this was my reading of an article on how gays now finally have the same marriage rights as far as taxes are concerned.  Here is an entire culture of people, who are show prejudice in a different way. It’s not because of the color of their skin, no, it’s because of some text written in some book. I can’t fathom the logic of not liking someone simply because of what a book that many hold sacred says.

I’m glad that over the last few years, gays have rapidly obtained the rights that we all take for granted way too much. And before those of you who learn towards the right complain that our rights are being taken away, ponder this. As you sit there, either reading this blog in the comfort of your home, sitting in some café using their Wi-Fi for your internet connection, there are people who don’t have it so good. There are cultures in which women are not allowed to be educated, and little girls who attend school are murdered. There are cultures in which simply writing a song to protest your government gets you thrown in jail. Not stalked, like the FBI did to John Lennon, I’m talking actual jail. Ponder that next time you complain that “Obama is taking away my freedom.”

This leads me back to my opening paragraph of this blog. In my 37 years on this planet, I have never seen a president attack like President Obama has been. Yeah, there was muckraking with Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush JR, but it all now just seems to have grown. Could it be that we have a black president, could his heritage be what is causing all of this? Think back to before, the images that we have been force fed through TV shows like cops, and what is usually reported on the nightly newscast. Could this spoon fed cultural damning be causing all of these attacks? When Bush JR was happily wiping away peoples freedoms in the name of keeping them safe, no one trembled. However, President Obama tries curbing violence by enforcing tougher guns laws, and people lose their collective minds.

I’ve tried not to draw any conclusions, I simply try to observe. However, it keeps gnawing at me, the one conclusion I’m not ready to face. Maybe, many of us just don’t want to live harmoniously with other cultures. Maybe it is a genetic flaw in our make-up, who knows.  It might take generations if this question is ever answered, if ever at all. Maybe we’ve relied on prejudice to create our entertainment for too long, just type casted once too often.

We need to figure something out, because until we do, there’s going to be more bloodshed, tears shed, and lives lost. Maybe we can do that by not living up to some predisposed image of what some of us are supposed to be.  That just might be the first step, in the right direction.

A return to the blogging world

Well, I guess I really should get back into trying to blog a little more. As you can see, it’s been a long while since I last blogged.

 

And today is pretty much going to be a free formed rant. Because there is a lot that has happened since my last blog, and well, a free flow is the form that best suits a catch up.

Enough of the royal family. I don’t care about them at all, and never will. There really is no reason for us to actually waste valuable time in the press with the coverage of the birth of their child. Murders, rapes, corporate greed, crooked politicians, all of that is better coverage than the birth of the Royal Spawn. Even the soft story of a child beating cancer would be better.  We’ve had an entire state prove they are inept when it comes to prosecuting anyone (more on that later),  an entire city go bankrupt, a whistle-blower get railroaded into leaving the country, and another one who’s stay in jail has been something from the dark ages. But no, let’s waste time reporting on the child of a royal couple from a country we rebelled against nearly 340 years ago.  I’m sure right now that john Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and every one of the drafters of the Constitution must be doing the preverbal rolling in the grave.  And if people in this country wanted to know why the rest of the free world considers our media a joke, well, you know why now.

 

Let’s take a quick examination of Edward Snowden. I’m really tired of everyone calling for him to be deported back to the states, and stand trial, and so forth. Personally, I hope he’s never brought back to the states, and he lives the rest of his days a free man. Neither he nor Bradley Manning did anything wrong, other than serve as an unofficial watch of the watchers.  After all, isn’t that what you people want in the first place, someone overseeing the government?  And by the way, why isn’t anyone calling for Dick Cheney, the former Vice President, to be arrested and tried for leaking government secrets.  This is the man, who while in the White House, leaked the name of a CIA operative in the field, all over a feud he was having with her husband. Didn’t he put the life of the CIA agent in danger, thus possibly putting the lives of Americans stateside in danger? Don’t see the press hounding him. I don’t see any of the mindless drones on CNN or GOP asskissers on Fox News calling for his arrest. Aren’t these the same folks who’ve said that anyone who leaks top secret information should be prosecuted?  And makes Dick Cheney so special that he gets a free pass? As far as I’m concerned, nothing makes him special. If you’re going to hound Snowden, and toss Manning into a rat hole prison cell, you really should make Dick Cheney his neighbor. We need a little consistency here, folks.

 

As for Florida, Stand your Ground, George Zimmerman, and Trayvon Martin.  First off, Zimmerman had zero business getting out and following the kid around, when he could have easily remained in his car and watched him that way. Besides, wouldn’t a normal person have simply asked for the cops to show up and informed them of his concerns. After all, it’s not like Trayvon came up running to Zimmerman’s car screaming “I’m going to kill you!”.  I don’t get how Zimmerman could have felt threatened in a situation he put himself in. How can you follow someone, have said person turn around, and use “Stand your ground.” Have you not impeded on someone else’s ground? Why wasn’t this mentioned in the trial.  Now, let’s take a look at the state of Florida, which has the most inept team of prosecutors in the entire country. They screwed the pooch on the Casey Anthony case by putting their faith into a DNA abstracting process that has not, and may never be, embraced by the scientific community. Not to mention that her father also had some issues with serious emotional detachment that may have had an effect on Casey’s overall reactions after the death of her child.

They lawyer in the Casey Anthony case seemed less interested in trying to prove her guilt, and more interested in auditioning for MSNBC, CNN, or Fox as a legal analyst. As for Trayvon Martin, the prosecution’s witnesses were poorly prepped, seemed utterly clueless, and ended up being saviors for the defense. I really have to wonder how these attorneys in Florida could be so inept at their jobs, yet hold positions of high importance.  Maybe it’s time we had an examination of those in Florida charged with handling these high profile trials. Maybe Florida seriously the entire office, and replace them with better quality attorneys.

And let me close with the following. While I will admit that I enjoy Ted Nugent’s music, and he’s a great guitar player, top 20 caliber, but as a human, he’s pretty terrible. He’s tried to deflect the blame to Trayvon, and has been running his mouth to anyone willing to give this glory seeking washed up rock star a vehicle to spout out his nonsense.  Ted, who crapped his pants and faked insanity when he was called to serve his country in war, and openly admitted that he adopted a 15 year old girl to use as his sexual tool while touring in 1977, tries to come off as a badass hunter. He’s a running joke, a utter jackass, and pretty much, a jerk off. And while I admit that he’ll never see this blog (though I really, really hope he does), and I’m not saying anything in print that I wouldn’t in a face to face meeting. I don’t shield my beliefs in order to appease anyone, that’s not my style.

And that should be clear in my upcoming blogs, which I hope to do at least once a week.

Baseball Writers strike out.

Well, I’ve taken a few days, to sit back, and relax. I’ve digested the reason the baseball writers opted not to elect anyone to the major league baseball hall of fame. And as I read their reasons, I have come to the following realization:

One, every current voting members for the major league baseball hall of fame needs to be let go. That’s right, they all need to have their privilege of voting for the hall of fame revoked.

The reason is very simple. Instead of giving votes to players like Craig Biggio, who was on for the first time, or legendary pitcher Jack Morris, who is running out of chances to be elected, some voters actually submitted blank ballots. That’s right, they opted to not vote for anyone.

It’s because they have judge all players from the 1980-2000’s guilty. Doesn’t matter if they have ever taken a PED, been accused, or anything. They have judged them guilty, hence they won’t vote for anyone. And if that is going to be their stance, its simple, revoke their right to vote.  Why should former players like Tim Raines and Morris suffer, and watch their chances to get in the hall be toyed with because of a vendetta by a bunch of baseball writers? It’s not fair to them. But hey, why should the writers care? They are seeking press by making fans think they are taking a stance, when they are nothing more than cowards. Any writer who submitted a blank ballot is a coward. Anyone who won’t vote to elect a player like Barry Bonds or Roger Clemmons just doesn’t understand the hall of fame.

Now, this misguided notion that a player elected to the hall of fame has to be a moral, nearly perfect citizen. Not sure where this idea even came from, but it somehow has seeped into the thought process. Now before you clamor with the thought that “These steroid players cheated, electing them would ruin the purity of the baseball hall of fame.” Well, let’s look at some current members, and ask yourself, despite what they’ve done on the field, should we really honor these folks with immortality?

Charles Comiskey. Here is the man that helped fuel his players to take a dive in the 1919 World Series. Comiskey was an owner who liked players, and liked money, but hated to see the two mixed. A noted tightwad, Comiskey would do anything, for ordering manager Kid Gleason to sit players, or order them to be taken out of games so they would not reach certain plateaus, which in return, would assure they would not get a promised bonus for reaching that benchmark. A complete inability  to relate to his players, or pry open his wallet, lead to a revolt, and his players, some of them top stars, deciding that they needed money more than World Series rings, so they took a dive.

Tom Yawkey. Famous owner of the Boston Red Sox, even has a street named after him. He was also a bigot. Tom Yawkey fought against intergrating the Boston Red Sox. Despite having talented black ball players in the minor league system, these players never played for the Red Sox. In fact, after one player hit .325 and 37 home runs in the minors for Boston, Yawkey ordered his release from his contract, instead of calling him up to the big league roster. The Red Sox had Ben Oglivie, a talented Outfield who became a star for the Milwaulkee Brewers. Yawkey ordered Oglivie traded for a fading starter, instead of making him a starter for the Red Sox. It wasn’t until years after his death, the Red Sox began to change their ways, and groom talented players like Jim Rice, who’d had never been given a chance uner Yawkey.

Kenesaw Landis. Let’s not kid ourselves here. There was only one reason that the baseball owners elected him as czar, and that’s because the owners owed him one. In 1915, the AL and NL were challenged by a third league seeking to be a major, the Federal league. The league was filled with talented players, and could have been a contender.  The league filed suit because of the reserve clauses that AL and NL players had, which meant that a players’ career was 100% under the control of the teams’ owner. Release, trade, the player had no say on where he went. The owners of the Federal League, eyeing several ML talents, thought this was, in effect, a monopoly. Landis was the judge that was slated to rule on this case. Instead, he did nothing, and this action forced the hand of the Federal League, and thus earned him a favor by the AL and NL owners, and that was paid back after the Black Sox Scandal.

But Landis was also a raging bigot. One of the criticism that he was given during his time as a judge was the notion that white men who stood before him, and black men who stood before him in court were treated different, with black men being sentenced harsher than white men. Landis also steadfast refused to allow baseball to be integrated. He famously told a reporter “They have their league, we have ours, that’s the way it should always be.”  After a group of ML all stars were defeated three games in a roll by Negro League standout team the Kansas City Monarchs, Landis ordered the series canceled, as many felt that Landis was angered that a team of all white ball players could lose to a team of black ball players.

Which is going to bring us to Cap Anson. Perhaps there is no more vile person in the hall of fame. That’s partly because Marty Bergen was never elected, and despite having worthy number, Bergen murdered his wife and two small children because he was depressed over his performance the previous season.

Cap Anson was a proud member of the KKK, thought that lynchings were the public’s way of controlling those the federal government could not, and is the man behind major league baseball being a white’s only game for 50 years. In 1884, Anson’s team was slated to play the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings. The AA was the second major league,  and the first to allow women to attend games, serve beer at the game, and allow blacks and whites to play on the same squad. Seeing that Moses Fleetwood Walker was the starting catcher, Anson was enraged. He called Walker the N-word several times, and pulled his entire team off the field, refusing to play unless Walker rode the bench. Toledo’s manager refused, and told Anson to “Go to hell”. This was followed by telling Anson that he would not be paid, nor would any of his players. Only after the notion of losing money, did Anson allow the game to go on. Anson would, ten years later, stage the infamous “White Players Revolt” in which Anson conned other top stars into thinking they would all lose their jobs if black ball players were allowed to compete with them for a job. Anson stated they would start their own league, which frightened the owners. Thus was born the rule that black men could not play in the major leagues.

There you have it. A tightwad who nearly ruined the game, and three racist, one with direct ties to the KKK, are immortalized in the hall. Is this the message that we want to send? That it’s okay to nearly ruin the game, or be a racist. To deny the chance to play major leagues to men simply because of the color of their skin, is that the message, really?

So, before you say that Barry Bonds, Roger Clemmons, etc ruined the game by taking steroids, and thus shouldn’t be in the hall. Before you say that “Shoeless” Joe Jackson and Pete Rose don’t belong because they gambled, think about this. Can you sleep well at night, keeping these men out, yet keeping in racist? There is the question. That is the question that needs to be answered.

If the PED tainted players are going to be kept out, then some that are already in, including those mentioned in this blog, Must be removed from the baseball hall of fame. If that doesn’t happen, then the message if that if you took drugs to enhance your performance, that was wrong.  But the same message also gives a free pass to those who’s crime was much more vile. Dismissing another human being, simply based on the color of their skin.