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We know Barack Obama is an intelligent man, not because he’s President (we’ve had a few quite ordinary presidents and a few borderline morons) but because he graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School (usually, very intelligent people attend and graduate from those schools). While in law school, he was President of the Harvard Law Review, and after graduation, he was a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. I’m leaving out his time as a U.S. Senator, because if you listen to the dunderheads who call themselves U.S. Senators when they debate what’s “good” for this country, you’d know that this is not something to put on your resume if you’re trying to convince someone of your intelligence.
So, why, when President Obama is gaining in the opinion polls (the latest approval polls give him an approval rating of 50%), and the presumptive Republican/Conservative Presidential candidate Mitt Romney is losing big chunks of popularity to upstart Rick Santorum, who is really Sarah Palin without the lipstick or dress, would the President do something so stupid as give the Republican/Conservative candidates fodder to liven up their base, especially at a time when the economy is very slowly improving, unemployment is being reduced ever so slightly but continuously (about .1% per month), and the housing market is starting to turn around. All of these improvements are taking away the Republican/Conservative arguments that the Obama fiscal and economic policies of the last three years have done nothing but exacerbate the recession. Why would President Obama open up the birth control/abortion debate and give the Republican/Conservatives relief from their own self-destructive tendencies?
On January 20, 2012 Nancy Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, with the backing of the Obama administration, announced that contraceptives would be part of women’s preventive services starting in 2012 in the Affordable Care Act (known to Republican/Conservatives as Obamacare). This means that, while religious institutions (churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.), still did not have to provide them to their employees free of charge, their affiliates would have to. This would include religious sponsored medical facilities, schools, day care, etc.
Many religious groups, including Catholic bishops and other Christian denominations, denounced the ruling as government interference in religious affairs. They claimed it was the right of the religious employers to set policy even though 98% of women, including those employed by those groups, use or have used contraceptives.
I back the right of any religious group to set policy for their religion; no level of government has the right to interfere in the policy making of any religious group as long as that group abides by the laws of this country, and so does the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Having said that, can religious organizations really impose their religious beliefs on the employees of their affiliates? Can the Catholic Church require the female nurses in a Catholic affiliated hospital, to refrain from using contraceptives? If not, and the hospital provides them with health insurance, and they are required to provide their female employees with other preventive health services such as mammograms and pap smears, why not contraceptives? Women don’t have to use them if they’re Catholic and religious.
I find it interesting that Catholic bishops, those same good old boys who shielded pedophiles priests from the law, would find it necessary to protect intelligent women from the evils of contraceptives when they wouldn’t protect little children from deviant priests (it’s also interesting that Pope Benedict XVI would appoint 22 new conservative cardinals to preserve his ideas on child pedophilia for another generation after his certain death; he’s certain to die because Paul died, and he’s certainly not holier than Paul, unless he can prove he can walk on water, produce enough bread to feed the masses, and change water into wine).
This decision to include contraceptives, and ignite the pro-life debate again after it’s been a non-issue in this campaign has invigorated Rick Santorum’s campaign. Santorum, who has been running around the country trying to prove he’s the only true Conservative, has likened the imposition of contraceptives to restriction of religious freedom and the involvement in government in our daily lives, this from the guy who voted for the “bridge to nowhere,” a big government boondoggle in Alaska, when he was a one term senator. I guess when it comes to stealing and wasting government money, you can’t have enough government involvement, other wise it’s not good.
Now Santorum has gone the next logical step, in his small mind, calling amniocentesis the precursor to abortion because, if genetic damage is found (such as Down’s syndrome), the doctor will often recommend an abortion. However, during his foaming at the mouth oratory, he neglects to say that it is still the woman’s choice.
Just ask Sarah Palin.
That’s what the Obama administration is trying to do: give every woman a choice. Obama’s problem is that he could have waited until after the election, until he cruised to a victory, to give all women this choice, not just middle class and wealthy women, and not just women with health insurance that covers contraceptives.
Back when part time Texas governor and sometime comedian Rick Perry was running for the Republican/Conservative Presidential nomination, he was doing his best to imitate Sarah Palin while pandering to the Tea Party extreme right when he said during a debate, “I will tell you, it is three agencies of government when I get there that are gone. Commerce, Education, and the -- What's the third one there? Let's see.”
Everyone knew that the third agency wasn’t the Department of Agriculture because Texas was an important agricultural state, and its farmers, ranchers and agribusinesses received millions in agricultural subsidies. But, while Republican/Conservatives of all colors were jumping in and attacking big government, especially Commerce (and the Free Trade Agreement and labor unions) and Education (because of teacher’s unions and the pensions they begot), and the Department of Energy, the third agency Perry forgot (because of its restrictions on gas and oil exploration and drilling), no Republican/Conservatives were attacking the rampant wasteful spending of the Department of Agriculture in their zeal to reign in government spending and the federal debt.
Congress, currently controlled by the Republican/Conservative Party, is trying to quietly write a new five-year farm bill that would cut some subsidies while preserving most for the farm block. (“Spending cuts trump farm subsidies for many voters,” Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press, 2/15/12). Why is this important? This block usually votes conservative, and if their subsidies are cut too much, Republican/Conservatives are concerned that Democrats might be able to make hay of this in the 2012 elections; one third of the House of Representatives are up for re-election this year. Now, it’s not that the farm block really needs the subsidies like they used to in the past; prices for agricultural products are at all time highs. No, these subsidies are outright bribes for votes.
Not only are Republican/Conservatives bribing farmers and agribusinesses directly for their votes with farm subsidies in the wake of soaring agricultural profits, but the Department of Agriculture is also bribing the poor with EBT subsidies. The Department of Agriculture controls the food stamp program, which is meant to provide nutritious food for the poor and under privileged and an outlet for the surplus agricultural products of American agribusiness. The Department of Agriculture determines what food products holders of food stamps, now EBT cards, can purchase, and the individual states determine eligibility for the program. EBT card holders are permitted, by the Department of Agriculture, to purchase soda, chips, cookies, cake, candies, and other assorted junk foods because they contain agricultural products (like high fructose corn syrup) promoted by the Department of Agriculture. It doesn’t matter that these junk foods ruin the health of their purchasers; farmers and agribusinesses are being supported. It doesn’t matter that billions of dollars have to be spent on Medicaid to treat the diabetes and other illnesses caused by the diets of these consumers addicted by the Department of Agriculture; Medicaid is another government department, and it is being attacked by the very same Republican/Conservatives as wasting precious government funds (because it is spending those funds on the poor).
Republican/Conservatives and Liberals had better get it through their heads that we’re all in this sinking boat together, and unless we’re all bailing out the water faster than it’s coming in, we’re all going to drown together. We’ve got to stop thinking about preserving “my benefit versus theirs” and start thinking about what will benefit the most while hurting the least. Libertarian farmers should look inward and assess if the’re really libertarian and independent if they constantly look to government handouts to survive, people should be willing to pay fair value for their food if the quality is high, the poor should be able to get humane but not extravagant benefits, and our representatives should be able to discuss what’s best for this country without separating into non-communicating blocks.
And then he awoke from his day dream.
The Supreme Court has interpreted the second amendment to the Constitution, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” as meaning that common, ordinary citizens have the right to own, carry and use weapons for lawful purposes.
I’m not going to argue the merits of this decision, although the real intention of the amendment was probably to enable the United States to rally men to its defense if the country was attacked quickly without having the expense of a standing army (the Army was virtually disbanded after the Revolutionary War), those men being primarily farmers and frontiersmen who had their own weapons and who knew how to use them.
The NRA will tell you that guns don’t harm people; people harm people, and they’re correct. A gun is just a machine that delivers a bullet in what ever direction it’s pointed when the trigger is pulled. They might also tell us that bullets don’t harm people; people harm people, and that would also be technically correct because the bullet only goes to where the gun is pointed when a person points the gun and pulls the trigger, but I think these are just technicalities, and the NRA knows this.
Times have changed. Most people either live in cities or suburbs, but we have been instilled with a frontier paranoia, fearful of getting mugged, pushed around, offended, or looked at askew. I’m not saying that the moment I step out my front door I don’t have to be vigilant; vigilance comes with living in a modern society, but I don’t see Jared Laughner’s face lurking about everywhere I look when I’m strolling through the mall. I don’t feel I have to look into the eyes of everyone I pass to see if they have that same crazy stare and might pull a gun and start shooting.
I don’t begrudge hunters, at least not hunters who eat what they kill, and who kill no more than what they intend to eat. Hey, I like to fish, and fishing is a form of hunting, so maybe the second amendment protects the right to own carry and use fishing paraphernalia (fish hooks are deadly to fish), and I follow my own rule of eating everything I catch and only catching what I intend to eat. I never catch and release because I have no intention of torturing fish; about 50% of the fish released die from exhaustion or injury, and I won’t torture an animal, or a human for that matter.
I also don’t begrudge farmers, ranchers, and those who live in rural areas for feeling the need to own a weapon to protect themselves, their families and their property (livestock as well as homes). I even don’t begrudge those who have been harmed in the past by someone or something and now feel safer with a weapon. What bothers me is seeing some huge, hulking man walking around in full view of the public with a weapon strapped to his hip or hanging under his armpit, daring anyone to mess with him. Nobody would mess with him without the weapon, so why does he need to carry around, in full view of the public, an extension of his penis?
Two years ago, here in Springfield, Missouri, a guy with an open carry permit saw a thief steal an old lady’s purse outside a supermarket. The thief jumped in a car and sped away from the scene of the crime, with our hero in pursuit. Instead of following the thief and calling the police on his cell phone (which he had), he pulled out his gun and emptied it at the fleeing car while he was driving, not hitting anything (that the police know of, fortunately). When he was arrested, along with the thief, he was indignant, along with many people in Springfield; he was only trying to protect the old lady. It didn’t matter to him that, in his testosterone induced rage, he might have injured or killed as many people as he had bullets. That’s the problem with hand gun ownership. In a rage, and most people will find themselves in that situation at sometime in their lives, if the right button is pushed, if a gun is handy, it will be grabbed and used, to everyone’s regret later.
Academy Sports Outdoors, a local sporting goods store here in Springfield, has an ad in the Sunday paper for Baretta PX4 9MM Pistol with a 17 shot clip for $499.99, a bargain. The gun is small enough to fit in a purse, a pocket or hang unobtrusively under an armpit, ready to protect its owner, come to the defense of the public, intimidate anyone who sees it, or shoot squirrels when it’s not being used for anything else.
Former pizza delivery man and current presidential candidate Herman Cain said God spoke to him and convinced him to campaign for the Republican/Conservative nomination for President. He compared himself to Moses: "That's when I prayed and prayed and prayed. I'm a man of faith — I had to do a lot of praying for this one, more praying than I've ever done before in my life," Cain said. "And when I finally realized that it was God saying that this is what I needed to do, I was like Moses. 'You've got the wrong man, Lord. Are you sure?'" (Associated Press, 11/12/11).
Was it the Lord who told Herman to place his hand on Sharon Bialek's leg and run it up her thigh to fondle her private parts? Instead of saying he doesn’t recall ever having met the woman, a claim now refuted by Ms. Bialek’s former boyfriend, Victor Jay Zuckerman, and her lawyer, Gloria Allred (doesn’t she do anything else besides wait for some celebrity to be accused of sexual misconduct and then find a way of representing the alleged victim?), maybe Herman should have said he was just checking to make sure her panty hose was on straight. That would have sounded more plausible than, “I don’t remember ever having met the woman.” That’s the defense Roger Clemens used when his good friend and former Yankee teammate Andy Pettitte accused him of injecting himself with performance enhancing drugs: “He misremembered
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On October 5, Sarah Palin officially declared herself a non-candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I hadn’t written an essay since August 16 waiting for that announcement, and when it came, I was so saddened, my writer’s block continued until today. Fortunately for me, Mme rouge énorme lèvres pulpeuses is running for President; she didn’t just give speeches to make $14 million so she and Todd could continue to afford to live in Alaska (it takes at least that much to be able to afford to shop at a Wal-Mart anywhere in Alaska) and take care of their son Trig (is that short for Trigger? Roy Rogers named his dog Bullet; is there a pattern here?).
After Sarah announced her non-candidacy, she went to Amsterdam, where she had a sex reorientation operation, and emerged as Rick Perry. Perry would have us believe that he’s been Rick Perry all along, but the real reason Sarah resigned as governor of Alaska was because she was nearing a nervous breakdown trying to be governor of Texas as Rick Perry and governor of Alaska as Sarah Palin. You want proof of this theory? Palin said she was dropping out of the Presidential selection process so she could concentrate on helping other Republican/Conservatives seek election/re-election. Who’s she helping? The answer is nobody, because she’s Rick Perry now and having Sarah Palinesque type problems in debates and on the campaign trail
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According to the August 15 issue of Time Magazine ("The Tea Party's Triumph," Michael Crowley, Time, 8/15/2011), the US owes its creditors $14.3 trillion. The largest parts of this debt are the $3.6 trillion due to shortfalls from the recession (due to less revenue), $1.7 trillion due to Bush-era tax cuts, $1.3 trillion due to the Iraq-Afghan wars, $1.4 trillion due to interest, and $2.7 trillion owed to Social Security.
Spending during the Reagan administration averaged 22.4% of GDP while taxes dropped to 18% of GDP by time he left office. Yes, he lowered taxes, but the national debt tripled. Currently, federal spending is at 24% of GDP while taxes are at 15% of GDP, which is why the deficit keeps growing so fast
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I live in a very small city. The city recently signed a garbage removal contract with a firm that is in competition with the company which picks up my garbage. I have a 55 gallon garbage can into which I usually deposit no more than two small bags of refuse because I recycle all of my plastic and paper at the local recycling center. If I decided to recycle steel and glass, I would probably have only one small bag of waste every three months.
My current disposal company has raised my rates about $10 over the last 5 years, so I decided to check out the rates of the other disposal companies. One of the companies I checked out was the one the city signed on with. My neighbor across the street from me had her garbage removed by that company. When I called, I was quoted a rate $10 per quarter cheaper than my current rate. So, just before I decided to switch, I went across the street to talk to my neighbor and ask her if she was satisfied with her contract. The next day, as I left my house to talk to my neighbor, I noticed she had a can from the same company I used. When I asked her about that, she showed me her bill from her current company, the company I was thinking of switching to. The bill was double the amount quoted to me. There was a base charge which was $10 less than my current contract, plus a fuel surcharge (which I am not charged by my current company), plus a dump fee (which I am not charged by my current company), plus a receptacle rental (which I am not charged by my current company). None of these extra charges were quoted to me. I didn't switch. Then, I received a notice from the city, with my sewer bill, announcing the agreement with the disposal company, encouraging me to sign up. Needless to say, I'm staying put
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On Monday, July 25, the California Supreme Court upheld the state’s policy of granting in-state state tuition at its colleges and universities to students who graduated from a California high school and who are also illegal aliens.
The justices said that their ruling did not conflict with a federal ruling that barred states from giving any college benefits to illegal aliens on the basis of state residency. Instead, because the student benefited due to high school graduation, not residency, the state could give in-state tuition to any qualified student who attended a California high school and graduated
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Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said at a media conference after a meeting of NATO members in Brussels what many people, government officials and ordinary citizens, have been thinking for a long time: “Future U.S. political leaders - those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me - may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost.” (“Gates blasts NATO, questions future of alliance,” Robert Burns, Associated Press, 6/10/11).
The fact is that NATO, which was created in 1949 to “"to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down,”” according to its first Secretary General, Lord Ismay, (“NATO,” Wikipedia) was really created to allow the United States maintain military bases on European soil to respond faster to wars against any upstart European power or Russia, while surrounding Germany with the continued presence of American military forces; it was really created for the defense of the United States by American military forces. Nobody really believed or believes that any NATO forces will ever come to the defense of the United States should it ever suffer a military attack (maybe Canadian forces will), and it is believed to be better to fight foreign forces in Europe than on the U.S. mainland
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On May 19, President Obama said,” The United States believes that negotiations should result in two states, with permanent Palestinian borders with Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, and permanent Israeli borders with Palestine. The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states." (“Obama Speech Backlash on Call to Reinstate 1967 Mideast Borders,” Huma Khan, ABC News/Politics, 5/19/11).
What prompted the President to suddenly give this speech? George Mitchell, President Obama’s special envoy to the Middle East, unexpectedly resigned, probably out of frustration, from dealing with Palestinian factions and Israelis who, although they proclaim a desire for peace, are satisfied with the current situation that allows for the retention of power among the various parties. Strangely, it was George Mitchell who brokered the peace deal in Northern Ireland, and that conflict seemed as difficult and intractable as the current Palestinian/Israeli one. With Hamas and Fattah in an alliance to push for a Palestinian state, and with most of the countries in the world seemingly ready to back such a move, the United States stands virtually alone in backing the Israeli position
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Comment by Michael Kindel
on New York Yankees
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