Category Archives: politics

A Second American Revolution?

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Ever since George W Bush served as President of the United States (2001-2009), I have been convinced that if Republicans ever took as much power over the federal government as they did in his first term, it would trigger a second American civil war and/or a second American revolution that would bring down the government and finally force some desperately needed reforms to make American a more ethical, just, and free society. Keep in mind that even though Hillary Clinton got over a million votes more than Donald Trump, the latter still got the most votes in the Electoral College, thus gaining the Presidency. Republicans have also kept control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, just as they had back in 2001, no doubt due to gerrymandering in many states as well as efforts to suppress the minority votes.

In January of next year, Donald Trump becomes the new President of the United States.The Democratic minority in the Senate proceeds to engage in the same sort of obstructionism against the policies of Trump that Republicans did against President Obama, including repeated acts of filibustering that Republicans cannot stop. A frustrated Trump eventually declares martial law over Washington D C  and orders the military to arrest most of the Democratic Senators and perhaps the Democratic House members too after they threaten to impeach him.  In response, the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, and perhaps Nevada decide to secede from the union. They are followed soon afterward by Illinois (Barack Obama’s home state), and most of the New England states (including New York, Trump and Clinton’s home state). New York’s defection is especially shocking to Trump for members of his family still reside there. Using the internet as their communication and organization tool, the leaders of the revolt form a provisional government among themselves, name themselves the Democratic Union of America, and accept Hillary Clinton as their leader.

In a rage, Trump orders the military to put down the revolt, but the generals, already angry at having been ordered to arrest members of Congress, turn against Trump and federal troops instead storm both the White House and the Capitol building, resulting in Trump, Vice-President Mike Pence, most of Trump’s Cabinet, and most of the Republican members of Congress being arrested or killed while the Democratic members of Congress are freed. With the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff taking over the capital city, a call is made for delegates to be sent from every state in the union to create a better government to replace the broken one. Most states agree and eventually a new U S Constitution is drafted, ratified by most of the states, and the Union is reestablished. But armed revolts break out in most of the states, which the newly formed government has to deal with over several years.

Two Reasons for Public Ignorance

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As I see it, there are two reasons why so many in the general public come across as “low-information”, often appearing to ignore or even deny what seems clear to those who are more knowledgeable.

First, many of us have what I call an ahistorical view. This means that if  you were born in a certain year, like 1969 in my case, anything that happened before that is irrelevant to you and may be ignored. That is why you see so many white people argue, “I had nothing to do with slavery before the Civil War! Don’t blame me for that!” Or, “I did not kill all those Native Americans back then and take their land, it’s not my responsibility for them now!” See this earlier blog entry for an expression of that ignorance by an actual celebrity:

https://dalehusband.com/2015/05/13/john-wayne-great-actor-terrible-human-being/

Continue reading →

What Trump’s Victory Means

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Last night, Donald Trump won the Presidential Election of 2016, which strikes me as by far the worst one I’ve ever lived though.

Trump’s victory means that America’s tendency to be hypocritical and white male dominated will continue just as it did before. Barack Obama’s election eight years ago was an exception, not the rule. We may not see another black person or woman elected President for decades after this.

When Trump first started to run for President last year, many people, including myself, dismissed his candidacy as a joke. “He is even worse than Bush Jr!” I thought, knowing Trump never held any public office before. Seems I underestimated the collective arrogance of my fellow white men! We tolerated Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr and Bush Jr despite the dishonorable natures of all their Presidencies. How low could America go, I wondered. Now we know!

Black lives are supposed to matter, but black VOTES do not!

Women do not matter, unless a man wants to assault them.

Gays and lesbians do not matter.

Christians matter, but no other religion does. Atheists will be even more screwed.

America will not have justice and compassion for those who want to come here and make a living and be treated fairly, but are not white and do not speak English.

We feel more comfortable electing an obvious crook because he tells us what we want to hear instead of a principled person who does not. Just like in 1972.

Americans love to talk about equality, rights, and how free we are. Never mind that the very man who wrote the Declaration of Independence and later became our third President was both a slaveowner and a rapist. He also took part in a massive land grab that would later displace lots of non-white people.

And let us not blame third parties and their supporters or Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The problem is and always should be squarely placed on the shoulders of Donald Trump and those who were stupid enough to vote for him.

I am ashamed to be an American and even more ashamed to be a white man in America!

Milo Yiannopoulos, Liar, Bigot, is Banned from Twitter

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Read this story:

Twitter permanently bans Milo Yiannopoulos for abusive comments on ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against Ghostbusters star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment. Image: @myiannopoulos Facebook/AP)

NEW YORK: After several complaints and repeated suspensions, the micro-blogging site Twitter has permanently ban Milo Yiannopoulos, the tech editor at conservative news site Breitbart and one of Twitter’s most offensive users.

The move came after Yiannopoulos led an online troll against ‘Ghostbusters’ star Leslie Jones who vowed to leave Twitter over her treatment, prompting a major outburst on social media, engadget.com reported on Wednesday.

“People should be able to express diverse opinions and beliefs on Twitter. But no one deserves to be subjected to targeted abuse online, and our rules prohibit inciting or engaging in the targeted abuse or harassment of others,” Twitter said in a statement.

“Over the past 48 hours in particular, we’ve seen an uptick in the number of accounts violating these policies and have taken enforcement actions against these accounts, ranging from warnings that also require the deletion of tweets violating our policies to permanent suspension,” it added.

Yiannopoulos reacted to the ban, saying that the site has “confirmed itself as a safe space for Muslim terrorists and ‘Black Lives Matter’ extremists, but a no-go zone for conservatives.”

The Breitbart tech editor has been disturbing Twitter users with his trolls for the past few years. Twitter earlier removed his verified status, but allowed him to keep tweeting.

Last March, Chuck Johnson who once argued that homosexuality caused a horrendous Amtrak train crash, was permanently barred from the site.

Just to verify this guy’s claims, I checked to see if other prominent conservative media personalities are still on Twitter.

Here is Rush Limbaugh’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/rushlimbaugh

Here is Bill O’Reilly’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/oreillyfactor

This is Ann Coulter’s Twitter account:

https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter

Donald Trump also has a Twitter account, and uses it often:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

No, Yiannopoulos, you were not banned for being conservative, because they all are too. You were banned for being a worse racist asshole than any of them. And that is saying a LOT. So you lied and I am calling you out on it.

The Downfall of Billy Graham’s Legacy

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Long after I abandoned Christianity as a college student (after I learned that most of the claims made to support it were nothing but double standards and even outright lies), I continued to respect evangelist Billy Graham as one of the genuine Christians I knew of. While some of his fellow Christian leaders would join together to form the despicable scam known as the “Religious Right”, Billy Graham steered clear of such things and continued to merely preach the Gospel with no political references. He also befriended and advised both Democratic and Republican Presidents regardless of their political or religious background, even the first Catholic President John F. Kennedy.

Continue reading →

Governor Bevin is a traitor, just like his Confederate ancestors

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Read this horrible story:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/kentucky-gov-matt-bevin-says-bloodshed-might-be-165058821.html

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin says bloodshed may be needed to protect conservatism

Michael Walsh

Reporter
September 13, 2016
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)
Bevin speaks at a picnic on Aug. 6, in Fancy Farm Ky. (Photo: Timothy D. Easley/AP)

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said conservatives may need to turn to physical violence in order to protect the United States against contemporary liberalism.

The Republican governor put forth the controversial suggestion after speaking of the “degradation of society” during an impassioned, 15-minute speech at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. The provocative comments started to gain national attention at the start of this week.

“America is worth fighting for ideologically. I want us to be able to fight ideologically, mentally, spiritually, economically, so that we don’t have to do it physically. But that may, in fact, be the case,” he told the crowd.

Bevin suggested that if Democrat Hillary Clinton were elected president, she would set the nation on a dangerous course that might require bloodshed to correct. He told the audience that the “candle” of liberty might go out “on our watch.”

To hammer home his point, he paraphrased a famous quote from Founding Father Thomas Jefferson: “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

“Whose blood will be shed? It may be that of those in this room. It might be that of our children and grandchildren. I have nine children,” he said. “It breaks my heart to think that it might be their blood that is needed to redeem something, to reclaim something that we, through our apathy and our indifference, have given away. Don’t let it happen.”

Bevin encouraged young conservatives to speak up, be bold, sound the alarm and wake up others. He told the conference attendees to not keep what they’ve learned from speakers and their books to themselves.

According to Bevin, too many people these days are following the example of former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who infamously tried to appease Adolf Hitler and promised “peace for our time,” as opposed to his successor, Winston Churchill, who is widely celebrated for understanding and combating the threat of Nazism.

He said liberals mock conservatives into silence by accusing them of being intolerant when they speak their minds. He lamented, for instance, that many conservatives have remained silent concerning “the atrocity of abortion.”

“It’s a slippery slope. First we’re killing children. Then it’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ Now it’s this gender-bending kind of ‘don’t ask, don’t be a bigot, don’t be unreasonable, don’t be unenlightened, heaven forbid, just keep your mouth shut.’”

On Friday, at a banquet in Washington, D.C., Bevin was awarded the Distinguished Christian Statesman Award from the D. James Kennedy Center for Christian Statesmanship, a ministry of Evangelism Explosion International.

Bevin’s office has not responded to a request for comment from Yahoo News, but he did post a statement on Twitter encouraging people to listen to his comments in their entirety. He suggested that the mention of bloodshed in his remarks was a reference to military sacrifice and that “any intelligent person will easily understand the message” if they listen to the speech.

And some might call me intolerant for saying there should be no place for conservatism in our governments? This is why! If we do not destroy them, it is increasingly clear that they will destroy us, just as they tried to do 150 years ago during the American Civil War! It was indeed conservatives who led the southern states to secede from the union to preserve the institution of slavery, resulting in vast numbers of unnecessary deaths! And what motivated slavery in the USA? Racism. Indeed, racism and fascism are the actual ideological roots of modern American conservatism, not liberty and justice for all. Gov. Bevin is not fighting for America at all, nor is he asking his bigoted followers to do so, but to fight for the society he lives in to continue to be white dominated forever. BTW, need I mention that Thomas Jefferson was himself a southern slaveowner?

But no, I do not want conservatives like Bevin to be silent at all. The more those idiots rant, the more liberals like me can expose and react to their hateful rhetoric and discredit it at every turn.That’s what free speech and freedom of the press is all about.

Trae Crowder, the “Liberal Redneck”

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Ever heard of the “Liberal Redneck”? He is a comedian who has recently begun making political statements through the New York Daily News and on YouTube. He talks with an accent that makes him sound at first like a typical southern white man…..but his messages are very different!

This was the very first video of his I saw:

Satire in general is often amusing, but pairing it with serious issues like this is….HILARIOUS! Sometimes the best way to respond to absurdities is with ridicule.

Such as…..

The first video mentioned suicide rates among veterans. This video expands on that point:

A video released this month strikes directly at the “war on drugs” we have been fighting constantly since the 1970s.

Below that video is a  link to a petition that I will reproduce here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/please-do-not-make-kratom-schedule-i-substance

Here’s one more from him:

I hope he keeps it up for years to come!

Why party labels in the USA are completely useless

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Watch this video:

The anti-slavery party of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War was NOT the party of Big Business from the 1870s to the 1930s. The party that defended slavery before and during the Civil War was NOT the party that fights for the rights of blacks and other minorities today.  The Religious Right which infested the Republicans in the 1980s had almost nothing in common with the likes of Donald Trump now.

This is why we need a MULTI-PARTY system like in some European countries. The two-party system we Americans have always had is by nature misleading. The south has ALWAYS been conservative compared to the north. If the Ku Klux Klan was founded today, it would be founded by southern REPUBLICANS. Conservatism is the ideology we must always fight, no matter what party label it marches under.

For the record, it is not BIG government we should oppose, but STUPID government which is a problem no matter what its size. Did you know that Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican, actually increased government by massive military spending….that we also never needed in the first place?! And why did Reagan do that? Because so many big businesses have had contracts with our military and profit from every war we end up fighting in! I can guarantee that if a Republican gets the Presidency in the next decade or so, then he will find an excuse, any excuse to get us into another overseas war like Bush Sr. did when he pushed us into war with Iraq in 1991. and his son did again in 2003. Consider yourselves warned!

As for illegal immigration, the rules were designed beforehand to exclude non-white people from Latin America, including Mexico. Ironic considering we conquered and annexed half of Mexico’s territory in the 1840s. “Hey, thanks for all your land, but we do not want your people! GO AWAY!!!” Meanwhile, Puerto Rico, which is majority Spanish-speaking and non-white, remains a mere possession of the USA and not a state. Go figure.

Cleaning up Congress

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Read this story:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-congress-approval-rating-drops-to-11-percent/

By Rebecca Shabad CBS News November 11, 2015, 3:45 PM

Congress’ approval rating drops to 11 percent

Congress’s approval rating has slipped to the lowest level this year, according to a poll released Wednesday by Gallup.

The poll found 11 percent of people in the United States approve of Congress, which is its lowest job approval rating this year.

It’s also only 2 percentage points higher than the all-time low of 9 percent approval from November 2013 after the last government shutdown.

Meanwhile, 86 percent of the public said they disapprove of Congress.

Gallup began tracking congressional approval ratings 41 years ago and the ratings since 2011 have been among the worst recorded. Congress experienced a record-high 84 percent approval rating in October 2001, a month after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The new survey also found 8 percent of Republicans said they approve of Congress while 13 percent of independents and 11 percent of Democrats said the same about lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The poll comes just weeks after Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, was elected as speaker of the House and after Congress passed a major budget deal to raise spending limits and lift the debt ceiling into March 2017. Lawmakers still must pass a spending package before the Dec. 11 deadline to fund the government and avert another shutdown.

The poll surveyed 1,021 adults between November 4 and 8 with a 4 percentage point margin of error.

How is it possible for the general public to so despise Congress when they have two year and six year intervals to replace its members? Because, quite simply, they almost never do! Most Americans only pay attention to the Presidential races and usually the Governors’ races in their respective states and do not take much notice of the Congressional  and state representative races. And yet it is Congress that makes the laws and decides the federal budgets for the United States, while state legislatures do the same at the state level. The President and the Governors have very little power, so merely electing them means almost nothing.

This is why the American people elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, then watched in amazement when Republicans took control of Congress in 2010 and 2014, causing incredible amounts of gridlock later. If you do not vote in ALL elections and for ALL positions in government, you end up with a government that you do not approve of! It is the extremists that take advantage of the mid-term elections to get their  stooges into Congress….and there are FAR more right-wing extremists in America than left-wing ones. You can blame dogmatic Christian denominations for that as well as the media being controlled largely by corporations with their own economic and political agendas!

Also, most Americans tend to support their own Representatives or Senators and assume that the “other ones” are the problem. That is not true! You can only replace the members of Congress that are supposed to  represent you, so if you do not vote them out, you are to blame for the failures of Congress. Not other people in different states and districts.

And of course, there is gerrymandering too.

How to disable the Republican Party

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Read this article:

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/07/19/24362128/dan-savage-on-jill-stein-just-no

Dan Savage said:

Yeah, let’s talk about the Green Party for just a moment, or third parties, getting a third party movement off the ground here in this country. Because we are sick of the two party system!

Here’s how you fucking do that: you run people not just for fucking president every four fucking years.

I have a problem with the Greens, I have a problem with the Libertarians. I have a problem with these fake, attention seeking, grandstanding Green/Libertarian party candidates who pop up every four years, like mushrooms in shit, saying that they’re building a third party. And those of us who don’t have a home in the Republican Party, don’t have a home in the Democratic Party, can’t get behind every Democratic position or Republican position, should gravitate toward these third parties. And help build a third party movement by every four fucking years voting for one of these assholes like Jill fucking Stein, who I’m sure is a lovely person, she’s only an asshole in this aspect.

If you’re interested in building a third party, a viable third party, you don’t start with president. You don’t start by running someone for fucking president.

Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom, grassroots, bottom up, building a third party, a viable third party.

You don’t do that by trotting out the reanimated corpse of Ralph fucking Nader every four fucking years. Or his doppelgänger, whoever it is now, Jill Stein and some asshole-to-be-named four years from now. You start by running grassroots, local campaigns. And there’ve been — and I’m sure we’re going hear from lots of people out there listening — there have been a couple of Green Party candidates who’ve run in other races here and there across the country. But no sustained effort to build a Green Party nationally. Just this griping, bullshitty, grandstanding, fault-finding, purity-testing, holier than thou-ing, that we are all subjected to every four fucking years by the Green Party candidate.

Bernie Sanders tried to challenge the Democratic Party directly by running for President as a Democrat despite serving in the U S Senate as an “Independent”. But he ultimately went nowhere. So the same advice applies to him as to the Greens or other so-called third parties in the USA.

We need progressives among Democrats running for city council and for mayors, and after capturing many of those offices, some of those progressives can run for state legislative positions and then for governor of various states. After that, progressives can run for Congress. Only when many of them are in Congress can one run for the Presidency. Over time, the progressives could be so successful that they can afford to split themselves off from the other Democrats, while the progressives and the (conservative) Democrats together erode the popularity of the Republican Party to the point that Republicans can no longer function as a national political party.

Those who say they are for “Bernie or Bust” have no idea the damage that attitude can lead to. If they really believe in what Bernie Sanders favored,. they should stand up and run for public offices themselves. Otherwise, they will fail and they are useless.

I will back Hillary Clinton this year, not because I agree with everything she has done, but because the consequences of Donald Trump winning are simply unthinkable to me. He is not fit to be President, and Ms. Clinton is!

Tim LaHaye is no more

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Read this news story:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/left-behind-co-author-tim-lahaye-leading-voice-evangelicalism-dies-n616481

‘Left Behind’ Co-Author Tim LaHaye, Leading Voice of Evangelicalism, Dies

by Alex Johnson

Tim LaHaye, an intellectual and popular leader of the evangelical movement whose 16 “Left Behind” novels sold tens of millions of copies, died Monday at age 90 in San Diego following a stroke last week, his ministry and his family said.

The “Left Behind” novels, co-written with Jerry B. Jenkins, were enormously popular, crashing mainstream best-seller lists in the 1990s and the 2000s, which until then had been all but unheard of for Christian-themed fiction.

The books, which were based heavily on the Book of Revelation, chronicled the struggles of the unfortunate people “left behind” on Earth after the Second Coming of Jesus and the “Rapture” of believers into Heaven, introducing the frankly apocalyptic theology to a much wider audience.

“Thrilled as I am that he is where he has always wanted to be, his departure leaves a void in my soul that I don’t expect to be filled until I see him again,” Jenkins said in a statement Monday.

But the books were only part of the reason the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College named LaHaye the most influential leader in evangelical Christianity in 2001 — ahead of Billy Graham, James Dobson and Jerry Falwell.

Falwell, who died in 2007, credited LaHaye with having inspired him to found the Moral Majority in 1979. And in a 2005 interview with Time magazine, Falwell called LaHaye and Jenkins’ “Left Behind” books the most influential Christian body of literature of the 20th century — behind only the Bible itself.

LaHaye also founded San Diego Christian College, 12 Christian secondary schools and the Tim LaHaye School of Prophecy at Falwell’s Liberty University in Virginia.

Among the first departments at San Diego Christian College was the Institute for Creation Research, which branched out as an influential young-Earth creationist research organization in 1972.

In 2005, Time enshrined LaHaye and his wife of almost 70 years, Beverly LaHaye — an evangelical leader in her own right as founder and chairwoman of the powerful conservative political group Concerned Women of America — as “The Christian Power Couple.”

Combined, their books and their radio and TV shows reached hundreds of millions of conservative Christians around the world for more than a quarter-century — and drew sharp criticism from liberal organizations and fellow pastors on the more progressive side of the Christian spectrum.

In 2009, LaHaye famously called President Barack Obama a socialist whose rise to power was possibly a signal of the approach of the End Times.

In an essay Monday in Christianity Today, Jenkins acknowledged that LaHaye was often called “opinionated, polemic, a right-wing conservative fundamentalist — and some will even accuse him of homophobia.”

But “the Tim LaHaye I got to know had a pastor’s heart and lived to share his faith,” Jenkins wrote. “He listened to and cared about everyone, regardless of age, gender, or social standing.

“If Tim was missing from the table at a book signing or the green room of a network television show, he could usually be found in a corner praying with someone he’d just met — from a reader to a bookstore clerk to a TV network anchorman.”

LaHaye’s ministry said that in addition to his wife, he is survived by four children, nine grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, a brother and a sister.

I first heard about Tim LaHaye when I was still a thoroughly brainwashed Southern Baptist and I had the misfortune to pick up and read his book “The Battle for the Mind”, a right-wing extremist diatribe that demonized secular Humanism as a corrupter of  American society. I wasn’t until I attended college and deconverted from Christianity that I realized the truth. I came to see that Humanists were to LaHaye what Jews were to Adolph Hitler and his Nazis; they were scapegoats that Christian bigots could focus their hatred on instead of the spiritual love that Jesus actually taught about.

As for that series of “Left Behind” novels LaHaye co-wrote with Mr. Jenkins, the entire premise behind those books was an outright lie, as I already showed in this blog entry:

Why the Rapture is a bogus concept

And that is why I prefer to call that fraud Tim LaHELL. He was just like Hal Lindsey, another self-styled expert on Bible prophecy no one should take seriously!

 

We must REFORM America’s democracy!

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And here’s how I would do it:

  1. Abolish the Electoral College. Presidential candidates should be elected only by direct popular vote.
  2. Abolish primaries. Let all candidates of all parties go directly to the general election, provided they get a certain number of petition signatures in every state.
  3. Eliminate the Senate and thus make the U.S. Congress a unicameral body. The term length in the U. S. Congress should be four years, rather than two. The membership of Congress should be 1000.
  4. Forbid state legislatures from drawing and approving Congressional and state legislative districts. Only federal courts should do that.
  5. Allow voters to cast a vote for as many candidates as they wish in the general election at all levels and positions, instead of being forced to choose only one.
  6. Require that the Presidential candidate that gets the second most votes become Vice-President.
  7. Make Presidential terms four years long and make Presidential elections at the same years as Congressional elections.
  8. Impose term limits on Congressmen; they should be allowed to serve no longer than 16 years (four terms).
  9. Make electronic ballots illegal; only paper ballots should be counted in all elections.

Greens have limited credibility

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So now it is official: Not only has Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination at last, but even her fierce rival Bernie Sanders has publicly endorsed her. The fighting among Democrats is over.

However, some diehard Bernie supporters refuse to vote for Clinton and may instead vote for the Green Party, which is indeed more progressive than most Democrats are.

I like most of what the Greens stand for, but there is one point that I strongly disagree with them on.

http://www.gp.org/social_justice/#sjHealthCare

Greens support a wide range of health care services, not just traditional medicine, which too often emphasizes “a medical arms race” that relies upon high-tech intervention, surgical techniques and costly pharmaceuticals. Chronic conditions are often best cured by alternative medicine. We support the teaching, funding and practice of holistic health approaches and, as appropriate, the use of complementary and alternative therapies such as herbal medicines, homeopathy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine and other healing approaches.

Unfortunately, most forms of “alternative” medicine are called that precisely because they have not been fully tested and confirmed to work via scientific methods. To illustrate the danger of being willing to uncritically trust such things, read this:

An Explanation About Science

One of the things people need to understand about science is that it is not like a buffet restaurant where you can pick and choose what scientific ideas and products you can accept or reject. You either accept it all or you are not thinking scientifically.

Here’s another questionable part of the Greens’ platform:

http://www.gp.org/ecological_sustainability/#esAgriculture

We urge the banning of sewage sludge or hazardous wastes as fertilizer, and of irradiation and the use of genetic engineering in all food production. (Emphasis mine)

Genetic engineering itself is neither good nor bad, so banning the procedure completely is nonsense. We need to judge all such issues on a case by case basis.

The Greens need to modify their platform by removing these controversial and inappropriate statements if they expect to keep my support. Otherwise, I will just return to voting a straight Democratic ticket this November.

Another look at Communism

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With a professed Democratic Socialist, Sen. Bernie Sanders, engaging and enraging the Democratic Party establishment as represented by Hillary Clinton, I decided to google “American Communism” to see if there was any remaining sign of the Communist movement in the USA. One would think that the downfall of Communism in eastern Europe and the breakup  of the Soviet Union would have discredited that ideology forever. And yet…..

http://www.cpusa.org/

A better and peaceful world is possible — a world where people and nature come before profits. That’s socialism. That’s our vision. We are the Communist Party USA.

Oh, really?

Continue reading →

Even Republicans are waking up!

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In a previous blog entry, I wrote the following:

Notice what all these current front runners have in common? THEY ARE ALL WHITE MEN! And that is really all the Republicans are appealing to these days, as well as Christian bigots. And these different candidates are engaged in a brutal fight for the nomination that is splitting the party up…..all of them are appealing to a core constituency, white males, who are no longer the overwhelmingly dominant segment of the American population, even though they are still slightly more privileged than those who are non-white and/or female. The fact that John McCain lost in 2008 to Obama should have showed the futility of continuing to appeal to a base that is growing impotent. But the Republicans have not learned how to grow and diversify, have they?

This past year, we DID have a black man, a woman and a couple of hispanics running under the Republican ticket for President, along with several white men, but I’d swear every single one of them sounded like a white male bigot! Not one of them really took any positions or said anything that would be truly appealing to women or minorities. As horrible as Donald Trump may seem to be, at least he seems more honest about his bigotry and appealing to the bigotry of voters than most other conservatives out there. Continue reading →

Newton’s Laws of Politics, sort of

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Conservatives often complain that poor and minority peoples are never satisfied, despite the gains supposedly made for them over the past two centuries. So they assume that their opponents are just being greedy and bigoted against whites and the rich. But there is another way of seeing what has happened and what can be done to stop the problems. Consider Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Continue reading →

Another Conservative gets caught lying

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Read this silly article on a right-wing propaganda website. The article itself will be in red and my direct responses will be in blue  .

http://www.yesimright.com/heres-the-hilarious-difference-between-donald-trump-and-hillary-clinton/

Although we do try to report on hard-hitting issues, we’re not above a few good laughs at the expense of far-left nutjobs like Hillary Clinton. Here’s an amazing anecdote about the difference between a conservative and liberal, attributed to Jim Spivey on Facebook.

Right from the start, this writer starts misrepresenting one of her political opponents. Hillary, like her husband Bill, is not far-left.  She is actually a fairly conservative Democrat. It is Bernie Sanders, who is also running as a Democrat for the Presidency, who can be called a “far-left nutjob” because he professes to be a democratic SOCIALIST. Yet he seems to have far more integrity than most other politicians, including Hillary herself. 

It sums everything up perfectly:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were walking down the street when they came to a homeless person. Trump gave the homeless person his business card and told him to come to his office for a job. He then took $20 out of his pocket and gave it to the homeless person.

Uh, NO! Usually when you fill out a job application, you must state your home address, thus preventing a homeless person from getting a job anywhere. This is exactly why being homeless is such a terrible trap!

Hillary was very impressed, so when they came to another homeless person, she decided to help. She walked over to the homeless person and gave him directions to the welfare office. She then reached into Trump’s pocket and got out $20. She kept $15 for her administrative fees and gave the homeless person $5.00.

Welfare offices DO serve homeless people in ways that private industry does not. And the implication here is that liberals must “steal” from the rich in order to give away money and other gifts to the poor. But that is a lie on several levels: First, taxation by legal definition is NOT and can never be theft. Second, government officials must eat too, so they do have to be paid for their services.  Or would you rather try to live without them and rely only on for-profit businesses for all your services?  You will end up even poorer as a result! And why would the writer say $15 for administrative fees and not a more reasonable amount like $5?  For hyperbole, of course. Note to right-wingers:  Private industry MUST make a profit to function, while governments do not!

Now, do you understand the difference between a Conservative and a Liberal progressive?

No, but I know a bigoted LIAR when I see one! Of course, the incident never happened anyway!

Pie charts and privilege.

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The basic conflict between conservatives and liberals can be illustrated by the following pie charts.

In the first, we see a typical arrangement in which a certain class that is privileged gets most of what they want, leaving only a little for members of a non-privileged class.

PieOne A truly just society, one that liberals would favor, would have an arrangement like this:

PieTwoBut this would cause the formerly privileged group to have less, which would go against their interests. But what if we could enlarge the amount of resources so that everyone could have more?

PieThreeSounds ideal, no? But conservatism depends on social inequality, so instead they might push for THIS instead!

PieFourIt does not matter how large or how small the pie is, as long as a privileged class gets most of it, period!

Maybe that explains this:  https://dalehusband.com/2009/07/13/the-absurd-scam-of-reaganomics/

Why did the Democrats lose this year?

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It seems that everything that could have gone wrong this election cycle, did go wrong. Texas elected yet another Republican governor, Greg Abbott (I am so tempted to tell jokes about the comedy duo Abbot and Costello), Kentucky re-elected Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Republicans will control the Senate next year and the House of Representatives actually INCREASED its majority for next year! And that begs the obvious question: WHY?

You see, the Republicans these days have literally NOTHING to offer the American people but bigotry and have nothing to do but express HATRED for President Obama based on that bigotry. Over the past two years, the Republicans running the House tried dozens of times to repeal the Affordable Care Act, even while knowing those attempts would fail in the Democratic controlled Senate. Now they may try again next year, but President Obama will simply veto such attempts. As the old saying goes, “To repeat the same action, and expect different results, is madness!” The Republicans may even attempt to impeach and remove Obama from office like they tried to do to President Clinton, and that will most likely fail too.

So why did the Republicans win so massively this year? Because, quite simply, many people assume that anything bad that happens to America must be the fault of the President, so they blame him for those bad events, then they vote for the party that opposes the President, even though he had nothing to do with the issues involved. For example, President Bush Jr was not responsible for the screw ups of federal agencies that followed the impact of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans in 2005. Likewise, Obama was not responsible for things like the ebola scare this year right before the election.  THAT WAS THE MEDIA’S FAULT! Hmmmm….

Part of the problem is that the Democrats as a party are much more diverse than the Republicans. Obama originally ran as a dedicated liberal but over time due to Republican opposition has moved toward the right, but that alienated many liberals who also consider themselves Democrats, resulting in them being reluctant to consistently support the President.

In fact, I would say the only reason Obama got elected at all was because the previous Republican President was so TERRIBLE! If Bush Jr had been half the President Bill Clinton had been, we would have elected McCain in 2008.

And maybe that is just the real issue, sadly. America as a nation just was not ready for an African-American President. We are still mostly racist bigots!

The ultimate discrediting of Libertarianism

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Over the past several years I have gone from being sympathetic to the ideals of Libertarians because of their opposition to the Iraq War and their support for drug decriminalization, to being highly skeptical of some of their claims and dogmas because of practical experience. But now, I am ready to publicly declare that Libertarianism as a political force has been completely debunked and should be abandoned as unworkable. It should not be contained in either a political party called the Libertarian Party, nor in the Republican Party. And here is why: http://www.viralnova.com/walmart-turned-library/

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Pamela Geller, pathological liar, hypocrite and bigot

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As opposed to radical Islam as I may be, and as offensive as I find many Islamic dogmas to be, I would never lie to try to either discredit Islam or attack Muslims or people who do not hate Muslims. But Pamela Geller, a right-wing extremist who would have been at home in the John Bitch [pun intended] Society of the 1950s (when it accused President Eisenhower of being under Communist influence), would lie and in the worst way.
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What if the American Civil War had never been fought?

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The election of Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States in 1860 triggered the succession of most of the southern states where slavery was legal, because the wealthy whites who dominated those states feared that the federal government would force them to give up slavery. The result was the four bloodiest years in all of American history. But what if cooler heads had prevailed and the Civil War had never happened? What if instead the South had remained in the Union?

For one thing, the fact that so many young men had not died in battle meant that the USA would have been able to conquer the western regions much faster than it actually did, and the Native American tribes living on those lands would have been even more brutalized in the process. Anti-immigrant sentiments would have been greater in the late 19th Century then they were, since there would be no perceived need for more people to come to the USA from other parts of the world. States that entered the Union after the 1860s might still have had slaves if they were in the southwest, but the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th Century would at the same time had made slavery largely unprofitable. Both northern abolitionists and European states opposed to slavery might have succeeded in putting enough pressure on the United States for it to pass a Constitutional Amendment abolishing slavery, but the southern states would have been able to block amendments granting citizenship and voting rights to freed blacks. As a result, the Supreme Court of the United States would have had no legal basis to condemn the Jim Crow laws and procedures of the South, resulting in racial segregation continuing to this very day. Many aspects of American culture, such as rock & roll and hip/hop music, would never have become popular among white youths. The United States would have regarded Mexico as an invader due to so many of its people coming undocumented across the border between them and this might have eventually led to another war with Mexico by the end of the 20th Century. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union would have lasted much longer and been more damaging to the interests of the USA around the world because most other nations would see the Soviets as more enlightened and honorable than the racist Americans. Most black Americans would have been far more supportive of Communism and this in turn would have made capitalist supporting whites hate blacks even more.

.So the ultimate result would have been an America that was even MORE racist than today!

The downfall of Eric Cantor

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A lot of ink (and pixels) has been used in reference to the stunning upset of a Tea Party challenger defeating House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor. Some thoughts of my own about that:

1. No politician should ever take his position in office for granted. You should be willing to fight tirelessly for your office against any challengers.

2. It really does not matter how much money is spent on your campaign. If your constituents have lost faith in you, then you should go down to defeat. So maybe there is hope for us after the Citizens United decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, even though it is still one of the worst such decisions in its history.

3. David Brat, the professor who defeated Cantor, is a Tea Party activist who is a hard-liner against immigration reform, and claimed that Cantor was too willing to compromise on it. Of course, that only means Brat is a bigoted @$$hole who does not deserve to be in Congress. Damn him!

4. Remember this I wrote years ago? I love being proven right!

5. Primaries of political parties tend to be dominated by hard-line supporters of that party, but then the winner of those primaries must then appeal to the general population, perhaps resulting in flip-flopping on certain issues.  All Democrat Jack Trammell, who will face Brat in the general election, has to do is present a moderate stance on the issues he supports from start to finish and thus come across as the candidate who will represent the most people in his district, as well as someone who is NOT A HYPOCRITE!

Wayne Christian and Todd Staples, libeled!

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Texas politicians are overwhelmingly Conservative and Republican, which as a liberal often makes me feel like an alien in my own state, despite being born and raised here. In looking at the candidates running for office in Texas, I stumbled upon some propaganda against them. Specifically, Wayne Christian and Todd Staples. Continue reading →