An Open Letter of Sympathy to Republicans

Dear Republicans,

Even though I have been registered as an independent since 1972, I have always voted for democrats.  This means I have often had to endure the embarrassment of watching many unqualified or uninteresting candidates lose.

Howard Dean, Mike Dukakis, John Kerry, Jimmy Carter...it doesn't matter whether they were good men or not, qualified or not.  What killed them politically was the fact that they couldn't sway the voters, couldn't perform well in debates and didn't accurately measure the pulse of the public.  So I and other democrats trudged to the polls with heavy hearts, knowing all the time we were voting for a candidate who would lose by a landslide.

And so it is without any sarcasm that I say "I feel sorry for you" because you're going to lose this election. Your current crop of candidates doesn't have a chance.  You're a house divided.  Believe me, I've endured the frustration and dissatisfaction that comes from watching my party and/or my candidate totally blow it by going in too many different directions at once, all of them silly and unimportant.

You folks on the right are going to wake up on the morning after election like a person with a hangover on New Year's Day who spends the next week wondering "What was I thinking???"  Herman Cain? He's like the bad prom date you want to forget.  Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry - you realize these people were utterly unelectable, right?

So now you're left with Newt, Santorum and Romney. Newt scolds everyone and arrogantly points out how smart he is every time a microphone gets near his mouth.  Santorum, who thinks he's Joan of Arc with testicles, and chastises Obama for wanting kids to go to college.  And Romney, who is the closest thing you can come up with to a candidate with mass appeal.  (Just so you know, my democratic friends and I wouldn't worry if Romney wins- he is, after all, a centrist democrat).

Oh, and let's not forget Ron Paul and John Huntsman, the only two intelligent candidates you have/had. One of them you kicked to the curb in favor of Newt and St. Rick, the other you just ignore.  Which is your fault, not the fault of 'the liberal media' or democratic organizers. Ron Paul would give Obama a serious run for his money, but...aw, what the heck, you guys are gonna do what you're gonna do. Just like we did when we ran hopeless candidates.

So, I'm sorry. Unless hell freezes over, you're going to lose and it won't be a close election.  Despite what the fear mongers want you to believe, Obama is not Satan in disguise and a lot of Americans have come to realize that.

My condolences

Irish Politics Explained

When it comes to Ireland, Americans ask one question over and over: 'what's the story with Irish politics?'

Variations of this question include 'Why do the Irish hate the English?,' 'What's the deal with the IRA?,' 'Why can't the catholics and protestants get along?' 'What's the fighting about?' etc etc

Here it is in a nutshell America.

Ireland was a free country until the British government took it over and made it a colony for centuries.

And what did America do when it was an English colony? America started a war, encouraged troops to ignore traditional rules of military engagement and act like terrorists, shooting from behind trees and walls.  It burned English ships.  It destroyed the King's property and it eventually drove the English out of America. By force.  Americans celebrate their victory every year on July 4th as Independence Day. Independence from English laws.

Get it now?

Intelligence, Bluster and Bullshit (for Newt)

Newt Gingrich is the big intellectual history professor, right?  Well here's some stuff I bet he doesn't know.

In 1879, a year after he took office president Rutherford B. Hayes began a campaign to make slavery legal again.  His argument was based on what he called "an ever expanding population of unwanted Negroes."  Surprised?  Don't be, Hayes had friends. Carlisle C. Stevenson, a senator from Kentucky supported Hayes' position on slavery, as did 14 other southern senators.  And one from liberal Massachusetts - Henry Wentworth, who argued that slavery was "essential to the southern economy in recovering from the devastation caused by our tragic civil war."

Shocked? Are you? Huh? Don't be. I just made all that up. It took me about 6 minutes.  Sounds believable though, doesn't it?

So what does that prove? It proves how easy it is to make up believable crap and how willing we are to believe anything that is A. written semi-intelligently and B. on the internet.

All politicians engage in this sort of distortion and lying. But there's no doubt some of the shining stars in the Academy of Bullshit come from the right: Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Hannity and, yes, Gingrich who is wrong and INaccurate about as often as he is accurate.

If you consider yourself an intelligent, thinking person, then prove it. Do some thinking and reading and stop believing everything you hear that "seems to make sense."

Capitalism vs. Capitalism, Republican vs. Republican

Romney vs. Gingrich....Gingrich runs a TV ad criticizing Romney and showing people making things, building things and doing things while he talks about free enterprise and the capitalist system.  Romney just talks about the right to make money and how wrong it is to criticize the rich. It's funny, the rich love being rich except when it's pointed out to them that they earn more in a day than most people do in a month. Or more. Then they start talking about how none of us understand how hard they actually work and how much they help the country.

There are now two types of capitalism in this country. The first type is the type Gingrich refers to, the old fashioned kind where you start a farm or a small business and work hard to make it grow. The second kind of capitalism - and i don't think it should be called that - is where you sit in offices and meetings and talk on the phone and speculate and invest and consult and watch the money roll in.

Nobody on the left that I know of is against the first kind of capitalism. That's a great thing.  Whether you start a sandwich shop or a small factory or a band or design a new piece of software, you set yourself up, you follow your dream, you put in your sweat and labor and you make money. Fine.  That's capitalism.

Then there's rich peoples' capitalism, Romney's capitalism. In this type of capitalism you don't DO anything. You don't use your hands, you don't do physical work, you don't sweat. You make deals and you're not the one who makes them. Your 'team' of consultants and advisors and lawyers and accountants make them. You buy up companies that are failing and sell them at a profit. Or companies that are doing well and then run them into the ground. You move money via computer from one account to another account. Your lawyers figure out how to keep your money circulating through your various businesses so that you don't appear to have "earned" anything, technically speaking, so you pay less in taxes than the average working family. You use inside information to invest the money you have and make more money. That's Romney capitalism: a get rich quick scheme where nobody gets dirt under their fingernails, nobody's back hurts at the end of the day, nobody has to get up at 5 a.m. to start a tractor, nobody ever works third shift.

If you are one of those ordinary republicans who works as a truck driver or school teacher or carpenter or small business owner, I have news for you: The Romney style capitalists don't care about you. Not one bit. They have nothing in common with you. They don't go to jail if they get caught doing anything illegal.  They don't lose their license to practice. They will never call you up to have lunch with them. They will never ask you to play tennis with them at their weekend house.  They don't like ordinary people, that's why they live in communities and houses that are designed to keep YOU out.

These folks exist to make money, nothing more. If their current plan calls for creating jobs in Ohio, they'll do it. Good for Ohio. But they'll take those jobs away just as quickly if they need money to invest in some other project. Bye bye Ohio.  That is not capitalism, that is taking advantage of loopholes in the capitalist system to behave like a greedy prick.  You never see the CEO of some company or some rich investment banker with a sign that says 'will work for food' do you?

These guys - as exemplified by Romney - are not the hard working Joe and Jane Average who have to  go to bed wondering if they'll be able to pay their mortgage.  These are not people who will come over to your house and help with yard work.  These are people who hire YOU to do their yard work so they can play golf.  Remember that when you vote.

When Gingrich talks about capitalism, he's talking about the kind of capitalism where Americans have jobs with American companies or start their own businesses and have some security. When Romney and his ilk talk about capitalism it's a code word for "me and my bank accountant."

The Republicans Are Right, But...

One thing you hear from republicans and conservatives constantly is that federal regulations eliminate jobs and are a drag on the economy. If only we didn't make our factories and businesses comply with EPA and OSHA and other workplace regulations, our economy would be booming.

They're right. But...

In 2009 I spent 3 weeks in China, traveling from Beijing down to the beaches on the South China Sea near the Vietnam border and back up to Beijing again. When you land in Beijing airport, there is a huge, scrolling electronic sign that advises you of all the diseases you might catch in China and what the symptoms are: thyphoid fever, cholera, dengue fever, CSARs, bird flu, yellow fever and - really - bubonic plague. Everybody except the poorest of the poor drinks bottled water because of cholera. I stayed in 5 star hotels (in China it's either a 5 star or a 1 star, nothing much in between). Every morning when they cleaned my room they brought in a fresh supply of bottled water. So you can't even drink the water in a five star hotel. The pollution in Beijing creaated a murky brown haze that hung over the city. We had planned a boat trip down the yellow river, but parts of it are so polluted from factory runoff that your eyes burn and you can't breath in certain places on that waterway. People work long, long hours without benefits, there's no social security, the state spies on you and you do what your boss says or else.

Why? Because the Chinese don't have the EPA, OSHA, a Clean Air Act, public health initiatives, etc.

Get the picture? Sure, we can bury China's economy overnight and get ours booming like crazy if we remove regulations. But you won't be able to drink the water, breath the air, complain about the dangerous working conditions or long hours at your job and when you're too old to work, you'll be on your own. If you lose a hand on an unsafe machine, you're also on your own.

So you choose: regulations or quality of life. Sometimes you have to compromise in life

How true

i love simplicity, especially when it produces something solid and irrefutable:

You cannot use logic to talk someone out of a position they did not use logic to adopt. 

Your Mind Can Be Fooled - Mine Was

Well, this is probably the laziest blog entry ever, since it's just a link. But what a link. Watch this video start to finish (it's about four minutes) and you'll quickly realize that whether you are a republican, democrat, rich, poor, christian, jewish, muslim, black, white, man, woman, etc. that your mind can be easily tricked.

Think of this video as you form opinions regarding the upcoming election and politics in general

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f29kF1vZ62o&feature=related