Bring on the clowns

December 7, 2011 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

 

From my friend and former colleague, Matt Davies.

Right now I’m thinking Rick Santorum is the clowniest clown of all the candidates.

The other day he said people don’t die from a lack of health insurance; they die from bad choices.

Yeah, my son made some bad choices when he was 16 to 22 — most of us do. It’s called adolescence. But his death didn’t come from any of those choices. His death came from the fact that he couldn’t get insurance because a birth defect is a pre-existing condition. Without insurance he couldn’t get care and so he died.

There was one choice involved; one that I made when I was eight weeks pregnant and the doctor told me I should have an abortion because I had a virus that could cause birth defects. My choice was to have my son.

But Santorum thinks the emergency room is access to care. Perhaps his access to care should be limited to the ER and we’ll see if he doesn’t change his view the next time he needs care.

He also believes gay sex isn’t equal to heterosexual sex, although I couldn’t figure out his logic there except that he’s homophobic. That’s why he believes gay people shouldn’t be able to get married or to have children.

He also believes President Obama shouldn’t have told the world Osama bin Laden was dead for at least 24 hours because spilling the beans at the end of the successful mission shows he can’t keep a secret.

Huh?

Meanwhile, Rick Perry’s wife has admitted it was “very painful” to watch her husband forget the third government agency he intended to close during a debate a few weeks ago. He jokes about it in a recent ad, closing with, “I’m Rick Perry and ,uh, what was that line? I’m Rick Perry and I approved this ad.”

Perry also says he’ll end President Omaba’s “war on religion,” which I didn’t even know was being waged.

Michelle Bachmann was taken aback this week when an 8-year-old approached her and after a little coaxing, he said, “My mommy — Miss Bachmann, my mommy’s gay but she doesn’t need fixing.” Bachmann shot the mother an icy look as she and her son walked away.

Newt Gingrich, a serial philanderer (although he has married two of the women he’s had affairs with), talks about “morality” with a straight face.  He served divorce papers to his first wife while she was in the hospital getting treatment for uterine cancer; his second wife learned of his affair with his current wife and his desire for a divorce just after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. I guess the take-away from this is that you should never get sick if you want to stay married to Newt Gingrich. A yearlong investigation by a Congressional ethics committee found him to be ethically challenged at best. He wasn’t charged with any crimes, I’ll give him that.

And Mitt Romney doesn’t even know how to be a regular guy, although he’d like us to believe he does by telling us he’s unemployed, too. That’s great, Mitt. I wish I had your millions to fall back on when my job went away. This week, Mitt had a “grass roots” event with valet parking.

And yesterday, that bloviating, pompous ass Donald Trump said he still might get into the race as an Independent.

Clown music just keeps playing on and on in my head.

 

The Donald is an ass

April 27, 2011 a world of progress Comments Off on The Donald is an ass

Donald Trump opens his big, flapping mouth.

So, Donald Trump is “honored” that he played a part in forcing President Obama to show his long-form birth certificate, and some people take him seriously as a candidate for president.

Trump, aside from the incredibly bad hair and annoying habit of talking through pursed lips, is so far from being the important person he thinks he is, and the media attention just feeds his massive, yet undeserved, ego.

We in this country have serious problems we need to address: The uber-rich are creating a permanent underclass; 45,000 people a year are dying because they don’t have access to health care; the Republicans are slasing the social safety net as they give the money to the wealthy and to big business.

All the while, the media chase this miserable middle-aged man who has no real answers. He is only wealthy because his investors prop him up so they won’t lose everything. He has minor shares in casinos, hotels and office buildings that carry his name. He is not an expert in anything but being a blowhard.

Most of the stuff he spouts is pure crap. He refuses to answer any real questions. In fact, his most-uttered phrase in a recent interview with George Stephenopolus was, “Move on.”

If he’s a real candidate, let’s treat him like one. Don’t just let him be a barking seal; make him answer real questions. Challenge his “facts.”

I don’t understand why he gets so much airtime. There was a time when the media would have seen through him and just not put him on the front page or on the air.

He is a distraction as “yooge” as the royal wedding, but he won’t go away after Friday morning. Pity.

One outraged citizen at a time

April 11, 2011 a world of progress Comments Off on One outraged citizen at a time

I’ve been feeling pretty hopeless lately, what with the successes of the right wing in strangling unions, reducing federal programs for people in need, cutting Pell Grants and other programs that help get people through college, sabotaging health reform …

They’re getting away with murder, even though most of the American people don’t want the things the right is doing. Most of us want Medicare left alone; we don’t want to see Social Security privatized, and we certainly don’t want to see Donald Trump as president.

This is a man who lives like a billionaire using other people’s money. He’s been broke for years, but his investors keep pumping money in so they won’t lose everything. He is everything those on the right say they hate about the government, but they seem to love him because he started an “investigation” into President Obama’s birth certificate.

The investigation that really needs to be going on is the one into the judicial election in Wisconsin, where several thousand votes suddenly appeared on the private laptop computer of a GOP operative who has worked for the candidate who will make decisions in favor of Gov. Scott Walker’s immoral cuts to workers rights.

Meanwhile, the government nearly shut down last week as the religious right in the house tried to insert language into the bill that would de-fund Planned Parenthood because they don’t want government money going to any organization that offers abortions, even though not one penny of government funding goes to abortion. Planned Parenthood has to be able to prove that, so where each dollar goes is carefully tracked. Planned Parenthood has never been accused of using government money for anything other than what it was intended for — well, except for people who have no proof of anything to support their false accusations.

Americans want to see the wealthy and big corporations pay their fair share of taxes, but government doesn’t care and continues to slash health and mental health programs, jobs programs and infrastructure repair (which really does create jobs).

Yeah, there’s plenty to be upset about if you’re an average American.

What we need to do is take this outrage we all feel and turn it into action. One outraged citizen at a time, we can come together and fight the incursions on our rights. We can decide whether we want to be a nation in community or a land of greedy, I-got-mine-get-your-own bastards.

The March 7/14 issue of The Nation contained an exceprt from the Stéphane Hessel’s book, Indignez-vous!, that I found absolutely inspiring.

Hessel, 93, was a member of the French Resistance during World War II. While Nazi sympathizers ran the “official” government, Hessel and others were with the government-in-exile, battling seemingly insurmountable odds to defeat the Nazis.

Hessel believes our outrage must take a positive form because anger only fuels more anger.

“We must realize that violence turns its back on hope. We have to choose hope over violence—choose the hope of nonviolence. That is the path we must learn to follow. The oppressors no less than the oppressed have to negotiate to remove the oppression: that is what will eliminate terrorist violence. That is why we cannot let too much hate accumulate.”

My late son, Mike, believed the same thing. Days before he died, he asked me to “play the dead-kid card” in a positive way, to try and use the energy of my grief to create positive outcomes.

We can put a stop to this if we’re willing to work together in positive ways to educate voters, then get them to the polls. If we need to help people get photo IDs, then let’s do it. If we see irregularities, we need to report them.

We need to be LOUD, but we have to keep our message free of violent rhetoric.

We can do this, one energized, outraged citizen at a time.