Different people handle the topic in different ways.  One comment that I found contained the following statement: “I think it’s not only selfish but it’s the last punishing blow to the living. It’s the easy way out of dealing with the turbulence that is life! We are left with so many unanswered questions.”  Apparently, this person doesn’t want someone to commit suicide because it is just too cruel to the living.  I guess that it is simple to put your own feelings ahead of those of someone who is so depressed that they see no other way to deal with their pain than to end their own life.  I mean, that’s a very typical thing, to put your needs before those of someone else.  What’s weird is that that attitude is not considered to be selfish, even though the “survivor” is not thinking about what the suicide victim has been going through, what pain might be causing them such agony, and just how desperate or lonely the person might be feeling.  To me, it seems selfish to say, “You’re punishing me by killing yourself.”

A religious website had the following: “When one has no hope does not know God or have faith, suicide becomes one of the greatest acts of selfishness.” I don’t get it. Does that mean that if a person who commits suicide is an atheist that they are being selfish, but if they are a Christian or practitioner of another religion that they are now less selfish?  How does their spirituality or lack-thereof determine if the act is selfish or not?  If God exists, do people really think that one of God’s posse is keeping up with which suicides occur among those who are church-going and which are among those who lack faith?  It seems like God would have bigger fish to fry. (And, no, that wasn’t some lame Lent-oriented pun.) God shouldn’t want anyone to suffer needlessly and, despite what some religious organizations seem to think, I don’t see a loving God as being one intent punishing people for being sick.

A user from the Experience Project’s website stated, “I don’t think its selfish to be angry with a person who chooses a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” That disregards a whole segment of society. While some who are suicidal are only temporarily depressed, there are so many who have a mental health issue that might be considered terminal because it will be with the person for the remainder of their life. For example, if a schizophrenic ends their life, then they are using a permanent solution to resolve a permanent problem. The statement also disregards the intensity of the pain that the person, regardless of the nature of their problem, is going through.

And, as always, children seem to have the best understanding of the world we live in and the problems we deal with. As a first grader, this person had lost her father to suicide and heard people at his funeral asking how her father could hurt her family in such a way. Even at that young of an age, she realized, “he didn’t do this to us. Instinctively, I knew.” So how is it that kids can understand that suicide is not an act of aggression against friends and family? How do the rest of us not understand that?

Suicide is not some simple choice people make because they are lazy or they don’t care about others. Suicide is the choice of someone who feels that their life has lost that little spark that made it worth living. Suicidal ideation is a horrible thing to go through. To feel suicidal is to feel like your very core is being sucked out of your body by a high-power vacuum and no matter what you do, you can’t hold onto it and you know that you can’t save yourself. It’s almost like being in the ocean with no life preserver, no lifeguard in sight, and no ability to swim. It drains you of your hope. It drains you of any joy you could have in your life. It makes you feel like your family, your friends, etc. don’t care or shouldn’t care or that they would be better off without you. And to write it off as the act of someone who doesn’t think about what others will go through is to thoroughly misunderstand the act itself.

Somehow, though, someone did. And apparently, it was the wrong someone because now the Parents Television Council, an organization which thinks it knows how to parent best and has such stellar parents on its advisory board as Billy Ray Cyrus, is involved, and they’re making it a big deal; a bigger deal than it should be. They complain about this event and talk about how this has harmed their children, but did it really?  Did the kids ask what the gesture or the word was?  Did they actually have to take time out of their Sunday evenings to actually parent their own kids? I have a feeling that the kids didn’t notice it, and that, if they did, they probably didn’t care.  By making this incident into such a scandalous affair and making it seem so taboo for someone to violate a social more, they are more likely to see this kind of behavior and language within their own families.

Obscenity laws run rampant in American culture, allowing groups like the PTC to attempt to govern what ends up on our television sets. In a society that promotes the idea of free thought and free speech, we have trouble accepting that some people might not conform to Puritanical ideals. We spend time on newscasts devoted to faux stories like the Super Bowl halftime show and we don’t pay attention to the real stories from the night, like Pete Hoekstra’s political ad that actually was offensive.

The PTC is demanding more than an apology from NBC and the NFL, in their words for having “a lineup full of performers who have based their careers on shock, profanity and titillation.”

How many performers don’t do something shocking in their careers?  I remember people freaking out when the Madonna/Britney and Madonna/Christina kisses happened on the MTV Video Music Awards.  Oh, or how about when the guy from Rage Against the Machine climbed up on the scaffolding on the VMA stage and made his political protest?  Or what about Miley Cyrus’ doing the pole dance at the Teen Choice Awards or, more recently, making photos at her boyfriend’s birthday party licking his phallic-shaped cake?  That might actually be considered shocking, profane, and titillating by a majority of people.

But, as a nation and as a culture, how define what is shocking, profane, or titillating? What is completely unacceptable to one person could be acceptable to another. To me, flipping off the camera is not a big deal.  And a singer mouthing a expletive?  Again, not a big deal, especially since being caught spouting off various expletives is not all that unheard of during a sports game.  (I grew up trying to figure out all the words that Greg Maddox used to say during Atlanta Braves games.)

We’ve got kids being beaten or molested in their homes, kids hearing epithets used on various groups and being raised to hate, kids being neglected, underage kids going on social media outlets and being exposed to things that they aren’t old enough to be exposed to, and kids watching violent programming. So why is it that this one incident is being lambasted?   Why is it such a big deal that this happened?

As I mentioned earlier, part of the problem is that we allow the PTC too much of an influence over how we are governed. Part of that influence is exerted through the FCC, whose power over obscenities and profanity is currently before the Supreme Court.  You may remember the FCC for their lovely part in the 2004 circus that was the Super Bowl halftime show with the wardrobe malfunction.  You may also remember the PTC from that, as well.

The actual power lies within the Supreme Court, if they choose to step in, which has established a three-part “test” for determining what is obscene:

• An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
• The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specially defined by applicable law; and
• The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.

Now, I don’t know that this incident would qualify as obscene under the second and third parts, since it was not actually depicting or describing (despite the implication of the gesture and the meaning of the alleged expletive, since both are forms of showing contempt) sexual conduct and since it has caused a bit of a political and artistic debate in the country. I’m not even certain that the FCC could fine over it being an indecent act since it doesn’t describe or depict a sexual act. And I’m absolutely certain that it doesn’t meet the profanity rule, since you have to actually hear the word in order to break that rule. Of course, the same could be said about the Janet Jackson incident, but that didn’t stop the FCC from going after her for showing her nipple. So, I would definitely not be surprised if they go after M.I.A., NBC, and the NFL.  Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they go after Madonna for wearing a skirt while doing a cartwheel next, or if they went after M&M’s for the “Sexy and I Know It” commercial or the GoDaddy body paint commercial.

Why don’t we actually focus on legitimate issues, instead of pretending like this halftime show crap is significant?  Are we too afraid of dealing with the real problems of the world  that we have to focus on something as dumb as this?

Though I don’t want to judge the private lives of others, Newt Gingrich is one that begs to be judged. I don’t particularly like the idea of divorces, and that is probably one of the only things that people might think me as conservative on. (Actually, my issue with divorces is when people don’t take their marriages seriously, so it isn’t really a conservative thing as much as a frustration at folks thing, but I digress.) First, he marries and (eventually) divorces one of his former high school teachers, which I could almost forgive him for, as those types of relationships are often (on some level) a form of authoratative abuse–especially when they start (like his did) by secretive dating. Now, I might have let it slide because of the circumstances related to the start of the marriage, but because he chose to leave his wife while she was being treated for cancer makes this personal decision of his a very disgusting decision. It is even more disgusting, if the allegations by Jackie Battley are to be believed, that he wanted to discuss the terms of her divorce while she was recovering from having surgery (her third related to uterine cancer) to remove a (benign) uterine tumor. Even more disgusting was that he refused to pay alimony and child-support while marrying Marianne Ginther, whom he’d been having an affair with. I have a hard time forgiving any person who cheats on their sick spouse. Adultery is bad enough, but to do it when a spouse is sick is just, in my mind, unforgivable.

Of course, his morally-deficient personal decisions don’t stop with his dumping of a wife with cancer for a younger, prettier version that he’d already proposed to during his first marriage. No, Newt was so into family values that he chose to browbeat Bill Clinton for his cheating ways, even though he had cheated on his first wife and was cheating (again) with who would become his next wife. And when he left Marianne for Callista Bisek Gingrich, it was a surprise to Marianne. Not only did he file for divorce from Marianne, he asked the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta for an annulment based on the fact that Marianne was previously married. He not only chose to divorce her, but to say that their marriage never existed. That alone would be proof of his lack of a conscience, but he left her eight months after she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. As is true with many chronic illnesses, the symptoms of and problems related to Multiple Sclerosis get worse with stress. It is important for people who have Multiple Sclerosis (or cancer) to stay as relaxed as possible to keep their diseases from worsening. It shouldn’t have surprised Marianne that Newt would do this to her, since it was virtually the same thing that he had done with Jackie. It also shouldn’t surprise her that he has never expressed regrets or apologized to her for the choice to leave her or cheat on her, since it looks like Mr. Gingrich has no moral compass.

So, why do these immoral decisions impact why I wouldn’t vote for Gingrich? Well, it’s a couple of things. In general, people who divorce their chronically ill spouse end up not only dissolving a marriage, but stripping a person of income, health insurance, and a good enough support system. Usually, the divorces come about because of the stress of caring for a disabled spouse or stress over the family’s finances. As the former probably isn’t true since, at least in Marianne’s case, the chronic illness was a relatively new diagnosis and the latter is likely not the case for Newt Gingrich because of his financial status, then it makes it seem like he doesn’t want to take care of someone in need. That is not a personality trait that should be admired or coddled in a politician. It is bad enough when politicians lose their moral compass because they are bought and paid for by corporations, but when they have no moral compass to begin with, it makes me wonder what kind of decisions they might make when given a great deal of power and authority. Another reason that I would not vote for him based on this issue alone is that if he abandons someone when things are stressful, then will he be able to handle one of the most stressful jobs in the world? What will he do when he has to make a decision and someone’s life is on the line? Will he be able to make it or will he just go find something easier to do?

Now, I shall devote my anti-Gingrich opinion to the typical issues that impact many voters on their way to the polls.

First of all, Newt Gingrich is, against federal funding “abortion providers” which is a fun and inflammatory way of saying that he doesn’t like Planned Parenthood. Despite the fact that he knows that it is already illegal for organizations like Planned Parenthood to use federal money for abortions, he still managed to bring it up as one of his campaign promises. He claims that more people in the country are pro-life than pro-choice, though, in 2003, 66% of Americans believe that first trimester abortions should be legal, with 25% of people polled supported legality into the second trimester and 10% into the third. Each of these numbers was up slightly from a 2000 poll and about the same as the numbers from 1996. A 2007 CBS polls also found that 30% of people said it should be permitted in cases like rape, incest, or to save a woman’s life, 16% said it should be permitted, but subjected to greater restrictions, 12% only want it permitted to save a woman’s life, and 31% said it should be permitted in all cases. In that poll, only 5% wanted an outright ban. This means that, regardless of how they self-identify, the majority of Americans are actually pro-choice on some level.

Newt Gingrich is a hypocrite. This is one thing that I’m pretty sure most people could agree on, if they looked at the facts. He has repeatedly gone after Mitt Romney for making money off of the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae housing bubble, despite working in a “strategic” influential position as a lobbyist for the housing market giants. If he was allowed to make money off of people going into debt, because of the “free enterprise” that he so lovingly promotes, then why not allow someone else to do the same without painting them in a bad light? And it isn’t just the economy that he is a hypocrite on. Gingrich has spoken in favor of cracking down on deadbeat dads, which is almost funny since he chose not to pay child support for his own children. How dare he take the moral high ground on that issue?

Gingrich doesn’t understand the economy and the problems related to it. He blames all of the issues related to the recession on Ben Bernanke, despite the fact that the majority of the problems that actually caused the recession were started during Alan Greenspan’s term. Bernanke became the Chairman of the Fed almost 2 years before the economy officially went into a recession, while most of the actions started in the 90′s and early in the first decade of the 21st century. In fact, he, during his term in Congress and as Speaker of the House, helped pass some of the laws that led to the recession. If anyone should have their feet held to the fire over this recession, it should be people like Newt Gingrich.

Newt Gingirch seems to be a conspiracy theorist. At the very least, he partakes in the conservative tradition of paranoia. He promotes loyalty tests for all Americans working in government positions because, as he puts it, “we now know there really were communist spies.” He doesn’t specify which government positions or how he would be able to tell who was lying and who wasn’t. He thinks that continuing the PATRIOT Act is a good idea because he says that we will all “be in danger for the rest of our lives” from terrorism. While it is true that we could be the victims of terrorism, it could also be true that we are all potential victims of crime, car accidents or accidents in other forms of transportation, health problems, etc. I mean, a lot of people have the possibility of having aneurysm somewhere in their body, which would increase the risk of dying unexpectedly, but that doesn’t mean that the possibility of dying by aneurysm should cause us all to have panic attacks and force everyone to be checked for them, including people who aren’t even necessarily at risk for them. The support of the PATRIOT Act is a support of severe and, many times, unwarranted anxiety and panic in all Americans. By making people fear some sort of imminent death, Gingrich promotes the allowing the government to use our fears and irrational thoughts against us. That is an action that could have severe repercussions for our basic rights and freedoms.

Newt Gingrich loves bringing up that he helped author the Defense of Marriage Act, a law enacted in 1996 that defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. If it fails, he wants a constitutional amendment to ban it. I could point out how hypocritical it is to have a noted philanderer promoting a law that defines marriage. I could also point out how cruel it is that Gingrich has a half-sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, who is personally impacted by his ignorance. Gingrich-Jones came out as a lesbian years ago, even appearing on Friends for the marriage of Carol and Susan, and has been challenging his political views openly since then. (Gingrich-Jones did say that privately her brother is cordial to her wife and bought the couple a shower gift and a wedding gift, which makes her question whether he is really anti-gay.) But I think it is more important to say that promoting the Defense of Marriage Act, Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, or any law denying civil rights to any group of people is not the kind of behavior that I would want in a leader of this country. It is even more disheartening that Gingrich chose to help finance the ousting three Iowa Supreme Court justices who approved same sex marriage in the state. I find it disturbing that he chose to call those who supported the ACLU’s lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America a group of “counter-culture warriors”, as it is a way to stir a greater hatred against the LGBT community and those who support the civil rights of all persons. It is also disturbing that Newt Gingrich refuses to accept that America is socially behind (including in same-sex marriage) so many other “developed nations” which impacts how the rest of the world sees us. He may think that it doesn’t matter, but even he should know that a lack of foreign support makes it harder for this country to be taken seriously when we comment on the actions of dictatorships and regimes that deny civil rights to their people and it also hurts when, in times of military conflict, we need the help of our allies. Regardless of what he wants to think, we are not on this planet alone, which means that we need a better ethical standard in this country.

Newt Gingrich promotes the more of his illogical ideology when it comes to drugs. He claims that legalization of Marijuana would tear the country apart. He claims that this would result in more people on welfare, more people being dependent, more people with bad health care outcomes, fewer people being able to work/pay attention on the job, and more people advocating cocaine and heroin becoming legalized. Maybe it isn’t his fault that he sees things this way, since this what many Americans are taught as children. The fact is that marijuana was more openly used in America up until the early to mid part of the twentieth century and its illegal status is the result of a series of actions by Andrew Mellon, William Randolph Hearst, and the Du Pont family. Hearst felt that the use of hemp as a substitute for paper pulp was a threat to his timber holdings, while DuPont, which was heavily invested in by Mellon, was promoting nylon as a replacement for hemp. The financial impact of marijuana was impacting their bank balances so they worked to make it illegal. The result is people like Gingrich continuing to promote an anti-marijuana stance, despite the fact that it could actually help the economy (since it is the #4 value crop in the country and is #1 or #2 in several states), does help some people with chronic illness to deal with various symptoms related to their disease, has never proven to be a gateway drug, and its being illegal has a negative impact on the crime rate of the country. (Many people are imprisoned on charges related to marijuana, thus contributing to prison over-crowding. The illegality also contributes to money going to various criminal enterprises, which increases the rate of other crimes.) It should also be noted that, though it is illogical to say that a legalization of marijuana would lead to a legalization of cocaine or heroin, the legalization (at least in certain cases) of those drugs might actually be a good thing, since both have been known to treat certain medical and psychiatric problems. (Also it is hypocritical for him to be anti-drug since he also admitted to smoking marijuana during his youth.)

His suggestion of increasing penalties on drug users is also a form of cruel and unusual punishment. In this country and in the world, we have a tendency to want to punish people using illegal drugs, while we do not understand that punishment is the wrong course of action for drug addicts. Drug addiction is both a psychological and physiological condition. It is something that we should try to treat, not punish. Throwing an addict in jail does not help the addict to deal with his or her addiction. Instead, it punishes him or her for his or her problem and, in some cases, introduces them to the world of drug smuggling within prisons. If we dealt with drug addiction in a more progressive way, then we might actually have fewer addicts.

Newt Gingrich’s promoting of ending the student loan program and only having a work-study model might sound good to some folks, but it is not flexible enough to deal with the lives of many college students. Gingrich thinks that students go to school longer if they are on loans, and take fewer hours per semester on average, which he says has led to the tuitions going up. He does not take into account that many students who are on loans are actually very well aware of what their education costs, but are, for one reason or another, unable to afford college any other way. Some people may not be able to do work-study because they already have a job or because they have a child at home or because they are ill and unable to work. Some may be unable to do a work-study program if they are in a program that requires them to complete an internship. For example, to get a Bachelor of Social Work degree, you have to complete a 40 hour internship. While some universaries will allow a work-study student to count some of those hours toward their BSW, it is generally on a case-by-case basis.

Gingrich also continues to promote ignorance when it comes to social welfare programs. He has made various statements that make programs like food stamps sound like they are being used primarily by blacks and other minorities (whites are actually the majority) or folks on Medicaid are actively abusing emergency rooms. (At least in Alabama, if you are on Medicaid alone, you must be going in for an emergency or something that cannot wait until a doctor can see you, or you are responsible for the full-cost of the visit.) His comments also make poor people sound like they are some how intellectually deficient in statements like, “to the shock of academics, poor people were aware of money and strived to get that bonus by not abusing emergency rooms”, which almost makes people using social welfare programs like Medicaid sound like either academics or Americans in general expect these people to have some severe cognitive issues. He does not understand that people within the system can be just as intelligent as those outside of the system. He even suggests that people who are unemployed need to do some kind of training, which seems to point to his idea that they are not educated. Given the number of jobs related just to the financial sector that were lost over the past few years, I have a hard time accepting that people who lost their jobs are somehow untrained or uneducated. The idea that people aren’t working because there is something wrong with them is a type of victim blaming that is just completely unacceptable. He also does not understand that the majority of abuses that the right claims as being rampant are the result of restrictive social programs. (For decades, the restrictive welfare programs would help single mothers, but not families. This led to families making the decision that in order to feed and shelter their children, they would split so that they could have help with income or food or housing. Thus the tradition of belittling “welfare moms” began.) There is no such thing as “free welfare” as he calls it. Gingrich willfully plays up the idea that welfare programs are something that people can have throughout their entire life, despite the fact that he was instrumental in working on the bill that started TANF, which is a temporary program that promotes work and only gives benefits for five years over a person’s lifetime. Oddly, the requirements that TANF set for people and the time limits actually led to employment rates of 20% less than those who left voluntarily. About two-thirds of people worked at some point after they left welfare, but many are still impoverished either by not having a job or by being concentrated in low-wage jobs. Having fewer people on the books for assistance hasn’t helped lower the poverty rate, since the number of leavers considered impoverished is between 48% and 74%. It has actually the share of the population considered to be working poor go up within the country. Newt can pretend that because people are working that this is somehow acceptable, but it is never acceptable for children and families to be in poverty.

Promoting tort reform is another anti-freedom issue that Gingrich seems to enjoy having as part of his campaign. Torts allow Americans to have some way to right a wrong within the civil justice system. It is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Tort reform has not stopped “frivolous” lawsuits. It has, however, allowed corporations and bad doctors and other professionals to hold onto their money, even if there is proof that they have harmed a person in some way.

He has severe misogynistic tendencies, which is not only evident in his treatment of former spouses, but is also evident in a claim he made in 1995 about women and combat to make a point. Gingrich made a comment to a college class that women are not suitable for combat because after 30 days in the ditch they are susceptible to infections, while men were born to hunt giraffes. While he was trying to say that women have skills that make them better suited for non-combat positions, he used a grotesque way of saying that and he promoted an idea that women are somehow built to fight. That is rather odd to me, because as many girls and women will probably tell you, you do not want to pick a fight with those of us without a Y chromosome because there are many women who will willingly kick someone’s ass. Underestimating the fighting ability of women is one way that Newt Gingrich exhibits that he doesn’t understand women. His misogyny was also exhibited by his statement that high school girls should be rewarded if they graduate as virgins. I’m not exactly sure if he’s planning on doing a virginity test, like the ones done in countries accused of or known for human rights violations, or if he is planning just taking the word of the girls.

I have expressed on this blog and off that I feel that Gingrich is a racist. Gingrich wants to replace bilingual education in this country with immersion in English so that people speek a common language and prosper, instead of staying in the ghetto. Whether referring to Hispanics or Asians or any other group, what he said was, at best, disrespectful and comes across as being very hateful. (Interestingly, there are many countries that provide multilanguage educations that have better economies and better education systems than the predominantly one language system that we have in America.) Another racist and/or classist tendency of his was saying saying that kids should work poor-time in school as janitors. This is not only a disrespectul position with regards to race and class, it is also against the law, cruel and dangerous (given the chemicals used by and activities done [like electrical repairs] that “janitors” do in schools) to make children do janitorial work, and advocates firing a group of working class people who probably need jobs just like other adults in this country. So, in that regard, he is not only racist and classist, but a complete and utter fool. Another racist idea of his is that Palestinians are an “invented people” and that somehow he is the only person telling the “truth” on this. It isn’t true. It may have been under the control of different groups over the years, but that doesn’t mean that they are an invented people any more than calling Estonians, who were controlled by various countries for hundreds of years, an invented people. The fact is that people lived there before Israel was established, both in Biblical times and in the last century. What they were called officially didn’t change the fact that they were Palestinian. Pretending like they didn’t exist will help spur more anti-American sentiment in the region, which will result in a greater risk of injury or death for Americans and American allies abroad.

Gingrich is one of many Republicans who has said that the Environmental Protection Agency is a radical, over-reaching agency that should be putting the economy over the environment. He fails to acknowledge that the quality of actual protection of the environment by the EPA has been reduced regularly and dramatically since his hero Reagan was in office; by not acknowledging this, he also fails to acknowledge that the economy and corporations have regularly benefited from the decrease in environmental protections. If we continue to put the economy over the environment, we will only see more of an increase in rates of asthma and other chronic diseases. (Asthma alone has increased by 4.3 million people in the United States in the past 11 years.)

And of course, there is Gingrich’s plan to have an American colony on the moon in eight years. Now, NASA is a wonderful agency. But getting to the Moon within 8 years is out of the question. It was a lot more feasible in 2005, but with just 8 years, it is financially impossible. And trying to get it past a Congress that has repeatedly decreased funding for the space agency is politically impossible. Then, of course, there is the science of building it for the moon and getting it to the moon. Newt proposes smaller rockets that already exist, but that would be more difficult and time-consuming, which would end up costing even more. Of course it seems like Newt Gingrich is either promoting this idea either to pander to Floridians or to promote his belief that China is out to enslave and/or kill all Americans. Either way, he is promoting this idea for the wrong reason.

So these are just some of the many reasons why I would not vote for Newt Gingrich.

I tried to give Callista’s special video on America being the home of the coolest kids around, but halfway through the short (two-and-a-half minute) video, I was already feeling nauseated by the the rhetoric.  Somehow, we are super special because God gave us special rights because we’re from a special nation.  (She doesn’t understand that the very line she quotes doesn’t mention anything about the rights only being given to Americans and no one else.  In fact, it says everyone is equal.)   And while she’s giving the shout-out out to God for being the bestest sugar daddy in the history of the universe for giving us our coolness factor, this video, like so many propaganda films of the last century, displays various military images.  Maybe it’s to inspire patriotism, but that was the excuse those other governments had almost a hundred years ago, too.

She may have innocent reasons for promoting American Exceptionalism, as may many others who have promoted it through the years.  Still, I would hope that people would be more wary of the ideas of one country or one group of people within a country being more important than another.  The ideas of empires, nationalism, and exceptionalism all rely on people placing more value on the lives of one group than another.  That may seem like a basic tenet of being a good citizen, but it is also a basic tenet of ideologies that shaped Nazi Germany, a fascist Italy, and the far-right regimes that rules the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.

When we start pretending that we are better than or more important than anyone else, we begin going down a dangerous path.  If we hope to be a nation that promotes liberty and freedom, then we can’t accept the idea that we are, in any way, more deserving of freedom, respect, and liberty than any other group.  When we start promoting the idea that we are better than anyone else, we forget that one very basic idea that existed at the very start of this nation: equality.

First of all, Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in the year 1961. There were witnesses, since he was born in a hospital. There was a birth certificate, since he was born in a state that has a certificate of live birth (aka a legal birth certification). There was also a birth announcement. Now, I know that on the last thing you birthers think that his grandparents from Kansas were trying to make him look like he was born here because they were conspiring to make him President almost fifty years later.  Conspiracy theories are for people who wear tinfoil hats.  They aren’t for high-functioning people like many of your purport yourselves to be.

Secondly, if Obama wasn’t born in the state of Hawaii, he would still be (cue drum roll and ominous music) an American citizen. Why? Well, since you admit (via your conspiracy theory) that his mother was a US citizen, he would be an American by birth. His mother came from the Midwest long after it had been entered into the Union. She, as an American citizen, carried him in her womb and gave birth to him, giving him (as a birthright) American citizenship. It made him a natural-born citizen. So, the very same thing that makes many of you citizens made him one, too.

Now, why do I think that you birthers are racist? It is very simple. In the 2008 elections, there were two viable candidates: Barack Obama and John McCain. Barack Obama was born in Hawaii to an American mother, making him an American citizen born on American soil, which meets even the narrowest of definitions of citizenship. John McCain was born in Panama to American parents. Yes, he was born at a Naval Air Station, which means he was technically born on American soil, but he wasn’t born in the fifty states, which is what many of you claim is necessary.  So, if this weren’t a racism-related issue, then you would have been equally appalled with the idea that McCain could have been President since he was, according to the birther logic, from Panama.

What some of you may not realize is that McCain’s citizenship actually had to be verified prior to the 2008 election because some members of both parties weren’t sure if his election would be constitutional.  Because Obama’s birth was well documented as being in Hawaii and to an American mother, his was not tested by both parties in Congress.  Instead, his went before courts back then to prove he was a real American.  His citizenship was verified again several times, even before Donald Trump decided to go after Obama.

Now, there is a precedent of the clause not being followed to the strictest of standards for some, while being interpreted too strictly for people from unpopular backgrounds in the past:

• Chester Arthur was rumored to be born in Canada.  Despite the rumors, he was able to convince enough officials that he was American by birth.
• Barry Goldwater, a candidate in 1964, was born in the Arizona Territory before it officially became one of the fifty states.  The 50 states thing is a common issue for some birther-types.
• Mitt Romney’s father George was born in Mexico to American parents. George was still able to be called an American citizen because his parents retained their citizenship. This allowed him to run for president.
• Lowell Weicker was born in Paris to American parents and was allowed to run because he was considered to be an American by birth.
• Christopher Schürmann was born in New York to German parents and tried to run for President in 1896. Despite being born in the country, his campaign was forced to disband because some Attorneys General felt uncomfortable about his parents being naturalized citizens. (Germans were discriminated against at that time, like many other minority ethnic groups.)

Basically, the country has had a history of allowing people who look a certain way or have acceptable names to get away with not being born in the right place or to the right kind of parents to run, while scrutinizing others. Since the scrutiny is only being focused, in great amounts, towards minorities, it makes birthers seem racist.

And the recent court order for Obama to appear before a Georgia judge to prove his citizenship is further proof that some of you are clearly taking this racist witchhunt way too far. What is surprising is that many of you are reportedly well-educated, with some of you even being doctors or lawyers, but you are unable to grasp the simple concept that yes, black folks born in this country can become President.  Maybe it isn’t your fault.  Maybe you were dropped on your heads or subjected to the racist tirades of a relative.  Whatever the reason, you need to get over it.  Obama has proven in court that he is an American, yet you won’t give it up.  You’re basically repeatedly filing truly frivolous lawsuits, which is either because you are too brainwashed by some Klan-like group or you are just too damn immature to admit that you are wrong and that filing these lawsuits is a waste of time and does the country no good.  So, I shall give you some free advice: get over it.

P.S. – Please tell some of your friends who keep calling Obama a “Muslim” that he isn’t one. (I heard a comment yesterday on the news from someone who claimed Obama was Muslim.)  Also, tell them that being a Muslim is not an insult.  I know some people think Muslims are terrorists, and yeah, there are some terrorists who claim to be Muslim, but they are in the minority.  (There are terrorists from ALL religious backgrounds.)  So, let’s stop with the ignorance and stick to facts.

First of all, every time I see Santorum on CNN or the nightly news, I get sick to my stomach. He always manages to say something that pisses me off or grosses me out. Though that happens sometimes with other politicians, it seems to occur every single time with Santorum.

Rick Santorum is one of those people who just doesn’t seem to understand what is going on in the world. He seems like has no grasp of reality. For example, Santorum told the mother of a cancer survivor, “Insurance works when people who are higher risk end up having to pay more, as they should. In your case, your son obviously did nothing wrong. Obviously there are a lot of other people that increased their health risk that did do things wrong and as a result, it resulted in higher health care costs.” This comment came after she asked why Santorum supported insurance companies who refuse to insure people who have pre-existing conditions and/or who charge more for people who are sick. He had previously said, when talking about having to get health insurance for his family (after he quit his job to run for President), “We have a child who has a pre-existing condition and we went out and we said, we like this plan…we have to pay more because she has a pre-existing condition. Well, we should pay more. She’s going to be very expensive to the insurance company and, you know, that cost is passed along to us…I’m okay with that.” Santorum doesn’t seem to understand the reality of being sick, nor does he understand the reality of being poor and sick. While there are some people who are sick who play a part in causing their illness, the majority of people who are sick didn’t ask to be that way. (From my experience, the belief that the sick cause their own problems is the opinion of someone who is either in denial, uninformed, or just an ignorant asshole.) Struggling families can’t pay for simple things like check-ups, yet if they are truly sick, he wants them to pay higher prices than healthy people. On what planet and in what universe does that make sense? How is it good or fair or just or, hell, even Christian to force the sick and the poor to cover that kind of cost? And what if they figure out that they can’t cover it at all? Itisn’t right to keep any of them from having affordable insurance because they happened to have health problems. What would his opinion be on this whole thing if he wasn’t wealthy enough to take care of his daughter’s medical bills? Would he still say that if he were struggling to make ends meet and was faced with the possibility of not being able to cover the bills, which might result in his daughter’s health being put in jeopardy? Would he still claim that mandates for affordable coverage were destroying most of the countries in the world if he needed that afforable coverage? Well, given the source, he probably would, even though it isn’t actually true.

Santorum is so out-of-the-loop when it comes to health care that he claimes that the pre-existing conditions clause in the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) would increase health care costs because people would wait until their sick to purchase coverage. This has actually been shown to be incorrect in the Massachusetts health care law (sometimes called RomneyCare) that the federal law is most like, where younger, healthier people are encouraged to purchase coverage before they get sick, which keeps costs lower, and has the costs of the sick being paid for by the premiums of the healthy.

Of course, like many in his party, he supports medical liability reform, which is also commonly called tort reform. It is simple to say that “frivolous lawsuits” cost Americans lots and lots of money, but the call for tort reform is not a good one. Decisions made by doctors have life and death consequences for patients. A lawsuit against a doctor who has committed a grievous act of malpractice is not a frivolous suit. It is a civil liberty guaranteed to Americans under the U.S. Constitution. It holds doctors accountable for the decisions they make, and encourages doctors, insurance companies, etc. to give the best care to patients that is possible. If you haven’t seen the documentary Hot Coffee, you should watch it and pay close attention to the story of Colin Gourley. If anyone is the poster child of how medical liability/tort reform has gravely impacted the lives of victims of bad medicine, it is Colin Gourley. I cannot immagine a person supporting that kind of reform after hearing Colin’s story.

Santorum seems to view himself as the savior of not just the country, but the world. On his own page, he paints himself as basically an All-American superhero. He claims to have been one of the first people in the country that knew that Syria was a threat. For the record, though he may have played a part in writing certain legislation regarding Syria, Santorum was not the first national leader to understand that there were some serious issues with the Syrian government. Relations with that government have been on shaky ground off-and-on since the 1950′s. Syria has been on the United States’ list of state sponsors of terrorism since the list was first made in 1979. In 1986, the United States withdrew its ambassador over evidence that Syria was involved in an attempt to blow up an Israeli airplane. Syria played nice and expelled some organizations leading to the countries started acting more diplomatic towards one another. Rick Santorum wasn’t born when the first issues between Syria and the United States arose, and he wasn’t in Congress when the United States designated Syria as a state sponsor of and safe-haven for terrorism.

He seems to be of the opinion that he, as the President, would need to make a pre-emptive strike on Iran if he thought that they might have a nuclear weapon. Nuclear weapons are scary, but so are world leaders who choose to go to war instead of making any attempt at diplomacy. We’ve had a President that chose pre-emptive war over an uncomfortable peace before. We’re just ending that war, and seeing how devastating the decision to enter into it really was.

Santorum seems to indicate that he believes, to some degree, that No Child Left Behind bill (that passed while he was in Congress) was good for American schools. Even though the bill is treated like a major triumph by many politicians, it was actually one of the most harmful bills of the Bush 43 regime. That may sound like an exaggeration, but it definitely is not. Expectations of students are set incredibly low, which makes it seem like progress whenever a student or a school succeeds. The bill’s lack of flexibility with low-performing students (and high-performing students) and students suffering from varying disabilities made it almost impossible to improve American schools. The bill paints students as being equal, which is ridiculous because everyone knows that no two children are exactly alike. Because of these issues and others, I have a hard time believing that Santorum even knows what the education system should be like.

As a Republican, Rick Santorum supports the NRA’s idea of what the Second Amendment says. He doesn’t just think that guns used in hunting and self-defense should be available to citizens of this country. He supports the ability of people in this country to use any sort of guns. He opposed the Assault Weapons ban because, according to his campaign’s website, “he believes there are more effective ways to stop gun violence, such as stricter enforcement of existing laws, than taking away the rights of law abiding gun owners.” I kind of understand where he’s coming from, though I would rather live in a country with bans on gun ownership than one without, but I don’t understand why any law abiding gun owners would need assault weapons. How do you go hunting with an assault weapon? And why would you need one to protect your life or that of your family? If violence in your area is so bad that you need an assault weapon, then maybe you should just move.

Santorum is Catholic, which should probably make me cut him some slack on his opinions about abortion and birth control, but guess what? It doesn’t. Santorum’s belief that states should be allowed to outlaw contraception makes me wonder if he’ll call for allowing footbinding next. He seems to think that allowing contraception gives people a license to act out sexually in a way that is unnatural. I’ve heard this kind of argument by some people before, and I know that some believe this is true. It is a rather naïve perspective. People were motivated by sexual drives and instincts long before the first birth control pill, condom, diaphragm, or any other contraceptive method was produced. Sexual drives are a part of being a living entity, and it is sad to think that some people do not understand this basic biological truth. Having contraception available doesn’t cause people to have more sex. Instead it helps to keep the number of unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases lower than they would be without them. There were STDs and unwanted pregnancies before contraception was ever available. Mr. Santorum could find this information easily, if he was only willing to look. Santorum also supports the idea of eliminating funding to Planned Parenthood. He wants to use half of the money that goes to Planned Parenthood to support adoption instead, which might seem like a good idea if you don’t know that the money given to Planned Parenthood by the government (1) cannot go toward paying for abortion and (2) actually goes to programs, like cancer-screenings, that save lives. Surely, Mr. Santorum would know this from his time in Congress. He should also know more about “partial-birth abortions” than his website and his comments seem to indicate. He should know that it is unethical to prevent these abortions, even though they are generally done to preserve the life of the mother or to prevent the pain of the child. Surely he would have learned this at some point.

And, like many of the other candidates from his party, Santorum is against the idea of gay marriage. He’s even suggested, in some speeches, that allowing for gay marriage would lead to polygamous marriages. He’ll sometimes start his comments on LGBT marriage with comments about civil rights and then he’ll go into how gay and lesbians shouldn’t have the same “privileges” as heterosexuals. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t view his ability to marry his wife as just a “privilege” and I’m pretty sure that if the government had told him that he couldn’t marry her because the government didn’t like the idea of their marriage that he would’ve been pretty pissed off.

I guess he was inspired by the Tea Party movement to support the idea of decreased government spending, even though, while in Congress, he used to increase the federal spending to programs he supported. Like many on the GOP side, he wants to cut resources to the Environmental Protection Agency for what he calls “job killing regulations.” I guess he would allow companies to have a bit of free reign on making hazardous products that would kill plants and animals, endanger the habitats of various species, and put lives of children and adults in serious jeopardy as long as it kept more people employed. I guess that jobs are more important than safety. Of course, his ideas for cutting funding to the EPA are not the only spending cut ideas that are a bit anti-life/safety/common sense. His ideas to freeze spending to social programs ranging from health care (Medicaid) to education to food stamps shows how distorted his views are. These are programs that are already underfunded, which causes children to not get the quality of education they deserve, needy citizens to go hungry, and the poor to go without adequate health care.

And, of course, he supports lowering taxes and increasing deductions, which is a commonly proposed idea from politicians on the right. It was even tried by the Bush administration. I think we all know what happened after the taxes were lowered and deductions were increased the last time. Santorum is off-the-mark on taxes, but that makes sense since he believes that all people can achieve greatness and wealth by rising on their own merits and hard work. That’s kind of odd, since some of the most difficult and tedious jobs are the lowest paying. People can work in fields with almost back-breaking labor and never break out of the income bracket that they were born in. Sure, there are success stories, where a poor kid becomes a wealthy adult, but those are the exceptions, not the rules.

Of course, there is one other thing that would probably inspire me to not vote for him. It may seem petty, but the constant retelling of the extremely premature birth (and subsequent death) of his son Gabriel always gets to me. It would be one thing if the story was told once or twice, or if he had never mentioned that they took the corpse of Gabriel home so that the children could cuddle it and say goodbye, but he tells the whole story often. Honestly, repeatedly hearing that they were all cuddling a dead baby has caused me to gag more than once. I can understand the idea of having some kind of ritual to deal with the grief of that kind of loss or even the parents holding the child right after the loss, but taking a dead child home to hold is just sick. You wouldn’t take any other dead body home to make a loss real for your family. If you suggested it, you would be looked at like a nut, so it doesn’t make sense why you would take the child home. It seems like it might even mess up some part of your other childrens’ psyches. And, even without the corpse part, the constant retelling bugs me. I understand that miscarriages, stillbirths, and losses of children are horrible. I’ve never lost a child, but I’ve had friends and family who have, including my own parents who miscarried several months before my mom got pregnant with me. And my own parents, who understood that kind of loss, were horrified by the idea of taking a dead body home for children to hold and touch. So, that made me feel a little less judgmental about the whole thing.

There are other reasons that I’m not going to vote for Rick Santorum, but I think that the ones that I have listed are enough to make my point.  I hope other people won’t vote for him as well, and will open up about their reasons for not wanting him in office.

One of the first things I can think of when it comes to why I wouldn’t vote for her is that I’ve never actually heard her say anything of value.  She acts like she is talking about the issues, but to me, she just speaks in sound bites.  Her speeches and answers for interviews and debates sound like they are made for a spot on the nightly news, but don’t sound truly researched.  She seems like that kid in an English literature class who thought that they could just read the CliffsNotes on a particular book and write a 10 page essay on that book based on the information in the study guide. I understand that she is trying to appeal to her base by saying what she thinks they want to hear, but she ends up coming off as fake and uninformed.

She comes off as a hypocrite on some issues. Bachmann is on record as being opposed to both federally and state-mandated health insurance laws, but, as far as I can tell, had no problem with the state of Minnesota requiring drivers to have not one, but four different types of automobile insurance.  As someone who worked as a State Senator for the state from 2001 until 2007, it would seem that if she was so opposed to the government forcing its citizens to purchase any type of item, product, or service, then she would have been vocal about the mandatory car insurance.  It could be argued that they are completely different, but they aren’t really.  Insurance is insurance.  Yes, car insurance keeps people from having to shell out lots of their own money to fix their cars when they’re involved in a car accident.  It keeps costs related to accidents considerably lower than they might otherwise be.  Health insurance could do the same for health care costs.  If every person were insured, then costs for procedures and medical care would go down.  So, why is she so okay with one and so against another?  Like I said, it seems downright hypocritical of her.

Michele Bachmann, like so many other candidates from her party, is supporting the idea of federal and state bans on same-sex marriage.  This is not only another example of hypocrisy by her, since she also wants a smaller government and less intervention in people’s lives, but an example of how ignorant the woman truly is.  Bachmann has called homosexuality a sexual dysfunction and has suggested that anyone who tries to teach children that it is completely natural and normal will be encouraging children to try homosexuality.  This stance makes it sound like homosexuality is like an addictive substance, instead of a natural type of relationship. Of course, to her, I’m sure that homosexuality just seems like a dangerous and addictive substance. After all, this is the woman who, along with her husband, has been accused of running a clinic that offers conversion therapy. (Both deny that conversion therapy is an offered service, but some of the quotes of Marcus Bachmann seem to indicate that they do offer it: “But if someone comes in a homosexual and they want to stay homosexual, I don’t have a problem with that.”) And her husband has suggested that parents of gay teenagers turn to religion for help by stating, “I think you clearly say ‘what is the understanding of God’s word on homosexuality,’…We have to understand barbarians need to be educated. They need to be disciplined and just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean we’re supposed to go down that road.” Bachmann herself has made other controversial remarks about homosexuality, suggesting that allowing gay marriage would lead to polygamy, group marriage, and “much worse” to happen. Bachmann was opposed to the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and has voted against enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes.

Michele Bachmann, unsurprisingly, is a “pro-life” candidate. What might be more surprising is the extent to which she denounces abortion. In 2008, Bachmann took to the House floor to voice support for the National Right to Life legislation. She is opposed to abortion and believes that raising the child or adoption are superior choices to abortions. She has tried to get Planned Parenthood defunded by the government and remove their tax exempt status from the group. She has cosponsored legislation to keep minors from travelling to another state to get an abortion, unless it is medically necessary. She cosponsored a bill that requires an abortion provider who knowingly performs an abortion on a “pain-capable unborn child” (defined as one 20 weeks or older) to (1) inform the woman of the probable age of the child, (2) provide an Unborn Child Pain Awareness Brochure (unless she says no), (3) provide information that pain medicine administered to the mother may not prevent pain in the child but that pain medicine can be administered directly to the child, (4) give the woman the provider’s best medical judgment of the risks and costs of that anesthesia, and (5) obtain the woman’s signature on a decision form and her explicit request for or refusal of the administration of drugs to the child. She co-sponsored a bill to prohibit taxpayer funds going to abortions, though that was already illegal. Another bill co-sponsored by her would require a woman to receive an ultrasound prior to the abortion. These bills, plus her history of sidewalk conseling, clearly emphasize that Michele Bachmann believes in bullying and harrassing pregnant women who choose to have abortions.

Bachmann is completely uninformed about the realities of the economy. Like many politicians, she assumes that the raising of the debt ceiling is an indication of a failure in leadership. The funny thing is that most countries have to raise their own debt ceilings, except for ones that have completely eliminated having a defined debt ceiling. Another odd thing is that there was a regular raising of the debt ceiling prior to Obama taking office, but no one really talked about it. They aren’t a new thing. She voted against regulating the subprime mortgage industry, one of the key factors behind the recession of 2008. She goes around claiming that the bailout cost the government $700 billion, despite the fact that it was actually only a cost of $25 billion. She voted against extending unemployment benefits and increasing the minimum wage, despite the fact that (for the former) so many people are still having so much trouble getting a job and (for the latter) the cost of living is clearly going up, which means people need more money to make it by in society. She voted against unions, which makes sense since the GOP has a history of siding with the employer over the employee. Bachmann wants to wean everyone off of Social Security and Medicare and wants everyone to pay some level of taxes. She wants to adopt a single-rate tax system, which might sound fair, but causes even more income inequalities to occur.

She voted against a bill that would provide $40 billion for green public schools, which is not all that surprising since she doesn’t believe that climate change is a legitimate science and wants to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. She also voted against enforcing limits of CO₂ global warming pollution, tax credits for renewable electricity, incentives for energy production and conservation and renewable energy, and investing in homegrown biofuel. She voted against the Cash for Clunkers program and protection of free-roaming horses.

The candidate claimed that “ObamaCare” replaced the finest health care system with government coverage, instead of it’s actual ranking of 49th. She voted against regulating tobacco as a drug, despite so much information showing how dangerous it is. She voted against expanding the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which is almost too disturbing for words for me, because there is no way that you can expect a child to pay for better insurance. She voted against giving mental health full equity with physical health, which doesn’t make sense for a person married to a counselor. She should know that mental illness is not different from physical illness.

Bachmann is a firm believer in continuing the PATRIOT Act’s wiretaps, which is disturbing on a basic civil liberties level. She also voted against requiring warrants for domestic wiretaps, as well as voting for retroactive immunity for warentless surveillance. She also wants to end net neutrality. It is quite disturbing to see a politician in this country who is so willing to restrict access to information on the internet, while also giving the government a blank check on violating a person’s basic rights.

I’m sure that people could argue that Michele Bachmann’s stances on all of the issues are just a representation of her views and her values, but if that’s true, then her views and values suck. Her political positions make her look like a bully who refused to learn anything in science and history class, and like a Christian in name-only, given her tendency to judge people, advocate a life filled with ignorance, and her love of hypocrisy. I think the only country where Bachmann would find her ignorance to be acceptable for the leader of the country is in a place like North Korea, where people have been abused by their government for so long that they are afraid to speak up.

That was the image my dad posted on his Facebook account, and one of his friends responded with:

This is just a History lesson. I am sending it to all regardless of party . Please don’t read this if you are afraid of the truth. It is history and nothing can change it.

The day the Democrats took over was not January 22nd 2009, it was actually January 3rd 2007, the day the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate, at the very start of the 110th Congress.
The Democratic Party controlled a majority in both chambers for the first time since the end of the 103rd Congress in 1995. For those who are listening to the liberals propagating the fallacy that everything is “Bush’s Fault”, think about this:January 3rd, 2007, the day the Democrats took over the Senate and the Congress:The DOW Jones closed at 12,621.77
The GDP for the previous quarter was 3.5%
The Unemployment rate was 4.6%
George Bush’s Economic policies SET A RECORD of 52 STRAIGHT MONTHS of JOB CREATION!

Remember that day…
January 3rd, 2007 was the day that Barney Frank took over the House Financial Services Committee and Chris Dodd took over the Senate Banking Committee.
The economic meltdown that happened 15 months later was in what part of the economy?
BANKING AND FINANCIAL SERVICES!
THANK YOU DEMOCRATS (especially Barney
) for taking us from 13,000 DOW, 3.5 GDP and 4.6% Unemployment…to this CRISIS by (among MANY other things) dumping 5-6 TRILLION Dollars of toxic loans on the economy from YOUR Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac FIASCOES!

(BTW: Bush asked Congress 17 TIMES to stop Fannie & Freddie -starting in 2001 because it was financially risky for the US economy). Barney blocked it and called it a “Chicken Little Philosophy” (and the sky did fall!)
And who took the THIRD highest pay-off from Fannie Mae AND Freddie Mac? OBAMA
And who fought against reform of Fannie and Freddie?
OBAMA and the Democrat Congress, especially BARNEY!!!!

So when someone tries to blame Bush…
REMEMBER JANUARY 3rd, 2007…. THE DAY THE DEMOCRATS TOOK OVER!”
Bush may have been in the car but the Democrats were in charge of the gas pedal and steering wheel they were driving the economy into the ditch.
Budgets do not come from the White House.. They come from Congress and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party.
Furthermore, the Democrats controlled the budget process for 2008 & 2009 as well as 2010 & 2011.

In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases.

For 2009 though, Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the 2009 budget.
And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete 2009. Let’s remember what the deficits looked like during that period:
If the Democrats inherited any deficit, it was the 2007 deficit, the last of the Republican budgets. That deficit was the lowest in five years, and the fourth straight decline in deficit spending. After that, Democrats in Congress took control of spending, and that includes Barack Obama, who voted for the budgets.

If Obama inherited anything, he inherited it from himself.
In a nutshell, what Obama is saying is “I inherited a deficit that I voted for,
And then I voted to expand that deficit four-fold since January 20th.”
There is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!

So, here is my rebuttal.  And, mine doesn’t sound like some stupid Facebook meme written by Karl Rove to sugarcoat the Bush Presidency and make some minorities look bad.

Pretending like it is just the Democrats’ fault that the economy turned to crap because of the timing is a ridiculous thing to do. The recession had been building long before the Democrats regained control. Between 2000 and 2006, a dozen economists had said it was going to happen. That was BEFORE the Democrats regained control of Congress.

Dean Baker pointed to the housing bubble in 2002. And Fred Harrison was suggesting it would happen in 1997. I’m pretty sure that Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Frank, etc. weren’t all conspiring for the economy to collapse then. Wynne Godley warned as early as the 1990′s that there were problems with international fiscal problems, which was another massive contributor to the growing economic troubles of the world. Admittedly, for things that were happening in the 1990′s, we (liberals) can’t blame Bush 43. However, we can blame the increasing willingness of so many Americans and so many worldwide to profit in potentially nefarious and, at least, morally ambiguous ways. Whether it was pretending like inflation wasn’t occuring on a massive scale or was acting like it was okay to set people up so that their mortgage was “worth more” than their property’s value. Greed was allowed to trump basic morality.

Bush 43 had his role in this whole thing. So did Clinton. So did Bush 41. Reagan, the Republican God of Economics, also had a role. Everyone contributed their own little bits of ignorance, arrogance, and insolence to the whole situation. And it wasn’t just the Presidents or the Congress. Alan Greenspan did a bang-up job in his position as Fed Reserve Chair, as did Robert Rubin, when they both allowed for derivatives to go practically unregulated. And non-politically minded and economically minded people allowed it to get worse, when it could have been stopped so much sooner. It was a willful ignorance of so many people to pretend that somehow it was okay for the cost of gas, food, and milk to double then triple.

Do you know why Fannie and Freddie went so kablooey? Bush 41′s administration did the wonderful thing of weakening the regulation of the two mortgage giants. The deregulation occurred in 1992, but wasn’t put into place until nine years later. And in 1999, under Clinton and FOP-controlled Congress, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act repealed parts of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which helped allow for financial institutions that were basically out control.

Now, if you want to get into percentages and numbers and the budget related to the Bush 43′s presidency versus that of Barack Obama’s, then let’s do that. Bush issued tax cuts like a mad man. There were cuts for all taxpayers betwen 2001 and 2003. The child tax credit was raised and the marriage penalty was reduced. Pretend like that doesn’t matter all you want, but bringing in less money means you have to spend less, but Bush didn’t do that. An elementary school student could’ve told him that the math didn’t add up, but it didn’t matter. In 2003, 450 economists, including ten of the twenty-four American Nobel Prize laureates that were alive at the time, urged Bush not to enact the tax cuts because they believed that they would increase inequality and the budget deficit, which would make it harder for the government to fund essential services and would not help to keep the country from failing to produce some level of actual economic growth. These economists pointed out that in 2003 there were already two million fewer private sector jobs than there were at the beginning of that (smaller) recession. And they pointed out that tax cuts would lead to “fiscal deterioration that will reduce the capacity of the government to finance Social Security and Medicare benefits as well as investments in schools, health, infrastructure, and basic research.” In 2003, the debt level of the country was at $589.0 billion, the GDP was at 5.5%, and Obama was in Illinois. In 2003, Barney Frank was opposing Bush’s proposal to lessen the actual oversight of Fannie and Freddie and allow them to go into the fun-yet-immoral business of offering subprime mortgages so that they could have the bragging rights about having such a high percentage of homeownership for low income people. And 2 years later, the Bush administration opposed a bill that was going through the Congress that would have created a better regulation of those two corporations. The White House of Bush 43 had the opportunity to get the FMs under control and what did they do? They made sure that that wouldn’t happen.  And where was Obama then?  He had just gotten to Washington.  So, yeah, it’s his fault that Fannie and Freddie went nuts.

And to pretend like the deficit of 2007 was somehow something worthy of bragging about because it was “the lowest in five years” is to forget that the public debt at that point was approximately 3.18 times that of what it was in 2001. It forgets that the Defense Department was given a blank check on two wars, including one that we had no business in being in in the first place.  And it forgets that Halliburton and other corporate entities were rewarded for being FOB (Friends of Bush) or FOC (Friends of Cheney), which meant that they were given unfair contracts, got to shortcut the system, and were allowed to manipulate and endanger the economy and lives of so many people.

And I hope that you will have actually read this because its true, and it isn’t just some little blame game orchestrated to make the black guy, the woman, the loud gay guy, and the Mormon all look like total schmucks.  It’s based on reality.  It’s based on history.

A 13 year old boy from Pennsylvania is suing a private school for discrimination after it refused to admit him because of his HIV status. This case is drawing comparisons to the Ryan White case from the 1980′s. And while many people realize that this is a case of discrimination, other folks seem to think that this behavior by Milton Hershey School is acceptable because it is a private institution. Apparently, because it is a private school, people think that they get to do whatever they want. That simply is not the case.  Private institutions do not have the right to discriminate against someone because of their health, even when they claim they are doing it for the health or safety of others.  (HIV is not an easy-to-catch illness, despite what some ignorant people seem to persist in thinking.) Despite what they think, they do have to follow many standards that protect those with disabilities, including the ADA.

First of all, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) exists to protect all people with disabilities. It exists to keep people from having their basic rights stripped away from them based on their disability. According to their website:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) gives federal civil rights protections to individuals with disabilities similar to those provided to individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, age, and religion. It guarantees equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities in public accommodations, employment, transportation, State and local government services, and telecommunications.

Before someone starts thinking that HIV cannot possibly be a disability, the ADA website goes even further to cover this:

Yes. An individual is considered to have a “disability” if he or she has a physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such an impairment, or is regarded as having such an
impairment. Persons with HIV disease, both symptomatic and asymptomatic, have physical impairments that substantially limit
one or more major life activities and are, therefore, protected by the law.

Persons who are discriminated against because they are regarded as being HIV-positive are also protected. For example, a person
who was fired on the basis of a rumor that he had AIDS, even if he did not, would be protected by the law.

Moreover, the ADA protects persons who are discriminated against because they have a known association or relationship with an
individual who is HIV-positive. For example, the ADA would protect an HIV-negative woman who was denied a job because her
roommate had AIDS.

And they also specify that this act covers “public accommodations” and a private school is considered to be a public accommodation, as are businesses, doctors offices, dentists offices, health clubs, museums, libraries, health clubs, and daycare centers. A public accommodation is specifically defined as “a private entity that owns, operates, leases, or leases to a place of public accommodation.” This means that a person who has any kind of disability is supposed to be given an equal opportunity.

Not only would this be covered under ADA, a disabled student is also covered under Section 504.  Section 504 covers people with a variety of disabilities, including ones of the immune system.  (HIV/AIDS are considered to be immune-related disorders because of their suppression of the immune system.)  Section 504 and the Office of Civil Rights for the U.S. Department of Education govern not only public institutions, but private ones as well.

It disgusts me that people persist in thinking that it is okay to discriminate against people with HIV/AIDS.  It also disgusts me that people think that schools can keep certain people from receiving an education because of their health status.  (There are obviously some personal reasons for my frustration at schools that do this.)  If we were talking about a disease or condition that only puts child in a wheelchair, then it would be obvious to all involved that this was a case of discrimination, but because of the persisting belief that you can catch HIV just by being around an infected person, there are still people who are willing to justify this kind of behavior.  It shouldn’t have been justified in Ryan White’s case and it definitely shouldn’t be justified in this case.

The most recent case of uninformed, but well-intended parents advocating sex ignorance over sex education comes from New York City. The New York City Parents’ Choice Coalition, as they call themselves, call people who advocate comprehensive sex-education and/or denounce abstinence-only education “extremists” and say that the points of view of the “extremists” are not true. To back them up, the group uses studies put out by an abstinence-only organization. According to the group, abstinence-only education does not disregard the facts about contraceptives. They claim that the programs contain plenty of information on the methods: “how frequently they fail to protect young people from pregnancy and STDs, and how condoms provide limited protection against HPV and herpes.” So, maybe they’re a bit right that the groups aren’t completely about abstinence, but their own phrasing indicates that they advocate teaching kids to be sex-negative.

It should be noted that the children of these parents are not being forced to attend the program. Even though the program is mandated, the New York state law allows them to opt out of any sex ed program that the parent finds inappropriate. Some parents complain that opting-out is too difficult or that their children should have an abstinence-only option. But with the ability to opt-out being available and morality issues generally being something people have to teach at home, it almost makes it seem like the parents are complaining because they want to complain.

Proponents of abstinence-only education typically argue that their version of sex education helps youth avoid the emotional damage of sex, promotes healthier and more fulfilling relationships, abstinence-only education correctly responds to an epidemic of STDs, provides some information on STDs and contraception, effectively reduces rates of teen sex and pregnancy, dicourages out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and discourages youth sex and risk-taking behaviors. They also make arguments about how comprehensive sex education promotes an irresponsible sexual culture and encourages sex, undermines the message of abstinence or ignores it as an option completely, does not reduce sexually trasmitted diseases, and the lack of modesty about sex-education is not appropriate according to parents. There are many problems with all of these arguments, ranging from the sources for the arguments (generally from conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation) and the presumed moral (read: religious) right of the abstinence-only crowd to dominate the sex ed debate.

According to an American school teacher by the name of Susan Wilson and a study about sex education, comprehensive sex ed teaches about sexual pleasure and gives students an understanding that sex is not bad or wrong, while abstinence-only education will lead to more self doubt and confusion about sex impulses. Teaching teens that sex is not bad will “help teens live a more fulfilling life, opposed to a life of self-denial.” The study also stated that teenagers who make virginity pledges, which is a normal part of abstinence-only educations, were just as likely to contract sexually transmitted diseases as those who had sex education in their history. It also found that they were more likely to engage in “risky behavior, such as anal and oral sex” because they believed that virginity was linked solely with vaginal sex. A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in four young women between fourteen and nineteen was infected with at least one of four common STDs, despite an atmosphere which promoted abstinence-only education over comprehensive sex ed. And abstinence-only education has not led to lowered rates of pregnancy, according to the non-partisan group Mathematica Policy Reasearch, Inc.

Proponents of sex-ed note that sex education teaches nothing new when it comes to sexual culture. Everywhere you look nowadays, you can find something sexual or provocative. With teens having greater access to the internet, they are more likely to find sexually provocative information, images, and videos than young people were even ten years ago. Even off of the internet, young people are bombarded with sexual imagery whether in the form of lyrics to a song or sex scenes from shows like True Blood. Even though the latter is intended for adults only, it is still available for young people to watch. And comprehensive sex education classes are not nearly as glamorous or hot as True Blood. In fact, with the discussion of diseases and ramnifications from sex, the kids may be sickened by what they see in the class.

Abstinence is not something that they should expect all teens to follow. Teens are going to have sex. Even if you are able to keep some from having sex, you cannot guarantee that every child will be abstinent, so you need to have an education that makes sure that students are fully informed. Donna Martin, a Beverly Hills 90210 character, was very insightful with the following quote:

Well, it’s just… if you say that kids don’t need condoms because they shouldn’t be having sex in the first place, well you’re overlooking two very important things. One is that a lot of kids are having sex and they other is that they are kids. I mean… it’s like if you have a swimming pool in your backyard… you can tell your children not to go in it, you can even build a fence around it but if you know that they’re going to find a way into that water… don’t you think you ought to teach those kids how to swim?

Telling teens to not have sex is a way to ensure that they want to have sex more. The same annoying defiance trait that parents notice is their toddlers is also common in teenagers. By making an activity taboo, parents may inadvertantly cause their children to take up that activity.

The sex-negative connotations are also an important thing to discuss when it comes to this issue.  As a culture that was started by Puritans, we shouldn’t really be shocked that we are taught from a young age that sex is bad or dirty.  We should, however, be willing to change that attitude.  By advocating abstinence-only/sex-negative education, people are advocating for an education that leads to the oppression of women, the LGBT community, the BDSM community, polyamorous persons, and other traditionally slighted groups.  It advocates a culture of ignorance over one of freedom and understanding.  It would seem like parents might want their kids to grow into roles as accepting and loving individuals, instead of being so afraid of “the sex.”

Parents are entitled to the right to keep their child under their moral thumbs, but the promotion of a coalition that denounces and vilifies comprehensive sex education is not helping the society as a whole.  It might help others who share their perspective, but it doesn’t help the rest of us.  If parents want to convince their children that sex is bad and abstinence is good, then that is their decision.  It would be helpful, though, if they would be more truthful with regards to what will be taught and what unbiased studies have shown about the two types of sex education.

Parents also should not denigrate educational resources like Go Ask Alice!, the website run by Columbia University’s Health Services.  By unfairly branding it as the go-to place for all that is immoral, they may be keeping young people from seeking the valid and important information that is available on the website.  The website is not even a sex education-only website.  It covers all health matters, which makes the denigration even more horrifying.