American Exceptionalism Scares Me

By Janet  |  2012/01/24 17:00 Posted in 2012 Presidential Elections and Primaries, American Politics, Exceptionalism/Nationalism, History  |  Comments (1)

The other day I saw something that said that Callista Gingrich, the third wife of Newt Gingrich, promotes the idea of American Exceptionalism.  Honestly, the idea of promoting a particular nation or ethnicity over another is a bit scary to me.  It becomes especially disconcerting when the person promoting it has bleached blonde hair, sparkly blue eyes, and dresses like she’s stepping out of a mid-twentieth century movie or sitcom where the womenfolk just weren’t quite as well informed as their husbands.   Maybe that’s because I’ve watched too many documentaries on other countries and their beliefs about how they were more special than other people.  Maybe it’s because there were countries during the early and mid-twentieth centuries that promoted the idea that not only were they more special, more deserving, and more super-cool, and when people didn’t agree with them, those extra-special and cool folks decided to force people into agreeing that they were awesome by threatening them with war, loss of life, loss of property, etc.

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.

Dear Birthers

By Janet  |  2012/01/24 09:28 Posted in 2012 Presidential Elections and Primaries, American Politics, Letters, Race  |  Comments (2)

Perhaps you do not understand the Constitution or perhaps you just don’t care. Personally, I think you are racist and/or ignorant. No matter what the reason is for your insistence that Obama is not a US Citizen, you need to shut up and get informed.  There is no good excuse for your stupidity at this point, so I’m gonna try to help you get over that stupidity.

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.

 

Why I Wouldn’t Vote For: Rick Santorum

By Janet  |  2012/01/07 07:05 Posted in 2012 Presidential Elections and Primaries, American Politics  |  Comments (2)

Okay, so I’m continuing in my “series” of why I wouldn’t vote for certain politicians. And I think that I’m going to go with Rick Santorum for this post, so this should be fun. (There are so many more of these that are possible.)

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.

Why I Wouldn’t Vote For: Michele Bachmann

By Janet  |  2012/01/03 14:24 Posted in 2012 Presidential Elections and Primaries, American Politics  |  Comments (0)

I could be petty and say that my sole reason that I would never vote for Michele Bachmann is her annoying voice/accent, but, as I said, that would be petty.  It would also be completely untrue.  To me, Michele Bachmann is a prime example of what is wrong with the Republican party and its growing fetish for extremely conservative candidates.

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.

Blame It On the Black Guy, The Gay Dude, and That Rich White Chick

By Janet  |  2012/01/02 00:11 Posted in American Politics, Economy, History, Honesty, Internet, War in Afghanistan, War in Iraq  |  Comments (1)

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.