Category Archives: Culture

7 Billion People. Now What?

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As of Monday, October 31, 2011, the world population officially reached 7 billion.  How appropriate that this milestone was reached on Halloween!

The statistic might not be so alarming if not for the fact that it took several million years for the population to reach one billion. It took just 123 years for the world to add the second billion. We’ve added the most recent billion in 12 years. And despite the fact that the world population rate has declined by half over the past 50 years, the world population is expected to reach 10 billion by 2050!

As the population grows, so will extreme poverty, food shortages and income inequality. So what can we do?

Ironically, those who are least able to afford it tend to have the most children. So the primary solution to our fast-growing population is to reduce poverty by investing in health and education. Second, we can promote women’s rights. As women gain knowledge and power, they tend to be less satisfied with being barefoot and pregnant. Obviously, we can promote family planning and the use of condoms. Finally, and perhaps most important, we can reject the idiocy of religions that disdain sex education and proven birth control methods for abstinance-only programs.

It may have made some sense for the Church to promote large families in the Middle Ages when infant death rates were high and large flocks of children were needed to help raise food. But that sort of primitive thinking is nothing less than global suicide in a world that has already over-exploited its natural resources.

Of course, any attempts to address over-population will be disdained by the simpletons who believe in the “rapture” or a heaven filled with virgins.  For them, the end of our planet can’t come soon enough.

The NRA Effect.

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Beginning in 1980, the National Rifle Association first inserted itself into politics by endorsing Ronald Reagan. Since then, the NRA has increasingly exerted its power and influence over both national and state politics. Nearly every year, the NRA writes proposed legislation then shops it around to state legislatures in hopes of finding sponsors.

Often the legislators who put their names on the bills never even read them!

An example is the Concealed Carry Law. In 1986, there were only 8 states that had legislation dictating that anyone who meets minimum requirements shall be issued a permit to carry concealed weapons. But thanks to the NRA, there are now 37 states that have “shall issue” permit laws and 4 states with no restrictions at all. Next month (November 2011), Illinois will be the only state left that does not allow concealed carry in any circumstances.

These laws were not demanded by the states’ citizens. Nor were they addressing real problems. They were written by the NRA merely to push its own narrow political agenda.

Of course, other special interest groups followed the NRA’s lead. For example, the Arizona anti-immigrant law was initially written by Kris Kobach, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. It was embraced by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) which is headquartered in Washington, DC. FAIR (or, more precisely, UNFAIR) then shopped the bill around to the states until Arizona State Senator-In-Recall, Russell Pearce agreed to sponsor it as the infamous SB1070. It has since been brought before state legislatures in Alabama, Georgia, and South Dakota.

Now Kenneth Blackwell, an Ohio citizen and Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council in Washington, DC, is pushing an anti-abortion bill for the state of Mississippi. The bill, if the voters of Mississippi pass it, will ban all abortions in the state by extending First Amendment rights to fetuses. And this isn’t the first hayride for the bill. It was previously promoted, and defeated, in Colorado.

Now, I believe US citizens should be able to create and pass legislation to solve problems in their own states as long as they meet the standards of our US Constitution. But it is one thing for a state legislature to identify issues, and quite another for special interest groups to write and promote legislative solutions in search of a problem.

It’s time for this nonsense to stop.

Teapublican Lie #23.

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“President Obama is not an American Citizen.”

The fact that any of us feel compelled to address this idiocy after more than 3 years of intense investigation is sad.  Yet this nonsense continues to pervade the ethernet. 

Never mind that the Federal Election Commission accepted President Obama’s birth certificate as evidence of his citizenship.  Never mind that the Hawaii governor, Hawaii secretary of state and virtually every other Hawaiian leader have certified his citizenship and proudly proclaim that he was born in Hawaii.  Never mind that there are archival birth notices in Hawaii newspapers announcing the birth of Barack Hussein Obama in a Honolulu hospital.  Never mind that the Republican Party, Tea Party leaders, media reporters, and right wing lunatics have spent millions in attempts to investigate claims that he was born elsewhere.

There is not one shred of proof that President Obama is not an American citizen.  Not one!  Yet Teapublicans continue to raise the question.

One has to ask why.

I believe the answer is simple.  If Teapublicans can delude themselves into thinking President Obama is not a citizen, then he is not really our president.  Therefore, they don’t have to respect him or anything he says.  They can tell themselves that he was elected only as the result of imaginary voter fraud by Acorn and inner city “thugs.”  They can tell themselves that all of our nation’s problems are the result of the policies of this “foreign born” interloper.

If this is how they react following Obama’s election by an overwhelming majority, imagine what they’ll do when he’s re-elected.

How Did We Get Here?

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Once upon a time, the most distinguishing characteristic between Republicans and Democrats was a difference in opinion on how to solve social problems and improve our nation.

For example, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and presidential candidate Robert Dole all agreed to the need for universal healthcare. They simply offered different means of accomplishing it. Indeed, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law by President Obama was actually based upon ideas by Nixon, Dole and Mitt Romney – all Republicans.

Contrary to current party ideologies, it was a Republican senator who authored the first anti-trust act. It was a Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt, who most aggressively enforced it to break up large corporate monopolies such as Standard Oil. And contrary to the Republican Party’s conservative heritage, it was Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, who created most of our national debt.

Similarly, it was a “liberal” Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who most aggressively controlled revenue and spending resulting in annual budget surpluses.

Unfortunately, the subtle gap between the ideologies has turned into an ever-expanding gulf.

Even as the Democratic Party has moved to the center right, the Republican Party has lept to the way-off-the-map extreme right. Republicans no longer talk about merely limiting government. They now talk about “starving the beast” and declare the government as the enemy. Indeed, they have set their sights on eliminating entire departments and agencies.

They demand an end to the intrusion of government into their lives. At the same time, they want to tell women what they can and cannot do to their own bodies.

They protect the incomes of millionaires and billionaires while rewarding corporations for sending middle class jobs overseas. They rail against class warfare as they continue to redistribute wealth upward. They approve of billionaires paying a lower percentage of their incomes than working people.

They praise the Founding Fathers while denying the very principles they fought for. Though the Founding Fathers declared that “all men are created equal,” Republicans deny equality to gays, blacks, latinos and anyone else who is different. Thanks to Republican appointments to the Supreme Court, corporations now have the rights of people. And since the same Republican-appointed members of the Court ruled that money equals free speech, large corporations have more rights than people.

The differences between the parties are abundantly clear. The question is how on Earth did we ever get here?

Teapublicans Are A Disgrace To The Term “Redneck.”

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Many Teapublicans, especially those in the South, are fond of referring to themselves as Rednecks. They interpret that to mean that they are common sense, down-to-earth people. They take pride in the fact that they’re relatively uneducated in contrast to the “pointy-headed liberals.”

Not surprisingly, it’s a false pride.

In fact, most of these people are diametricly opposed to the priniciples of the original Rednecks. You see, the term Redneck actually stems from the organized labor movement. In the early 1900s, West Virginia coal miners were fighting for better pay and better working conditions. The mine owners convinced the local law enforcement authorities to fight their battle for them. In late August and early September 1921, 10,000-15,000 coal miners confronted an army of police and strikebreakers. They met on Blair Mountain where they battled for days. More than a million rounds of ammunition were fired. The fighting only stopped when the US Army intervened following a presidential order.

What does that have to do with Rednecks?

Since those fighting did not have uniforms to identify friend from foe, the miners wrapped red kerchiefs around their necks. The term, Redneck, stuck.

Today, not only are the rights to collective bargaining once again under attack by corporate interests. The battlefield on top of Blair Mountain is also under assault by big coal. A coal company wants to remove the entire mountaintop to get at the coal below. To add insult to injury, the coal company owners are supported by modern day “Rednecks.”

Origins Of The Right’s Misplaced Hate Of Obama.

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I confess that I’ve long been confused about the intense (and, I believe irrational) hatred of President Obama, when it appears to me that he has been guilty of nothing more than trying to correct the problems created by the previous administration.

Upon reflection, I believe it stems from the Right’s unfailing belief in the so-called “free” market.

When the economy, led by the housing market and a lack of common-sense regulations, careened off a cliff in late 2008, the Bush administration recommended a bill to Congress that called for the US to spend billions in order to prop up the failing banks. Lacking the support of Republican leaders in Congress, the measure initially failed. But when the stock markets crashed as a result, enough Congressmen were persuaded to change their votes and the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) went into effect.

The program ultimately stabilized the markets and the economy enough to prevent the Great Recession from turning into a second Great Depresssion. Yet many Republicans were furious. They believed TARP to be a government intrusion into the infallibility of free market principles. When President Obama subsequently offered government-backed loans to General Motors and Chrysler in order to stave off the collapse of the American automobile industry, the free market Republicans and Libertarians went ballistic.

Capitalizing on an idea by a Republican strategist, groups such as the Koch-funded American FreedomWorks spent millions to rally free market believers to protest. They labeled the movement a modern day Tea Party. It turned out to be the perfect way to inspire the Republican base which was dispirited following the 2008 elections.

Teapublicans deluded themselves into believing that the Great Recession was not the fault of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act or the Bush administration’s lax oversight of the financial industry.

They focused, instead, on President Obama’s attempts to fend off an economic Armegeddon. In addition, they convinced themselves that the national debt, which had doubled under President Bush, was now the fault of President Obama. They believed the auto bail-outs and economic stimulus were evidence that the administration was moving toward socialism. The President’s eventual signing of a bill to reform the out-of-control healthcare system added even more fuel to the torches being carried by the Tea Party.

When viewed in context, the Teapublican fears seem irrational. But when viewed through a partisan lens and slavish devotion to free market principles, regardless of their consequences, the fears are understandable, if not logical.

Moreover, this helps to explain why so many lower and middle class Americans vote against their self-interest by supporting Republican candidates determined to transfer wealth upward through tax breaks for the wealthy.

Over many years of listening to Fox News pundits and Rush-to-the-table Limbaugh, these people have become convinced that all of their problems will be solved if only we rid ourselves of government intrusion and allow Teapublican leaders to work their free market magic. Indeed, these voters are likely convinced that the only thing standing between them and unimagined riches are evil Democrats, who in their Teapublican minds, are trying to replace capitalism with socialism, or worse yet, communism or fascism.

Never mind that many of these people don’t have a clue of what any of these “isms” actually mean. Hence the Tea Party signs that read “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.”

Teapublican Lie #21.

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“Teapublicans are pro-life.”

I guess it depends on whose life we’re talking about.

Yes, Teapublicans do protect the unborn by fighting all abortion, even if carrying the child to full-term endangers the health of the woman. But, after the child is born, as far as they’re concerned, it’s on its own. For example, Teapublicans have opposed or cut funding for stem cell research that could save lives, even if the stem cells are taken from umbilical cords after the birth of a child.

Teapublicans have opposed or cut funding for so-called “Welfare Moms” that would help to feed and house children. They have opposed funding for SCHIP, the federal program that provides healthcare to children of those living below the poverty line. They’ve opposed the extension of unemployment benefits forcing many families into homelessness. They’ve opposed programs such as Early Childhood Family Education. They’ve opposed sex education, which might result in fewer unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Indeed, they’ve opposed education in general, as evidenced by their draconian cuts to the funding of public education in virtually every “Red” state.

What Teapublicans do favor is easy access to guns which result in the homicides of more than 12,000 Americans annually. They also seem to favor war, such as the “blood for oil” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which have killed tens of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan children, not to mention more than 4,600 US troops.

So even though Democrats favor a woman’s right to choose when it comes to her own body, tell me. Which is the true pro-life party?

Teapublican Lie #20.

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“Teabaggers are patriots. Occupy Wall Street demonstrators are misguided thugs and revolutionaries.”

The Tea Party claimed to be a grassroots movement, but in reality, it was created by Republican strategists, financed by Republican think tanks and billionaires, and promoted and publicized by Fox News Channel, Rush-To-Judgement Limbaugh and the rest of the Republican megaphones.

The Occupy Wall Street movement, on the other hand, receives no money from millionaires and billionaires. It has no think tanks to fund it. And it has no media organizations under its control. The movement was created by a diverse group of young people fed up with the wealthy who control Congress and dictate public policy. And it’s growing.

So why are the Teapublicans now dismissing them as out-of-control rabble? Why are Teapublicans portraying them as dangerous and disrespectful? And why are Teapublicans saying “they ought to get a job?” Actually, that’s the question at the very heart of the movement. The Occupy Wall Streeters want to get a job, but feel that Teapublican policies dictated by the wealthy prevent them from any chance of success.

Instead of trying to initiate legislation that might create jobs to make the Occupy Wall Streeters go home, Teapublicans would rather spend their time denying tax hikes for millionaires and billionaires. And they are using their media megaphones to portray the movement as dangerous. On his daily radio diatribe, Glenn Beck even said, “They’re coming to kill you!”

Hmmm…think about it for a moment. Which group brought guns to their rallies and carried signs with overt threats against Congress and the President? Here’s a hint: It wasn’t the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators.

The Least Generation.

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If the heroes of WWII were the Greatest Generation, how would you describe those who have followed in their footsteps? I’d have to say the reviews are mixed.

Take my generation of so-called Baby Boomers.  We started out by fighting for Civil Rights. When confronted with a lame and unjustified war in Vietnam, many of our generation fought despite reservations while the rest of us fought to end wars against those who never attacked our shores. A few years later, we fought to win equal rights for women. And many of us took up other noble causes such as fighting for a cleaner, safer environment.

All of that was admirable. But what have we done lately? Moreover, what has the post-boomer generation (those who are now in their 40s and 50s) done? Let’s just say they may be remembered as the Least Generation.

While the Greatest Generation believed in shared sacrifice in order to obtain lofty goals, such as overcoming the Great Depression and overthrowing despotic dictators such as Adolph Hitler, the Least Generation voted to give themselves tax cuts. While the Greatest Generation built our nation’s infrastructure with hard work and tax dollars, the Least Generation has stood idly by and watched that infrastructure crumble.

While the Greatest Generation toiled and sweat to earn a better future for their children, the Least Generation has mostly reserved its sweat for the athletic club. While the Greatest Generation fought for labor unions and workers’ rights, the Least Generation has fought to destroy them.

While the Greatest Generation scrimped and sacrificed to maintain the war effort, the Least Generation has mostly patted soldiers on the back with a very public “thank you for your service” and privately told themselves “thank God that’s not my son or daughter.”

In recent years, politicians from the Least Generation such as Michelle Bachmann and Eric Cantor have shown they’d rather play partisan politics than do what’s best for our country. They have voted to end welfare. They have cut Medicaid, public education, Early Family Childhood Education and social services while cutting taxes for millionaires and billionaires. They have fought to maintain subsidies and tax loopholes for the world’s largest and most profitable corporations while refusing to extend benefits for the unemployed.

They have voted to cut Social Security rather than raise the cap on FICA contributions for those making more than $106,800. They’ve voted to end Medicare rather than root out the causes of inflated medical costs or negotiate the cost of pharmaceuticals with manufacturers. And they were willing to risk government default rather than risk alienating their wealthy contributors by raising taxes.

Let’s hope the next generation does better. But I’m not optimistic.

Teapublican Lie #17.

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“The federal government paid $16 each for muffins.”

Last week, Teapublican megaphone, Fox News Channel, reverberated with charges that the Department of Justice purchased muffins at $16 apiece at law enforcement conferences in Denver, Colorado.

It was a sensational story.

Teapublican bully and buffoon, Bill O’Reilly used the story to excuse the fact that he and other millionaires pay lower taxes than the middle class. In his interview on The Daily Show, he said he wouldn’t mind paying a little more taxes. But only when the federal government gets spending under control and stops wasting his money on things like $16 muffins. The only problem is that, as usual, O’Reilly is wrong.

According to Hilton Hotels where the law enforcement conferences were held, the $16 charge was actually for a full continental breakfast plus tax. Hardly the extravagant waste of taxpayer money that Fox claimed. And, of course, the alleged transgressions occurred during both the Bush and Obama administrations. (But Teapublicans conveniently ignored that fact.)

And before you make the claim that the cost is still unjustified, consider this. A large part of business and government work consists of meetings, and employees need to eat – even government employees. Additionally, $16 is hardly an outrageous sum for a meal. Have you ever ordered breakfast in a New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Washington, DC hotel? Compared to those prices, $16 for breakfast is a steal.

Of course, you’re not likely to hear the truth about “Muffingate” on Fox News Channel. But that should come as no surprise. Fox News Channel seldom tells the truth about anything.