Everyone has an idea on how to improve the country. Some of them get thrown around in memes on the internet and shared by people who say “Great idea!” without ever thinking about what that idea really means.
Here’s one of my recent favorites:
In case you can’t read it well, it says: “I think we should have Congress take an exam on every national bill (e.g. Obamacare) to make sure they understand the bill, its positive and negative consequences, and write an essay showing their knowledge of the bill and how it affects all social classes in America. Bring in Unviersity professors to proctor and watch for cheating, and if they don’t pass the exam, they don’t get to vote on the bill.”
What a great idea! Now, how do we pick the university professors and make sure they are writing the exams fairly? Oh, I know! We’ll elect them! And then we can make sure they’re doing their job right by making them run for re-election every few years. And we can have debates and interviews so we can make an informed decision about these professors…
Wait a minute…
Simple solutions are often just that — simple. And often, it boils down to the most basic question in a democracy: Who decides? Who decides that they passed the exam? Who chooses the exam givers?
When people say we should limit hateful speech, the next question should be “who decides what speech is hateful?” When someone says we should use religious law in America, we should ask “Who decides which religion?” Who decides is what democracy is all about.
The bottom line to me though is that when someone demands that we allow college professors make these decisions, I’d like that person to be able to spell the word “university.”
And yet another place shuts down because of Obamacare.
A free clinic administering to the poor, with volunteer doctors. Yep, you guessed it — Obamacre is making them shut down.
Because they are no longer needed.
“Because people are qualifying for insurance coverage through the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, our free medical clinic will not be needed anymore,” Stacey Bowser RN, 9th Street Ministries Clinic Director, stated. “We’ve gone from seeing around 300 people a month on a regular basis, but as people were enrolling in Obamacare, the numbers we were seeing have dropped. We were down to 80 people that came through the medical clinic in February, all the way down to three people at the medical clinic in March. Our services won’t be needed anymore, and this will conclude our mission.”
CBS announced that Stephen Colbert will take over for David Letterman in 2015.
Good:
1. Stephen will be a great host. Unlike Jon Stewart (who was a Political Science major and then a stand-up comic), Stephen was always an actor first. Much of the humor on his show was political, but much was not. I think he sees himself as an entertainer first, not a political pundit, and this should translate well into the standard talk show. His interviews with musicians and actors on his own show prove he can handle it.
This is a picture my wife made of Stephen Colbert using dryer lint. It’s now hanging in a Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum somewhere. Her web page is here: http://www.heidihooper.com
2. It’s already angered the right wing lunatics. Rush Limbaugh, in his soft-spoken way not given to hyperbole, declared that “CBS has declared war on the Heartland.” Others complained all over the Twitterverse about it, because of course everyone is always forced to watch TV shows they don’t like. You can always judge a man by who his enemies are.
3. He will stay in New York. West Coast humor just isn’t as, I dunno, intelligent as East Coast humor. Even Harvard graduate Conan O’Brien seems to have dumbed down his show heading west. I don’t know if it’s the writers or the audience or what. New York has an attitude that lends itself to a certain type of humor that doesn’t seem to be anywhere else. (Just like British comedians have a different type of humor than American comedians.)
Bad:
1. We’ll miss the Colbert Report! With John Oliver moving to HBO, will Comedy Central attempt to create another political show, or will the time slot be given to South Park reruns? Maybe they’ll expand the Daily Show to an hour, which would also give Stewart more time for the interviews without having to say “To see the whole thing, go to our web page.”
2. He’s not going to be playing his conservative character in this new show.
3. Colbert will not be getting Peabody awards where he’s going, and he’ll be just another talk show competing with all the others at Emmy time.
4. I feel sorry for Craig Ferguson, whose show is often hilarious. I thought he’d be next in line since his show follows Letterman and is owned by Letterman’s production company.
The bottom line is that this is a good move for him (bigger audience, bigger pay, etc.) but bad for us.
The photographer who refused to provide service to a gay wedding because it went against his religious beliefs lost again, this time with an appeal to the Supreme Court.
This has some religious people quite upset, because they believe — try to follow this logic — that laws that prevent cruelty to and discrimination against other human beings violates their rights. Their right to deny rights to others.
I know, right?
The law in that particular state prohibited this exact kind of discrimination, so the photographer thought that there should be an exemption for those who disagree with the law. You know, in the same way that there are exceptions in other laws that allow you to disobey them if you don’t like them. In the same way some religious folks were able to ignore laws that struck down interracial marriage back in the ’60s.
Oh, right, I remember now. That never happened.
Republican leader Mike Huckabee thinks this decision is just terrible. After all, the Bible is against this and our laws should do whatever the Bible says. Which means that not only should we be stoning gays to death, we should also bring back slavery.
As Huckabee stated, “unless God re-writes it, edits it, sends it down with His signature on it, it’s not my book to change.” I wonder how many gays Huckabee stoned to death this week?
Here in this place called the United States, we have a Constitution in which the Founding Fathers said, in the very first amendment, that our government would not promote a religion in any way (the “establishment clause.”) There are other parts of the Constitution that prohibit any sort of religious test be given to anyone in our government, too.
Is it all that surprising that people like Mike Huckabee pick and choose what parts of the Constitution they think should apply to them in the same way they do with the Bible?
There’s been another example of a Republican cheating on his wife and getting caught with a mistress.
Yes, some of you respond, but Democrats do that too! Remember Bill Clinton?
You’re right. Democrats certainly have no monopoly on ethical behavior. In the last few weeks there have been a bunch of Democrats being caught in money scandals, for instance (as they rightly should have been).
The issue though isn’t about ethics; it’s about hypocrisy.
Politicians who talk about “family values” being so important are while they are undermining those same values are hypocrites. Voting against gay marriage and then getting caught soliciting sex in a men’s bathroom doesn’t help your cause much. Being against abortion while telling your girlfriend to get one does little to endear you to anyone.
And that’s why it’s news. And why it gets bigger coverage than it probably should. It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.
And rightly so.
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