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The 300 Person March

The tea party planned a huge 30 million person rally yesterday, in which they would demand that the President and all of Congress resign so they could install whatever. You can see how it was all over the news today. Um, well, maybe not. They ended up with about 300. Just 29,999,700 short! 

Here’s a video of their planning session:

Those who were there were as active as ever, with their “Impeach Obama” signs and others that just said “Benghazi” as if that explained everything.

They were predominately white and elderly (the Fox News demographic, where the average age of viewers is 68) who hate socialism and socialized medicine.  They were in good shape thanks to medicare and could afford to travel to Washington thanks to Social Security.

Of course, these people have the right to protest — but this particular protest was ridiculous. They demand that everyone in American government must resign so that new people will be appointed who will “obey the Constitution” — according to who?  Who gets to decide who gets appointed?  Who determines whether someone is obeying the Constitution?  (This is a common argument among those who really don’t think it through.)

These are people who lost the election and cannot accept that. They can’t see that other people might have different views (and, I might point out, the majority of Americans disagree with them on just about every single issue.) In their world view, everyone who has a different opinion is evil, wrong, and undermining the Constitution.

I will admit that they at least are not advocating the violent overthrow of the government. But the basics are the same. One of the main speakers there yesterday spoke in support of that Bundy rancher who does not accept the legitimacy of the US government.

And the crowd cheered.  Such patriots!

(That was sarcasm.)

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Either way, Hillary is unfit (says Fox)

That Hillary — she really knows how to manipulate us!  (Well, according to Fox News).   clinton-glasses-2

For instance, when she fell and hurt her head, Fox was absolutely convinced that it was faked.  Obviously it didn’t really happen;  she just lied in order to get out of testifying about Benghazi (in one of the many hearings the Republicans have wasted our taxpayer money on).

Well, that narrative has come and gone, because now the question from Fox is, “Does this minor concussion from a year and a half ago prevent her from being President?”  Karl Rove even accused her of having “brain damage.”

I am not making this up.

Hey, remember when Fox admitted it was wrong about the fake injury?  Ha ha!  Just kidding!  Maybe in an alternate universe.

The Fox version is this:  either she faked it and thus is unfit or she didn’t fake it and thus is unfit.  There is no winning scenario for them.

“What we clearly need,” they will say next, “is for Hillary to release her Health Certificate.  The long form.”

(Remember:  you read it here first.)

 

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OK, so this Donald Sterling apparently exists …

I know nothing about professional sports, and had never heard of Donald Sterling until this weekend.  Seems he said some blatantly racist (and sexist) remarks that were recorded and now everyone is demanding that he resign.  He’s losing sponsors and otherwise feeling the heat.

So, of course, the first thing the right wing does when faced with a racist in their midst is to run away and disown him.   They tried to do that with last week’s racist, Clive Bundy, and now they’re doing the same with Donald Sterling, except this time they’re using the old technique of lying through their teeth.   donald-sterling

“He’s a Democrat!” claimed the right wing blogosphere, pointing out that he had donated some money to former Basketball player Bill Bradley’s campaign many years ago.

That’s it.  That’s basically the evidence.

Which is contradicted by the easily verifiable search of voter registration records showing him as a long-time registered Republican.

Am I implying that all racists are Republicans?  Of course not, and don’t try to put words into my mouth.  And I know that most Republicans are not liars.

But I’m damned tired of loudmouths on the right spreading lies, while responsible Republicans remain silent and refuse to call them out on it.

 

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See? I wasn’t exaggerating.

A few weeks ago, I argued that America had become an oligarchy, run by the rich.

I also pointed out that this pretty much started under Reagan.   oligarchy

A recent study by Princeton confirms both of my points — that our government is now run by and for the very rich, and this has been happening since Reagan drastically reduced taxes on the 1% and got rid of regulations that prevented the kind of abuses that have led to the wealth in our country being divided in a way it hasn’t been in a hundred years.

We can fix this.  We outnumber them.  We can outvote them all.

But this won’t happen until we make it happen.  And that means telling both parties that we won’t put up with it any more.

 

 

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A solution worse than the problem

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:
1476706_10153500011730494_700077965_nIn 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.”

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Bernie Sanders: The new Ralph Nader?

I agree with Bernie Sanders on almost every issue, and think it would be amazing if he were President.  It will never happen though, and I’m not naive enough to think that it could.   Bernie_Sanders

That doesn’t mean I would object to him running in the primaries.  He could move the Democrats to the left and prove that it is possible to do so without alienating voters.  While it is true that “the votes are in the middle” and if you run a candidate too far to the left or right you will lose the election, the problem is that politicians are wrong about where the “middle” is.  They think it is far more conservative than it is in reality.

A majority of Americans support Obamacare.  A majority thinks gay marriage, abortion and marijuana should be legal.  A majority supports more gun control.  A majority want to raise the minimum wage and do something about campaign finance reform.  A majority wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and do not believe that “corporations are people.”

These positions are not radical dreams of the left.  They are mainstream.  For Democrats to shy away from what a majority of Americans want is ridiculous.  Having Senator Sanders in the race might help toughen up the other candidates and bring them away from the center-right and perhaps lure them to the center-left.

The problem is this:  For all Sanders has said about wanting to enter the race, I am waiting to hear that he will be running as a Democrat.  Because he isn’t one.  He’s an Independent Socialist who caucuses with the Democrats.

If there’s one thing we definitely don’t need, it’s another spoiler who will siphon off votes from Democrats and allow a Republican to win the Presidency in 2016.

So here’s hoping his plan is to enter the Democratic primaries and not run as an Independent.  Otherwise, we could end up with President Ted Cruz.

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Happy Anniversary Ventrella Quest!

A year ago, I decided to start this blog so that I can discuss politics and society and stuff (a) without clogging up my Facebook page with debates;  and (b) so that the debates can be searched and can last longer than a Facebook debate.

It’s done really well on the second part, but people still prefer to debate on Facebook than here.  Go figure.   mike surprised

The first post of this blog was about Constitutional Fundamentalists — people who interpret the Constitution in the same way religious fundamentalists interpret the Bible: “There is only one right interpretation, I know what it is, and it matches my own viewpoint exactly!”  This has continued to be a theme on this blog.

The blog has had over 40,000 hits over the year.  That’s not 40,000 people, but it’s still nice to see.   It averages out to about 100 hits a day.  Some posts have gotten a lot more exposure than others, especially when you share them (use the “share” buttons below!).  My post about the Atheist monument had over 1000 hits one day, mostly because American Atheist President David Silverman shared it (Thanks, David!).  The one about the Westboro Baptist Church still gets hits, and I am still wondering if the Fred Phelps who responded in the comments is the real Fred Phelps.

The few posts I have done about the Beatles have generated some hits as well due to search engines, but my favorite is still the post I did about how the anti-gay marriage advocates always use animals as their slippery slope argument.  I called it “Sex with Animals” knowing it would get some attention.  I still laugh when I imagine people who search for that and end up on that page.

So thanks to all of you who read this and comment and share!

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Florida is crazy

So Michael Dunn gets upset at some kids playing what he calls “thug music” (that means “black” for those of you keeping score).   He walks back to his car, gets his gun, and shoots them.  Then he calmly goes back to his room, orders a pizza, and doesn’t call the police.

Yesterday, a jury in Florida found him guilty of attempted murder on all the kids who were in the car that he didn’t kill.  gavelThey were deadlocked on Jordan Davis, the kid who was actually murdered, whose 19th birthday would have been today.  There was at least one person on the jury who believed Dunn’s incredible story that he was “scared” and that Jordan had a gun (which was contradicted by every other witness).

Even if Jordan had a gun, Dunn was the one who walked up to the car with his gun first, looking for a fight.

Hey, this sounds familiar.  Wasn’t it George Zimmerman who, with a gun, chased down Treyvon Martin and then shot him when Martin didn’t like having a gun pointed at him?

At least one juror on the Dunn trial still believes that this is absolutely fine.

Dunn himself was astounded by the verdict — as are some gun advocates who apparently interpret Florida’s crazy “Stand Your Ground” law to mean “Shoot whoever bugs you.”   Dunn, being an unapologetic racist (although he prefers to refer to himself as “prejudiced”), thinks that the world would be better “if more people would arm themselves and kill these **** idiots.”    I am not making this up.  These quotes are from letters he wrote from jail.  Somehow, these letters were kept out of the trial, even though they seem absolutely relevant to show his mindset and to counter his claim that this was in self-defense.  I wonder if the result would have been different otherwise.

Anyway, what also surprises me about this verdict is that Florida allowed a conviction and a mistrial in the same verdict.  I’ve never seen such a thing before.  I guess that means they can retry him on the murder charge and the other charges stick (assuming they’re not thrown out on appeal).

Florida is crazy.

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Debating Creationists

I mean, seriously, what’s the point?

Nothing you say will change their minds.  But yet, there was a debate on TV between scientist Bill Nye and creationist Ken Hamm. nye  As I predicted, Nye made Hamm look like an idiot, and Hamm and his followers claimed that they won handily.  That’s easy to do when facts don’t matter.

If people want to believe that the earth is only 4000 years old and dinosaurs roamed with cavemen, fine.  Go ahead and believe in whatever silly thing you want to.   This is America, and you have every right to do so.

But I think it is also inherent on us to start treating these people with disdain in the same way we treat racists.  Let’s call them out.  Let’s challenge them.  Let’s make them outcasts.

Like racists, these people are hurting our society.  They are filling their kid’s heads with nonsense and destroying their future.  Worse yet, many of them are trying to force us to teach their mythology in our science classes.  (Next:  astrology and alchemy!)

So I applaud Nye for at least making this public and getting people to talk about it.  Sure, he didn’t plan on changing anyone’s mind, but the more we expose these people, the better.

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Regulations Schmegulations

Can’t help it, I think regulations are a good thing.

I like the fact that our government regulates our food to make sure it’s not filled with e coli.  USDA-Meat-Inspection-LabelI like knowing what ingredients are in the food. I like restaurants to not have rats.  I think regulations to make sure our cars are safe are a good idea.  I like having doctors and lawyers and electricians certified by the government and subject to regulations about what they can do.  I like requiring only adults to buy alcohol and cigarettes. I like regulations about workplace safety, and prohibitions against discrimination, and housing restrictions that prevent someone from putting a pig farm next door to me.

Some people, however, think that the “regulation” is a bad word.  They will use some example where a regulation has gone too far and then say “See?  Therefore, we should get rid of them all.”

Both extremes are bad.  “No regulations” is anarchy.  “Complete regulation” is tyranny.  Usually we’re pretty good about finding a reasonable spot between the two, but anyone who says “all regulation is bad” or “all regulation is good” is deluded.

Take financial regulations.  From the time of the founding of the United States, we had a recession or financial crisis on the average of once every seventeen years.  There was the Panic of 1819, the 1837 Crisis, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, the 1907 Banker’s Panic, and so on up to the Great Depression. Then Franklin Roosevelt put in controls and restrictions on Wall Street and banking and lo and behold, no depressions and no recessions for fifty years. Reagan comes in and removes those and bang! The S&L crisis, the 2001 recession, the 2007 Mortgage crisis, and the 2008 Bush collapse.

Regulations can be good things.

So no, you won’t get me jumping on your libertarian view that all regulations are bad, any more than you’ll get me jumping on a communist view that everything must be regulated.