PEOPLE'S COPING SKILLS HIT OVERDRIVE

It is really difficult to listen to the haranguing amongst the 'so-called leaders' of our country.  The media seems to give more time to the Tea Partiers these days.  The reasoning behind this decision escapes me but I sure there is one there since MSNBC has been hosting a House Republican Tea Partier nigihtly.  Never having been one to suffer fools easily, these interviews have sorely tried my patience and credulity.  Some commentators have referred to the Tea in "Tea Party" as the bacronym "Taxed Enough Already"

Today I learned the definition of a backronym.  Wikopedia defines it as :  "It is constructed by taking an existing word already in common usage, and creating a new phrase using the letters in the word as the initial letters of the words in the phrase. For example, the United States Department of Justice assigns to their Amber Alert program the meaning "America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response," although the term originally referred to Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old abducted and murdered in Texas in 1996".

Amazingly, people who think we are overtaxed seem not to know any math.  They do not know that, if the rich shared in taxes proportionately to income as do the poor, we would need to do far less to balance the budget.  But alas, their deficiencies allow them to spout off as they they had been annointed by God when they were elected to the House of Representatives.

They are currently professing to be seriously disappointed in President Obama but have no idea just how disappointing they have been to the American public.  Instead of coming to Washington to improve the lot of the American people, they march to their own drummer and seem to want to push progress back 40 or more years.

Coping mechanisms are creaking everywhere.  They need far more than the political equivalent of  WD40.It must be similar when a child sees a parent fly off into a temper tantrum.  I will not spout platitudes.  I can only say that I hope the current Administration has a plan to.no longer try the patience of the American people with an attempt to compromise with a party that has openly and firmly states they are only interested in having Obama fail and be a one-term president.

Please, let's prove them wrong!

HOUSE PASSES A COMPROMISE BILL?

Boehner was filmed many times saying he doesn't do compromise.  Why then does the abomination that shreds the American way of life sound like a compromise?  Oh, right, because Boehner didn't compromise, the Democrats did..

The joy is that it is only until September, just so the government wouldn't be closed down.  59 TeaParty Republicans refused to sign it.  They wanted 100 billion, not a paltry killer of women, children, and abortions in Washing, DC, amongst the charitable work they did on the Federal budget

The far more difficult task of reducing government spending in a legislature divided not by political parties but by ideological factions will be far more difficult, especially as the 2012 election edges closer.The problem was made more serious when the electorate voted in uneducated children to the House who neither understand the Constitution but also include Members who don't believe in Federal Law, only God's Law.  It is difficult to discern which TV channel their messages are emanating from.

The TeaParty tsunami has done its damage and now the country is picking up0 the pieces it left in its path.  The non-believers in government who voted for them are taking a second look at the lies they fell for.   May be there IS hope for our democracy, after all.

PAUL RYAN WAS DISAPPOINTED BY THE PRESIDENT, ACCUSING HIM OF BEING INACCURATE

My President and Yours if you think you are an American

Following the well thought out and delivered speech of Obama,  the Republicans were not celebrating with champagne, but rather, sour grapes.

Paul Ryan accuses Obama of being 'partisan'.   Barney Frank expresses surprise at the chutzpah of the Republicans accusing Obama of being partisan.  We seem to have moved into a schizophrenic alternate world of politics.

Obama made a cool, clear and factual view of what this country needs to keep all its people moving towards a better life.  Kucinich and Frank both agreed that much more detail is needed about what, exactly, the President is intending.  Anyone who has played any kind of competitive board games knows that it is not good to be in a defensive position.  While people were criticizing Obama, he was protecting Health Care.  He let the Republicans prove their desert of ideas and then came up with a message of hope once again as he did during his campaign.  Despite what people criticize Obama for his campaign promises, he has fulfilled everyone over which he was allowed any kind of control.

Quote heard from the GOP chief after the President's speech:  "Obama is in love with the sound of his own voice.".

Representative Ryan strikes back.  Rep. Paul Ryan called President Obama’s speech on deficit reduction"  “a political broadside” and accused the White House of “poisoning wells” on the budget debate".  Surely Paul Ryan should be taken more seriously than Obama, right? 

Just how foolish does Ryan really think the larger proportion of the poorer 98% of the population might be?

SHOULD 'GOD'S' LAWS TRUMP THE LAWS OF A CIVILIZED COUNTRY IN 2011?

France has passed laws that prohibit women from wearing a Burka in public.  Just because middle-eastern men can't contain their lust when seeing a woman's (any woman's) face, women should hide their face so as not to be blamed for causing their own rape.  I suspect some women have decided to hide their need for electrolysis, a nose job, orthodontia, acne relief, and a few other assorted conditions which might show if a face is exposed.

One of the arguments I have heard is that the government has no business telling people what they can wear.  Try going out naked.  See if the government will then tell you firmly what to wear or let you go to your choice...jail or the local mental hospital..  Why do people not see there are exceptions to all rules.  We have 'freedom of speech' but don't yell 'FIRE' in a theater because you are not free to do that.  And you shouldn't be free in our society to hide your identity., in my humble opinion.

The hijab, burqa, burga, burka or one of as many versions as the spelling of Moamar's last name in English, would supply with the wearer with total gender and personal anonymity.  Our society assumes that when someone puts a mask on, they are trying to hide something. It is frowned on by the police and a test case in Florida a few years ago denied a Muslim woman the right to have her driver's license taken with her burqa on.  The article quotes:  "

"Here in the U.S., Islamic women encounter no official discrimination for veil-wearing, any more than Amish or Mennonite or Jewish people do for wearing their religion on their sleeve, so to speak. There are some distinctions to be drawn, however: not too long ago, a woman in Florida was denied a driver’s license because she refused to be photographed without her Islamic veil, and the state considered that a driver’s license is a privilege, not a right; being photographed for identity purposes  was part of the requirement to obtain a driver’s license. So it wasn’t considered religious discrimination to refuse the license; the woman could wear her veil all she wanted, but she couldn’t be licensed to drive behind a mask, as the state claims the right to determine that the license belongs to the person who presents it."

This article does not refer to any experiences thee women may have in the workplace.  For example, would you hand your money to a bank teller in a burqa? Would you take a credit card without seeing the picture matching the being in the burqa?  Would grade schools welcome unidentified people on their grounds when it can be anyone underneath that fabric?  We have many needs for being able to identify people with whom we do business in our society.  Women are fearful even in playgrounds that their children may be kidnapped.  Would they feel comfortable around someone in a burqa?    I think even the US has to rethink some of the things that may not yet have presented a problem because it has no reached the media.  What if it does?

Can you imagine what a family portrait of all the women in the family at a public event would look like?

 

 

 

 

IS THIS REALLY OUR AMERICA?

It is intimated that there was a deliberate plan to have the Republican party show themselves and their real goals.  If that is true, it certainly worked.  We have learned that the Republican party has no unified goals.  They have goals to change laws like Roe vs Wade which has been legal for forty years, thus sending us backwards, not forwards.

I appears that Washington, DC, was thrown under a bus again without even an opportunity to vote.  They cannot even use their own funds (not Federal funds) legally any more to pay for poor women to get abortions.  I sincerely hope this will get a court challenge very soon.  I can't believe that meets with the Constitution.  If it does, what does it say about a group that says they want government out of their lives and bodies?  Or are we seeing some double standards here.  The DC Mayor, Vincent Gray, was arrested in the protest the next day.  Click here.

Stephen Singular has written .The Wichita Divide about the murder of abortionist Dr. Tiller.  It is a sequel to his first book, written 25 years ago, Talked to Death about the assassination of Alan Berg, Denver radio host.  It examines the normalization of hatred in our culture in our culture since then.  Of interest is the thesis that our current TV and radio media has contributed to the buildup of hatred and group fighting for their own goals, believing themselves to be God's chosen people and above the Federal, man-made laws.

SNIPPETS OF NEWS INFO

Budget:  It was nice to see that Obama plans to let his budget plan be known this week.  I'm reasonably certain that great minds have been working on it for some time and, frankly, anything sounds better than that of Paul Ryan who is currently the budget God of the Republicans.

Foreign accented media:  Whenever I turn on the BBC channel I am prepared to hear British sounding folk.  However, when I switch channels without paying much attention, I think all of them are BBC today.  Even CNN has used British anchors for years.  The one word used by then that throws me for a second or more is 'wee-kend' accent on the second syllable.  To Americans it has always been a 'week-end'.

Christiane Amanpour on This Week (ABC Sunday mornings) is great.  She is clear, bright and not at all difficult to understand, which is not true for all.  There are some British who slide over words and sound 'mumbley'.  I do not usually have a problem understanding them but that is hardly true for many of my friends.  Those who are not used to listening to foreign accents complain about the Help desk people in India and even the Southerners, especially with the few additives in the African-American speech. .

Research on sexy lady news anchors:  : In January 2011, Margaret Hartman wrote  "men retain less information when the woman delivering the news wears a sexier outfit."  I have found no evidence of research done on women by sexy male anchors.  Could this possibly mean that the hormones raised in women by sexy men do not stop their brain processes from continuing to work?

NOW IT JUST BEGINS TO GET EXCITING

For those of you who do not refer to FactCheck.org, a word of advice:  You should.  For example there were a few exaggerations  in Iowa by Bachmann, Gingrich and Barbour.  The tragedy is, how many people will ever know they were exaggerations..

Under the heading GOP exaggerations in Iowa,  Bachmann falsely stated that Obama administration officials have approved only one new drilling permit "since they came into office".  It is actually more than 200.  Gingrich claimed to have 'helped balance the budget for four straight years" but he was only in Congress two of those four years.

For those of you who get emails that say, "This was checked by Snopes and it is true", don't believe it.  Check it out yourself.  Many times I find that the story is not true and can be extremely misleading.  For an example of how it handles some quotes, click here.

There are many useful websites but the people who need to use them are too lazy to do it.  I once had someone reply when I suggested they check out Snopes, I was told, "I wondered about that but I figured you would check it out and let me know."

We will all get some things wrong but, at least we have a fighting chance if we try to check out as much as we can from reliable sources.