PEOPLE ONCE IN GOVERNMENT ARE DOING MORE FOR THE COUNTRY BY WORKING OUTSIDE OF IT

The Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe from Maine, has written on what it feels like to be in the Senate today as compared to her previous forty years.  The House and Senate have become charades, trying to make people believe what they are doing their job recognizable as governing, which in reality it is not.

There is a very good reason that ratings are the lowest in the memory of most of us who have been around for many decades.  The loss of respect for our legislators follows the loss of respects for priests, Boy Scout leaders, police who are brutal, teachers and so many more,  This is sad because not all people in any of these groups is shameful.  But our young Americans do not hear of those unless they are lucky enough to find a few during the growing up years.

Most of us can avoid many of these groups, especially as we are older, but we can't get away from the fact that the Legislators rule our lives.  It would be nice to have them doing a good job. No, not just nice; it is necessary that they do their jobs and I can only hope that people will vote with great consideration to which of these people have not done their jobs since they were elected on a State or Federal level..

THE SENATE BARELY SANE TODAY

The Blunt amendment was voted down today in the Senate.  In Virginia, the Republicans  passed a bill that chips away at the rights of women.   Scott Brown is  backing the Blunt amendment.  It should be helpful for Elizabeth Warren who is running against him.  (make MA proud of its senator once again and vote for Warren, you from Massachusetts!)

The Virginians passed their draconian bill by 2 votes while the Senate bill in Washington DC lost by three votes, Sen Snowe from Maine casting the vote against it as the only Republican senator to do so as she announces her resignation.  She will not run for another six year term.

Rush Limbaugh spoke about this young woman, Sandra Fluke (calling her Susan) and switched the subject totally. (Ms Fluke was the witness for women whom Sen Issa denied as not a fit witness.)  The tiny, insensitive heart living in that fleshy chest showed itself for what it is.  It is being called,  The War on Women.  The fact that this was an amendment to a transportation bill, tagged on in a sneaky way, apparently didn't fool the Democrats, only the ridiculous Republicans who vote in lock step (with the exception of moderate Sen Snowe who finally voted her conscience.)

It seems there are those who are trying to push the clock back several centuries.  We seem to have a Congress full of men who believe in:  "Keep them barefoot and pregnant". as their tiny testicles disappear from fright at the sight of a strong woman.  And we have been told that Neanderthals are extinct!  Actually I read that Neanderthals and modern humans must have mated because there is evidence in modern genes with Neanderthal DNA. 

CONTRAST BELIEF IN GOD AND RELIGION

When one dies, I believe that person is no more the one known in life on earth.  I never really understood spiritualism until I looked it up.  Spiritualism is beyond my ability to comprehend.  However, religion should be as separate from the church as we ask it to be in our Constitution...separation between church and state.  There is good reason for that.  We do NOT all believe the same about God, Christ, Allah, Joseph Smith or any of the hundreds of religious leaders on this earth currently. The religious right has gone too far.

The priest that refused to honor his commitment to perform a service for a dead woman in commemoration of her life, or give communion to her lesbian daughter is unconscionable.  The pedophlic priests who tormented youth of both sexes for generations is not a call to honor the church for its handling and long term denial of the problem or its seriousness nor to respect the church..  Before contraception was legal, and nuns were the only women around, the House of the Good Shepherd was full of pregnant nuns whose children were given up for adoption.  The fathers?  Nuns did not have great contact outside the church, did they?  The fallacy of celibate priests went on for years and there may still be a few do not have sex with the opposite sex.  Whether they masturbate or Nature takes her course by giving them wet dreams, or whether they are asexual, I doubt someone will make it a Master's thesis and research the subject.

If believing in the church's teachings is a comfort to people, that is good.  For those of us who find no comfort in deceit and manipulation through fear of something which cannot be proven...afterlife in Paradise (even if you deny a good life on earth), may never be realized.  Life after death is not a concept for which I am willing to change my way of life on earth.  I believe in the Golden Rule and I hurt no one intentionally.  I do not live life in fear of the Almighty.  If I have sinned, I would atone but refuse to atone for sins committed by Eve in the Garden of Eden.  I do not believe we are all born sinners though some of us may become so as we live. However we live our lives, we need not fear that church attendance should be our judge.  It is who we are in life, how we behave and treat others, how we value and respect others for whom they choose to be or are, and whether we share ourselves as part of a community with other human beings that counts.  Until someone actually comes back from beyond in an after life that I might change my views.  In this life, ask yourself, are you the shepherd or the sheep?  As in life, there are more sheep than shepherds, you know.

One can believe in God and Christ and never set foot in a church.  I doubt God will make an issue of it.

WHAT WE DON'T KNOW IS % OF WHAT?

We keep hearing the 'tactics' of the campaign.  Santorum may have lost Michigan but he made Romney spend money in his own state, that he won't have to spend elsewhere.  We heard talk of how Romney gaffed in the past couple of weeks by constantly pointing out how moneyed he is and allowing people to speculate how little he knows about the issues of the blue collar or middle class.

Santorum blew it by saying he wants to vomit when he hears what Kennedy said about separation of church and state. Santorum vehemently violates the essence of the constitution by proclaiming he is not for separation of church and state. But most importantly to me is the way percentages are thrown around.  If there was one person running and that person got one vote that would be 100% of the votes.  Despite the good attempts at polls, no one really knows how many people change their minds after the poll was taken and how small the pool is.  We are hearing that Santorum has lost 10% of the woman's vote in the past week or two, nationally.  We also need to look at the votes those legislators who are putting in the rape bill  (intrusion by the state into a woman's vagina without her permission) in Virginia and, I think, Pennsylvania or perhaps it was Georgia.  Too many states are jumping on that losing bandwagon.

This rush to understand what is happening before it happens is useful only to the journalists who are getting paid to try to do it.  To the rest of us, it does little but influence those who always want to vote with the majority, to feel with the 'in' group.or maybe to feel good they are with a winner.  At this point we have won nothing. It was announced that 30% of the post ballot collecting, we learned the Catholic vote went to Romney.  Where did the other 70 % go?.  After 75 minutes of 'too close to call', finally Romney was announced the projected winner.

To borrow a phrase from Santorum, when I heard him say "we need to get big government out of our lives, thinking they know better than we do about what we need in lives...."  'I wanted to vomit'. Either Santorum didn't realize he had lost or he just doesn't know when to stop speaking his lies...he went on for several minutes while the TV screen kept projecting the running banner saying 'Romney the winner in Michigan'.

SANTORUM: PURVEYOR OF HIS FORM OF RELIGION WHETHER WE WANT IT OR NOT

Rick Santorum

BBC wrote an article titled:Romney and Santorum vie for Michigan breakthrough 
"US presidential rivals Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have attacked each other on the final day of campaigning before two crucial Republican primary votes."

It should not have said 'vie', but should have been 'lie'.  I've never been so ashamed of politicians before.  It is not the first time I've heard distortions and lies before but never have I heard the President so disrespected and a campaign so off the main point of what the American people are focused on.

Santorum is distorting the 'separation of church and state', fairly well clarified in the Constitution and claims he would vomit hearing what President Kennedy had said (which should go down in history as a true reading of the meaning our forefathers wanted in the Constitution.  Speaking about Santorum's stand on contraception, Matt Lewis wrote on Hot Air  "He should have said “The use of contraception is inconsistent with my Catholic faith, but many other fine faith traditions disagree, and I respect their position” — and then moved on.
But Santorum doesn’t really believe that. What is more, he was more interested in winning the argument than winning the election." 

He makes it clear that he will bravely force his religious views on all of us and will work to make those most offensive to most of us as law.

OSCAR NIGHT

This will be a short blog.   The whole evening was wasted, yes that is not a typo.  Billy Crystal is the best part to me but he just isn't enough of the show.  All the beautiful (though not necessarily physically so), are chosen for their talents.  It may not be considered kind of me to say that watching sometimes tearful people (I might also be brought to tears with the honor of the win) thanking everyone whom I don't know, don't care to know, and am just happy they do their job well.

It always feels as though I am looking in some one's keyhole. I don't feel a non-part of it all.  It is as exciting as a psychotherapist of he year award might be.  There is so much packed in when only little, short clips of things are played so fast and tun into one another that I have no idea what (or whom) I am watching with the greatest question always being, why?

Others talk about watching the Oscars to see the clothes they wear, or almost wear as the case is often .  Some of the historical stuff is interesting.  The movies, foreign in writing, acting, and outsourcing is a reflection of the rest of America these days.  Who are we, really?

To those who watched and enjoyed, I envy you.  To those of you who didn't watch because you chose not to, I applaud you.  To those of you who watched because everyone else would be talking about it and you didn't want to miss being a part of it, I pity you.  Usually I have seen at least one of the movies nominated.  This year I had the distinction of not having watched any of them.  My rule is to be happy and only watch movies in which I can smile through it all.  This was not a banner movie years for me but I look forward to seeing the next Pixar and Miyazaki productions.

AL-QAEDA IS HARD TO DESTROY

The Obama regime has done a masterful job of killing many of the heads of al-Qaeda but, like the Phoenix, new jihadists are joining new ranks.  "First came the statement on 9 February by Osama Bin Laden's successor, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, that al-Qaeda had now merged with Somalia's insurgent group, al-Shabab." from BBC News, by Frank Gardner.  To read the entire article, click here.

Somalia is a hot bed of violent, angry and hungry men  We have read about their piracy but know little of the deprivations that have driven the outlaws to commit the heinous crimes of which they are accused.  Leaderless for far too long, the behave like the boys in Lord of the Flies. 

In a world that is bleak to young men, who see no future for themselves, it is easy to find the angry who are willing to join a violent, angry organization.  It does not take many to reek havoc on the world.  We have seen this in the past few years in which they have been organized under Osama bin Laden.It has taken 150 years for our own country to stop fighting the Civil War.  Why would we expect this group to stop simply because one leader has been killed.  The BBC printed this picture in Somalia which pretty much says it all.