Thursday, October 1, 2015

The Debates

Again it has been a while since I have posted anything. Not because there isn’t anything to talk about but because I’ve been too lazy to write. Watching the Republican debates and the race for the Republican nomination has given me enough motivation.

I knew this round would be good once Donald Trump made it to the top of the polls. This is all being driven by the Tea Party followers. I’m loving it. The Tea Party is the extreme Right-Wing part of the Republican Party. Consisting of the extreme religious fundamentalist and the money backed capitalist people like the Koch brothers. The Tea Party people have been sold a bill of goods that pretend to be supporting the best interest of the country but in reality they are destroying it.

This current core of the Republican Party is driven by fear. They are afraid of the loss of power they once had and desperately fighting to retain it. They can’t accept the fact that this country is changing. The demographics are not what they used to be. It is becoming a majority minority or non-white country and that scares the hell out of them. They are fighting to retain that fading glory that once had them in that top seat of power. Power that really was just an illusion.

This country was built on the idea of a system of free market capitalism. Over the years corporations any been allowed to grow and gain power. They have used that power to remove the restraints that kept them in check. The truth is there is no more “free market” in this country. The rules of the free market have been all but eliminated by removing government regulations/regulators. Without government regulators there can be no free market. It would be like playing ANY sport without referees. The referees are there to enforce the rules of the game. The players or in this case the businesses are there to win. Most of the businesses will do whatever it takes to win while others will always play by the rules. Some of these businesses have gotten so big that they are paying people in Congress to change the rules to help their company. That’s just a fancy way of saying cheating. There once was a time that if a company got too big the government would break it up to keep it in check but those days are gone. I’ll give you one example of how broken the system is. Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to pay generic medication makers NOT to make a generic brand of their medication so they can keep their prices high. The game is rigged and the tables have been tilted to favor the very rich and very powerful people and companies in this country.

These rich people/companies have been allowed to grow by creating fear in the minds of the people at the bottom. Telling them they should be afraid of the immigrants and minorities because they are coming to take their jobs. Telling them they should hate immigrants and minorities because they don’t want to work and they only want to live off of the government. How can it be both? Another good one is, the religious right is against abortion and also against child care assistance. They call themselves pro-life but they are in favor of the death penalty. I could go on and on but I won’t.

Now the Republican Party has created this mess for themselves by bringing the Tea Party into their tent and they have grown too big for them to control. They are pushing their own agenda by way of Trump, Carson, and Fiofina. Those three are the current front runners and all three are running campaigns that are void of facts. They can do this because that is what the Republican Party has become. A Party that is void of facts. I’ll give you a couple of examples. First, Planned Parenthood. It has been proven that the videos being used to attack Planned Parenthood were edited to portray the organization in a negative light and are not accurate. Never the less, Republicans continue to quote and site those videos as the source of their information. The second one is Benghazi. There have been more than 10 Republican investigations looking into the death of 4 Americans and the role Hillary Clinton played. Every one of those investigations have come to the same conclusion and found “no fault” on the part of Secretary Clinton but Republicans continue to say that she did something wrong. This is what the Republican Party has become.

This is not something I am happy about. It is entertaining to watch on the debate stage but it is bad for the country. We need the Republican Party. We don’t need the country going only to the left just as we don’t need the country only going to the right. Republicans have created Frankenstein’s monster and it is tearing them apart and taking the rest of us along with them.

The front runners are running on nothing. Their platforms are built on absolutely no substance. When I listen to them in interviews and in the debates I hear nothing. They just repeat things that have been proven to be false as if it is fact. They are saying things that feed into the fears of the Republican base. The base that is the Tea Party is eating and drinking it all up with gusto.


The monster they created is beating us to death while the creators of the monster are picking our pockets and robbing us blind. We just need to get the people to understand that their fear and anger is misplaced. If we can do that then maybe we can move us all in the right direction.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

The TPP


It has been a while since I’ve posted anything on here. Not that there hasn’t been anything to write about because that would be a lie. The biggest reason is because I get to vent on Facebook and I lost part of my motivation. After talking to Herb this morning I decided to go on and post my thoughts about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).  

Currently President Obama is asking Congress to give him Fast Track authority over TTP in an effort to get this trade agreement in place. I’ve been watching the TPP for a couple of years now. When I first heard of it I didn’t believe it had a chance of being passed. I never thought President Obama would even be onboard supporting it. Sadly I am wrong. The President is fully supporting this bad deal.

Fast Track approval would give each person in Congress less than 90 seconds to make their case for or against the trade package. It would also allow it to pass with a simple majority vote. Republicans complain about Obama being on a power grab and now they are willing to give him even more power. One of the biggest problems I have with it is the fact that the few people that have read the deal are not allowed to talk about what is in it. Why all the secrecy? If it is such a good thing we all should be allowed to see it. As with most things, leaks happen. What has been leaked is that corporations will have MAJOR power over government from federal down to local. It has happened in other countries and is moving here. Corporations would have the power to sue ANY government for damages due to laws being passed restricting their profits. Local governments would no longer have the right to protect its citizens from harmful products if it restricts the profits of the corporation. I believe that is a bad deal for this country.

For many, many reasons I’m not going into why I believe President Obama is pushing this INSANE trade deal. The people that I talk to freely about government actions and the amount of money flowing into election and all things politics will understand why. The Multinational Corporations have all but taken over the government and I had hopes that President Obama would stand up to them. Sadly I may have been wrong. What little faith I have left in him is fading.  

I’m posting a short video that I found that explains what I believe is happening with the TPP and why I am against it. I hope you enjoyed reading this and that you gained some useful information. I will try to post more. I really only had one cheerleader for what I posted on my blog even though we didn’t agree half the time because he was a Republican. His name was Bruce Scher and he passed away a couple of years ago. It was great having someone that didn’t let politics get in the way of our friendship. I found out the hard way just how rare that is. I still miss him. I’ll try to post more and thank you Herb for the nudge in writing this.