WCGreen
WCGreen's JournalActions speak louder than words...
Especially when they come from a president giving a prime time speech and some relatively obscure cleric speaking at the end when hardly anyone was listening.
I do get why the Gay community is upset that this guy was let anywhere near the podium in our convention, especially here in 2012. If was gay I would be a lot more pissed about it than I am as an atheist who has to endure what I consider superstitious poppy cock.
But please, before anyone gets really pissed off, look at the actions and the rhetoric of the man in charge.
President Obama has been open in his support for Gay Rights. It was in his speech right there. When was the last time a presidential candidate from a major party openly proclaimed he support issues so near and dear to the Gay community.
Obama addressed the LGBT community directly three separate times during his speech, which ran 40 minutes — 10 minutes less than former President Bill Clinton's speech the previous night.
"If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void," Obama warned, including the voices of "Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry."
Obama also chided Republicans for using gay people as scapegoats.
Speaking to Republican critics who believe government is always the problem, Obama said government isn't the source of all our problems "any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles."
Ticking off a list of accomplishments, the president highlighted his repeal of "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" as well.
http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2012/09/obama-expresses-support-for-gay-community-in-conve.html
On old man railing at the tail end of a convention that was quickly winding down has little to no relevance.
Of course it was political having this guy at the convention. President Obama has to constantly remind people that he believes in God. It's part of the game. But again, actions speak louder than tired rhetoric.
I didn't want him there probably as much as any gay person. Because of this continued embracing of some God who cares one wit what we do is so out dated that it is almost comical to me. The further we look out into the universe and find no evidence of God and yet people still find comfort with holding on to that belief confounds me.
But there it is. God is still with people.
To my many friends in the LGBT, please don't give up on President Obama.
The job numbers are not as bad as they look...
at least politically. What most people will see is the Jobless rate dropped from 8.3% to 8.1%.
Most people don't look past that number, the percentage.
On the other hand, the real reason these jobs numbers are down is because of the childish behavior of the GOP.
But we know the case for that will be lost in the big themes of a campaign.
No election is lost or won on the job numbers from August.
If the numbers come down poorly for September, again under 100k, then that might be a game changer.
But the ADP numbers from last month showed a much better job performance as this measures the number of people actually counting as new hires. They claim 201k jobs were created in August.
http://www.adpemploymentreport.com/
This will more than likely show up in the September numbers.
BTW, if Romney is so private sector is always better, i find it a little disingenuous that he ignored the ADP numbers and instead seized on the Labor Department numbers.
Is Romney ashamed of his wealth, a traitor to his class...
If he is ashamed that he is paying at his tax rate, that tells us something about what he really feels about his tax situation.
If he was proud of what he did he would throw the taxes on the table and say I made major risks with my money to gin up the wheels of capitalism. I have made these decisions because I feel that capital should be treated with respect.
The Capitalist puts it all on the line but people who work can always find other work if I fail.
And with a lot of my investments, I had to wait years, some times decades to get my return on my investment...
Instead he sulks away and hides because...
What Romney did was not traditional capitalist. He invested money to make fast cash. He destroyed in order to take the loot as fast as the law would allow. He also shoveled money at lobbyists to create ways for him to avoid paying any tax what so ever.
What boggles my mind is that this country was built on that premise. The reason Capital Gains were treated differently was because the returns on those investments could take years. In many cases, the lower tax rate for Capital Gains was because inflation reduced the return as the value of the dollar invested had dropped.
The tax situation that built this country worked fine until those who never had it all on the line now want it all now.
This treating income differently tax wise is one of the main reason, no, it IS the main reason we are in this situation we are in.
To put it simply, why would you want a salary when you could get stock options, wait a little while and then pay a much lower tax rate when you cash out!
The Republicans know the demographics are not breaking their way...
They know that exclusion, blame them over there, the denomization of the other are soon to be seen as failed approaches to national politics. The best they can do is to try and stop people who are newly entered into the electorate from getting to the voting booth.
And that will prove to be a losing tactic as well as financial stability allows people to turn their attention toward more civic involvement.
That is why they appear to be so desperate.
The only thing keeping the GOP hopes alive is that the drawing of the districts after the 2010 census allowed the GOP to draw favorable legislative districts.
If we hang on now, if we can grab some house seats and keep the senate, if we can take some governor mansions back, we can put the Republican Party into a Bath Tub and pull the plug on their hate and cynicisms.
I'm lucky enough to be covered by Medicare...
But I am so glad that the Obama Administration worked to get the life-time caps taken out...
In a country that supposedly sanctifies life, how can they commit people to death just because they don't have insurance.
OMG, It's labor day....
You know they always have great movies on the Fourth of July and Ceremonies all over Washington to honor those who died for our "Freedom", and on Presidents Day the history Channel has a presidents of the US marathon giving even the most obscure president at least a shout out.
But when it comes to Labor Day, the day set aside to celebrate the gains of the labor movement, we don't even get a showing of Norma Rae on the tenth Starz Channel.
So what are we celebrating when white collar workers are pretty much given the day off while all of those who labor, well, it's just another day.
Labor use to be an important, no essential part in the Capitalism troika, you know Capital, Labor and Materiels. Now it seems capital is the king, the top banana, the big Kahuna.
So where does that leave Labor?
Both the democrats and the republicans are quick to negotiate away the hard fought gains of the generations that spilled blood for the sake of a fair share.
No body speaks convincingly to the people who labor on behave of the upper classes.
And the people who labor are so spooked about paying their credit card debt that they are never going to be anything but docile.
Let's face it, the owners have bought out everyone who has a 401k or and IRA matching program at work.
Why does the Owner class hate the idea of Universal Health Care? Because that takes away a real good way to cow tow their workers when it comes to negotiating time. If there is health care available for all, people could better sell their abilities in the market place. There has got to be a whole mess of people being underpaid or over qualified because they can't risk losing their company afforded Health Care.
I don't know, if this would even help, but why don't we push to get the local schools to read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Maybe if people the kids of the future had a basic idea of what goes on in the real world.
BTW, have a happy Labor Day and get back to work.
Meet the Press....
the once go to Sunday morning show is a former shell of itself.
Of course a lot of that has to do with an explosion of competition. If you are one out of three networks to choose from, well. But now there are literally hundreds of competitors out for eyeballs.
But still, on a broadcast network with a sixty year tradition and all they can manage is 2.6 million eye balls? To put that in perspective, it is how many people live in the Cleveland, Ohio area. That's it Less than one percent of the population.
One has to wonder what is the problem.
To me, it seems, there is no drama. We all know what the democrats will say and we all know what the GOP spokesperson will say. The main difference now is that host, David Gregory, tilts the discussion toward the establishment bend which is of course the agenda of White Powerful Men in Power. The fact that most of them are republicans is beside the point.
All information has an inside the beltway tinge that is foreign to people out their beyond the outer belt surrounding DC. The people in the 99.99% of the US that is not in the inner circle could give a shit what these ass holes wail about, complain about...
This stuff is so far out of the normal persons purvey that it is almost as if they are talking gibberish, which if you watch once in a while you will know what I mean.
Gregory has committed the worst sin of Journalism; he has become one of the insiders. He revels on knowing what the knower's know. he is now a pooper smoocher.
I can related to that because I had a taste of it when I was close to the inner circle of the democratic party here in Cleveland. It's insanely empowering to know what is going to happen before it does.
Back to the show, I truly believe that is Gregory's problem, he is addicted to being on the down low, to be one in the know, to be in on the fix, so to speak.
The problem the show has is it truly believes if they go tough on these pampered mouthpieces they will stop stooping to talk to the "press".
What would be the big loss, I ask, by not hearing what Frank Luntz has designed us to hear or what ever spin doctor is spinning the web of lies and deceit.
Any way, that's all I have to say tonight. I'll let Edward R Murrow tell the rest....
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility."
http://www.evesmag.com/murrow.htm
One of the first adult novel that I read was the Razor's Edge....
I was in between my junior and senior year in High School. All my friends had their drivers license and me, well I was kind of stuck out in the middle of nowhere. They also were all over 18 and could hit the bars. I was only 16 that year.
We lived in the farm area of our town that was about to explode with development. It was hard to get in and out of our house so I was kind of isolated. I also had a raging case of acne that forced me to the sidelines of the dating game..
So I immersed myself in books. The Razor's Edge was my first "adult" novel that wasn't force fed to me by the English Departments. Even though I was in Honors English, we were reading Homer, Shakespeare and the Bible as literature, I still kept looking for that book, the book that would, well for lack of a better phrase, speak to me.
I found it in the Razor's Edge. Of course it borderlines on the salacious, but there was enough stuff about finding oneself to make it interesting for an isolated kid who continued to walk the batter when pitching woo.
So I spent hours that summer reading what was interesting to me. Now there was no internet to look about to find something, so I was left to tagging along when my mom went to the mall. I would slip away and head on to the book store and look for books that might surprise me.
I found the Razor's Edge and was drawn in after reading the first chapter. The main character, Larry, was a man who had seen the brutality of war as he served as a ambulance driver in WWI, or "The Great War" as they called it back then. After the war, Larry wanted more than being defined by a job or even a career.
Years later, I was excited the Bill Murray did a remake of the movie. It followed the book pretty but Bill was miscast. I was glad to find out that Tyrone Power was the first Larry.
The idea of searching for something to believe in has always been a part of our humanity. Over the years I have become far more cynical than I was way back there in 1974. So I read the book at just the right time.
The book showed me how to look for the meaning of life by just trying to empathize with the people around you.
Why did I post this in the General Forum? Well, because I think there are a lot of Larry's who flock to the democratic party because we look for solutions to problems that are just as well as functional. The other party seems to have the cloak of "what's in it for me" blanket that stifles all compassion.
Politics should be an exercise in compassion because if you have no empathy toward your fellow man, what, dear god, are you here for....
And so, read the book or watch the original with Tyrone Power
What would happen if say several African American males showed up in the most white geographic
voting election and challenge the voting status of White People.
Think about it, these Voting Activists aligned with the Tea Party are going to African American voting areas and stand their watching people vote. It's intimidating, especially when they show up when the older folks come to vote. These folks remember voting intimidating, and Jim Crow and all sorts of voting suppression aimed at the African American community.
I have been wondering about this since I was coordinating voting workers when i was an officer of the democratic party here in the Cleveland Area...
My problem with the Christian Right is
that they are certainly not Christians and the are almost always wrong...
To me, they live in this century with a nomadic herd mentality best suited for survival in a semi arid climate.
They accept everything up until Jesus appeared on the scene, skipped right over that nonsense of loving thy neighbor and casting stones when you are guilty and embraced the psychotic rantings of a hermit better known as Revelations.
If you concentrate on what Jesus allegedly said and did then these self-professed true believes would be cast out of the temple.
It's just fucking crazy.
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Gender: MaleCurrent location: Cleveland Ohio
Member since: 2003 before July 6th
Number of posts: 45,558
