Principles

In a long-overdue move, today a Congressional panel approved a measure which labels the massacre of Armenian civilians by the military forces of the Ottoman Empire as “genocide.” Proposals to apply this term to the atrocity committed nearly a century ago have been punted down the line from one Congress to the next for many years now. The wholesale massacre of civilians by a military force is inexcusable under any circumstances, and the fact that it has taken Congress this long to call the act by its true name is shameful and sad.

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My neighbor’s car has a bumper sticker that says, “How’s that whole hopey-changey thing goin’ for ya?”   This moronic expression is not only annoying because it reads like it was meant to be a Sarah Palin quote. It is annoying because I would actually like a whole lot more change, please, and I still hold out some hope that change is possible. It is annoying because my neighbor, people like my neighbor, and the type of politicians that my neighbor supports, are responsible for the slow pace, and in some cases the complete absence, of change. It is annoying because my neighbor seems to think that I – who still have a “Got Hope?” sticker on my truck – might be regretting my earlier support of the principles of change because, in my neighbor’s view, the changes that were proposed to the health care system looked like the dangerous path to socialism. My neighbor is a fool.

What a shame there are so many millions of people just like my neighbor throughout the country. I maintain hope that rational, well-meaning people can overpower the conservative defeatism that is attempting to drag down our efforts to create positive change and to instead mire us in the conservative muck.

Conservatives are opposed to change. That is what the word “conservative” means: people who espouse this philosophy wish to conserve the status quo. It does NOT have anything to do with fiscal responsibility, as was so aptly evidenced by the egregious economic mismanagement of the Bush administration. The result of Republican economic policies: double-digit unemployment.

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The filibuster, simply put, is the practice of talking proposed legislation to death. Presently, in the Senate, a three-fifths majority vote is required to end a filibuster: a high standard that aims toward consensus instead of mere majority rule.

Back in the days of the Bush administration, when the Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House, the Republican leadership grew frustrated that Senate Democrats had the temerity to use the filibuster block 4% of President Bush’s ideologically extremist judicial nominations. In response, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) proposed using what he dubbed the “nuclear option.” Under the so-called nuclear option, a motion could be carried with a simple majority that would end the long-standing practice of the Parliamentary maneuver known as the filibuster, at least in the case of judicial appointments.

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The pro-vaccine crowd has grown increasingly intolerant of the very idea of defending their position. Instead they have resorted to name-calling, accusing vaccine doubters of being “anti-science,” and lumping vaccine doubters together with Creationists as irrational and superstitious. The present harsh rhetoric of the pro-vaccine crowd in the media actually makes me even more suspicious than I might have been already.

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This is priceless… the funniest thing I have heard all day is not a joke! (Thanks to Huffington Post for bringing this to my attention.)

The Conservative Bible Project is literally re-writing the Bible.

What is all this about? How could fundamentalist Bible-thumpers find objection to their own most sacred text?

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Today’s word of the day is jingoism. Given its prevalence in modern American society, this word is severely under-utilized.

Jingoism: noun. The spirit, policy, or practice of bellicose chauvinism; professing patriotism loudly and excessively, favoring vigilant preparedness for war and an aggressive foreign policy.
-Random House Unabridged Dictionary

Sound familiar?

I’d like to take a moment to reflect on the part of Big Government. Yes, I am speaking of the American political party that ran up the largest budget deficit in our history after inheriting a budget surplus from their predecessors. This is the party whose leaders have consistently supported such privacy-invading policies as warrantless wiretaps and renditions. This party is pushing for a surveillance state: the true “Big Brother is watching you” scenario, where the NSA reads all your e-mails, the FBI has a computer system to transcribe all your phone calls, and the police have cameras on every intersection to track your movements. This party’s leaders lied to Congress, the United Nations, and the American people in order to start a war on false pretenses, a war they wanted for no other reason than because war is profitable. And lest we forget, this party’s leaders also handed more than a trillion dollars in taxpayer money to irresponsible financial institutions.

Yet somehow this party’s spokespeople like to pretend that it is the party of small government??? The party of fiscal responsibility? How do a surveillance state and record deficits square with small government?

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Of course I agree with the sentiments expressed by President Obama in his op-ed piece in the New York Times.  While more rallying cry than technical discussion, the President’s piece insists that health insurance reform is necessary, and he names four specific impacts which such legislation would have on the lives of ordinary Americans.

The first of these is affordable, portable insurance coverage for everyone, including those who are presently uninsured.

Then he mentions the broad goal of controlling costs and cutting systemic inefficiencies, and gives examples of ways in which such cost-cutting measures would impact other aspects of the system.

It is on his fourth point that President Obama’s editorial waxes the most eloquent with specific policy agendas for the legislation under discussion:

Our reform will prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage because of your medical history. Nor will they be allowed to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses. No one in America should go broke because they get sick. Most important, we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups, preventive care and screening tests like mammograms and colonoscopies.

All of these are, as I say, admirable sentiments: goals which you would think our whole country could unite behind.

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President Obama has submitted his budget proposal and it is no surprise that the uproar was instantaneous.  These are contentious times and he has had to make difficult decisions.

One item that has caught a lot of attention is his plan to eliminate the continuing manufacture of expensive Cold War-era weapons systems.  One such weapons system is the F-22 Raptor, a fighter plane designed to overtake and outmaneuver other advanced fighter planes.

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In the book, I offered two possible solutions for the conflict between Israel and Palestine.  One possibility I suggested was the complete social and political unification of the entire territory of Israel and Palestine; and the other was the much vaunted “Two State Solution.”

The present military action in the Gaza Strip has forced me to spend some time evaluating my position and as a result I no longer consider one of those ideas to be a viable possibility.

Not A Solution

The “Two State Solution” is not a solution at all. 

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