Why do we do it? I mean it! They have been talking about the dumbing down of conservatives, so why make it so easy for them to make such claims? Science deniers, history rewriters, with a flat earth mentality are running amuck and we are agreeing with them. I mean we have conservative Christians who have built museums based on the Flintstones as a documentary! People who cannot grasp the difference between the terms weather and climate seem to abound in the conservative world. They also do not know the difference between sheet ice and glacial or permanent ice, which is one example of weather and climate. Maybe they just choose not to in order to conform to what rich and powerful conservatives have been telling them to think! Am I picking on conservatives, well, yes I am. Most of my long-term friends are conservative so I care about them.
A lot of what I see posted can be disproved in about two minutes! Even if I have never heard of the subject before by just making use of the magic called the Internet. Which means the person posting did not bother, just copied and posted from the first thing that made him or her feel superior and better than all of those freeloading commie socialists he or she knows is out to suck them dry. This is a perfect example of “dumb”. It does not mean that you are dumb, but it is an example of a dumb act which fuels the dumbing down of conservatives rhetoric. So I guess a few examples are necessary, so here goes. I will not go into global warming or evolution, just be aware I believe in both. I will admit that the global warming issue is complex and since it is a global phenomenon is too complex for a discussion here. If you do not believe in evolution then nothing I say to you will matter anyway, I believe you will be too hard to reach.
I will start with stuff I saw this morning. Conservatives, or lets call them by a more common name in Washington, Republicans, are just all incensed over the President using the power of the executive order. They act like it is something rare and unheard of, or at least something we rarely have ever done. Well let’s take a look at the actual numbers of a couple of recent Republican presidents! Ronald Reagan used it 381 times. George W. Bush used it 291 times compared to the current 168 of Barack Obama. These are actually low numbers. Franklin D. Roosevelt issued 3,467 executive orders. There are several others in the thousands, for a total of 15,177 issued so far. This is an example of a party redefining anything this president does in a negative way, even to the point of threatening to sue him for doing what Reagan and Bush did at least a hundred times more than he has. Do not be fooled by why these other presidents used the executive order, it was exactly for the same reason Pres. Obama has. They either knew something was not going to get through congress they thought was needed, or they did not want to wait for it. Just because someone does not agree does not now make something illegal that has been legal for over a century. You can bring up SCOTUS if you like, but I am convinced they are, for the most part, bought and paid for, just like most of our politicians, so I am not taking much stock in their rulings. However, if anything President Obama has done were actually illegal, the Republicans would not be confused about what they are suing about or hesitant to file charges. The very fact that they have been going over every action the man has ever taken with a microscope but have never filed any charges is the best proof that he has committed no crimes.
Now do not get it into your head that I am defending everything this President does because I am not. He has plenty of faults to go around. But if you act like the boy who cried wolf too frequently, then when the wolf really shows up who is going to be paying attention!
I firmly believe that most of the reasons everything Obama is being discredited or opposed is for a very special agenda. Why do you think this congress, at least the Republican faction, has practically filibustered congress to a complete standstill. They are taking a hit for these actions but still persist in opposing anything Obama endorses. I mean anything and everything! This agenda is racism, don’t like that, too bad, it is the truth! The plan is fairly simple, make this administration look as bad as can possibly be managed and make sure it is always linked to the President. In this way they hope the voters will not consider another black President anytime in the near future, if ever! I could list at least a hundred photos that have been doctored to show either the President or his wife not respecting the flag, for example. If you look at the info and contact the original photographer and reporter, the pictures are not authentic, not a single one. One of the more popular ones that shows Mrs. Obama disrespecting the flag standing behind her husband while the flag was being lowered at end of day, well she was not even present at the event depicted, the photo had been doctored. Another showing the President, too casually dressed for the event, and hands down at his sides while everyone else had theirs over their hearts, well he was actually standing on a golf green watching someone else hitting away, again doctored photos. It is crap like that that I see every day that makes me ashamed.
Next, very briefly I will discuss Obamacare, or more correctly the Affordable Care Act. A lot of you are mistaking this for actual insurance when it is not. It is merely spelling out some rules to make it more affordable and available. The rule about a fine if you don’t buy in needs some tweaking in my opinion, but the rules for not being able to deny coverage because of a former illness is long overdue. How much they can charge has a cap by how much profit they are making. I don’t have a problem with that, but these last two items are why insurance and drug companies are spending billions to get Obamacare out. It is all about money, theirs, not yours. You are not even required to use the official website. You can get your coverage however you want, it is just easier to see what is out there on the website. California, where I live, does not use the federal website, we set up our own which works way better and is perfectly legal. Small business, well there are enough lies out there about that to blot out the sun. My take is that if you have more than 50 employees you need to be doing something to help them out. Plus you know that raises and bonuses will be calibrated to help defray the cost, but people need this. Plus it takes the strain off of emergency rooms. In rural areas you think so what, but here in heavily populated areas, going to an emergency room is a nightmare. So pick at it, make it better, but talking about repealing it without another plan that incorporates some of the much needed things it includes is wrong. The posts, adds, and commercials that I have investigated about losing insurance and costs going way up have all turned out to be false, every single one. If you are claiming to be a practicing Christian and posting any of this junk, then shame on you! You can’t have it both ways.
I have followers here and in several countries now; not many I admit, but I’ll take what I can get! But the people I really care about, well I have no evidence they actually read my blogs. If I have emailed you this blog, then I care about you and you are special to me. I do not expect you to just fall in line. I know better than that, but I hope you will at least allow my blogs to make you think about the ideas put forth. I promise your brain will not explode and that whatever I have is not catching, I wish it were!
So in closing, check out what you post before you post it. Make sure it is not fiction, if you cannot verify, then do not post it because it is probably made up. Plus use your brain-housing group for more than a hat rack when looking at some of this stuff. Whatever the President is, he is not unintelligent. He is not going to disrespect the flag in front of billions of people and neither is his wife. Even if he is the Muslim terrorist you believe him to be he is not going to make it that easy for you. But that is just another embarrassing piece of crap out there like his birth certificate, no degree, and not being an American. Do I need to say it again? Ok I will let it slide this time. Just please remember the boy who cried wolf example. If you want your opinion to matter you have to post responsibly or you are just making yourself and those you support less, not more!
I would also like to recommend you watch Inequality for All. It is an eye opener. It is done by Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor, Harvard professor, and currently the Professor of Public Policy at U.C. Berkeley. You can find it on Netflix, iTunes, Amazon, etc. I know some of you consider me a pain. But I believe we must stay engaged and constantly updating our education. If you know me from Council, just remember I love you regardless of whether we see eye to eye on policy.
The Love Chronicles 