Even if we were in different grades and classes back in school in small town Idaho, we knew each other. Maybe we did not run in the same circles, actually, since I was not related to half the town or had family who had lived there for generations it was different for me in some respects. Luckily I made school and sports work for me, and living with the town Doctor and a state legislator’s family did not hurt either. I loved being editor of the school paper for two years, and this after not going to school for more than a month or so a year until I was thirteen! My point is, when I lived there, and even in my early years in California after my stint in the Marine Corp, I was a Republican! This was before the advent of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and others. They changed the landscape of the party from a conservative viewpoint to fear mongering troglodytes and isolationists who blame the poor, the immigrant, and people of pretty much any color, big government, and of course hippie dippy liberals, as the reason all bad things happen!
Christians, especially evangelicals, went on the warpath because of course we had been told by talk radio that we are turning into a godless nation and christianity was under attack. So I had to get the hell out. If I show someone how to access the facts, show them the entire script from where some sound bite or sentence is being made to sound or mean something totally different than what was originally intended, well they will not even read, view, or take two minutes to find the truth! They just throw some hate label at me and dismiss it. They do not want to know the truth, plain and simple! They vote against their own interests, believe what thirty-second sound bites tell them is the news produced by lobbyists, not any gleaned from actual facts! And polls asking Republicans basic facts about the condition of the country show they do not know the actual facts! They don’t know about unemployment being as low as it was before the crash, or that the stock markets are way up, not down!, The fact that the deficit is dropping, not climbing! They do not know that the their Republican representatives want to curtail or get rid of social security and medicare entirely. They think the opposite is true in overwhelming numbers because they believe the sound bites and never check the facts! Our current President does not want their guns, he has said so plainly! But because the NRA tells them different, that is what they believe. The pundits like Rush, Glenn, and Sean have learned that if you want to control the conservative vote tell them someone is after their guns, the poor and immigrants are the reason the middle class is disappearing, religion is under attack, and scientists are all just members of an evil cabal! They will gather like lemmings and run off any cliff you tell them to! Not politically correct some say, but it is the truth, and it is time for us to start telling it like it is!
Now some will say that there are millions who have timed out of unemployment but still are unemployed so the figures are inaccurate. That is true, but what is also true is that has always been the case, in both Democratic and Republican presidential terms, it is not endemic to the current administration. Keep in mind, figures do not lie, but liars can figure! You also need to keep in mind that Republicans met on the day of President Obama’s inauguration and agreed to block anything he tried to do, regardless of whether or not we the people wanted it, even if it was actually an idea they themselves were in favor of before he was elected. The Affordable Care Act is a perfect example! Republicans are on a renewed kick to try to repeal, or at least delay (in the hopes of killing), the “individual mandate” that’s included in the President’s health care reform law, aka the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. The irony, of course, is that it was Republicans, via their premiere think tank, the Heritage Foundation, who came up with the idea in the first place! Now this is truth not fiction.
As you know, the “individual mandate” requires that every American buy health insurance, if they don’t have it through their work, or pay a penalty. The reason for the mandate is so that insurance companies can cover people with pre-existing conditions and to keep premiums lower. Insurance companies need large amounts of younger insured customers that need less medical care to balance it all out and keep costs down to the consumer. It also keeps that same segment from using the emergency rooms across the country as their healthcare provider, while you and I pay for it! And as I said, a Republican idea, an idea that they even published, but now they seem to have selective memory malfunction! They also forget to tell you the poorest among us are excluded from this mandate.
No matter who you are, you will make mistakes. Has President Obama made mistakes, yes he has. Are they more egregious than his Republican predecessor, I think not! If you want to strip it down, President Obama is one of our most intelligent Presidents. His IQ has been maligned, but here are some facts. The average IQ for a college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in the U.S. is 115. Barack Obama graduated from Columbia University, so the assumption is he must have had at least an IQ of 115. Barack Obama graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard Law School; such academic honors are only awarded to students in the top 10% of their class. Obama’s IQ has been estimated as high as 165, but again that is a guess based on his education. He is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as editor, and later as president of the Harvard Law Review; which is an extremely prestigious position. Obama also taught at the University of Chicago for 12 years, a top-ranked university in the United States. So no matter how you try to rate his intelligence, it is high! If you look at his predecessor, the junior President Bush, he will not fare well when compared to President Obama. If you come to a different conclusion based on facts, then there is another reason you disparage the President, but we won’t go there today!
It has been reported by Fox News, and others, that this president is looked down on by the rest of the world! However when you check foreign papers, speeches and interviews given by foreign dignitaries and rulers, you find the exact opposite to be true. If you poll the common men and woman of our peer industrialized countries, you find them praising our President, but castigating our congress as a do nothing body of government!
But like I said, he is not perfect, I am not in favor of our current trade agreements, some of the provisions look like they came straight off the desk of the Koch brothers, for example! But most of what you see on the Internet is either blatantly untrue, cherry picked to change the meaning, or fictional! You have to go to the source, and that takes time. If you want to know about Benghazi, for example, you have to read the entire report by the Pentagon. Which stated that they received no instructions telling them to do, or not to do, a single damn thing from the administration! They did the job as they thought it should be done based on real time information! Then you should read the Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee report that also found no wrong doing by anyone in the administration! A FREAKING MIRACLE OF OUR TIMES! But that is not what you heard reported by those supposedly bringing us the facts! Facts are not sensational enough for todays news media who make up news as if it were a fictional show fighting for ratings so as to keep an audience tuned in! Especially since most in the Republican Party have reduced themselves to a lobby for the Oligarchs, with a few Democrats sprinkled in to make it even more spicy!
So what I am saying is do not be lazy! Check out your facts. Do not repost things on the Internet because they make you feel good, or because they back up how you wish things to be without fact checking. We are the most ill informed voting public on the planet, and that is a damn shame!
The Love Chronicles 