My faith trumps your rights. Get over it.

Let me tell you what I believe. I believe women should be kept locked inside the house. I believe they can only come outside with their husband.  I believe blacks and whites have no right to marry.  I believe in slavery.  I believe if you wear the wrong clothes or eat the wrong food or say the wrong prayers, you should be stoned to death. (Trials optional.) I believe that my rights of Faith supersedes any right of the government and its laws and its citizens.

Now take that person who believes all that and let him or her start a business.  Better make it a him— she isn’t allowed outside.  A company is started.  Under the supreme court’s ruling in the Hobby Lobby case, all of those religious beliefs conflict with the state.  They all go against the constitutional rights of citizen of the United States of America; yet, you are going to have to let that crazy person in the first paragraph have his way.  Because it is his FAITH.

Well, the real me, says Bull Shit.

The Supreme Court in a narrow 5-4 vote just opened the floodgates to all manner of lawsuits and litigation.  Bring out the Bible. Bring out the Koran. Get the quotations of Buddha and god knows who else and you’ve got a leg to stand on when opposing the state and its laws.  And not just the U.S., but any state.

No governmental laws or rulings can now stand in your way of enforcing your narrow-minded religious convictions on those who work for you; and in a sense on all of us, as well.

The Court has missed the mark again.  Citizen United said the rich can buy the government and now Hobby Lobby says the religious can disobey the laws of land because they want to— their FAITH gives them that right.

To the five morons who continue to push a right-wing agenda in the Court, you have placed us on a very slippery slope. I hope you are prepared for the tumble.

This guy makes a lot of sense.

The Dallas Morning News columnist, Steve Blow has some excellent words for us all to read today. I am reprinting this without permission, but I am giving all the credit to the man who write it.Very smart words.

 

Steve Blow: Looking on the bright side feels lonely these days

By Steve Blow

Columnist

• Published: June 14, 2014 9:54 PM
• Updated: June 14, 2014 10:08 PM

I have a bias. I recognize it and wrestle with it, which is good, I suppose.

But right now, the bias leaves me feeling particularly at odds with the world around me.
In brief, I’m bent toward optimism.

It’s not the worst bias to have. In fact, I’m grateful for whatever random acts of nature or caring acts of nurture left me with this tendency to see things in a positive and hopeful way.

I got light duty in life compared to those burdened with a constant apprehension of doom and decline.
I’m grateful for their vigilance — and glad not to live that way.

But more and more, it’s the cataclysmic view of life that seems to hold sway. I think it explains so much of our politics today.

Until last week, it was unimaginable that a U.S. House majority leader could lose office to a barely funded political newcomer. Did you see Newt Gingrich’s explanation?

“There’s a large element of America that wants a fight,” he said. “If you’re a conservative, you think Barack Obama is literally destroying the country you love.”
Now, Gingrich is a man smart about words. He’s not misusing “literally” in the way people will say “It literally killed me.”

When he says “literally,” he means actually, factually so. He means the belief is widespread that the president of our nation is willfully, successfully killing the country.

What nonsense. But that sort of explains everything, doesn’t it? The tenor of the times, I mean. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.

I was on a conservative website last week and an ad popped up. “Barack Obama’s Plan to Destroy the United States!” it said. “Enter your email here to get free report.”

If politics seems irrational right now, it’s because it’s based on irrational beliefs. Love him or hate him, the president is not destroying our country.

And I don’t think that’s just my optimism bias talking. Or is it?

See, that’s the thing I wrestle with right now. Who is deluded here?

In a letter to the editor on Friday, a Plano resident said he’s “alarmed at how rogue this president has become.”

“Rogue”? Really? The word to me suggests reckless, out of control, outside the law.
If anything, I’m amazed at how quiescent Obama seems these days — especially for a guy painted by his opponents as a leftist radical.

I see more Ward Cleaver than Eldridge Cleaver right now.

At the Texas Republican Convention in Fort Worth last weekend, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz stoked the crowd with fiery rhetoric, including this statement: “Today, liberty is under assault like never before.”
Wow, that’s alarming. And those are definitely fighting words. But are they true? Could they possibly be true?

I don’t have degrees from Princeton and Harvard like Cruz does. But this humble graduate of Tyler Junior College and the University of North Texas can quickly think of a dozen times in our history when liberty seemed under far greater threat than today.

You encounter claims of calamity everywhere you turn these days. I get emails from frantic readers on a regular basis.

The Mexicans are taking over. The Muslims are taking over. The Chinese are taking over. The atheists are taking over. The “takers” are taking over.

The national debt is killing us. Government regulation is killing us. Taxes are killing us. The Federal Reserve is killing us. U.N. Agenda 21 is killing us.

If anything is taking over, it’s a kind of political hysteria. If anything is killing us, it’s our inability to deal with problems in a calm, common-sense way.

I’m biased toward optimism, but not so much right now.

Follow Steve Blow on Twitter at @DMNSteveBlow and on Facebook at facebook.com/DMNSteveBlow.

 

I would like to thank Steve for these words. In the hysteria of the right wing media swirling about, it is nice to hear a calm, sane, sensible person who understands, we've got it damn good in the USA.  And we are not coming apart at the seams.

This time it IS Obama's fault.

Just to prove that I am an independent thinker, not tied to party affiliation (although admittedly liberal in point of view) I am taking on the White House today and most specifically President Obama.

As many of you know I have supported many of the President's actions, especially The Affordable Health Care Act, which seems to get under the panties of many in the GOP. But I've been down that road often enough, today is a new fight with a new enemy of the state: the current administration and the President himself. Oh how I wish it were the Kock Brothers or the Heritage Foundation or Partners against Gay Marriage, or the Baptist church. That would be fun.  I would even love to just with Karl Rove.  No, this isn’t fun. Because I trusted you and you let me down, Mr. President.


So what's the fuss? The Obama administration has told law enforcement agencies not to discuss or disclose even to courts the technology that is allowing them to use to sweep electronically entire neighborhoods for cell location signals. Let's say it another way. Don't tell anyone you are spying on Americans.

Obama — You are no better than Nixon in my book now.  This trumps all the good you've tried to do.  You are George W. Bush in sheep's clothing.  Worse — you are Dick "the dick" Chaney personified on the left.

Forget that this week alone two separate appeals courts have ruled against unwarranted surveillance by police departments using NSA technology, Obama says keep quiet about it and keep doing it.  Even threatening the courts themselves in their rulings because they were public.  Hey, this is fucking America, Dick Wad Obama. (How’s that for showing a lack of respect for you.  And remember, I was one of your most ardent supporters.) This isn’t your little play sandbox.  It is the fucking USA and we have a say in how we live. 

WE DON'T WANT TO BE SPIED ON, MR. PRESIDENT. BY YOU OR ANYBODY ELSE.

Is that clear enough? Sorry for the language being so rough today, but I for one (and there are many, many like me from both sides of the proverbial aisle) who hate this secrecy shit going on in our country.  You want to investigate me.  Show a court probably cause, get a search warrant and go to it. Otherwise, keep your god damn listening devise and spying to your self.

I am fed up with this.  And Dear, Barack, I am getting fed up with your smug attitude toward this. Edward Snowden was right. There is a cancer growing in America and soon we will not be able to talk about it at all.  Thank god he did what he did. You don't like him, because he pointed a finger right at you and called you what you are. The head spy on American people.

We didn't elect you to do that.  We had better and higher hopes for you.  But you failed us.

Turn this crusade around Obama. Turn it around now.  Americans don’t want to be spied on by the NSA, CIA, IRS, FBI or even a bunch of policy nerds at the White House. And we sure as hell don’t want our police canvassing our neighborhood with technology to see who is home in their beds at night.

I no longer support you, Barack. You’ve gone too far. And this is too important to look the other way.

Stop the spying.  Stop it today.

A sad day to be an American. An even sadder day to be a Republican.

The senate just stopped college finance refom in its tracks. 

It has effectively said it is okay for big (they can't fail) banks to borrow at unheard of low rates...2-3% while forcing college students to carry debt in some cases in excess of 20% on student loans.  Who voted against this?

The fucking GOP.

My two senators from Texas did.  Cruz and the other dip shit.  So when you get ready to pull a lever for senate come Novemember, remember that Cronyn voted against giving people affordable college education. So too, did all his Republican buddies.  They sided with big banks.  Even the Federal Reserve thought this was a good bill, but the GOP in its brown nose way coud not see it through, because it was an agenda item of President Obama. Oh yeah, the Cock Brothers were against this bill.  Said it would hurt the country.  Like they would know.

I am ashamed to be an American today.

But I am not as ashamed as those of you who are Republicans...not as ashamed as you should be of your party.

To tea or not to tea...

Eric Cantor just lost his primary in Virginia to a Tea Partier. 

What does it mean?


I have a prediction.  If the Democrats can get even a smidgen of a voter turn out, the Republican party will fall to pieces under the onslaught of the extreme right in their own party.  the Tea Party will weigh it down with so much baggage that it will not recover for some time.



Why?



America is a centrist society.  It has a thin line that it wavers on between moderate left and moderate right.  It like social programs but it wants lower taxes.  It wants to be safe, but not at the expense of a bloated Pentagon and Homeland Security budget. It does not like the far sides of either party.  Jesse Jackson’s wing of the Dems in the late 70's and early 80's sank the donkeys for about ten years, until a centrist, Bill Clinton, came along and resurrected the party — with a great deal of help from one arch conservative, H. Ross Perot.  But turn the party around he did...and he drove it straight out of the fog bank on the left and into the center, where it sits today.



The Republicans are going in the opposite direction. Ever since Karl Rove announced that the Elephants would control the White House for perhaps the next 100 years, the extreme wing of the party has been trying to muscle its way in and share in the glory and in the victories.  But alas, they are running into the same problems that the Dems had in the 1980's. They are too far out of the mainstream for America to trust, or even to listen to. The repackaging of George W. Bush in his second term, by Dick Chaney and friends, was nothing short of trying to foster the look and feel of the right– the far right — onto the American public.  And they didn’t bite.  Instead they went with a first term U.S. Senator with little to no experience named Barack Obama. And he has steered a course, (if you don’t listen to the right-wing radio and Fox News pundits) into the center once again.



The Republicans are losing footing.  Sure the Tea Party is making great strides in the primaries.  They are knocking old guard members of congress and the senate out of the way left and right.  But look at the voter turn out.  27%. 30%. Those are high.  Most states are seeing in the neighborhood of 16% or less.

So should the Democrats get a ground swell and get people off their butts and out of the recliners this fall, the Republicans might lose more than the two houses on the hill.  They might well lose their way.



It is a game of numbers.  Percentages.  Democrats need to raise their numbers at the poles by 20% across the states.  If they do that, America will go blue. 

I'm sorry Eric lost.  he was a pompous ass.  I wanted to see him go down to a democrat with good solid ideals about how to help Americans and not step on them for his rich buddies.  too bad.  His own party did him in.  As it will the rest of the party.