I haven’t had much to say recently. For a long, long time, even. It’s not that things have been going swimmingly in the world of politics, religion, and so on. It’s simply that nothing has compelled me to actually blog about it.
But these days, America is driving me insane. Here are just a few things that have my blood pressure medicines straining to keep my BP low.
- Politicians are opposing the Islamic cultural center and prayer room a few blocks away from Ground Zero in NYC–and the media continues to call it a “mosque.” Whatever happened to religious freedom and tolerance that this nation was allegedly founded on? More importantly, how does this help our foreign policy in the Middle East? Isn’t this just providing recruiting material for the terrorists?
- Americans seem to revel in their willful ignorance and belief in debunked lies–almost 1 in 5 believe Barack Obama is a Muslim, even though he’s a Christian.
- The Catholic Church…well, actually the Bishops. Don’t even get me started.
- Tea Partiers who claim to be pro-constitution, but then don’t seem to know much about the Constitution they supposedly support.
- Conservative Democrats and Republicans who don’t want to spend money to help the jobless or keep teachers employed–because doing so would increase the deficit–and yet who are willing to make the Bush tax cuts permanent–even though doing so would increase the deficit.
- Uninformed voters.
- Columnists who should be smarter than their columns suggest, but apparently aren’t.
- People who bash public (and private) schools for “failing” yet who do not realize that you can’t teach many kids whose homes are a disaster, whose parents do not value education, and who can’t even get a decent breakfast before school.
- People who chant about paying too much in taxes, but then complain about potholes in the roads that don’t get fixed.
- People who think the health care reform legislation is a “government takeover of health care” when it’s really a gift to the insurance industry that operates on a business model of collecting as much in premiums as possible but pay out as little in claims as possible.
Frankly, the whole situation in this country is depressing. Republicans are licking their chops at the prospect of taking over one or both houses of Congress, yet voters don’t seem to realize that the Republicans are promising to a) hold lots and lots of investigations and maybe try to impeach President Obama; b) go back to the policies of the Bush Administration that voters soundly rejected in 2006 and 2008; and c) do nothing other than prepare for the 2012 elections.
A majority of the people believe the country is on the wrong track, and it probably is–because we haven’t gotten that far away from the track that Bush and the Republicans put us on. The economic stimulus package was too small to do enough good, we’re still dealing with the consequences of de-regulation and completely free markets, and here’s the BIG ONE: money still plays too big a role in politics so that huge businesses and the very wealthy get to feed at the trough while everyone else gets screwed.
President Obama is a disappointment in many ways. He campaigned about changing how things are done in Washington, but he’s not willing to use the millions of voters who supported him to push the Congress to go along. As a result, we get half-baked reform (if we can even call it reform) and the Democratic leadership caves in to the demands of Congressional Republicans–who end up voting against legislation anyway.
Anyone know of a Canadian province in the Caribbean?
The Liberal Patriot 