Divad123
Divad123's Journaleducation
This is kind of obvious, but one way to get more qualified teachers,(once money for better schools is available), is to give tax breaks to individuals choosing education as a career. How about legislation that teachers pay no federal and state taxes for 15 years as long as they are working as a teacher?
'Bi-partisanship'
Every time I here the republicans talk about ‘bi-partisanship’, whining about how the democrats are being ‘unfair’, I think about Charley Brown, Lucy, and the football.
“Come on Charley, I’ll hold the football, and you kick it.”
“I don’t want to Lucy; every time you hold the ball, you pull it away at the last second, and I fall flat on my back.”
“Come on Charley, I promise I won’t do that this time.”
“OK Lucy, I trust you.”
Charley runs up and kicks the ball, and Lucy pulls it away at the last second and Charley falls flat on his back.
A humorous cartoon, but a deadly serious political truth.
Anytime democrats allow, or have to include republicans in the process to pass important legislation, from banking laws to environmental regulation to social programs and most recently police reform, the republicans always find a way to kill it or weaken it to the point of ineffectiveness.
The only way democrats are going to get anything done it to shut the republicans out of the process entirely, and this is something that democrats are ideologically loath to do; because it IS unfair. But what is the alternative? We have to admit that the republicans will NEVER ‘play fair’, embrace the reality of the situation, and when we have the power, embrace the 'unfairness', cut them out of the process completely, and get it done.
We have to learn that being 'fair' to the fundamentally 'unfair' is a fools mission.
Let the ‘culture warriors’ scream; it’s better than letting them have their way--the world can’t wait for the republican to grow up or grow a conscience, because they never will.
More lies you can believe in
And so, the republicans are talking about ‘Law and Order’ and making speeches against ‘socialism and anarchy’. They are using the language and demeanor of statesmen and ‘tisk tisking’ the democrat’s unwillingness to compromise.
But what are the democrats refusing to compromise with? A republican bill that does extraordinarily little to address the reality of police brutality and does nothing to address the systemic causes that create it.
Yes, the republicans are using the language of statesmen, but as always, the lip service they pay to the language of statesmanship only gives cover to their policies of racial division and subjugation.
As always, the republicans are using lies their constituents can believe in.
Now we know
Now we know who the "Forgotten men and we men" that Trump talked about in his inauguration speech are: Those folks who wear white sheets to their cross burnings.
Conservatives true face
Today George Will came out against Trump and the senate and house republicans saying that they should lose the next election because they had “abandoned their principles”. What a clever lie. No, Mr. Will, republicans haven’t ‘abandoned’ their principles; following the example of their commander in chief, they are wallowing in shamelessness and showing the naked face of what ‘conservativism’ is all about: maintaining the political privilege of wealthy white men by using the Fox propaganda machine to stoke the flames or racism and ‘John Bircher-ism’, and urge them on until it reached its logical conclusion.
No, Mr. Will, conservatives have not abandoned their principles; unhindered by shame, they have finally seen them put into effect.
Freedom to starve
I remember the early days of the Libertarian party. In the small office there was a handout for volunteers, a xeroxed pamphlet on the basic principles, and a few stuck in my mind.
The first one was on civil rights. It started by claiming that civil rights laws were the real source of racism, so the way to end racism was to get rid of ALL civil rights laws and let free market forces end any disparity.
Social programs were the source of the problems they sought to address, and the only real ‘social program’ one needed was a job.
It also claimed that the only laws we needed were property rights, because property rights were civil rights.
Environmental laws were unnecessary, because wise and heroic businessmen would realize that caring for the environment meant protecting their resource base.
Business regulation of any kind hurt the average American because any restriction of the free market costs Americans jobs. So, do away with them, and then we can all live in the best of worlds.
This is the ‘freedom’ that libertarians work towards. Ayn Rands fantasy world made real by people who in the name of anti-communism and an absolute moral philosophy would send us to a world of heroic philosopher CEO’s who will tell us how to live, and if we don't like it, we have the 'freedom' to starve.
Fox frenzy
So, Joe had a brain fart and stuck his foot in his mouth, and Fox is screaming, Guillotine! Guillotine! Why doesn't someone on CNN or MS NBC put up a chart comparing every racist thing Trump has said against every racist thing Joe has said? I don't need to point out Fox's hypocrisy on this, but someone at the networks should.
I HATE TRUMP: REVISITED
A few days ago, I was talking with my sister, who I love dearly, and the topic of Trump came up. Now, I didn’t push it, but she wound up saying, “oh, you just hate Trump”.
I momentarily “Lacked sufficient flow of words” and changed the topic. But it got me thinking.
So many time ‘Trumpers’ dismiss folks who didn’t drink the cool aid by saying “oh, you just hate Trump”. For them I have this question: If a drunk driver killed your mother in an accident, would you exonerate the drunk driver of any responsibility for what they did, just because you hated them?
I hate Trump, not because he’s a disgusting excuse for a human being, but because of what he’s done with the power of the highest office in America.
From a book I’m reading:
“In civilian and military life, criticizing demeaning or degrading moral practices is often precisely the form that acting from moral conscience takes.”
Sherman, Nancy. Stoic Warriors (p. 47). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
In my own words:
The republicans promote a twisted view of is of the world and culture we live in. Everyone should go to church, wave the flag, believe that any social program is communism, have a heterosexual marriage, and vote to lower their taxes. Anything else is at least immoral, and probably demonic. And I can add that while we are all equal under the law, wealthy while males are ‘more’ equal. This is the ‘ideal’ that they sell with the fervor of Elmer Gantry.
Republicans have used this propaganda to cripple the middle class, create corporations and individuals more powerful than governments, promote and normalize ‘white (male) power’ fanatics, and mainstream the John Birch Society.
So, what’s their endgame?
They work for a world where only ‘the worthy people’, the heroes, people like the Koch brothers, have influence over our lives—as opposed to votes by the ‘parasites’ who want a (communistic) welfare state.
It’s their patriotic duty to deny the right to vote to people who need some form of (communistic) social programs to get by. Or folks motivated by (communistic) social justice, or folks motivated by (communistic) economic justice concerns, or folks who need the (communistic) Affordable Care Act. If it takes accepting assistance from an enemy power to win an election, destroying and corrupting our institutions, and promoting dangerous conspiracy theories, then so be it. To them, it’s better than having any social program, because they see them as corrupting our nations moral fiber by enabling ‘parasites’.
Like climate deniers and creationists, they ignore and/or distort evidence from all sciences, but in this case, the social sciences.
A large part of our personal identity is formed by our social interactions, and while adults can rise above and critique these ‘filters’ that guide expression and give shape to our experiences, few folks understand the core issue: that beyond our enlightened self-interest, if you care about the world your children will live in, you have to consider the quality of the culture we live in.
Are our heroes going to be from ‘Real Housewives’ and ‘Honey Boo Boo’, or will they be Martin Luther King, Malcom X, Gandhi, Presidents Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Obama?
The degenerate from ‘The Apprentice’, Fox News, and the republican establishment have already made up their minds, and the armed thugs that stormed the Michigan state house have already shown us how their ideology will be put into practice, on the rest of us.
So, yes, I hate Trump, Fox News, and the republican establishment, not because they’re disgusting human beings, but because they have proved over and over again what their ‘culture war’, at the heart of their ideology, means for the rest of us.
Civilization is not just at a crossroads, it’s literally in their cross hairs.
Peace
I Hate Trump
A few days ago, I was talking with my sister, who I love dearly, and the topic of Trump came up. Now, I didn’t push it, but she wound up saying, “oh, you just hate Trump”.
I momentarily “Lacked sufficient flow of word” and changed the topic. But it got me thinking.
So many time ‘Trumpers’ dismiss folks who didn’t drink the cool aid by saying “oh, you just hate Trump”. For them I have this question: If a drunk driver killed your mother in an accident, would you exonerate the drunk driver of any responsibility for what they did, just because you hated them?
I hate Trump, not because he’s a disgusting excuse for a human being, but because of what he’s done with the power of the highest office in America. There are reasons he is and should be hated, and they are all good ones.
Is this just me?
I was looking at a picture of Pence today, and it seems that his resting emotion is a sneer. Does anyone else get that?
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Member since: Thu Aug 15, 2019, 08:02 PMNumber of posts: 93
