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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Irreconcilable Differences



No,my wife and I are not getting a divorce but it’s getting harder and harder to reconcile my differences with my Republican friends.

Yesterday, as I was watching the IRS hearings, my mind was swirling, as I was trying to make some sense of what a few conservative witnesses were saying. The Tea Party witnesses were obviously political activists and not entitled to tax-exempt status, but one used the word tyranny to describe her dealings with the IRS, even thou she was not denied.. Another said “This dialogue is about the jackboot of tyranny upon the field of our founding documents," said Karen Kenny from the San Fernando [Calif.] Valley Patriots. Really,would the founders have approved tax-exempt status for political activism or for  keeping a donor’s name a secret? I’m sorry ,I’m going to save my tears for the single mom, holding down a couple of minimum wage jobs being told that her public assistance is being cut due to sequester cuts.The IRS hearing is just political theater because if they were serious, something would be done about the abuses of the intent of code. The issue of targeting has already been addressed and stopped but the real scandal of tax-exempt status abuse will continue.

Republicans are throwing out a new slogans to describe their obstructionists  practices.Mitch McConnell is saying that President Obama is creating a “culture of intimidation” as an excuse to do nothing. Senator Grassley is saying that the president is trying to “stack the court” by filling the vacant D.C. Circuit court’s vacancies. The president has a constitutional duty to appoint nominees to those positions. Truth is,the GOP is trying to eliminate the three vacant spots to keep the president from filling that lower court’s vacancies  because they want to stop his agenda.

Conservatives think that just because they are holding hearings;it  means that the parties they are investigating are guilty of something that will be proven  at a later date. Right now, they are trying to find the facts to fit the charges. As I was  looking through the right-wing blogs this morning;I found their latest outrage. On site posted “ the nerve of the president appointing Susan Rice to be the National security Adviser when she was part of the Benghazi scandal.” You see what I’m talking about? Susan Rice should get an apology from those who accused he of any wrongdoing but it’s another case of “we indict, you prosecute.” 

The Republicans, media and some Democrats are trying to make out like Senator Marco Rubio is an immigration guru and that any chance of bill getting passed has to meet his approval.  That's a bunch of hogwash, the bottle neck continues to be the far- right wing of his party. Senator Rubio, has to take a lot of hard-right  stances just to keep his credibility intact  with those folks. 

A lot of people are getting tired of the race- card being used, but it’s not as easy to dismiss it as it may seem. An example of that is being discussed on our on-line forum. The example in the story doesn’t have a definable use of racism because not much context was given. For one thing,signing in English or Spanish amounts to the same thing,so the attorney in question should have said “don’t forget to sign the Spanish version” and nothing would have been said.  Freudian slips of the tongue happen all the time, and unless you live in a glass house; you shouldn’t be casting stones.

Having said that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe that a certain percentage of remarks against the president are racists ones.  Those are two separate subjects because on the latter, I have a lot substantial facts to back up my suspicions.  After all, I'm an old timer, and I've grown up with generational racism, so I know it when I hear or see it.Too many Republicans in high state offices and even federal judges had to step down because of racist emails. I even heard a congressman yell out “you lie” at the State of the Union and have read about racists remarks made towards the first lady.  

We have to come together and condemn the actions of the two Jasper,Texas cops who beat a black woman's head against a desk in trying to subdue her. Yes,this is the same town where two white men chained a black man to their pickup and dragged him for miles which led to his eventual death.There's a video tape of the incident but no audio.  It doesn't matter what the lady said or how much she resisted arrest because this all stemmed from a $150 traffic ticket. The policemen were fired and the charges were dropped but the city of Jasper will pay dearly. It's incidents like these that keep the race card alive. 

There's a time and a place for everything and sometimes it takes a moment of spontaneous action to drive home a point. Yesterday,Michelle Obama faced-down a heckler by meeting her head-on and giving the crowd a choice of who to listen to. The crowd chose Michelle but the heckler was given her right to free speech. That's a once in a lifetime opportunity for Michelle but it will give the next heckler something to think about.


The country is changing fast, and a lot of old-timers are not adapting to it very well. After thirty years of Reaganism, they now see “don’t ask don’t tell” being repealed, a Massachusetts liberal as the secretary of state, a Republican turncoat heading up the defense department,  and a black president and a black Atty. General. I’m not being too hard on my old Republican friends because that’s exactly what the people inside the party are saying. That’s the reason some are talking about a tyrannical government and a need to be armed to the teeth. It used to be that they could take out their frustrations at the ballot box but that no longer is a given. I remember when I was a blogger at the VA, I could never get my opponent  to agree that we have a multicultural country. I think when we agree on that;the rest will fall in place.

3 comments:

Mike said...

I finally found out why the ballots and verifications of such are written in English and Spanish.

From the Longview News Journal.com

QUESTION: Texas ballots are written in English and Spanish. Are there any other states that print their ballots in English and another language? If not, why does Texas print their ballots in two languages?
ANSWER: I’m assuming y’all know by now that there are few simple “yes” and “no” responses in Answer Line’s world, and this is one of those cases..
It’s true that Texas ballots and other election materials are printed in English and Spanish, something that is dictated by state and federal laws that have been in place since the 1970s.
So without trying to find out what each of the 50 states does, I can tell you that based on the federal Voting Rights Act alone, at least two other states must provide statewide ballots in English and Spanish — California and Florida.
That determination, by the way, is based on formulas that use information from the Census Bureau, with the Department of Justice making its most recent minority language determinations in October.
For purpose of “language minorities,” the Voting Rights Act applies to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives and Spanish-heritage citizens, according to information I found on the Justice Department’s website.
The website listed what languages ballots are required to be printed in various places around the country. I thought it was pretty interesting. Here’s a look:
In Alaska, there are different places where ballots have to be printed in Spanish and Alaskan native languages;
Some places in California have to provide ballots in Vietnamese or Chinese, for instance.
Ballots are required to be printed in various American Indian languages in parts of Arizona and Texas.
You’ll see Chinese and Vietnamese on some ballots in Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.

Mike said...

I can't believe some people still think the United States has an official language.

Edith Ann said...

Humankind is making me weary.

Any ignorant fool with an iPhone can post whatever crap pops into their head and largely go unchallenged. There are more lies sent round the world that there will ever be any truth! How sad is that?

Then locally you have a rag of a newspaper that will print whatever they think will sell a paper, or garner a comment on their boring raggedy comment section.

They are so biased these days it is not even funny!