No Facebook for me

Just about every time I get the itching to open up a Facebook account, I read a comment or two off our local online forum, breathe a sigh of relief and  assure myself that I made the right decision, especially since the local newspaper can’t control the content.  For example, a local arrest brought out the issues about the public housing, and the audacity of a tenant  playing on their Xbox in the middle of the afternoon. It's very common of an attitude that screams "you know people on public assistance are at our mercy and they should be treated that way. ." Every move they make should be scrutinized.   It took off from there -to someone being called a cyber stalker, creepy, and the other being unhinged.  If only that was the exception rather than the rule.

I would love to get back to commenting because I love to debate the issues,  but I draw the line when it comes to having a daily name- calling contest.  I would love to go in and correct the myth that going into Iraq was a bipartisan issue. The sole decision to go to Iraq always rests with the Commander in Chief and  besides less than 1/3 of the YES votes came from democrats.  There were only 374 legislators who voted YES to give the president the authority to use military force, but you would think on such an important decision; it should have been at least 450 yeses.  Only six senators had enough initiative to look at the contradicting evidence in the intelligence report that said  that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction.  After viewing the report they didn’t make a real effort to convince their colleagues.

The first myth that I would correct is that President Clinton caused the housing bubble.  Using that logic, the housing market is on the rise, should President Obama be given credit for that?  As I've said several times, the economy was booming and the president, treasury secretary, Congress, and Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan(conservative Republican) supported legislation not to make Wall Street be more transparent when dealing with derivatives. The repeal of Glass-Stegall did not by itself cause the 2008 financial crises.  It was a perfect storm of an ineffective SEC, a corrupt Wall Street, credit rating firms which stamped the junk mortgages with an AAA credit rating, and predatory lenders who lend to unworthy home buyers just so they could bundle the junk mortgages and resell them to naive investors.  The fed itself kept the interest rates' low feeding more fuel to the fire.  I could go on and on because it was not a one-factor  collapse.  I couldn't believe when I saw that  AIG, after being bailed out by the taxpayers, has the audacity to want to sue the government.

This is just the beginning of a never-ending  saga.  This morning I was watching an interview  with a freshman tea party representative from Arkansas, Tom Cotton.  The man has excellent credentials, so I thought he would be a breath of fresh air, but he's further to the right than most legislators.  He actually thinks the win in his district is equal to that of Present Obama and  Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren.  He constantly uses the word “ liberal “in the pejorative, thinks Obama is the cause of all our ills and that he has been sent to Washington to cut spending and nothing else. People like him, thinks a compromise is for sissies, and they are tone death when a pundit tells them that polls results contradicts everything he believes.

I was told that we should be punishing our representatives by cutting their pay and benefits.  I can see making it a law that our representatives couldn't get government paid health care that was better than what most Americans get.  I believe then, they would take some steps to improve our health care but a majority of them are rich, so that's not much of an incentive for some.  There's a lot, to “ we get what we pay for” but I think the first thing we need to do is quit sending people to Washington, who will not compromise.  We need to do something about the gerrymandered districts and get to work on some serious campaign reform measures.

We used to have some serious discussions but that's long gone because the posters at the VA would rather spread their long- held myths than discuss topics such as, education reform, climate change, reasonable gun control measures, and things we can do to improve health care.
I’m waiting ,I’m a “never say never” person but for now Facebook is not for me.