Month: November 2012

Categories
rant

I Am Not Misinformed!

Okay, I’m going to rant a bit! Imagine this writing in all caps…my bark is always worse then my bit. Maybe….

I refuse to claim the title, directly or indirectly of misinformed. Or it being “my fault” that President Obama was re-elected. And most certainly will not accept that I or anyone who voted for President Obama is part of the “dumbing down of America”!

Come on people! Wake up to the evolving ever changing (thank God) world that we live in. Where because of the nature of a country that offers life liberty and the pursuit of happiness, by that statement alone opens doors and yes boarders.

And I refuse to slap a title onto anyone who voted differently that I did. I wish I were that smart. I take that back. I don’t ever want to be or even think that I am that smart, that I can assume that anyone made a misinformed decision because it was different from mine.

I read my eye’s dry most days. A luxury of unemployment. (she says in gest) If only there was a news outlet on television that I could watch that would give me “the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help them God” reporting. One station just talks, one just shows the clips that justify what they want to be the truth, another show shows context but it’s a comedy show.

If the media took an entire statement, start to end and actually analyzed what was said and then was actually given the opportunity to ask questions of the statement and have reasonable expectation that they would actually get an answer. Then we might have something.

I try to read and when I do listen to people, I listen to those who have some sort of background the allows me some level of confidence that they freaking know how to speak on the subject of what they are talking about. And that it’s not based on their own fear of change or personal ideology that in no way supports the nature of this diverse county. I refuse to listen to those in the media who pontificate and spew hatred and fear with no facts or information to back it up their words.

I’m not the smartest person in the room, nor will I ever be. But I am smart enough to know where to find information to make my own informed and God given right to a decision.

Some of the places I go to read and try to understand;
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ (because it pulls from everywhere)\
http://thehill.com/
http://www.ap.org/
http://www.economist.com/

I watch;
http://www.pbs.org/weta/washingtonweek/
http://www.thedailyshow.com/ (cause I need a laugh and he gives context that I can then go check)

I try to watch;
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032608/
http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/
http://www.cbsnews.com/face-the-nation/

I do not watch shows that base their opinion on the hatred or the demonization of anyone, official or otherwise. I have tried to watch or listen. I can’t stomach it just like I can’t stomach what I’ve been reading this week from people who I believe to be loving and caring individuals. We may have differing opinions, but the lack of respect for those difference to me is destructive.

I will also not blame any “one” person for where we are because I do not believe that any “ONE” person has that much power and singlehandedly got us to this point. That is just being narrow minded and not open to the entire conversation.

Do we not have a House of Representative? Do we not have Congress? The guilt for blame is wide spread and hits more people than I have the time to or care to mention.

What is it you all want? A dictatorship? A county run by one person and one agenda? That is not what we have and certainly what we will ever have as long as the democracy that was created for us years ago is allowed to continue. Please?

Conservative or Republican ideas or ideology have never set well with me. I don’t think that we, by any stretch of any means live in a black and white world. In my opinion Conservatives and the Republican party want a black and white, cut and dried nice little tidy world. We don’t live in a just black and white (literally or figuratively) or tidy world. Change is painful, but always necessary.

It’s not easy. We have to work for it like everything else in our lives. I am that large percentage of the “unmarried woman” who voted for Obama. I have never had or have been in a two-income family or household. Or had a second income to help me through three stents of unemployment. I have family and friends who have graciously helped, but I am in this game all by myself. I am also an uninsured unmarried woman. Because ten years ago I accepted a referral from my MD for a therapist. I’m not insurable. Not crazy or unstable. Very stable I think, considering. Just not enough to be insured. Not something I care to be at the age of 52, uninsured that is.

But I digress.

I can go out and find hundreds of video and words to support my convictions just like the ones I have seen and watched all over Facebook since Tuesday. Video’s, real or otherwise of people taking advantage of systems. People saying incredibly stupid and yes misinformed things.

OF COURSE THAT is what you will find. How about making your point with real ideas of how to change things. How systems can be better monitored instead of blaming one man for everything.

But I choose to find out as much as I can, to read both sides of what is really going on and stay away from any thing that sounds like, looks like or feels like that in four years we will somehow this country will be down the drain.

We don’t talk about the issues we point fingers and blame others for not playing the game the way we want it played. We don’t debate the issues in true debate format so that actual thoughts and ideas can be explained or even completed. We don’t answer hard questions because deep down when we get to what we really for a real solution, the answer is the same and that scares the crap out of us. Really? We believe and want the same thing? I believe that we do, that we all have rights and liberties that we don’t want taken away or changed.

Well guess what folks. The world is changing and we have to let some of it go. I don’t see anything but love in the changes that I see for this country. God forbid that we have a government that projects us from terrorists and financial failure and allows us to live in love and safety.

Why do we vote? We vote because we believe in the system that has been handed down to us for generations. There isn’t a right or wrong an informed or misinformed party. And I am up to my eye balls freaking tired of seeing it and hearing it.

There. I think I’m done.

Categories
don't speak...don't speak!

Choice (2)

Why I Am Pro-Life By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

HARD-LINE conservatives have gone to new extremes lately in opposing abortion. Last week, Richard Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed Republican Senate candidate in Indiana, declared during a debate that he was against abortion even in the event of rape because after much thought he “came to realize that life is that gift from God. And even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” That came on the heels of the Tea Party-backed Republican Representative Joe Walsh of Illinois saying after a recent debate that he opposed abortion even in cases where the life of the mother is in danger, because “with modern technology and science, you can’t find one instance” in which a woman would not survive without an abortion. “Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions anytime, for any reason,” Walsh said. That came in the wake of the Senate hopeful in Missouri, Representative Todd Akin, remarking that pregnancy as a result of “legitimate rape” is rare because “the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”

These were not slips of the tongue. These are the authentic voices of an ever-more-assertive far-right Republican base that is intent on using uncompromising positions on abortion to not only unseat more centrist Republicans — Mourdock defeated the moderate Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana in the primary — but to overturn the mainstream consensus in America on this issue. That consensus says that those who choose to oppose abortion in their own lives for reasons of faith or philosophy should be respected, but those women who want to make a different personal choice over what happens with their own bodies should be respected, and have the legal protection to do so, as well.

In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children. You can call yourself a “pro-conception-to-birth, indifferent-to-life conservative.” I will never refer to someone who pickets Planned Parenthood but lobbies against common-sense gun laws as “pro-life.”

“Pro-life” can mean only one thing: “respect for the sanctity of life.” And there is no way that respect for the sanctity of life can mean we are obligated to protect every fertilized egg in a woman’s body, no matter how that egg got fertilized, but we are not obligated to protect every living person from being shot with a concealed automatic weapon. I have no respect for someone who relies on voodoo science to declare that a woman’s body can distinguish a “legitimate” rape, but then declares — when 99 percent of all climate scientists conclude that climate change poses a danger to the sanctity of all life on the planet — that global warming is just a hoax.

The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth. That radical narrowing of our concern for the sanctity of life is leading to terrible distortions in our society.

Respect for life has to include respect for how that life is lived, enhanced and protected — not only at the moment of conception but afterward, in the course of that life. That’s why, for me, the most “pro-life” politician in America is New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he supports a woman’s right to choose, he has also used his position to promote a whole set of policies that enhance everyone’s quality of life — from his ban on smoking in bars and city parks to reduce cancer, to his ban on the sale in New York City of giant sugary drinks to combat obesity and diabetes, to his requirement for posting calorie counts on menus in chain restaurants, to his push to reinstate the expired federal ban on assault weapons and other forms of common-sense gun control, to his support for early childhood education, to his support for mitigating disruptive climate change.

Now that is what I call “pro-life.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 28, 2012

A phrase in this version of the article has been changed to “every fertilized egg in a woman’s body” from “in a woman’s ovary.”