Bad Manners Reaches the U.S. Congress

The general lack of respect and civility that has been increasingly plaguing our society has finally reached Congress.

In one wanton outburst House Republican member Joe Wilson of South Carolina rendered class and decorum as obsolete notions.

We elect these people as our representatives to debate issues not to shout down the president or throw insults at each other. That is the domain of such classless venues as wrestling matches not the U.S. Congress.

If he and Governor Mark Sanford are representative of the best that South Carolina can offer then the good people of South Carolina are being short-changed.

Whether Americans engage each other in town hall meetings, at political rallies, or in social media, we need to remember we are all Americans with the same desire to live in peace and find the most viable solutions to our most pressing problems. It is counter-productive to resort to childish name-calling and disrespect.

Debate, don’t be contentious.

We are losing our common decency

Dad kills children’s mother in front of them.

Kid Rock arrested after Waffle House brawl

Teen shoots four, kills self at Cleveland high school

A sheriff's deputy kills six young people at a house party in Crandon, Wisconsin, because his ex-girlfriend wouldn't take him back.

Man kills self in front of City Council after vote.

Parents beat 5-year-old.

Police blast into building, kill 63-year-old man who shot 5 at law office because he felt unfairly treated during divorce settlement.

Ex husband sets wife afire in front of witnesses. They don’t even care that their brazen acts of violence are witnessed anymore.

Stories like these are repeated every day. People are either putting off responsibility onto others or they are taking the law into their own hands and using violence to 'solve' their problems.

Why is it that people are resorting to violence and giving up on more civilized methods?

Are we becoming a society that believes if you walk away from a confrontation instead of getting physical then you are a wimp? Is this how an adult is judged these days? Is this what is passing for being manly, grown-up, or mature? Have we really reverted to animalism as the only means to settle our differences?

People are willing to become criminals, facing jail time, over words! How ridiculous is that?

People are lowering themselves to animal behavior because someone says they don’t ‘love’ us anymore and then killing the person they vowed to ‘love, cherish and respect’. What the hell, people?

This is ludicrous. The threat of punishment does not stop these people any more.

Is it becoming more of a mental health problem or simply animal instinct coming out?

Where is this society headed when we think it is better to kill or beat someone than to just turn the other cheek? This used to be preached to us as children that what ever someone says to you is only words and you should never escalate it into violence. I went to church as a child and I was taught to treat others as you want to be treated. This important lesson is not being taught anymore. There simply are not enough people going to church anymore learning to respect other people.

This is the perfect time to bring up the proliferation of the number of handguns in our society. Without them there would not be as many dead. That point cannot be argued. Handguns are used to kill people. That stupid slogan about how guns don’t kill people, people kill people, well without guns it would not be so easy to kill someone. And there would not be as many dead.

Why are we so on edge all the time ready to flip out at the drop of an assumed slight?

This affinity to resort to rage is especially prevalent while driving a car. Road rage cases are up. People become infuriated at the slightest assumption of rudeness. Stress, anxiety, antagonism all fuel the fire of frustration with life’s every day pressures to result in taking out that frustration on unsuspecting people. Then those people who now feel wrongly attacked fight back. Then it devolves into violence. We need to learn anger management.

Even without anger management, the one thing that should help us all get along with each other is respect. Everyone deserves it until they show they don’t want it. Common decency should tell us that a human life is worth far more than the ego of any one person who feels he should exact retribution just because someone calls him something he doesn’t like or cuts him off in traffic, or refuses to be with him anymore.

Have American workers lost their pride?

Recently a Chinese co-owner of Cheung Shu-hung, the company that exported toys that were recalled in the U.S. due to lead paint, committed suicide. The reason for his decision to take his life was based on the responsibility he felt he carried in bringing embarrassment to the Chinese government over this latest recall.

Truly, this man took his responsibility in this embarrassment very deeply.

This is something that American workers cannot possibly understand.

American business owners don’t take their responsibility seriously enough to consider such as rash action.

This would require things like ‘pride in workmanship’ and ‘pride in a job well-done’.

These noble ideas have become foreign to the American worker.

The American worker only cares about showing up for work for the sole purpose of collecting a paycheck. And there are a lot of those who scheme ways of collecting that paycheck without putting forth any effort at working for it. And all the while complaining that they aren’t paid enough.

They only perform their job duties to the point that it keeps the boss off their back. Nobody goes the ‘extra mile’ to produce a better quality product, except maybe the ‘new guy’ and then he is laughed at and soon ‘falls in step’ with the rest of the work force.

Everyone of you out there knows this is true. You have either participated in it or have witnessed it.

So when American companies make the decision to move overseas for a cheaper work force, think back on what you could have done to make them think a little harder about that decision. Maybe they would have stayed if they didn’t have to pay you so much to do such little work of such poor quality.

When is the last time you put in a solid eight hour work shift and truly felt you earned that money? Actually, it is unfair to ask any individual this question because I would most certainly be lied to. Let’s ask the question this way, look around you, how many people can you honestly say really work for their income?

I worked in this job market for over thirty years and I am not exaggerating when I say that clearly less than 20 percent of the number of American workers actually put themselves into their job based on pride toward the final product.

This is to say that very few Americans meet their employers expectations to ensure the final product is up to standard.

Most people will look at their job as something they have to do in order to collect money. It is nothing more than a nuisance. There is no pride in what they do and the end result shows it.

This is why our ‘quality of workmanship’ is falling behind the rest of the world. The quality of ‘American made’ is based on an idea that died decades ago.

American workers today just don’t care about quality.

The phrase ‘they don’t make them like that anymore’ is sadly true.

The phrase is very apt because it is based entirely on quality.

The quality of workmanship given to preparing the raw materials, the quality of workmanship given to the final product just isn’t there anymore.

When you see advertisers use this ‘gimmick’ to sell a product, everyone sees through it immediately as BS.

When you walk into any store or any restaurant and try to find someone to help you who actually acts like or looks like they want to help you will be in for a long and fruitless search. Hell, just try to find someone to help you, period! Those people that genuinely do try to help are few and far between.

There are many reasons for this lack of pride and they are all based in selfishness. Nobody wants to work harder than the next guy and get the same paycheck. Nobody wants to stand out as an ‘over-achiever’ which has somehow been twisted into being a bad thing. Nobody wants to look outside themselves at the bigger picture and take that extra step to ensure a job well done. Mainly because there are too many low-lifes ready to backstab you and take credit of your extra hard work.

The end result of this selfishness is that nobody does go beyond, nobody shows any real effort to do it right the first time. Therefore, quality and pride suffers.

Suicide because you brought shame and embarrassment to the U.S. government? Not going to happen in America.

What the U.S. is being left with when all of these manufacturing jobs move overseas is the service industry. God help us because American workers are not ‘into’ serving anyone. They think everyone should serve them.

We need to wake up and practice humility. We need to stop trying to convince ourselves that we are better than everyone else. We need to treat others as we want them to treat us otherwise there can be no respect and therefore there can be no pride.

To “Fix the problem”: quit

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claims he will ‘fix the problems’. The ‘problems’ he refers to involve using politics as a basis for hiring and firing prosecutors in his office.

He claims he is opposed to politics in decision-making in his office. Yet it is commonly understood that this is exactly the basis for his firing of eight U.S. attorneys. When he faced the Senate Judiciary Committee, in April of this year, to answer these charges his favorite answer to almost every question was “I cannot recall”. This in itself is a very poor response for someone in such a position as his. And to hide behind this transparent stalling technique shows him to be as guilty as anyone sitting in any witness box of every courtroom in this nation.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, sent Gonzales a list of 12 questions that he promises to ask Gonzales today. Senator Leahy, D-Vermont, decided to present these questions to Gonzales before hand so that Gonzales will have time to prepare his answers instead of hiding behind his supposed faulty memory.

It will be interesting to see what ‘facts’ he will hide behind to try to get the heat off of him.

Alberto Gonzales is not qualified for his position. He does not have enough experience to be in this position. No one can convince me that politics did not get him this position. No one can convince me that politics did not play a part in the firing of those eight prosecutors.

Politics is the only game this person knows, he is not fooling anyone.

The only way Alberto Gonzales can ‘fix the problems’ is to step down.

The U.S. Attorneys Office commands better respect and prestige than this man can provide.