“The best of my ability. . .”

Any time I hear a politician say “I have to lead first by example…” I quickly prepare myself for the smelly load that is heading down the chute. The latest load of feces oozing down that chute comes from Mitch McConnell when speaking about spending earmarks.

A senator, when asked to defend his use of earmarks after admitting they are outrageous, says he doesn’t have to.

These guys have become so emboldened by the public’s lack of willingness to do anything about their actions that they can actually speak publicly about how earmark spending is an outrage and then walk into chambers and load up any available bill with millions in earmarks.

They have become quite proficient in the use of political double-speak in order to avoid answering embarrassing questions. This is all the proof necessary to show how little respect politicians have for the voting public.

That same senator when repeatedly asked by another reporter if he was wrong for asking for millions in earmarks states that he has tried to answer to the best of his ability.

The way I see it, if truth is not a part of the ‘best of his ability’ then he should not be an elected representative.

Neo-Nazi couple learn they are Jewish

How odd would it be to grow up convinced that another person is of lesser value then you based on their ethnicity only to learn you are of the same ethnicity? Can your beliefs suddenly change so drastically?

This is exactly what happened to two Polish neo-Nazis who were childhood sweethearts and later became skinheads. They discovered their shocking family secret, that they are both Jewish, a few years ago after going through records at the Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute. Both their families had escaped Nazi Germany and hid their true identities in order to escape persecution.

Before they learned of their true roots, they both practiced the belief “that Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world".

They've now embraced their Jewish identity and are active in their local orthodox synagogue.

When I read this story I was struck with the obvious very deep lessons to be learned here. Not the least of which is that all people want basically the same thing, we just have differing ideas on how to get it. And who is to say that one idea can be judged as better ot more value than another?

Before these two ex-skinheads learned they were Jewish they would have never stepped into a synagogue and now they worship in one. The basic concepts of their belief system can not have drastically changed, they just focus them in a different direction within a different frame f reference. They are still the same people.

Plus, we can see how we are shaped by ideas and stereotypes. Now that they have learned they are Jewish, surely, they no longer believe “that Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world".

CNN did a documentary about Poles rediscovering their Jewish roots generations after their ancestors hid their religious identities to escape persecution during World War II. You can read more about it and watch excerpts from the documentary on CNN.

Vatican Men’s Club Tries to Maintain Purity??

Being able to teach religious ethics and morality is not dependent on testosterone. In fact, in almost every situation, too much testosterone is detrimental to teaching anything worthwhile. The Vatican, by threatening to excommunicate any woman priest and the guy who ordained her, seems to have allowed their self imposed celibacy to cloud their logic.

A priest is a priest is a priest. Being able to teach the word of God only requires a thorough knowledge of the Bible, a good heart and moral character, and a willingness to speak to large masses of people.

How can they with any clear conscience demand human rights throughout the world and then deem a person unworthy to be a spiritual leader because that person has breasts?

My experience, through attending several different churches of different faiths, has taught me that religious teachings, in the Catholic religion in particular, is riddled with hypocrisy. To see these delusional old men who decorate themselves in ecclesiastical vestments in an attempt to convey that they themselves are the only chosen few worthy of spreading God’s words, formally ban women from their exclusive club, only illustrates their small-mindedness and willingness to divide church membership just to placate their ego.

The long list of atrocities that have been committed against humankind in the name of God, under male leadership, proves that men are not stalwarts of morality. They have failed miserably.

It is unconscionable that church leadership would serve up pedophiles as examples of morality than to welcome the natural nurturing ability of women who are willing to offer their services in God’s name. Again, hypocrisy at its finest.

This in-fighting just to maintain control over that tiny piece of real estate called the pulpit will only limit the number of persons willing to take on this important social need.

Perhaps they are afraid of having to build separate dressing rooms. Maybe they don’t want to have to put the toilet seat down. Or, do they think only men look good in those gaudy robes?

We need all the moral and ethical teachings we can get from anyone with the ability to get people to listen. Spreading the word of God is not exclusive to only those of us who can pee standing up.

What Choice Do We Have?

John McCain

John McCain hired a lobbyist, Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma’s repressive regime to manage his GOP convention this summer. Burma (Myanmar) has been strongly condemned by the Sate Department for its human rights record and remains in power today. He is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients.

McCain has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests and yet hires a special interest advocate. Much the same way ex-NY Governor Eliot Spitzer ran a campaign on ridding the city of white collar crime and was caught as a client of a high-priced prostitution ring.

He admits the war in Iraq is for oil and then back pedals. Will he have a chance to backpedal while in the presidential office? What ramifications will we see then? Judging from the media, not much.

McCain voted against passage of Martin Luther King as a national holiday and when confronting constituents who wanted the passage he backpedals yet again and said he was wrong.

He, along with John Edwards, authored a Patients’ Bill of Rights in an effort to crack down on the tobacco industry. He said he never back down from legislation to regulate the industry. He has since changed his mind.

McCain’s position on abortion flip flops apparently depending on what time of day you speak to him.

He supports the war in Iraq but won’t give soldiers expanded GI Bill benefits because he thinks they will not re-enlist so they can take advantage of the benefits.

His campaign is deeply embedded in hypocrisy. The message is clear, if you don’t like what John McCain says one day, confront him on it the next and he will go through the motions of apology and appear to change his mind, just to appease you.

The news media has already made its choice by choosing to downplay McCain’s involvement with xenophobic, homophobic, bigoted evangelical John Hagee while serving up a relentless campaign against Obama for his association with Reverend Wright, even two months after Obama dumped him.

Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton resorts to dirty politics, lies and scandals in an attempt to win her nomination. She insulted an entire race of people who has been undyingly supportive of her husband by saying that since Obama is black he cannot cut it with hard-working white Americans. She insulted white Americans as well with this poisonous rhetoric, by inferring that most working-class white people are unwilling to give an African-American candidate a fair hearing in a presidential election.

The Clintons are no strangers to scandal. Mrs. Clinton’s brothers, Tony and Hugh Rodham, had lobbied the president on behalf of criminals who then received presidential pardons or a sentence commutation from Mr. Clinton.

Bill Clinton did have “sex with that woman” and then lied about it to the voters and investigators.

They took furniture and rugs from the White House collection that had to be returned. And they received $86,000 in gifts during the president’s last year in office, including clothing (a pantsuit, a leather jacket), flatware, carpeting, and so on. In response to the outcry over that, they decided to repay the value of the gifts.

Bill Clinton has been under investigation of drug use, threats against women for testifying to his numerous extra-marital affairs, improper influence in judge selection to hear cases potentially harmful to Clinton, allegations of a cover-up involving the deaths of two teenage boys while Clinton was governor of Arkansas.

A trail of mysterious deaths surrounding some involvement with the Clinton’s have yet to be satisfactorily solved.

She is desperately trying to count votes, from Michigan and Florida, that were knowingly illegally cast and were therefore ruled to be void by her own party chairman.

Hillary constantly tries to smear Obama through associations with controversial people for their questionable activity while she herself was investigated for her actual involvement in the Whitewater Development Corp. affair. Her associations with the type of people she is trying to connect Obama with are well documented.

Her campaign is deeply embedded in falsehoods, deception, divisive rhetoric and hope that the nation will forget about her past ‘indiscretions’.

Barack Obama

Barack Obama is calling for diplomatic solutions to Iraq, a path I have long been supportive of. He has shown me to be a thinking man’s answer to politics as usual.

He was criticized for no longer wearing a lapel pin of the American flag, his response was that wearing it had come to feel like “a substitute for true patriotism”. He is correct, simply ‘showing’ patriotism through the display of some materialistic item does not prove patriotism, actually doing something shows your patriotism.

Obama has tried to get more people involved in the process by not playing dirty politics, by presenting himself as human by admitting to past mistakes, and by acknowledging the rights of people to make their own choices about how they conduct their lives. His honesty and openness to questions about his past has garnered great respect from voters.

His campaign has been one of respect and many voters have taken to it because we are tired of the ugly, dispiriting campaigns that have so defined political races in the past. He is persuading younger voters in record numbers to participate in the process.

I believe he knows that by demonizing his opponent he is actually demonizing himself. It is refreshing to find someone who is willing to shun conventional belief and stand by what voters are searching for, a clean campaign where the actual topics are center stage instead of what the other person did to or for whom.

How his demeanor will be taken in Washington as president is yet to be seen, and I don’t foresee him as able to come out of it without all the good being boiled out of him. Which is too bad.

No Vote

This has long been an alternative to choosing between the ‘lesser of two evils’ that has lead to widespread apathy among voters in this country.

I don’t want to have any part of putting another George W. Bush into office and I am tired of rich, old, white men thinking they have a monopoly on power in this country.

I don’t want to be a party to endorsing dirty politics as a viable and acceptable tool for campaigning. It’s high time we prove that gender does not dictate leadership ability, but this woman is bad for this nation. She has way too much dirty laundry and has proven too many times that she will sink to any devious, underhanded method to get her way, and I don’t believe there is enough room in her heart to put America’s best interest ahead of hers.

It is also high time we show the rest of the world that America’s race relations has come far enough that a persons race has no connection as to ability to be commander in chief. But I believe that anyone who thinks they can survive unscathed from participating in the partisan, scandal-racked, special-interest-backed political arena of the federal government without succumbing to its temptations while being looked back upon as a great president is truly naïve.

We either flip a coin or don’t participate. What are you going to do?

Theft runs rampant in U.S. government

Government employees steal when they think they won’t be caught. Gasp. Can anyone truthfully say they are shocked by this revelation?

A Government Accountability Office audit has uncovered rampant abuse of government issued purchase cards (credit cards, debit cards). The audit also found that government agencies could not account for nearly $2 million worth of items, which included computer servers, laptop computers, iPods and digital cameras. Nearly half of transactions made during the audit period were improper, and the audit condemned the government-wide "rate of failure" as "unacceptably high."

Hell, as a taxpayer, I condemn this abuse to be theft and submit that all abusers should do jail time like the common thieves they are.

There is a continuous outcry against corporate fraud, against abuse of power, against fiscal abuse, against moral transgressions, and the list goes on and on. Yet when many, I repeat, many of these same people who complain are given the responsibility of a credit card to make valid, necessary, job-related purchases the temptation to abuse this trust becomes too great.

I am sure each individual can come up with some justification for using my money to pay for Internet dating services, iPods, expensive clothing, a $13,500 dinner, lingerie to be worn during jungle training in Ecuador, gambling debts, mortgage payments, and gasoline purchases. But you know what? Their feeble reasoning is not good enough.

I am sure they will each tell you they felt guilty about doing it, at first. But then it became too easy to continue and too hard to stop.

You may ask why this free access to funds was given so freely in the first place? To streamline federal purchasing. To make things easier for paper pushers. Limits were of course imposed but no one enforces them. This abuse has become endemic to government employees who consider this money free for the taking. It involves Postal service employees, Department of Defense employees, State Department employees, local government employees, etc. Our public servants. People we are forced to trust to keep our government services operating smoothly and efficiently, for us.

In a society where the typical household does not have the discipline to maintain a savings plan and goes through life living on credit that has resulted in the largest credit deficit in history, this idea of giving credit cards to individuals was an extremely stupid idea.

Even in categories that are considered job appropriate the purchases far exceeded maximum allowances. The purchaser totally disregarded the maximum through some flawed and bogus reasoning process familiar to thieves everywhere and the person or office charged with scrutinizing and authorizing or disallowing the purchases bought into it. It has become so universally accepted that this money does not come out of their pockets that spending it has become second nature without any regard to price or necessity. I have news for you jerks the money does come out of your pocket, and mine. It comes out of every taxpayers pocket. It is a major reason taxes keep going up every year.

This amounts to blatant theft and as a taxpayer, I am mad as hell. There are many taxpayers losing their homes, struggling to make ends meet, working two jobs to feed and clothe their children, caring for their aging parents because they can’t afford proper healthcare and these degenerates justify spending my money on porn sites, expensive clothing and dining out. This is the lowest level that public servants can reach and heads should roll over this and I am willing to bet that only token punishment will ever be handed out. The money is gone. We taxpayers still pay the bills. The problem will never end. How can we ever look at any government employee and not think how much of my money have you stolen today?

I am ashamed and disgusted to be a part of a society that offers these adults as the best examples of our public servants.

The hypocrisy of the White House shines again

Here’s a story that illustrates the hypocrisy that is the White House Administration.

Secretary Rice says the Russian Kremlin’s consolidated power endangers democracy.

How can we think we have the right to tell Russia to not do what Bush/Cheney has been doing to democracy in this country for the last six years?

"I think there is too much concentration of power in the Kremlin. I have told the Russians that. Everybody has doubts about the full independence of the judiciary. There are clearly questions about the independence of the electronic media and there are, I think, questions about the strength of the Duma," said Rice, referring to the Russian parliament.

Bush/Cheney undermined the independence of the Attorney Generals office by forcing their lapdog Alberto Gonzalez onto the American people so he could do their bidding. And the spineless weasel did it gratefully.

The mainstream media in the United States is clearly backing this administration by reporting only glowing reports of how the Iraq war is progressing and stumbles over itself in helping the lunatic team of Bush/Cheney force it down our throats.

Then she casts suspicion on the amount of power the Duma has after Bush has overridden constitution law by use of executive privilege, disregarded the Bill of Rights by using the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens and fires Generals until he gets one who says what Bush/Cheney want to hear.

She encourages activists in Russia to build institutions of democracy that would help combat arbitrary state power knowing that Bush/Cheney are completely isolated from activists in America by the Secret Service.

Does she have no clue to what is going on in this government? Is she really that blind or is she as evil and deranged as Bush/Cheney?

I was beginning to think that since she stood up to Cheney that maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. But I see I was wrong. She continues to wave the American flag of hypocrisy high.

No double standard here

Drunken Blackwater guard who killed Iraqi is back in Iraq thanks to State Department.

Why not! Drunken drivers are allowed to drive our roadways everyday after being caught and given nothing more than a symbolic slap on the wrist.

This is just a simple case of naiveté in it’s purest form. Our ‘justice’ system believes that someone who is willing to go into public, drunk, with a deadly weapon, be it a rifle, a machine gun or a car, without any regard to the lives of innocent, unsuspecting citizens will not do it again just because the guilty person acts remorseful and says they won’t. This amounts to criminal enabling.

The fact that it has been proven many times over that these people have caused death, injury and untold millions of dollars in property damage, after saying they would not do it again, is not enough to get our law makers to put the safety of the rest of us first.

The fact that these people are willing to go back out into the public under the influence of a substance that has been proven to disrupt their thinking and common sense shows they cannot control themselves and therefore need to be more heavily monitored in order to keep the rest of us from paying for their diseased negligence.

Of course it is a disease. No one will argue that it is not. That doesn’t give them the right to be behind the steering wheel. It does not alleviate the responsibility of our justice system and lawmakers from doing more to keep these people off of the roads.

If money is the only thing lawmakers understand then look at the amount money spent every time an EMT and police officer is called to cleanup after these people. Add in the amount of money spent for hospital personnel to care for any survivors. Add in the amount of money spent by insurance companies to cover the cost of hospital stays, vehicle replacement costs, lost wages, etc. Look at the number of lives that are affected by this one persons irresponsible act of getting behind the wheel of an automobile while drunk.

Lawyers have work thrown their way, too, as a result of drunk drivers so maybe lawmakers are just looking after their ‘brothers’ welfare.

It is disgusting and unconscionable to repeatedly hear of a drunken driver killing another person after being arrested multiple times for drunk driving.

It is not unheard of to learn that people have been arrested 5, 6, 7, or even 10 times for drunk driving only to find them on the road again.

Yet our government, local, state and now federal, thinks its okay to subject law abiding citizens to these people’s behavior.

Why??? Why is this insanity allowed to continue?

We have MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), RADD (Recording Artists Against Drunk Driving), and even BADD (Boaters Against Drunk Driving) as well as BADD (Bikers Against Drunk Drivers) and the problem is not lessening.

So many groups against drunk drivers and yet there are still so many drunk drivers on the road. What is wrong with this picture?

Thanks to the efforts of these advocacy groups, as well as others, and the list is long, the penalties and consequences of driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs have gotten much stiffer.

Stiffer penalties is obviously not a good enough deterrent. It certainly is not keeping the ‘hard core’ drunk driver off the roads, the people who have been arrested multiple times and will continue to drink and drive until they themselves are killed.

It seems to me that death is the only thing that will stop these people because these groups are not effective enough by themselves.

These groups are not even deterring the first time drunk drivers. Those people who drink and then drive for the first time make it home without incident and are then foolishly emboldened to believe that they are not affected by alcohol become convinced that it must only be a problem for other people.

These groups are only convincing those of us who don’t drink and drive. We congratulate ourselves that we are doing something to stop drunk driving, usually in the name of a loved one who was killed by a drunk driver, and the problem continues with no end in sight.

So, now, it does not surprise me to hear that the federal government believes that a person who got drunk and killed someone with a government issued weapon is not a sign that this person is not responsible enough to have a weapon.

Apparently, no one really takes the problem of alcohol abuse seriously enough.