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Grandma’s Got My Purse or Senile Republicans on a Rampage

  • Posted on May 14, 2011 at 4:16 pm

Do you really want someone like the character Cloris Leachman plays on Raising Hope to be in charge of the federal government purse strings?

I was thinking about the House of Representatives recently.  The Republicans just keep blasting on and on about the budget deficit, even though they didn’t seem to care about it Christmas time when they extended the Bush tax cuts.  Friday morning when I was listening to the Morning Joe show I had this flash of the Republicans actually being a senile grandmother.  It’s like this.  You give your purse to your senile grandmother to hang on to thinking that’s a safe place.  After all what can she do?  Well, when you’re not looking, she hides the damn thing.  You’re stuck searching everywhere for that damn purse.  You’ve got these bills that are due and you are beside yourself wondering how you’re going to pay them.  When you ask her about it, she seems rather clueless, just like those Republicans.  They hold the purse strings and so now we have a do nothing Congress that seems to be doing quite a bit of damage to the middle class.

Rep. Duncan Hunter from California says, “It’s time to trim the fat.”  Yes, he’s talking about education, not oil companies or defense!  http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/campaign-k-12/2011/05/house_calls_for_eliminating_mo.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

Over in the Senate things aren’t much different as Sen. Mitch McConnel is busy attacking Medicaid and Medicare.  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-12/mcconnell-seeks-significant-spending-changes-in-debt-plan-1-.html

This morning I had to fill my car with gas at $4.13 99/100 a gallon.  I’m not complaining for me on this one because I haven’t been filling my gas tank too often this year.  I’m so busy with the online courses I’m taking that I don’t have time to drive any place special.  I can’t imagine the rest of you that are driving great distances to work with the cost of gas hanging over your heads and the stagnant paychecks.

For most of us, all of this is a no brainer.  With Bin Laden dead, it seems to me that we should get out of these three wars that we have found ourselves in.  Of course the “money makers” and those “job creators” want no such thing.  While major companies continue to profit off the wars, I find myself reminiscing about an old song that seems to fit today.  Take a listen and think about what we’re fighting for.  I’m so tired of that Bushism, “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”  Another one we are always told basically is that “freedom isn’t free”.  As we continue to give up our rights in this country and go down that rabbit hole of confusion about what’s really important in our lives; we should stop and think about what all of this is doing to our country, our way of life and our standard of living.  It seems the rich just keep getting richer and the poor; well you know what’s going on there.  The rest of us are holding onto our jobs by a prayer and a whim and hoping this too will pass.

War, what is it good for?

  • Posted on January 22, 2011 at 1:01 am

So, I’m looking around on the internet just reading tonight and I noticed Keith Olberman is out. I don’t really care about Keith, so I read on and look for news on the wars.  I never hear much any more about either war, even though there is constant turmoil in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  It all seems pretty much null and void in the minds of the American people.  I sometimes wonder if I am the only person that thinks spending all of this money to blow up a couple of countries is insane!  I came across this site which seems interesting.   http://armscontrolcenter.org/

According to this site, here is the defense budget for 2011 and it does match up with what I have found on the Whitehouse budget website as well.

Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Overview

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010, the Obama

Administration has requested a base budget of $548.9 billion for the Department of

Defense (DoD). This is $18 billion, or 3.4 percent, above the appropriated Fiscal Year

2010 base budget of $531 billion.

In addition, the Administration has requested $159.3 billion for “Overseas

Contingency Operations,” to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This brings the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget request to a total of $708.3

billion.

What I am noticing is that high cost for the two wars.  I looked up the population of Iraq which is around 31.5 million.  California has a population of around 37 million.  What I am getting at is this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget

Check out the federal budgeted money for California or any state for that matter.  I think there is something wrong with this picture.  That money spent on the wars could really be helpful back over here in our own country.  Of course the conservative Republicans have other ideas.  Here is where you can check out their proposal to reduce spending.  http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/Solutions/SRA.htm

On the two page summary, I noticed many interesting cuts to everything from the arts and humanities to the repeal of the Davis Bacon Act which requires the government to pay the local prevailing wage.  I wonder what’s up with that, less money for the common man, just trying to make a living of course.

The other day I was listening to the Ed Schultz radio show for a few minutes on my way home from school.   Some one was sitting in for Ed.  A guy called in who really cracked me up.  He was on a rant about Senator John McCain and he said McCain has been taken care of by the government is whole life.  This man couldn’t believe McCain’s stance on health care since McCain has essentially been taken care of with government health care his whole life.  I had to laugh because it was essentially true, except for the stint he had when he was a POW.  The politicians in office just don’t get it.  They have everything at their finger tips like money, power, health insurance, great pensions and they just cannot see what has happened to the common worker in America.

The American people need to pull their head out of the sand and figure out what is really going on.

Big business and government combined is a lethal combination for the American worker.  Labor unions have been destroyed over the last forty years.  One of the last of the unions still standing are the teachers unions.  They are the next to go.  This is the way the American people are being programmed right now.  There is a constant drumbeat against the teachers and their unions.  We are being told how poor our education system is and it is the fault of the TEACHERS!  Tenure is a dirty word.  We are being programmed that it is the problem and it must go!  I’m only throwing this out there because as a teacher, I can feel the target on my back and I can see what is going on.  We, the people, are being programmed once again that business is good, privatization is good, and labor unions are bad, bad, bad!

All across the country we have business people getting into government.  Here in Michigan we have our new governor, Rick Snyder, a business guy.  I listened to his state of the state address and he was very short on anything specific in terms of cuts and spending for the most part.  The big thing he talked about was building a bridge to Canada.  Here is a transcript from his address.  http://www.freep.com/article/20110120/NEWS15/110120009/1001/NEWS/Transcript-Read-and-watch-the-State-of-the-State

It had a lot of “fluff” but not much substance.  I expect in April when he gives the next speech he mentioned, we will hear more specifics.  I don’t think his address was much different than most others.  I just would like to know what his plans are for the budget.  He wants to change the small business tax but he doesn’t say how he’s going to pay for these changes.  Some in K-12 education are worried that he is going to take from that budget to give to the public colleges.  I don’t know what is going to happen, but I think it will mean more pain in education whatever is decided.  This year I had to pay 3% more into my retirement with no additional benefit.  Next year it could be more.  We don’t have a contract and we are probably not much different than most schools in the state that are wondering what the budget is going to be.

The other day I was applying for a bus grant to take some of my art students up to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and I asked the school secretary what portion of our students was on free and/or reduced lunches.  Our school was around 61% but she said one of the elementary schools is somewhere around 90%.  These are scary numbers.  We need jobs for American workers.  I feel like I’m on a wheel that just keeps going round and round.  War, what is it good for?  What is it really doing for the American people?  We know what it is doing for some corporations.   http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/160995.html

You must listen to this video because it is so interesting.  The wars will continual until they are financially unsustainable because it is in the best interest of corporations.  War, what is it good for?

The Video We Aren’t Supposed to See

  • Posted on April 7, 2010 at 12:36 pm

Please don’t watch this video if you can’t take the truth of it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ_zTrjMhX8&feature=player_embedded

This is the article that accompanied the video that I first watched.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack

War is hell.  We all know this but what we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about is what happens when the men and women that are part of that hell come home.  After seeing this video, that we aren’t supposed to see, I could only think about the inhumanity that I witnessed.  The men talking and shooting acted like they were merely at a shooting range.  The people they sniped off were poor unaware bastards that were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  I first saw the incomplete video on CNN.  CNN explained they wouldn’t show the complete video out of respect for the dead and their families.  I think it was more like to cover up the deeply disturbing video that showed American soldiers, acting like this was nothing more than a video game they were in the middle of playing.  There was no thought for the people below that were kept in the gun’s site.  There was no thought for the guy that was wounded and trying to crawl away except for wanting him to pick up a gun so they could shoot some more.

We have been raising our children for war now for some time.  Since September 2001 we have spent these last nine years filled with hate and creating children that have learned how to hate like us.  We have desensitized them through video games that even the Pentagon loves for training their future soldiers.  What I worry about is what is happening with our society.  We seem divided as a nation but when I look at these two stupid wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we seem to be united in our hate.  A Republican president started them and a Democratic president continues them.  What is this really going to get us?

I do know that we have many men and women that are coming back hurt by their time engaged in war.  Some have mental hurts and others are physical.  Some have shed their blood in these wars with no clear mission of what has been accomplished.  We, as a society, will have to deal with all of this pain when these soldiers come home.  Some will turn to crime and have already and some will live with their own personal hell hidden in sweat filled, agonizing nights of horror while others will feel daily the looks from strangers at their mangled and burnt bodies.  What will all of this do for our country and what has it done for our country.

We glorify war in movies hoping to propagandize the next generation into thinking that being a soldier is filled with honor and glory.  Being a soldier may be honorable but the government that often sends these soldiers to war often is not honorable.  We have war hawks in government that have never been a soldier themselves.  Government officials that would never send their own children to war but would ask you to send your children in a heart beat.

I feel the wounds deep in our country for our children.  I look in my art classroom and I wonder about the children I am teaching.  How many of them will go off to these crazy wars.  Am I just teaching children so they can be used in a future senseless war?  Will these young children be put to the test of their lives in the hell that is Iraq or Afghanistan?  No one can give me that answer because I taught young people in 2002 that have ended up fighting in these two wars of today.  We are in a senseless, endless war with the boogey man that is terrorism.  We will give up our freedom and even our children to fight this boogey man.  We will allow our hate to change our children into hate filled, killing machines so we can feel “safe” once again.

We will protect ourselves from the hell of it all by watching cleaned up versions of the news and heroic movies.  We will excuse the behavior of these soldiers when they come back as we all know war is hell.  However, if they get too out of control we will slap them in jail and throw away the key.  I remember Timothy McVeigh and the truth is he was created by our government.  He was filled with hate and loathing.  Are we creating more soldiers like him to come home to no job and filled with anger and hate?

I hate war.  I have been told that sometimes it may be necessary.  However, when I look through the history books war seems to be more about turf building than people building.  Powerful countries have warred on to control land, minerals, and people.  I don’t think it is much different today.  We have even had holy wars because God would have wanted this to be so?  One of my brothers even worries about the terrorists taking over the United States and making us all bow to Allah.  I hear paranoia in this kind of thinking but it is brought on by a corporate controlled and owned media in America that makes much money off these wars.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WfA8JWMgiQ&feature=player_embedded

War is man made hell created by a society that cares more about their next computer gadget and social networking than it does about the innocence lost by our children from this hell and the numbing of our souls by this warring mentality.