There's a familiar pattern in American politics, where a party starts getting some real power and starts thinking it can use that power to start forcing the country into their little mold. This arrogance then causes them to lose big in elections, giving them a valuable opportunity to rethink their platform. It happened in 1992 and 2010 to the Democrats...this year, it happened to the Republicans.
What does the GOP need to do to be worthy of a comeback? Here are my suggestions:
1) Do be financially conservative without appearing like a soulless dick. A balanced budget is one thing; a schmuck like Romney joking about firing people during a Recession just makes you look stupid.
2) Don't mindlessly attack whole segments of the population. Intelligent people don't try to control or influence what birth control women have access to. Intelligent men don't quibble with women about what "real" rape is and "men" who do deserve a punch in the nose, not a job with lots of power.
3) Don't take power you were given on a limited government platform and try to be the lifestyle police. Gay and lesbian people are really cool when you get to know them and our society is immeasurably richer for its diversity. That LGBT folks want to form committed relationships with legal standing is an awesome thing and not something you should even think about getting in the way of.
4) Do stand out by becoming the party that takes civil liberties more seriously and doesn't shred the Bill of Rights at every opportunity. Again, back to that small government thing. Using drones in the US, the TSA and its constant grabs for more power to stupidly embarrass senior citizens, the endless Drug War and its abominations like Asset Forfeiture...shut them down before we end up hunting you with dogs, OK?
5) Do remain supportive of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Speaking of civil liberties, this is one of your party's few solid, smart pro-right positions. Don't be be like California Republicans and support dumb gun laws.
These are my suggestions...make of the what you will. As a swing voter, I will only vote for the best candidates and in this election cycle, you gave me very little to support.
Saturday, November 10, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Ditto (Election 20XX)
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is too liberal
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is too conservative
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is Ron Paul
Most Republicans: Obama is a bigger dick and that's why we should vote GOP
Most Republicans: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban
Some Democrats: Obama is too liberal
Some Democrats: Obama is too conservative
Most Democrats: Obama is a dick but Republicans are bigger dicks and that's why we should vote Democrat if they nominate a Honey Badger.
Most Democrats: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban
News media: BLAH BLAH BLAH we have something relevant to say BLAH BLAH
Most people in the US: there's no 'None of the Above' option and old reruns of Gilian's island make more sense than this crap
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is too conservative
Some Republicans: that Republican candidate is Ron Paul
Most Republicans: Obama is a bigger dick and that's why we should vote GOP
Most Republicans: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban
Some Democrats: Obama is too liberal
Some Democrats: Obama is too conservative
Most Democrats: Obama is a dick but Republicans are bigger dicks and that's why we should vote Democrat if they nominate a Honey Badger.
Most Democrats: We want less government except for all the stuff we want to ban
News media: BLAH BLAH BLAH we have something relevant to say BLAH BLAH
Most people in the US: there's no 'None of the Above' option and old reruns of Gilian's island make more sense than this crap
Don't Wait for a Leader: Become One
The Net uprising over SOPA/PIPA this week has been an interesting exercise. It *looks* as if Congress is backing down, though of course dumb laws like this are revived and become laws all the time. It looks as if Obama is opposed to them, although his recent surrender regarding the military detainment of civilians has shown that he will support the Democratic party's interests over those of the American people.
The election this Fall promises to be a gloomy one. Since we don't have a 'None of the Above' option on the ballot, our vote is a forced choice between a sellout incumbent president and a field of Republican alternatives who I'd hesitate to give a supermarket job reference for, with Ron Paul being the one possible exception.
Maybe it's time we all stopped waiting for a leader to come along and took back the reins of our own damn country. When enough Americans get pissed off, we can make the government back down. Get involved, stay informed, fight back. According to this article, 4.5 MILLION people took the trouble to sign a petition against the acts. That's huge.)
Put the government back on the short least it was released from after 9/11, a leash it has been furiously trying to put on us!
The election this Fall promises to be a gloomy one. Since we don't have a 'None of the Above' option on the ballot, our vote is a forced choice between a sellout incumbent president and a field of Republican alternatives who I'd hesitate to give a supermarket job reference for, with Ron Paul being the one possible exception.
Maybe it's time we all stopped waiting for a leader to come along and took back the reins of our own damn country. When enough Americans get pissed off, we can make the government back down. Get involved, stay informed, fight back. According to this article, 4.5 MILLION people took the trouble to sign a petition against the acts. That's huge.)
Put the government back on the short least it was released from after 9/11, a leash it has been furiously trying to put on us!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
My Dream for 2012: Drop TSA From The Plane!
My dream for 2012 is to see the TSA dissolved as an entity...for the American people to grow a fucking spine and say "enough" to idiotic and offensive, yet ineffectual scenes like these:
Since the Democrats and Republicans are milking the "War on Terror" for all the power they can get, it will be up to a pissed off mob of business travelers to rebel and turn on the creeps at a TSA checkpoint:
Real cops, tired of having to tolerate sex offenders in their areas, do not interfere or perhaps support the rebels who Shanghai TSA agents onto planes...
And in 2012 sanity returns, when the newest competitive sport is dropping TSA goons from planes onto crop circles. Eventually, there is talk of making it an Olympic sport, if they don't run out of TSA "volunteers" first...
Since the Democrats and Republicans are milking the "War on Terror" for all the power they can get, it will be up to a pissed off mob of business travelers to rebel and turn on the creeps at a TSA checkpoint:
Real cops, tired of having to tolerate sex offenders in their areas, do not interfere or perhaps support the rebels who Shanghai TSA agents onto planes...
And in 2012 sanity returns, when the newest competitive sport is dropping TSA goons from planes onto crop circles. Eventually, there is talk of making it an Olympic sport, if they don't run out of TSA "volunteers" first...
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Election Season as Reality TV
Election season 2012 is now in full swing here in the US, promising yet another misspent preparation for choosing our national "leaders". In keeping with the tradition of the past 50 years or more, it will have have much more in common with a dysfunctional family holiday gathering than an intelligent, adult discussion with the goal of choosing our potentially great nation's course into the future.
The Right is likely to continue preaching the ideal of small, less intrusive government while making it a priority to legislatively micromanage peoples' in the name of morality. Their reason for wanting to turn the US into a third world country is financial. We're paying too much in taxes...cut those school and library budgets!
The Left, ever nostalgic for the 1960s, is busy occupying Wall Street now (because, um, some people there are bad with the goal of, um, making things less badder). They are likely to continue preaching the idea of more civil liberties for all, though the fourth amendment doesn't apply to taking your backpack or purse anywhere in public and they think having your privates (and your kids') felt up in airports is a small price to pay for the illusion of safety from terrorists. Their reason for wanting to turn the US into a third world country is because humans are bad for the environment.
All in all, we've become a nation best symbolized by two dumb prats in a Toyota Prius and a pickup truck driving side-by-side at 5 mph under the speed limit, both flipping each other the bird and making faces at each other. Meanwhile, the people who want the US to continue being a world leader who can compete with India and China are stuck in traffic behind them.
Where do we go from here? I see three possibilities:
- Continue with more of the same until we become a nation whose population is made up mostly of government bureaucrats and call centers operators working for minimum wage for tech companies overseas. But if we can come home and have a few Budweisers and 150 channels of reality TV, what the heck?
- A good old fashioned Civil War. When you look at our big dysfunctional family, it's abundantly clear that we're a country full of people who are really, REALLY sick of each other. So stop pussyfooting around and get on with it. Because the 1860s were a WHOLE lot of fun.
- Everybody grow the fuck up, start finding common ground with people who aren't just like you and start rebuilding a society that find strength in the diversity that's a fact of life and can make us the most versatile and successful country in the world.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Coordinating the Fight
"We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately."
- Benjamin Franklin
After my first experience this week (account to follow...not as obnoxious as actor Wil Wheaton's but still Unconstitutional) in opting out of the back-scatter xray machines, I started looking for a petition online, either calling for TSA restrictions or for the government to shut them down outright. I was happy to find such petitions and dismayed at how fragmented they were.
A few petitions run into the thousands of signatures. If you added the signatures all up, they'd total close to 70,000 signatures and you have to start thinking that if they keep growing and the government receives 100,000 signatures on a petition, they'll have to back down to some extent. Unfortunately some of those signatures are on conservative sites (the largest one with 38,000 signatures is) and others are on liberal sites. The old "divide and conquer" strategy works far too well on us here in the US...it's time to realize we need to cooperate with each other when facing a common enemy if we want to defeat it.
As a political moderate, I'm therefore urging that everyone reading this blog take the time to visit and sign petitions at ALL these sites. I'll stop back here at this blog entry occasionally and update its totals or add new petitions. We have to find a way to cooperate or we're never going to get this mindless beast back on a short chain.
Come on people...let's send Napolitano and Pistole to the unemployment line!
http://www.wnd.com/airportscreening 38,000
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-tsa-to-stop-intrusive-body-searches 9,000
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/882/104/966/ 8,701
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-body-scanners-and-intrusive-tsa-pat-downs/ 227
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/27/abolish-the-tsa/ 20
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-tsa/ 115
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-tsa-gropingnapolitano-must-resign/ 77
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/tsa-scanners-and-pat-downs-ok-prove-it/ 247
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/full-body-airport-scanners-pose-too-high-a-risk-to-human-health/ 200
http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/doherty/tsa-petition/sign-the-petition-help-stop-invasive-tsa-screening/7149 4,000
http://www.petitiononline.com/StopScan/ 2,972
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-tsa-no-more-patdowns-for-minors 1,200
http://abolishthetsa.net/sign-the-petition/ 308
http://www.change.org/petitions/tsa-must-revise-screening-procedures-for-amputees 120
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/tsa - Count unknown but this one is mentioned in several places
- Benjamin Franklin
After my first experience this week (account to follow...not as obnoxious as actor Wil Wheaton's but still Unconstitutional) in opting out of the back-scatter xray machines, I started looking for a petition online, either calling for TSA restrictions or for the government to shut them down outright. I was happy to find such petitions and dismayed at how fragmented they were.
A few petitions run into the thousands of signatures. If you added the signatures all up, they'd total close to 70,000 signatures and you have to start thinking that if they keep growing and the government receives 100,000 signatures on a petition, they'll have to back down to some extent. Unfortunately some of those signatures are on conservative sites (the largest one with 38,000 signatures is) and others are on liberal sites. The old "divide and conquer" strategy works far too well on us here in the US...it's time to realize we need to cooperate with each other when facing a common enemy if we want to defeat it.
As a political moderate, I'm therefore urging that everyone reading this blog take the time to visit and sign petitions at ALL these sites. I'll stop back here at this blog entry occasionally and update its totals or add new petitions. We have to find a way to cooperate or we're never going to get this mindless beast back on a short chain.
Come on people...let's send Napolitano and Pistole to the unemployment line!
http://www.wnd.com/airportscreening 38,000
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-tsa-to-stop-intrusive-body-searches 9,000
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/882/104/966/ 8,701
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-body-scanners-and-intrusive-tsa-pat-downs/ 227
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/27/abolish-the-tsa/ 20
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-tsa/ 115
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-tsa-gropingnapolitano-must-resign/ 77
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/tsa-scanners-and-pat-downs-ok-prove-it/ 247
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/full-body-airport-scanners-pose-too-high-a-risk-to-human-health/ 200
http://www.senatenj.com/index.php/doherty/tsa-petition/sign-the-petition-help-stop-invasive-tsa-screening/7149 4,000
http://www.petitiononline.com/StopScan/ 2,972
http://www.change.org/petitions/tell-the-tsa-no-more-patdowns-for-minors 1,200
http://abolishthetsa.net/sign-the-petition/ 308
http://www.change.org/petitions/tsa-must-revise-screening-procedures-for-amputees 120
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/tsa - Count unknown but this one is mentioned in several places
Push Back Now
I'm here to make the argument with this essay that we're at a critical point in time in terms of retaining some control over our government but that it's time to push back HARD because the beast's hunger for more power is getting ever more voracious.
Case in point: the TSA and the general government overreaction and paranoia about terrorism. Certainly there are some bad people who want to kill us and who need to be ventilated but we're now letting the government treat everyone it encounters in ways that we'll eventually feel really stupid about, like looking back on Joe McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt or the decision to send innocent Japanese citizens to concentration camps in World War II.
This week's news shows that the civil liberty infringements are just getting worse:
- In response to a highly publicized case in which a 6 year old was patted down, TSA goon Janet Napolitano is asking for legislation guaranteeing TSA the power to search minors without parental consent
- Not satisfied with turning airport travel into an exercise in public humiliation, the TSA this week occupied a train station, detaining and searching passengers.
It looks to me as if they'll keep grabbing more power for their ineffective yet insulting little bureaucracy until we show some dignity as a people and push back, HARD.
Case in point: the TSA and the general government overreaction and paranoia about terrorism. Certainly there are some bad people who want to kill us and who need to be ventilated but we're now letting the government treat everyone it encounters in ways that we'll eventually feel really stupid about, like looking back on Joe McCarthy and his House Un-American Activities Committee witch hunt or the decision to send innocent Japanese citizens to concentration camps in World War II.
This week's news shows that the civil liberty infringements are just getting worse:
- In response to a highly publicized case in which a 6 year old was patted down, TSA goon Janet Napolitano is asking for legislation guaranteeing TSA the power to search minors without parental consent
- Not satisfied with turning airport travel into an exercise in public humiliation, the TSA this week occupied a train station, detaining and searching passengers.
It looks to me as if they'll keep grabbing more power for their ineffective yet insulting little bureaucracy until we show some dignity as a people and push back, HARD.
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