Politics in America Part II

These past few days have only increased my hostility toward the far right.  A Texas Congressman blamed the disturbances in Baltimore over the death of a young man in police custody on “Gay Marriage.”  MSNBC posted an article on the history of the Gay Marriage case before the SCOTUS.  One of the comments ranted against the ACA. What equal rights have to do with the disturbances in Baltimore or with the ACA is totally unclear to me.  It must make sense to the far right, however.  That he was arrested for no real reason and that the knife he had was legal apparently is irrelevant to the Right.

The Texas Governor is concerned about military maneuvers in the southwest and called on the Texas National Guard to keep an eye on the US Army.  He is responding to paranoid concerns from Tea Party members in his state.  Why let reason play a part in your actions?  Probably, the Tea Party supplies money and votes for his election and re-election.

Steven King of Iowa wants to introduce a law to change the 14^th Amendment and its consistent interpretation for the past 150 years.  He doesn’t want being born in the USA to qualify one for citizenship.  He is a xenophobic idiot and how he is re-elected each time is beyond me.  Can the people in Iowa be so frightened for “foreigners”?  Aren’t they all descendants of immigrants?  Oh, I guess it has to do with skin color.  Otherwise, I would be concerned about my own status. My mother became a citizen 2 years after I was born.  My father was born in NYC but to immigrant parents who never became citizens.  Does his suggested law affect my citizenship?  If it does, it will affect millions of others who are in similar circumstances to me.

Southerners continue to celebrate the soldiers who fought in the War of the Southern Rebellion.  I no longer will refer to it as the Civil War.  There was nothing civil about it.  It was one of the deadliest conflicts in American history.  The southern states rebelled against the Federal Government and fired on a Federal facility in the waters off Charleston, South Carolina.  Despite their arguments about the rebellion being about States’ Rights, it was about the states maintaining the institution of slavery.  These Christian whites liked their economic system dependent on the involuntary labor of blacks.  Their desire to maintain slavery was the cause of their rebellion.  Modern Southerners must realize that continuing to glorify the Confederacy and its flag is as obnoxious and as inappropriate as Germans considering the Swastika a symbol of their glorious past.

 

             The House voted to protect predator money lenders from the American veterans.  I said that correctly.  All their bovine manure about helping our veterans and they vote with the banks to allow them to fleece veterans.

A Maryland legislator suggested taking food stamps from any parent whose child was involved in the disturbances in Baltimore.  He obviously doesn’t know the phrase, “Cutting off your nose to spite your face.”  This is part of a national project to make food stamps as difficult and unpopular as they can.  One state puts the funds on credit cards which charge a fee each time money is withdrawn.  Therefore the user loses money every time they access the card.  The state then requires that they use no more than $25/day.  That requirement increases the fee paid to the card company and decreases the money available to the citizen.

Finally, Pope Francis is supporting pay equality for women, against the gross inequality of income in the world, and against the worship of money by the top 1%.  I guess he is not a Republican.