Posted by admin | Posted in Log Cabin Tips & Ideas | Posted on 01-08-2010
Tags: 2004_election, blogpost, gay, log cabin democrats, log cabin democrats obituaries, scandal, usa
Log Cabin Democrats
It's Getting You Cannot Tell The Political Parties Without A Score Card
I have been really confused lately and it conjured up an old baseball saying: "You can't tell the players without a score card." Up until recently, each of the major political parties had done a good job of telling us why they were the good, blessed, annointed party of the people and the other party was nothing short of satanic. Think about it. The Democrats have told us for decades that the Republicans were anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-immigration, anti-minority, and cared only about being friendly and kind to big business. The Republicans have told us for decades that the Democrats were anti-business, anti-rich, anti-strong national defense, and anti-small government.
But consider my confusion with this neat, easy-to-understand political description of the world relative to some recent news events:
- Recently, a Federal judge found the U.S. military policy of "don't ask, don't tell" to be unconstitutional and ordered the Pentagon and the Obama administration to dismantle the program and treat gay soldiers and enlistees as they would straight soldiers and enlistees. According to traditional dogma, this would count as a great victory for the Democrats. But wait! The main plaintiff in this case was a national, major Republican organization, the Log Cabin Republicans. In fact, the Democratic administration Barack Obama and its Justice Department has had to defend this anti-gay law in Federal court (Source: The Week magazine, November 12, 2010). Very confusing, Republicans might not be as anti-gay as the Democrats would have you believe.
- In the overheated debate about the new anti-illegal immigration law that was passed by the state of Arizona, it was pretty clear that most Democrats wanted more favorable treatment of illegal aliens while the Republicans wanted harsher treatment of illegal aliens. But wait! In September, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News and the Democrats' favorite media political bad guy and demon, actually testified in front of a House of Representatives Judiciary subcommittee to bring "an end to the arbitrary immigration and visa quotas" as it related to illegal immigrants (Source: Businessweek, October 25, 2010). Very confusing, maybe the Republicans and their favorite media supporter might not be as anti-immigration as the Democrats would have you believe.
- Over the years the Democrats have painted themselves as the bigger supporters of women's rights from supporting abortions to having a larger number of female politicians in their party vs. the Republicans (but still not nearly enough, relative to the male/female split in the general population.) But wait! As the midterm election results came in, it became clear that the Democrats no longer were the sole purveyor of female politicians in the nation as Republican women ran and won many, many elections:
- While nine Democratic women ran for Senate seats with four of them winning (44%), a respectable five Republicans also ran with two of them winning (40%), a comparable winning percentage.
- Eight Republican women won seats in the House of Representatives.
- Republican women became Governors in three states (Oklahoma, New Mexico, and South Carolina).
- A former Republican female governor, Sarah Palin, became a national force, for better or worse, in the election cycle.
Very confusing, looks like the Republicans might not be as anti-feminist as the Democrats would have you believe.
- The Democrats have traditionally painted themselves as the bigger supports of minorities vs. the Republicans. But wait! The midterm election results have turned that assumption upside down:
- Susanna Martinez became not only a female Republican governor in New Mexico but the first Latina governor anywhere in our nation's history.
- Nikki Haley became not only the female governor of South Carolina, the first one ever, but she is also the first Indian-American woman to serve as a state's chief executive.
- Michael Steele, an African American, is the chairman of the Republican National Committee.
- Marco Rubio, a first generation American born of Cuban parents, came out of nowhere to win a Florida Senate seat.
- Two African American Republicans won their elections for the House of Representatives and one of them, Tim Scott, was a Tea Party favorite.
Very confusing, I guess that the Republicans were not quite so anti-minority as the Democrats would have you believe.
Note: do I think either party has an adequate representation of women and minorities in their ranks? Not by a long shot. In fact, I believe the Justice Department needs to make sure that both parties abided by the same laws, regulations, penalties, fines, and principles as the rest of America when it comes to race/sex quotas and discrimination. However, the point to be made is that the Republicans are not the vicious anti-feminist and anti-minority type that the Democrats would have us believe.
But wait! There is confusion on the other side as well:
- The Republicans would have us believe that Democrats are anti-business and the Democrats' policies restrict business and thus, restrict the growth of the economy. But wait! According to a recent Washington Post article that was summarized in the November 12, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, corporate political action committees directed 53% of their donations to Democrats in the recent midterm elections, up from only 35% in the last midterm election. Very confusing, looks like the Democrats might not be as anti-business as the Republicans would make them out to be.
- Continuing along that same theme, according to an article from Politico's website which was summarized in the November 12, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, from January, 2009 through June, 2010, U.S. corporate profits increased 62%, the strongest 18-month rise since the 1920s. Very confusing, more proof that the Democrats might not be as anti-business as the Republicans would make them out to be. Unfortunately, as the Democrats were helping businesses to attain record high growth, ordinary citizens in America were saddled with very high unemployment, underemployment, and high demands for productivity gains.
- Republicans have long portrayed Democrats as weak on national defense and terrorism issues. But wait! The Obama administration has followed the same Iraqi U.S. troop deployment plans of his Republican predecessor, has actually increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan, has renewed the oppressive Patriot Act that was put into effect by his Republican predecessor, has not reduced unnecessary international U.S. troop deployment anywhere in the world, has not closed the terrorist jail facility at Guantanamo, and much like his Republican predecessor, Obama will not put some terror prisoners on trial at all, keeping them locked up forever without a day in court. Very confusing, a Democratic President is acting just like a Republican President on national defense and terrorism issues (unfortunately).
- The Republicans have traditionally portrayed the Democrats as anti-small government. Unfortunately, you do not need a score card for this one, the Democrats actually live up to (or down to) their stereotypical portrayal here. Since the Democrats have taken over Washington in 2006, the national debt has skyrocketed to never before seen heights, Federal government employment has increased by hundreds of thousands of new government employees, and the Democrats have pushed the Federal government into more and more aspects of individual Americans lives.
Why am I so confused about the score cards of the political parties? It is because the politicians in this country want to keep you confused, that is how they keep control of the government and our lives. The Democrats want to "energize their base" of gay communities, women, and minorities even though it is Republicans that are breaking down the military's anti-gay stance, it is the Republicans that are putting women into powerful political positions, and it is the Republicans that are opening up to minority candidates.
Conversely, the Republicans want to "energize their base" of corporate types, strong defense advocates, and those favoring small government even though U.S. business has done very well under democrat Obama, the Obama administration policies on defense and terror are basically the same as the ones under Bush, and small government...well, the Republicans are probably right on that stereotype.
With so much confusion, voters fall back into the old stereotypes that the politicians want us to believe in order to maintain their grip on their elected office and to protect their re-election campaign donation streams. As a result of not having a good score card to track the actual actions of each party, we continue to fight each other over issues and stances that are not as concise or as clear as our raving politicians make them out to be.
As a result, we waste a lot of energy placing fellow Americans into rival "tribes," as defined by the political class, while the same politicians with the same tired ideas use their tribes to continually get re-elected and no major issues facing American is ever seriously addressed, never mind solved. Once organized in these "tribes," we tend to not have serious, constructive discussion with other tribes despite strong common interests and concerns.
Hopefully, we saw a glimmer or two of light in early November as some strong incumbents were not asked back to Washington by the voters. Maybe voters are finally looking at the score cards and taking notice that the current members of the political class are making a lot of errors and not hitting a lot of home runs. Maybe it is time to break down the tribal barriers, have a national discussion on how to solve our problems, and finally put some runs on the score board and score card, regardless of what party or tribe gets the game winning hit.
About the Author
Walter "Bruno" Korschek is the author of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government. - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class," which is available at www.loathemygovernment.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our daily dialog on freedom in American can be joined at www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.,com.
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Log Cabin Democrats
Down The Rabbit Hole and Ito The Surreal World Of The American Political Class
If they were asked to take a hard and honest look at the problems facing this country in today's world, it is easy for most people to identify the five or six overriding issues that deeply affect the most Americans. I would bet that the following issues would make most people's top ten:
- Two ongoing wars in the Middle East.
- A continuing battle against terrorism.
- Our failing public education system.
- An ongoing battle against the plague of illegal drug usage.
- Escalating health care costs.
- Both Social Security and Medicare heading for insolvency.
- Skyrocketing national debt and deficit spending.
- High unemployment.
- The lack of a national and rational strategic energy plan.
- Illegal immigrants and the problems caused by the lack of a national border security capability.
Wherever you fall on each of these major issues (e.g. against the wars or for the wars, against legalization of drugs or against legalization, etc.), most sane people would agree that if we could focus and solve just this small handful of issues, the real world would be so much better.
However, when you listen to politicians speak, you sometimes wonder what world and reality they are dealing with and living in. Have they fallen down the proverbial rabbit hole from Alice In Wonderland to a world that is different from the ones most Americans inhabit everyday? Could it be that these major problems facing the nation listed above, the same ones that have not been solved by the political class for decades, have not been resolved because the political class lives in a different dimension than us? Consider the following events relative to the American political class that have recently popped out of the rabbit hole of politics:
1) A county politician in Wisconsin, running for a political office, opines in a public forum and on camera that Arizona is definitely not a border state with Mexico.. In all of the maps of the country I have seen throughout my life, Arizona is shown to have a very long common border with Mexico. In this Wisconsin politician's world, that is not the case, making it tough to solve the illegal immigration problem when we are looking at totally different maps.
2) When the Democrats took over both houses of Congress in 2006, the Speaker of The House, Nancy Pelosi, proclaimed that the Democrats would reign in the outrageous deficit spending habits of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. She vowed that there would be no new Federal government spending unless other areas of the Federal budget were reduced in order to pay for the new government spending, her highly touted "pay as you go" approach to curtailing the size of government. She proudly proclaimed on her website: "While the President's (Bush) budgets have turned surpluses into deficits, the Democrats' budget takes America in a new direction, returning fiscal responsibility to Washington and the right priorities for our nation." Given the fact that Federal government spending has grown significantly and budget deficits have skyrocketed (tripled) since this Democratic Party Congressional takeover and into the first two budgets of the Obama administration, it is apparent that Nancy Pelosi exists in a different universe from us. Most of us would agree that fiscal responsibility does NOT mean tripling the size of the deficit within four short years as it does in Pelosi's mind. However, we would agree with her assertion that the Democrats' budget is taking us in a new direction, the fast track to national bankruptcy.
3) Let's stay with Pelosi for another trip down the rabbit hole because her world is so fascinating and different than ours. The Speaker recently announced that high unemployment is good, and that, in fact, high unemployment is one of the best ways to create jobs. You cannot make this stuff up, check out her press conference on YouTube where she seriously made this claim. Thus, in her world, the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs are created for those in need of a job. In her world, if we can get to 100% unemployment, everyone might have a job created as a result. Obviously, economic theory is different where she exists.
4) In Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson's world, physical laws of nature are suspended. In a recent Congressional hearing, the Congressman expressed his worry that the U.S. island of Guam might tip over in the ocean. Again, you cannot make this stuff up, check the YouTube video of the hearing.
5) The Associated Press reported on July 15, 2010 that Federal prosecutions of illegal immigrants jumped to new high levels in the spring as the "Obama administration continued an aggressive enforcement strategy championed under President George W. Bush." Apparently, in our world, 4,145 cases were referred to Federal prosecutors in March and April. This was the highest number of cases for any two month stretch in the past five years. The article also reported that deportations have also climbed significantly, from 185,944 in 2007 to 387,790 in 2009. So let me get this right: the Federal government is prosecuting and deporting more illegal aliens than ever but has the chutzpah to turn around and sue the state of Arizona for trying to reign in the same large wave of illegal immigrants coming into its state from Mexico? Seems kind of contradictory, at least in our world of reason. Apparently, it makes perfectly good sense in Washington, send home illegal immigrants with one hand and slap the state of Arizona with the other hand for doing the same thing.
6) On July 13, 2010, the Associated Press reported that over 100,000 pieces of children's jewelry had to be recalled from retail shelves because the jewelry contained high levels of cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal if ingested. That's the good news. the bad news is that in the world of government safety regulation (e.g. U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission), one does not learn from past mistakes. Several years ago, U.S. government safety organizations failed to realize that there were many, many children's toys being sold in this country that had high levels of lead, another substance that can cause severe damage to a child if ingested. After that recall, it turns out that the same manufacturers replaced lead with cadmium, resulting in another recall earlier this year, a recall that included millions and millions of products. One would have hope that after the lead scare, the safety organizations would have been more on alert about similar type products. No such luck. After we got through the first cadmium scare, we now have another one. In the product safety dimension, learning does not happen, disasters just repeat over and over again.
7) In the surreal world of the American political class, all Republicans are vehemently against homosexuals and Democrats are the only advocates for the gay way of life. However, in our reality, this is not the case. An Associated Press report from July 13, 2010, reported that a Republican gay rights group, Log Cabin Republicans, is suing the administration in Federal court over the refusal of the Obama administration to repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" military doctrine on gays serving in the armed forces. This will set up the surreal situation where a Democratic administration will be using taxpayer funds to defend a policy, a policy it also wants to see repealed, against a group that is traditionally been painted as anti-gay. Got that, makes no sense to me either.
And finally, lets leave this post with some Orwellian and otherworldly snippets from President Obama. George Orwell in his novel, 1984, was very precise when he showed how by manipulating how you say things, e.g. war is peace, freedom is slavery, etc., you can make the unreal become real. In President Obama's world, getting our military out of Iraq means staying in Iraq, closing the Guantanamo Bay prison means leaving it open, not hiring lobbyists to serve in his administration means hiring lobbyists to serve in his administration, significantly reducing earmarks means increasing earmarks, being fully engaged in helping the Gulf Coast residents survive the BP oil spill means taking two vacations, playing seven rounds of golf, participating in several athletic photo ops with various teams, and taking at least two trips to California to campaign for other Democrats, and not raising taxes for anyone earning under $250,000 a year means raising the taxes for those same people's kids and grandkids by allowing unprecedented government spending and national debt increases, increases that every American, present and future, will eventually have to pay.
The sad thing is that the political class lives in their own world, a world where the pay is very good, the benefits are great, you can almost never get fired since you have rigged the election process, and you don't have to care what your constituents think and the issues they face. You also do not have to solve real problems like the war on drugs, failing public education, wide open borders, etc. even though these problems have plagued the nation for decades. That is why imposing term limits on all Federally elected politicians is becoming more and more critical, forcing them out of their worlds and other dimensions after one term, hopefully replaced by regular people that are grounded in this world and the major issues listed above. It is time to bury the rabbit hole once a fall all, stop wasting taxes and start tackling real issues and problems.
About the Author
Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our daily dialog on freedom in America can be followed at www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com.
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