The Republicans want to destroy our democracy!

Wow it's been months since I posted on this blog, I was going through a lot in the last three months. Now I'm feeling much better and I can't wait to start writing about conservative nonsense and there is plenty of nonsense that conservatives are pushing lately. I'm personally quite frustrated with conservatives and their insistence on trying to destroy the government and make sure that the government does not do anything at all. I've always wondered why they insist on doing that? If you follow me on Twitter and if you've read this blog over the last few months you will know that I used to be a Republican. I was trying to be a liberal republican which now I realize was a foolish move. However I could agree with some republican ideas, like people taking responsibility for their own actions and staying out of other countries business. I've always hated the idea of using our military to replace governments that we don't like. who the hell does American think it is doing that? Anyway I figured out pretty quickly that the republicans were lying and did that believe their own rhetoric.


Anyway back to the point of this post, people that run for office need to care about the country and the people of this country. Republicans don't give a damn about this country or the people. What they care about is corporations and tax cuts and deregulation of those same corporations. The Republicans are heartless assholes and I can never be a republican or support a political party that just cares about corporations and the most wealthy people of this country and the rest of us can go to hell. That's not right, that's not justice, that's just infuriating. Why do Republicans insist on hating our government and our way of life? I'll never understand it, but I'll give my theory. Simply put the Republican party is dying a slow and horrible death, and they know it, there ideas are failing with the American people. Their ideas are the same ideas they had thirty years ago. Tax cuts and deregulation. That's all they know and they don't want to have any new ideas. I've had enough of that nonsense it's time to vote these bums out once and for all, and whatever we do we can't vote these bums back into office because the same thing will happen again. Republicans hate our way of life and our country!

Conservatives have always been against America's progress!

The weekend is coming up and I'm going to write this blog because it's the total truth and I'm sick of conservatives who think that they own the Constitution and/or the American flag. If you look through out American history you will see that progressives have had the backbone to change what needed to be changed and all through out American history you will see conservatives crying and whining like babies while that change for the better is being made. Before I continue I understand that not all progressive policies work however at least progressives or liberals whatever you want to call us, want to try and make things better in this country, meanwhile conservatives don't want to do anything and they want to keep the status quo. Conservative policies have always caused problems for this country and it seems like conservatives will never change, if we keep giving them power things will get worse and worse. Primary example of that is the state of Mississippi the poorest state in the union. The last time a Democrat was governor of Mississippi was in 2000 over ten years ago. I think that progressives should call out conservatives who use the flag and the constitution as political props they are not the only real Americans, we are all real Americans no matter what's your political affiliation. So now let's start with the era of the American Revolution, because these conservatives think that the founding fathers were conservative and they would've agree with their world view.

Let's briefly look at the era of the American Revolution the founding fathers were sick and tired of the tyranny of the British King George III and they wanted to create a new nation based on a fundamental rights and principles that every person should be created equal. The founders created a document called the Declaration of Independence, and later on the Constitution. The founding fathers created the two most progressive documents in the history of the world at the time. However there were other people that were called "loyalists" these people were still loyal to the crown and they did not want to fight for their freedom from the crown. These people were very conservative and they wanted to keep the status quo. In my opinion the founding fathers had the foresight and the guts to fight for what they believed in which is why these are the most progressive men of the 18th century. That's the total truth and I'm sick of today's conservatives and the tea party claim that these men were conservatives. That's the biggest joke of all.

Now let's jump ahead to 1860 when Abraham Lincoln was elected President and as we all know Lincoln was the first Republican President and at this time no one knew how Lincoln would govern as President. eight of nine states had seceded from the union and Lincoln had publicly been against slavery since the 1850s. and he knew that slavery was morally reprehensible and as a country we could not allow this policy to be continued. The people in the south were very conservative and they are for the most part still very conservative today. Over 600,000 people died in that brutal Civil War and Lincoln wrote the The Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 which was one of the most famous executive orders ever written by a US President and this executive order ordered the army to free all of the slaves in the south during the war. President Lincoln was one of the most progressive Presidents in American history and I'm proud to be a progressive just like President Abraham Lincoln. I laugh whenever conservatives pretend that President Lincoln was a conservative and he would have agreed with them. If Abraham Lincoln knew what his Republican party has turned into today, he would be sick to his stomach and he would turn over in his grave has well.

I could go on and on but I'm going to move on to today, we see that conservative policies are destroying America and these conservatives do not care about governing and fixing the problems that they created quite frankly instead they talk about shutting down our government and they refuse to pay the bills that our government has incurred, these people are holding the debt ceiling hostage in order to defund the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare and if we don't raise the debt ceiling then we can't pay our bills and if we won't pay our bills then we will destroy our economy and the world's economy. These people are the most anti American group of people in the country and they will not stop until they destroy our country. We progressives need to take power back from these crazy people and we need some sensible leaders in Washington again. Because Ted Cruz and his ilk are not going to help things, they are going to make our problems worse for our country. It's time to fight these damn fools and vote them out of office.

Corporate money is destroying our democracy!

Today I must write the truth about corporations and the wealthy have stolen our democracy in order to create a government which works for corporate interests and the interests of the wealthy first and they don't give a damn about the average person in the United States. If you look back at American history you will see that corporations and the very wealthy have been trying to take over our government since the 19th century. The beginning of the modern corporation can be traced to the late 19th century Supreme Court ruling "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad" in 1886 and other cases like "Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward" in 1819 which for the first time held that the Contract Clause of the United States Constitution applied to private corporations. I can go on and on but these are some of the rulings that created today's modern corporation. Before I go on in this post I have to say that I don't think that corporations are bad for our country, they employ many Americans and they also donate money to charities and their money can be used for good. However when we allow corporations to donate to our politicians then they become a cancer to our country and as we've seen today after Citizen's United decision which I'm going to talk about later in this post. Corporations can't donate anything to Political Actions Committees (PACs) or Politicians that's the only way that we will get our democracy back.

Now let's discuss something that very few people know about or even talked about and it's been called the "Business Plot" These two videos which I'm going to post will describe what happened in  the "Business Plot"  The first video is General Smedley Butler explaining what happened when he was approached by the business leaders in the United States at the time and why he reported them to Congress. I personally think that Butler is a hero because I do believe him and Congress believed him as well at the time and even though there were no arrests made but I still believe that Butler stopped what would have been a fascist dictatorship in the United States. The second video was made by "Stuff they don't want you to know" They investigate conspiracy theories and they a entire video explaining the "Business Plot" It's very well done and I recommend you check out both videos.

Prescott Bush

The most powerful and richest corporations and people in the country were rumored to be involved in the "business plot" including Prescott Bush the father of George HW Bush and the grandfather of George W. Bush. Prescott Bush as well was involved in the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany is the 1930s and if you don't believe me check out the piece that The Guardian wrote back in 2004 called "How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power" It's a very interesting piece and the reason why Prescott Bush was one of the people that helped Hitler get into power is because it made his companies more money. In my personal opinion the reason why Congress did not prosecute anyone for their roles in the business plot is because they came to Congress in private and came to a deal with them in order to avoid any treason charges filed against them and there was really no proof besides the testimony of General Butler so Congress just agreed with them not to charge anyone. I do not have any proof for my theory but it's the only one that makes sense. Corporations have always wanted control over the government in order to make more money and to have the laws in their favor. Now they've found a new way to get the government to do whatever they want to, just corrupt the Supreme Court.

US Supreme Court 

The reason why I make this point is because in the last ten years almost every ruling that the Supreme Court has handed down has in one way or another benefited corporations and the wealthy. As we all know about the Citizens United v. FEC ruling which recognized corporate person-hood and then the case that did not get as much press attention was American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock  which reversed a decision by the Montana Supreme Court Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana this cased held that "the broad free speech protections given to corporations in Citizens United v. FEC do not apply to Montana's campaign finance laws." Which of course the Supreme Court reversed so corporations won again of course. So now corporations and wealthy people can donate whatever amount of money they want and they buy our politicians and those politicians do the bidding of their corporate donors, every republican works for their corporate donors and I believe most democrats work for their corporate donors as well. However there are some principled Democrats left and they do want to work for the people that they represent.

So what do we as progressives do about this? Since the Supreme Court has handed down their decision in Citizens United the only way to overturn a Supreme Court decision is by a constitutional amendment. We need a constitutional amendment that bans corporate money from our politics. Simply put the first amendment does not guarantee corporations free speech because corporations are not people, corporations do not vote in elections so they can't be a person. We need this  constitutional amendment in order to get back our democracy. If we keep letting corporations and rich people control our government then we will have the fascist government that the corporations and the rich tried to fund back in the 1930s, in fact in my opinion we have a fascist government today right now in 2013 because all of the laws that are passed seem to benefit corporations and the wealthy. We as progressives need to fight this because if we don't we will lose our democracy, and don't listen to conservatives that say that we are not a democracy but we are a republic, we are a democracy we have freedoms and rights as Americans and we have to fight to keep our rights.

My opinion on President Putin's Op-Ed in NYT

Presidents Obama & Putin

Well the weekend is coming up and there's been a lot of news coming out about Syria, some of it bad and some of the news is good. However last night President Vladimir Putin of Russia wrote a opinion piece or Op-Ed in the New York Times (NYT) which was published last night on the NYT website. I heard about it on Twitter last night and I was reading some of the tweets from some of the people that I was following and I honestly did not understand the reaction towards President Putin's Op-Ed, most of the people I follow are progressives of course and like I said I don't understand the reaction, the reason why is because progressives start to attack Putin and don't get me wrong all of the attacks were valid, however I could be wrong and please let me know if I am but it seemed like to me that no one really read his piece and just started to criticize him. Like I said all of the attacks were valid but after reading Putin's Op-Ed I agree with most of what he had to say. Before I give my reasons on why I agree with President Putin, I'm going to talk about why I think President Putin motivation was when he wrote his Op-Ed. I don't think that President Putin is worried about American interests or the American people, hell I don't even think he cares about his own people. The reason why I think that President Putin wrote his Op-Ed is because he's worried about his own government's interests and he's worried about the United States possibly starting World War III over these chemical weapons. That's the Russian President main motivation.

Presidents Assad & Putin

Now the first point that Putin made which I agree with is that "The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria's borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance."This is a good point of Putin because most counties of the world do not agree with the action to bomb Syria, and if the United States bombs Syria without UN authorization, then we would lose even more credibility with the rest of the world, and we can't afford that at this point because thanks to President Bush we lost most of our credibility with the rest of the world. Also if we do attack Syria without the support of the rest of the world, then if Syria retaliates then this could lead to World War III and nobody wants that.

Another point that Putin made was "It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America's long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you're either with us or against us.” Putin is right because as a American I'm alarmed that the United States always think that military intervention is always the answer and no that is not in our best interests right now, and that's going to cost us more and more money which we don't have by the way because we won't raise taxes on the top 1% or the corporations. I'm glad that President Obama is allowing the Russians to try and get the Chemical Weapons from the Syrians that way the government would not have bomb Syria, because if Mitt Romney would've became President then we would have boots on the ground in Syria right now which would be a awful decision.

US forces in Iraq

Putin also talked about American intervention in recent history "But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes. I do agree that force is ineffective and pointless we started two wars and Afghanistan and in Iraq and more than a decade later neither of those counties are not stable and Iraq has slipped into civil war, so the United States policy of democracy by force did not work and it's a failure, and in my opinion we can't force feed democracy to the rest of the world, to me democracy has to manifest organically and not by force by another government, like in Egypt for example when they removed Mubarak from power a few years ago. It was organic that's my point but I digress.

Russian President Vladimir Putin

Putin also said that "We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement." He's 100% right about that and I would hope that the Syrian's would hand over their Chemical Weapons to the Russians because I've always been anti-war and I don't want to keep using the military in order to fix the internal problems of other countries, the United States should stay out of Syria and other countries internal problems. The last point that I would like to make is that I understand the frustration of progressives with President Putin, Putin has used the politics of fear in order to gain a firm hold on his power in Russia, he's blamed gay people for all of Russia's problems and it's worked unfortunately. Reminds me of what Hitler did with the Jewish people which lead to World War II but I digress, the final point that I'm trying to make is that Putin is not the ideal leader for Russia we can all agree to that, but we should not close our minds to what he has to say just because he's Vladimir Putin President of Russia, we as progressive should not be closed minded no matter who's making good points we need to listen and learn.

President Putin's Op-Ed in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/12/opinion/putin-plea-for-caution-from-russia-on-syria.html

Update: I just came across a story from Al-Jazeera America that says that "Assad told Russia's state Rossiya 24 news channel in an interview that is set to be broadcast fully later Thursday that "Syria is transferring chemical weapons under international control because of Russia." He added that "the U.S. threats hadn't influenced" his government's decision." This is a good development because like I said many times I'm against any bombing action in Syria and I don't care what reasons the Syrians have for handing over their chemical weapons, as long as they do it that is what matters to me.

Al-Jazeera America link: http://live.america.aljazeera.com/Event/Syrias_War/88723083

 

The Voters In Colorado were screwed by the NRA

Sen. Angela Giron & John Morse

Before I start to write this post, I want to say today is the 12th anniversary of the September 11th 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, The Pentagon, and the plane that crashed in Shanksville PA. I will take the time and write two post to my blog today and I will be talking about 9/11 and my thoughts in my details in my next post coming later today. Now moving on to why I'm writing this post. Yesterday was the recall elections in the state of Colorado of two Democratic State Senators named John Morse and Angela Giron and I was on Twitter last night and I was shocked when I found out that these two brave Senators lost the election. At first I was mad because I thought that these voters just were against these gun restriction laws and just voted these Senators out of office, I even thought that these people are morons. Then I wake up this morning and I was reading the Huffington Post and read that piece and it changed my mind on what happened in the recall election in Colorado. I will be providing a link to the piece at the end of this post.

Now in my personal opinion I think that the NRA and the Koch Brothers stole this election and then they had the nerve to say that freedom won. I will provide quotes from the piece to show why I formed this opinion. Some background information first "Morse and Giron both voted in favor of the legislation, signed into law by Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) in March, which requires background checks for all firearm purchases and bans ammunition magazines over 15 rounds." I'm honestly not surprised when I read that all of the outrage is because of background checks. All this law says if you buy guns you need a background check that's it, I personally would have gone much further then that, what are these gun lover so afraid of? I don't get it, what are they so scared of? Are all gun owners criminals? That's what is seems like to me, because they are afraid of some background checks.By the way I don't think all gun owners are criminals I was just trying to make a point. The problem is that most sensible gun owners are not against background checks most of the polls show that. However the problem is that NRA and the Koch Brothers are against anything that may hurt the profits of the gun manufacturers. This is another reason why we need to regulate how Political Action Committee or PAC's spend their money because the piece also said that "The NRA spent heavily on the recall effort, reporting at least $360,000 and funneling unspecified dollars through its nonprofit arm. The billionaire conservative Koch brothers also entered the fray, using their advocacy group Americans For Prosperity to target Morse and Giron. Due to the organization's nonprofit status, AFP also did not have to report its spending to the Federal Elections Commission." Our Politics is run by money and in my opinion that's the reason why we are losing our democracy to these billionaires and corporations and my fear is that politicians will learn the wrong lessons from this elections and not fight for sensible gun regulations because they are afraid of the NRA. Most politicans are all cowards so they will not fight for sensible guns regulations.

The piece lists another example that the NRA and the Koch's stole this election from the people "A get-out-the-vote canvasser for Giron, who requested anonymity out of safety concerns, said gun rights activists also engaged in "extreme voter intimidation" at polling centers in Pueblo on Tuesday."We had to call the police on a van of four huge guys staking out our staging location, the canvasser told HuffPost. "Volunteers are being followed, threatened, having their pictures taken and yelled at. We're now being told that it's bad enough to call 911 immediately." This is according to someone that was there at the time and I'm not saying that the NRA or the Koch Bothers sent these nut jobs out there in order to intimidate potential voters, these people could have done this on there own but these people that did this are anti American and they missed the whole point of our great nation. "A Quinnipiac poll released last month found that 82 percent of Colorado voters supported expanded background checks for gun sales. But respondents were split down the middle on the 15-round magazine limit." Most people in a favor of background checks and gun manufacturers oops I meant the NRA don't give a damn what the people say about that.

What made me mad was the NRA then released a condescending statement about their "victory" and it said that "The people of Colorado Springs sent a clear message to the Senate leader that his primary job was to defend their rights and freedoms and that he is ultimately accountable to them -- his constituents, and not to the dollars or social engineering agendas of anti-gun billionaires" the anti-gun billionaires is in reference to Michael Bloomberg the mayor of NYC and I don't agree with Bloomberg on everything but I do agree with him on this issue. So what do we progressives do about this issue? Do we give up? Or do we keep on fight the NRA and the Koch bothers? If you've been reading my blog for a while then you already know the answer to these questions. We need to keep fighting in NRA if we don't then the whole country loses because we will be flooded with more and more guns and more and more Americans will die because of gun violence. Come on progressives keep up the good fight, we need to win this fight!

Link to the piece: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/10/colorado-recall-results_n_3903209.html?utm_hp_ref=politics 

Our Government is owned by Corporations we need Campaign Finance Reform!

Constitutional Convention 1787

One of the very few points that both conservatives and progressives can agree upon is that there is way too much corporate money in our politics and lobbyists that represent the corporate interests have bought our government. The government does not represent the American people's interest anymore instead they represent the corporations interest. I'm not just referring to just the banks, I'm referring to all corporations private health insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, the private military contractors (PMCs) and I'm sure I could name more corporations who own a share of our government but I think that my readers get the point. I personally think that the only way that we can try and fix this major problem is to have a Constitutional amendment in order to ban corporate money in our politics. I know that it would next to impossible for congress to ever propose this Constitutional Amendment because they are the ones that are bought by the corporations, but we have another option which is a Constitutional Convention which is in Article V of the United States Constitution, the exact language is;

"The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate."  

(http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/constitution/article-v.html)

See, all we would need to 34 states and we can get a Constitutional Convention

To simplify it we would need two-thirds or 34 states to ask for a Constitutional Convention in order to get one and that way we can change the Constitution in order get the amendment to finally get corporate money out of our politics and get our country back from these corporations. As everyone knows the reason why we have unlimited corporate money in our politics is because of the Citizen's United ruling. To me the Citizen's United ruling is one of the worst that the Supreme Court has handed down since the Dred Scott case. If you know your history you will know what the Dred Scott case held, I'm not getting into it in this entry, just Google Dred Scott. Anyway if you don't know the Citizen's United case, this is the infamous case that held that "that corporations and unions can not constitutionally be prohibited from promoting the election of one candidate over another candidate." (http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf) In other words as Mitt Romney once infamously said "Corporations are people my friend" This Supreme Court ruling has destroyed our country and allowed corporations to completely take over our government.



See, Conservatives and Progressives can agree on something.

So what can we as progressives do? Well my answer is to go to the states where progressives and conservatives can agree and we as a country can fight for this amendment in order to finally rid ourselves of the blight of the Citizen's United ruling and make our politicians work for us the people again, like it was always meant to be. One final point that I would like to make for this post is to the conservative politicians that think that Corporations are people as Mitt Romney said, do you men really think that the founding fathers really wanted corporations to run our government? There is no way that you so called men can really believe that, you republican politicians are just corporate robots that take the corporate money and crush your political opponents, and which is regular people like myself who have ideas for our great country can't run for office because we don't have the money for a political campaign and that is the saddest part of this.