Poorest American's don't get Medicaid! (Rant Post)

WTF? Wow just open the government back up GOP!

Today is day three of the government shutdown that the far right wing of the republican party has caused, we now have republicans trying to shift the blame to the democrats because they refuse to negotiate with the hostage takers or better known as the republicans. The democrats should not negotiate with hostage takers, so the republicans are 100% wrong as they usually are I will be the first one to bash the democrats when they deserve it but they are 100% right in this case. I'm really mad after I read a article in the New York Times called "Millions of Poor Are Left Uncovered by Health Law" the reason why I'm so mad is because the whole point of the Medicaid expansion in the Affordable Care Act is to try and insure the poorest of Americans who can't afford private health insurance. Instead what do we see from the conservative states? They reject Medicaid expansion and they doom the poorest people in their state to not have any health insurance. That makes me so angry, the reason why is because I live in the state of New Jersey and we are expanding Medicaid next year and I'm a college student and I can't afford private insurance so now because of the Affordable Care Act now I can get Medicaid and I have President Obama to thank for that. I'm fortunate that I live in a state that is expanding Medicaid, now I kind of feel bad because what about the people that live in states that are not expanding Medicaid? They are out of luck I guess because millions of people that live in those states are going to continue to die thanks to the republicans in these states.

Every American deserves health insurance! 

What frustrates me is that the federal government is paying for the Medicaid expansion, it's not like the Affordable Care Act is making the states pay for the Medicaid expansion, I would be against making the states pay for the expansion. The article says that "The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years." After 2016 these states would have to pay for 10% of the cost of the expansion, why don't those conservative republicans take the money for the Medicaid expansion? I really don't understand how heartless these conservative republicans are, every person in America deserves some type of health insurance no matter if they are very wealthy or they are the poorest people in this country. Most of these states are in the deep south and except for Arkansas all of these states have rejected Medicaid expansion under ACA. The New York Times says that "Every state in the Deep South, with the exception of Arkansas, has rejected the expansion. Opponents of the expansion say they are against it on exclusively economic grounds, and that the demographics of the South — with its large share of poor blacks — make it easy to say race is an issue when it is not. In Mississippi, Republican leaders note that a large share of people in the state are on Medicaid already, and that, with an expansion, about a third of the state would have been insured through the program. Even supporters of the health law say that eventually covering 10 percent of that cost would have been onerous for a predominantly rural state with a modest tax base."

I'm not sure whether race is a factor or not in the reasoning why these southern states are rejecting the Medicaid expansion, part of me thinks so, however I will give them the benefit of the doubt. In Mississippi a large percentage of their people are already on Medicaid which is the reasoning the Republicans have in why they reject Medicare expansion and they do not want to pay for the 10% of the expansion after 2016. Really? They can't pay the 10% after 2016? Why? Because the rich in the south need more tax cuts? If that's the case that's an outrage because these people still need insurance and no matter what they deserve respect and these conservative republicans do not respect these poor people because if they did they would take the money for the expansion and they would make sure that those poor people were covered under Medicaid. “Any additional cost in Medicaid is going to be too much,” said State Senator Chris McDaniel, a Republican, who opposes expansion." I don't know this man but I bet that he's against any tax increases on the wealthy and corporations in order to pay for the expansion. If you can tell from the tone of this post I'm disgusted by these republicans that are rejecting Medicaid expansion and letting their poor people go without any health insurance, yes I'm damned disgusted.

My question is what kind of country do we want America to be? Do we want a country that will neglect their poor and sick because they don't want to pay 10% of the cost of an expansion of Medicaid that will cover poor Americans? Do we want to let heartless conservatives control our domestic policy making here in America? Because if that's the type of country that most Americans want then we've misunderstood the meaning of America. However I know that most Americans are not like these heartless conservatives that claim that they can't expand Medicaid because they don't want to pay 10% of the cost are the same conservatives that are in favor of fighting two wars that cost us trillions of dollars and giving subsidies to massive oil companies that cost us the tax payer billions and billions of dollars. They are in favor of that but they are not in favor of expanding Medicaid. How dare they! What nerve do they have in rejecting those funds that are supposed to help the poorest Americans get Medicaid in order to get the minimal care that they deserve. Ten fucking percent that's the reason why they rejected Medicaid expansion how dare they!

Postscript: Yes I was very made when I wrote this blog post today and I don't regret anything that I wrote here, thanks for reading and let me know what you think. Now back to the government shutdown, I saw a couple of more covers from the New York Daily News and Time Magazine which I loved and I will post here.  

The 2nd Amendment is a Relic of the 18th Century!

Yesterday was the Navy Years Shooting in Washington DC and it's another outrageous crime that should have never happened but it did, and why is that? The reason why this happened is the lack of sensible gun regulation and I place the blame on the Republican Party, Conservatives and the NRA and the gun manufacturers. Democrats share part of the blame as well because they don't fight hard enough when it comes to sensible gun regulation. I know that's a lot of people at fault however it's the truth. Many Americans have the misguided idea that the founding fathers were always right and they were infallible and that the United States Constitution is a document inspired by Jesus (Yes the Jesus from the bible) As you can see on the right a painting of Jesus Christ bring the Constitution to the founders. For the record the founding fathers were not infallible in fact they were human that make mistakes just like the rest of us. As a example look at the Three-Fifths Compromise in the Constitution. In Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons." This compromise counted black people that were slaves at the time as three-fifths of a person and they were not legally a citizen of the United States. Everyone admits that this was a big mistake and the founders clearly made this mistake. Now getting to the point of this blog post is the real history of the 2nd amendment of the US Constitution. The 2nd amendment has been perverted and used by conservatives and NRA in order to put more guns on the streets in order to make more money for the gun  manufacturers. Conservatives always say that the 2nd amendment has always been considered a individual right that's wrong let's look at the real history.

In 1876 the Supreme Court ruled in a case United States v. Cruikshank and the case held that "The right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence" and limited the applicability of the Second Amendment to the federal government." This case proves that that the 2nd amendment has not always been considered a individual right and in my opinion the individual right theory of the 2nd amendment is a fallacy, and I know about the District of Colombia vs. Heller case in 2008 now states that the 2nd amendment is a individual right, but the reasons why were some of the dumbest I've ever heard. I talked about the DC v. Heller case in a previous blog post last week and the details are on there check it out if you have not already. So to me the individual right that is in the 2nd amendment is just a theory with no basis in fact. If you've followed me on Twitter (@TheMadMan31686) you've seen this tweet:

The 2nd amendment is a relic of the 18th century we should not be making policy in 21st century America (cont) http://t.co/dqbEyCwoMy
— Angel Rivera (@TheMadMan31686) September 17, 2013

This has been my opinion for most of my political life and let's look at some of the reasons why the 2nd amendment is a relic of the 18th century. In the 18th century these are some of the reasons why Americans thought the right to keep and bear arms were for enabling the people to organize a militia system. participating in law enforcement deterring tyrannical government repelling invasion suppressing insurrection, allegedly including slave revolts facilitating a natural right of self-defense. All of these are not problems in the 21st century America and this point is for the conservatives that use the famous Thomas Jefferson quote "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." I've heard conservatives use this quote over and over again, and I don't think that these people understand the era that Thomas Jefferson came from. We have got to remember that in Jefferson's time America was a colony of Kingdom of England and there was a tyrannical king named King George III. Even after America gained her independence from England there was plenty of concern that America could fall into a tyrannical government once again, which is why when Jefferson's said that it made perfect sense. For conservatives to use this quote today makes no damn sense because we don't have a tyrannical government and there are no tyrants threating the United States anymore.

I don't understand the gun culture in the United States today, people want to buy more and more guns and there are more and more mass shootings where more and more innocent people die and every American should reject that. Part of the reason why Americans want more and more guns is because of all of the mass shootings Americans are afraid so in order to feel protected they buy more and more guns and that's another way that gun makers profit off all of the death that has been happening in the last six months. Another factor is the people that are called "preprers" these are the people that are preparing for the apocalypse whether it's zombies or something else these people buy millions of dollars worth of guns and ammo and store them. To me these people are nut jobs and they need lots of help. Gun makers take advantage of these poor people and make millions and millions of dollars of these people.  Simply put the gun makers are manipulated this whole debate thanks to help from the NRA to profit off of people's deaths or profit off of people's fears and to me that's not right and the NRA, the gun makers, and the conservatives have blood on their hands.

The Right Wing/Republicans are trying to start another War in Syria because of religious prophecy

This is why President Bush went into Iraq for Moron!

I know that some progressives in this country are religious, so before I start to write today's blog post, I want to say that my intent is not to offend anyone, I just want to write my honest opinion. I want to preface this post by saying that I was raised a Christian and I still believe in Jesus' teachings and he had the ideal way to live life. The reason why I don't consider myself to be a Christian today is because there are certain Christians that will use the religion in order to do outrageous things like hating homosexuals, starting wars in the middle east just because they think that the end times prophecies will come true, example is when President Bush invaded Iraq. In 2003 Bush told the French President at the time Jacques Chirac that "“Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.” (http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=haught_29_5) Whatever we do as a country can't allow these fundamentalist Christians to take the power in order to invade another country that did nothing to us in this case Syria.

Now after one long paragraph, what was my motivation for writing this post today is I saw a article on the web site therawstory.com "Fox anchor asks viewers to consider if bombing Syria is a harbinger of the Second Coming of Christ" Honestly I assumed that the "Fox anchor" would be Sean Hannity, because for one Glenn Beck is not at Fox anymore and Hannity is so into the Christianity I thought that it made sense to assume that it was Hannity. I read a little bit of the piece and I found out that the anchor was Neil Cavuto, I'm not saying that I'm surprised because all of Fox News is a propaganda outlet for the Republican party and for the Christian/Catholic Church. In my opinion Fox News is dangerous for the country because a portion of the American population takes them seriously and those people think that they are real news. They disguise their propaganda under the guise of real news and that's what makes them really dangerous. The story that I started to talk about in the beginning of this paragraph is another example of how dangerous Fox News is for the country.

Now after two paragraphs I'm finally going to talk about the article I started to talk about in the second paragraph. The article is accompanied by a video, which I will post at the end of this post, so you can check it out for yourselves. Cavuto said that "This Syria stuff is way old, I mean Old Testament old. That’s how old I’m talking about. Don’t laugh. Some biblical scholars say it’s all there in black and white." To be fair to Cavuto the Bible does talk about prophecy regarding Damascus, “This message came to me concerning Damascus: ‘Look, Damascus will disappear! It will become a heap of ruins. The cities of Aroer will be deserted. Sheep will graze in the streets and lie down unafraid. There will be no one to chase them away. The fortified cities of Israel will also be destroyed, and the power of Damascus will end. The few left in Aram will share the fate of Israel’s departed glory,’ says the Lord Almighty.” Isaiah 17:1-3 as an example, my problem with this is that these prophecies are not real, they are just stories that were told thousands of years ago just to entertain people. Then Joel Rosenberg said that "“These are prophecies more than 2,700 years old, some of them, but they have not actually been fulfilled,” Rosenberg said. “But this prophecy, as you just pointed out, talks about the complete and utter destruction of Damascus. That’s an End Times or eschatological prophecy. It’s a very sobering thought to think that a judgment of a city or a country could happen in which an entire city could be wiped out, but that is, in fact, what the Bible is predicting,” he added. “I think it’s wrong for people who teach Bible prophecies to guess — I mean, in a sense try to say for certain it’s going to happen now.”

This Joel Rosenberg guy is a fraud, because not many people would take these prophecies seriously because they were spoken 2000 years ago and it was for entertainment purposes only, and to people that take these prophecies seriously my question is why do you take these prophecies seriously? I don't get it, like I said at the beginning of this post, I was raised a Christian but I never took any of those prophecies seriously. However that's just my opinion, but I'm serious but Fox News being dangerous for this country as long as they are treated like serious news, if one day most people realize that Fox News is right wing propaganda, then I will have no problem with them because in America there are free speech rights and they have to right to say whatever they want and I as an American will defend their rights. However I'm glad that President Obama is in office now and not President Bush or else we would be going to war with Syria and we as a country can't afford that.

Link to the article: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/10/fox-anchor-asks-viewers-to-consider-if-bombing-syria-is-a-harbinger-of-the-second-coming-of-christ/

Why do Christians use their religion in order to justify their hate for Homosexuals?

Jesus Christ

I can't stop posting to this blog, but I have to write about how Christians are using their religion in order to justify their hatred for homosexuals. Before I start I want to say that I consider myself a Christian even though I'm really not practicing right now and my middle name is Jesus and my mother gave me that middle name because she is a firm believer of Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. Now I'm going to start with the Christians, first of all for the record, I'm not degenerating all Christians with this blog but only certain Christians that use their religion in order to hate other people no matter if they are gay. What's interesting to me is that Jesus does not talk about hating other people in fact it's quite the opposite Jesus talks about loving your neighbors. In Matthew chapter twenty-two verses 37-40 Jesus says that "thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40) These verses talk about loving God of course that's expected, however it also talk about loving your neighbors too. As Christians you are not supposed to hate anyone, no matter how they lead their lives. This is a hypocrisy some Christians in the religion have that really bothers me which is one of the reasons why I don't practice the faith as much as I personally think I should.



I guess Christians with tattoos are hypocrites
and they are all going to hell!

Now regarding Homosexuals in the Old Testament in the Holy Bible it says in the book of Leviticus chapter 18:22 "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." (Leviticus 18:22) and it says in 20:13 it says that "If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads" (Leviticus 20:13) Leviticus does say that Homosexuality is a sin however there are two problems with this, one Leviticus is in the old testament and the second problem is that Leviticus did not ever meet Jesus Christ who Christians believe to be the savior, the Messiah and Jesus Christ himself never directly condemned homosexuality in the Bible. To me personally as a Christian if Jesus did not condemn homosexuality that means that it was not too important to the savior Jesus Christ. Another point that I laugh every time I think about it, Christians that hate homosexuals believe Leviticus 18:22 completely however I guess that these so called Christians did not read the very next chapter of Leviticus. Chapter 19:28 says that "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor tattoo any marks upon you: I am the Lord." Every time I see Christians that hate homosexuals they always refer me to Leviticus 18:22 but they obviously did not read the very next chapter and when I bring it up most of these people just give me a blank stare like they never heard of Leviticus 19:28 before. So I guess that most Christians have never bothered reading the rest of Leviticus and that's funny to me because if you are going to believe in a religion at least know what you can and can not do.

Now the next point that I want to talk about is all of the right wing Christians that have not read the Bible at all obviously, or else they would not hate homosexuals. I've been watching a lot of conservative commentators on YouTube and I am amazed how hateful some of these people are. An example of someone like that is Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association (AFA) I've been watching some Fischer clips on YouTube and he hates homosexuals. He has blamed gays for almost all of our problems in this country. This video on the left is Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association blaming homosexuals for the economic crash. I was shocked when I saw Fischer says this because there is no proof what so ever that homosexuals was the reason why that the economic crash of 2008 happened. There are a number of factors that lead to the economic crash of 2008, however one of those factors was not homosexuals. That is the most asinine argument I've ever heard. This is not the only clip of Bryan Fischer hating on homosexuals but to me personally this one that surprised me or made me laugh the most. I'm assuming that most people that are going to read this blog know why the economic crash happened and it had nothing to do with homosexuals. 

These are going to be my final thoughts of this blog, I personally think that homosexuality is neither a good thing or a bad thing but it's not up to us as a society to judge homosexuals. What we as society should be doing is accepting of homosexuals and making sure that they have all of the rights that we do as heterosexuals. I know that this may not be popular with some people Christian or not, but if you are against my idea and you are a Christian, then you must understand that only God can judge people. If you are not God then you have no business judging anyone let alone homosexuals. If you look at the book of Matthew 7:1-2 it says that “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you." In other words if you start to judge other people then you will be judged in the same manner because you are sinning just as much as the homosexual for example.  Hell even Glenn Beck agrees with me check out this clip below.

PS: I don't think that Beck really agrees with me but he makes the argument that gays have made the point that equal rights for homosexuals is about freedom and as Beck says 

 "The Principle Of It Is Right"