Why I can't celebrate on this Fourth of July

Wow has it been four months since I last wrote a post? It's been too long, anyway I hope that everyone has a very happy 4th of July. However I personally don't have many reasons to celebrate our country today. I know that maybe Blasphemy to the right wing in this country that celebrate the fourth of July no matter what's going on in America. Today the United States has turned into the United Corporate States of America, our government is totally owned by muliti-national corporations and we the people of this country are sitting around wondering what's going to happen next on "American Idol". Some of the serious issues facing this country is that the Supreme Court is giving away all of the people's rights in order to give them to corporations. This Supreme Court has according to AF:L-CIO the Roberts Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Chamber of Commerce 72% of the time, as you can see on the chart on the right. Why would I celebrate a holiday that honors America, when one of her institutions is actively screwing over the American people?

The American government has since the Bush years been killing millions of people overseas with their drone strikes and not telling us why they are doing this and who have they killed. Keeping secrets from the American people who employ the people in the government by the way is unacceptable and Anti American and possibly treasonous. For the record I do understand that the American government has to keep certain things secret from it's people but secrets that are embarrassing to the government can't be hidden under the guise of "national security" According to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism since January of 2014 President Obama has killed more than 2,400 people under his drone program in the middle east. As you can see on this chart on your top left. Look I'm not saying that all of the people that are killed under this drone program are innocent, however America is not supposed to kill people without giving a suspected terrorist a trial and convict him, to me most Americans have forgotten this important ideal.

There are many other reasons why I can't celebrate the fourth of July today, if I go on and on I'll be writing all night long, however I will list one more reason the anti-immigrant protests in Murrieta. They are protesting those poor kids that are coming across the border like these kids are the problem in this country. Those kids deserve a chance to stay in America. That's the whole point of this once great country. These "Americans" never read what it says on the Statue of Liberty. We are supposed to be a great country that accepts anyone and everyone to give them a second chance. Instead we got a group of people that only care about themselves and their perceived interests. So these are my thoughts on this fourth of July I do not want to be a party pooper but I just needed to get this off my chest.

Links to my sources:
http://www.aflcio.org/Blog/Economy/The-Market-Isn-t-Free-if-the-Refs-Consistently-Rule-for-One-Side
http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2014/01/23/more-than-2400-dead-as-obamas-drone-campaign-marks-five-years/

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.  

Racism in America is not dead!

Miss America 2014 Nina Davuluri

I hope that everyone had a good weekend, I had a good weekend and I unplugged from politics and I needed to break. Now I'm plugged myself back in and I see a story that pissed me off. This post has nothing to do with politics but with the Miss America Pageant. On Sunday night Nina Davuluri, Miss New York, was crowned the winner the 2014 Miss America Pageant. She is the first contestant of Indian descent to be crowned Miss America. I before I continue to write about this I want to say that I hate Beauty Pageants, I personally think that Beauty Pageants promotes the worst stereotypes in our society, for example the only way that women can be beautiful if they are skinny and full of makeup and with fake hair and eyelashes. That's just my opinion on Beauty Pageants. However the winner of the pageant Nina Davuluri did not deserve the racism that she has been getting since she won the pageant, and I'm ashamed that I'm apart of a country that still treats people in this fashion. Which is why I'm writing this post today, just to let people know that not all Americans are this ignorant and racist. Now I saw some tweets from people that are clearly ignorant and racist even though some of them claim that they are not racist but they will still send out a racist tweet. Here are some as a example:   

So miss america is a terrorist
— Nick Pizzo (@pizzo_nick) September 16, 2013

#MissAmerica ummm wtf?! Have we forgotten 9/11?
— anthony ridgeway (@anthonytkr) September 16, 2013

There are many more that I saw but these are a couple of examples of racist tweets and/or ignorant tweets that I saw. Another reason why I'm writing about this today is because regardless what conservatives say racism is not dead in the country. In fact racism is alive and well. Just because we elected a black President does not mean that racism is dead and we are all loving of each other. So the question is what can we do about this? Is there anything we can do about that? In my opinion we can do something about this we can condemn these people and show them how wrong they are. Will that change anything? Probably not, however these people should be embarrassed of what they tweeted out and these are the type of people that we don't need in our country. We don't need this type of hatred and ignorance in our country. America is the country of immigration and as it says on the Statue of Liberty the last lines of a poem by Emma Lazarus It says: 'Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breath free/ The wretched refuse of your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'