Jesus or Herod, Who Do They Really Follow?

Today precious hours were wasted on the House floor debating, and passing, bill H.R. 1797; a bill that surely will be killed at the Senate.

Republican Representatives expressed their believe in saving all lives, particularly that of a zygote. Michele Bachmann who rarely speaks a coherent word gave a lecture about when a fetus feels pain as if she or anyone in her Party knows what the heck they’re talking about.

H.R. 1797 requires for a physician to conduct tests against the woman’s will to a woman that is seeking an abortion. If a physician fails to conduct these tests and performs the abortion, he or she will be disbarred and will be sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison. This bill goes against Roe v. Wade and it is unconstitutional, but that has never stopped Republicans – they are doing this all over the nation where they hold a majority of the State Congress and where the governor is a Republican.

Republicans claim that fetuses feel pain as early as 20 weeks after gestation. It matters very little that JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association) has determined that there is no proof of this and what’s more, they believe that fetuses do not have the necessary physical components to feel pain until about the 30^th gestational week (28^th developmental week).  An article published by JAMA - Fetal Pain - states: "Although this legislation would not affect most US abortions because only 1.4% are performed at or after 21 weeks’ gestational age,this legislation raises important scientific, clinical, ethical, and policy issues."  Only 1.4% of abortions are performed on pregnancies over 21 weeks, and I am inclined to believe that these pregnancies were ended for greater reasons than not wanting to carry the pregnancy to term.  You can read the study by subscribing to JAMA and searching for Fetal Pain or by clicking the following link after you have subscribed. http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=201429

What I find so amazing and hypocritical is that all these Republicans claim to be defenders of life, shouting that ALL life is sacred and the usual rhetoric used by the fanatical Christians that are part of the GOP. I respect their views but how do they justify their actions towards the living?

These Christians are against helping the needy, against the well-being of the poor fighting with nails and teeth for all Americans to have health insurance because it is their belief that if we have Universal insurance then insurance companies will hurt and disappear and for them, that’s a greater sin than a human being not being able to go to a doctor because lack of funds or insurance. The fact that a living, breathing child can’t go to a pediatrician because the parents can’t afford one is not their problem and they won’t lose any sleep over it – after all, that child is not a fetus.

These Christians for whom ALL life is precious, advocate for the death penalty even when it has been proven that many of the men sitting on death row are innocent and if executed, an innocent man would have been basically murdered by the system. That is a price these Christians are willing to pay, who cares if an innocent man is killed if they get to kill ten guilty ones?

According to Gallup, 75% of Conservatives, 80% of Republicans, 47% of Liberals, 45% of Democrats, 60% of Moderates and 65% of Independents support the death penalty. Please notice that Liberals and Democrats are the ones where the majority is against this barbaric practice. How can Republicans “love” life so much for the unborn and hate the one living? This is because they wholeheartedly believe in the scriptures. Matthew 5:38-39 says: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” As usual, they pick and choose what they accept from the Bible and they picked ‘an eye for an eye’ and ignored the part they don’t like: ‘turning the other cheek.’

The bottom line for Republicans is the mighty buck, not the almighty. They oppose universal health care because it will financially hurt insurance companies. They oppose helping the needy because the government is spending too much on the indigent. They oppose immigrants because they are poor and they approve of the death penalty because the faster you kill them the less money we spend on them – they do not know that it is far more expensive to put someone to death than to keep them alive.

I will never understand how the Conservative/Republican mind works. They claim to be Christians and want the word “God” everywhere yet they do not practice what Jesus preached, actually if Jesus were alive today they would think of him as a Communist, Socialist, Liberal scum; they follow more closely Herod than they do Jesus.

I Love My Mother

It’s been a very tough couple of months for me. I lost my job in April and have sent out hundreds of resumes for which I have received zero replies and I’m finding myself struggling trying to make ends meet; just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse my mother fell ill and has been in the hospital ever since. My mother’s illness has helped me put things in perspective, losing my job is nothing compared to the prospect of losing my mother.

Doctors have been doing every test imaginable and can’t find the cause of her illness. Her arms, once spotless and pink are now full of bruises to the point that it’s painful to see, even for the nurses that are used to this kind of things. I know that the day will come when my mother will no longer be with us on this realm but I am not ready for that yet.

My sister lives abroad and came two weeks ago to be with my mother. She is my mother’s little girl and the apple of her eyes yet her presence didn’t improve my mother’s demeanor, which has been eroding on a daily basis.

I can’t believe that she was fine and happy on mother’s day and two days later she began on this slippery slope. She has lost a lot of weight, and justifiably so she is very depressed. Today, my sister is returning to her home and as she was saying goodbye my mother said a final goodbye… she is giving up, she has lost hope of ever returning home to me. We were crying, it wasn’t what we were expecting her to do.

I am not ready for her departure and I realized that today. Doctors still don’t know what’s wrong with her and they’re telling us her vital signs are all good yet she is weakening each day. Her once rosy cheeks are now pale and not even the mention of her furry baby, who she raised on her bosom since birth and who means the world to her, motivates her…

My mother had and has many flaws, like all of us; she drives me crazy most of the times but I want her to keep driving me crazy – it’s part of my world. I love her and I can’t accept that she will not overcome this hurdle, I refuse to believe it; I refuse to accept it, at least not yet.

She has been a father and a mother to my sister and me. I owe so much to her! Growing up she never tried to change me, or the way I perceived life. Quite the contrary, she has embraced it and she admires me for it. The best compliment I’ve ever received was from my mother when she told me that I was the only person she knows that truly loves life. I will never forget that day, it’s the most beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me and it fills my heart that it came from my mother’s lips.

I know that most of you will think I am too old to say this, but I need my mother, I love my mother.

I haven’t written in a while and now you know why. I don’t know when my next entry will be, I just hope that it is soon and that it will be because my mother is back home, happy and once again driving me nuts.

A Rice to the Right and a Rice to the Left

Nine-Eleven, that horrific morning back in 2001 that every American has engraved in their memory until the day they die. Unfortunately, there are those on the right that have no recollection of what happened between that day and March 20, 2003. Amazingly, this people suffer for a rare and incurable case of amnesia: Extreme Whiteness Amnesia. This ailment severely affects white people with low IQs, religious fanatics and bigots. 

For months now we have been tortured with their cries about the “Benghazi scandal.” The Right has gone as far as claiming that Benghazi is the worst terrorist attack they've seen in their entire life, that Watergate pales in comparison, because the horrible, unforgivable offense of publicly saying, less than a week after the attack, that it might have been in response to the offensive video that had Muslims up in arms is the worse lie they have been subjected to. 

That communication given by Susan Rice, the United States Ambassador to the UN and at the time candidate for the Secretary of State position, is what has the Right so upset, wasting thousand of dollars in unnecessary hearings, wasting time and diverting the public’s attention to the fact that Congress is doing absolutely nothing for them. The whole thing is a charade, but we have to endure watching these morons act so arrogantly while saying that the Obama administration “lied to the American people” and it is an offense for which they want to impeach the president, again, since they can't lynch him as they would have done in the "good ol' days". 

I say Americans suffer from severe amnesia because they have erased from their memories the lies that their beloved presidents have said to the people. Their demigod, Ronald Reagan, lied through his teeth when he was caught in the Iran-Contra scandal and George W. Bush, not only knowingly lied to the people but, planned the invasion that he sold to the American people with false pretenses and which have cost us our reputation and thousand of lives from both countries. But for them, that has been forgotten. 

Today, most of us that have managed to escape the apparently highly contagious amnesia, remember how the Bush administration neglected going after those that supposedly attacked us and concentrated in completing the plan that he, Rumsfeld and Cheney had forged long before 9/11 and the invasion. There are documents that proof the invasion was planned, that the administration – and that includes every top official from Bush to the Secretary of the Press and the then National Security Advisor – who later became the Secretary of State (perhaps as a reward for participating in the lies) Condoleezza Rice lied to incite the public into going to war. One Memo dated July 27, 2001 was from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice and the other one was dated November 27, 2001 again from Rumsfeld to General Tommy Franks. Later Condoleezza Rice went on public television to help instill fear in the American Public with her infamous “Mushroom Cloud” comment.

I can’t help but thinking of the two Rice women; similar situations, both women were offered the position of Secretary of State; one woman, lied to help perpetrate a crime a lie for which thousands of lives were lost and the other one, who after the sinister said that the attack was caused by a video and whose comment cost not one single life. One is highly regarded by the Republicans and the other one almost accused of treason and who to this day is a victim of a Republican witch-hunt. On September 16, 2012 Susan Rice on the request of the President, appeared at various news forums to provide a statement about what had transpired in Benghazi on September 11. Her talking points were given to her by the Intelligence Community, information that was also shared with Congress, and which cost this woman her chance to become the next Secretary of State. To this day, the Right is trying to destroy her impeccable career at the expense of the American public; these useless trials are costing us thousands of dollars. Remember, in case you have the disease, what’s being investigated and on trial is not the tragic event but what Susan Rice said on September 16, 2012.

The Right might play stupid but they’re far from it, that is why they are not outraged by the actual attack and they never bring that up to the light because what happened on that fateful night was mainly their fault, after all their constant negations and demands for austerity is what allowed this crime to happen. It was their budget cuts that reduced the funds for the embassy’s security, forcing the embassy to hire local security for their protection instead of our own and that ‘s what allowed the embassy to be broken into and the ambassador and three members of his staff killed. The only ones to blame for those deaths are the Republicans and Teapers in Congress.

What happened in Benghazi was horrible, no one is disputing that, but embassies have been attacked before and I can assure you that somewhere in time, there will be other embassies attacks somewhere in the world. But Susan Rice statement should not be on trial, not until we bring to justice the top members of the previous administration for crimes against humanity, for lying to the American people, for the unnecessary death of many of our young men and women as well as the Iraqis based on a fabricated lie to invade a country to satisfy their greed for oil. Let’s bring Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice to justice and then and only then we should talk about Benghazi. This is owed to the American people and to the world that have been demanding justice for a very long time.

I'm Resolved to Steal (IRS)

I am a Liberal, a Democrat Liberal but before being a political person, I try to be a righteous individual and I will not do what Conservatives do: excuse whatever wrongs those in my Party are caught doing. I said “caught doing” because I am certain that all politicians are crooks, some more than others, but not all have been caught, yet.

The Cincinnati IRS scandal is one of the latest political scandals to hit the airwaves last week. Republicans and obviously the Tea Party – who was the IRS’ target – are all up in arms about it and demanding for heads to roll, and rightly so.

I’ve heard that the reason the IRS targeted Tea Party’s organizations was because after President Obama was elected, and before the elections of 2010, there was an overwhelming number of Tea Party organizations applying for section 501(c)(1), which would provide them tax exempt status and having so many applications, it made their job easier to pin point those that seemed to be political in nature rather than organizations involved in social welfare or charities. Chris Hayes, from MSNBC, showed a graph where you could see that the number of political organizations doubled while the IRS employees decreased in that period of time.

According to many news groups and even on publications so reputable such as Times, the scrutinized organizations applied for 501(c)(4) and if this is true, then the IRS had every right to investigate them because section 501(c)(4) its for organizations whose primary activity is social welfare and not political ones.

Now, why would these political organizations apply for this exemption when there is one that will allow them to do everything they want, legally, and with the tax exemptions they seek?

I understand that for members of the Tea Party what they are doing, in their minds, is for the social welfare of the citizens but anyone with an ounce of gray matter can identify their activities are political, not social. They campaign to have members of their Party elected to office. What social welfare or charity do they engage in to claim exemption on 501(c)(4)? What they should have filed under was 527(e)(2).

What’s wrong here is that the IRS targeted them, but then again, if you have 500 applications and 450 are from the same Party chances are that there will be more applications selected for audit or questioning than from any other group, it’s simple math. But the IRS admits to look for organization’s names that had “Patriot” or “Tea Party” in it, and that is selective scrutiny and no matter how you slice it, it is wrong.

I doubt the President or any other member of Congress – from any Party – were informed of what the IRS was doing. One must keep in mind that the IRS has a special relationship with government, almost as loving as with us mere mortals. While they enjoy almost every perk government officials do, they are not part of the government as the FBI or the CIA is.

I blame Lois Lerner, the person in charge of overseeing the Department of Tax-exemptions. She should have been aware of what was going on and stop it. As I said before, the IRS was right in investigating the applications because they were applying under the wrong section, but targeting a group based on the name of their organizations was and is wrong.

One way to fix this is to end, once and for all, Citizen’s United. Citizen’s United has made of an already corrupt political system a mockery of democracy, where individuals cannot compete with the funds provided by these organizations to support their candidates or agenda and where sooner rather than later, the wealthy will be the ones placing their puppets in the Oval Office and when they do this, it will be the end of America as we know it.

The political party should provide the campaign funds to their candidates and this amount should be a set amount for all candidates of all Parties, as an example a Republican candidate will be given 100 thousand for his or her campaign, the rival will be given the same amount by his/her Party. Ads should be provided by the media, free of charge and as a tax deductible for the media and providing equal space and/or air to each of the candidates. We must make the system work if we are to continue being “We the People.”