Liberal is not a dirty word

What liberals are not

By raulito

The word liberal has received a bad rap among the conservatives and there are a lot of Americans out there who are misinformed and ignorant and will believe anything they hear on Fox News or what Rush Bouncy Bouncy Lindbaugh tells them.

I will tell you what LIBERALS are not:

We don’t believe in torturing our prisoners of war and denying them a fair trial.

We don’t take the country to war for the profit motives of the oil companies under the fabricated excuses and lies our government tells us and the world to go to war.

We don’t invade a foreign country, destroy their bridges and infra-structure to occupy their land to secure the oil interests, then we don’t need to spend billions of dollars repairing their bridges and infra-structure while ours collapse at home.

We don’t take away all regulations and laws that put some control on the banking and insurance industries for the mistaken ideology that they will do just fine without the government regulations. We don’t believe that the marketplace will correct itself and the law of reason and fair play will keep insurance companies honest.

We don’t believe that our President should be less intelligent than most of us, on the contrary, we want our President to be articulate, educated, pragmatic and above all not arrogant.

We don’t believe that government is the problem, only when it is in the hands of the Republicans does it become a problem.

We don’t believe in TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS because if you give tax incentives, subsidies and make concessions to the rich, they will hoard it and it never percolates down to the middle class and the poor.

We don’t believe that lobbyists are good for democracy. Why? Because they interfere by applying influence and pressure on the representatives the constituents elected to look out for their interests, not those of the lobbyists.

We don’t believe that this country is a Christian nation but a secular one and we are the most outspoken supporters of the Constitution in this respect. We know that the Founding Fathers were not in for favoring one religion over another or even the lack of one. Most signatories to the Declaration of Independence were either agnostics or Deists and the ones who were religious were the most adamant supporters of the concept of separation of church and state.

We don’t believe that you are looked upon God more favorably if you insert a penis in a vagina. Nor do we believe that the rights of people who are different than we are should be denied systematically because it does not fit our religious ideology.

We don’t think that being born on one side or the other of a particular river or body of water makes you any better or superior. Nor do we believe in white supremacy.

We don’t think that America is WASPH, (white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, Heterosexual) America is built upon the concept of the melting pot where we celebrate the differences and diversity, that is one of our most precious values. “All men are created equal”

In case you think the word LIBERAL, PROGRESSIVE, DEMOCRAT has a negative connotation.

Is this what you want for America?

Why do uneducated, poor, low class wingnuts defend the rich?

DEFEND THE RICH? I DON’T THINK SO

By Raulito

Why do these uneducated, low class, ignorant wingnuts defend the very rich and the corporations?

I have often asked myself this very question. For the life of me I can’t figure it out. They repeat these mantras of repudiation of SOCIALISM when they belong to a group or a class within our society that would most likely suffer from giving to the wealthy and taking it from the poor and middle class.

They, in their blissful ignorance think that SOCIALISM is a dirty word, anti-American, unpatriotic, detrimental and an insult. Yet they may be collecting SOCIAL SECURITY and take advantage of MEDICARE.

I have always maintained that the FREE ENTERPRISE SYSTEM is the best economic model.
But I have always made it a point to say that FREE ENTERPRISE needs regulations and some kind of set of measures and laws. In the absence of these, FREE ENTERPRISE gets out of control. Why? Because the profit motive is propelled by greed and greed has no conscience.

A lot of these people will tell you that they believe in smaller government, less regulations, a return to the do nothing model. They so vehemently embrace Reagan’s concept that “GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM” and that “TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS” is a sustainable and fair model. We have seen that time and again this is just a bunch of bull shit. In the absence of regulations, the rich become greedier and hurt the middle class and the poor. If you give tax cuts and incentives to the rich, they will just hoard it and it does not trickle down. Can you honestly tell me that this bank and insurance bail out did anything other than save their asses and allow them to keep their high, undeserved salaries and bonuses?

I ask you this question, and if you can honestly say that you defend their right to benefit and enrich themselves at the expense of the majority, then I would say to you, you are perfectly correct. But just remember that in order to have an opinion, you have to be well informed and to be able to express that opinion you also have to be relatively coherent, state your views in concise, correct English or you will not be able to get any validation from me. If you can do this, you may still find me disagreeing with you, but I will respect you and I will respect your opinions.

You just can’t go to a Town Hall meeting and spew a bunch of meaningless slogans, do it disruptively and interfering with the right of free speech of others. If you do that then you are a FUCKING MORON, A WING-NUT TEABAGGER PIECE OF SHIT.

Boy Scouts are homophobic

LAPD Ends Relationship with Boy Scouts, Cites Anti-Gay Policy
by Kilian Melloy
Monday Dec 28, 2009

A youth program associated with the Los Angeles Police Department will no longer be affiliated with the Boy Scouts of America, due to the BSA’s policy of excluding gays, atheists, and agnostics.

The Explorer’s Program, which the Boy Scouts created in 1949, has served since 1962 as a means of giving youth interested in law enforcement practical experience by allowing them to assist the LAPD with crowd monitoring, clerical work, and other tasks. But now the program is set to be re-vamped, dropping both its old name and its last ties to the BSA, which has provided insurance to participants through its Learning for Life program, reported an article posted Dec. 22 at Daybreeze.com.

But the Boy Scouts’ policy of excluding gays, atheists, and agnostics clashes with the city’s non-discrimination policies, and the Police Commission has determined that the LAPD will no longer associate with Learning for Life. The new program will commence on Jan. 1, 2010, and will rely in part on donations.

"It’s bittersweet in the sense that the Boy Scouts or Learning for Life have been part of this for a long time--in name only--but the LAPD is committed to a better program and we can do that without having discrimination," Police Commissioner Alan Skobin said.

Openly gay Police Commissioner Robert Salzman said that the new program, which he has helped devise, would be "as good or--I’m confident--better than the program it replaces."

Continued Salzman, "The Boy Scouts are clear that they discriminate based on sexual orientation, gender identity and religion, and the result of that is I could not be active on the Boy Scouts."

The Boy Scouts have defended their exclusion policy, taking the battle to the U.S. Supreme Court, which upheld the group’s right, as a private organization, to determine who may belong. But the group has continued to generate controversy, since it is in some cases entwined with city programs.

The Boy Scouts’ chief executive, Bob Mazzuca, told the Associated Press recently that, "We do have folks who say we probably should rethink this." The Boy Scouts of America will celebrate its centennial in February, 2010; said Mazzuca, "We can agree to disagree on a particular issue and still come together for the common good."

For all the organization’s emphasis on leadership and ethical integrity, however, Mazzuca indicated that the Scouts were in no hurry to update their policies. "This issue is going on in every nook and cranny of our country," Mazzuca said. "We’re just not at the point where we’re going to be leading on this."

Said Lambda Legal’s Kevin Cathcart, referring to the 2000 Supreme Court decision, "The world has changed immensely in these past nine years and the Scouts appear not to have changed at all."

Said David Niose, who serves as the president of The American Humanist Association, "The Boy Scouts are synonymous with American values and patriotism--like motherhood and apple pie. By excluding atheists and secular Americans, they are essentially saying we cannot be good citizens."

It’s not just social attitudes that are changing; how people connect, stay in contact, and influence one another’s views also are in flux, as young people grow up with cell phones, text messaging, and the Internet. Said Mazzuca, "We’ve been slow to realize the changing landscape of how people form their opinions." The AP article said that BSA is now delving into social media such as Twitter and Facebook to plug into youth culture.

"One of the magic parts of this adventure is that none of the bedrock things that made us who we are have to change for us to be more relevant and dynamic," Mazzuca said.

http://www.edgenewengland.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=&sc2=news&sc3=&id=100459

A couple of weeks ago, I went shopping at a Publix grocery store and before you enter the store the Boy Scouts had a table set up and they were selling goodies. They asked me if I wanted to buy and I looked at the mom behind the table and said: “I will never buy anything to support a group that discriminates against gays” and kept on going. I heard her jaw as it hit the floor.

Mr. Bob Mazzuca obviously does not seem to see discrimination as a problem and that it is one of the most integral parts of teaching youngsters to be tolerant and celebrate diversity, just like baseball, apple pie, this is one of our American values.

He will think differently if it was the Boy Scouts who were being discriminated against. But as more and more people and organizations repudiate discrimination and they begin to see their support languish, they will change their tune.

A small reminder:

Bush traveled the country in the early days of his presidency, promoting his tax cut plans as hugely beneficial to small-business people and families of modest means. This was more deceit. The tax cuts would go overwhelmingly to the very rich.

The president would give the wealthy and the powerful virtually everything they wanted. He would throw sand into the regulatory apparatus and help foster the most extreme income disparities since the years leading up to the Great Depression. Once again he was lighting a fire. This time the flames would engulf the economy and, as with Iraq, bring catastrophe.

And they are now accusing President Obama of trying to institute socialism in America. Socialism is what the Republicans successfully accomplished in the years before Obama….only the rich and powerful corporations were the recipients at the expense of the poor and the middle class…REDISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH HAS ALREADY SUCCESSFULLY TAKEN PLACE IN AMERICA…FROM THE POOR AND THE MIDDLE CLASS TO THE VERY RICH…THANK YOU REPUBLICANS.