Gadding and Grandstanding

So this is what democracy comes to these days. This week, Senator John McCain piped in on an apparently good-natured exchange between Senators Leiberman and Franken. For all intents and purposes, it appeared Leiberman knew he'd be denied extra time when he asked for it on the floor of the senate.



Within 24 hours, Jon Stewart had found video of a young McCain sticking it to Senator Byrd in the same way. This in spite of McCain's insistence that it's "never happened before". Now, you wonder why so many young people don't take you seriously, Senator McCain. The gentlemen from Connecticut and Wisconsin seem to be more grown up than the crop coming out of Arizona.

Does anyone in the senate really get traction with this kind of blatant grandstanding? That's when I remember the tea party crowd and realize that they do, of course. Simply stated, there will always be an ignorant fringe in any group. But why the heck would you play to it? The broad message of the tea party groups is that they aren't their brother's keeper or his ATM. They don't want progress. They want to live in that wild-west mentality where it's every man for himself and the rule of law is the gun. Why on God's green Earth would you enlist their help or approval? The polls even show them as fringe elements of the Republican Party.

The answer I come away with, Senator, isn't pretty. You must be in agreement with them, and all these years of middle ground, maverick thinking and speaking were a sham. It's a shame really. The last, best hope for bipartisanship sinks into the ocean with all that damned tea.

Forums Expose Failure in Education System

Image via Wikipedia

Oh, boy. I'm channeling my gramps here, but when did we lose our way? Every now and again, I take a stroll down a forum, just to take the pulse of the internet populous. It's always a mistake because it destroys my carefully and painfully maintained hope that "In spite of it all, people are really good at heart". Annie, my girl, we can only hope.

Flossophy, a truly great thinker, posted this to an article on the Shepard Hate Crime Bill being attached to a defense bill which had a significant number of GOP no votes. "I'm looking forward to a world of mixed r@ce people. It'll make these ha'te crimes laws seem silly." First, Mr. Flossophy ( if that is your real name), you are a "mixed race person" as am I. Science tells us so. Second, where is the eloquence?

The issue of hate crimes is a legal issue built around a real problem. It simply means that if your motive was an irrational hatred of another person, your crime just got "bumped up". It doesn't imply any value judgment of a person's race, creed, color or orientation. It simply ups the ante on the crime. In schools, it would be referred to as a "No Tolerance" policy.

I'm rambling. My point is that we as a people should know this. It's simple everyday common sense, like the location of Canada and the name of our first president. Thomas Jefferson (Not our first president, by the way!) once said, "To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education." Oh, ain't it the truth!

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/35-gop-senators-vote-agai_n_330376.html



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