It’s All A Game….

I have been blogging for about eight months now over at InSearchOfAmerica. It is quite different from this one in that it is dedicated to looking at all the great things about this country that I have discovered throughout my many years. Over there I talk about what is right about America. I continue to be amazed by how great this country is in so many ways. I am now in the process of putting in somewhat detailed travelogues documenting my many trips around this great country. It is fun posting there even if my visit count is only 10% of here.

I love America and wouldn’t have wanted to be born anywhere else.  I love America but it is not perfect and that is more or less a major theme for RJsCorner. It is about trying to get a better understanding of things we do and don’t do. I know I often get somewhat critical of America when it comes to not doing things we should be doing and not learning lessons from the rest of the world where they get it right.  I have been in a hyper-reflection mode in these thoughts for most of the current year.

I have come to the conclusion lately that one of our major problems in why we can progress in some areas is that life has just become too much of a game for us. It is about winning and as Vince Lombardi said we rationalize that is the only thing that matters.  I am afraid that we are throwing the moral high ground of our founding fathers out the window in favor of winning at all costs. It’s all a game to many of us and that mentality has throughly soaked into way too many of us in the country.

If you believe in any of the hype put out by all the lawyer/police shows that permeate our airways, lawyers don’t really care that much about “justice for all”. It is about winning and that means beating the other side at all costs. So those who chose to be Republican fixate on beating those who chose to be Democrats. We rationalize that since we are the good guys they must be the bad guys. Common good is not much of a player when it comes to lawyers it seems and since the majority of our government representatives are lawyers that has polluted the entire system.  It’s all about the game…

When a leader of the opposition party does something we must do everything to defeat that idea no matter what it is or who it affects. It’s all about the game.  We as a society are just to fixated on us vs. them and the word “compromise” has as a result become a dirty word to be avoided at all costs. No one likes ties. Everything is black/white, win/lose, good guy/bad guy; there is no middle ground. It’s all “about the game…

Is it even possible to reverse this trend in order to accomplish some levels of forward progress? I simply don’t know the answer to that question right now. Maybe just recognizing the problem is, well, half the problem. There is just too much spite and hate going through the country right now. It seems to have almost snuffed out any common bonds we might have had in the past.  It greatly saddens me to see this happening. It’s all a game to too many of us. Win at all costs; beat the other guy. NO COMPROMISE!!  It’s all a game.  When will we ever come to realize that fact?

LOL……..

 

 

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud when I saw this cartoon. Thanks Gary Varvel for the laugh. And an Indiana guy at that.

I know the GOP is desperate to rebrand their party into something with a broader appeal. But for some reason the Democrats just don’t seem to want to cooperate in that endeavor. 🙂

 

The “A” Word….

I want to warn you up front that this will be one of those serious posts by me. I try to keep this blog light-hearted at least on some level but the topic I am going to discuss has no possibility of that. In the 1950s the “a” word was the atomic bomb. As a school kid during that time I was taught to get under my desk if the teacher told us an atomic bomb had been dropped. I never understood how my desk was going to protect me but that is another story.

In the 1970s and beyond the “a” word has become abortion. Abortion was not a new thing even back then as there were many thousands performed before that time. But when the Supreme Court made being able to easily get an abortion the law of the land via the Roe vs Wade ruling it came to the forefront. Unfortunately abortions accelerated quickly after that ruling.

Of course with our two-party system of government in the U.S. one party tends to take one side of an issue and the other takes the other side. The Republicans took up the “anti-abortion” mantel and the Democrats took up the “pro-choice” position. I recently got into some discussions with one of my regular commentors on this blog about this topic.  The post around the comments didn’t really have anything to do with abortion but as usual when ideologies are discussed it often comes into the conversation.

Many who take the anti-abortion stand seem to think that all of us who support the Democratic party  in any regard are somehow pro-abortion. They therefore expect all of us to give argument supporting abortion. I usually try to avoid these discussions as they are seldom fruitful but I had to finally declare that I am “pro-life” all the way. That statement probably surprises some but on looking up the facts of this issue it seems that 57% of Democrats do not want abortion on demand. But another statistic that may have even surprising to many is that even 29% of Republicans want abortion to be widely available.  Here are the figures behind this statement.

So, it seems that the abortion issue does not fall strictly along party lines as most people seem to see it. I wish people would realize that there are people in both parties that are on both sides of this and many other issues.

Before leaving this post I am going to  proclaim one more time.

 I am “pro-life” all the way.

That is I am against abortion but I am also against capital-punishment, I am against war, and I am against guns.  I am also firmly for universal healthcare and a strong safety net for all our citizens. Of all of these issues I generally only see most Republicans aligned with the first one. Are my Republican friends only pro-life when it comes to the unborn?  To me a life is a life and should be treated as sacred in all instances. What point would it be to have a baby born and to then see that life extinguished due to a random shooting, an unnecessary war (and almost all our wars are unnecessary), an innocent person being found guilty of a crime, or even worse having someone die because of the lack of  nourishment or adequate healthcare.

I am “pro-life” in all aspects of life. Not just those who are yet to be born. When I look at the overall picture I see the Democrats as being more aligned to the vast majority of these issues. All of them, not just abortion, often result in lives lost and I mourn each death no matter the cause. I wish my Republican friends could understand that.

Ok, enough of these serious issues. Let’s move on to something more light-hearted. How about politics. 🙂

Why???….

I have always been a person who is constantly saying “Why?” Here are some whys that have been spewing off the top of my head lately.  🙂 They are too small for an entire post so I am just going to throw it out here and in no particular order:

• Why do fifteen percent of the population think they are in the top 1%  ?— So there are fifty times more people worried that their taxes will go up if President Obama is re-elected.  We all want to believe that we are somehow special but 1/6 of the population just won’t fit in the one percent tub. No way, no how…..

• Why don’t people understand that if you want to live like a Republican you must vote like a Democrat? —  It is a known fact that if you had invested $10,000 in only Republican administrations for the last eighty years it would now be worth $11,733.  If you had invested in only Democratic administrations it would be worth $300,671!  (source  Wolfram Blog : Stock Market Returns by Presidential Party.)  So why do all the money hungry  folks continue to align with the Republican party?

• Why do so many women seem to want to be six inches taller than the height God gave them? –This trend toward wearing six-inch heels really confuses me. I believe that women have come a long ways in the past few decades. They have asserted themselves in the business world. They are now the primary earner in many families. There are now many shows on TV where they are in charge now. You certainly didn’t see that even a decade ago.  So why do so many women continue to fall in line with the latest fads no matter how absurd they seem to be? I want to predict a huge increase in demand for podiatrists in the future to treat all those future bunions out there. 🙂

• The major focus of the country is currently on unemployment. It seems to be driving much of this political season. If you believe the hype everyone is either unemployed or underemployed in this country. But what happened this week seems to directly counter that belief.  Across the country were millions of people standing hours in lines to pluck down up to $600 for a new iPhone5?  It is obvious that not everyone has been affected by the economic downturn. Many if not most of the people in these long lines already have an iPhone 4 that is still very functional yet they have enough disposable income to update to the latest thing. I just don’t understand it?? But then again in reality only one out of every twelve of us can’t find a job….

Obama’s DNC Speech…

Source: Obama: ‘America, our problems can be solved’ | The Ticket – Yahoo! News.

“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over a decade.”

It seems that many in this country think that all problems can be solved in a four-year presidential cycle. Of course life just doesn’t work that way. As noted above it took as decades to get into the troubles we are now digging out of. Years of Republican mantra of deregulation caused the near collapse of our financial sector. That mammoth problem can’t be corrected quickly.

“All they have to offer is the same prescriptions they’ve had for the last thirty years: Have a surplus? Try a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations, and call us in the morning!” 

As usual President Obama’s acceptance speech was uplifting. He knows just the right words to use get his feelings across. But to me the most significant thing about the speech was the difference between the Republican reaction to these time and the Democratic. The Republican convention last week seemed focused on who to blame for all our current problems and they blamed almost everyone except themselves.

• It is the lazy welfare recipients who are gobbling up things they didn’t earn.

• It is those immigrants who are in our schools costing us a fortune.

• It is the liberal administration now in power

• It is the homosexuals who are causing the downfall of the traditional family

• It is this, it is that…..

 

The Republican response to our current problems is to blame everyone. Mr. Obama put forward a different approach. He cites the strength of our citizens as the answer and not the problem. He showed us that this is not the first problem that we have had as a country and it certainly won’t be the last one. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan seem to think that the only citizens who can do anything about our problems are the super-rich. If only we give them another tax break then it will trickle down through the economy and create jobs.  As Ayn Rand, their hero, points out if only we can keep “those” people away for our riches we will have more for ourselves.

Something happened in the 1980s that caused corporations to no longer think of their employees as assets but to think of them as liabilities. Employees are something to be downsized in order to create a bigger profit. That is the current business mode and that is the basic philosophy of the current Republican leadership. The Democrats showed us this week that it is our citizens who are the primary asset of this country and if we just give them a level playing field prosperity can come to all of us once again.

So to me this election comes down to one basic question. Are our citizens assets  or liabilities? It seems as simple as that.

Let the Democrats Emulate the Repbulicans

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If that is really the case then I say let the Democrats emulate the Republicans in their do-nothing attitude. There has been talk about the Senate Democrats letting the all the Bush tax cuts expire and forcing the ten-percent reduction in the military budgets by doing nothing. Will the Republicans be flattered by this imitation of their strategy in congress? I kind of doubt it. 🙂

But at least it would result in some restructuring of our debt increases. Will it be good for the jobs picture? It can’t be any worse than it is. The conservatives said that tax cuts to the “job creators” (meaning rich)  would create jobs; never happened in the ten years since. How long do we need to wait 😉 If the Republican are really for no new taxes and all tax cuts then maybe they will agree to a middle class tax cut to put them back to where they were with the Bush cuts. It sounds like a win-win situation for everyone except those who are filthy rich. They might have to fork over a little more of their obese discretionary income. They may not be able to buy a second or third vacation home but they should get by.

This idea seems too good to be true for a Democrat strategy so I’m pretty sure they will screw it up before the end of the year. After all they have proved to be pretty good at caving into Republican demands lately. But at least I can hold out hope for this one.

But what do I know…