Mindful Musings #13

Are you as disgusted as I am about the path of this mid-term election? I suppose if you are a news junkie as I am you would be disgusted as well. It seems that everyone has the inside track on who is going to win. I watch all the news shows on MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, and NBC (no I refuse to watch FOX, unless I need a good laugh). I do listen to Rush, Hannity, and Savage on the radio on my frequent jaunts to the beach in my car. Every one of them knows what the American people want and that is a super victory for the Republicans.

I think they may be right, that is if Americans think like the Tea Party. I know many do, but many, and I will call them the silent majority, do not go along with the Right wing view of life as we know it. I shake my head at the inconsistencies in their thinking. For example, they will decry all programs run by the government as "entitlement" programs. The word, entitlement was coined by the Republicans in the last administration as were the words, "war on terror", "weapons of mass destruction", and various other dire and depressing words.

Entitlement, my bun! Programs such as Social Security, Medicare, VA, Military health care, and Medicaid are not entitlements but I dare-say, necessities, in this country. The Republicans and the Right wingers want to privatize it all as to them those programs are costing too much money. The philosophy behind this is that people need to take responsibility for their own lives. My question is, who says they are not taking responsibility? The Right and Tea Party advocates will complain about government being too big and intrusive but while they do they have no problems taking from those very entitlement programs. Many are on Social Security and Medicare. Try to take that away from them! Talk about hypocrisy!

They will monitor what is done in the bedroom, find it ok to probe into our internet, and our phone calls. Is this not intrusion? Yet, they continue to complain about gay rights as a moral issue, and abortion, as killing. The fact is gay rights is a civil rights issue and abortion is, in fact, a law of the land giving women rights they did not have in the past.

They complain about the "tax and spend" Democrats but fail to fund infrastructure programs, education, and government help in staving off another great depression. They want to maintain the Bush-tax cuts for the top 1% of people but do not care if the middle-class is taxed out of our gourds. They want no new taxes, but they want a top-notched education system, a crack military, roads, bridges, levies all without taxing citizens. In other words getting something for nothing. This makes no sense whatsoever.

We have had 8 years of war and tax exempted government. Now we are in an economic hole. The Right fails to understand the need for government in our lives for regulation, and for helping the population that needs such help. Balancing the budget and creating new jobs do not take 1 and a half years to correct. According to sources, we were losing 700,000 jobs a month under GW, now the amount of job losses have significantly lessened. Many new jobs especially in the green area are being formulated, but this will take time and a change in attitude by the American people. I honestly don't think we want to go back to the year 2000 again, let alone, 1950. Time to move forward with all the growing pains that will come with it.