Fay's Blog @faypax-blog - Tumblr Blog

Posts

“Birth control is not a proper political or government activity or function or responsibility....it is not our business.”~ President Dwight Eisenhower, 1959 Since the 2010 elections, according to the Guttmacher Institute, Republican legislators have introduced more than 2,000 bills related to women’s reproductive healthcare. The assault on women’s health and freedom denies millions of women access to affordable contraception, life-saving cancer screenings, testing for H.I.V. and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some laws call for measures as drastic as imprisonment. In 2013, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, published the results of a study that examined cases in which a woman’s pregnancy led to arrests and incarceration, detentions in hospitals, mental institutions, and forced medical interventions. Read some of the case summaries.

In 39 states in these United States, at least some or all state court judges and judges for the State Supreme Court are elected by popular vote. Candidates for the bench chase money and votes, pander to voters and pressure groups not unlike members of Congress. Just think, some of their contributors are the same voters and groups that will appear before them in court. It is a practice that happens in no other country in the world. We preach about the virtues of judicial independence and proudly proclaim that we have “the best court system in the world”. And perhaps we do…thanks to Citizens United...the best system money can buy.

Judging by the criticism, President Obama is responsible for everything that happens in America, the world and beyond. Everyone is an Obama critic, though all too often they are painfully misinformed and misguided. During a conversation about the President’s accomplishments, a friend recently confessed that he “ is just too disappointed by the President’s actions on the NSA, NDAA, TSA and drones.” I question the underlying source of this disappointment, for like many people, he behaves as if these laws and practices originated with President Obama. An important point, since as President his first duty is to enforce the laws of the country. The President does not legislate, despite claims that infer otherwise, legislating is the province of Congress. So let’s set the record straight. Read more......

If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably wondered about the Republican obsession with slavery, a condition I call OSD (Obsessive Slavery Disorder). It seems every other day, some poor, neglected Republican is declaring his admiration for slavery. It’s like an itch they can’t scratch. The answer to this Republican obsession came to me in a dream...their inner Negro is screaming to be free. They just want to be slaves.... Down on the Obamaster Plantation they were gathered for inspection, where they were stripped naked, examined from head to toe, then branded like the cattle. Some of them delighted in the feel of the red-hot iron and the smell of sizzling flesh. They were all Obamasters now! They’d come from far and wide and so many of the faces were familiar. There was Ann, who’d been a writer and racial antagonizer back in the old country, and Sarah from way up North somewhere near Russia. Rush was there and Newt and Louie along with hysterical Michele. Read more.........

I just learned that a lot of people were absolutely incensed that I called Dr. Ben Carson a happy-go-lucky darkie, and boy did they have words for me (funny, since I wrote it a year ago). How dare I criticize such a brilliant, benevolent, kind and compassionate man. Now, we can assume that he is intellectually brilliant, but how anyone would know he is benevolent, kind and compassionate without personally being acquainted with him is beyond me, but that’s another story. First, Dr. Carson has accomplished much to be proud of. He has earned the right to stick out his chest and declare that he knows....”about neurosurgery”. So let’s be clear, I am in no way minimizing his accomplishment. My critique of old Ben stemmed from his performance at the National Prayer Breakfast where he chose to be critical of President Obama, in his words “to his face”. I might not have been so struck by his disrespect had he not seen fit to gleefully credit himself with “telling the President off”. More importantly, I fail to understand how his remarks focused on prayer and the religious values of the nation. This need to make every scintilla of life in America about Barack Obama is more than a little insane to me. And yes, it is personal. I’m more than a little sick and tired of the Republicans and the media scrounging up Blacks to justify their indifference...”see, here’s a Black man who feels just like we do”....”here’s a Black man who defeated all the obstacles, so that’s proof anyone can do it”....”see, slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination are no excuse for complaint.” Folks like Ben give ornery whites justification and exoneration. read more

An Executive Order enables the President to create a law without the consent of Congress. When Congress is unable to agree on how to implement a law or program, it leaves an opening for the President to take over, in the form of an Executive Order. I wanted to look back and see how past Presidents have used Executive Orders. This is what I found: 1942 - President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 gave the military broad powers to ban any citizen from coastal Washington state to California, extending inland into southern Arizona. It was signed specifically to intern Japanese-Americans, but was also used to intern 300 Italians and 5,000 Germans. 3,200 Italians and 11,000 Germans were arrested. Read more.......

(via No one Takes Our Freedom, We Give it Away |The Political Pragmatic)

The Birth Control War - Religion Has Nothing to do With it

America’s Hypocrisy

While our legislators are upending every hard-earned reproductive right American women have, the United States is an active participant in Family Planning 2020; a global partnership that supports the rights of women and girls to decide, freely, and for themselves, whether, when, and how many children they want to have. The program works to give millions of women and girls throughout the world access to contraceptives. But is it really about family planning or population control?

Donor Government Disbursements for Family Planning in 2013 (page 5)

From the website:

Health trends affect a wide range of interests beyond just healthy, productive families and communities. Family planning increases prosperity and economic stability. It significantly improves maternal, infant, and child health, while it averts unintended pregnancies and abortions. Studies have shown that family planning reduces maternal deaths and infant mortality.

The right to choose is important because women are critical to reducing poverty, boosting economic growth and raising healthy and well-educated children. In short, the empowerment of women contributes to improved maternal and child health. It improves the health and well-being of the women and their existing children, leads to more financially secure families, and ultimately the economic growth of the nation.

Jimmy, is that you?

Everytime I think I can move on to a subject that isn’t racially driven, something like this happens that hits me square between the eyes:

It’s official, the Republican Party is stupid on purpose; a bunch of bigots with racially divisive tactics and policies that are insulting and anti-minority, on purpose. Fine writers like Rick Perlstein can give excellent accounts of historical analogies in an effort to demonstrate “that the vituperation directed at Obama is little different from that aimed at John F. Kennedy....or Bill Clinton....” On one level, I completely agree. But the castigation of President Obama transcends the political and is deeply mired in personal (his mother is a fat slut; his mother slept with a dog; kill his monkey children) and racial abuse (lynching the President in effigy, hoisting the Confederate flag, praising slavery). The reminder that “racial rhetoric has been entwined with government from the start” is like writing about Andrew Jackson and discounting his contribution to “The Trail of Tears” because hostility towards Native Americans was commonplace. It isn’t just about the racially toxic rhetoric, it’s about the resurrection of policies that hearken back to the era of Jim Crow. We love to bluster the idea that “America is a nation of laws”. But, is it? The 15th Amendment to the Constitution granted African American men the right to vote. Although ratified on February 3, 1870, the promise of the 15th Amendment was not fully realized for almost a century. That’s one hundred years! Through the use of purging, gerrymandering, poll taxes, white primaries and literacy tests, states effectively disenfranchised African Americans. After the election of President Obama, Republicans ginned up a fake voter fraud crisis then passed new laws to combat the fake crisis. Every single Republican-controlled state government has enacted laws to make it more difficult for minority voters to successfully cast a ballot. Jimmie, is that you?

Republicans Haven’t Been Fiscally Responsible Since Eisenhower

According to polling, more people have confidence in the Republicans to solve our economic problems than Democrats. I can’t imagine why. For while there might be other reasons for voting Republican, all economic reasons, every single one of them, favor voting for Democrats.

Republicans love to talk about how they passed balanced budgets during the Clinton administration. It is a lie. In 1993, the Democratic majority in Congress passed a budget bill that raised taxes on the wealthy and cut taxes for small businesses and the poor. The bill also required that future budgets balance and reduce the deficit. They could have made balanced budgets a matter of law, but not a single Republican in either house voted for that bill. Again, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, introduced by now Ohio Governor John Kasich was defeated by the Republicans in the Senate.

Still today, Republicans claim they want a balanced budget amendment, but when they controlled all three branches of the government during the Bush administration, from 2003 to 2006, they not only didn’t approve a balanced budget amendment, they never even held a vote on one.

Republicans Lie about the Debt and Deficit

The Republicans have spent 5 years blaming President Obama for deficits and the debt. Clearly, anyone who knows basic math or can merely read knows the Republicans lied to the public again.

Read more: http://thepoliticalpragmatic.blogspot.com/2013/10/republicans-havent-been-fiscally.html

(via The False Virtue of Catholic Bishops and the Courts |The Political Pragmatic)

(via In Search of a Gotcha Moment |The Political Pragmatic)

(via Dear Piss and Moan Party |The Political Pragmatic)

(via The Reason I Write About Race |The Political Pragmatic)

(via Economic Fail - A Carefully Contrived Occurance |The Political Pragmatic)

The Dismantling of Democracy

“First they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me” ~ Martin Niemöller

The goal of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 was to create a vibrant federal system that could address national problems. The Constitution was not about embracing states’ rights. Instead, it eradicated states’ sovereignty which had existed under the Articles of Confederation and asserted the sovereignty of “we the people of the United States”.

Gen. George Washington wrote,

“Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin to the whole.”

The claim that the drafters of the Constitution were opposed to a federal government and advocates of states’ rights is a revision of history and flies in the face of common sense. Ratified by the 13 states in 1788, it represented a dramatic shift of power from the states to the national government. Still, ratification of the Constitution did not stop proponents of states’ rights from resisting federal authority, even to this day.

As state’s nullify federal law and the Constitution, freedom really is being whittled away. The media and politicians blind us with sensation about things we cannot control, while infringements we can affect are ignored. That is, until it’s your freedom.

- See more at: http://thepoliticalpragmatic.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-dismantling-of-democracy.html#sthash.PH0dXF4a.dpuf

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Fay's Blog