So I was checking the news today (I really gotta stop doing that) when I came across this story, "Fla. doc's sign warns off Obama supporters" (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36152956/ns/health-health_care/).
Yes, that's right a doctor, someone whose purpose in life should be to help people, is putting politics first. Now, to be fair (unlike the GOP, HA!), he isn't necessarily refusing service to people who voted for Obama. If you read the article you will see that the sign on the door appears to be as far as he goes, but isn't just putting up the sign going too far? This urologist is pressuring people to seek medical help elsewhere because of their political affiliation. This is absurdly unethical. No one has to right to know your political affiliation much less discriminate against it. Even if he is not directly discriminating against people, he is most definitely indirectly doing it and in my opinion that is still clear discrimination. Think about how the public would view the situation if he had a sign that said, "If you're Jewish, go see another doctor."
As a doctor, he took an oath to help people, to improve their quality of life. Doctors are supposed to be compassionate individuals that use their intelligence to serve the public. In this country, the public is made up of any race, religion, or political belief. The doctor has no right to even hint at not treating a certain group of people who are doing nothing but exercising their right to freely elect their leader. His prejudice is Un-American and is preventing him from living up to his obligations as a medical doctor. If he is going to continue with his discrimination, his medical license should be revoked.
His actions are in response the new healthcare legislation. How can someone be so afraid of the progress the country is making? We just passed universal healthcare (more or less) and are finally catching up with the rest of the developed world. It is people like this, people who supposedly represent the educated, upper-class American citizen, that makes the rest of the world dislike and probably pity the United States.
I woke up this morning a little early so I could check my email before going to class. As usual, that took all of two seconds so I decided to check on various news sites to see what's going on in the world today. I read through a few stories talking about Obama keeping his promise and signing the no federal funds for abortions law (though it's not as simple as that), but then...low and behold...there it was, "Measure to Legalize Marijuana will be on California's November Ballot" (Los Angeles Times).
I had heard about people attempting to put this on the ballot a few months ago, but I never thought they would actually be able to. I'm assuming supporters just hung around outside southern California colleges going from person to person until they had enough signatures, but it is still amazing they've gotten this far. Do I think it will pass in the end? That's hard to say. But whether it will pass or not is not what I want to discuss.
For the sake of this post, let's assume that it is going to pass and think about some repercussions. Obviously you'll have some people worried about others driving while baked, or kids finding Daddy's gun (or Mommy's in this women-should-be-equal era). But has anyone given thought to the people that already grow? Northern California, specifically Humboldt County, is known nationally as the place to get good weed. Sure it's illegal unless you have that magical "green card", but there is still a lot of money revolving around the Humboldt County horticulturists and their product. Almost certainly, if this legislation were to pass, Humboldt farmers would lose their exclusivity in the pot world. Prices would fall as supplies increased statewide and they might even be taxed for their crop. It may sound like they're getting the raw deal, but then again, what right do these people have to hold the monopoly on something like this? I hate to bring in capitalism, but anyone else who offers a good or service doesn't have protection against competitors offering something similar. McDonald's can't be the only place allowed to have a dollar menu even if they were to the first to have one, right?
So, I ask you, is this situation synonymous with other cases of competition, capitalism, and monopoly? Is it fair to the rest of us that Humboldt County's slogan has become "Save Humboldt County — keep pot illegal"? Are their concerns even legitimate or are farmers of Humboldt County freaking out over nothing? After all, you can get wine anywhere, but everyone knows Northern California's wine is the best so they go there (and pay a little more) to get it. If the product is good, many people are probably willing to take the extra steps to get the best pot out there. What's your take?
So what's with all of this bickering about climate change? Some studies were reportedly falsified or some results were exaggerated or something? Wooptie-fucking-do why do we care?
There are thousands of legitimate scientific studies that all say the same thing, CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL. OMG WUT? Yes, it is. Any good scientist would agree with this fact (that's right not theory, F-A-C-T).
So to you all you junk scientist dissenters out there, get bent okay :)
And to Mr. Beck, you don't know what you're talking about when it comes to the environment. just STFU already.
This is the beginning of a new segment/reoccurring topic that I like to call "The Person I Hate Most Today". If you haven't assumed this already, I will basically name one person as the person I hate the most on the particular day I feel wronged enough by this person to make my way to my computer, double click my browser, click on the new post button, and write away.
So without further ado, the person I hate most today is.....(drum roll here)..... Sarah Palin. Why you ask? Why now? What makes today so special? Well, to be honest, it's not so much what she's doing today specifically as much as what she's been up to lately as a whole. The keen political mind that is Sarah Palin has been very active lately as she has been on a nonstop daytime media binge in an attempt to peddle her very "factual" pamphlet Going Rouge....errr...I mean Going Rogue to the mindless drones that, sadly, make up a large portion of the American public.
Everyday I have seen news headlines about the release of her book and every one ends the same way hinting or suggesting that she might run for President in 2012. Often in these stories there are quotes from numerous "Palin Pals" encouraging her to run while pledging their unquestioning support for her supposed stances on the many political issues of the day (never mind the fact that her stances on the issues of the day are Republican influenced sentence fragments of political thought deserving nothing more than to be presented in the form of kindergarten macaroni art much less a book). I have not really taken comments about her running for President seriously until I heard quotes from Republican organizers in Iowa following her latest book signing. They want her to come back to Iowa and essentially start campaigning. Iowa happens to be the first state to vote in the Presidential Primaries which makes it a very influential state. An Iowa Republican Party official made it clear that they could rally a crowd of 20,000+ if she were to come back and field questions about running in 2012. It seems as if though people are actually very serious about her seeking office.
Not only does this baffle me, as she has pretty much no real political experience, but it scares me as well. 20,000+ does not sound like much now, but this could only be the beginning. We've all suspected that this "tell all" book is an attempt to gain support for a White House bid, but now I am actually thinking that our suspicions may be correct. That 20,000 could grow very quickly with all of these book signings and with the comments from Iowa Republicans it seems as if she actually might be able to rally enough support to be taken seriously as a potential candidate. Does this worry anyone else?
No offense to her, well actually...complete offense to her, the woman is nothing but eye candy. She has no political merit and her lack of understanding regarding domestic and international policy, as exemplified through numerous interviews during her 2008 campaign, should offend anyone else who is actually qualified to run for president. I was surprised she was able to coherently collect her thoughts on issues to successfully write a book even with the help of her right-wing nutjob coauthor who probably did most of the writing. Sarah Palin should not be considering running for office and no one in their right mind should find reason to support her. But for some reason people like her and they do support her, and it is because of this that Sarah Palin is the person I hate most today.
(to the regular readers of this blog: this is a blog project for my polsci senior seminar in case you're wondering why I would post something like this. feel free to comment on it, but no derailing please. serious comments only. thanks)
Jimmy Gaffney
Dr. Browning
Video Project
POL491
16 November 2009
Responsible Parties
Morris P. Fiorina describes two ways in which the two major American political parties act. They either act as decentralized parties or responsible parties. By decentralized he means that there is not much party unity and that congressmen “blithely sacrifice general interests in their pursuit of particularistic constituency interests” (Fiorina). It was because of this that several political scientists believed that voting was not so much in favor of parties, but rather incumbents and their records and under this system no one was being held accountable for the failings in national politics. An example of such failure was the nonexistent party cohesion during the Carter administration that lead to congressmen being worried more about looking good for their constituents instead of backing the president and thus the complete breakdown of legislation resulting in the solving of very few national problems at the time. Therefore many political scientists supported the idea of responsible parties in which members of the parties would be unified and able to enact positive change behind a strong president of the same party (Fiorina). This became the case in 2000 when W. Bush was first elected to the presidency and even more so when his party gained several seats in Congress (and therefore more power) in 2002. In this essay, I am going to discuss the concept of responsible parties in modern politics by using three video clips from the C-SPAN Video Library to explain how each is an example of either the Democrats or the Republicans representing themselves as responsible parties.
The first video is a speech made by President George W. Bush in 2006. In it he expresses his support of amending the Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.
This speech and his support of the bill was mostly symbolic (Fiorina). This means that the bill never really had a chance of passing into law and he most likely supported it because it was a good opportunity to express his support for the conservative ideological foundation that makes up a large portion of the Republican Party.
Bush gave this speech on June 5th, 2006 which was just a few months before the elections that restored majority power in both the House and the Senate to the Democrats (Democrats Retake Congress). Bush and other Republican leaders may have assumed that, as a result of declining numbers in both presidential and congressional ratings, various Republican congressmen stood to lose their jobs. This speech appears to have been an attempt to rally support for those Republicans congressmen and is therefore an example of the concept of responsible parties. Rather than remain ambiguous on the issue, he came out in support of his fellow Republicans when he did not really need to. In the selected portion of his speech he twice said something along the lines of taking power away from judges and giving it to the people. As an influential Republican figure he is trying to unite people to the Republican Party by referring to the public as “the American people” which comes off as patriotic. He is also trying to unite them against “activist”, or liberal, judges which represent the opposite ideology and presumably the opposite party in this case.
The second video is also just before the 2006 mid-term elections, but it is from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum. In it House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi discusses some of the Democrats’ economic plans assuming they will win enough seats to become the majority party in Congress. I could not embed this video and the time frame that I am referencing is from 7:15 to 7:49. The link to the clip is http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/194679-1. The clip is short but it thoroughly demonstrates the Democratic side of the concept of responsible parties. Like Bush, Pelosi also explicitly refers to the people that she is talking about as Americans in attempt to unify them toward her cause. However, unlike Bush, Pelosi made it a point to call attention to how the Republican Party as a whole had in a sense failed the average, middle-class American. Bush somewhat attacked the liberal ideology and the Democrats by speaking about “activist judges”, but in this clip it is clear who Pelosi is trying to establish as the “villain” in attempt to put her party in power. She goes back and forth several times explaining how the actions of the Republicans have affected Americans in negative ways and how the Democrats plan to remedy the situation.
This is an example of responsible party politics because Nancy Pelosi is clearly trying to incite a positive attitude from the public in favor of her party and a negative perception of the other party. According to her, as a whole, the Democrats will do “this”, Republican’s will do “that”, and as Americans we want “this”. Pelosi and other Democratic leaders knew that in 2006 they had a very strong chance of winning the majority and understood that if they expressed themselves as a unified body, a responsible party, representing core values of Middle America, they would most likely win and they did.
The third video serves as a great relevant and recent example of responsible parties from both the Democrats and the Republicans. It is a clip from the debate and vote on the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009 and it clearly reveals the two opposing sides of the bill. The Democrats were in favor of it and the Republicans were opposed. The whole video is 872 minutes long, but the portion selected is of only two opposing representatives that I felt adequately displayed their party’s opposite stances on the issue.
The first person in this clip to speak is Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen. His speech focuses on great Americans politicians throughout the 20th Century and how they would support the passing of this bill. Interestingly, he includes the recently deceased Senator Ted Kennedy who was a very influential and long time Democratic member of the Senate. Rep. Cohen most likely included Kennedy in his list of important figures as a means to bring Democrats together to support this legislation as Democrats currently have the majority in the House and the Senate and, with the added benefit of having a Democrat as President, they have a strong chance of passing this bill into law (at the time of this writing it has only passed the House). After Cohen’s list of important people he then goes on to explain how passing this bill will bring the United States into the 21st century. He notes that the U.S. has infant mortality rates similar to those of third world countries and claims that by passing this legislation that will no longer be the case. The tone of his speech (regarding modernizing America) is rather progressive which is typically representative of liberalism which is associated with the Democratic Party (Fiorina). He is attempting to unite the Democrats as being progressive in an attempt to pass this bill.
The second speech in the video is by Republican Rep. Jeff Miller. Immediately he seeks to accuse the Democrats of belittling average Americans in favor of gathering support for the Republican stance on the bill. His speech is very short and not so much factual as it is emotional. He ends with the claim that Americans want freedom and that the Democrat-sponsored bill will violate the freedoms of Americans if passed. Miller attempts unite people under the Republican Party with a core American value.
The bill passed with a vote of 220-215 with only 39 Democrats opposing the bill and only 1 Republican in favor of it (Karl et al). In this case, both parties represented responsible parties. While 39 Democrats opposed the bill, 180 of them followed party lines and passed it. They knew that as a responsible party they would have no obstacles in passing this legislation. On the other hand, Republicans were responsible as well. Only one of them voted in favor of it meaning that 175 united and voted against it. They most likely knew that since they represented an extreme minority in the House, they did not have a good chance of getting their way. But they came together as a responsible party, symbolically, as Bush did in my first clip. Perhaps this demonstrates that even in weak times, when their overall party organization and welfare has been questioned by the media, they are in fact strong, and if given the opportunity to become the majority again will act as a responsible party and pass legislation representing their party’s beliefs.
This essay has examined three video examples of the concept of responsible parties. The first was a speech by President W. Bush in which he gave symbolic support of a less-than-likely-to-pass amendment to the Constitution in order to demonstrate his allegiance to a responsible Republican Party. The second clip was of Nancy Pelosi just prior to the 2006 elections in attempt to gain the support of a unified, responsible Democratic Party that if in power, according to Pelosi, had the opportunity to right the wrongdoings of the Republicans and improve America. The third clip was of two congressmen of opposing ideologies supporting their party’s stance on the health care bill that recently passed the House.Both speeches represented the ideals of their respective parties and in the end both parties followed the responsible party model. The Democrats followed it to demonstrate that they do have the power to make the changes their party promised, and the Republicans followed it to show that even though their party has struggled in recent years, they are still strong.
Works Cited
C-SPAN Video Library. Web. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/.
"Democrats Retake Congress." CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News. Web. 15 Nov. 2009. http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2006/.
Fiorina, Morris P. Parties as Problem Solvers. Principles and Practice of American Politics. 4th ed. Washington DC: CQ. 611-24. Print.
Karl, Jonathan, Rachel Martin, and Teddy Davis. "Nancy Pelosi and Democrats Pass Sweeping Health Care Reform Bill in House, Now All Eyes on Senate." ABCNews.com - Breaking news, politics, online news, world news, feature stories, celebrity interviews and more. 8 Nov. 2009. Web. 12 Nov. 2009. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nancy-pelosi-democrats-pass-sweeping-health-care-reform/story?id=9027367.
Sullivan, Andy. "Struggling Republicans to Pick New Party Chief." Reuters.com - World News, Financial News, Breaking US & International News. 29 Jan. 2009. Web. 12 Nov. 2009. http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE50S10K20090129.
If conservatism was a passenger on my boat I would kindly ask him to immediately remove himself and swim to the nearest deserted island. Then I would wonder how the hell he got on my ship. Its not that I'm expressly opposed to his presence, I just know that he really wouldn't like New America. My point is, I don't like conservatism and I would say that it's bad for humanity.
Conservatism is an archaic principle that has little to no place in the modern world. Radio host Michael Savage regularly sums up conservatism as protecting "borders, language, and culture" and I think most people would agree to that definition in terms of today's mainstream conservative movement. Its very isolationist and encourages an "us versus them" view of humanity. I strongly feel that all people are born equal and the only way to truly progress as civilized and intelligent species, is to stop thinking of each other as American, Liberal, or Christian.
Hmmmm while I doubt that too many people check up on this anymore, I feel the need to vent so here we go.
I pay a lot of attention to politics and the news. One source (and I would hardly call it a source) that I go to is Fox News Channel. Why you ask? Sure it's great to listen to people that you agree with on other networks, but I feel that it is also good to listen to people you disagree with in order to keep your political skills sharp. I watch Fox not to be informed, but rather to debate and challenge every lie that they tell.
Anyways, I have had enough of the sheer idiocy of their guests and supposed "analysts". Lately Hannity, Beck, the morons on Red Eye, and Gretchen have made it a point on their respective programs to bitch and moan about how the media is not criticizing Obama like they did for Bush. Tonight on Hannity's "All-American Panel" (that's the name of the panel, not me mocking it although I might as well be) he had one bumbling, nervous liberal and two uninformed conservatives sharing their twisted politics. Fox always like to say they are fair and balanced, but whenever they have a liberal analyst, it is always the most nervous and crazy sounded liberal they can find. But that's not why I'm pissed off right now. I'm pissed because of the "professional" conservative analysts featured. One was a ex-professional football player and the other is a conservative blogger with a bad face-lift.
Why does the non-fact based opinion of an ex-nfl player matter enough to be shared on a news network? This guy has no qualifications and is simply warping the opinions and beliefs of those who know even less than him. At one point he asked why former president Bush is under scrutiny for waterboarding and then went on to preach that Bush was defending us from terrorists and that he should have done more (suggesting caning). Now because he said that, there are going to be a 1,000 more idiots out there asking the same thing completely ignoring the fact that torture is ILLEGAL and that the U.S. has even led UN sanctions against other nations that have done the same thing (Japan for water boarding). This person has no business informing the public because he apparently has trouble distinguishing fact from NOTHING.
The other analyst, the blogger with the mug you don't want to chug, was an even bigger imbecile. She is Pamela Geller and her website www.atlasshrugs.com is filled mistruths and mindelss zombie followers applauding her for every word that she spews. On the show, she claimed that when it comes to abortions, liberals only want to drive you to the abortion clinic. Hmmmm, I'm a liberal and I do not want anyone to have to get an abortion. I would rather that people had a choice that they can make for themselves. On her website, she claims that all democrats protect child rapists? I'm not even going to argue this one as there is nothing that could be further from one-sided coverage of an issue than this.
How in good conscience can Sean Hannity invite these idiots to share their bias when his program airs on a NEWS channel. There is no news here. Back to Fox's anti-Obama campaign, aren't other news networks doing the same thing Fox did when Bush was in office? Get off your high horse Fox, they are doing the same damn thing you have done for the last eight years. All that these hosts are doing is bitching about Obama and offering "news" with their good ol' fashioned right-wing spin. How is it possible that you can even judge Obama after 100 days? Oh wait, you can't. All of their talk about how Obama is befriending terrorisim supporters (specifically Chavez) is completely misguided and I feel sorry for those who treat this bullshit as actual news.
