My favorite folks ! :)

25 July 2010

I AM SICK OF IT !

Inflammatory email.  Please remove me from your list!

This week i received an email entitled What is missing at Obama's press Conference?


(The link will take you to snopes where they give the email in full & then the reality behind it.) 

I went to Google images & looked at "Obama Press Conference" & of the first 10 images that appeared, the American flag was in 6 of them.  Did the same for "Reagan Press Conference" & of the first 10 images that appeared, the American flag was in 3.  Same number for Bill Clinton.  Four for GW Bush.  I only found a couple for GHW, & they usually did not include the flag.  ???

Apples & oranges.  Different conferences have different backdrops for different presidents at different times.  I found a dozen of Mr. Obama with American flags.  I found a dozen of Mr. Bush without.  One such picture means nothing.


I'm getting very impatient with folks who use fear-mongering to try & up the anxiety level of folks about what is going on in our nation.


I was NOT a supporter of Mr. Bush & said at the time things that made this clear.  When i made such statements, i would at times be admonished by Christians who said "it is our God-given duty to support our President, who was elected by the will of God."


I am NOT a supporter of Mr. Obama.  I'm not very thrilled with some of what he has done thus far, but in my eyes he really has not done any worse than did Mr. Bush.  In fact, by this time in office, Mr. Bush had us embroiled in the Iraq war, which i never supported & never will.  The Patriot Act was also passed which did more to restrict our freedoms than any president previously since Abraham Lincoln.  


What i want to know is, where are the Christians who will say, "it is our God-given duty to support our President, who was elected by the will of God," when the president is Mr. Obama instead of Mr. Bush?  Did God abandon us when Mr. Obama was elected?  


Now, frankly, i'm very unhappy with the things going on in this country.  I don't appreciate the idea that "we get the leaders we deserve because we elect them."  First off, i have only ONE vote.  Second, the people do NOT elect their president.  Go look it up.  We have an electoral college who does the voting for us.  Supposedly they go by the will of the people, but that means that if 51% of the vote for an entire state goes to one candidate, ALL the votes of that state go to the one candidate.  And, not many folks are aware, but the electoral college does not have go to by the 51%, although they usually do.  Some states have laws that require them to follow the will of the people, but most do not.  Maine & Nebraska are the only states that have the option to "split their votes" & to date have not done so.  


Many folks believe we live in a democracy.  We do not.  We live in a "democratic republic," meaning that some things are done by election (Congress) but most things (the president, bills/laws) are not.  


I personally think we should go to straight democracy for electing a president.  I think that we should not be pulling "party lines" when electing our representatives but looking at the voting record for incumbents & other issues for new folks running for election.  I think it should be much easier to get an independent into office, congress or president, than it is currently.  


But i'm tired of hearing fear-mongering about Mr. Obama.  Please.  If you have the belief system that everything is ordained & predestined by God (that is not my belief system) then how is it that all this fear is occurring?  How could these things be happening outside the will of God?  


Fear is not part of who we are called to be as Christians.  Fear is not where we should be when voting.  Fear is not good in policy-making.  My favorite quote by Ben Franklin is:  "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."  If you give into fear trying to gain safety, liberty will always lose.  


Sorry for the political rant, but i'm utterly fed up with some of the email i continue to receive.  

_______________________


The UTI is better, if i continue to take most of the items i listed before.  If i miss a dose i'm in pain again.  

We chose not do to any church today.  Looking forward to attending St. James for the Wednesday noon service.  :)





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6 comments:

toto said...

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

Every vote, everywhere, would be politically relevant and equal in presidential elections. It would no longer matter who won a state. Candidates would need to care about voters across the nation, not just undecided voters in a handful of swing states.

The current winner-take-all rule (i.e., awarding all of a state’s electoral votes to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in each state) used by 48 of the 50 states ensures that the candidates do not reach out to all of the states and their voters. Candidates have no reason to poll, visit, advertise, organize, campaign, or care about the voter concerns in the dozens of states where they are safely ahead or hopelessly behind.

The bill would take effect only when enacted, in identical form, by states possessing a majority of the electoral votes--that is, enough electoral votes to elect a President (270 of 538). When the bill comes into effect, all the electoral votes from those states would be awarded to the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states (and DC).

The bill uses the power given to each state by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution to change how they award their electoral votes for president. The National Popular Vote bill does not try to abolish the Electoral College. Historically, virtually all of the major changes in the method of electing the President (for example, ending the requirement that only men who owned substantial property could vote), including current state-by-state winner-take-all laws, have come about by state legislative action, without federal constitutional amendments.

The bill has been endorsed or voted for by 1,922 state legislators (in 50 states) who have sponsored and/or cast recorded votes in favor of the bill.

In Gallup polls since 1944, only about 20% of the public has supported the current system of awarding all of a state's electoral votes to the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in each separate state (with about 70% opposed and about 10% undecided). The recent Washington Post, Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University poll shows 72% support for direct nationwide election of the President. Support for a national popular vote is strong in virtually every state, partisan, and demographic group surveyed in recent polls in closely divided battleground states: Colorado-- 68%, Iowa --75%, Michigan-- 73%, Missouri-- 70%, New Hampshire-- 69%, Nevada-- 72%, New Mexico-- 76%, North Carolina-- 74%, Ohio-- 70%, Pennsylvania -- 78%, Virginia -- 74%, and Wisconsin -- 71%; in smaller states (3 to 5 electoral votes): Alaska -- 70%, DC -- 76%, Delaware --75%, Maine -- 77%, Nebraska -- 74%, New Hampshire --69%, Nevada -- 72%, New Mexico -- 76%, Rhode Island -- 74%, and Vermont -- 75%; in Southern and border states: Arkansas --80%, Kentucky -- 80%, Mississippi --77%, Missouri -- 70%, North Carolina -- 74%, and Virginia -- 74%; and in other states polled: California -- 70%, Connecticut -- 74% , Massachusetts -- 73%, Minnesota -- 75%, New York -- 79%, Washington -- 77%, and West Virginia- 81%.

The National Popular Vote bill has passed 30 state legislative chambers, in 20 small, medium-small, medium, and large states, including one house in Arkansas (6), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Maine (4), Michigan (17), Nevada (5), New Mexico (5), New York (31), North Carolina (15), and Oregon (7), and both houses in California (55), Colorado (9), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), New Jersey (15), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), and Washington (11). The bill has been enacted by Hawaii, Illinois, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington. These five states possess 61 electoral votes -- 23% of the 270 necessary to bring the law into effect.

See http://www.NationalPopularVote.com

Amrita said...

Indian politics is also very messy and I don 't suport the policies of the govt. but I suport their policitcal party .They are better than the right winged fundamentalists.

There is a lot of fear mongering here too.

Glad your UTI is better.

lisa said...

I will and do support my political beliefs but I don't need outside help that is for darn sure! I don't like it when I get phone calls to donate money to that particular party. They make a heck of a lot more money than I do and I sure as heck am not going to give them my hard earned money when they haven't given me much of nothing and seem to keep taking away more and more of our rights. Who says we are free?

Meadowlark said...

WELL SAID!!! I'm always so disappointed that the same people who had a fit over the "Bush-bashing" are doing the same. When I mentioned it one of them said "Now it's OUR turn". Great... you people are allowed to VOTE? Holy crap. :(

As long as politicians can keep us bound into a two-party system where they can exploit the "us versus them" mentality, they have a virtual guarantee that we will not rise up against THEM, but rather keep ourselves occupied with useless in-fighting.

Sigh... :(

Rosemary said...

I get tired of all kinds of emails that are just mass mailings such telling me I am loved but send this to 15 people in 5 minutes or my teeth will fall out.

Kathryn said...

I decided not to respond to the political stuff, although i appreciate each of the comments.

I do have one question, tho, Rosemary, have you lost your teeth yet?