politicians and morality

Politicians while running for government office tend to say things that appeal to the morality to specific groups that they feel will give them the most votes while shunning and sometimes outright puts those groups down.  The politicians would have us believe that their sense of morality is our morality for our government.

The groups that politicians tend to ignore or put down are part of their voter base as well and what they are doing is a form of bullying by belittling their desire to be part of the process.  In some venues, they are an influential part of the voter base which means that they need to put their morality aside if they want to get elected.

The thing is, we each have our own sense of morality that may be different than that of the politicians and the politicians know that and it is why they change their tune when then get elected.  Some do try to do what they believe while others do end up doing things that go against their campaigning, when it comes to morality.

There are some people who believe that there is no separation of church and state where the U.S. Constitution does not have the exact phrase "separation of church and state" even though there are provisions prohibiting the union of the two.  Granted we cannot totally take our belief systems out of our daily lives which means some of the beliefs will spill over into our government even if it is inadvertently.

There are some people who would take a specific part of a religious text and through it in peoples faces, what they will not show is, the full text of the religous text which also includes a bunch of things that society considers normal and many politican past and present pursue as if it was a badge of honor instead of adhering to the text which goes against what they are doing.

I would like to know where the politicians get their data on taxes

Given that some politicians think that giving tax cuts to the richest 2 percent of the U.S. population equates to job growth in the U.S. I would like to know where this mentality comes from?  For many years there have been tax cuts in place for the richest in the nation, yet the jobs have been leaving the country or have been cut totally due to the mentality that there is higher profit if jobs are dealt in this way.

If there are to be continued tax cuts to the wealthiest of our citizens we need them to show that the mentality that has lead to the tax cuts is for real by actually creating the jobs that they have lead the politician to believe would happen. 

Barack Obame - President Elect

Barack Obama deserves to be applauded for attaining the office of the President of the United States. He exemplifies the hopes and dreams of many people in the U.S. especially those who have felt that they have been cheated out of the american dream.

He made history in being elected president. He is the first person to be elected that is of mixed racial background even though most see him only for his skin color.

The questions now are like that of any other politician. will he live up to his promises? will he be able to keep his promises?

pork barrel politics

the people who have the ability to do something to help the economy and the environment are all saying that we should to this or we should do that. Unfortunately, none of these people want to actually sit down and work with each other due to the mentality of "what is in it for me".

that mentality has slowed down any real attempt at helping those who would have the most to gain from people sorting things out, which only compounds the problem in the long run due to having to add pork barrel items to the solution that has nothing to do with fixing the problem only to have to deal with any ill effects of those pork barrel items at a later date if it is shown that those items just compound a problem elsewhere.

what is needed is someone standing up to those who really enjoy adding pork barrel items and stating that they have no business there if they need to paid with pork barrel items to do what they know to be right by their constituents.

there is a time and place for adding pork barrel political items. they tend to show up in area's where they have no business being in due to people trying to quietly attaching them to things that they do not relate to, just so they can pacify a persons friends or people trying to influence them in some way.

this has been shown with both the environment and the economy. If you look at the bail out of Wall Street, a few hundred million dollar if not a few billion dollars in pork barrel items had to be added to get the needed votes to pass congress. With the environment it has been shown that for many people with influence don't care about it due to wanting to go into areas that are protected to make money stripping the environment in some way to get the product that they are looking for with no real plan to protect the environment from the ill effects caused by the process of extraction. it also has been shown that these same people are catered too by not enforcing different laws that pertain to what they are doing or burying bills that would effect those people.

The bailout

The fundimentals of any bailout plan has to be the protection of those who would be adversely effected by the failure of the system. This means that those who are already or will be living paycheck to paycheck are the ones that are in need of the most protection. This is not to say that there should not be protections put in place for the financial institutions either but protections for both sides should keep one protection from overriding the other.

The working poor and the middle class should not have to worry about the potential loss of their homes or retirement accounts due to people or rules that favor taking the stuff to gain short term satisfaction over working with the people and families for long term satisfaction.

when it comes to the financial institutions they should be more willing to rewrite the terms of mortgages and other forms of credit so that the people who are paying on the credit can still afford to keep paying rather than taking steps that would hurt the financial company through having property that is not generating income due to forcing the people from their home.

The other forms of credit like credit cards, the financial institutions need to look at what is going on with the way they handle interest and fees. The financial companies who provide credit cards have to reduce the interest and not be so willing to add fees to the accounts due to the fact that sometimes when a late fee is assessed to an account the account gets charged an over the limit fee as well which at times forces the interest rate to spike. The financial institutions should not be permitted to assess fees when to an individuals account when the account is at or close enough to the limit that it would adversely effect the account holder financially.

at the same time the financial institutions should have protections against people who are trying to scam people and the financial institutions in ways that adversely effect the one going for the credit and the financial institution or are willing to lie about their financial situation to get the money that they are looking for only to turn around and file for protection against creditors.

this years presidential run seems a little off kilter

with the way both candidates have been going about their presidential runs you would think in some ways they are in the wrong political parties. you have a candidate in the democratic party who is willing to talk faith issues which the republican party normally talks about.

then you have a candidate in the republican party who has selected a running mate who doesn't fall under the normal conservative family due to her daughter being pregnant out of wedlock even though it has been publicly stated that she is going to get married before the baby is born.

on a personal level I do not have any problem with either of them but in my opinion as to whether or not they can effectively run the country, I feel that neither of them can do it, at least as it would be needed to put us back on stable footing both domestically and internationally.

the way I look at it we have to choose between someone who thinks for the most part like the current administration and someone who broke his promise to finish his first term as senator before running for another office.

an opinion on the candidates

as the presidential race is heating up we will inevitably be exposed to a lot of campaign rhetoric that would not sound like it is a bias against the normal set of candidates but with this campaign where age and race are involved what would normally be perceived as rhetoric will to some degree be perceived as a bias either against age or race.

the real problem is having to choose between two individuals one of which believes in the current policies which have brought our country to a breaking point domestically and internationally; the other has the ability to tell you exactly what groups would like to hear but hasn't really come out and said anything with regards to how his goals for this country will be achieved.

opinion regarding military service in presidential politics

Given that President George W. Bush pushed military service to the forefront in the past two presidential elections it is something that is now a subject that people are going to look at. Unfortunately it is something to be used negatively due to George W. Bush since he belittled McCain’s years as a P.O.W. and then belittling Kerry’s swift boat record.

In my opinion, it should not be up to the general public to pass judgment on someone who actively served in the military. This judgment should be reserved to those who are serving, that have served and the immediate family of those serving and of those who have died.

The whole subject what brought into play eight years ago when a now sitting president who decided to use McCain’s status as a former P.O.W. against him calling into question where his loyalties lied since he was held captive and tortured. Then he used Kerry’s swift boat experience against him, saying that there was no way he could have gotten the amount of medals he did with such a short time in the military.

Those who have served should be ashamed of themselves if they come out against someone’s military service for the sole purpose of garnering support for the person going against him. If you are going to belittle someone’s service then belittle it solely on merit of service not for political posturing. If they are that intent on belittling their own then it should be an open field to play both ways and they should be dealt with in the same manner to see how it feels to have a peer belittle them for serving as they did.

In the end they need to act like adults who have commanded respect of others not as children who don’t know any better.

the race for the democratic nomination

I don't think that any of the candidates running for office are actually going for the office of the president strictly for the sake of running the country.

In regards to the democratic candidates, I feel that even if Hilary is really running to make positive changes, she would be unable to due to the fact she thinks too much like the national level politicians that bicker more than work. Obama, he has had the habit of bringing up that he grew up poor and really hasn't talked about his mixed heritage like he did early on in the campaign, he reminds me of the people who want nothing to do with their life before they made it to where they are now and I have known a few people like that.

Hilary has to show that she is capable of not thinking like the normal politician, and Obama even though being born poor still can be an elitist given his attitude and achievements.

I do think that Hilary should drop out but at the same time I think that she be on the ticket as the vice presidential candidate to make it harder for McCain to win.

commentary on the presidential candiates

Dealing with the issue of race and gender in the democratic primaries, there has been no direct commentary that I have heard regarding race or gender coming from the candidates directly. The issues of race and gender have, but others regardless of whether they were part of the campaigns or not have had commentary on both. Early on it was general commentary about gender and whether a woman was electable, not it has gone from general commentary about gender to more specific commentary that normally goes on in other public forums in regards to race and an individual’s personal actions.

Obama has consistently tried to take race out of the equation, which is a good thing since he is actually mixed regardless of who says what about his race. At the same time there are elements out there in this country that purposely inject race into what ever they can even if an opponent is going with the actions of the individual. The problem is that the people who inject race tend to equate an attack on an individual as an attack on the race itself, which causes a tit-for-tat situation which works against both sides.

If either Obama or Clinton gets the nomination for the party, race or gender will definitely play a role in the general election due to the nature of our society and the nature of campaigning. All of the candidates have to actually take a stand and show everyone that there is no room for gender or racial bias in their campaigns otherwise it will only get worse as the campaigning goes on whether or not the candidates really want that stuff injected.

All of the candidates in both parities have all been campaigning to some degree for change, the thing is that change happens with each new administration sometimes it’s for the better sometimes for worse. The thing is that going from experience a campaign just touting change is far different then providing proof that you are going to make changes if elected.

The candidates have been saying we need to change this or change that but I have not heard one iota about the specifics of how they plan to change each issue that they have been stating that needs to be changed which for them is a good thing for them but a bad thing for the voters and the electorate. It is a good thing for the candidates not to go into specifics since it can come back to haunt them if they do but at the same time it is very bad for the voters and the electorate due to a lack of information to make an informed decision on who to vote for which opens up the opportunity for here say on what the candidates mean when the talk about change.

Beyond the race and gender issues, there is a definite feel that the candidates are already acting as if this is the general election instead of the primary due to the fact that the front runners for both parties are consistently attacking each other on stuff that pertains to their own actions. The general response has been to these attacks have been the same coming from both parties with the responses being “that’s not what I said or did” or “that’s not what I meant” even with evidence in hand to show that is what was said or done.

That shows me that the candidates who are using those general lines are trying to run or hide their record especially if it goes against what they are currently stating they stand for in their campaign for president. Those candidates more than anyone else have to show what they actually stand for due to the fact that they don’t want their own past used against them and if they don’t want their past involved in the current campaign season, then they have to have the same hands off approach for the past for the other candidates that they expect the other candidates to have with them.

The one real way to show that they intend on making real changes if they get elected is to actually show that their intent to change is real and by actually showing how they intend on changing things while in office. They have to make an honest attempt to show that they are more than willing to work with both democrats and republicans in the attempt to make the changes by allowing the proposed changes to be reworked by both parties as long as the way you wish it to work remains relatively the same and can actually produce positive changes for the issues.

Change for the sake of change isn’t at all a good thing, change to make a positive change is regardless of who actually comes up with the change. Real change in relation to issues that the government has to take up, comes when we actually take the time to work out how to do things in a way that promotes positive results for as many people as possible not for a select demographics.

a thought before the New Hampshire primary

I am writing this before the New Hampshire Primary.

I feel that McCain will end up winning the republican winner of the New Hampshire Primary. Nothing against the other candidates but I think that McCain is the better choice on the Republican side.

On the democratic side I am not sure who is going to win, but do think it will be either obama or clinton.

presidential candidates

This presidential election even though we are still in the primary season, we as a nation are in a different position than we normally are. This time around we are faced with deciding between genders and race which people have taken notice of.

regardless of qualifications, gender and race issues will arise as time goes by in this election season which will surely create tensions between various groups of people who might otherwise be on the same side in the way things get done.

the only way to get past the issues that may detract from who we feel is most qualified to be president, is to look past both the gender and race of the people who are running for president so we can actually see what they stand for and what they are hoping to accomplish as president in an attempt to find out who we think is the most qualified.

Mitt Romney's speech

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney in a way had to give a speech concerning his religion and politics due to people making necessary due to faith issues.

I do not agree with what he is doing based on his past political experience in Massachusetts but he did make at least one point that I have been trying to state in message boards and in letters to the editor of multiple newspapers which is the fact that there is a distinct separation of church and state.

that is a great point but given the circumstances surrounding his gubernatorial campaign and subsequent election as the Massachusetts governor, he has shown that even though he has now stated publicly that there is a separation of church ands state he becomes a hypocrite given what he said in his campaign and subsequent tenure in Massachusetts.

in his gubernatorial campaign he expressed that his faith would not interfere with his job as governor, yet a few months into his first year as governor he started showing that he could not leave his religion at the front door of the statehouse by stating that he would not support different laws based on his religious beliefs.

given his past record with massachusetts, I cannot believe that he will not bring his religion to the table as the president regardless of how polished his campaign speeches are.

alberto gonzalez' resignation

regardless of whether or not the allegations against the outgoing attorney general are warranted, I believe he did the right thing by resigning. regardless of his capabilities after the senate started looking into the allegations, he was unable to do his job correctly due to having the senate breathing down his neck and his underlings had little to no confidence in him due to possible credibility issues.

resigning protected the sanctity of the position and will allow a new person to take the helm and hopefully get things moving in the direction needed.

I feel that he is a qualified attorney but that he let his loyalty to the president get in the way to do his job the way it should be done.

scooter libby

This may sound very partisan in nature, but I think that what happened with I. Lewis Libby shows the very thing that has even some Republicans steering clear of President George W. Bush.

The whole thing with publicly acknowledging Valerie Plame's identity to a reporter was a farce that allowed the Bush administration to be absolved of any responsibility due to the way it was handled.

First it came out that her identity was top secret which initiated an investigation, then it came out that the President quietly let allowed the her identity to be removed from the ranks of top secret just long enough for there to be questions posed as to whether I. Lewis Libby made the statements about her identity before or after this happened.

In the end he was not convicted of the actual indiscretion, but rather he was convicted of the other charges that stemmed from the initial charge but that he should not have been convicted of since it came out that it was well with in his offices right to acknowledge her identity to the press.

Five hours after the sentence had been handed down, President Bush commuted the jail term of I. Lewis Libby and said that a full pardon may not be totally out of the question.

I am a democrat and find that I. Lewis Libby was used as a scapegoat to keep the focus off of the Bush administration and its attempt to keep people silent on subjects that are questionable in nature stemming from the current administration.

embryonic stem cell research, politics and religion

When it comes to medical research, more specifically embryonic stem cell research and presidential politics, the current president is playing to what our country calls the “Christian Conservatives” and their views on religious beliefs. The problem with that is the fact that some issues that the “Christian Conservatives” rather than looking at all beliefs they run with a specific belief on an issue that they either agree or disagree with and try to have a one sided debate with it.

The current president has made it a point to side with the “Christian Conservatives” on the embryonic stem cell research debate even though there are beliefs that to some degree contradict their stance.

Stem cells from my understanding are the cells that designate what is what in our body and we can use these stem cells to recreate pieces of that specific type of tissue. Embryonic stem cells are unspecified stem cells that haven’t been assigned a specific type of tissue to make and therefore have the ability to be told to create any type of tissue in the body. This gives us the opportunity to learn how stem cells work in general before they become specific to a type of tissue and to see what can and does go wrong in the creation of the different types of tissue so we can learn how to correct it.

The problem isn’t the research itself but rather the mentality of the people setting the public policy in government concerning medicine and research. These people who include the president try to put medicine and religion at odds with each other even though they go hand in hand due to religious doctrine. Religion states that it is our duty to heal the sick, which is were medicine comes into play.

It is understandable that many of the “Christian Conservatives” take a stance against embryonic stem cell research based on their religious beliefs. This is due to Christianity stating that life begins at conception and that we are not supposed to kill. At the same, there is a flip side to those as well. Religious doctrine not only states that we are not supposed to kill religious doctrine also states that we are supposed to learn, to heal the sick and to gain wisdom.

We cannot gain the wisdom needed that comes from learning if we place restrictions on what we learn or how we learn due to it going against one specific religious belief. By placing limits on what we learn and how we learn it when it comes to medical research we are hindering our ability to allow the medical community to do its job and in some cases we essentially are killing the people who we are in charge of healing because we are choosing to stand around and watch them die rather than learning how to heal them.

Where we are taught religion long before we are taught about government and politics we inherently put our religious beliefs into our politics. The people who were trusted to right the foundation of our country knew this and when they were writing the United States Constitution, they tried to limit the influence of both religion and government over each other. There will always be people including politicians who feel that there is no such writing in the constitution and others that feel that religion has no place in government at all.

Presidential politics is about running the country as effectively as the individual can run it given both domestic and international issues that relate to the people and the government, not using the Presidential podium as a pulpit to preach religious doctrine and limiting what we can do based on his own views on religious doctrine. The president if he uses the podium as a pulpit on the subject of embryonic stem cell research, belittles the researchers trying to do their jobs and he is forgetting that at one time many of the medical advancements we have achieved have come about even with religion being against it and how these advancements have helped us everyone including the people who didn’t believe in the advancement of medicine.

The has to be some sort of medium between secularism and religion when making decisions for the country as a whole since the country is a melting pot of cultures and religions rather than treating the country as if there is one culture and one religion.

Yes, in essence religion doesn’t permit us to kill, but at the same time if we choose not to do the Embryonic stem cell research then we are choosing to kill far more people that have illnesses we have no treatment for that may have had a cure stemming from that research.

a political letter of mine Published in 2004

The following letter is mine that was published in the Boston Edition of Metro on september 27, 2004.

During this political campaign, all we have to choose from is a person that appears to be a liar and a person that appears to flip-flop on issues. One of my co-workers told me not to listen to any politics at all. I ended up telling him if I want to vote I must listento what they are saying. I also told my co-worker that the presidential candidates don't want you to lishen to what they have to say; all they want you to hear is "vote for me."

What I don't understand is that both candidates are obsessed with the war on terror and what happened during the vietnam era. The media is feeding those obsessions and not forcing the candidates to say anything on record that would show where they stand.

All of the media outlets should stop feeding into what the presidential candidates want you to hear and take a stand. What I mean by that is, they should make a more concerted effort to show what issues the candidates stand for and then try to match the statements to how they have handled themselves on those same issues in their respective offices.
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it is now 2007, it may be early yet in the presidential campaign but the last paragraph in the above letter is as relevant as three years ago at this time.

an opinion on Iraq

Regardless of what went on concerning Iraq and the months leading up to our Invasion of Iraq, I feel that the decision to invade was forced down the Senates throat. I have thought that from the start of President Bush pushing for the war with Iraq based on CIA information that had been presented to him concerning Iraq. If the media outlets are correct and I stress if they are correct then the CIA had asked President Bush to hold off on asking for a declaration of war so that way the agency could verify the intelligence in the report that went to his desk.
Now that we have been there for four years there is no easy way out of Iraq because the innocent people trying to live their daily lives don't deserve to have their country occupied but at the same time there are people who are hiding behind the dominate religion there and they are also perverting it to get people to do their bidding that would seize control of the country.
If you notice the masterminds behind the perversions that they are perpetrating onto the religion are not the ones going off and killing themselves to prove their point they are using the people hat they had sucked into the mess to kill themselves after getting them to believe that it is the only way to attain the goals of the masterminds behind the attacks.
I do not blame the religion, I blame the individuals that are perverting the religion to fit their agenda's. We cannot resolve the issues unless we can negate the religion factor in the whole situation.

The Republican party

I have a few friends that are Republicans, and have no problem with them being Republican. It is the Leadership of the political party and the politicians who are Republican I tend not to agree with. I will not put anyone down here but I would like to state my opinion on how I think they appear in the media.

The republican leadership appears to be smart people with well enough intentions but work against themselves at least in my book. Both mainstream political parties do seem somewhat out of touch with the voters but the Republicans appear to be worse off than the democrats with being in touch with the voters, this is due to what looks to be a college fraternity mentality.

I am saying that they have a fraternity mentality due to the fact that they tend to treat non-republican legislation with disdain even if it means positive change for their constituents. They also tend to hold onto a narrow view of what is best for this country and tend to blindly follow the party line when ever there is any legislation that may be considered controversial. each group regardless of political or social affiliation, tends to back their members up but the republicans at least in the public eye tends to protect its ranks even when they cannot be defended against their own action.

religion and politics

I will not fault anyone for having religion or politics as their driving force in their lives. I feel that they both have their place but should not be mingled together as deeply as some would want us to do.

Unfortunately, with the founding of the Moral Majority, by Jerry Falwell more than two decades ago we have more people trying to make Christian Doctrine into governmental law. For somethings I can understand why people would want it or feel it is needed but other things I feel it is an intrusion into the private lives of people who don't practice any of the Christian faiths or don't agree with religion being force fed to them from strangers that don't have anything to do with them personally.

Jerry Falwell had the best of intentions when trying to open peoples eyes to what you can do when it comes to government, but he should have made every effort to seperate his religous teachings from his political views due to the fact that even though we do put the two together to some degree we should never put them together on a large scale like what has happened. Religion is based on beliefs and values that are suppose to be based in the home, the respective places of worship and the respective local communities that they are in.

given that religion has tried to intrude into politics, how would a religious service take to a politician trying to turn their service into a political forum?