Wedge issues are nothing new. BOTH SIDES ARE NOT EQUAL (sorry I shouted) and the #GOP has become especially adept at engaging low-information voters to vote against their own interests, mostly for things that will never become law. Starting with the Southern Strategy to capture rural, Southern Democrats, Republicans have been wanting to keep Jim Crow alive, women subjugated, and African Americans as second class citizens.
We are one nation. When we eliminate the social wedges, we mostly want the same things. There will always be a rabid right wing that flares up or is inflated by Koch-sized money, but we can mostly just get along and work on the day-to-day issues of running a government. The GOP is making it particularly hard these days...
At their 2012 convention, they are proposing a platform that is surely designed to take our country back - to 1850.
-They propose to repeal #PPACA. This would immediately put us on track to trillions more in national debt, unless we make it up in taxes or decimate our military and social investment programs.
-They would deny a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy, no matter whether it would save her life, or she was raped. This is slavery, pure and simple. I do respect their consistency - if they believe a zygote is a baby, then it still is a baby no matter how the pregnancy started and no matter what it's outcome will be - but their hatred is vile.
-They would deny contraception, in-vitro fertilization, and other common practices that don't even terminate a pregnancy. Outlawing abortion doesn't end abortion, it only denies abortion to those who don't have the money, and makes them dangerous to all. With more pregnancies, because women don't know about contraception and can't get it if they do know, we will have more abortions.
-They would voucherize Medicare, causing an immediate increase of appx. $7,000 a year to seniors, and trust me, this is the difference between security and poverty. To throw the health care of Medicare recipients to the corporate market is simply murder.
-GOP will send Social Security to Wall Street. Good luck if you plan to retire in a down period, when your Social Security is upside down.
-They will destroy Welfare as we know it. More single mothers have to work - family values at its best! Clinton folded in the face of strong opposition, he didn't need to do this, and they still impeached him. The same will happen to Barack Obama during his second term, mark my words, and it won't necessarily be about welfare, but it will be about race.
-"We don't need more fire fighters" - Mitt Romney. We don't need more teachers. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps, educate your self, 2nd graders. Save your own homes - buy more hoses!
POLITICAL PREACHERS
-"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." —Matthew 7:15
I have been preached at. "There is evil in Washington" "We need to take our country back" "The president hopes to change our country to a communal, European nation"
Every week, from the pulpit, tax-free, preachers are telling their congregations how to vote, how to hate.
"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?-Barry Goldwater knew the truth, and he lost, in part, because he didn't embrace the fringe elements of his party. There were many things I didn't like about his policies, but he seems like a moderate compared to today's GOP.
Insurrectionists like http://www.speakupmovement.org/church/LearnMore/details/4702 have events like Pulpit Freedom Sunday. They have convinced congregations that they are under assault, that some government entity wants to take away their freedoms and tax the church into submission. A big danger is that these seditionists spread hate, fear, and malaise to their congregations so their people can be controlled. This is so their vote can be controlled, not that their souls can be saved. Their votes can be channeled toward hate and repression. It's the people of these congregations that must stand up to the dangerous moneyed interests that control their church. Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of hate group Focus on the Family, collects money by passing the plate in church and funnels it toward policies that subjugate women, blacks, gays, etc.
Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, has subjugated our democracy. Out of state, mostly Morman money, was used to puff up hate legislation. They lied to make people believe that P8 would take away their rights, when it was only extending rights to those who have been disenfranchised.
There is some hope. Rev. Greg Boyd gets it http://astore.amazon.com/christusvicto-20/detail/0310267315 In his book Myth of a Christian Nation, he defends the strong right for religious institutions to stand outside the reach of government influence.
"I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?-Barry Goldwater knew the truth, and he lost, in part, because he didn't embrace the fringe elements of his party. There were many things I didn't like about his policies, but he seems like a moderate compared to today's GOP.
Insurrectionists like http://www.speakupmovement.org/church/LearnMore/details/4702 have events like Pulpit Freedom Sunday. They have convinced congregations that they are under assault, that some government entity wants to take away their freedoms and tax the church into submission. A big danger is that these seditionists spread hate, fear, and malaise to their congregations so their people can be controlled. This is so their vote can be controlled, not that their souls can be saved. Their votes can be channeled toward hate and repression. It's the people of these congregations that must stand up to the dangerous moneyed interests that control their church. Alliance Defense Fund, a nonprofit legal defense group whose founders include James Dobson, the founder of hate group Focus on the Family, collects money by passing the plate in church and funnels it toward policies that subjugate women, blacks, gays, etc.
Rev. James Garlow, senior pastor at Skyline Church in La Mesa, Calif., who led preachers in the battle to pass California’s Proposition 8, has subjugated our democracy. Out of state, mostly Morman money, was used to puff up hate legislation. They lied to make people believe that P8 would take away their rights, when it was only extending rights to those who have been disenfranchised.
There is some hope. Rev. Greg Boyd gets it http://astore.amazon.com/christusvicto-20/detail/0310267315 In his book Myth of a Christian Nation, he defends the strong right for religious institutions to stand outside the reach of government influence.
The GOP platform wedges sane Americans from fringe Americans. We just need more people to see clearly the importance of keeping our government outside the reach of extremist, seditious Religious Industrial Complex influence.
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