Helen Thomas

I'm sure that some of you are going to disagree with me here but it's amazing to me that a women who has been working the white house press core for more then 4 decades can lose her job over night while people like Glen Beck, Rush, Anne Coulter and Michelle Malkin can spew their lies all over the airwaves (with hardly any repercussions) on a daily basis shows just how upside down and stupid this country has truly become. Granted what Helen Thomas said was irresponsible, insensitive and of course totally unrealistic however I don't think she should have been fired for it which is basically what happened. The women has been up until a few days ago one of the most distinguished journalist on the white house press core. I understand that this country has deep ties with Israel and they are a powerful alley but I think it is unfair that Helen Thomas is treated like some horrible villain for again what was a very stupid comment when others can lie daily and hardly anyone bats an eyelash. It's maddening. Joseph Farah of World Daily Net on daily basis accuses Obama of not being a US citizen and some sort of communist Nazi yet do you ever hear people like Ari Fleischer (you know the really honest and upstanding person that he is) coming on CNN complaining about how offensive he is?? NO, I don't think so. But Fleischer didn't waste any time coming on to CNN yesterday to complain about how horrible Thomas is. Interesting where our priorities lie. I understand what Thomas said would be deeply offensive to many people but should a career as long as hers come to a halt over one off handed comment, no matter how off-base, I just don't think I'm comfortable with the destruction of one women's career over this. It's sad and although I don't agree with her comments in any way, I think what is more sad is we can go on the attack like this because of her comments about Israel but others can lie without repute daily and we (media & public) turn a deaf ear and laugh it off. I'm not sure which is more offensive.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37555003/ns/politics/

Thoughts?

All Things Lost

Hello Fellow Lost Fans,


I thought I would take a break from the serious and post something on Lost.

Below are a few links to some articles that I found this morning on the web. The first one is Jeff (Doc) Jensen’s recap of Lost which is always great!

I really liked the finale and the more I think about it the more I like it. There are some unanswered questions for sure. The mysteries of the Island will for the most part stay a mystery but perhaps that is for each person to ponder. Like each of the castaways we will never fully know what the island is and what it is to each person is personal. I think the island is just a mythic or spiritual place existing in real time that has all sorts of powers that have all different effects on the people who come in contact with it. For a while it might have even been a place to keep evil at bay. You could say Jacob made a horrible mistake by pushing his brother into the cavern of light and thus creating MIB and for the rest of Jacob’s time on the island it remained important that this creation of evil never left. You could also say that the island needed to be protected only because of its uniqueness in the world and that alone was reason enough to sacrifice so much to keep it safe. Or perhaps it really is a center spot on earth that balances good and evil. Obviously the island has had many protectors over time. Hurly will just be the next person in what is sure to be a long linage of guardians. And Ben as his second in command truly represents a whole circle completed. Ben wanted only to stay on the island, the love of his life and Hurly the lovable Stars Wars quoting big guy reluctantly accepted his fate but the two of them combined equal a whole. Ben the darker persona and Hurly the good natured and kind persona and together they represent a new balance to watch over the island. Ben even foreshadows this idea by saying that Hurley didn’t need to do things the same way that Jacob did, i.e. he has a choice in how things are to go.

As for the sideways world it was of course touching to see each person awaken and find their soul mates or in the case of John and others like Boone reconnect with their castaway family before moving on. I think that the fate of each of these people were so intertwined that it made a nice allegory that they could not move on to the next world until they all came together in death. Their most profound experiences in life happened together on the island and so they needed each other to move on to the next place. Their experiences in those few months or years transcended everything else in their lives, their souls were bonded beyond what was physical or corporeal.

I think if you believed in and cared about these characters and their lives then the ending was satisfying, you could say that for all they suffered in the end they were rewarded and united. If you cared more about the island and wanted definitive answers then this might have left you with an empty feeling. I think I care less about having every island question answered and I am more satisfied knowing what happened to each of these characters. Also, what did everyone thing of the airplane wreckage and the significance, if any, of it being shown at the end? What did all of you think? I am so curious to know?

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20313460_20387946,00.html
EW Recap part I, part II comes tomorrow

http://marquee.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/24/final-lost-one-for-the-ages/?hpt=Sbin

http://tv.yahoo.com/lost/show/36617/news/tv-news.en.ap.org/tv-news.en.ap.org-20100524-us_tv_lost_finale

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/05/23/lost-finale-recap-spoilers/
This review is good just to see people’s comments and thoughts. They start at the end of the article.

Arizona Immigration Reform: A Teaspoon to Clean an Oil Slick

This last week I have been contemplating a blog on Goldman Sachs which will be forthcoming but instead I have chosen to focus on the Arizona Immigration Bill since it has been the dominate discussion point on talk radio, the internet and the TV news stations. This bill is a lightening rod for sure and although I believe the bill to be a useless and ill-conceived piece of legislation enacted by a desperate group of political nut jobs hopefully it will bring attention to the serious issue of immigration reform. First let’s talk about this bill. If anyone thinks this is going to actually help put a stop to illegal immigration then I want what you’re smoking (I will just dedicate that line to Bill Maher). This law is going to allow police officers to racially profile anyone with dark skin. If I am a Latino American living in Arizona I would be outraged that I can be stopped at anytime and asked to present identification. The bill is very vague about what the criteria is for stopping some one other then saying, “reasonable suspicion.” (See the link below for a summary of this bill) What exactly does that mean, reasonable suspicion? Does it mean that a bilingual Mexican American speaking to a friend in Spanish can cause suspicion and then questioning? What if they forgot their driver’s license that day or lost it the night before, are they going to be arrested? After all they are of Mexican decent, with no identification on them. Is the officer going to take their word for it that they are American or arrest them on “reasonable suspicion?” These are American citizens who are going to be effected and yes the legislation has been created to target illegal aliens but how will the police be able to differentiate between those that are illegal and those that are citizens? They won’t and therefore citizens of this country who have brown skin and live in Arizona are going to live in constant annoyance if not fear of being sought out by the police. I might be simplifying the issue here but this bill is trying to simplify an issue that is highly complex and extremely diverse. This is not going to stop illegal immigration. It’s like saying let’s clean up our latest oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico with a tin fishing boat and a teaspoon. Sure maybe you will get a little bit of oil but the rest is just going to slip further and further away. Maybe this bill will help Arizona, all the illegal aliens there will just go to California, New Mexico, Utah or Texas. What we need is real reform at the Federal level that will actually make a difference.

What kind of legislation would actually make a difference in immigration are the questions and answers we should be seeking. What do you do with the estimated 8-12 million or more illegal people here already? You can’t round them up and ship them off to Mexico, Cuba, China and other countries of origin because it would cost trillions of dollars and it would take forever. And in the particular case of Mexico they are part of the problem. They are overrun by drug lords and a corrupt government, they have little industry and a huge population. Can you blame people for wanting to come across the boarder to America, the land of opportunity? I don’t know about you but if I had the choice of living in abject poverty in Mexico, becoming a drug mule or literally working for pennies a day or I could come to America illegally and make some decent cash I know what options and risks I would take. And when you look at the situation in this light it also becomes a humanitarian issue. Not so simple is it? That’s right this is complicated, far more complicated then profiling someone’s skin color and tossing them back over the boarder. Maybe in Arizona they will catch 1000 people with this new law and big deal we will still have 11, 999,000 more illegal people in this country. Teaspoon to oil slick folks, it’s just not going to make a difference. These are some of the questions we should be asking and as far as the answers, I definitely don’t have all of them but here are some ideas. You legalize as many of these aliens as possible as long as they don’t have a criminal record here or in Mexico. You give them green cards and put them on the path to citizen ship. You force them to pay taxes and get jobs at minimum wage or higher and you force employers to hire people legally and pay the taxes involved in having legal employees. The argument is these aliens are taking jobs away from hard working Americans. The truth is these aliens make it possible for employers to pay them at substandard wages and employers don’t have to pay taxes for these employees since they are off the books. Therefore they are not taking jobs away from Americans because Americans would never be hired for these jobs in the first place. The next step is to close our boarders in some real sense. I heard Ed Shultz interviewing Pat Buchanan on the radio today about having the National Guard patrol our boarders or the US Army. Not a bad idea in my book. Instead of spending billions on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan let’s bring some of these troops home and have them close off our boarders in Texas, California and Arizona. If they can bring order to Iraq then surely the can bring some order to the US boarders. This would make a huge difference in stopping illegal aliens from entering the country not to mention it would put a major dent in stopping illegal drugs and the people shipping them into this country as well. Now take all of this and ask congress to pass some sort of reasonable immigration reform and you will see where the true problem lies. You see politicians, both democrats and republicans, are in bed with businesses and farmers. These businesses/farmers, etc can’t afford to pay workers legally along with the taxes involved in having legal employees and keep their cost down so the translation here would be if we legalize these jobs then our cost of goods go up or businesses go under. It’s an ugly little problem and this in a very simplified nut shell is why no sitting president or congress has been able to pass any kind of real immigration reform. I have no idea how we solve this problem and I have really only scratched the surface of the issue but I do know that this sham of a bill in Arizona is not going to make a bit of difference other then boosting the ratings of talk shows, scaring the Latino population in Arizona and sending illegal immigrants further into hiding in this country.

Attached below are links to a few good articles on this subject plus links to the actual bill.

Please comment with your thoughts and ideas.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-creamer/the-arizona-of-2010-is-th_b_551062.html

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/04/arizonas_shameful_immigration.html?referrer=emaillink

Bill
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/bills/sb1070s.pdf

Summary of Bill:
http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/49leg/2r/summary/s.1070pshs.doc.htm

Health care reform, lies and social responsibility

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to discuss the passage of the health care bill. I will admit I have not read the entire bill but I have read abbreviated highlights of the bill. Check out this link: http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/TIMELINE.pdf .  This is also a great link that will take you directly to the facts of the health care bill which was signed into law: http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform/summary.  What I really want to talk about today is a two part discussion. Number one is the lies and blatant destructive and irresponsible tactics being used by the extremist in this country to incite fear and the other is the idea of social responsibility and why we need reform.

Let’s start with the lies. The vitriolic blow hard talking heads on AM radio would have you believe that the government is about to take over your health care, force you to die at a certain date and will mandate everything from abortions to severe financial penalties if you don’t buy into the health care system and of course your taxes are going to sky rocket. Lines for the doctor’s office will wrap around the building and everything will be rationed. NOT TRUE. First off there are no death panels. Second if you are uninsured you have until I believe 2014 to buy into the system. At that point if you don’t buy insurance the fine is $95 and if you can’t afford insurance there will be a lot of subsidies and government help to make it possible for you to obtain insurance. The reason for this is simple, the system will only work if everyone participates and why wouldn’t you want to? Preventive care especially for young people and middle age people is the front line in catching disease early and therefore will bring down the cost of care. There is also an element of social responsibility here that my Libertarian friends will scream about but I will touch on that in a bit. In addition there are some really good practices coming out of this bill. It will end rescission, it will stop the practice of denying people coverage because they have a preexisting condition (children included) and it will open up special financial loan programs for doctors who choose to enter into preventive care rather then specialize in areas such as surgery. This is important because most med students choose to enter specialties to make more money to pay off the mountain of student debt they rack up in med school which is causing a shortage of preventive care doctors. I could go on and on here but I will refer to the links above for more detailed information on the bill. What is most disturbing are the lies that are surrounding this bill and the people perpetrating these lies. Sara Palin yesterday actually launched a link on Facebook which maps out democratic congressional offices and pinpoints these office through the image of a rifle lens. This is beyond irresponsible and the connotation surrounding her graphic of a rifle lens is one of violence. There are enough crazy tea baggers out there that they might just think this is their call to go on a shooting rampage rather then engage in a discussion of ideas. The Party of No and their band of self created ignorant followers has no room here to complain since they never legitimately offered any alternatives or real ideas to the debate other then let the free market rule and reform malpractice suits. One is ideology the other is like trying to shore up a waterfall with a paper towel. Now let’s talk about social responsibility.

Here is where my Libertarian friends are going to scream and stamp their feet but there is truth in social responsibility and health care. Health care takes up 18% of the GDP and without reform that number is expected to continue to rise. Also, health insurance for individuals and families has been increasing at an astronomical rate year over year and it is severally hurting the middle class in this country. And then there is the problem of the 45 million people who can’t afford health care at all. You can’t tell me that these 45 million people are good for nothing slackers or that all of these 45 million people are lazy and trying to get a free ride. These 45 million people are US citizens and they deserve the opportunity to buy (as in pay for) health care. How can we as the richest nation on the planet not provide health care for our people when other countries like Canada, Spain, France and the UK can? The most ironic part of this is the people who I have seen protest against this the most are very conservative and very Christian. This is a Christian concept, this is what Jesus preached, help the poor, care for the poor. We have a responsibility as a people to care for our citizens and to try and make things better for those who have less. If you want to scream at me and call me a socialist then so be it. Reforming the health care system or really we should say reforming the private insurance companies with more regulation so they can’t gouge and mistreat people is a far cry from the socialist agenda the Tea Party and others are so afraid of. It’s our responsibility as a nation to care for its people, all of its people, not just the rich or the middle class but everyone. And if you want to get down to the bare bones of the issue whether you care about being social responsible or not, if we don’t reform health care it’s going to destroy our economy, hurt our businesses and in another decade even the middle class won’t be able to afford insurance so either way it needs to happen. The government is going to mandate it and some people are going to scream and yell, and call for a civil war, and Obama is going to be a socialist who only cares about a black agenda but slowly as the bill is enacted and people see that we are not going to become Cuba they might actually like the doors this opens for them. Time will tell but hopefully we can get back to a place of civility and discourse rather then being ruled by ignorance and fear.

McCarthyism Tactics, Absent Leadership and a Silent Moderate Populace

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, how the baseless and irresponsible claims made daily by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Sara Palin, Bill O’Reilly and countless other extreme republicans use McCarthyism tactics to further their agenda and spread fear and discord. I don’t think we need a history lesson here to know that spewing unsubstantiated statements and factoids without proof is dangerous and that is exactly what these people do, every day, all day and I wonder to myself where is today’s Edward R. Murrow? It seems to me that the moderate populace who elected Barack Obama and the democrats to their super majority status have suddenly lost their voice when in fact they could collectively be the Edward R. Murrow of today and call these idiots out on their lies and extreme agendas. Instead all I seem to hear about are the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck.

Beck, Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly, and Palin might claim to be the champions of the little guy, supporters of the Tea Party movement and true defenders of America when in fact these people are true enemies of this country and not the patriots they claim to be. They offer no real solutions, they flame the fires of fear, hate and divisiveness and most importantly they obscure the truth to become something so ugly that people actually believe Obama is a socialist/communist ready to turn our county into Cuba, sell our first born to Muslim extremist and that in fact he is not even an American citizen. Sound familiar? Yes it should because these are similar to the tactics that Joseph McCarthy used in the 1950’s. Today is a scary time: high unemployment, a delicate economy, tremendous deficits and no clear solutions as to how to solve these problems. Instead of working together, government and the people, we are being ruled by fear. A lot of people listen to Beck, Hannity and Rush and believe their lies and they grow even more fearful while the other half of the population appears to be deaf and our government can’t seem to find a way to get past their polarized state of being. In the end we are left in a very scary place. So where do we go from here? How do we silence these fear mongers and not trample on their first amendment rights and where oh where is the moderate voice in this country?

A little over a year ago we seemed united and ready for change. Now all we have is finger pointing and czar witch hunts in the White House and some how we have magically forgot all about Bush and the massive problems he left us with, somehow this has all become the fault of Obama and the Democrats. A great line in a favorite movie of mine is when Michael J. Fox tells Michael Douglas, “People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.” Truer words were never spoken and today this is exactly what is happening. President Obama made a promise, took an oath to protect this country well Mr. Obama, PROTECT IT. Stand up and give a gut punching speech to this country, to the naysayers and to the extreme right wing. Tell them this is what we are going to do and you are either in or you are out but no more lies, no more exaggerations, no more finger pointing, no more party of no! You tell them you are an American citizen and you care about people, jobs, fiscal responsibility and that this isn’t the country of all for me and not you, this is the country of “We the People” We take responsibility as a country, we come together and we work together. If you can’t do that then get out. Mr. President you need to get mad, you need to get tough and you need to get down in the dirt and maybe get a little bloody but you need to come out swinging and every day you delay is another day that Beck, Hannity, Rush, O’Reilly, Palin and countless others come to the microphone to chip away at America’s confidence, it’s brilliance, its potential to be great and most importantly these people move us further and further away from the middle to a new land of distrust, fear, lies and hate. We can’t let the thoughts and ideologies of these extremist shape America. It’s up to us the people to say no more, to not drink the sand, to dust ourselves off, to think for ourselves, to educate ourselves and to fight for this country.