David A. Schwinghammer
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Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Independent Voters Need to Pick a Side
6/11/2012 8:12:47 AM
There's a vast difference between GOP ideologues and the Democratic Party.
The recent recall election in Wisconsin was instructive in that independent voters carried the day for Scott Walker. Who knows what their reasoning was. The democrats didn’t run the strongest candidate. Walker had already defeated Mayor Barrett of Milwaukee in the previous election and perhaps they felt Walker shouldn’t have to run again. Or maybe they fell for the GOP reasoning that private sector pensions and health care benefits were not competitive. Apparently independent voters haven’t noticed what modern capitalism is doing with pensions and health care. Everything is bottom line these days. And if those voters have pensions and insurance through their employers, they won’t have them long. If they want to keep their jobs. Unions are dying faster than dodo birds. Independent voters need to make up their minds. You don’t vote for Michelle Bachmann in the congressional election and turn around and vote for Barack Obama. 2010 voters sent people like Chip Cravaack to congress. He was a former veteran and airline pilot who retired because of sleep apnea. He also claimed to be a member of a union when he was a pilot. Union members don’t support the Republican party, much less run as one for congress. Cravaack also criticized James Oberstar, his predecessor, for living in Maryland. After he pulled off his stunning victory, Cravaack immediately moved his family to New Hampshire. He also belongs to Michelle Bachmann’s Tea Party caucus. That’s the bunch who would have shut down the government prior to the Christmas holiday if they could have had their way, causing your IRA to plummet into the nether world. I have a feeling independent voters don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between the parties, the good old red devil blue devil notion that Khrushchev espoused. That’s just not the case, especially with the new far-right GOP that values ideology above people.
The GOP is homophobic, sexist, and anti-science. You need look no further than the proliferation of Marriage Act legislation. The constitutionalist party (that’s sarcastic) is willing to deny basic rights to American citizens. There’s no reason why gays can’t get married. Marriage between same sex partners is not catching. The GOP and their fundamentalist religious allies would have you believe that homosexuality is a matter of choice. As my eighth graders would say, “Duh!” Women are also being denied basic human rights. Republicans are fighting equal pay legislation and contraception rights. Apparently women are supposed to stay home and have babies. Which would explain Rick Santorum’s appeal. Republicans are anti-science in respect to such areas as global warming and stem cell research, which could cure paralysis and make organ donors unnecessary. Guess what? Republicans oppose therapeutic cloning, too.
Republicans are also anti-education. Reagan’s “Nation at Risk” distorted reality, claiming America was at competitive risk economically because of the deplorable state of American high schools. Today the national media seems to have latched onto that idea as fact, despite what I call the watermelons and raisons comparison. Finland is supposedly the number one country in the world educationally, especially in math and science. Finland treats its teachers like rock stars; Finland also has only five million people. Meanwhile Scott Walker denies negotiation rights for teachers in Wisconsin, and this is supposed to improve education in the state. Perhaps a more telling point is that our universities are the best in the world. Students from other countries clamor to come here. If our secondary schools are so terrible how do our universities manage to retain such stature?
Meanwhile the Republican alternative is home schooling and voucher systems, which are really plans to thwart the democratic base.
Perhaps the biggest reason not to vote Republican is their reliance on their fundamentalist Christian base. Come on, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann? Wasn’t Sarah Palin bad enough? Do we really want to go back to the 19th century when women weren’t allowed to vote, blacks were lynched for looking at a white woman, and the robber barons did whatever they felt like. We also forget that there was no unemployment compensation and your savings were fair game during bank runs. Children were also forced to work.
Okay, enough of that. Let’s look at the democrats. Despite what Teabaggers might think, the democratic party passed social security, Medicare and Medicaid. They also passed the Civil Rights Act, Child Labor laws, and gave women the right to vote (They returned the favor by electing Warren G. Harding). Then there’s the G.I. Bill and the Marshall Plan. When American veterans returned from the wars in Europe and Japan they were compensated fairly. These days they have to beg for medical treatment, thanks to Republican austerity programs (which work so well in Europe). Republicans sent National Guard members to fight their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because they knew the draft wouldn’t work. All hell would have broken loose, just as it did in the sixties. Ironic considering George W. Bush couldn’t be bothered to fulfill his term in the National Guard.
These days we have a president who tried to get us single payer health care. Thanks to the democratic Blue Dogs that wasn’t possible, so he settled for a former Republican pan that would allow parents to cover their children under their own plans until they’re 26; it also prevented unions from turning people away with prior medical conditions. The Supreme Court, with five conservative judges, one who pretends to be a moderate, are about to declare “The Affordable Health Care” unconstitutional. If affirmed, so called Obamacare would save each citizen not qualified for Medicare or Medicaid approximately a thousand dollars a year. If overruled we’ll still be paying for those who go to the ER where they have to treat you. The main bugaboo seems to be the individual mandate which requires everyone to have health insurance. What the administration lawyers didn’t tell you is that we’re talking cataclysmic insurance here, with very high deductible. It’ll help you if you have cancer, but not if you break your arm. And you have a chance to choose between private health insurance and the federal plan, which will lower rates. Not too shabby.
Believe me, I can understand why some people are independent voters. They think they’re being fair. I voted for Reagan. I didn’t even know what conservatism was. I didn’t have a problem with Pat Robertson running for president. But that was because I was reading the sports pages and the funnies and ignoring the front page and the editorials. I beseech you, independent voters, do your job. Become informed before you go to vote. Don’t vote for a pit bull because he says he’s pro-life; he’s probably lying anyway. If you still decide to vote for Chip Cravaack or a Republican bully who cut off a gay student’s hair when he was a teenager, I hope you can live with your conscience.
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More Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
• Skunks Believe Everybody Else Stinks - Thursday, May 16, 2013
• The Morning After Pill - Friday, April 12, 2013
• What Would Thomas Jefferson Say? - Saturday, April 06, 2013
• Boneheads - Tuesday, March 12, 2013
• Why Benedict XVI Resigned - Sunday, February 17, 2013
• Gabby Giffords Testifies - Wednesday, January 30, 2013
• Newspaper Caters to Gun Owners - Wednesday, January 23, 2013
• Piers Morgan Deserves a Medal - Monday, December 24, 2012
• The Red Devil and the Blue Devil? - Tuesday, October 30, 2012
• Is the new TV show, REVOLUTION, fantasy? - Wednesday, September 26, 2012
• Fanatical Moslems Aren't That Different From Our Fanatics - Wednesday, September 12, 2012
• We Need the United Nations - Wednesday, July 18, 2012
• Stop Catering to People's Basest Instincts - Monday, July 09, 2012
• Concerned Women for America political ad - Saturday, June 23, 2012
• Independent Voters Need to Pick a Side - Monday, June 11, 2012
• Romney's Solyndra Appearance - Friday, June 01, 2012
• Single Issue Voters - Sunday, May 20, 2012
• Bully or Sociopath? - Saturday, May 12, 2012
• Tan-orexic Woman Poor Role Model - Friday, May 04, 2012
• So Far Right They're Almost Left - Sunday, April 22, 2012
• Dog Eat Dog - Sunday, April 15, 2012
• The Tea Party is Back! - Sunday, March 25, 2012
• Gas Prices - Tuesday, March 13, 2012
• "Doofus" - Tuesday, March 06, 2012
• Bon Iver Front Man Makes Important Statement - Thursday, February 16, 2012
• Contraception Blowback - Friday, February 10, 2012
• 800 vetoes! - Saturday, February 04, 2012
• Issa Hounding Holder over GOP program - Thursday, February 02, 2012
• Rick Santelli's Rant - Wednesday, January 18, 2012
• Corporate Raider President? - Thursday, December 01, 2011
• Is This the Best They Can Do? - Thursday, November 17, 2011
• Tea Party a non-violent Movement? - Sunday, October 30, 2011
• Wall Street Protests - Wednesday, October 05, 2011
• Three new stooges - Thursday, August 25, 2011
• Hypocrite enters the race - Friday, August 19, 2011
• Business Leaders Need to Speak Out - Saturday, July 30, 2011
• Rupert Murdoch and GOP Credibility - Monday, July 25, 2011
• Playing on the railroad tracks - Sunday, July 17, 2011
• Scapegoating - Sunday, June 19, 2011
• The Biggest Swindle in US history - Friday, June 03, 2011
• We're Still Here! - Saturday, May 21, 2011
• Improve education by improving teacher morale - Wednesday, May 04, 2011
• Tea Partiers Don't Know What They're Talking About - Thursday, April 28, 2011
• General Electric paid no corporate taxes - Tuesday, April 05, 2011
• The Flat Earth Society is at it again! - Thursday, March 17, 2011
• Crap fest - Thursday, March 03, 2011
• Egyptian Revolution - Tuesday, February 08, 2011
• Tucson - Wednesday, January 12, 2011
• Would you want a right-winger for a neighbor? - Friday, January 07, 2011
• Noah's Ark Museum - Monday, December 06, 2010
• Frick and Frack Shoot Off Their Mouths - Friday, November 05, 2010
• Enthusiam Gap - Wednesday, October 27, 2010
• Super Computer - Tuesday, October 19, 2010
• US Chamber of Commerce, conservative front group. - Wednesday, October 13, 2010
• 13 Reasons to vote the straight democratic ticket - Wednesday, September 01, 2010
• Breitbart Makes Segretti look like a choirboy - Wednesday, July 28, 2010
• House on Fire? - Thursday, June 17, 2010
• The Blame Game - Friday, May 28, 2010
• National Prayer Day - Tuesday, May 18, 2010
• Conservative psyche (continued) - Friday, May 14, 2010
• Conservative psyche - Wednesday, May 12, 2010
• Are you smarter than a half-term governor? - Wednesday, April 14, 2010
• Rewriting History - Monday, April 05, 2010
• Fred Phelps - Friday, April 02, 2010
• Combing the Daily Newspaper - Wednesday, March 17, 2010
• Noir - Friday, November 06, 2009
• Interview with SOLDIER'S GAP author continued - Tuesday, November 03, 2009
• More from SOLDIER'S GAP author - Thursday, October 29, 2009
• SOLDIER'S GAP author answers questions. - Thursday, October 22, 2009
• Everything you always wanted to know about writing a novel - Tuesday, October 20, 2009
• Manuscript conventions - Thursday, September 10, 2009
• Revision - Monday, September 07, 2009
• Dialogue - Thursday, September 03, 2009
• Scene cards - Tuesday, September 01, 2009
• Point of view - Thursday, August 27, 2009
• Plot - Tuesday, August 25, 2009
• Arnie's dream - Friday, August 21, 2009
• Rituals - Thursday, August 20, 2009
• Dressing Arnie Vogel - Tuesday, August 18, 2009
• Character sketch continued - Friday, August 14, 2009
• Character sketch - Thursday, August 13, 2009
• Characterization - Wednesday, August 12, 2009
• Scene outline - Tuesday, August 11, 2009
• Warm-up activity - Freewriting - Monday, August 10, 2009
• Warm-up activity - brainstorming - Sunday, August 09, 2009
• Warm-up techniques (clustering) - Saturday, August 08, 2009
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