Zadroga Bill

The Zadroga Bill was intended to provide assistance to the first responders (firefighters et al.) to the 9/11 attacks. It was filibustered by the G.O.P. I know Jon Stewart is a humorist, and not the most reliable source for unbiased news, but the underlying truth to this video actually sickened me more than it made me laugh.

Some people...

The Compromise

The Bush tax cuts were extended for two years this week, plus a generous estate tax break was added*, unemployment benefits extended, and payroll tax cuts added. I could have sworn I wrote about this a few months ago, but that must have been the post that I remember writing for a really long time and then abruptly deleting everything. So it goes.

Anyways, I won't go into the details of the plan; there are stories all over about it. Basically taxes won't increase next year, which is good for taxpayers and bad for our deficit, if you happen to care about that as much as the incoming Republican class does.

The most striking thing about all of this to me can be summed up well by this paragraph from this article by EJ Dionne Jr.:

"And at least these negotiations have had the benefit of proving conclusively that the only people for whom conservative Republicans will go to the mat are the country's best-off citizens—and deficits be damned."

Politics frustrate me.

*I'm going to add a footnote that the 2010 rate for estates over $1 million is 0, but is due to revert to its pre-Bush levels of 55% next year. The number agreed upon is now 35%, which some (mostly the Right) consider a tax hike (which it is, relative to the current 0%), while most consider it a tax cut, since it will only jump to 35% instead of 55% next year, as it would have if the bill hadn't passed.

Midterms

What a great day to be free Americans. People say it all the time (because it is absolutely 100% true)...we take our freedom for granted. Shame on you if you did not vote today. It's one of the greatest privileges we can have, and something a great number of people are not able to do.

I can't say I'm particularly pleased with the results of the elections today, but I also can't say that I'm at all surprised. This really should have surprised no one. As of now, the Republicans are projected to take back a majority in the House, but still hold a 51-49 disadvantage in the Senate. Gubernatorial (that's for governors) races across the country are almost all colored red--most pertinent to me and many of my readers is Terry Branstad's defeat of Chet Culver here in Iowa (why wasn't I able to vote against Terry's haircut on the back of the ballot today?). My problem is this: gridlock. The next two years are going to be full of a lot of talk and arguing and very little being accomplished, not unlike the final years of Clinton's administration (Democratic president vs. Republican Congress). To me, this gridlock is the most frustrating thing. I tend to, though not always (I'm looking at you, Chuck Grassley) vote Democrat--and I would much rather see an all-Republican Congress than a gridlocked one. At least we'll be moving somewhere in an orderly fashion.

A lot of people who are frustrated with the polarization of the political world, especially since 2003, would say that Washington is broken...attributing our problems to some sort of structural deficiency within our government. I would caution against this. In theory, our government works. In theory, it's foolproof. It's been intact and stable for over 200 years. The concept of our government...the Constitution, organization, all that...is solid. Please don't confuse me with a Tea Partier--don't even get me started on that. Anyways, the practice is where we have problems. Basically, suffice it to say that I think we are in a transition period where our government is struggling to adapt to the fast-paced, uncensored information era. Perhaps I'll save that discussion for another time.

One of the major challenges associated with this is the role of the media in government. What you need to understand when you are thinking about anything dealing with politics is that everything is essentially driven by motives. Decisions aren't made for the hell of it, and the sad apparent truth is that most people involved in policy are self-interested. Always ask what they want. What do politicians want? They, like most reasonable working people, want to keep their job so that they can live comfortably. How do they keep their job? Win elections. How do they win elections? The vast majority of the time the candidate who raises more funds wins. So it comes down to money, and making popular decisions. Remember that old saying "what's right is not always popular and what's popular is not always right?" Well...I think the problem in politics is evident.

The other side of that is the media. What do media companies want to do? Make money. How do you make money? Create a product that sells. People don't like to be fed facts, they like to be entertained. People don't want to have to think too hard, they want to have all the facts and details chewed up and analyzed by some talking head, who then spits it back out with whatever flavor they want to put on it. Almost all of the information we receive is second hand, and second hand information is almost always biased. Even if people are trying to be neutral, they will include subconscious biases, often in what they don't say. It's unavoidable.

What else entertains? Controversy and nut jobs. You never see moderate people on cable news, because they are too boring. The media loves the Tea Party, because they are entertaining. Almost no one in Washington takes them or their views seriously, but that's not the point. They get all kinds of news coverage, to the point where they have become sort of this self-fulfilling artificial political force to be reckoned with. It's like Jersey Shore...they are so ridiculous that no one should take them seriously, and the establishment actively resists taking them seriously, but at the same time, they present a challenge in that they have undue influence on the way people think and behave, so they must be given fair consideration.

I never, ever, ever treat television news as a credible source for information. That shit's below Wikipedia in my book. If you want real, fair news, you have to go abroad. BBC is fantastic. RT out of Russia does a very good job. Al-Jazeera is a great source too. If you absolutely must go American, it's NPR and POLITICO. The other way I get information is from actual first-hand documents. Most people don't realize just how much information is publicly available from the government, and frankly, people are too lazy to dig it up themselves.

The truth about the American voting base is that we get all of our information as these half-truths from television news. As a result, we are either terribly misinformed or under-informed. We are also very fickle, with short attention spans and even shorter memories.

This is why the Republicans are taking back control. I talked about it in an earlier post...the Democrats failed to answer the most pressing need--unemployment--and are going to pay a heavy price for it. People don't seem to remember just how discontented the political climate was during the Bush era--and, as an offhanded comment, Bush was a pretty terrible president. Thankfully, Bush isn't waltzing back into Washington, but all of his best friends are.

Let's continue on this line...I don't usually like to get too political in my political posts...but this could be fun. The biggest issues on the ballot for me today were on the back: justice retention and the constitutional convention. It looks like all three of the Iowa Supreme Court Justices who were up for retention aren't going to keep their seats. This is quite a blow to Iowa's gay marriage ruling, as it looks like their replacements will be appointed by Terry Branstad, who opposes gay marriage. Another thing is if the constitutional convention is passed, that is the most viable way for an amendment regarding the banning of gay marriage to pass. A convention will be held, where an amendment will be brought up for a popular vote regarding the issue. Hot button, single-issues like this are the Republican party's bread and butter. They are able to play on people's disdain for "morally unjust" issues to recruit votes for their more substantial political agenda. Frankly, I don't think anyone in Washington gives two shits about abortion or gay marriage, but it energizes their base, who unwittingly vote for all the other (more important) items on their agenda. There are no viable excuses for continuing to deny homosexuals equal rights, and our resistance to fairness is disturbing. For further reading, this article is one relevant reason (among many) why Bob VanderPlaats is near the top of my political shit list. Also, I intend to dedicate a post to this topic soon.

I think I'm going to wrap this up quick. I apologize for any incoherence...I'm exhausted and haven't given this as careful of a review as I'd like. Feel free to fire back at my uncharacteristic political jabs. I like to think that I am still being objective in my commentary, mostly because these high-emotion issues don't faze me. I am (as far as I know) the closest thing to an unemotional machine, while still having a pulse...but we can save my personal peculiarities for another discussion as well.

In sum, I'm disappointed by the elections, but not surprised. It should be an interesting next two years, and a very pivotal point in Obama's career. I envision much more polarization, arguing, and gridlock, which will be frustrating. People would do well to remember that in the grand scheme of things, we are all playing for the same team. It's pretty sad that it takes some sort of national crisis or tragedy to ever realize that. I can only hope that our generation is the one to figure it out...but I don't think my significant doubts are unreasonable. Go America!

So then...upcoming discussions:
Tea Party
Media and Politics
Gay Marriage
Perhaps a little Old Testament knowledge?
My peculiarities
Me hanging out with Bo Burnham

Should be fun!

Wall Street Reform

The second of Obama's 3 pillars of domestic reform (healthcare, finance, and energy) has made some major headway in the last few days. The House passed the Wall Street reform bill in the wee hours of this morning, and it is expected to clear the Senate and make it to Obama's desk before too long.

This Wall Street reform was the most popular of the pillars, for fairly obvious reasons...the American people are still upset with Wall Street for the housing bubble burst that spurred the recession that we are finally climbing out of. While it is more popular than healthcare and energy reform (which will actually be easier to pass in the wake of the oil spill), I think it is going to bring the Obama administration equal trouble.

What this reform does is basically place a lot more oversight on the finance industry by means of an expanded bureaucracy and tougher regulations. Frankly, the bill is very tough to explain, and that is a major issue facing the Democrats right now. Just as with the healthcare bill, this one is huge and complicated. Just as Nancy Pelosi admitted that how Obamacare was going to work was somewhat of a mystery, Chris Dodd has said the same thing with this finance reform. The thing is, it's hard to predict with absolute certainty anything that hasn't been done before. Only time will decide if the Democratic Party's diving into uncharted territory will be considered brave or foolhardy. In the short term, this will most likely be disastrous for the party.

People don't fully understand this legislation. Or the healthcare legislation. People fear what they don't understand. People don't understand it because Congress doesn't seem to understand it either. It's tough to explain to people what you yourself don't comprehend. Also, a lot of Congressmen don't bother to read the entire bill before voting on it.

America's biggest concern right now is jobs. Unemployment is still officially at 10% (probably higher), while the number of unemployed people getting zero unemployment benefits is creeping upwards. Job reports show that since Obama took office, we have been losing fewer and fewer jobs, before adding jobs starting in January this year, as evidenced by this chart:

**I realize the partiality of this chart, being from Nancy Pelosi's blog. You can check the actual numbers here. It is also important to note that this includes public sector jobs, meaning 400,000 of the jobs added were part-time census workers.

Anyway (I'm starting to digress), what Americans want to see right now are immediate, tangible results to real problems. They want to see the beaches along the Gulf Coast clean, and they want to have jobs. This finance reform isn't going to create many jobs or clean many beaches. What it will do is minimize the risk for another economic collapse by means of more oversight from a bloated bureaucracy and more restricted access to credit. When people are looking at the immediate, tangible results of the bill, they see the government barging in and saying they can't borrow money like they used to. They aren't going to appreciate the safeguards against economic collapse, because that isn't something that you can directly attribute to this bill. Even if it works to perfection, all that means is that our economic system will function normally. It isn't going to wow anyone. There will be winners and there will be losers, and the losers always cry louder.

Critics don't believe that the government is being tough enough on Wall Street. Banks are still going to be subsidized and "too big to fail," and many banks won't see a difference in the way they do business. But at the same time you can't really punish an industry that our economy relies so heavily on to function by incapacitating them.

The Obama Administration (and the Democratic Party) is bringing sweeping change to this country. It's just not the change that people want to see right now. The Democrats will suffer badly at the polls this November. The country has a lot of problems, and the party in power always pays the price for that. I do like that the Democrats seem so committed to the change they promised. I think that the three pillars will ultimately help the country, and the Democratic Party seems willing to take a huge bullet by seeing them through to the end. I see it as an honest desire to better the country, not the usual political point puppet show. Not many Congresses have the guts to see such legislation through, because the need to face the short-term issues weighs far more heavily on elections.

A Long Commentary on Oil Spills

I don't know if any of you have heard anything about the oil spill down in the Gulf of Mexico, but I guess it's kind of a big deal. I'm going to think out loud here in this post in an attempt to make some sense of what is happening.

Back in April, the Deepwater Horizon rig had a blowout that killed 11 workers before sinking to the ocean floor. The rig was owned and operated by a company called Transocean, and leased by British Petroleum. Apparently all safety mechanisms that would have stopped the flow of oil out of the well in the event of such an explosion failed shortly before or during the accident. Now oil is spewing out of the ocean floor at a rate of several thousand barrels a day, ultimately culminating in an epic environmental disaster, with oil washing ashore in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, affecting some of the world's most delicate ecosystems.

BP leads all oil companies in terms of investment dollars for such deep water drilling. More shallow drilling is much more common, but this rig was tapping a well some 5,000 feet below sea level. Apparently all the kinks haven't been worked out on how to operate machinery in such treacherous conditions. Several attempts to stop the leak have failed, with no one really seeming to have a clue as to what to do. BP first tried to cover the leak with two separate domes, in order to funnel it into a pipe, only to have the funnel plugged by a freak crystallization of methane gas. In another attempt, they tried to attach a tube to the broken pipe, only to have one of their robots collide with it and break it, forcing them to start all over again. Recently, after 7 million barrels had already leaked, a "top-kill" was attempted, in which cement and mud is forced down the well in an attempt to clog it. Four days, three tries, and 30,000 barrels of mud later, they gave up, saying the oil pressure was too great.

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As Colbert points out, no one really has a clue. And that's not just BP--that's everyone. BP is now drilling a relief well, which will stop the flow, but that will not be completed until August at the earliest. In the meantime, BP has announced that it is successfully collecting up to about 15,000 barrels a day on tankers--very nearly the same rate it is being leaked.

While it will likely take years before everything is sorted out, the blame game has begun. BP is accepting full financial responsibility, already spending about $1.25 billion on cleanup, with billions more in governmental fines to come. They also say they will accept any legitimate claim against them, which are sure to be extremely costly. They assure us that no tax money will be necessary, though many groups fear that the costs will bankrupt the company, leaving costs on taxpayers.

So who is to blame?

Most people are putting the blame on BP, as evidenced by a Gallup poll showing 76% disapproval for the company. It is easy to blame them, as the company has a track record of preventable accidents (a Texas refinery explosion and an Alaskan pipe leak), and, as leaseholder of the well, they are ultimately in charge of what happens there.

I, personally, am reluctant to place all the blame on the London-based oil giant. Let's try to put this in a separate context. Suppose your name is BP, and you are renting an apartment, called the Deepwater Horizon Rig. The landlord's name is Transocean Ltd., and Transocean will do basically whatever you say, because you are one of the richest people on earth, and Transocean stands to make some good money off of your patronage. You decide that you want a new furnace in your apartment, but you want to save a few bucks, so you settle on a cheap, kinda crappy furnace. You stay within the law, of course, and get the project approved by a governmental inspection group. Let's call them the US Minerals Management Service. Now, the MMS is kind of a corrupt joke, and okays the project without even checking it out first. Furnace installation is kind of tricky business, so your landlord hires an expert to do it for you. His name is Halliburton Corporation. Halliburton installs this cheap furnace just as you requested, but for some reason, the furnace just blew right up and pissed off all your neighbors. Why did the furnace blow up? Was it installed wrong? Was the furnace itself bad? Was it a freak accident of everything going wrong? Unfortunately, that will take years of investigation to figure out, and in the mean time, you agree to pay for absolutely everything, including all your neighbors' numerous lawsuits.

Should BP be to blame for ultimately being in charge and possibly skimping? In any case, they share some responsibility. Should Transocean be to blame? They are responsible for the operation of and maintenance of equipment on the well. If there was an equipment malfunction, that will be on them. Did Halliburton do something wrong in the construction process? They claim they were simply following BP's specs. Should the Minerals Management Service be to blame? They are notoriously corrupt and poor at their job, so much to the extent that President Obama has already announced plans to dissolve the whole thing. Should the Obama Administration answer? Many say they have responded poorly. Should the Bush Administration take some blame? Many left-wing politicians have been criticizing their lack of discretion in appointing the MMS. Should Congress be to blame? Many are pointing to lax drilling laws and breaks for oil companies as a major problem.

I think it's a mixture of everything. Like a perfect storm where everything went perfectly wrong. BP is certainly partially to blame, but I think we are misguided in our disgust towards them. What more can we ask than what they are doing? They promise to cover every cost; they are living up to their responsibility to keep us informed with regular announcements and video feeds of underwater operations. What incentive does that leave for them to not do everything they can to fix this? Not only are they losing a ton of money with every barrel leaked (both through cleanup costs and lost potential sales), they are wilfully accepting terrible PR with this whole thing. I honestly can't figure out what more people want from them. Accidents happen.

I think one of the worst responses is the current BP boycott. BP's revenue is generated primarily through drilling and refining oil for sale to other companies. Any loss of sales at the pump is hardly going to affect their bottom line. Here in Iowa, we have a lot of Casey's gas stations. Do you think that Casey's drills and refines their own oil? No. They buy it from companies like BP, Shell, and Exxon Mobil. BP sells a lot more oil through other companies like that than through stations under their own banner. All boycotting BP stations will hurt is the local owners who bought into the franchise. That's not the right response. To hurt BP's revenue, you would basically have to stop buying all gasoline, plastic...anything that comes from oil. But how would bankrupting BP help the situation? If they go under, who's left to foot the cleanup bill that they are wilfully accepting now? Taxpayers. And that will only bring about a whole new wave of complaining. At least let them live long enough to clean up their mess.

I don't mean to sound insensitive. This is a major environmental crisis. Not buying gasoline certainly won't hurt the environment. But it also won't help with the oil spill.

On Health Care

As many of you know, the House of Representatives passed legislation last night to overhaul our nation's health care system, much to the dismay of a lot of people. I'm going to be honest and say I haven't been paying a whole lot of attention to the decision making process with this. These topics of contention in Washington just seem to frustrate me, so I like to avoid them. That being said, I'm going to offer what thoughts I have on the subject.

First of all, I know you can't take anything anyone says at face value. There are always going to be prejudices and biases in politics, whether you are listening to a politician speak, reading a newspaper, watching the news, reading my blog...anything that is a secondary source is going to be skewed at least a little to embellish or demonize a point. When dealing with topics such as these I like to go straight to the source, in this case the original text of the bill. Unfortunately this is a notoriously long and complex document (a few thousand pages), and I simply haven't had the time to give it more than a cursory glance. This is the main reason why I cannot give a solid argument one way or another--lack of necessary information. I only wish others, too, would do some good research before making free with their claims and judgments.

Here's what I've gathered thus far: Republicans and some Democrats are against this bill. Here are their main reasons:

• The cost ($940 billion over 10 years)
• The loophole that allows federal dollars to fund abortions
• Various horror stories of how poorly universal health care works in other countries
• The principle: more government means more inefficiency and fewer liberties

Here's why the majority of Democrats like it:

• Expanded health care to 32 million uninsured Americans
• Greater regulation means increased affordability and reliability
• The principle: this legislation was over 100 years in the making, and Obama's top prize

Here are my thoughts (no need to take them at face value, in the spirit of my second paragraph. The last thing I want to be called is a hypocrite).

I'm glad this bill was passed. Of all the industrialized democracies, America has one of the highest percentages of uninsured people, yet we are still paying almost twice as much as everyone else per capita on health. Talk about inefficiency...we are suffering from one of the most financially inefficient systems out of all the industrialized democracies.

Here's a great video summing up the argument against health care reform:





I would like to address a few things that she mentions. She makes a very powerful statement, saying "they ignore the fact that it is our children who will pay for their greed." My initial response to this is: who's being greedy? I fail to see how this bill relates to any personal greed amongst her colleagues. But that's not really a huge deal. It's probably just because, as I've said, I didn't read the whole text yet.

She mentions that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are insolvent and are going to crush us under their weight. This is probably true, but to compare these three things to this current legislation is kind of like comparing apples and oranges. Social Security is currently a mess. It was a saving grace when it was first introduced, though, and was done with the right ideas in mind. The problem is that the government failed to adapt Social Security to the changes and challenges it faced--namely the huge population bubble in the Baby Boomer generation, as illustrated by this chart:



Our government is designed to be able to adapt to the changes and challenges of our times. Social Security was something it was very slow in reacting to, and we will likely pay the price. We can only hope that any challenges that will arise with this bill will be addressed and remedied as we see fit. No law we pass will be set in stone. It can always be changed if it doesn't work.

Marsha Blackburn views the federal government's control of things such as health care and student loans as chilling, and I guess this is simply an ideological difference that we have, which makes it awfully hard to change. But let's do a case study with Germany: it has guaranteed health care, retirement, and college funding for all citizens, making it one of the most developed social democracies in the world. The government pays for you to go to school from kindergarten through grad school, pays for your health care, and pays for your retirement. This helps give Germany a particularly notable statistic: 0% poverty. Yeah...no one in Germany lives below the poverty line, because the government works like it should and takes good care of its citizens. Even more impressive: Germany can offer this while only levying marginally higher taxes (3-5% more as a percentage of income) than the United States. This is because Germany has no standing army (other than for peacekeeping). We in the United States pick up the defense tab for Germany and other NATO nations by virtue of our $900 billion defense budget and our de facto "world police" status. All this socialism must be destroying the economy, right? Nope. Germany has one of the most productive economies on earth, leading the world in exports until China very recently surpassed them. Blackburn calls it chilling. I call it awesome.

While on the topic of ideologies, I can't help but make an aside regarding religion in politics. As I've been studying Catholic Social Thought this semester, I found it interesting that the official Catholic Church stance on this topic would be for universal health care. Pope John Paul II wrote in his social encyclical Laborem Exercens "The expenses involved in health care, especially in the case of accidents at work, demand that medical assistance should be easily available for workers, and that as far as possible it should be cheap or even free of charge." I know religion plays a large role in people's political leanings, and that the Catholic Church is notoriously associated with the Right. But I think that if you actually read official church doctrine on social issues, Catholic thought aligns precisely with the Democrats' platform on all issues not related to same-sex marriage and abortion. That's where that little loophole about abortion can make things kinda ugly. That alone will null a lot of people's support for the bill. Obama issued an eleventh-hour executive order to keep the status quo on abortion, but a lot of people on the Right are still skeptical. I think that the language creating the loophole will be the first to be changed in the bill. Obama and the Democrats can't afford to be responsible for the fiasco side effect of legalized abortion, and the executive order is pretty good evidence that abortions will not in fact be funded by taxes when all is said and done. It's far too risky.

Anyways, the really big issue that Blackburn is trying to drive home is the cost. The peculiar thing is that the Congressional Budget Office, a bipartisan group, projects that this bill, while costly, will actually reduce the overall deficit by some $143 billion. I suggest reading at least the first few sections of the Fiscal Year 2011 Budget for more information on how conscious the Obama Administration is about not adding to the national debt.

The curious thing about tax dollars is that they don't simply disappear into a vacuum every Spring when we file our taxes. That money is being kicked back into the economy through government purchases. The big thing is that taxes are meant to serve the common good of the people who pay them, not to be squandered or dumped in some politician or lobbyist's savings account somewhere.

My guess is that a lot of the doomsday predictions against this bill will never come to fruition. The passage of the bill probably will, however, hurt the Democrats at the polls come November, whether it is a net good or a net evil. I can see both sides to the coin, but I firmly believe that this legislation is a net good and a step in the right direction. While it's imperfect, I trust our government and our voters to perfect it over time, just as we always do (except for Social Security). But what do I know? I haven't read the text.

Want to know how this bill affects you? Here's a helpful illustration.

Animosity

All things considered, animosity sucks dick.

Pardon the dysphemism.

Anyways, this is why I lost interest/faith in American politics (I've touched on this earlier). There are two camps of people with irreconcilable and deep-seated views about everything. There can be no peace between the two, because there is no respect for the other side. The right and left are forever fundamentally different, so everything turns into a shouting match. Stupid.


But that's not my point. I'm just reminded of this as I read all these Facebook and Twitter posts about the Vikings-Saints game today. So much hatred over football! It's kind of upsetting to me, because it seems unnecessary. And because I've been a Vikings fan my whole life, and I am completely crushed right now. I try to stay out of the shouting matches, though, because I don't see much point in it. I know the Vikings fumbled away their chance to win. I don't need to blame the officials or other people or anything like that.

But seriously. I'm absolutely crushed by this. Like...way crushed. Devastated. I'm going to go ahead and say this is right up there with when Ash had to let Butterfree go in Pokemon. Only WORSE! Because this is real life.

And reading all the hate towards Vikings fans like me really sucks. That shit also gets a "child please."

I've been a loyal fan for nigh on 20 years now, and I honestly don't know if any team the Vikings put together can go all the way if this one couldn't. This was like a one-shot deal, because Brett Favre is old as hell. Oh well. Maybe I'll see them win a Super Bowl in my lifetime...something my great-grandfather (peace be upon him) never got to see. But for now I guess there's only one thing left to say:

GO SAINTS!

...got damn

Politics!

I've been quiet about politics because I know it makes for nasty conversation material. But this blog isn't so much a conversation as a one-sided "this is what Bryan thinks" outlet. So I'm going to let you know what I think.

The political state of our country is sickening. This has nothing to do with whichever party controls Washington at any time. I was sickened by what happened under the Bush Administration, and I'm sickened by what's happening now. The problem has a lot to do with our 2-party system. It makes for an environment where unless someone makes the most neutral and inconsequential of statements, he or she is going to be waved off as a right or left wing nut job by half the country. If I were to open up this blog by saying something like "the public option health care may not be such a bad idea" half of you would call me a socialist and a communist and an enemy to American values.

Tomorrow, President Obama will be giving a speech to students addressing the beginning of the school year, just like Reagan did. Just like George H.W. Bush did. Just like Clinton did. Just like George W. Bush did. Only this year, there is a huge uproar from the right with parents threatening to keep their kids home from school so Obama can't brainwash their children with his leftist agenda. The text of the speech is here. Tell me if you see any political propaganda. I don't. The right has recently been on this trip, convinced that all mainstream media (which, incidentally, plays host to such names as Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, and O'Reilly) is completely controlled by the left, and is trying to turn everyone into a socialist.

Earlier this week, Van Jones resigned from his post as an adviser to President Obama on the creation of environmentally-friendly jobs, after what he called a "smear campaign" spearheaded by Glenn Beck was launched against him. It is a sad day for America when an extremist (I don't believe I am overstating anything with this word) radio show host holds enough conference in our government to be able to pick-and-choose which guys he doesn't like, and have them removed. This is all while Beck complains that the media (except for his buddies at Fox...duh) is brainwashing us.

To be fair, Jones had his faults and made his mistakes, and it was a terrible oversight for the Obama administration to appoint someone who signed an "anti-American" petition and freely called Republicans "assholes" to any position of power, even one as trivial as green jobs adviser. How his attitude towards conservatives hinders his ability to adequately fulfill his job of creating environmentally friendly jobs for disadvantaged and unskilled workers, I'll never know. I guess one of the requirements for holding public office includes a lack of opinion and/or courage to openly share said opinion.

This is why our government cannot function properly: people like Glenn Beck. People like him leave no room for compromise--a critical part of American society, especially in his sacred US Constitution. No decision Washington makes will swing far enough to his side of the spectrum, and he will consequently continue to undermine our government by tearing out the pieces he doesn't like. It starts with Van Jones. Where does it end? People like him seem to be hell bent on bringing down Obama's administration. It's as though they are trying to make our government fail. But for what? Bragging rights?


Forget the left and the right. We're all Americans, and we're all in this together.