The 2nd Amendment Isn’t the Only Amendment

And all Americans should know that as can be attested to by the 2nd Amendment’s name…

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick’s has refused to stand during recitations of the national anthem at football games in a personal attempt to protest police brutality in the United States. Consequently this has many conservative Americans up in arms, including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

Which I find quite interesting because conservatives are supposed to be the ones who have less of an inclination towards change or liberal interpretations… of, say… the Constitution of the United States of America! As in the 1st Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech and the right to peaceably protest without fear of government reprisal.

So Mr. Kaepernick would like to protest, which is his 1st Amendment right to do so, in front of America’s football fans, just like he has the right to carry a gun and shoot himself in front of America if he so chooses. And you can bet that Conservatives all across this great land would defend his right to do just that (after having staged the appropriate moment of silence before prying said gun out of his cold dead hands)

But when Mr. Kaepernick exercises his 1st Amendment right to free speech and protest, so called Conservative pundits are going hog wild with apoplexy and are making comments like. “How dare he!” “He’s UN-American!””He must be a Muslim!” “But I thought his parents were white?”(which of course is a prerequisite for American contentment?)

And then even that great Constitutional scholar, Donald Trump, chimed in with “Why doesn’t he go find another country?” (Also his immigration policy)

Yes, we live in the land of the free and the home of the brave but how dare anyone be brave enough to exercise their freedom  by protesting that which they find disturbing or inequitable about their government or country.

This is America after all so sit down and shut up… or rather stand up and place your hand over your heart and shut up…no don’t shut up. Just sing! About the ramparts and the red glare and about how the country fought for its freedoms because freedom isn’t free and that’s why we have the 2nd Amendment, which is the only really true and important amendment, so when you get frustrated and angry with your government that you feel no longer serves the people you can go out and get your gun and then just shut up and shoot someone…

No wait…that can’t be right can it???

Damn liberals!

 

 

O Fish How Art Thou Fishified!

We love fish here at the Jersey Shore (well at least some do)but how many fish are left in the ocean? Here’s something I wrote 3 years ago and yet Red lobster still has “all you can eat”!? Any thoughts?

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I knew I was right about fish!

When I was a child I hated fish because to me it always tasted fishy which was not a flavor that I enjoyed. My dad however, loved fish and he would always have me try different types of fish to see if there was one that I perhaps liked better than the others. For my dad each fish had its own taste but for me?…All I could taste was fishy. Fish tasted like fish and even when my dad would try to tell me that this new fish that I should taste would taste like chicken all my taste buds could taste was fish. Yuck, send it back to the ocean and give me the chicken please.

Now that I’ve grown up…I still don’t like fish but I feel that I have finally been vindicated in my culinary discerning of flavor and taste…

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Do All Lives Matter? Really?

This is something that I wrote a little over a year ago as the political frenzy here in the USA was just beginning to heat up. Now that it’s on full boil I thought that I’d post it again. We have a lot of good things going for us here in the USA and we have a lot of problems too. But what is it that matters the most to Americans? Is it our fellow country-men’s lives, fortunes or sacred honor?

I saw a post on Facebook recently espousing this thought:

“We must put an end to economic freeloading…There must be no place for parasites who draw their sustenance from society without giving anything in return.”

We have over 50 million people in this country who live below the poverty line. And it’s a pretty low line…certainly not one that we or anyone else that I know would want to live under for one day… let alone a year or two or a lifetime. And of all the industrialized countries in the world we, the United States, the richest, mightiest, most boastful country in the world… is last in helping its poor people.

Wow! We’re last in the first world at charity…and as far as I can tell it makes most Americans sick…and not because we’re last but because we can’t get any lower… without leaving the first world and joining the second and third world countries in order to do it that is. Most folks and certainly all Republicans, would like to cut programs for the poor (like food stamps, rent assistance, healthcare and welfare) all together and completely.

After all there is no place for parasites is there? Unless we count prison, and we are first in prisons and prisoners aren’t we? Huzzah! At least we are proud to be number one in some category among the wealthy, advanced nations of the world. But if the poor are parasites and undeserving moochers who draw sustenance from their hosts while offering nothing in return, what are we to do with them? Kill them? Eat them? We already ignore them don’t we? If they aren’t already in prison then they certainly are pretty much invisible. Right?

I mean seriously, do you see a lot of poor folks during your daily routine? You pretty much have to go out of your way or take a wrong turn or exit on the freeway to bump into them don’t you? Or maybe you sometimes see them get shot by scared witless policemen in their efforts to “protect and serve” as you channel surf on your cable TV. So really, what more can we do besides cut those checks?…and I mean cut as in off… not as in… write.

But who are these undeserving poor that beguile and bewilder our great United States of America with their hands out for more and more of our hard earned money every day? Who are these 50 million or so ingrates who can’t stand on their own two feet? These huddled masses who are bankrupting the richest citizens of the richest country in the world? Which, by the way, they aren’t because in case you missed it at the beginning of this blog post, we don’t really give them anything, because we, in all actuality and factuality, already are the STINGIEST, wealthy country in the world!

But I digress…

Because, who are these money grubbers anyway?!

Well… 35% of the 50 million or so poverty stricken Americans are kids! They are all under the age of 18 so how much of a slacker can they all be? Are we going to call 17.5 million children parasites and undeserving moochers for whom there must be no place in our society because they don’t pull their own weight in this world? Yet? They haven’t even graduated high school.

Another 10% of the poorest Americans are elderly. They are all over 65 years of age and can’t work or shouldn’t have to work anymore. How much financial independence and personal accountability do we require from those who may not have had any pensions or 401K plans during their working years or who saw them swallowed up by banks or government cuts or by the financial sector’s mismanagement? Can we give these folks a break and help them out with food stamps, medical and housing assistance or is there simply no room in our society for this particular type of societal parasite? You know…the old and feeble kind.

So that accounts for almost half of all the poor citizens in our country: old folks and children. But did you know that another 31% of the poor in our country are poor because they have mental and/or physical disabilities that prevent them from working or that caused them to lose their jobs in the first place? They might be veterans, paraplegics, developmentally challenged, perhaps those who suffered on the job injuries where no workman’s comp. was in effect or those who were suffering from severe mental incapacitates when their hospitals were closed during the cutbacks of the Reagan years and beyond. Are these citizens to be considered freeloaders also? Lazy work shirkers on the public dole? Irresponsible no-gooders who need to have their food stamp purchases monitored lest they buy an occasional steak or seafood out of season so that we do-gooders can treat ourselves to another tax cut?

A full 76% of those who live below the poverty line here in the United States of America are either children, senior citizens or disabled…that’s 3 out of 4… and what of the other 24%? Mostly they are comprised of mothers: more than likely they are single, divorced or unwed women with children (and a man on the lam from his child support)

And all together they comprise the Approximately 50 million people who can’t make ends meet in this, our Land of Plenty. Sure it’s a big number…but we’re a big country…and a rich country…the richest country! One that can afford to spend 20+% of its budget on blowing the citizens of other countries up and then debate whether or not we should be spending more on such endeavors.

But when it comes to helping our own poorest of citizens, the great majority of whom are either too young, too old, too disabled… or mothers trying to make ends meet…we wag our fingers and say, “We’ve given you enough! What more do you want?”  And yet, We as a nation are last in the world at helping our fellow citizens get back up on their feet now, so really, How much crueler and indifferent can we be?!

Well…The United States also has the highest poverty rate among the major industrialized nations of the world! And Our poverty rate for children is just as bad. So that means that we are first in creating poor people and last in helping them! Do we now need to make sure that we constantly refer to the poor in America as Parasites? Fraudsters? Morally bankrupt? Undeserving? Lazy? Cheats? Thieves?…

Do we really need to add insult to penury?

Because after all. Haven’t we fortunate Americans…God Bless Us…done enough already?

Let’s Make America Great Again, just Like it was in…

Donald trump says that America is…and I quote, “A hell hole.” And that it is a country in decline and one seen as a disgrace across the globe, where we are figuratively “down on our knees” before the other industrialized nations of the world.

Is that how you see America? Would you like to go back to the glory days of 2001-2008 during the G.W. Bush administration? Or the Clinton years of 1993-2000. Or Bush the 1st from 1988-1992. Do the Reaganomics 80s bring a big smile to your face or perhaps the Jimmy Carter years? Maybe Ford and Nixon make you wax nostalgic? The Vietnam 60s perhaps?

We’ve already got the world’s largest military and half of the world expects us to protect them from the other half. You’ll find our corporations’ money in banks all over the world and foreign workers working at low wages in practically every country around the world in order to make stuff that we Americans can’t do without.

We’re 5% of the world’s population and we use 30% of the world’s goods and resources. That’s pretty damn great of us isn’t it? We have over 300 million guns for over 300 million citizens. That’s pretty magnanimous of us is it not? We spend billions of dollars to fight the global drug war…and we won’t even stop using most of the drugs ourselves…That’s greatly hypocritical of us wouldn’t you say? We use robotic weaponry to enhance our citizen soldiers fighting ability and can and do rain destruction from the skies abroad and at home whenever we wish…that’s greatly frightening I think.

I’ve often written about how the USA lags behind other nations when it comes to things like eradicating child poverty, or feeding the hungry, or providing affordable and adequate child care, or healthcare or housing, or rights for women, minorities, and the elderly…

But Donald Trump and the  Republican party have absolutely no plans to improve any of those problems…

So if those are not problems that need fixin’ then what’s the plan to get us off of our knees, make us look more respectable to the rest of the world and restore our greatness? Unleashing nuclear weapons perhaps? Taking us back to 1945 greatness?

I’m just curious to see what others think about the greatness of America and what’s lacking in our country today that needs fixing by bringing back something from years gone by. How would you restore America’s luster? More rights? More war? More tax cuts? More middle class jobs and wage increases? More regulation of women’s bodies? More religion? More secular freedom?

Just curious…