Current Events 1/10/11

courtesy of my blog: http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/

One of my New Year's resolutions is to blog more about personal stuff, and less about politics. Instead I'll reduce my political opinions into entries addressing the many current events of the week. Week 1 of 2011 had a lot! So, here's my "Skewed View."

Ted Williams - I'm happy for this guy. Homeless, but as a cool voice. Gets discovered, and gets famous. The rest of us paid our dues, and worked our asses off on the way up from the bottom, but OK. I saw him as a guest on Jimmy Fallon, and as wonderful a rags-to-riches story as this is; he's pretty freaky. I know it's happening pretty fast, but damn!

Repeal of Healthcare - The new Republicans got sworn in to Congress, and immediately, their first priority: Throw out that historic law that Obama passed last year. Why?
Kills jobs? Only if Employers are scumbags. And new regulations need people to regulate, so it actually creates jobs.
Increases the Deficit? No, the CBO, who by the way are the ones who determine whether or not it increases the deficit, say no. Actually, repealing it will cause the deficit to increase. So, that's not it.
Because it represents a major defeat of the Republican party and they would rather erase it from the history books? Yeah, probably.

Reading the Constitution - The 112th congress started their session with a collective reading of the US Constitution. Afterwards, the Tea Party candidates said, "Wait, THAT'S what it says?"  I think every politician, heck, every American should familiarize himself (or herself) with the U.S. Constitution, but they should do it on their own. They shouldn't have the document read TO them. Rather condescending, if you ask me. This was political theater meant to make a point, which was lost through the line by line format of the performance, the omission of certain inconvenient parts (Regarding Slavery) and constant interruptions from the peanut gallery. I might have preferred an actor or some important person not affiliated with congress to have read the entire document dramatically.

Shooting of Gabrielle Giffords - A teacher did a series of lessons where he modeled his classroom after the way things were in Nazi Germany. He did this to make a point to the students of how easy it is to go along with propaganda like this. When the students took it too far, and started bullying and beating up other students, I'm sure the teacher realized that the student's actions were inappropriate and the students are responsible for these acts. However, I like to think that he had enough sense to realize that it was the tone he set in the classroom that eventually led to these incidents, and in the novelization at least, he attempted to make it right.
I will not say that Sarah Palin incited this guy to shoot those people in Arizona, nor did any particular Republican leader. The guy was deranged and acted on his own motivation. But can we please acknowledge that Republicans and Teabaggers...
a) Use rhetoric which labels Liberals and Democrats as "people who are destroying the country we hold dear, and who need to be stopped."
b) Reference imagery from the American Revolution which equate what they (The Tea Party) are doing with the violent uprisings of the past. and
c) are blatantly seeking as their target audience, ignorant, easily swayed and easily manipulated people prone to incitement.
When you set that kind of tone, and then use verbiage like putting someone on their "hit list," what is an idiot to think? Idiots need to be specifically told NOT to do something violent and stupid. I won't say that what happened in Arizona is the fault of the Republican Tea Party Movement, but I think they need to acknowledge that they set the tone for this, and make amends.