Integrity Should Be Bipartisan

Here’s the most stand-up guy that I’d never vote for.

First, let’s start with the definition of integrity by Merriam-Webster:

integrity

noun

in·teg·ri·ty | \ in-ˈte-grə-tē\

1 : firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values : incorruptibility

2 : an unimpaired condition : soundness

3 : the quality or state of being complete or undivided : completeness

I think most of us can agree that these are qualities that all humans should aspire to. We can have integrity and disagree with each other. Our values can differ. As long as we are moral individuals who are not motivated by the desire to harm others, we can certainly have distinct priorities and unique points of view.

When I vote for an individual, first and foremost, I try to gauge their level of integrity. Do they consistently act upon their stated beliefs? Are they predictable? Can they be counted on? If they have made mistakes, have they owned up to them and sincerely tried to repair the damage? Only then do I try to determine if their values align with my own.

I may be looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, but I really do believe that all politicians should vote their conscience rather than simply toeing the party line. What is morally right? What will allow them to look at themselves in the mirror? What is in accordance with the greater good? What is important, not only tomorrow, but in the long term?

These are factors that all politicians must weigh. If only more of them would then act on these factors. Unfortunately, many are more concerned with lining their pockets, or getting reelected, or bowing down to power. Many are motivated by greed rather than integrity, hate rather than generosity, or they are in short-term survival mode. They are afraid. They don’t have confidence in where they stand, so they don’t stand firm.

Having said all that, I’d like to reach across the aisle and give Senator Ben Sasse, from Nebraska, a pat on the back. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t like his voting record. He himself says he’s “one of the most conservative voters in the Senate.” But there’s one thing he has never waivered on: when it comes to Trump, he hasn’t been afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes.

According to this article, Sasse has spoken out against Trump and his family on numerous occasions. He holds Trump responsible for the insurrection on January 6^th. He chose not to participate in Trump’s reelection attempts. When Trump lied about the election, he condemned that. And because of that, he faces censure by the Nebraska Republican Party’s State Central Committee.

Think about it. He’s not being censured for inciting violence or promoting conspiracies that can easily be proven wrong. He’s being censured for saying that, based on the facts as he knows them, he does not condone or support the actions of an individual. Whether you agree with him or not, the man has integrity. He’s being honorable.

This censure says more about the party members who are bringing it on than it does about Sasse. They are more interested in party loyalty, despite the consequences. They can’t accept anyone who wavers, despite the former emperor’s blatantly obvious naked state.

Would this group censure Marjorie Taylor Greene if she were a Nebraskan? She has incited people to violence, wished death upon her fellow congressmen, and has supported easily disproven conspiracy theories to the detriment of all. But say what you will, the woman has been loyal to Trump, so she’s alright by the GOP. It’s really quite sick-making when you think about it. But this is where we are now.

Would I vote for Sasse? No. Our values don’t align. I’d only vote for him if the Democrat running against him was a person devoid of integrity. But I think Sasse is a stand-up guy. The two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Don’t censure someone just because you don’t like their stance. Censure them because their stance is provably false and a danger to others. Anything less is a breech of integrity. So who should really be censured in this scenario?

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Is the World a Safe Place?

That one question accurately determines whether you are a Republican or a Democrat.

More and more studies are showing that how you answer that question will accurately determine whether you are a Republican or a Democrat. If you accept that as a given, then we are in a very scary point in history, because I can’t imagine anyone or anything that would make any of us change your mind about how we answer that question.

If you think the world is not a safe place, well, then, it wouldn’t be very safe for you to change your mind, now, would it? On the other hand, if you think it is a safe place, then you are more flexible about new concepts, new knowledge, new ways of seeing the world and the way we choose to live in it, and I can’t imagine anything making you give that up, either.

Think about this from a political standpoint. If the world isn’t safe, then immigrants can’t be trusted and should be walled off. Vaccinations can’t be trusted. We should stick with age-old traditions. Gender roles should remain rigid. We should all have guns. These are all political issues that stem from our worldviews.

This article, entitled A new theory for why Republicans and Democrats see the world differently, by Ezra Klein, spells this out in much more detail. It’s a fascinating, though frustrating read.

And once you’ve read that, hop on over to take this intriguing test. It consists of 27 questions that have nothing to do with politics, but your answers will quite accurately predict your politics regardless. It’s pretty much based on the same theory, only it determines one’s level of disgust. And that’s a little scary, don’t you think? (The results said that my brain is 74 percent Democrat. That’s because the only thing that disgusts me to any degree at present is the current administration. I’m surprised that I didn’t show up as 110 percent Democrat. Still…)

So, if the way we all see the safety of the world isn’t likely to change, and if it’s true that that pretty much spells out our political party, then that means we can count on being polarized from here on out. Because we’re already polarized. That means that this divisiveness and gridlock will be nearly impossible to get past. In essence, nothing of note will ever get done.

That makes me tired. And it makes me sad. But I’m really glad to be in the group that sees the world as a basically safe place. It must be terrifying to think otherwise.

safe world

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The Outrageous Entitlement of Republican Politicians

I was driving to work on the afternoon of November 30^th, and an interview I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered nearly caused me to swerve off the interstate into a concrete barrier, such was the level of my outrage. Robert Siegel, one of my personal journalistic heroes, was interviewing Charles Grassley, a Republican senator from Iowa, who is on the Senate Finance Committee, about the proposed Republican tax overhaul.

I strongly encourage you to go back and listen to this interview here, because it should still be available as of this reading, and it’s absolutely dumbfounding.

At around minute 2, they were discussing estate taxes. Mr. Seigel stated that only 80 people in the entire country would face any estate taxes in 2017, so why is it so important to raise the ceiling on these taxes, “when a couple already can pass on an estate of up to 11 million dollars, tax free?” Good freakin’ question, Robert!

Senator Grassley replied, “I suppose to show appreciation for people that have lived frugally early in their life, delayed spending, so they could save. It seems to me there ought to be some incentive and reward for those who work and save and invest in America, as opposed to those who, uh, just live from day to day…I’m giving you a philosophical reason for recognizing savings versus those who want to live high on the hog and not save anything or invest in a commodity.”

Because, yeah, we all know that those 80 ultra-rich )(*^%^& are investing in America. Come on. They don’t give a shit about us. That’s why they’re so rich in the first place.

Did you know that’s what you’ve been doing, dear reader? Living high on the hog and not working hard? Me neither. When I was living in a tent and working at the age of 10, I had been living high on the hog and I didn’t even know it! Silly me. But for my own laziness and stupidity, I could have been a millionaire.

And that attitude, in a nutshell, is EXACTLY why none of us should vote Republican. Because I can only see one of two possible scenarios that can be true. Either Senator Grassley is so removed from reality that he actually believes what is spewing forth from his pie hole, or he KNOWS it for the bold-faced lie that it is, and his moral compass is so unbelievably bent that he’s willing to perpetuate that lie.

Either way, why would anyone vote for this man to represent us? Why? Why? Gaaaaaaaaah!

Thanks for listening. Knowing I could rant on my blog is the only reason I’m not being scraped up off a concrete wall even as we speak.

29903084942_2aff8951d7_b

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Feelin’ the Bern

On Saturday night I got to be a part of history. I went to see Bernie Sanders speak at the Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion here in Seattle. It was a seminal moment. Socialism has never been a strong movement in this country, but it does tend to surge when the upper classes begin to behave more abominably. So it’s surging now.

I arrived a couple hours early, and still the line was a half mile long, wrapping around Husky Stadium next door. You could feel the electricity in the air. The crowd around me was discussing the fact that Sanders’ afternoon speech was disrupted by the Black Lives Matter movement. I’ll write more about that tomorrow.

People were walking up and down the line asking us to sign petitions. I signed one to put something on the state ballot to address electoral reform. (Would that I could have signed it twice.) Others were handing out flyers. One was by Kshama Sawant, our city council member who is a member of the Socialist Alternative party (God, how I love Seattle) and it was very supportive of Sanders. Another was by the Freedom Socialist party, and it was very critical of him, which seems counterproductive. I mean, yes, he hardly toes the party line, but at least he’s a step in the right direction.

And of course, there were protesters. One group was rallying for rent control (yeah, buddy!) and another was pro Palestine. As I stood there, gazing at all these people with their valid causes, I was feeling grateful that we live in a country were these opinions can be voiced.

Finally we got inside, and I was relegated to the nosebleed section, but I was just glad to be there. I saved two seats for some friends who weren’t allowed in after all, and they wound up being the only two empty seats in the entire arena. 12,000 people packed it, and another 3,000 people listened from outside while I sat next to my two empty seats feeling sheepish.

This was taken by my friend Amy, who couldn't actually come inside for the crowd, but Bernie, being a man of the people, came to her. — This was taken by my friend Amy, who couldn’t actually come inside for the crowd, but Bernie, being a man of the people, came to her.

There were about 5 speakers before Bernie, each promoting him or herself and whipping up enthusiasm for the main attraction. I didn’t even get their names, frankly. I couldn’t be bothered. They were just filler, and I got the sense that the crowd viewed them as a waste of time. I know I did. It was hot in there and we were impatient.

Then out came Bernie Sanders. This sloppy little man looks exactly like that neighbor you used to have who would shout at kids for playing on his front lawn, and confiscate all the balls that flew into his back yard. You know the one. And the crowd erupted in deafening cheers.

When he spoke, calling us brothers and sisters, he said all the right things. He said he had more individual donors than any other campaign. (To add yourself to this extremely wonderful group of individuals, go here.) He railed against big money and corporate greed. He talked about racism and income inequality. He said that the billionaire class needs to pay its fair share of taxes. He supported marriage equality, and glory, glory hallelujah, he acknowledged the fact of global climate change. He discussed the need for prison reform and a minimum wage increase. He laughed at the Republican concept of family values with its obvious disdain for women’s rights.

I have to admit that I was swept up in the enthusiasm. I had never before been in such a large group of people who think like I do. I never experienced this in all my years mired in the ignorant cultural backwater that is Florida.

But then something came over me. Maybe it was the heat and the crowd. Maybe it was the fact that I had walked a mile and a half to get there because parking in this town absolutely sucks. Maybe it was the fact that I’d worked all day and then had to kill about 3 hours of time before entering the arena, and had not been able to convince anyone to go with me. Or maybe it was the fact that the creepy guy behind me kept “accidentally” stroking my hair.

Suddenly I looked around and realized there was a distinct lack of faces of color in the crowd, despite all the cheering for immigration reform and an end to racism. I also kind of got a bitter taste in my mouth, knowing that these people, who were enthusiastically supporting Bernie’s bashing of the Billionaire class, were going to go home to their million dollar houses in downtown Seattle, and that I’d never ever afford to become one of their neighbors. It must be a lot easier to sit up there and support the causes that may or may not help the people sitting down here.

I support Bernie Sanders because I have to. He’s the only candidate for president who seems to give a shit about me and my situation. He seems to be the only one who cares enough to try to make my life better. I’ll vote for him in the democratic primary to send a message that I’m sick and tired of the way the political system is going in this country. I’m fed up. I’ve had it. Maybe my vote will make the Democratic Party blink, and realize that we are sick of the moderation.

But I don’t think he’ll win. Not in a million years. There are too many ignorant voters out there who buy into the paid political advertising.

And if by some miracle he does manage to win, we’ve already seen what happens to presidents who have absolutely no support. We’d be treated to a 4 year long filibuster. As hard as he’d try, and as much as we’d want him to succeed, nothing would happen.

So I left early. Bernie had me at hello and he made no promises, which is admirable in a politician. He’s got my vote. But I just couldn’t sit there anymore and listen to a view of utopia that I long for with all my heart and soul, but am fairly certain I will never get to experience.

With a magnifying glass, you might be able to see me in the extreme upper left corner of this picture.

How the Republicans Helped Kill my Boyfriend

Today would have been my boyfriend’s 59th birthday. He had tons of health issues. In the year before his death I had either called 911 or driven him to the emergency room on 5 occasions. Most nights we didn’t sleep fully because he couldn’t breathe. In fact he had to fight for nearly every breath he took. It was heartbreaking to witness.

When the Affordable Care Act came along I heaved a huge sigh of relief because I thought that finally he would have the health insurance he so desperately needed, and perhaps get some continuity of care for a change instead of these spot checks by harried emergency room doctors and yet another bill to add to the 90,000 dollars’ worth of medical debt that he had racked up and would never be able to repay.

Unfortunately, due to his declining health his income had declined as well. Because of his low income, he didn’t qualify for the Affordable Care Act insurance. In a just and decent world, he would have then been able to get Medicaid. But no. We were in a red state, Florida, and that meant that Rick Scott, the evil republican governor, refused to accept the federal funding that would allow the Medicaid program to expand enough to accept people like my boyfriend who fell between the cracks. In fact it widened the crack considerably.

This meant that my boyfriend was in the awkward position of being too poor for Affordable Care and too rich for Medicaid. So he continued to have no insurance at all. Until that fateful day when it was no longer needed.

They found his body in his truck in front of the pharmacy just a few blocks from home. He was clutching his rescue asthma inhaler. What a horrible, lonely, terrifying way to go.

I will never know what happened that day, but I will always think that if he had been able to get adequate medical care, if his asthma and his heart issues could have been brought under control, the love of my life would still be alive. And the only thing that stood between him and that medical care was a republican governor who was trying to make a political point. And the final bitter irony is that my boyfriend was many things, but a democrat was not one of them.

Make no mistake: any political party that is willing to risk peoples’ lives just so they can try to make a president’s initiative look bad and therefore garner more votes for their party is evil. Republicans do not care whether you live or die. They just care about manipulating your vote. People are dying in red states. Fathers, brothers, sons, mothers, sisters, and daughters. They’re dying because they can’t get the insurance that would easily be available to them if these republican governors accepted the available federal funding. And they’ve left behind loved ones who can vote.

So please vote tomorrow. Please. Do it for my boyfriend and for the many other people like him.

Rick Scott, you creepy, lizard-like man with no conscience, j’accuse.

The American Voting Spectrum: Florida vs. Washington State

The minute I knew what my address would be in Washington, I registered to vote on line. Burning my Voter ID card from Florida made me feel as good as burning my bra would have during the early days of the Women’s Movement. You see, I come from the land of the hanging chad, where one could never really be certain that one’s vote was actually counted.

When I got my Voter ID card here in Washington, I looked to see where I would have to go vote. In Florida it would have been a local library or school or church (which always seemed counterintuitive and ethically shady to me, but whatever). And the polling place would have been staffed by geriatric volunteers and presided over by dour faced election observers from foreign countries, which always made me feel like I had just stepped into a third world dictatorship. Washingtonians have none of that. You vote by mail. Are you kidding me? What, no 5 hour lines in the blazing sun, surrounded by theoretically distant yet somehow still in-your-face biased political yard signs? No Republican false advertising telling people in minority neighborhoods the wrong hours and days that these places would be open? How is that possible?

And the registration process is less restrictive in Washington. Here, you can vote if you’re a felon, as long as you still are not under Department of Corrections supervision. So you can actually pay your debt to society and once again have a say over how your community is governed. Imagine that. You can’t do that in Florida without going through an often decades-long process to get your right to vote restored. We wouldn’t want those extra Democrats floating around and mucking up the system, now would we?

Also, in Florida you can be adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting. I’m surprised they aren’t still participating in involuntary sterilization, too. Sort of a one stop shopping for the mentally undesirable.

And according to the registration website for Florida you have to “Provide your current and valid Florida driver’s license number or Florida identification card number. If you do not have a Florida driver’s license number or a Florida identification card number then you must provide the last four digits of your Social Security Number. If you do not have any of these items, you must write “none” in the box or field.” Gee, if you can write none, why bother with the rest of it? To be more intimidating and inconvenient, perhaps? The Washington site doesn’t even get into that foolishness. It just says you have to be a legal resident.

And as if all of this wasn’t good enough, on October 15^th, I got two magazine-sized publications, one for the county, one for the state, and my official Washington Ballot, which I can either mail in or drop off, as long as it arrives by November 4^th. The magazines include a full page of info for each candidate, including the nonpartisan judges. Each candidate also has web page information so you could read further if desired. The initiative measures have up to 8 pages each of information. These 8 pages include an explanation of the law as it presently exists, effects of the proposed measure if approved, statistical charts, a fiscal impact statement on both state and local levels, and arguments for and against the initiative. This made me nearly weep. Anyone in this state who doesn’t take advantage of this incredibly easy system is just lazy and civically irresponsible.

In Florida, what you got was a two page sample ballot with no descriptions of anything at all. If you wanted to learn more about candidates or measures, you had to really do your homework. Read the papers, get on line. Do your research and hope the information you came up with wasn’t warped by someone with an agenda. And nonpartisan judges? Forget it. Finding out about them was nearly impossible. It wasn’t unusual to Google their names and find nothing at all. Can you imagine how hard it would be to cast an educated vote if you were semi-literate, unmotivated, or a retired person who isn’t computer savvy?

The thing is, Florida’s system was the only one I knew, so I had no idea how justified my outrage should be. I feel as if I’ve woken up in an enlightened society for the first time in my life. And I’m also starting to fully understand how unbelievably screwed over I’ve been up to this point.

This is your typical Florida voting line. I got this picture from an article on Think Progress, which was entitled:

Long Voting Lines Drove Away At Least 201K Florida Voters, Study Finds

No matter how hard they try to make it for you, don’t let them win. Vote! Vote! Vote!

Jeannette Rankin: A Woman Who Stood Alone

Recently I watched a program about the presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and in it they mentioned in passing that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt went to congress to ask them to declare war on Japan and there was only one vote against it. Think about that for a minute. That had to take guts. We all remember how much patriotic pressure there was after 9/11. Most of us alive today can only imagine how intense it was after Pearl Harbor.

The resolution passed the Senate 82-0, and in Congress it passed 388-1. Who would have the courage to stand up against 470 of his fellow politicians and overwhelming public sentiment, and say, rightly or wrongly, on public record for all eternity, “I disagree”? There was hissing in the gallery when that vote was cast, and an angry mob pursued the voter after the fact. I had to find out more about this person.

And what an interesting person she turned out to be. Yes, she. Jeannette Rankin, a Montana Republican, was the first woman ever elected to the United States Congress, and ironically this occurred in 1917, when not all women in this country had the right to vote. She was for women’s suffrage, of course, and against child labor, and a devout pacifist her entire life. She voted against the war in Germany in World War I, and she led 5,000 marchers to Washington to protest the war in Vietnam. When she cast that single dissenting vote during World War II, she said, “As a woman I can’t go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.”

She also never married, despite many proposals, and she was highly educated. Those were two things that were extremely rare for her generation. Her first degree was in biology, and science is a field that is still underrepresented by women to this day, so you you can imagine what a good ol’ boy network it must have been in 1902.

Jeannette Rankin was a woman who bucked the tide. I never thought I’d say this about a Republican, especially a Republican woman, but I have nothing but admiration for the life she led. If you’d like to learn more about her, start here.

10 Quotes That Should Piss Off Any Woman With Sense

What breaks my heart is that this blog entry could practically write itself.

“The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.” –Republican Mike Huckabee (Gee thanks, Mike. It sure has been no fun being a victim of my gender up to this point.)
“If I was a woman over 50, I wouldn’t need gynecological services.” –Republican Allan Rothlisberg (So, Allan, can I assume your prostate disappeared at the same time my vagina did?)
“Legitimate rape rarely, if ever, results in pregnancy.” –Republican Todd Akin. (Oh, where to begin.)
“You know how to stop abortion? Require that each one occur with a gun.” –Rush Limbaugh (Now let’s figure out how to stop you from talking.)
“Do your husbands like you working full time?” — Democrat Joe Biden on a visit to Japan (What is this, 1950?)
“The women in my family are doing great. That’s what I see in all the statistics coming out. I have, you know, young women in my office that are the leading intellectual lights of our office. So I don’t really see this, that there’s some sort of war on women that’s, you know, keeping women down.” –Republican Rand Paul (SUCH a relief that your family is a valid statistical sample for the rest of the country, Rand. It makes life so much easier.)
“Planned Parenthood has been far more lethal to black lives than the KKK ever was.” — Failed Virginia Republican candidate for lieutenant governor E.W. Jackson (Really?)
“If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women. It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that it has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it’s the party of women and ‘We’ll pay for health care and tuition and day care — and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?’” – Ann Coulter (There’s nothing more idiotic than a women-hating woman.)
Liberal women “have been neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness — to let them know that we are not going to have our men become subservient. That’s what we need you to do. Because if you don’t, then the debt will continue to grow…deficits will continue to grow.” –Republican Allen West. (Sounds like time to invest in cast iron cod pieces. Do it for the economy.)
Birth control is “not okay.” “It’s a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” –Republican Rick Santorum (Sounds like you really have your finger on the pulse of how things are supposed to be, Rick.)

This is 2014, isn’t it? Keep reminding me. It’s easy to forget.

[Image credit: thepoliticalcarnival.net]

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Why I Love Obamacare

As an abysmally underinsured American, for the past decade I’ve been acutely aware of the passage of time. Every day that went by felt like it was one day closer to whatever catastrophic health problem was going to take me down. The company I work for thought it was decent and fair to provide its employees with insurance that had a 3,500.00 cap. I always felt as if I were one sprained ankle away from joining the ranks of the uninsured, and it terrified me.

Once, I tripped off a curb and as the asphalt was rushing up to meet me, instead of thinking, “What can I do to prevent this?” or “This is going to hurt,” my very first thought, even prior to impact, was, “I can’t afford this.” That shouldn’t be the case.

Another time I broke one of the bones in my foot and couldn’t afford treatment, so I hobbled around for six months on a cane while it improperly healed. I can feel it every time the weather gets cold, and that will be an ache that I’ll get to experience every winter for the rest of my life. That shouldn’t be the case.

Oh, believe me, I tried to get individual insurance, but due to pre-existing conditions, they wanted to charge me 900.00 a month. That shouldn’t be the case either. Before taxes, I only make 1700.00 a month, and I pay 700.00 a month in rent. That would leave me less than a hundred bucks a month for food, gas, utilities… Give me a break.

Could I get some kind of financial or medical assistance? Nope. I make too much money. My friends in other countries are shocked by my situation.

So when I finally, finally paid my first monthly premium for Obamacare and found it would cost me the same amount that I had been paying for my previous, crappy insurance, but that this coverage would be about a million times better, I hung up the phone and I got tears in my eyes. That’s one less thing to worry about, freeing me up for that pursuit of happiness that I was assured was my right according to the Declaration of Independence.

Let’s address the big old Republican elephant in the room, shall we? Yes, the website is a joke. Yes, it took me daily attempts for almost two solid months before I could get through that nightmare. But you know what? I did it. In spite of the frustration, I kept trying until I got through, because I desperately needed to succeed in this effort, and I wasn’t going to give up. It was too important.

Yes, the Republicans are flooding the media with absurd horror stories and warnings that they’ll take away your firstborn child, implant you with microchips, shuttle you off to a death panel, plaster close up photographs of your hemorrhoids on the billboard closest to your place of work, and force all the doctors in America to go bankrupt, but I’m here to tell you that Fox News and their ilk are spewing fifty gallon drums of liquefied manure.

Here’s the horror story that they don’t want to tell you. As more and more of us sign up, and as the dust settles, we’ll start to realize just how many lies we’ve been told over the years. We’ll realize that our employers have been screwing us over, and big insurance companies have been sticking knives in our ribs for decades. It isn’t Obamacare that has forced all of us off of our substandard insurance. Our insurance companies’ refusal to make the coverage meet even the most minimal requirements is what caused those jokes they called policies to disappear. The spiraling cost of medical care, the abuse of the pharmaceutical companies, and the greed of the insurance agencies wanting an ever increasing piece of the monetary pie is what’s putting the squeeze on doctors.

Once we all stop waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, worrying about the mildest of sore throats or the dullest of aches, affordable healthcare will become a regular part of our lives and it will be here to stay. All the boogeymen will crawl back under their dusty little Republican beds and life will go on. The term Obamacare will stop being a pejorative and instead will be considered a basic right. (And I’m making every effort to hurry it on its way by using it whenever possible, to de-criminalize it in people’s minds.)

Soon it will be big business waking up in a cold sweat, figuratively speaking, because they’ll have to accept the fact that if they had behaved decently in the first place, Obamacare wouldn’t need to exist. And they’ll no longer be able to hide the fact that because of their abuses, the vast majority of Americans actually want this. Really, they’ve brought it on themselves.

Whatever caused it to exist at this moment in our history, I’m extremely grateful that it does. So thank you, Mr. Obama! I know it feels like an albatross around your neck at the moment, but future generations will appreciate your courage and resolve. I can honestly say you may have just saved my life.

[Image credit: beforeitsnews.com]

Upset that Everyone Now Has the Same Rights that You Do? Oh, Simmer Down.

Democrat, Republican, Conservative, Liberal, Fundamentalist, Atheist, anywhere in the spectrum, all Americans have to abide by the US constitution. There’s nowhere that says you have to like it. So feel free to pitch a tantrum. I just wish you’d do it in the privacy of your own home, because you are messin’ with my celebration here!

I’m never wild about getting political on this blog, but when the Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act the other day we witnessed history, and I couldn’t be more proud. At a time when politicians on both sides of the aisle, lawmakers, and bureaucrats in general are behaving in a shameless, corrupt and despicable manner, it does my heart good to know that sometimes they still manage to get things right. And this administration has done more for LGBT rights than any other in the history of the world. Yay!

Opponents of this decision will use California as an example, and say that the federal government should have no right to overturn the decision of the majority of the people. California voted against proposition 8, thus depriving a segment of the population their right to marry, and saying only marriages between a man and a woman are legal, and that should be that, right?

To that I say poppycock. If you had asked the Germans to vote in 1935 to deprive the Jews of every single right imaginable, they would have. That wouldn’t make that action any less of an utter slap in the face of civil rights. So I’m THRILLED that the federal government doesn’t care what you want, California! There are times when what you want isn’t the right thing. Sorry.

Everyone should have the same rights. No group should be singled out. And every year, on the anniversary of this fateful day, and as more and more states make gay marriage legal, more and more people will pull their heads out of their behinds, look around, and realize that allowing people to marry whom they love has not in fact brought about the destruction of life as we know it. It hasn’t oozed into the very foundation of individual marriages, causing some sort of irreparable damage. It hasn’t caused children’s heads to explode. And it certainly isn’t going to loose the four horses of the apocalypse.

So enough with the free floating anxiety. Relax in the knowledge that civil rights seem to actually matter in this country, at least every once in a while.