rampage

Since taking control of Ohio in January, the Republicans, lead by Governor John Kasich, have been on a rampage of right wing ideological legislation. Now the Ohio Assembly is set to take up another slice of that agenda:

Abortions in Ohio would be banned at most publicly funded hospitals, clinics and other facilities under a proposal Senate Republicans are considering putting in the state budget, a Senate GOP official told The Associated Press on Monday.

The official, who had direct knowledge of the changes being discussed, requested anonymity because the revisions were still a part of negotiations.

State senators are also weighing a separate amendment to restrict public employees' insurance from covering abortions, the official said. Not included would be those public employees of the state's two chartered counties and chartered municipalities, which account for roughly two-thirds of the cities in the state.

This can be added to the growing list of idealogical legislation either passed or in the process of being passed, which includes: stripping unions of bargaining rights, opening Ohio parks to oil drilling, stopping the voter approved casinos, allowing people to carry guns into bars, etc., etc., etc.

The Republicans have no intentions of creating jobs in Ohio. They don't care about our state's economy. All the Republicans are worried about is rushing through an agenda based upon their social agenda.

Alan Simpson, the Republican co-chair of President Obama's debt commission, decided to go on another rampage yesterday:

The co-chairman of President Obama’s deficit commission tried to scold the elderly on Monday for complaining about their Social Security funds being targeted, but instead he found himself making a reference to “Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg.”

“This is a fakery,” Simpson said on Fox News. “If they care at all about their children or grandchildren, and sometimes I doubt that – I think, you know, grandchildren now don’t write a thank-you for the Christmas presents, they’re walking on their pants with the cap on backwards listening to the enema man and Snoopy Snoopy Poop Dogg, and they don’t like them!”

I decided to start a new post on this. You can read my early posting here.

One of the big questions surrounding today’s revelation that the Justice Department had issued a subpoena against the website indymedia, including a gag order, is what for? It’s apparent that the Justice Department was working on some auspice of the Patriot Act and despite all the conspiracies on the right it also is evident that this all occurred under the Bush Administration.

Located in the limited documents we have are a couple of interesting facts. First off is that this case was taking place in Indiana and secondly a certain date– 6/25/08:

While doing a bunch of Googling I did come across a post on indymedia from that date. The author is going on a rampage about the proposed super highway that would run from Mexico to Canada. In it an admission is made:

There has been a lot of talk about Justin Barrett, a police officer with Boston. He made fame yesterday when it was exposed that he wrote a letter to the media and referred to Henry Gates as a “banana eating jungle monkey'”. if you missed it, here’s the run down:

The law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Officer Justin Barrett referred to the black scholar as a " jungle monkey" in the letter, written in reaction to media coverage of Gates's arrest July 16.

Barrett, a 36-year-old who has been on the job for two years, was stripped of his gun and badge yesterday and faces a termination hearing in the next week, said police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll. He has no previous disciplinary record, she said.

Barrett will be represented by the police union in his hearing, as he should be. This gets into a very iffy area of our first amendment rights. One way he may have stripped himself of that protection though is by identifying himself as a police officer in his “anonymous” email.

But there is something more interesting here. In Barrett’s letter he made a statement that should be a warning sign that a person does not understand the very fundamental’s of our nation’s laws:

Again, I am writing this as a life long Democrat, but a Democrat who cherishes our need for opposing ideas in order to provide the best for our nation.

Part of the Republicans biggest problem is their ego, which I mentioned in my previous post.

I think another example of this can be seen in Bobby Jindal. So much attention has been given to him for the response Tuesday night that we seem to have forgotten the simple fact that it is the Republican response, not the Bobby Jindal response. He was just the messenger. Now we see Republicans and conservatives throwing Bobby under the bus for delivering the message of the RNC.

Perhaps that should send up the warning flags. You take away the big crowds and enthusiastic speaker, you are pretty much left with nothing. That’s what the voters have seen for the past four years and why the Republicans have been getting slammed at the polls.

I too have been lost in the “laugh at Bobby” mentality engulfing our country, but then I realized that it isn’t just Bobby, but the GOP as a whole. Perhaps that’s why Rush Limbaugh went on a rampage yesterday against any Republican criticizing Jindal.

So what should the Republicans do now? Well first off they need to declare war – a war on people like Limbaugh. It doesn’t have to be nasty, but these people need to realize that if the Republican Party is to survive that they need to entertain a wider range of ideas and philosophies. Destroying their own party because some people don’t agree with them isn’t the answer to regaining majority status, but rather the prescription for denying it. If they don’t do this then the GOP is no longer a party, but rather a special interest group.

Turns out the man who went on the shooting rampage in that Tennessee church yesterday, did so because of the church's liberal views. I had a feeling that was the case once I heard the church was Unitarian, but wanted to wait to hear the facts.

My blood boiled yesterday as I started reading right-wing blogs immediately jump on the "give everyone guns" mentality following the shooting at Virginia Tech. Details will still emerging on the deadliest mass shooting in our country's history, yet the wingnuts figured they had a political card to play here. Michelle Malkin had a post immediately following the breaking news, which linked to another post and said this:

Just imagine if students were armed. We no longer need to imag[in]e what will happen when they are not armed.

Ok - I'll play along. Let me imagine that. If we had students armed, there is a chance so many would not have died on April 16, 2007 on Virginia Tech, but how many would die on other days? How may boyfriends would get pissed at their girlfriends, or find them cheating and decide to use that "justice maker" they have under their coat?

Let's look at that another way. The descriptions show the gunman barging into classes and opening fire. If students had guns, chances are they wouldn't have time to react. Who says they even know how to shoot the damn thing or a good aim? Instead we could see a higher fatality rate yesterday. Another question remains unanswered - did the shooter use all his ammo? Did he take his life when he had only 1 bullet left to do so? If the students had guns, that could have given the shooter much more ammo to continue his rampage and we might be looking at a higher number of fatalities today.

As typical for the right, history teaches nothing. Sure there were no mass shootings like this back in the 1800's, but there was a lot more killings. Why? Everyone had guns. They were very easy to come by and people needed them just to hunt so they could eat.