Trump vs Transgender

Like a pinball, Donald Trump has again richocheted off the White House walls and declared transgender servicepersons are no longer eligible to serve in our Armed Forces.

One of the Trumpster's latest tricks is to spread the media thin by keeping as many topics on the front page as possible. This tactic does two things... energizes his base and inflames his opposition as well.

Transgender servicepersons have done an exceptional job in our Armed Forces. Certainly, they are on par with our service women, whom have demonstrated a propensity to excel within our Armed Services.

In my humble opinion, a diversified military is a stronger military; our military has to be inclusive. To that end, I am opposed to the 'edict' announced by His Highness, the draft-dodging occupant of the Oval Office barring transgender persons from wanting to be a part of the greatest military ever assembled!

                           by

Rodney Davis STC(SS) USN R'td

The Tea-Partied Republicans and Big Business

This America... home of the free, defender of democracy the world over, and all that is righteous is under attack from within.  The descent into chaotic disorganization began the day that Bush 43 announced that we were in a recession - a lie, that Big Business took as its cue to rid the American people of their right to a decent wage and fair workplace laws.  We, the silent majority, have watched as the Tea Party influenced the Republican Party to demand extreme solutions to our economical dilemma by taxing the poor and removing what the Right calls our 'entitlements'.


Let me remind all of you sympathetic to the Republican train of thought to destroy the institutions that each of us has paid into, and what we now recognized as Social Security and Medicare.  We were signed into the system before we understood what we were committing to the day that we took our first job.  The system has been there and will be there until someone introduces change that will not disenfranchise those that have paid faithfully into it.


Big Business, with the help of Chief Justice Roberts, has gotten the green-light to finance the re-structuring and deletion of every right that we have earned through years of social evolution.  OSHA, EPA, FDA, and many of the other agencies such as the new Department of  Consumer Affairs are in danger of being eradicated as well... at the behest of the Koch Brothers to their Republican puppets in Congress and State Legislators.


Who is doing this to America?  What Democracy Antichrist is creating this environment for us... the Republicans in association with ALEC, Carl Rove, and the Koch Brothers are the main culprits?  Pay attention - be informed, and follow the money trail.  
  



In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

A Letter to a Staunch Republican

My dear Rhonda...

As is usually the case with people that have views such as yours; you haven't read, so you don't know. Your views mirror mine as well when it comes to giving the store away to people that have not taken the time to provide for themselves.

I was in one stupid war that cost even more lives than this one (Iraq) - Viet Nam. I regretted not ever saying anything about it during my time in service... I have survived to talk about it though.

When it comes to the notion that everyone on welfare is a crack head... You don't know that everyone using public housing and food stamps is a crack head. You assume the worst because that is what you have been told. You speak of rights, but then you don't want to give other people the same rights that you preach about. You talk about one word that I misspelled (liar) and you attempt to degrade me with that as the point of your argument - educate yourself as to what really is happening around you before you make a fool of yourself. You never mentioned one thing about the real things that I discussed with you, obviously because you know they are the truth and you can't refute them.

Ask your brother if he still believes that there were WMDs in Iraq. In case you haven't heard - They never found any WMDs, and that is because Bush lied about them being there. I know that there were never any WMDs in Iraqi because I handled nuclear weapons for twenty years in the U.S. Navy - Submarines. Nuclear weapons are not easily hidden because of the 'gamma ray' trail that they leave when moved from place to place. You would know that if you were as informed. I am a Viet Nam veteran - I protected this country just as your brother did; I did it for twenty years!

I don't live in the United States anymore. I took my money out of U.S. banks. I sold my houses, land and divested myself of everything that I owned in America because I knew that Bush's practices would bring down the economy there. Bush was given the reins to the country with 1.3 trillion dollars in the Bank. He promptly spent it on tax cuts for the rich. I got 27 thousand the first year of those tax cuts... what did you get - probably 600 hundred dollars like all of the rest of the people? Only the rich (I am far from rich) benefited from that tax cut. You can't pay the nation's bills if you are giving away the nation's money sweetie... that is why we are in a hole.

What did Obama get when he took over from Bush... two wars that Bush lied to get into and did not clean up. A prison full of Al Qaeda that has yet to be tried… a national debt bigger than ever before… an economy that is in shambles. And then, you have the audacity to blame Obama for the '2.4 trillion' that you said he has spent - most of which has been spent to keep this country from falling apart at the seams.

First of all, I want you to get a life... you are obviously taking advantage of the unemployment that Obama is providing for the likes of you. You are bothering me, secondly! And lastly, if you can't take the time to get involved with what is happening around you, you are as useless as Bush was. Instead of hating so much, use some of that energy to stay informed as to what is really happening in the world around you.

You have had your say... and so have I. You can't be convinced otherwise and I refuse to degrade myself further by arguing with someone that simply doesn't care to read and be informed.

Have a nice day...


The person I was having this heated conversation with is typical of what serves as the core Republican constituency. The mantra effect, as applied by Rove, Limbaugh, and Beck, has warped the thought processes of these individuals into believing what they hear and none of what is obvious to the senses of a literate person.

To the Republicans willing to give a darn - become informed by listening to more than your 'selected' sources of information. Ask questions of yourself when you read, hear, or listen to political orations. Look behind the curtain to see who is manipulating the puppets that are preaching a point of view. Ask yourself, if the Republican Party ran this country so well, why was it that the State of the Nation that Obama inherited was nowhere near what it was when Clinton left office. Clinton may not have been a model President when it comes to morality, but he sure didn't misuse the office of President to the point where we suffering as we are today - it took a drunk to do that.

Before you start blaming Obama for everything that is happening, remember the condition of this country when he took office. Few of you can even comprehend how close to economic collapse this country was. History will show that if there are no checks and balances in what we do - the speed of electronic data will find and utilize the loophole a million times over before it can be corrected. That is why you can't say 'NO' (nonsensical obstinacy) to everything that is presented before Congress to correct the problems that we are discovering.

Remember - if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

Obama Will Triumph -- So Will America

By Frank Schaeffer

Before he could served even one year, President Obama lost the support of the easily distracted left and engendered the white hot rage of the hate-filled right. But some of us, from all walks of life and ideological backgrounds - including this white, straight, 57-year-old, former religious right wing agitator, now progressive writer and (given my background as the son of a famous evangelical leader) this unlikely Obama supporter… are sticking with our President. Why… because he is succeeding?

We, the faithful Obama supporters, still trust our initial impression of him as a great, good, and uniquely qualified man to lead us.

Obama’s steady supporters will be proven right. Obama’s critics will be remembered as easily panicked and prematurely discouraged at best and shriveled hate mongers at worst.

The Context of the Obama Presidency

Not since the days of the rise of fascism in Europe, the Second World War, and the Depression has any president faced more adversity. Not since the Civil War has any president led a more bitterly divided country. Not since the introduction of racial integration has any president faced a more consistently short-sighted and willfully ignorant opposition – from both the right and left.

As the President’s poll numbers have fallen so has his support from some on the left that were hailing him as a Messiah not long ago; all those lefty websites and commentators that were falling all over themselves on behalf of our first black president during the 2008 election.

The left’s lack of faith has become a self-fulfilling “prophecy” - snipe at the President and then watch the poll numbers fall and then pretend you didn’t have anything to do with it!

Here is what Obama faced when he took office-- none of which was his fault:

1. An ideologically divided country to the point that America is really two countries.

2. We are in two wars, one that was mishandled from the start, and the other that was unnecessary and immoral.

3. We are in the worst economic crisis since the depression.

4. America’s standing in the world at the lowest point in history.

5. A country has been was misled into accepting the use of torture of prisoners of war, we have a health care system in free fall, an educational system in free fall, a global environmental crisis of history - altering proportions – about which the Bush administration and the Republicans had done nothing.

6. We have an impasse between culture warriors from the right and left, huge financial deficit inherited from a terminally irresponsible Bush administration…and those were only some of the problems sitting on the President’s desk!

“Help” from the Right?

What did the Republicans and the religious right, libertarians and half-baked conspiracy theorists - that is what the Republicans were reduced to by the time Obama took office - do to “help” our new president (and our country) succeed? They claimed that he wasn’t a real American, didn’t have an American birth certificate, wasn’t born here, was secretly a Muslim, was white-hating a "racist", was secretly a communist, was actually the Anti-Christ, and was a reincarnation of Hitler and wanted “death panels” to kill the elderly!

They not-so-subtly called for his assassination through the not-so-subtle use of vile signs held at their rallies and even a bumper sticker quoting Psalm 109:8. They organized “tea parties” to sound off against imagined insults and all government in general and gathered to howl at the moon. They were led by insurance industry lobbyists and deranged (but well financed) ‘commentators’ akin to the likes of Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh.

The utterly discredited Roman Catholic Bishops teamed up with the utterly discredited Evangelical leaders to denounce a president who was trying to actually do something about the poor, the environment, to diminish the number of abortions through compassionate programs to help women and to care for the sick! And in Congress the Republican leadership only knew one word: “No!”

In other words, the reactionary white, rube, uneducated, crazy American far right, combined with the educated but obtuse neo-conservative war mongers, religious right shills for big business, libertarian Federal Reserve-hating gold bug, gun-loving crazies, child-molesting acquiescent “bishops”, frontier loons and evangelical gay-hating flakes found one thing to briefly unite them - their desire to stop an uppity Black man from succeeding at all costs!

“Help” from the Left?

What did the left do to help their newly elected president? Some of them excoriated the President because they disagreed with the bad choices he was being forced to make regarding a war in Afghanistan that he’d inherited from the worst president in modern history!

Others stood up and bravely proclaimed that the President’s economic policies had “failed” before the President even instituted them! Others said that since all gay rights battles had not been fully won within virtually minutes of the President taking office, they’d been ‘betrayed’! Never mind that Obama’s vocal support to the gay community is stronger than any other president’s has been. Never mind that he signed a new hate crimes law!)

Those that had stood in transfixed legions weeping with beatific emotion on election night turned into an angry mob saying how "disappointed" they were that they’d not all immediately been translated to heaven the moment Obama stepped into the White House! Where was the “change”? Contrary to their expectations they were still mere mortals!

The legion of young new supporters was too busy texting to pay attention for longer than a nanosecond… “Governing”?! What the hell does that word, uh, like mean?”

The President’s critics left and right all had one thing in common: impatience laced with little-to-no sense of history (let alone reality) thrown in for good measure. Then of course there were the white, snide know-it-all commentators/talking heads who just couldn’t imagine that maybe, just maybe they weren’t as smart as they thought they were and certainly not as smart as their president. He hadn’t consulted them,
had he? So he must be wrong!

The Obama (sic) ideological ideas critics' defined their idea of reality rather than reality defining their ideas, about what is possible in one year in office after the hand that the President had been dealt by fate, or to be exact by the American idiot nation that voted Bush into office… twice!

Meanwhile back in the reality-based community – in just 12 short months… President Obama:

1. Continued to draw down the misbegotten war in Iraq (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

2. Thoughtfully and decisively picked the best of several bad choices regarding the war in Afghanistan (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

3. He gave a major precedent-setting speech supporting gay rights (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

4. Restored America’s image around the globe (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

5. Banned torture of American prisoners (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

6. Stopped the free fall of the American economy (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

7. Put the USA squarely back in the bilateral international community (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

8. Put the USA squarely into the middle of the international effort to halt global warming (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

9. Stood up for educational reform (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

10. Won a Nobel peace prize (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

11. Moved the trial of terrorists back into the American judicial system of checks and balances (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

12. Did what had to be done to start the slow, torturous and almost impossible process of health care reform that seven Presidents had failed to even begin (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

13. Responded to hatred from the right and left with measured good humor and patience (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

14. Stopped the free fall of job losses (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

15. Showed immense personal courage in the face of an armed and dangerous far right opposition that included the sort of disgusting people that show up at public meetings carrying loaded weapons and carrying Timothy McVeigh-inspired signs about the “blood of tyrants” needing to “water the tree of liberty”… (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

16. Showed that he could not only make the tough military choices but explain and defend them brilliantly (But that wasn’t good enough for his critics).

Other than those "disappointing" accomplishments -- IN ONE YEAR -- President Obama “failed”! Other than that he didn’t “live up to expectations”!

Who actually has failed... are the Americans that can’t see the beginning of a miracle of national rebirth right under their jaded noses. Who is failing… the smart ass ideologues of the left and right who began rooting for this President to fail so that they could be proven right in their dire and morbid predictions? Who is failing… the movers and shakers behind our obscenely dumb news cycles that have turned “news” into just more stupid entertainment for an entertainment-besotted infantile country?

Here’s the good news: President Obama is succeeding without the help of his lefty “supporters” or hate-filled Republican detractors! The Future Looks Good…

Ron


In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

What Did You Expect...

We are thirty-four days into the Presidency of Barack Obama. The President is moving to accomplish campaign promises, chief among them – transparency, and yet; the Media has asked the questions that one would only have expected from an administration that had been in office for a year or more. Will the President nationalize the banking system; how are you going to manage the Guantanamo ‘mess’; will the Stimulus work; the rantings of one uninformed Rick Santelli… and more? Despite the hand that he has been dealt, the President is doing remarkably well in making the adjustments and decisions necessary to bring good government to the American people.

Even more surprising is the stout wall that the Republican Party has set for the President to vault in attempting to extend the right hand of partisanship. We all know that Madam Pelosi is not prone to following the lead of anyone, hence the degree of difficulty for the President in achieving this noble goal. But, Pelosi notwithstanding, the Republican Party has done its best to thwart the efforts of the President in realizing this goal. If there is ever to be some semblance of bipartisanship, the Republican Party is going to have to realize that they are not in the best of positions to dictate policy given the last eight years under Bush with six of those years in total control of the Congress by the Republican Party.

The responsibility for bringing America through this crisis rests with Congress in supporting the direction of the President. Robust debate with the intent of reaching this lofty goal is expected of the Congress. We saw just the opposite from Congress in passing the Stimulus package. The galvanization demonstrated by the refusal to include the Republicans in the initial phase of the Stimulus package was followed by the refusal to support any part of the Stimulus package by the Republicans. The debacle reminds us that bipartisanship is not the primary goal of this Congress. The President has said that it is incumbent on the majority to include the minority, and the minority should come to the table with constructive ideas.

The attempts to discredit the President have continued to be a source of embarrassment for the Republican Party. Witness the conversation of McCain and the President on the fleet of helicopters that President Bush ordered; a situation that President Obama had already discussed with Secretary Gates. McCain knew that Obama and Gates had already talked about the helicopters, but he attempted to use the helicopters and their cost to discredit the President; it backfired.

The Republican Party has tried unsuccessfully to question the authenticity of the President to serve…

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Senator Shelby, (R) Alabama spoke with connotations of himself being the ultimate authority as to the right of the President to be the leader of the United States simply because he had not seen the President’s birth certificate, therefore; the President had not been shown to be legitimately eligible to hold the office of President. These tactics have continued to explode in the faces of those attempting to use whatever means to discredit the President.

At some point in time the Republican Party will come to the realization that Barack Obama is the President of the United States of America, and that he is also a cunning adversary that will take them to the hoop on any subject! The Republican Party will be forced to reconcile themselves with the responsibility of working with this President for the good of America because 2010 is right around the corner!

When It Comes to Our Veterans - McCain Doesn't Get It!

Less there be some mistake as to whether Senator McCain told the truth when it came to our Veterans and his promise to “take care of them’ as he stated during the debates last night, here is his record. Senator McCain has a tendency to lie when it comes to his support of our servicemen. In fact, most of the lawmakers in Congress wearing the Republican Party badge have a shaky record when it comes to the welfare of our troops. Make no mistake, the Republicans don’t mind sending our relatives off to war, in some cases their own relatives, but when it comes to protecting them and providing for them – the answer is a resounding ‘NO’.

Most recently, May 22, 2008, Senator McCain had an opportunity to vote in support of legislation to appropriate funds for the war in Iraq and McCain did not vote. In that bill was an amendment that provided for the education of our veterans – McCain took care of our Veterans; the good Senator voted 'NO'. Senator Obama voted ‘Yes’ for HR 2642.

That entry in the Congressional record is available for you here:

HR 2642 GI Bill and Other Domestic Provisions
Sub Amend S Amendment 4803: GI Bill and Other Domestic Provisions
Issues: Budget, Spending and Taxes, Education, Foreign Aid and Policy Issues, Senior and Social Security Issues, Veterans Issues, Welfare and Poverty
Date: 05/22/2008
Sponsor: Sen. Reid, Harry (D-NV)

In January of 2008 HR 4986, a bill that provides the following for veterans was on the floor for a vote. These provisions in that bill would affect veterans:

-Increases the basic monthly pay for members of the uniformed services by 3.5 percent starting January 1, 2008 (Sec. 601).

-Permits veterans who are 100 percent disabled to receive all of both their retirement pay and their disability pay (Sec. 642).

Senator McCain did not vote for this bill, nor did Senator Obama.

HR 4986:
Issues: Budget, Spending and Taxes, Defense, Foreign Aid and Policy Issues, Veterans Issues
Date: 01/22/2008
Sponsor: Rep. Skelton, Ike (D-MO)

The vote was taken for S 2020 the 17th of November, 2005. The bill, “To provide an additional $500,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2006 through 2010, to be used for readjustment counseling, related mental health services, and treatment and rehabilitative services for veterans with mental illness, post-traumatic stress disorder, or substance use disorder”, was not supported by Senator McCain. Senator McCain voted ‘no’. Senator Obama voted ‘yes’.

Bill Number: S 2020
Issue: Veterans Issues
Date: 11/17/2005
Sponsor: Amendment: Sen. Boxer, Barbara [CA]; Original Bill: Sen. Grassley, Chuck [IA]

S Amendment 1937 to HR 2863, a bill that provided for the future funding of health care for former members of the Armed Forces takes into account changes in population and inflation was introduced on November 5th of 2005. Senator McCain voted ‘no’. Senator Obama voted ‘yes’.

Health Care for Veterans Amendment
Bill Number: HR 2863
Date: 2005-10-05
Sponsor: Amendment: Sen. Stabenow, Debbie [MI]; Original Bill: Rep Young, C. W. Bill [FL-10]

Senator McCain has consistently voted against, or ignored bills that had reference to our Armed Services. When the Senator from Arizona stands before the cameras and tells you that he will take care of our veterans, I am not sure that he will take care of them in a good way – do you?

Another disturbing trend in the vote for our servicemen is the tendency of Republicans to vote along party lines in non-support of Veterans Affairs and benefits.

Project Smart Vote, an independent organization that tracks the voting records of all of our Congressmen, has compiled a non-bias data base that reflects the tendencies of all elected officials in Washington. Familiarize yourself with this site!