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May. 12th, 2012 01:20 pmI'm finding myself increasingly politically frustrated, lately. I do not use facebook as a political platform, because the idea of discussing politics with my extended relatives, fellow PATH moms and old high school acquaintances sounds like a nightmare to me - but everybody else seems to. So I get exposed to a wild spectrum of thoughts and ideas, many of them shouted through offensive gifs or typed in caps lock with a bunch of exclamation points.
Anyway, the two main things I cannot stop thinking about as I drive and sweep the floor lately are:
1. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are, or what your political party is - if you are not gay, gay marriage is just NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and actively trying to get in it's way is not ok. I just do not GET how anybody thinks it's their right or their duty or any of it to regulate or curtail the rights to LEGAL (not Catholic, not Mormon, etc) marriage in AMERICA. Going out and voting against something like that just seems so terrible to me, so wildly busy-bodyish and hateful! Secular marriage is not the same thing as Christian marriage, at all, so I don't understand why it's suddenly equated as soon as we bring in gay people. Secular marriage involves everything from immigrants trying to stay in the country through friendly arrangements that end when citizenship is achieved to celebrities on their 10th spouse; in many of our states, it can be cousins and/or it can be ended through no-fault divorce. Legal marriages are often "open" or involve swingers, they can be performed as a Pagan handfasting, or can include home-written vows and be done by a minister of the Church of Satan in a graveyard at midnight. There is place in Vegas where you can get married in your car at a drive-thru place. NONE OF THIS IS BEING LEGALLY BLOCKED, and do you know why? Because we're a free country, and people believe in individual rights for all even when they go against their own shit! GAH!
2. I've had this big hang up for a long time as a pseudo-liberatarian, that even though I believe in many democrat-type ideals I also really, really believe in smaller government. Over the last month though, more and more, I think that republicans are not in any way making government smaller. We don't have small government now. Everyone who thinks Obama is making the government too big and too powerful just make me think things like:
How is it not causing anyone to panic or be scared that our freedom is being eroded that (GMO, Monsanto, etc) corn and soy are heavily subsidized to the point that they are in every single thing we freakin' eat, and the government buys gross enormous quantities of pink slime for school lunches and that's normal - but when Michelle Obama wants to institute healthy school lunch programs and put in an organic community garden on the white house lawn, everybody panics that we're on a terrifying slippery slope? I'd rather be on THAT slippery slope, you know?
There are tons of parallels like this. Car subsidies, gas subsidies and WARS OVER OIL are fine and right in line with small govt, but gas prices going up and environmental subsidies are large govt? Wrong. You can't just call everything you don't personally agree with big government. You can say you don't like the direction things are headed in or you agree with the old ways, but that's not the same as someone, you know, destroying the constitution.
Regardless of any feelings I've ever had on the matter, mandating TRANSVAGINAL ultrasound before an abortion blows my mind. Does govt GET any bigger than that? I mean I had six pregnancies and a ton of ultrasounds and every single ONE of them was done through the belly, and yet Republicans want to make it law that the doctor has to be able to do that to you? I had to laugh at the thing I saw that said, "Government so small it can fit in your vagina". I am saddened by abortion but it is absolutely ridiculous to require a photo of your dead fetus to stay in your medical records for doctors to see along with the print record.
Right now, hospital fees are INSANE and insurance is wildly expensive, because of the vast sea of uninsured Americans who use hospital ERs as free clinics without ever paying the bills. Tax payers fund medicaid for the pregnant women and small children in that sea, and Medicare for the elderly among them. It's a totally unsustainable system that makes no sense because the people who have more are paying for everyone else anyway - the only alternative would be to turn them away at the doors and have them dying of totally preventable stuff, and we aren't going to do THAT. So...what is the problem with instituting a system? How have they not already done that? My stepmom has over a million dollars in unpaid medical bills from breast cancer, my dad half a million, they don't even make payments. I owe a hospital in Boston hundreds of thousands for Elise...they aren't getting it, unless I become a millionaire one day or something. Meanwhile I can't afford to get my thyroid checked out and my fucking hernia is a pre-existing condition. Unsustainable! Government systems suck, having to wait for things sucks, but geez man my grandparents - one of whom is a veteran with full retirement benefits - can't get a home care nurse even part time for my Nana, even while he has a needed surgery. I've always been the one there saying "But then they can determine the care we get, what if we don't get to pick our own doctors, etc" - but you know? Medicaid paid for a maternity center. The private insurance my sister has pays for a midwife. MEdicaid wouldn't pay for Nancy in Boston, so we found a way to do it ourselves. I mean geez you can't turn everything into some wild conspiracy theory that recalls Nazi Germany, sometimes a social aid program is just a social aid program. Like the one that's allowing me to go to college (Pell Grant) or get Isaac counseling and evaluation or the one that funds the Greater Miami Youth Symphony. I don't like them all! I don't like public schools! So I opt out, and it's more expensive to buy our own stuff but that's worth it to me. I don't want to forget all of history, and I know politicians are liars and motivated by their own interests, but I also don't want to constantly live in some state of paranoia that politicians are EVIL and have hidden agendas that involve destroying the nation in some calculated plan that benefits nobody.
/end rant
Feel free to weigh in if you like.
Anyway, the two main things I cannot stop thinking about as I drive and sweep the floor lately are:
1. It doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are, or what your political party is - if you are not gay, gay marriage is just NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS and actively trying to get in it's way is not ok. I just do not GET how anybody thinks it's their right or their duty or any of it to regulate or curtail the rights to LEGAL (not Catholic, not Mormon, etc) marriage in AMERICA. Going out and voting against something like that just seems so terrible to me, so wildly busy-bodyish and hateful! Secular marriage is not the same thing as Christian marriage, at all, so I don't understand why it's suddenly equated as soon as we bring in gay people. Secular marriage involves everything from immigrants trying to stay in the country through friendly arrangements that end when citizenship is achieved to celebrities on their 10th spouse; in many of our states, it can be cousins and/or it can be ended through no-fault divorce. Legal marriages are often "open" or involve swingers, they can be performed as a Pagan handfasting, or can include home-written vows and be done by a minister of the Church of Satan in a graveyard at midnight. There is place in Vegas where you can get married in your car at a drive-thru place. NONE OF THIS IS BEING LEGALLY BLOCKED, and do you know why? Because we're a free country, and people believe in individual rights for all even when they go against their own shit! GAH!
2. I've had this big hang up for a long time as a pseudo-liberatarian, that even though I believe in many democrat-type ideals I also really, really believe in smaller government. Over the last month though, more and more, I think that republicans are not in any way making government smaller. We don't have small government now. Everyone who thinks Obama is making the government too big and too powerful just make me think things like:
How is it not causing anyone to panic or be scared that our freedom is being eroded that (GMO, Monsanto, etc) corn and soy are heavily subsidized to the point that they are in every single thing we freakin' eat, and the government buys gross enormous quantities of pink slime for school lunches and that's normal - but when Michelle Obama wants to institute healthy school lunch programs and put in an organic community garden on the white house lawn, everybody panics that we're on a terrifying slippery slope? I'd rather be on THAT slippery slope, you know?
There are tons of parallels like this. Car subsidies, gas subsidies and WARS OVER OIL are fine and right in line with small govt, but gas prices going up and environmental subsidies are large govt? Wrong. You can't just call everything you don't personally agree with big government. You can say you don't like the direction things are headed in or you agree with the old ways, but that's not the same as someone, you know, destroying the constitution.
Regardless of any feelings I've ever had on the matter, mandating TRANSVAGINAL ultrasound before an abortion blows my mind. Does govt GET any bigger than that? I mean I had six pregnancies and a ton of ultrasounds and every single ONE of them was done through the belly, and yet Republicans want to make it law that the doctor has to be able to do that to you? I had to laugh at the thing I saw that said, "Government so small it can fit in your vagina". I am saddened by abortion but it is absolutely ridiculous to require a photo of your dead fetus to stay in your medical records for doctors to see along with the print record.
Right now, hospital fees are INSANE and insurance is wildly expensive, because of the vast sea of uninsured Americans who use hospital ERs as free clinics without ever paying the bills. Tax payers fund medicaid for the pregnant women and small children in that sea, and Medicare for the elderly among them. It's a totally unsustainable system that makes no sense because the people who have more are paying for everyone else anyway - the only alternative would be to turn them away at the doors and have them dying of totally preventable stuff, and we aren't going to do THAT. So...what is the problem with instituting a system? How have they not already done that? My stepmom has over a million dollars in unpaid medical bills from breast cancer, my dad half a million, they don't even make payments. I owe a hospital in Boston hundreds of thousands for Elise...they aren't getting it, unless I become a millionaire one day or something. Meanwhile I can't afford to get my thyroid checked out and my fucking hernia is a pre-existing condition. Unsustainable! Government systems suck, having to wait for things sucks, but geez man my grandparents - one of whom is a veteran with full retirement benefits - can't get a home care nurse even part time for my Nana, even while he has a needed surgery. I've always been the one there saying "But then they can determine the care we get, what if we don't get to pick our own doctors, etc" - but you know? Medicaid paid for a maternity center. The private insurance my sister has pays for a midwife. MEdicaid wouldn't pay for Nancy in Boston, so we found a way to do it ourselves. I mean geez you can't turn everything into some wild conspiracy theory that recalls Nazi Germany, sometimes a social aid program is just a social aid program. Like the one that's allowing me to go to college (Pell Grant) or get Isaac counseling and evaluation or the one that funds the Greater Miami Youth Symphony. I don't like them all! I don't like public schools! So I opt out, and it's more expensive to buy our own stuff but that's worth it to me. I don't want to forget all of history, and I know politicians are liars and motivated by their own interests, but I also don't want to constantly live in some state of paranoia that politicians are EVIL and have hidden agendas that involve destroying the nation in some calculated plan that benefits nobody.
/end rant
Feel free to weigh in if you like.
