Wednesday, January 27, 2010

A New Pledge of Allegiance

The Supreme Court shocked the American political system last week with its ruling giving new rights to corporations. According to the Supremes, corporations have the same constitutional rights as individuals do. Therefore, there can be no restrictions on their free speech rights under the First Amendment.

The result of this decision sweeps away 100 years of jurisprudence and American tradition. It allows corporations to spend an unlimited amount of money in election campaigns. They are free to buy access to the halls of power in our fair Republic without any restriction. I suggest the following change in our nations Pledge of Allegiance:

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Corporations of America and to the conglomerate for which it stands, one oligarchy, under the almighty dollar, with liberty and bonuses for all CEOs."

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Conservative Response to Earthquake in Haiti

Just a few days ago the island nation of Haiti was devastated by an earthquake. Thousands of buildings collapsed; tens of thousands of people are dead. America responded as usual to these kinds of tragedies by immediately rushing to help the beleaguered people of the impoverished nation. President Obama made a public call for Americans to contribute much-needed money to the relief effort. Americans are a generous people and will rise to this occasion as needed.

However, all is not well in our fair Republic, for none other than conservative leader and radio personality Rush Limbaugh condemned Obama's call for help and implied that people should not contribute. "We have already given through our incomes taxes," he stated. He also implied that any money donated in response to Obama's call would be siphoned off for political use and never get to the needy people of Haiti.

Not to be outdone, conservative Christian leader Pat Robertson made an emphatic statement that the Haitian people had made a "deal with the devil" when they rose up to throw off the shackles of colonial rule. The result has been a history of suffering and devastation.

One wonders how much lower conservative leaders can sink. Now is the time when the Haitian people need words of comfort not condemnation. Do conservatives have any compassion whatsoever? It is far past time for conservative leaders of the Republican Party to disavow the hatred spewed out by these outspoken men on a continual basis. They do no good for the Republican Party nor are they good for America.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Connecting the Dots

America is all in a frenzy because of the near tragedy on Christmas day when a Nigerian youth attempted to blow up an airplane landing in Detroit. Our security forces should have apprehended him prior to getting on the plane,President Obama declared. We had plenty of information, we just didn't connect the dots.

From my perspective, the reason we didn't connect the dots is that there are just too many dots to connect. With 1 million people on the watch list it is impossible before the fact to identify the ones who really are the bad guys. Now, because of the security frenzy, even more people will be put on the list making more security dots to connect. America's desire for perfect safety in every aspect of life is probably not reasonable.