ZEITGEIST

To start this out, let it be known that I’m socially liberal and fiscally conservative, so I have a foot in both parties, yet neither of them are really doing their job, in my opinion.

Anywho. When I watch the news, I watch CNN and Fox News Channel, because I’d hate to think that I’m only getting one side of any story. But anyway, of the two, CNN seems to have the more balanced and fair coverage and FAR less concern about Liberal or Conservative. Fox News Channel seems to ALWAYS stress that divide in our country, ALWAYS. It amazes me as I watch that channel, just how obsessed they are with “Liberal this” and “Conservative that”.

I find it so stifling that Fox News Channel seems to be trying to create an “Us against them” or “My Team” mentality within their target audience, instead of trying to show how simple it all really is: We’re all Americans who want to see our government acting in the best interest of ALL the citizens within its borders. Democrats and Republicans may not see eye to eye on many, if any, issues, but they’ve completely lost their political objectivity in their never-ending struggle against each other. They’re there for us ALL, not for Joe Conservative or Joe Liberal. They’re in office to serve AMERICA, not their respective partys’ interests.

It’s that simple, we’re ALL Americans who just want to live the best life we can for ourselves and for our children and so on. This whole conservative and liberal inter-snottiness is ridiculous and horribly short-sighted.

I just find that this horrible over-complication of what the system SHOULD be doing goes so accepted by Americans on both sides of the fence. “Well, I don’t want those fucking conservatives to do this or that”, “Well those whiney, bleating-heart liberals are just bitter about this…” Who cares people? We all just want what’s best for our families. And that’s what people should be focused on, loving their families and friends and living a good life. If you can’t have compassion or empathy towards someone on the opposite side of the fence, you’ve lost yourself in the mire of political party-line thinking.

Life is FAR more simple than Americans tend to let it be for themselves. Live a good life, do you work, love your friends and family, eat when you’re hungry, sleep when you’re tired, move your bowels. Be compassionate towards all people of ANY race, religious background or nationality. Realize that this is America and some people will do things that are perfectly legal that you don’t agree with on some level. It’s not your place to force your values or beliefs upon them or to belittle them for living a life that differs from yours. Keep your nose out of everyone elses’ business unless you’re asked to take a whiff.

If this country is divided, it’s because there have been complicating labels slapped on you by someone else and imaginary lines have been drawn between you and “them”. Just try to remember that we’re ALL in the same boat, for the most part. We will generally gravitate towards like-minded people, but that shouldn’t be to the exclusion of all others.

I find it weird that so many people are upset that the pope is a non-Italian. Should it REALLY matter what nationality your new spiritual leader is? If your answer to that is “yes”, than you only have to wait 10 years or so before we have to go through this whole media circus of a process again. The new pope is 78 years old, so clearly he’s not going to be around for 25 years as any sort of spiritual leader. Good job guys, were there no other OLDER candidates in the running so we could do this whole thing again sooner?

Who really benefits from the new Bankruptcy Protection Laws passed by this administration? It’s pretty simple, not you or I.

Let’s face it, the only people who stand to benefit from this all, in any meaningful capacity, are the big businesses that are owed money. Instead of giving people affordable health care, or stopping the outsourcing of jobs that could potentially allow American workers to earn more money, they’ve made it harder for someone who has a stack of outrageous medical bills or a minimum wage job(s) harder for them to get out from under the mountain of debt that came from the circumstances of their lives.

I understand if you’re passing this bill to make it so people can’t charge up thousands upon thousands of dollars on a credit card, with meaningless crap and then dodge out of their debt with the credit card company. But I don’t think that congress or the administration, as a whole, realize just HOW many Americans have to declare bankruptcy for reasons entirely out of their control. Some poor schlub, with a lower-wage job finds out he has cancer or some other horribly expensive-to-treat illness and gets buried in debt just to get the adequate treatment he needs to stay alive. Making it hard for that guy to get out from under that debt, that obviously, he would’ve rather avoided having to get into anyway, is just rude and ridiculous.

So the next time, Joe Six Pack, that you think your government is acting in the best interest of the American people, why don’t you think about the fact that they’re not making health care, something that should be readily available to ALL who need it, more affordable. Nor are they trying to stop big businesses from exporting jobs to vastly cheaper foreign markets that would pay Americans a decent wage. Instead they’re chopping off the head to get rid of the headache.

Yes, there are some people out there that are wrapped up in their own material needs that they’re charging up tons of money and ducking out on their responsibility. But with this new bill, all it looks like they’re doing is trying to save big business from taking a financial hit, instead of helping citizens like you or I find better jobs or affordable health care. And face it, a LOT of bankruptcies are people who are unable to keep up with their medical bills.

Let’s hope they make it hard to declare bankruptcy on the right people, and not on the people who fell into circumstances beyond their control.

My wife and I have been wrapped up in this season of 24, pretty tightly. I’ve read that there are groups out there concerned with the fact that it was an Arab terror cell, perpetrating the acts of terrorism on that show. This whole scene kind of bugs me on the same level as hearing Italian Americans bitch about the fact that the Sopranos isn’t an accurate portrayal of a typical Italian family.

I just think about it like this: Are there NOT Arab terrorists in the world? Has there never ONCE been an Italian family in the mafia? Face it, Arabs and Italians, your non-terrorism, non-mafia lives would make for some incredibly boring television.

There ARE Arab terrorists out there and there are Italians in organized crime. Face it. Neither show is telling the American public, “Look at these despicable people, go attack Arabs or Italians because a VERY small percentage of them are bad”.

24 is an entertaining show about a counter-terrorism agency, who have really only dealt with an Arab terror cell THIS season, season 4 of the show. The Sopranos is an excellent show, that’s more of a character piece than a glamorization of the mafia.

On the opposite side of the coin, however, I have seen a commercial running, that I find sad that it has to be run. And that commercial is the commercial with ordinary people saying “I’m an American Muslim”. I find it sad that the events of September 11th, 2001 have made people upset at the entire Muslim world. As someone who’s known a fair number of Muslims in his day, they are GOOD people. But the fact that they need a commercial to show YOU, Joe Cracker, that they’re not terrorists is a sad statement about how BAD and PETTY Americans can be.

We’re all in this fuckin rat race together people, we might as well try to get along as best we can. Or are we?

It occurs to me as I even hear President Bush, after the Terri Schiavo thing, talk about the US becoming a Culture that embraces life and bla bla bla that he was one of the most prisoner-executing governors in our nation’s history.

So tell us, Georgie-Boy, how do you expect to have a legacy as someone who embraces life with all the prisoners you’ve overseen the executions of and all the dead in Iraq? A war we pretty much ALL know could’ve EASILY been avoided?

It seems to me that if you’re so concerned about the welfare of Americans and shit, you’d do much more to help those people in the US who have already been born and can’t afford the health care they so desperately need or just want equal rights that all other Americans are afforded the “luxury” of. I guess it’s easier for you to think of all those terminated pregnancies as tax dollars missed out on, but you’re worrying about it isn’t improving life for a single, living American, who are actually counting on you to do SOMETHING in their interest instead of the interest of your coffers or the religious right.

Just a thought.

I meant to comment a bit on this the day I saw it happening, live, on TV. Better late than never, I suppose.

A couple of weeks ago, while working out at the gym, I saw on ESPN, the Congressional Hearing on steroid use in professional baseball. I guess what bothers me so deeply about this issue, isn’t the steroid use in baseball. It’s the fact that with ALL the issues in the world today (ie. Enron, Haliburton, no WMD’s in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, etc…) the House Government Reform Committee, who can hold hearings on ANY issue in the country at ANY time they choose, chose fucking baseball!

Anyone who doesn’t see the “Sweep It Under The Rug” agenda of the Republican party is wallowing in blind ignorance. Tens of thousands of people out of work, retirement funds completely ripped out from under them and professional baseball is on the TOP of the list for the House Government Reform Committee? 10,000 + Iraqis dead, over 1,000 US & coalition troops dead, our standing in the international community dead and they chose to waste precious time talking about fucking BASEBALL???

Over the past two weeks, listening to Republican after Republican saying that we need to be “a culture that respects life”, and we’re talking 10,000+ people dead at order of those very same Republicans. They need to clarify and call us “a culture that respects life so long as they’re white and heterosexual”.

At ANY rate, with all the shit wrong in this world and that our government has it’s nose buried deeply in, and our tax dollars are getting wasted on a hearing about fucking BASEBALL! Of course there are those out there who adamantly think that this administration can do no wrong, but certainly there are MANY rational people out there who are or should be at least mildly outraged by this complete waste of time and money.

I’m not saying the die-hard Democrats can’t be just as blindly igorant or blindly loyal to anything their party perpetrates, but I just see more of it happening on the Right than the Left these days. I’ve seen the blindly loyal on BOTH sides of the politcal fence and they’re equally as scary, for different reasons.

Let’s get down to some god damn issues that matter if we’re going to throw tax dollars towards issues that are problems in this country. Steroid use in professional baseball isn’t a matter of great importance on a national level. Shit, I’ve had jobs where I had to be drug tested and I didn’t make anywhere NEAR what professional baseball players make, nor was I anyone’s role model for my vocation. Professional Baseball is perfectly able to have ALL of their players tested for illegal substances and act accordingly.