I have to share

Hello all,

So i watched the Democratic and Republican conventions the past 2 weeks, and I must say that the mainstream media missed it all this time. How exciting was it this week to watch the Republican geriatrics meeting? And although the Democratic meeting event was more exciting, they still couldn't dance. That's what most of my friends got out of the mainstream media coverage the past two weeks. I can't stand it. I have been watching so many free speech shows (I am lucky enough to get the FreeSpeech TV channel) and reading so many indy reporter articles of what's happening outside of the conventions. If the media actually covered those happenings... wow... what ratings they would have gotten then. No mention of the ridiculous arrests made. No mention of the Ron Paul convention which was a huge success. Oh, wait, they did talk about Palin. A relative newcomer to the arena and as such, I don't have much against her. Maybe it's for a different reason altogether that I want to believe her, but the fact of the matter is that she has aligned herself with McCain (who for some reason could lift his damaged arms enough to do the "Politicians point and wave" to the empty upper deck seats of the stadium they were at). That alone is reason not to trust a pretty face. I am straying...

So, here below is an example of what I've been reading about. It is a disgusting sample of what has happened to hundreds of innocent people this week and last. It is a gross representation of what has become of our society and what has happened while we watch our TV's and stay inside our homes out of fear. Here it is:

Why We Were Falsely Arrested
Amy Goodman Truthdig September 4, 2008

St. Paul, Minnesota - Government crackdowns on journalists are a true threat to democracy. As the Republican National Convention meets in St. Paul, Minn., this week, police are systematically targeting journalists. I was arrested with my two colleagues, “Democracy Now!” producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while reporting on the first day of the RNC. I have been wrongly charged with a misdemeanor. My co-workers, who were simply reporting, may be charged with felony riot.
The Democratic and Republican national conventions have become very expensive and protracted acts of political theater, essentially four-day-long advertisements for the major presidential candidates. Outside the fences, they have become major gatherings for grass-roots movements-for people to come, amidst the banners, bunting, flags and confetti, to express the rights enumerated in the Constitution’s First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
Behind all the patriotic hyperbole that accompanies the conventions, and the thousands of journalists and media workers who arrive to cover the staged events, there are serious violations of the basic right of freedom of the press. Here on the streets of St. Paul, the press is free to report on the official proceedings of the RNC, but not to report on the police violence and mass arrests directed at those who have come to petition their government, to protest.
It was Labor Day, and there was an anti-war march, with a huge turnout, with local families, students, veterans and people from around the country gathered to oppose the war. The protesters greatly outnumbered the Republican delegates.
There was a positive, festive feeling, coupled with a growing anxiety about the course that Hurricane Gustav was taking, and whether New Orleans would be devastated anew. Later in the day, there was a splinter march. The police-clad in full body armor, with helmets, face shields, batons and canisters of pepper spray-charged. They forced marchers, onlookers and working journalists into a nearby parking lot, then surrounded the people and began handcuffing them.
Nicole was videotaping. Her tape of her own violent arrest is chilling. Police in riot gear charged her, yelling, “Get down on your face.” You hear her voice, clearly and repeatedly announcing “Press! Press! Where are we supposed to go?” She was trapped between parked cars. The camera drops to the pavement amidst Nicole’s screams of pain. Her face was smashed into the pavement, and she was bleeding from the nose, with the heavy officer with a boot or knee on her back. Another officer was pulling on her leg. Sharif was thrown up against the wall and kicked in the chest, and he was bleeding from his arm.
I was at the Xcel Center on the convention floor, interviewing delegates. I had just made it to the Minnesota delegation when I got a call on my cell phone with news that Sharif and Nicole were being bloody arrested, in every sense. Filmmaker Rick Rowley of Big Noise Films and I raced on foot to the scene. Out of breath, we arrived at the parking lot. I went up to the line of riot police and asked to speak to a commanding officer, saying that they had arrested accredited journalists.
Within seconds, they grabbed me, pulled me behind the police line and forcibly twisted my arms behind my back and handcuffed me, the rigid plastic cuffs digging into my wrists. I saw Sharif, his arm bloody, his credentials hanging from his neck. I repeated we were accredited journalists, whereupon a Secret Service agent came over and ripped my convention credential from my neck. I was taken to the St. Paul police garage where cages were set up for protesters. I was charged with obstruction of a peace officer. Nicole and Sharif were taken to jail, facing riot charges.
The attack on and arrest of me and the “Democracy Now!” producers was not an isolated event. A video group called I-Witness Video was raided two days earlier. Another video documentary group, the Glass Bead Collective, was detained, with its computers and video cameras confiscated. On Wednesday, I-Witness Video was again raided, forced out of its office location. When I asked St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington how reporters are to operate in this atmosphere, he suggested, “By embedding reporters in our mobile field force.”
On Monday night, hours after we were arrested, after much public outcry, Nicole, Sharif and I were released. That was our Labor Day. It’s all in a day’s work.

Well, I think this is gonna have a lot of responses and that we'll be discussing this heatedly for a while. Let me know what you think of the conventions, the mainstream medai, and what happened to these indy reporters.

Peace,
Rich

Thomas Jefferson

"... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty.... And what country can preserve its liberties, if it's rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

-Thomas Jefferson

Wow. Over 200 years ago. What has happened since then to make us think we're smarter than previous generations? We have public schools, we have the internet to look up anything we want. We have planes and cars with a road infrastructure and airports wherever we want to go so that we can learn hands on and commit to memory. We think we're so much smarter than those who lived in the 1700's. If that were true, we would not be tolerating being taxed like we do, we would not tolerate our liberties being taken away and our constitution being voided. We would not tolerate wars overseas and sacrificing lives for the profit of a few (who do not risk their lives at the same time). We would say "No!" and back it up with force if need be. We would be proactive and do what we can politically to make things right for our towns, our states, our nation.

Here is a sample of taxes imposed upon us that we are forced to pay (thanks to voyiatzis @ blogspot)

A Partial List of Taxes Americans Pay

Accounts Receivable Tax
Automobile Registration Tax
Building Permit Tax
Capital Gains Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
CDL License Tax
Dog License Tax
Estate Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (Tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (Tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Local Income Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Parking Meters
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Septic Permit Tax
Service Charge Taxes
Social Security Taxes
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Toll Booth Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and non-Recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Toll Bridge Taxes
Toll Tunnel Taxes
Traffic Fines
Trailer Registration Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Water-craft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
Gasoline Tax (42 cents/gallon)
Federal Income Tax

Jefferson didn't pay these taxes. Who's smarter now? He ensured he didn't have to pay these taxes. So here's my question to you (and I ask for a why to your answer)...

Would you rather be alive today or in 1777?

That's all for now. Let me know what you think and as always, thanks for visiting the site.

Peace,
Rich

How to stage a protest

Here's an interesting article I found. Unfortunately it was a few days too late. I went to the Revolution March this past weekend in D.C. and it went practically unnoticed. I expected the mainstream media to ignore it, but nobody indy was there that I could tell. It was great to be around thousands of people who believe like I do, but I wish something would've come out of it.

Anyway, days later, I find an article that would've helped us all out a lot. It was written shortly after the 2004 Republican National Convention and it addresses the protestors that were there. It's here below, but came originally from

http://www.16beavergroup.org/mtarchive/archives/001278.php


"March To Irrelevance" is an important article on the protests by Matt Taibbi. Taibbi is one of the Bush admin's fiercest critics, and a sharp brain. As such, his critique of the protest movement is worth listening to. -Naeem

Excerpt: "There was a time when mass protests were enough to cause Johnson to give up the Oval Office and cause Richard Nixon to spend his nights staring out his window in panic. No more. We have a different media now, different and more sophisticated law enforcement techniques and, most importantly, a different brand of protester. Protests can now be ignored because our media has learned how to dismiss them, because our police know how to contain them, and because our leaders now know that once a protest is peacefully held and concluded, the protesters simply go home and sit on their asses until the next protest or the next election."
A March To Irrelevance By Matt Taibbi, New York Press Posted on September11, 2004, http://www.alternet.org/story/19840/


Hey, you assholes: The `60s are over!


I'm not talking about your white-guy fros, mutton-chops and beads. I'm not talking about your Che t-shirts or that wan, concerned, young Joanie Baez look on the faces of half of your women. I'm not even talking about skinny young potheads carrying wood puppets and joyously dancing in druid circles during a march to protest a bloody war.

I'm not harping on any of that. I could, but I won't. Because the protests of the last week in New York were more than a silly, off-key exercise in irrelevant chest-puffing. It was a colossal waste of political energy by a group of people with no sense of history, mission or tactics, a group of people so atomized and inured to its own powerlessness that it no longer even considers seeking anything beyond a fleeting helping of that worthless and disgusting media currency known as play.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. I admire young people with political passion, and am enormously heartened by the sheer numbers of people who time after time turn out to protest this idiot president of ours. But at the same time, I think it is time that some responsible person in the progressive movement recognize that we have a serious problem our hands. We are raising a group of people whose only ideas about protest and opposition come from televised images of 40 years ago, when large public demonstrations could shake the foundations of society. There has been no organized effort of any kind to recognize that we now live in a completely different era, operating according to a completely different political dynamic. What worked then not only doesn't work now, it doesn't even make superficial sense now.
Let's just start with a simple, seemingly inconsequential facet of the protests: appearance. If you read the bulletins by United for Peace and Justice ahead of the protests, you knew that the marchers were encouraged to"show their creativity" and dress outlandishly. The marchers complied,turning 7th Ave. into a lake of midriffs, Billabong, bandanas and "BuckFush" t-shirts. There were facial studs and funny hair and man-sandals and papier-mache masks and plenty of chicks in their skivvies all jousting to be the next young Heather Taylor inspiring the next Jimi Hendrix to write the next "Foxy Lady." And the New York Post and Fox were standing on the sidelines greedily recording all of this unbowed individuality for posterity, understanding instinctively that each successive t-shirt and goatee was just more fresh red meat for mean Middle America looking for good news from the front.

Back in the '60s, dressing crazy and letting your hair down really was a form of defiance. It was a giant, raised middle finger to a ruling class that until that point had insisted on a kind of suffocating, static conformity in all things – in sexual mores, in professional ambitions, in life goals and expectations, and even in dress and speech. Publicly refusing to wear your hair like an Omega house towel boy wasn't just a meaningless gesture then. It was an important step in refusing later to go to war, join the corporate workforce and commit yourself to the long, soulless life of political amnesia and periodic consumer drama that was the inflexible expectation of the time.

That conformist expectation still exists, and the same corporate class still imposes it. But conformity looks a lot different now than it did then. Outlandish dress is now for sale in a thousand flavors, and absolutely no one is threatened by it: not your parents, not the government, not even our most prehistoric brand of fundamentalist Christianity. The vision of hundreds of thousands of people dressed in every color of the rainbow and marching their diverse selves past Madison Square Garden is, on the contrary, a great relief to the other side – because it means that the opposition is composed of individuals, not a Force In Concert. In the conformist atmosphere of the late '50s and early '60s, the individual was a threat. Like communist Russia, the system then was so weak that it was actually threatened by a single person standing up and saying,"This is bullshit!" That is not the case anymore. This current American juggernaut is the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, and it is absolutely immune to the individual. Short of violent crime, it has assimilated the individual's every conceivable political action into mainstream commercial activity. It fears only one thing: organization.

That's why the one thing that would have really shaken Middle America last week wasn't "creativity." It was something else: uniforms. Three hundred thousand people banging bongos and dressed like extras in an Oliver Stone movie scares no one in America. But 300,000 people in slacks and white button-down shirts, marching mute and angry in the direction of Your Town, would have instantly necessitated a new cabinet-level domestic security agency. Why? Because 300,000 people who are capable of showing the unity and discipline to dress alike are also capable of doing more than just march. Which is important, because marching, as we have seen in the last few years, has been rendered basically useless. Before the war, Washington and New York saw the largest protests this country has seen since the '60s – and this not only did not stop the war, it didn't even motivate the opposition political party to nominate an anti-war candidate.

There was a time when mass protests were enough to cause Johnson to give up the Oval Office and cause Richard Nixon to spend his nights staring out his window in panic. No more. We have a different media now, different and more sophisticated law enforcement techniques and, most importantly, a different brand of protester. Protests can now be ignored because our media has learned how to dismiss them, because our police know how to contain them, and because our leaders now know that once a protest is peacefully held and concluded, the protesters simply go home and sit on their asses until the next protest or the next election. They are not going to go home and bomb draft offices, take over campuses, riot in the streets. Instead, although there are many earnest, involved political activists among them, the majority will simply go back to their lives, surf the net and wait for the ballot. Which to our leaders means that, in most cases, if you allow a protest to happen... Nothing happens.

The people who run this country are not afraid of much when it comes to the population, but there are a few things that do worry them. They are afraid we will stop working, afraid we will stop buying, and afraid we will break things. Interruption of commerce and any rattling of the cage of profit –that is where this system is vulnerable. That means boycotts and strikes at the very least, and these things require vision, discipline and organization. The '60s were an historical anomaly. It was an era when political power could also be an acid party, a felicitous situation in which fun also happened to be a threat. We still listen to that old fun on the radio, we buy it reconstituted in clothing stores, we watch it in countless movies and documentaries. Society has kept the "fun" alive, or at least a dubious facsimile of it.

But no one anywhere is teaching us about how to be a threat. That is something we have to learn all over again for ourselves, from scratch, with new rules. The '60s are gone. The Republican Convention isn't the only party that's over.


This was written four years ago, and we still haven't learned. How sad.

Peace,
Rich

So I'm posting once again… but why? What does it matter? There is nothing we can do about it. People don’t want to hear it anyway. They just want to pretend that it’s absurd to even imagine our country’s leaders out to get us. I watched Endgame this week and must say that I’m getting quite disappointed in the level of intelligence in this “free” land. Part of me says they should get what they deserve. I just wish there was a way for me and my family to not also be affected by the changes that are coming even faster now. Anyway, I really am too upset to respond to Sarah’s question today. Instead I’m gonna start a new thing…

So I stumbled upon a website the other day with some interesting quotes on it from our founding fathers and would like to start sharing and discussing them. It amazes me how we let the Supreme Court take a look at things from the past and see what the true meaning was when all we have to do is research what they meant by their writings! Anyway, here we go…

"Any people that would give up liberty for a little temporary safety deserves neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin

How valid is this quote today? It makes me sick to my stomach to know that these people were so much smarter than us as to realize this. How could they know? Maybe because it happened to them too? Maybe history repeats itself? We have to give up our liberties for some security. I have to be tracked every move I make?! I have to be on camera if I go in public?! I have to be scanned and harassed just for the privilege of flying on a plane that I paid for?!!!!! I will have to have a national ID card for my safety? What do I need protection from that I cannot provide myself? There have always been bad guys. Maybe if we stopped taunting how great we are and rubbing everyone else’s noses in it we wouldn’t be hated so much! Have any of our braindead citizens thought about that? We need to get them Iraqis because someone somehow linked them to the people who ALLEGEDLY flew some planes into our buildings? Wake up, damnit!

Too mad to go on…

Post-flu posting

Sorry to everybody, hopefully you all have bags an bags of unlimited patience! Two weeks ago, I had all hopes of typing the newest blog, but came down with a major case of the flu! And not just me, but my entire family. It has been a miserable number of weeks. On top of that all, I've been working 12-16 hour days at work. Rough times. I got over the bad part of the flu pretty quickly, but I have a bad, deep cough that can last up to 6 weeks. Oh well, it can always be worse... I mean, at least I'm not on fire. Okay, anyway... whlie I've been under my rock according to some :), I have thought of a few things to talk about.

First of all, we once again set the clocks forward. And why do we torture ourselves twice a year? Originally, it was created to save money. But with everyone having heating and ac units, not to mention lights, it is an outdated, antiquated idea that causes more trouble than its worth. Here's an interesting article that kind of unofficially highlights my point.

http://www.geocities.com/midimagic@sbcglobal.net/daystupid.htm

Okay, I know I'm usually more winded at my points, but I really have little energy, so I'll just go on to my second point for now, which is...


Does anyone care about the upcoming election anymore? We have been, as a country, more interested and involved in the 2008 presidential election coverage than maybe ever before. But what has it become? The republicans have all but picked John McCain, who is determined to continue to put us in the downward spiral that we've been going into. Sure, Ron Paul is still campaigning, but for what use is he at this point? Without making a third party run, he is doing nothing good. People gave him so much money, but what is he doing with it? His campaigning was minimal and now he has scaled backed to almost nothing, but what has happened to our money? We paid money to him and he promised to spread the message of the people as long as the money came in. But unless he makes a third party run very soon, I will be done with him completely.
The democrats have two choices left. Hillary, who for some reason says she has over 30 years of making change. That would be the same as my wife stating that she defended the country on a submarine. No, she supported me, as Hillary did to her husband, but that is the extent of it. She didn't join the ranks of policy makers until she became a New York senator. And isnt it funny how she is only taking credit for the positives that happened during Bill's presidency, but doesn't own up to any of the negative. She is such an old school politician, that it's disgusting to even watch her. And Obama... well, I'm not sure what his deal is. I would like to say that it's the fact that he doesn't have enough experience, but I have said time and time again that experience only corrupts. Ron Paul aside, of course. Some articles I've read have even predicted him to be the antichrist (I personally save that distinguished title for whoever sired Michelle Malkin). My biggest issue with Obama really is that he wants to make healthcare run by the government. That means more taxes out of my pocket. And as anything else run by the government, it will be a huge moneypit of a project. It seems like all three of the candidates that have a chance will take more money and more freedoms from us.

Personally, I will be voting third party or just writing in Ron Paul's name. Some people have tried to tell me that that would be throwing my vote away. No it's not. It's me stating my voice. It's me being heard. If I stay home and not vote at all, then I'm saying I don't care who is in charge of me. And if I vote for the lesser of two evils, then, as I've stated before, it's still voting for evil. No, my voice will be heard. It doesn't have to be in the majority. I am not so shallow that I need to vote for who I'm told will win just so I feel good. Nor am I so stupid that a news channel has to tell me who to vote for.

Sorry, not sure if this makes sense at all or if it even is complete. I'll read it over again in a bit and see if I need to edit it anymore. But, please, let me know what you think and feel free to argue like intelligent beings in the response page. Until next time, take care all.

Rich

Keeping Me In Check

Hello all once again, my friends!

I am pleased to announce that I have had a new person add a post and share her views while asking for clarification on mine. Welcome to the blog Sarah. And not to leave the old "salty" one out of the spotlight, thanks again to Dan for his question. We'll get to it in a minute though. First, a response to Sarah...

First of all I guess it came off a little rough when I stated that people have three choices when it comes to public schools. I stated they can accept the teachings, ignore the teachings, or move to another school. I still believe that accept or ignore are options. This has always happened and till happens today. Case in point... Evolution or the Big Bang Theory. Not everyone believes in those two theorys, but yet it is taught to them and the children are tested on it. So the children either believe what the teacher says or they ignore it based on what they hear elsewhere. Some go to the point of sending their children to a different place to learn such as a christian based school or they home school. So to clarify my comment of "move to another school", I never meant that people had to pack up and leave town. Most towns have more than one school available that people can send their children to, to include their own house possibly.

Ultimately, I would expect a principle or the school board to hear the voices of parents or read petitions, and plan their school out appropriately. Offer Christian courses if that's what parents want. And they could be optional, so not to offend or ram religion down the throats of others. The point I want to bring home here is that other groups are being taken care of, sometimes to rediculous extents, so that they are not offended, while Christians are thrown to the wayside. That's not right and I would expect everyone to be respected the same. Of course, this is only possible if parents get involved with their schools and it would go a lot easier if they actually volunteered to support what they think is important.

Now, on to the second item. Sarah brings up a great point that teachers influence young ones. I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, I don't think it's only a vision of the future but also a spectre of the past and the body of truth today. And that's why I think it's even more important to match up the right teacher with the teachings that parents want to see. Even as a judge has their favorites but cannot let their feelings interere with their job, a teacher must do the same. When it comes to an item such as I already brought up (Creation versus the Big Bang Theory), I have had teachers who said one was right and one was wrong. This is such an awful thing to do. They are both theories and should be presented equally. That would take away a teacher's influence one way or the other and allow the child to see both points of view equally. And today, there are schools out there that are forcing children to understand islam and other religions(go to http://www.blessedcause.org/encourage/forcing%20islam.htm for an example... google for more). I think this should be saved for after school clubs which would be totally voluntary (all religions included). This could be how parents get involved with volunteering.

Lastly (and I hope I haven't lost my newest reader already with my responses!), Sarah has stated a concern about dividing the States on such issues as abortion. I agree totally that the States would be non-homogenous and I look forward to the day! Our Constitution was written with that in mind. That is the way I believe we should still be today. I personally have travelled to may States in our Union and get so dissappointed when I realize that the accents are disappearing or that every town has the same restaurants to choose from. We do not need to be the same. That is the beauty of the Freedom we have been granted. But if you look at history we always band together when it counts to ensure that our freedoms remain. We need to do that now as well, only the politicians we currently have are not willing to rally us together. Why? Because they are the enemy now and so we must look elsewhere for leaders.

Thank you for the topics, Sarah. I really, truly appreciate them. I promise we will not see eye to eye on everything. It is impossible, regardless of what our Presidential Candidates will have you believe. But, I will always respect your opinions. And I hope you can think of other questions or topics to introduce on this blog. And for anyone else who reads, remember... nothing is off limits.

Okay, now on to Dan's question. He has asked the question of how I intend to inform the public of what is really going on in Washington and abroad and how I would plan on providing proof for them.

Good question, Dan. One of my platforms on running for President in 2012 is to talk to the public every day, Monday through Friday, around 7:30 and inform them of what happened that day in politics. But not as a politician would. Down to earth and let them know who voted for what. For example... what who added earmarks to a bill and what it was for. That way the people know what their voted representatives are doing. In addition, I'd take a call each day from someone in the country and just listen to what they have to say. No holds barred.

One other thing I plan on doing is utilizing the internet to allow efficiency and accountability. A user-friendly site should be created to where a person puts in their zip code and then a screen pops up with a menu of all their politicians from local to president. Click on a name, andevery vote that person has made in that position is available for review. This would eventually reduce campaigning to minimum spending and weed out the criminals and enemies of the people, paving the way for champions to succeed in politics.

And, if I keep a blog going, I think I would be a little too busy to type every day, but I'll hire someone to type it for me (after I approve of it). Looking for a job, Dan?

I hope this post answered both of your questions, but if not, just let me know. And Sarah, please continue to be my "inner voice" for when I don't explain things properly. Keep me in check so people understand where I'm coming from with the issues.

I'll leave you all with an interesting article to read...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2008/100208Impeachable.htm

Okay, all... that's enough for today. Keep the questions coming and have a great day!

Rich

Happy 2008 to all!

Hi all! I’ve been busy doing my part for the candidate whom I believe should be our next President. But here I am to answer the two questions left as comments to my last post as well as add a little something bugging me these days.

First is the question presented by Dan and he writes:

I know you are pro-life...but are you anti-choice?

As he has written, I am pro-life personally and could not imagine giving up or having aborted any of my children. But to clear things up, I am not anti-choice at the federal level. This is one of the issues that I believe should be out of the hands in Washington D.C. I would like to see the laws be made at the State level as the highest level. Personally, I would like to see it be a county or community decision. Since we are a nation of many peoples and supposedly the land of the free, I don’t believe in a “one answer fits all” system of government for the issue of abortion. Will people leave one area and travel to an area where it is legal to have an abortion? I’d like to answer with a sure “no”, but we all know that it will happen in some instances. But at least those women would have more time to change their minds as they travel or would agree with the laws of their community and not go through with the procedure. Lastly on this subject, I believe with the proper education provided, that we can reduce the need for abortion all together. This would tie in with my idea to give the education system back to the people of their communities. People should be able to decide what to teach their children with much looser federal guidelines.

Now for the second question, from anonymous, who writes:

Don't you think it is time we put God and discipline back in our school systems? All we have to do is walk around any major city and see the product of our failed schools.

Personally, I would answer with a yes, but again, I believe in throwing back to a time when the local community cared about their children’s education and had a say in it. I believe in an education system where the majority votes win and is not constrained by ridiculous requirements handed down by the folks in D.C. That includes the issue of placing God in schools. If the majority of people want God in the school and a few oppose it, then He should be placed back in that school. And the opposed have three choices from there… Accept the teaching, ignore the teaching, or move to a more suitable school. We can not please everyone. We are learning that at the expense of Christians right now. And the failed schools are not just in the major cities. It’s any place where the community doesn’t get involved. It’s anywhere that lets government make the decisions about what their children need to learn. And it’s really this “No Child Left Behind” act, which is made up of complete horse manure. See my earlier postings for a whole article on my ideas about the current state of education as well as my ideas for the future.

Okay, here’s a headline that has irked me today…

Online protests seek to include Ron Paul in N.H. debate

NASHUA, N.H.--An online protest is growing over presidential candidate Ron Paul's exclusion from a Fox News debate here on Sunday, even though other Republicans receiving fewer votes in Iowa or scoring lower in the polls were invited.
Paul received a fifth-place 10 percent of the GOP vote in Iowa's caucus Thursday, ahead of Rudy Giuliani, who received 3.5 percent. He's also ahead of Fred Thompson in New Hampshire polls, polling 7 percent to Thompson's 2 percent.
But both Giuliani and Thompson still appear to be invited to Sunday evening's debate sponsored by Fox News and the New Hampshire Republican Party. Paul isn't.

I placed a response to Fox News with the hopes that it will open the eyes of many FoxNews loyalists of the link between Rudy Guiliani and the FoxNews station. It read:

"Fox News was launching, with Ailes at the helm, and Time Warner, which provided cable service to 12 million homes nationwide, had decided it would not carry Fox News. Time Warner was the dominant cable operator in New York City, meaning that not only would 1.1 million city homes not get Fox, but the fledgling network would go unseen by media powerbrokers in the nation's media capital.
Three days after Murdoch learned of Time Warner's decision, a call from Ailes to Giuliani set in motion a series of unprecedented moves in favor of a cable network by the Giuliani administration. As calls and meetings continued between Fox and city officials, including Giuliani, the Giuliani administration reportedly threatened Time Warner executives with the loss of their cable franchise if the cable provider didn't accept a deal in which the city would give up one of its own government channels so Fox News could take the slot. (Some 30 other cable networks had tried and failed to win channel space on Time Warner.) When Time Warner refused to take the deal, the city announced that it would go ahead with the plan anyway and force the cable provider to carry Fox News. A legal battle ensued."

Read the full article @
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/11/15/regan/

I think they are helping out their guy by taking out the biggest threat to Rudy any way they can like after the last debate when they said that the "Paulites" were texting over and over to vote him as the winner when for days prior, they were touting how there would be only 1 vote allowed per phone. I hope this opens everyone's eyes to the real nature of this "fair and balanced" Faux News!

Please take the time to read the whole article and respond to me with what you think. Until then, Please take it easy in these hard times.
Rich