Christmas is a Time to Reflect

This will be my last post for before Christmas as I am getting ready for the trip to Denver to spend with the two granddaughters.  Rotating Christmas now with our grandchildren getting older.

Decided today I was going to answer the Mike Huckabee's of the Country who seem to believe only their evangelical churches have all the answers and the rest of us are not 'true' believers.  Former AR Governor Mike Huckabee has been trying to walk back his comments after a backlash on what he said about the massacre in CT, but IMHO his true feelings haven't changed as I see the same thing out of other evangelical leaders:

During his own Fox News program over the weekend, Huckabee also spoke about the massacre, tying the supposed removal of God from society to the increased instances of violence. "We’ve escorted [God] right out of our culture and marched him off the public square," Huckabee said, according to Inquisitr. "And then we express our surprise that a culture without him actually reflects what it has become.”

The Huckabees of the world can talk all the want about the reason that all these massacres are happening is taking God out of our lives.  Just because someone doesn't attend Church, doesn't mean they don't believe.  To emphasize prayer being taken out of the schools was the reason for the shootings shows a vengeful God of the Old Testament not the loving God of the New Testament.

As a Christian, I am sick and tired of the hard right acting like they are the only one's who believe in God and  if you don't believe like them, then you cannot be a 'true' Christian.  When the Supreme Court ruled that organized prayer in the schools was against the Constitution using "freedom of religion," the hard right evangelical community missed the interpretation preferring to get publicity and donations for their campaign to put prayer back in schools.  Prayer never was removed from schools -- it was organized prayer by the administrators that was stopped.  It didn't stop schools from having a moment of silence where students could choose to say a prayer or not.

You cannot remove God from a building or a Town Square no matter what you do because I believe he is everywhere and in our hearts.  My biggest problem with the religious hard right today is that evangelicals in so many areas refuse to acknowledge other people's faith and beliefs.  They want clones of what they believe which was brought home to me right here in Norman several years ago:

When I was the Vice Chair of the County GOP, the local Parade Committee decided to rename the Christmas Parade to the Holiday Parade to be inclusive as we have many different religions and beliefs with students and professors from all the world here in Norman.  The uproar coming from the evangelical community was so far over the top that I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  I was dumb enough to write a letter to the editor saying I didn't see a problem as we are a diverse community and not having 'Christmas' in the name didn't change the parade.  I was not prepared for the nastiest that ensued with a lot of it coming out of the faculty of the local Christian school.  Some of the threats were so far over the top, they were reported.

That's when I learned to know members of the City Council who had no input into the name change but like me didn't see a problem.  The instigator of all the hate towards us was the same person who was the distributor for bracelets "Keep Christ in Christmas" all over the Country.  Put 2+2 together and you have the obvious answer for the uproar.

Imagine between told someone wants you to die and go to hell over a name change of a parade -- finally disconnected my phone but looking back that may have been the start of my splitting with the Republican Party because I couldn't believe what happened next.

Our County Party had a float in the parade and because the theme was about toys, I thought it would be a great idea to have our float based on Toys for Tots and then give all the toys on the float to the Marine Corps Reserve for their campaign.  Because of my standing up for other religions who wanted to participate in a Holiday Parade, the County GOP members did not donate very many gifts so I was approached by four businessmen who wanted to give money anonymously to buy the toys.  That soon grew and I had $1,200 to spend on toys along with smaller donations which added up to $1,500 after I rounded it off with a donation of my own.

I ended up on local TV as I was coming out of a  toy store for an interview why I thought the name change didn't matter and I told the reporter I didn't think changing the name of a parade was going to  change anyone's belief in Christmas and the birth of Christ.  Went on to tell him it was only the name of a parade that hundreds of kids look forward to every year.  Toy store gave me a 20% discount on everything as they had been following the story and then the manager threw in two dolls with outfits and several trucks as her donation.

Our float was a real hit with the kids with some asking to throw them a toy instead of candy.  After the parade, people came up to me to thank me for standing up and then made donations for more toys to purchase after the parade.  A week later I was still getting checks for toys from people of the community which I turned over to the Toys for Tots campaign.  I received donations of toys from several different religious groups who do not celebrate Christmas after being on the news.  As one student from the Jewish Center on campus told me -- this is about children having a toy to open on Christmas morning.  It is about the children not the adults and then thanked me for standing up.

After I delivered the presents to the Marine Corps Reserve across from Tinker AFB and saw the disbelief on their faces that we had so many toys and then turned over the checks, I knew I had done the right thing in not pulling our float out of the parade,   When I first contacted them I figured a couple bags of toys, but it was much more than that as they kept taking bags of toys out of my car and then I handed them checks for $432 to buy more toys.  All the toys we collected were distributed back to the children of our County who would not have had a Christmas present.  I told the Marines that the toys and donations came from people of different faiths in Norman.  The Lt told me that they had read about me in the paper and how I stood up for the children as the Religious Right wanted to cancel the parade because of a name change.

The following year the parade committee caved to use both Holiday and Christmas in the name but the parade is the same no matter what the name -- people in the parade pass out candy to children as the floats go by, the children dance to the music from the marching bands, and then get so excited when the last float with Santa Claus appears.  The parade is about how much the children enjoy the parade not what the parade is named.  .

When my term was over, I never ran again and the GOP never did a Toys for Tots campaign again -- their own self importance ruled the day not what you could do for children.  It was a lesson I will never forget.

If I had one moment in my life where I stood up and said enough is enough out of the Republican religious right, it is that moment where I wrote a Letter to the Editor which I knew would set off a firestorm but I wanted to help rescue a parade for the children.  In the end, the children won because they had presents to open and the Scrooges of the GOP lost.  I would do the same thing all over again.

The massacre of innocent children, teachers, and administrators in CT followed by the ridiculous and stupid comments from the hard right religious leaders along with the gun lobby, made me think back to that parade and all the hate that was spewed at volunteers, city leaders, and myself for a name change.  It is the same mentality I see today in people like Huckabee that want to blame everything on lack of God in buildings, in parks, or in town squares where you cannot put up a manager scene on city property.  Churches put up manger scenes all over the country and so do private property owners.  God is everywhere and how a person chooses to worship is a private matter.

This Christmas season is a time to pray for all the families who have lost family members to gun violence this year and pray that the cycle of these mass killings come to end by giving our elected leaders the courage to stand up and do something about getting so many violent weapons off the streets.  Pray this Christmas season that the hate rhetoric stops and we come together as a Nation.

At this Christmas season, remember all the children and hug your kids and grandchildren a little tighter and thank God for every day you have with them.  My three children are grown but it doesn't mean I stop worrying about their well being and happiness.  Have three grandchildren who I love deeply and Thank God for them and their parents every day when I wake up in the morning.

God Bless and have a Merry Christmas!

Will Romney/Ryan Turn Nasty for the Last Seven Weeks?

You can bet on that and win a lot of money of Vegas would give you odds.

Romney's "God" campaign yesterday was sickening and disgusting.  The Republican Party and Mitt Romney do NOT own "God" and to invoke the word "God" into a partisan campaign shows how desperate Romney has become to win.  To infer that Obama is anti-God and going to take God off the coins, out of the pledge, and the Government shows a very flawed man that should be no where near the Presidency.

The very nerve of Romney to use "God" in a political way goes against everything I have been taught.  When one of the Romney supporters, Gary Bauer said, "God doesn't want to be mentioned in the Democratic Party platform ," I lost it.

He’s going to campaign with at Robertson. He’s going to work “Obama-Is-Anti-God” motifs into his stump speech, as he did yesterday. He’s going to keep running with the lies about welfare. 

Does Romney want us to believe he is the only candidate who believes in "God?" I thought Romney couldn't get any more despicable then he was in the primaries, but he managed to do it yesterday.

If Tomasky is correct, which I believe he is, then Romney/Ryan are going to get worse.  We already know how low Romney can go from the primary when he went after fellow Republicans with lies and innuendos.  Already his attacks on President Obama have sunk to a new lows which seem to go lower almost on a daily basis.

The fact checkers on welfare have called Romney/Ryan ads completely false and on social security mostly false which also included some of the Obama/Biden comments as well, but the Romney/Ryan answer?  Ignore the fact checkers unless it is against their opponent and keep right on lying about welfare.  Fact Checkers have been used by both sides for years but now Republicans want to ignore them to keep spouting lies?  Is that how far the GOP has sunk today?

Now Ryan says he didn't vote for defense cuts which he did as part of the agreement that was reached to keep the Government from defaulting.  Just like Ryan criticizes Obama on not following Simpson Bowles when his vote is the one that killed it.  Guess you should figure out when a person lies about their times in a marathon, they will will lie about everything else.

Battleground States are going to see some of the nastiest ads every out of Romney and his Super PACs but I don't think they will work as we already saw what a nasty person Romney was in the primary in 2008 and worse in 2012.  IMHO Romney will say and do anything to get elected because he seems to believe the end justifies the means.  That is one reason even Republicans are pulling away from Romney and the Republican Party who have left a lot of us in the dust.

It felt good to join Republicans for Obama even though philosophically there are a lot of issues I  disagree with Democrats but frankly I agree with them more than the far right social conservatives and the neanderthal  GOP Platform.  The Democrats have taken over supporting our military, veterans, foreign policy, and many other issues that were Republican at one time like Civil Rights and One Man, One Vote.  Now Republicans want to suppress voting to elect Romney and don't mind saying that in public while tossing President GW Bush under the bus like he didn't exist. It is like there is a seismic shift going on between the parties -- don't recognize this Republican Party.

How about making Independents a political party?  At least there would be some common sense unlike what we are seeing out of the far right Republican Party that has been taken over by the Koch Brothers and Tea Party movement.

It is going to be a wild and nasty seven weeks with the Romney camp going after Obama with lies, mistruths, and innuendos to make the President look bad.  I don't think it is going to work because Romney and now his wife are not likable people as they are condescending and come across that they think they are better than everyone else.  We are supposed to trust them -- no details why -- just trust what they say to which I reply Bravo Sierra!  When your whole campaign is based on being anti against your opponent, your chance of winning is slim to none IMHO

Michael Tomasky on What Will Happen When Romney Gets Desperate

by Michael Tomasky  Sep 11, 2012 4:45 AM EDT
Sep 11, 2012 4:45 AM EDT

Obama’s lead is growing, and Romney can’t seem to catch a break. If the trend continues, get ready for things to turn very ugly very fast. 

I don’t know if team Romney should be panicking just yet. Convention bounces have been known to fade; it’s not every week that Barack Obama is going to get Bill Clinton to give a barn-burner of a speech on his behalf that outdraws the NFL game on the other channel. In my view it’s not so much that the fundamental nature of the race has shifted as that it has solidified. Obama spent months being mostly just a little ahead, and now he’s a little more ahead than that. Lots of people have been writing in the last couple days about the larger Obama lead. But no one has yet turned attention to the consequences of that change: that Romney and Paul Ryan are likely to run the dirtiest campaign we’ve seen in a long, long time.

Go back in time a few months. The Romney theory, bruited by his aides and accepted by much of the media, was that all he had to do was talk about the economy and he’d win. There was no way an incumbent president sitting on these kinds of economic figures could possibly be reelected. Unemployed, underemployed, not even looking anymore, wrong direction … no question that they are all bleak figures. All Romney had to do was keep talking about them, and as they say in the East End, Robert’s your father’s brother. 

This job was supposed to get even easier when Romney tapped Paul Ryan for veep. Ryan was the man with the plan, the Republican Brain, the guy who actually knew budgets and fiscal policy, the Republican who could slice right through all the Democratic pettifoggery and actually beat the Democrats at their own game of talking all those numbers. Ryan’s presence on the ticket made the economic choice that much more stark, the argument went, and he’d win over the serious-minded moderates.

Well. It’s exactly one month after Ryan’s selection was announced, and his reputation has gone nowhere but down. He’s a liar and his famous “numbers” actually make no sense at all because they’re intentionally misleading. So now he looks less like a serious budget person than a drunken back-bencher who has to be elbowed awake to cast a vote. 

Then there are the past few days. We got a crappy jobs report Friday morning. Romney trotted out and said the kinds of things he was supposed to say. And lo and behold—it hasn’t hurt Obama a whit. In the days since the report—days, I should note, when media coverage has made it abundantly clear that the jobless rate fell only because more people quit looking for work—Obama has gained ground. 

So two facts are now clear. One, Romney is on the ropes. The memo from his pollster makes a few plausible points about why it’s too early to head for the exits. But Romney has some serious problems in some key states, notably Ohio. If he can’t win there, he basically has to win all of the following swing states to hit 273 electoral votes: Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. 

And the second fact that’s clear is that the economic argument is not working. Turns out that it’s not enough just to repeat the dour news when you keep dodging questions about your own plan. And taken together, these two facts mean: Romney isn’t going to desert the economic argument, of course, but he is going to try to win this thing in other ways. 

(snip)

As I’ve said many times, the ongoing debate about whether Romney is really conservative or really moderate has wasted lots of airtime and killed many innocent trees. He’s neither. He’s nothing. He’ll say or do whatever he needs to do, whatever the Koch brothers or whoever tell him to do. He’s been dreaming of the presidency since 1968, and as he sees it slipping through his fingers, he’ll be capable of anything. It’s going to be a nasty seven weeks. 

Excerpt:  Read More at The Daily Beast

Tomasky makes some very good points in this video -- in fact he has nailed it in my book!

Michael Tomasky: 'They Can't Possibly Win an Election if They Say It'

As the scrutiny increases on the lack of specifics in the Romney-Ryan proposals, Michael Tomasky joins Tamron Hall on MSNBC's News Nation to discuss why the Republican ticket cannot get particular about which loopholes will be closed.