THEY HANG THEMSELVES EVERY TIME

So I was out and about with my wife Saturday night and we stopped into a local bar for a beer where we ended up striking up a conversation with another couple who was around our age. They seemed like a white collar couple. She had just gotten off of work and obviously worked in the medical field and he didn't seem inarticulate. Not long into the conversation they started dropping all the stereotypical catch phrases that made them out to be obvious conservatives. I won't go into everything we discussed but I would like to point one or two things out to show just how incredibly stupid these people are. At some point they asked me if I like Obama and I said that I certainly do and that I feel that he brought this country back from the abyss that was created by GW Bush. I then stated job creation numbers and other economic statistics along with my favorite line to use on these types of people, "the facts don't lie." Which prompted his wife to say in a very sarcastic manner, "I guess that's why my husband has been unemployed for two years." Now I have no idea what this guy did for a living or what his particular skills are and I didn't care to ask. I also had no idea how ambitious or creative the man is as far as seeking employment. Here's what I was able to deduce though . . . It was at about this time that he spoke up and said, "where do you get your news and facts from?" I then explained to him that I pretty much watch all of the news channels as well as read a lot of online news and that when I hear or read something I then go to some reliable fact checking website to verify. To that he replied, "you cant get news on the internet and you can't fact check on the internet. Everything on the internet is a lie. I don't even use the internet. I never go on there." I disagreed with him of course and pointed out to him that even newspapers and magazines are now online but that's neither here nor there. Here's the thing that his little argument exposed to me. He is getting all of his information from TV and I'll bet it all comes from one channel called Fox and, he isn't using the internet in his search for a job. Here his wife is, blaming Obama because her husband has been out of work for two years and the guy doesn't even use the internet. They were just so adamant in their hatred for Obama and all things liberal that it made me sick and yet there they were also demonstrating just how out of touch and uninformed they really are. If you give any conservative enough time and let them talk long enough they will hang themselves. They will expose their ignorance. It's a sure bet every time!!

FIRST DEMOCRATIC DEBATE FOR 2016 BID

The first Democratic debate for the 2016 presidential bid is in the books and it was a very good debate! At least for the main three candidates it was.  I'm not so sure we'll see Jim Webb or Lincoln Chafee in the next one *LOL* But the debate itself was on point and full of substance and information.  For the most part they expressed similar goals and direction for the country and although they each had slightly different ways to achieve those goals they expressed those differences in a civil way. There was no childish name calling or condescending remarks. And most importantly there was no pandering to special interests groups or religious organizations or false patriotism. After seeing the first two republican debates and now the first democratic debate I would be inclined to say that it is truly befuddling to me how anyone could vote for any of the candidates on the republican ticket in 2016.  As for me, I'M WITH BERNIE!!!!!

THE PATRIOTIZATION OF ISOLATION

It amazes me what an isolationist mentality the average American citizen has.  When I look at other countries around the world, many of them much more poor than America, I see citizens that can speak at least two languages fluently and often three or four by the time they are young adults.  Yet in America very few people are multi-lingual.  We even have politicians who voice the opinion that everyone in the country should speak only English and that anyone who does not speak English should be shunned and treated as somehow inferior.  This mindset is even cheered by many citizens and the whole concept is deemed to be patriotic.  Many of these same people want to build a wall to keep people out.  Well, from where I sit a wall seems more like a way of keeping people in than a way of keeping people out.  To me it seems a symbolic way of keeping people trapped and uninformed about the rest of the world.  A way of keeping everyone isolated while telling them that we are the best at everything.  Don’t these same people remember the Berlin Wall?  Wasn’t the, (so called,) evil communist empire of China also partially surrounded by a wall?  Surely they have seen the wall that keeps the people of North Korea separate from their brothers and sisters in South Korea and the rest of the world.  Can these American citizens not connect the dots?  This is a beautiful planet that we live on folks and I embrace other cultures and people from all parts of the world.  I wish I spoke every language so that I could communicate and learn from everyone.  This isolationist mentality is just a form of control to keep the worker bees in line.  It's a distraction from the more important issues that gives the peons something to rally around. Well I, for one, can see through the propaganda.  I can see through the wall of cluelessness built to control the masses.  Associating patriotism with isolation equals ignorance and ignorance is nothing to be proud of.  To me there is nothing worse than blind patriotism.  Give me something to be proud of and I will be the loudest voice in the crowd.   Try to keep me uninformed and isolated and I will be equally as vocal for I can not remain quiet in the face of attempted manipulation and brainwashing.

I’ll end this with a quote from Mr. Samuel Clemens, AKA Mark Twain:  “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”