“Helpless” is a word I feel right now, when it comes to what is going on in the nation. The nation is arguing about if “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques” are torture and if those “techniques” provide any valuable information. The U.S. House of Representatives just voted – with huge Democrat support – to allow banks to have their risky financial behavior, such as selling sub-prime mortgages to people with bad credit, to be protected with OUR deposited money. On top of that, they also opened the door even wider to allow wealthy donors to donate even more money to political parties. Merry Christmas to you too!
We are slowly losing our democracy here.
Let’s start with these so-called “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques”. I have a good idea; let’s try some on former Vice President Dick Cheney and see if he thinks they’re not torture, when we’re done. We should also try them on anyone else who authorized those special techniques.
It does not matter if they gleaned valuable information or not, torture is not America, or at least the America I grew up to know. I have never been as ashamed of this nation as I am right now. We no longer deserve to be called exceptional. Our leaders chose to lower themselves and the nation to the standards of our enemies and torture people. It’s appalling.
Fear is a powerful emotion that can cause men and women to do terrible things, if he or she allows fear to overcome their better nature.
I like Chris Matthews of MSNBC but I was very disappointed in him recently because he seem to want to believe that if the torture that was used on detainees by CIA operatives, gained valuable information, that made it okay to do. He has reasoned with himself and his viewers that perhaps those “techniques” protected the nation. This is voodoo reasoning and it takes us down a dark road, or perhaps to that dark side that Dick Cheney went down a long time ago, when he too reasoned with himself that it was okay, he’d do it all over again. What a sadist!
The world is watching closely now, and many of our friends and allies are no longer looking up to us for leadership but down at us for our failure to uphold the highest principles of morality in the face of taunting danger.
Our Founding Fathers must be rolling over in their grave, to think that we lowered ourselves to the level of our enemies by doing what we swore America would never do.
Then there is the budget bill that just got passed in the U.S. House. I was already rolling mad over the information about the CIA torturing prisoners with the worse kind of torture and now our elected representatives again signed onto a budget bill that would again reward banks with a bail out if those banks decide to make money off of risky financial dealings.
Have we already forgotten that after we bailed these guys out, it was ordinary Americans that took the brunt of those bailouts. We lost jobs and took pay cuts while Wall Street was back to giving themselves huge bonuses for their bad behavior, and banks were refusing to back mortgages for people with decent credit, to buy homes and cars.
Republicans were then talking about wealth distribution, and how high taxes were for the wealthy and all the time, wealth was being distributed upwards, from the pockets of hardworking middle-class families. Who has more money now, Wall Street or average hardworking Americans?
Don’t worry, those politicians in Washington DC made sure to include their own pocketbooks in the wealth distribution, by raising the amount wealthy donors can give to the RNC or the DNC. That’s to pay for their loyalty to Wall Street while they give the rest of us lip service. In Addition, don’t listen to those Democrats who voted “yes” to Wall Street because they are in the pockets of those wealthy donors too.
America, we are being sold down the river by our elected leaders. We can’t even get a minimum wage increase and yet Wall Street can do what they want, our money will protect them from any losses.
President Obama doesn’t get a pass this time either, by this very loyal supporter, and I mean loyal; just read any of my past blogs and you will see what I mean. He pushed Democrats in the U.S. House to sign on to the bill, so I am definitely unhappy with him right now.
Helpless is how I feel, because it feels my vote does not matter anymore. I am sad to say, America is not the same anymore, we have been sold down the river by a bunch of greedy politicians with their hand out. Now, to wait for the GOP to take over all of Congress next year and watch as they push our little rowboat even further down that river with deregulation of polluting industries and even more money into the hands of the wealthiest. Merry Christmas to you too!
This is a republish from my website: Fidlerten Place