Todd Akin, a new Tea Party low?

Just when we all thought that it was impossible for Tea Party People to become more evil, there was Todd Akin saying that women can’t get pregnant from ‘legitimate rape’.

A Statement he later on of course said was misspoken. Very interesting, because if he didn’t mean exactly what he said, then what did he mean? How else can you mean a line like that? And if we look at the context it proves he did mean what he said.

He said that he had understood from doctors that a woman has some kind of natural alarm system that makes sure that whenever she is raped, her body doesn’t work the way it works if she is having voluntary sex. She wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. And this was supposed to be an important statement in the discussion about abortions for rape victims.

If we look at the context it is beyond any doubt, that what Akin was trying to say is that women use rape as an excuse to get an abortion. In his mind they actually liked having sex because otherwise they wouldn’t be pregnant so there was no rape. Because if it’s legitimate rape, she wouldn’t be pregnant.

The goal Todd Akin had was not to talk about rape, he was talking about abortions for rape victims and what he meant is that it is impossible to need an abortion after being raped because if you are pregnant, there has been no rape.

After the social and the regular media started to puke all over him because of his statement, he came up with some lame excuse that he never meant it like this. But if we look at the quote and the context of his story, there is no way that he could have meant anything else than exactly what he said.

I don’t know if this is a new Tea Party low. Over the last years we got used to a lot of idiots. Limbaugh’s ‘Women who are on birth control are sluts’, was followed by ‘there is no war on women’. After this Todd Akin scam, the GOP campaign staff will without a doubt come up with some nice quotes for women over the next couple days. Then in a while the next Tea idiot will complain that he saw a kitchen without a woman in it to clean it up, followed by ‘there is no war on women’. After that we will hear that ‘women are strong enough to fight for equal pay themselves’ as a lame excuse so they don’t have to deal with the issue. Of course followed by ‘there is no war on women’.

In reality there is not only a war on women, there is also a war on immigrants, except when they try to win the Latino vote. There is a war on the middle class but whenever they are confronted with the consequences of their policies for the middle class, they will say the middle class is very important to them. They will say there is no war on Islam, but just as a coincidence it’s always Americans with roots in the Middle East who are questioned by Tea People if they are Bin Laden fans or not. Of course Tea People claim to not be racists, but they never ever claimed that any white Democrat who was President was Moslem, they never asked Bill Clinton for his birth certificate, but they stalk the first black President the USA ever had, with stuff like that all the time. Followed by claiming they are against racism.

And after every despicable act, they come up with ‘we didn’t mean it like that’ or ‘I misspoke’, followed by complaining that the Democrats are being so negative in their campaign.

Every now and then Tea People come up with something so disgusting that you think it can’t get any worse. And every time they prove you wrong. If there is one thing clear it’s that the self-proclaimed Tea Christians don’t know any low. They don’t have any morals. The only thing they have to do with morals is that they talk about them all the time.

We want to stay decent and that makes it hard to fight to pure Tea evil. They’re on a level that is lower than anything has ever been in history. They want to tear this country down and they will use any means necessary to get what they want. Todd Akin was willing to say that women are not raped if they got pregnant. That women who have been destroyed by something so horrible, are complaining about nothing and use rape it as an excuse to get an abortion. Make no mistake, look at the context. It is exactly what he meant!

And the only thing we can do is to make sure they won’t get away with it. We had to listen to despicable crap long enough. And it gets worse and worse, and every time they try to get away with it by saying they never meant it like that. It is time we won’t let them get away with it. It is time we will let them know that we don’t buy their lame excuses any longer, that we let the world know how low and immoral these Tea People really are.

We can’t fight them with violence, but we can continue to confront the world with these things. And if we do, there will be a moment that the decent part of the Republicans will conclude that they don’t want to be a part of this any longer. We should never forget these issues and continue to talk about it, is the only way to fight this kind of evil. If we wont let idiots like Todd Akin get away with this, then maybe someday they will stop confronting us with their hateful crap.

 

 

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How to deal with Tea People?

It is not that long ago that the Tea Party was introduced to us. There had already been a small Tea movement before but the Tea Party as we know it, was launched in response to Barack Obama’s Presidency, by conservative Republicans who apparently thought that the GOP was not conservative enough and who are somehow convinced that this country is going in the wrong direction.

Before I will share my thoughts on the Tea Party and my ideas how to fight them, I need to make a couple of things clear. I am not talking about all Republicans. There are people who are actually informed and who have a different opinion on the big issues. I don’t mean to call them stupid or evil, they’re allowed to have a different opinion. If we search real good, we might even be able to find one or two convinced Tea Party members who actually know what they’re talking about, who’s principles are not based on hate or being uninformed, but who are convinced that life was better in the 50’s. I don’t agree with them on anything, but I also don’t mean to insult them.

I’m going to discuss average Tea People and their leaders. Often it seems as if they are all the same. But I don’t think that is the case. And to figure out how to fight them, and to try to teach some of them some decent morals, it is important to know who we are dealing with.

In my opinion there are two different sorts of Tea leaders. First of all we have got the uninformed ones, Palin, Bachmann, Perry and so on. They are able to communicate certain issues in a way that makes their fans cheer. Their electorate wants to hear strong language and they deliver. Behind those strong words however, it’s hard to find any knowledge. They know how to give a speech, they know what their people want to hear, but as soon as a journalist asks them three questions about a certain issue, they will fail completely. We all remember what happened when Sarah Palin had to answer tough questions about the issues. She was stuttering all over the place, no idea what to answer. It’s those people who complain about Libya, but if you show them a map they would never find it. It’s those who talk about the economy and that they want to fix it, but if you ask them how exactly they want to do it, they are unable to give you more details than the line they began with. They want to fix it, that’s all. They use strong language but they can’t back it up with any knowledge. And they usually get away with it by avoiding complicated interviews, and by spreading their ideas amongst those who won’t question them in the first place. And even though their ideas are dangerous, as a person they are not of much danger. They may be able to get a seat in Congress, in some States they may even be able to become Governor. But they will never ever be President or GOP leader, simply because average Republicans realize that they haven’t got enough knowledge to do the job.

More dangerous are other Tea leaders. People like Gingrich or Santorum. They have the same ideas, but they actually also have a brain to back certain things up with. They’re good communicators who are able to manipulate their way through the issues. And they are not afraid to scare people off with lies.

A couple months ago Rick Santorum was campaigning in a very conservative village where he tried to compare the Obama Administration to European countries. In some European countries Euthanasia is legal, as long as people are very sick, with no chance of recovery and if they are in unbearable pain. It’s in fact very complicated to get permission to legally end your life. Several doctors have to agree, and there are a lot of people in a lot of pain who have been fighting in court for years because doctors don’t agree with their wish. There is no example, not a single one, of people who died against their will because of euthanasia.

Santorum, campaigning in a village, wanted to scare people off. He told a story about European countries, where the elderly walked around with bracelets and notes saying ‘please don’t kill me’ whenever they had to go to hospital.  According to Santorum that happened because in Europe the elderly are being murdered, put to death, whether they wanted it or not. He convinced those who listened that this was a normal thing in Europe and if we would reelect Barack Obama it would also become normal in America. Better write a note to the doctor, or else he might kill you. The audience was shocked, some people cried, others cancelled their vacation to Europe.

The story is of course a fairy tale. Not a single person in Europe has a note with ‘please don’t kill me’ on it, if they go to the doctor. Not a single example was given. Conservative organizations in Europe, who are against euthanasia, said that Santorum shouldn’t come up with lies about issues like this, stated that they never heard of such a story, and that this was not the way to reach their goal. It’s totally made up. It’s not a small story that got bigger. There was no story to begin with. A complete lie. But Santorum got what he wanted. He scared people off, he got them to cancel their vacation to Europe and the elderly who listened to his speech hated Obama even more after hearing this. Because if Santorum says that Obama wants these things to happen in the USA, then it must be true. And an hour later Obama was a murderer, and they hated him even more.

This is one example how despicable and manipulative Tea Leaders can be. Scaring people off, brainwashing them with lies. Mainstream media checked this story and concluded that it was a complete lie, but his audience doesn’t watch mainstream Media. They watch Fox and Fox has no intention to fact check stories like this. And while we all know it is a lie, there are probably still people spreading this story around, scared to death by it and by how America will turn into a country that kills the elderly, under the Obama Administration.

If we switch from Tea leaders to regular Tea people, the voters, there are also different sorts of them. Almost all of them have in common that they are in church every Sunday. They also have in common that whenever they leave church, they forgot what they learned. They just heard a story about how Jesus preached forgiveness and love, but once they left church they call the cops because there is homeless guy hanging out in their street.

Some Tea people will know that for example the story I just described that Santorum told, is probably not true. But they don’t care and they will use it anyway. Whatever is needed to scare people. It is legitimate as long as it will make people hate Obama. It’s these people who are filled with hate, it’s these people who want the world to know that they go to church and that they are devoted Christians, but if some Governor proudly says how many people he executed, they are the first to cheer. They don’t care about others, they care about themselves and their community. They don’t like moslems, but they’re not allowed to say that so they come up with stories that suggest that all moslems are terrorists. They claim to be not racist at all, but wait what happens if their son or daughter will date a black boy or girl.

A couple days ago I complained on Twitter that it’s ridiculous that women still don’t get equal pay. A female Tea person replied that she didn’t need the government to meddle in because women were strong enough to take care of themselves. I asked her that if it works like that, then why is there in fact no equal pay? Then the answer, was that I had to ask Obama why he was so unfair to women.

This is the standard conversation with Tea people. First they deny a problem, if they can’t get away with it, they blame the President, less than a minute after they said that the President shouldn’t meddle in. Facts don’t matter. Logic and reason don’t matter. They don’t want to talk about issues, they want to blame Obama! Obama standing up for equal pay, more than any President ever did, doesn’t matter. It’s his fault.

I don’t think we should waste too much time on people like this. They don’t want to acknowledge the truth, they don’t even try to get it right. All they want is to get rid of this President, to guarantee that they can live their lives in a society that is not allowed to change. And anyone who wants things to change is the enemy. Life was good for them, and even though they learn in church that the intention should be that not only the lucky people but all of us should have the right to a decent life, they don’t seem to care about it. They will say that People on food stamps are all lazy and if a 40 year old widow who is raising three kids while working two jobs still can’t pay for healthcare for her kids, then she should find a third job and if that’s impossible then it’s her own responsibility. ‘Why should I pay for her, I never asked anyone for help’ is the common answer these ‘Christians’ will give you. They don’t want to acknowledge in what kind of trouble some people really are, they just don’t care. And even though it never ever worked, they favor lame solutions as giving tax cuts to the rich so that their wealth will spread to those who need it as a solution for all problems.

To try to convince the neighbors and fellow ‘Christians’ how much they care, they will go to some charity once in a while, do fun stuff and eat and drink all day. And if there are some hamburgers left at the end of the day they will throw them on the street in front of a homeless shelter and their conscience is cleared. There is no hope that Tea people like this will ever become decent. They just don’t care and only a miracle can help them.

It’s not against the law to be evil or dumb or whatever word we want to use for it. Lately though, I started discussing certain issues with a Tea person who actually turns out to be not stupid. Uninformed or misinformed would be a better word. She was told that if the Democrats ‘took over’ the homeless would be rich and the rich would be homeless. She was told that Democrats think it should be mandatory for her kids to have a gay teacher, who would probably be having sex with his boyfriend while the kids were watching. The richest people on the planet, she was told, were people on food stamps, who all owned I-Phones, a big car and could afford all the pleasures in life, paid for by hard working Republicans. Of course Obama also ruined the economy, was a moslem who wants to take over America and he was of course against the Constitution. And it was pretty much a proven fact that Obama was not an American.

What she thought was pretty much the average Tea crap and the average lies that Tea People tell or what they are told.

So my first reaction was, how can you be so stupid to believe all that crap? This person though, was not a dumb, nor a bad person. And confronted with another opinion she was willing to think about what she heard. She started checking things out herself and came to the conclusion that what she has been told all her life were a bunch of lies. And she is now recovering from those lies.

It made me realize that not all Tea People are evil or dumb. Let’s be honest, a lot of them are. But those who grew up in a conservative environment, where everybody repeats the same things over and over again, where people still think that Fox is actually a News Channel, maybe they really can’t help it. If you repeat a lie long enough, for some people it will end up being a fact.

These people are actually victims of a brainwashing campaign. The example I gave about Santorum and euthanasia is one of those lies that became a fact for many people and if there is no one around who explains that it’s actually a lie, then how are people supposed to know? The person I talk about was spreading lies herself, without even realizing it. I’m convinced that many Tea people don’t know what they’re voting for, they got scared by lies. They’re brainwashed. And in my idea of what to think about the brainwashed part of the Tea movement, I started to realize that feeling sorry for some of them is maybe better than to think they are stupid.

Some of them actually are open to find out how things really are. Those are the ones who grew up with lies and never heard anything else. Those are the ones who would never ever vote for Tea if they realize what they were voting for. They are voting for pure hate, but they think they are voting against it.

The best way to convert those people, is not to block them from social media or ignore them, but is by doing what Democrats can do best. It’s the same thing most Tea People are allergic for. Present facts. Keep confronting them with how things really are and back your opinion up with facts and statistics. Those who don’t want to see the light never will. Ignoring them is the best option. But for the brainwashed Tea People there is still hope. And it’s up to us to show them how things really are.

America’s Dysfunctional Justice System

One of the things that surprises me most in America is our justice system.

I think it’s safe to say that Americans probably haven’t got more criminal blood in them than other people do. Having said that, here is the problem.

Statistics show that a little less than 5% of the worlds population lives in America. Another statistic shows that 25% of the worlds prisoners live in an American prison. It’s easy math to figure out that in the USA there are five times more people in prison than there should be. And if there is no such thing as being more criminal than people in other countries, the question is how did that happen?

If the difference compared to other countries would be ten or twenty percent, we could discuss if there are for example more people who live in poverty, who can’t find a job, and therefore are more likely to turn into a criminal.

But unemployment, growing up in a broken family, poverty, are circumstances that can be found everywhere. And if there is more poverty or unemployment in the USA compared to other Nations, the difference would be ten percent. Not five hundred.

To figure this one out, we need to analyse our justice system, we need to analyse what the goal of our justice system is and what it is based on. I realize this is holy ground for most Americans, and criticizing it would automatically mean I’m not a patriot. Because why would one criticize our Justice system? My answer would be, because it obviously doesn’t work. But a true American is supposed to love his Justice System, even if it doesn’t work. And the fact that we got five times more prisoners than other Nations is a detail that doesn’t need to be discussed. And even with the statistics in front of them, some people still feel that we should punish our criminals even harder.

Although I personally think that religion should have no influence on the justice system, it’s also pretty clear that our justice system is for an important part based on old religious rules. The more Conservative Christian a State is, the harsher the sentences. I’m not a religion expert but i know enough of it to wonder why for some reason Christians all over the world focus on the New Testament, based on forgiveness and Christians in America are more focused on the Old Testament with the ‘Eye for an Eye’ rules.

Rules based on hate. People ignore the fact that -from the point of view of their own religion- those rules were no longer the rule once Jesus came and preached forgiveness instead of revenge, preached love instead of hate. They ignore that Jesus faced a couple of people in his life who were about to be executed and in all occasions he asked for a stay. And Christians are told to live the way Jesus lived. So it’s actually not that complicated to figure out what the Christian religion actually says about it.

I think religion should not influence any system, but still, the justice System in America is based on Old Testament rules. And there is the difference, because in most other countries the criminal Justice System is based on the best way to fight crime. And statistics prove that the best way is not to go by the Old Testament because all other first world countries have a better record as far as fighting crime goes than the USA has.

The American Justice System is based on ‘if you hurt someone, we will hurt you back’. Very understandable for victims of crimes, for their families. And if someone would hurt my sister, i would probably feel like that too. But understandable as it is, it just doesn’t seem to work.

In most other countries the victims of crimes, their families, have no part in a trial in court. They don’t have a say in how they want someone to be punished for his crimes. That’s the job of the judge. The only thing a judge will look at is what kind of crime someone did, what his circumstances are and how long he should be in prison for it. The role of prisons is also different. It’s not based on giving someone a hard time, it’s based on making sure that whenever a person is released from jail, he will have a chance in life and will probably never commit a crime again.

It’s often frustrating for victims of crimes, but then again it’s pretty much proven to work better and to cause a safer society. This gives us the choice. Are we going to give one victim the right to revenge and by doing so, create the next victims, or is the most important issue to make sure there will not be a next victim?

Not long ago, a family i know had to report their son for running away from home. Fifteen years old, never committed a crime, never had to do anything with the Justice System. Just a fifteen year old boy, puberty hits, he didn’t agree with his parents, ran away from home, informed people that he was alright via Facebook but ok, he ran away and he was not supposed to do that. A day later the cops picked him up and took him to Juvenile Hall. He had to spend a week there and in that week he learned to never do something like that again. No crime committed, but he ran away from home and after a week in prison, he was released and sure he would never do it again.

The Justice system did what it had to do. The kid had been scared for a week, regretted what he did, learned from it. Unfortunately the story didn’t end there.

The system now wants that kid to spend the next four years in jail. For what? For running away from home for one day. No crime committed, nothing else than running away from home. No one feels the need to lock him up but the Texas justice system probably thinks it is a good idea to lock a fifteen year old kid without a criminal history whatsoever, up in the middle of a bunch of criminals. If you would write a book called ‘how to create a criminal’ this would be your story.

And this is only one example where the Justice System is too harsh and totally dysfunctional. Too focused on the idea that the tougher the sentence, the more it scares people of to do crimes. An idea that has been scientifically disproved, but unfortunately the system doesn’t like to use statistics.

Even though most will criticize me for even mentioning it, there is a very famous example of where our Justice System goes wrong. Who doesn’t know the Texas Seven? Seven criminals, all convicted for various crimes, serious crimes, and most of them had no option of ever getting out of prison again, so they had nothing to lose and tried to escape from jail.

The leader of the gang who organized it all, George Rivas, had before he escaped from prison, never killed or wounded anyone. Never. Yet he was sentenced to eighteen consecutive life sentences for armed robberies. More than any serial killer who escaped the Death Penalty. Let’s all agree that armed robbery is a serious crime,  for which one should be punished. But come on, eighteen life sentences? The sentence meant that under the parole rules back then, he could be released after 270 years. So he was sure to never get out of prison alive, no hope, no future, nothing.

And for some horrible crimes life in prison should be the sentence. But if you never killed or wounded anyone, the sentence is ridiculous. Without defending anything Rivas ever did, this sentence was the reason that he tried to escape. An escape that later on would cause the horrible death of a police officer. And one can only wonder what would have happened if they would have given Rivas a more European sentence, eight years in prison and the chance to start a normal life after that. He probably wouldn’t have tried to escape in the first place, because there was still hope, there was still a future, he would still have a chance.

On a Youtube video i saw an eighteen year old kid who was just caught for three robberies. He has never ever seen his dad, his mom was a prostitute, he grew up without anyone caring about him. He got hungry, robbed a store, that worked out so the next time he got hungry he knew what to do. Three weeks later the kid had made a total of 400 Dollars with his robberies before he got caught. And now a prosecutor wants him to go to jail for 45 years. If he’s lucky he can be paroled after thirty years, he will be 48 by then and the only thing he will know will be criminals and their tricks. So not only will his life be ruined, the chances are that by the time he will be released, he will continue doing what he knows best by then. Being a criminal.

You don’t have to be very forgiving to figure out that a kid like that should realize that what he did was wrong, that he should be punished for it, but that it makes no sense to throw someone like him in jail for so long. It’s bad for him, it costs a lot of money and the streets might be safer for now, but they probably wont be thirty years from now. Something that all can be avoided.

In European countries the kid would have been sentenced to prison for two years. The first year based on punishment, on not having any freedoms or extra’s, and if he behaves, the next year will be focused on making sure he will be reintegrated in society. He will have an ID, a bank account, a home. Companies are subsidized if they hire him for a job and if all goes well, he will end up having a future and a better alternative than committing crimes.

It’s human to have a hard time not to hate. Reading this i already know what a lot of people will think. ‘It’s way too soft. Why do I have to pay for a criminal? I had trouble when I was a kid too, i never ended up being a criminal, it’s his own choice? Throw him in jail, that will teach him. No one is arranging a job for me, why would they do it for a criminal?’

All human reactions. And all will probably be answered with a lot more applause than i will get for writing this. But they all ignore the fact i started with. The USA has five times more prisoners than it should have. Part of it because of very long sentences, for another part because the system creates it’s own criminals. If tough sentences don’t work, and tougher sentences still don’t work, then it might be a good idea to try more humane sentences. It might work to not base a whole system on hate and revenge, but on reintegration. It might work to look at all other first world countries, who all spend less money on their prison system, have less prisoners and less recidivists.

And guess what? With a more humane Justice System there will be less people entitled to say that they are paying for it all. Former criminals will end up being normal tax payers. There will be more people working to pay for less criminals. The streets will be safer. The crime rate will decrease.

We all win. The only ones that lose will be those two pillars our Justice System is based on. Hate and Revenge.