Israel

Israel is a great country. There are people of many ethnicities with Israeli citizenship. There is freedom of religion. There is freedom of speech and many different freedoms for all of her citizens.

However, the Gaza Strip and many parts of the West Bank do not have the same rights as Israel. They are led by terrorist organizations that do not have the good of the people in mind. By having citizenship for Muslims difficult, possible, but difficult to achieve most good citizens of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank cannot fulfill the requirements to become citizens of Israel. If there is to be peace, I think that everyone who has lived in Israel and Palestine since they were born or the creation of Israel should be offered citizenship without any other qualifications. This would take away a major recruitment tool from the terrorists Hamas and Hezbollah which would diffuse the situation. Israel will not fall if they do this because Jews are now the majority of the land. They would become like South Africa or the United States where there are many different ethnic groups coexisting with equal rights for all.

I believe Israel to be a good country. I believe that all peoples should have equal rights. I also believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a good Document to determine the most important rights. Peace is possible.

Freedom in the Middle East.

To the good peoples of Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, and Iran.

I watch the news here in the United States and continuously hope that freedom will become the norm for the Middle East. I know for a fact that even though a lot of far-right Western media portrays Islam as a bad religion they are wrong. They have never learned what Islam stands for. The Americans who have researched your noble beliefs know this too. You are a powerful people, with vast resources and potential to continue to be economically powerful past peak oil. You also deserve to have governments that you can trust. You deserve to have your governments stick our for the people. You deserve democracy if you want it.

You do not deserve to have your noble faces be hidden by the face of terrorism. When you win the revolution you can end the minority of Arabs who practice terrorism's movements forever. You can reach out to the entire world and be equal with all the other nations of the world in terms of freedom. You can reach out to Israel and open relations. This would diffuse the potential conflict revolving in your region ending the biggest threat to world peace. Also, invest in renewable energies. With those you can have your poor have a lifestyle similar to that of Europe where everyone has enough to eat. Poverty can be ended and everyone in the world will benefit. Expand education and literacy across the region so that every good Muslim can go to the Koran and read it and understand their place in the world, and everyone can be active members of the global economy. You are great peoples and the People of the West stand behind your quest for freedom.

Death and Dying

Reading the last chapter in my psychology textbook it becomes apparent that I should blog about laws respecting death. Basically, they must always be designed to respect the person's wishes and keep them and their families as pain-free as possible.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a powerful tool to bring someone out of pain if it is done correctly. It is cruel to the individual and their loved ones to have them go through pain. If the laws are written correctly than you do not need to worry about it being abused. Specifically, by making sure that the person is conscientious and not under dementia than it cannot be abused. This has been seen in Oregon. It should be allowed if it is in the person's advance directive

Advance Directives

Advance Directives should be allowed in all political divisions across the world. They are the most important tool for elderly people who are at risk of dementia to prevent being taken advantage of. They should have legal status and should be recognized wherever the person is. This is respecting the person's wishes which is essential. They must be well-defined so there is no chance of them being misinterpreted.

Why Civil Unions are not and never will be enough.

At first glance, civil unions seem excellent, you keep the religious conservatives happy by keeping marriage between a person in a male body and a person in a female body and you make those pushy activists content with a form of union between gays and lesbians. To many of us in the movement for equality between straights and gays civil unions seems like a reasonable compromise for equality.

However, it is not and never will be enough. It is second class, and any society that has classes is an unjust society. According to theNational Center for Lesbian Rights there are some gigantic disadvantages to civil unions currently. They do not get any of the 1,138 benefits of marriage from the federal government. Most states will not recognize civil unions. They also do not have the clarity of marriage, not having the same benefits state to state as marriage does.

But this is not nearly as egregious as the most dangerous status of civil unions. If the entire United States gave marriages to heterosexual couples and civil unions to gay couples they are in two distinct classes. Because the lists are separate it takes only a swipe of a pen to eliminate all the rights for gays by eliminating civil unions. The Radical Christians would have no problem doing this.

This is still not as dangerous as it truly is. If the Radical Christians become any more radicalized they could instead hunt gays like in Uganda. They would have all the information there and it would be easy to find them. Replace the benefits with punishments. It may seem a long ways off but it is still a possibility that would be easy to do.

Also, in Washington State anyone can view people with Civil Unions on the Secretary of State's website. This puts them at terrible risk for hate crimes and losing business and not getting jobs (by giving another reason).

This must end now. This is why we must not bow to hate. We must demand that all people get the same recognition under the same name, Marriage. It must be on a nationwide level so that people who currently don't know people who are gay will be able to turn off the hateful rhetoric that comes from so many radicals throughout the country. Until then equality will not be possible.

The most dangerous threat to America's prosperity and Freedom. Ourselves.

A big problem in America lies not inherently with the current government but decades of corrupt government and corrupt media spreading fearful lies for political gain. The American people have forgotten how our government works and where the power lies. Any government, according to the Declaration of Independence, derives "their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed." This was said during a time where speaking out against government was illegal so we left the United Kingdom. This philosophy has been followed across Eastern Europe over the past twenty years and since their independence the people's participation has been a check on government corruption, no matter how infringed they are in some countries. Voter participation is the reason why Australia's political situation is more stable than America's even though their media is a monopoly. In other words, we should not fear the government because if information is sent from the elected officials to the people, then we wouldn't have to be pessimistic. This already happens, but people do not care. By not participating, the corrupt members of our government do not have a check to their power and they can do whatever they want and most of us will never know. Both sides use their massive spin machines to hide the parts they do not want to be shared through pundits that hide all the faults from their side. We the people are literally sending a message of “Whatever you do we do, we do not care what happens to us. We were told our vote doesn't count so we aren't going to take responsibility. The benign members will be overcrowded by lobbyists.” We will hear pundits say what another place is like in terms of a major issue and never check it with that country's people. We do not have a culture of social responsibility, and that has put us in danger which has allowed corruption on Capital Hill to go rampant and many of us do not see the numbers for who the donations are really made to and who they come from. Our pessimism and lack of knowledge is a larger threat than Illegal Immigration, Communism, Large Government, and Gun Control Combined. By not confronting the corruption and saying we don't care we are supporting the corrupt politicians who have massive spin machines and lie to us about controlling our lives while tapping our phones. The more egregious the crime the better they will hide it from us. The small stuff is amplified and made up for political gain that puts us in danger.

This is easily fixed by standing up, dusting ourselves off and walking away from this dangerous political situation. We start by checking the facts when things are said about other countries and looking at the raw numbers. We insist that our children get the education they need to know how they can be successful citizens, so they can not be taken advantage of, and get the information they need to have to be responsible citizens to be a huge check and balance to our government as our forefathers envisioned voters to be. We teach them how the world works from every perspective and the undisputed concepts of the social sciences that currently are not taught that will disable corrupt self-serving politicians and media pundits from misleading large parts of the population of what works and what doesn't so that the truth is known through the undisputed facts of how the world works. By teaching our successors the warning signs, corruption will whither and die and our entire society will improve. If we do not hold politicians accountable with our vote like we have not done for forty years, we cause corruption to go unchecked. We then complain about it even though we don't vote. This prevents us from fixing the problem. Blinding yourself and not doing anything when your house is burning down will only make the house burn down faster. We all need to take our nation's future into our own hands and vote. We need to know what is happening in order to keep our status as the richest nation and regain our former status as the freest nation on Earth which we have been surpassed as by us not fighting for equal rights and allowing pundits to use propaganda to take advantage of our lack of knowledge.

Them

"They did it again those no-good, ungodly, sinning Thems. Can you believe as a good Christian American what They did? They want to take Our jobs, leaving Us out on the street. They are going to marry and then rape Our women, They are going to take over Our government, and to top it off They are going to become the leading class leaving Us to the dogs. They are going to be elected President. They are already in Congress. If you ask me, I think we should deport Them all. Send Them back to where They came from I say, and if We want Their land We will take it and They will have less because They are not God-fearing. Not only that but They have already taken over entire cities, entire states that We used to control. They don't even speak the same language as Us with all of Their culture's nonsense words that We don't use. For the sake of Humanity, They must be destroyed."
~ Leader of the West Secure Klan Inc.

Sound familiar? Good, you read your history. Sound familiar? Good, you have been watching the news.

Lies in the media and on the hill about Recycling

Today on ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/capitol-hill-cafeteria-battleground-congress-republicans-democrats-politics-13061385

When he said how much it cost to do recycling this was complete spin. All those recyclables that would be recycled would be sent to the garbage instead. The Republicans and ABC focus on the amount the recycling spent but left off the amount on trash spent before and after Capital Hill became green. Also, the claim that "my spoon melted after being left in my soup" is ridiculous because that wouldn't happen if you would let it cool. Also, to the Democrats: why didn't you just get metal silverware for in-house eating? That is a million times more cost effective and environmentally friendly than buying any one-time only set of silverware.

On health, if you find me one reputable health scientist who denies that organic food is more healthy I will be shocked because they do not exist. Also, if you want to improve the American economy you would have our leaders eat American food from small farms as opposed to food made in other countries.

Please far-right, stop ignoring the facts that scientists who spend hours of time per week analyzing and listening to your pundit's made-up numbers. I talked to the person in Olympia who analyzes the amount it costs my school (which has about 2000 people staff and students) to compost and recycle as opposed to throwing everything away and he told me that when we finally start compost in the future we will save about $55 per week. Capital Hill is no different.

ABC has been added to FOX and Al Jazeera on the boycott list for lies.

Tearing us apart from the inside

Anarchists, might sometimes sound amusing at what they say, but the system of government is the scariest of all the systems. Of 195 countries in the world 1 has what could be considered an anarchistic form, and that would be Somalia. Every other nation has the government involved in many things, infrastructure, education, public utilities, public goods, and other things that directly help the People. They currently have been eliminating funding for programs that go directly to the people, education is getting the axed with the saying of "budget" all the while people's incomes are being sucked up by health care more than anywhere else in the world (World Health Organization) and places where actual waste happen are not being targeted. We spend more money on military than any other nation except Israel (which is understandably spending a lot being in a region in complete turmoil and instability) while we are in the safest part of the world. This goes back to my previous previous post "Of, By, and For the Rich" where the rich can buy these "fiscally conservative" tea party members to get billions of tax payer dollars sent to the politically powerful.

But what actually disturbs me about this is that they do not focus a lot of energy into making government more efficient. Every American should look at the US Immigration system which is I hope the most convolved part of the law. Also, why does the tax code have to be 16000 pages long? That seems bloated and if it were simplified by removing the lobbyists' sections the government would not have a deficit and everyone's taxes could go down, stimulating the economy, and decreasing the amount of bookkeeping necessary to keep the government running. If they really were proponents of small government they would have this on their platform. They don't which tells me that this isn't what they are concerned about. They then must be the lobbyists' best friend.

One idea I have is that Social Security should not be mandatory. Many people do not want the paychecks. If they do not want the help they should not be forced to have it. It should be a voluntary basis though because some seniors live on social security paychecks and they keep them from being a burden on their families. Those seniors' families benefit greatly by the paychecks for their years of work and the seniors live better lives.

Also, on welfare, there is a lot of waste in the system. Many people get their welfare checks and spend it on things that should not be covered, such as big luxuries, cigarettes, drugs, and other things that should not be covered. Welfare should be designed to give people enough money to live when they are down on their luck so that they can recuperate from an injury, or some other condition. Welfare should be designed so they can buy things that they need and other things that give them the information they need to stay on top of the news. Things like food, newspapers, internet, cable, books, toiletries, pet supplies, fuel, basic insurance, and inexpensive electronics so that they can stay on top of current events and developments, but do not buy luxuries that they wouldn't afford otherwise. It should be seen as an intermediate step and they should spend their welfare dollars on a debit card. They should be allowed only $100 of cash from the debit card and an upper limit of the current cost of living so that they cannot overspend or purchase things that are not necessary. This would eliminate the waste that happens saving billions of dollars that are wasted.

Education should not be cut. Education is the one part of government services where I do not see any real waste because, excluding teacher's salaries, every penny goes directly to maintenance and education. It should be the last to be cut because it is where students should learn the skills necessary to succeed in the modern world. Education should be looked at as the greatest investment of them all because through it our economy becomes stable through our future leaders and professionals, no matter what their career, get the jobs they need to keep our country running. It should train students to be active members in society and know how society works, which it has not been designed to do with the emphasis on testing and the removal of High School Civics several decades ago. The reforms have made the curriculum less preparing for what we are going to need as adults with many concepts, like economics, psychology, and political science being removed to dumb down the curriculum. An attitude change is needed here. Children are brought up by our culture to think that school is a chore and not supposed to be fun. It should be more focused on preparing children for being world citizens than passing tests and going to college. The culture of high school sends students to college who then go on to do careers that do not require college education for their entire lives, which forces up the demand curve for college, making those of us whose careers require advanced degrees have to spend more than we should. Many of the "college-bound students" should go to trade schools. Most programmers for instance should go to trade schools because they are prepared for their careers. Once high school prepares people for the responsibilities of citizenship and adulthood, career training would be all that is required for productivity and full societal participation. This would save society billions of dollars for society and save years of time and tens of thousands of dollars each for many young adults in unnecessary college tuition.
     Also, school districts across the country should get the amount of money that they need to have state of the art equipment, up to date textbooks, up to date school buildings, and an environment that tells students that America cares about their futures. Rural school districts have to scrounge for money to replace out of date equipment all the time while rich school districts get their computers replaced all the time. Every school district should have the same high standard of education that is appropriate for the richest nation in the world. China is still a long ways behind us in GDP.

What they are doing is eliminating the very programs that allow the people who are not rich to not go bankrupt, the same programs that raised the United States from an agrarian nation to a first-world industrialized superpower are being put first for cutting. These things are so ingrained in society that many do not realize the impact these have on our society today. This makes the number of lobbyists fighting for them small, while the corporate interests in the military-industrial complex are very interested at more arms sales, because they get richer.

This would look like corruption but it also shows a purposeful lack of care for what happens in the future and a hatred for government. Some civilizations fall from invaders and some fall from revolution. Others fall from internal vandalism to society's structure. They are destroying American's acts of citizenship through a massive propaganda machine spreading fear through lies, i.e. the so-called death panels. By destroying all of the things that our country is built on they are effectively destroying our country by bringing our society from the level we share with Western Europe to the only country on the face of the planet that does not provide any services for its citizens, Somalia. This is treason and must be stopped.

Of, By, and For the Rich

I've finally had enough. I woke up this morning to hearing a five minute clip of John Boehner explaining why the government shouldn't outlaw internet censorship through making some websites have higher priority than others. It all reflected around the one central belief of the Tea Party movement: Government is Bad.

This is a lie. This is such a big lie that I was literally swearing up and down for about 5 minutes it was so incorrect. If you go onto any watchdog website that gives donations from corporations: I recommend opencongress.gov and you look at the amount of money being sent to all members of Congress (especially the Republicans) to increase military spending and deregulate media putting control of content into corporate hands, the number is in the millions. Corporations give them altogether billions of dollars on all the things they want: mostly more weapons to be purchased, less regulation, and pet projects that then cost most of the national budget. In response the conservative members of Congress can keep their 5 mansions each. They become filthy rich and tax payer dollars go into huge wastes and it is covered up by the right extremist media who never mention it.

This enough to make one balk, but it is worse than that. The Democrats do not ever speak up and give the reasons why the Republicans are hurting everyone by selling where they send our money. They let them put in the huge pork of guns, pass the bills into law and Lockheed Martin becomes filthy rich. We become the country with the largest mostly unused arsenal in the world that is added to every single year.

That is revolting , but it is even worse than that. Public programs that benefit all Americans are then canceled and are made difficult to get to decrease the debt. The money that actually goes to the people is cut and the money goes to the filthy rich leaving the poor and lower middle class with very little compared to the other two income groups. The income gap is widening America, and most people are seeing their average real incomes fall. Nobody wins, except for the Lobbyists with Seats in Congress who can do whatever they want because the "news" that their constituents get leaves out all the real pork, and they get filthy rich with all of their billionaire sponsors.

This could be stopped in a heartbeat. The President, who as invisioned by our forefathers to represent the entire country should use his State of the Union to call out the corruption of corporations and bring people to check the facts. There will literally be nothing that the Republicans could do in response. Once this is done and the corruption of the modern tea party is shown for what it really stands for, America will loosen up and we will be in less danger of revolution.

"It is not fit that you should sit here any longer! You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing lately. You shall now give place to better men! You call yourselves a Parliament. You are no Parliament. I say you are no Parliament! Some of you are drunkards, some of you are living in open contempt of God's Commandments, following your own greedy appetites and the Devil's commandments. Corrupt unjust persons, scandalous to the profession of the Gosepl; how can you be a Parliament for God's people? Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, GO!"

~ Oliver Cromwell Address to the Rump Parliament 20 April 1653 London, ENGLAND