On the Contrary

Okay, I have been complaining about how the lowest common denominator is driving our train in this country and resisting change.  Since I am forced almost every day to listen to their babble and half baked ideas, I thought turn about is fair play. So here is my babble and half baked  out ideas about turning George Bush’s ship around:

• Outlaw torture even for the CIA.  It is simply not who we are and the ends do not justify the means.
• End rendition, close Guantanamo and live with the consequences that we have tainted the evidence so bad with our treatment that bad people are going to have to be let go.
• End the Patriot Act and restore private citizens right to privacy.
• Undo many of the regulations he has put in place that destroy our environment, health or welfare.
• Etcetra

Etcetera?  Well you get the gist.  That is the easy stuff and obvious stuff.  Here comes the hard stuff and some would say half baked.  But since this world has never tried it my way why not?:

• Join the World Court and get over the idea that we are special.  Whenever I hear objections to being judged by foreigners, I think of moving this nation from a confederation in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia.  It is the same thing.
• End the “War on Drugs” and start helping to reduce consumption through education and treatment.  Attacking the supply is a waste of time.  Decriminalize non-violent drug use.  Quit wasting your time chasing marijuana growers.  It just keeps the prices up.
• I like to go to Cuba and lie on the beach so can we stop the criminally insane and counter productive policy we have had with Cuba for the last 50 years.  It’s worked well hasn’t it?
• End the abortion thing once and for all.  Nobody likes them so why don’t we spend half the time trying to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  Oh no, we would much rather see some truly unfit mother raise some kid to be a truly unfit parent.  On and on….
• Realize that power is limited and military power is an oxymoron.  Sure we can level a nation, but then you have to tame the population and shouldn’t the Russians have taught us a lesson in Afghanistan.  Oh I see, that’s different because we are freedom-loving occupiers instead of commie occupiers.  The end result will be the same.  I think occupier is the operative word here.
• Did you ever ask yourself why we are the only large industrialized nations that does not have high speed rail?  For God’s sake, Mexico has one.  Government has a major role to play in planning our transportation future and it is not in moving around in individual steel boxes.
• Did I mention that the price of gas is way too cheap in this country?  Anything below $4/gallon and we once again fritter away a chance to move away from gas guzzles or encourage alternate energy research.  Slap that old tax on there right now and never again will we ever pay less than $4/gallon for fuel.
• This one is a shocker.  TAXES ARE GOOD if they help pay for our investments in the future.  It is time to pony up.
• On the health care front, give me a break.  Private insurance is the most inefficient way to provide health care.  Any of you geniuses out there ever done a business plan.  Well do one for health care.  Bottom line:  Lots of people paying premiums and no pay outs for sick people.  Having a no-duh moment?  Skim the healthy, deny claims, and screw the poor or sick.  It is what we have today.  Single payer, single payer, single payer.  Or we can just continue our moronic dance trying to fit a round peg in a square hole.
• Why do we pay more than all other nations combined for our military?  Time to rethink how much bang we get for our buck with all those fancy toys when we are fighting Stone Age people in the Middle East.
• Speaking of the Middle East, why do we support any country who denies women’s rights.  Pakistan comes to mind.  Muslims have a lot to answer for here.  Mormons run a close second.  Real change will come when we finally decide to walk our talk.  Respect for other cultures can never be an excuse for enslavement. All value systems are not equal.
• Can we get over the gay thing?  Can we finally stop having a homophobic attack and call it religious righteousness?   I will never lose my interest in women and even when I was two, the choice has always been obvious for me.  What the hell are you people afraid of really?  Real change will happen when nobody cares anymore.  Our children may save us on this one.  They seem to be a lot more secure in their sexuality than us old farts.
• Here is one most of you will disagree with me on:  Just because you serve in the military does not make you a hero, and hero worship of the military just enables them to suck in more kids who pay the ultimate price. Sometimes it is more honorable not to serve.  Honor is being true to your values, not conforming your values to public adulation.  Real change will come when our youth have more than one choice for upward mobility and employment that doesn’t involves killing and maiming.
• Deficit spending is bad when we are making fat white people fatter and richer, and it is good when we are building an infrastructure that helps all of us.  Real change will come when we let go of market place ideas that have failed us miserably
• Conservatives are selfish self-centered people who have used their marketplace religion to justify screwing the rest of us.  Behind every high sounding value of self-restraint and discipline hides one more justification why they should get your piece of the pie too.  The real reason they hate taxes is because they got theirs and they feel no empathy to help their fellow man and they justify that by saying everyone else is just lazy.  Real change will come when we throw their whole ideology into the trash heap.

But if you really want to know what I think would make the biggest change in our world think about this:  There are some truly sorry ass people in this world.  But once they were just little kids, but they had sorry ass parents.  If I have learned anything in this life of mine, it is parents who hold the key to their children’s future.  And so many of them should never have been allowed to procreate.  The next time you see some human being performing some despicable act, think about who they were at two and wonder what happened.    Parenting is the most important thing we do in life and we rarely hold parents accountable.  We love to blame teachers, but we never hold parents accountable.  Where the rubber meets the road….

Just some random babbling before I go back to trying to be rational.