A Tale of Two Men

Boy meets Congressman.  Boy has inappropriate relations with Congressman.  Congressman gets caught.  Congressman looses everything.  Boy fades into oblivion after fifteen minutes of fame.   It's the oldest story in the book.  Well, maybe not the oldest, but it's quickly becoming the most cliche story in the book.  As I was reading the story about Republican Representative Phillip Hinkle referring to the mess he's gotten himself into as a "shakedown", it occurred to me that this story was only being covered from one angle.  It was the typical angle.  Hinkle is a public figure...queue the public outrage.  

I try to approach my writing with fairness.  Of course I have my opinions.  I wouldn't be much of an aspiring opinion writer if I didn't.  I think everyone should be taking a good long look at BOTH of these men.  Since Rep. Hinkle will most certainly be publicly crucified, let's take a look at the person most people will not be talking about.

Kameryn Gibson - 

Here, we have an 18 year old young man who has posted an ad on Craigslist.  In the ad, he claimed he was 20(a lie) and looking for a "sugga daddy".  First of all, I'm no legal expert but this is at the very least borderline prostitution.  Let's get real for a moment.  It's one thing to go online looking for sex.  It's an entirely different thing to be looking for someone to pay you for sex.  Where is the outrage about this young man's behavior?

Adding insult to injury, Kameryn took items from the Congressman as "hush money"...an iPad, Blackberry, and $100.  He then decides to "do the right thing" and allow all this to go public.  I'm confused.  Wouldn't the right thing be to not post an ad that basically amounts to prostitution?  Maybe the right thing would have been to not accept cash and other items to stay quiet.  Perhaps the right thing would also be not allowing your sister to go to a newspaper with this story.  It seems to me that this young man is desperately trying to get attention in any way possible.  Maybe he has aspirations to be famous?  Maybe he has a complete lack of aspiration, hence the "sugga daddy" mentality.  Maybe he's just an attention addict and this whole situation is like crack to him.  I just question the point of all of this in light of his own terrible decision making.  At the end of the day, it doesn't make it more wrong that Congressman is involved in this.  It's all wrong.

Kameryn lied.  Kameryn wanted to trade sex for money. Kameryn took cash and gifts to keep quiet.

I have a hunch that we are hearing about all this because the Kameryn and his sister Megan started seeing dollar signs.  I also think they knew there would be a certain level of notoriety that comes along with this sort of situation...something they were both unable to resist.  

The Bottom Line:
In a world that values celebrity over all else, it's time we get real about things like character.  Sure, public servants should be held accountable for their actions.  After all, we are paying their salary.  That, however, does not exclude the everyday person from being accountable as well.  Our political figures are a real reflection of the people.  That fact alone should scare us all into making better decisions and being the best people we can be.  These two seemingly different people are really not all that different at all.  When the sensationalism settles and the story is long over, we still have to look at ourselves in the mirror.

Who do you see staring back at you?

United States of Terrorism: Why Immigration is Just a Symptom

"Immigration"  

This word really is a loaded gun, a gun certain political parties seem hell-bent on using against anyone that dare stand in their path.  Arizona has become a lightning rod of attention with the passing of the very obtuse immigration law recently.  I'd like to point out that this law is not only a band-aid for a very real problem; it's a dirty band-aid.  Politicians in Arizona are trying to make a statement.  They are trying to tell the White House that they can do as they wish when it comes to immigration.  The problem I see with this law and logic is that immigration is to the United States of America, not Arizona specifically.  With that in mind, I believe immigration laws should be written on a federal level...not state.  I also believe that measures to prevent illegal immigration should be funded and maintained by the federal government.  The Arizona bill flies in the face of federal judiciary and law.  This is why you will see challenges to it.  Local law enforcement should hold its traditional role...to protect the people.  It should NOT be used to act in a federal capacity by verifying U.S. citizenship.  The federal government should be securing our borders with agents, funding, fencing, and technologies.  Stopping every ethnic person one sees to make sure they belong here is not an answer.  Putting our police officers in a role of having to racially profile individuals is not wise and not clever.  Solve the problem at the source...the border.


Those who tell you that Arizona HAD to pass this law to protect the citizens are wrong, if not lying outright.  Some of the worst laws in history were passed out of fear...i.e. The Patriot Act.  Politicians will use the weapon of fear to keep their own positions of power and influence.  They are not concerned with making sure people are U.S. citizens.  At the end of the day, they would do most anything to keep a seat at the government's table.  Government, in general is a gigantic popularity contest.  If you can't appeal to people for votes you must scare them into voting for you.  September 11th didn't just kill thousands of people, it turned America into the VERY thing we claim to fight against... the largest, most well-funded terrorist group the world will ever see.  Think about it, we have waged wars using bad intelligence, killing thousands and contributing heavily to economic unrest.  We've imposed our way of life and values on sovereign countries.  We have terrorized our own citizens with laws that infringe upon basic civil rights.  We tell our citizens, by our actions, that we should live in fear of the unknown...fear of things that are different or contrary... fear of finding our own answers.  Oh, we go on and on about how this is all in the interest of national security...blah blah blah.  It's about power.  


While I realize that many will find my words subversive and unpatriotic, the simple truth is, I love this country and those who, under orders from our government, risk their lives for this country.  I have NO ill will toward and mean no disrespect to any member of the armed forces.  I also love the freedoms that this country was founded on that afford me the right to express my opinion.  I want those same freedoms to remain in tact for my children and their children.  I do not love what I have seen happening in America since 9/11.  It's year after year of bad judgment and leadership.  It's moment by moment scare tactics.  It's a dreadful mess.  


The Bottom Line:
Don't let the politics of immigration law distract you from the much larger issues going on in America.  There are very real powers at work to make sure we remain under foot and scared of the dark.  

Marketing 101 - GOP Style

The GOP's answer to providing an alternative to "Obamacare" as they so gleefully call it, is to "Fire Pelosi".  When you say it out loud it sort of just hangs there.  OK, fire Pelosi.  I don't care for her either.  She's spent more time getting Botox and appearing at press conferences than working to make things better.  Then what?  What on earth will the GOP do next?  The GOP claims they have alternative legislation which is "common sense".  I read through this "common sense" summary.  The only thing certain about this summary is that it's VERY common.  It's more common talking points from a party with few real alternatives.  A party whose entire offering is based upon pointing out deficiencies in the Democratic health care plan.  Let's look at just a few of the statements taken directly from the GOP website. See the GOP Summary here.

• Lowering health care premiums. The GOP plan will lower health care premiums for American families and small businesses, addressing Americans’ number-one priority for health care reform.

This is a great campaign point, but how exactly is this going to be carried out?  I wouldn't know.  There is no information to support this bullet point.

• Ending junk lawsuits. The GOP plan would help end costly junk lawsuits and curb defensive medicine by enacting medical liability reforms modeled after the successful state laws of California and Texas.

Sounds great...except California and Texas are number 5 and 9 respectively on the list of states which have the highest payments for medical malpractice claims. See the list here.  This means... "successful" is NOT a word any reasonable person would use to describe their reforms.  Then there is that whole California is bankrupt...thing.  Why on earth would their legislation be considered a good example of ways to cut costs?  

• Prevents insurers from unjustly cancelling a policy. The GOP plan prohibits an insurer from cancelling a policy unless a person commits fraud or conceals material facts about a health condition.

Hmmm... and who will decide what "material facts" will be defined as?  I am guessing the federal government.  Last time I checked that's still part of the makeup of social medicine.  

• Encouraging Small Business Health Plans. The GOP plan gives small businesses the power to pool together and offer health care at lower prices, just as corporations and labor unions do.

• Encouraging innovative state programs. The GOP plan rewards innovation by providing incentive payments to states that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured.

These two statements use the word "encouraging".  This isn't an after-school special people.  The word "encouraging" is just a marketing word that really means government regulation and legislation...still social medicine.  It's STILL the same thing the GOP says we should all be fighting against.  Additionally, just HOW is the GOP planning to fund these "incentive payments"?  Monopoly money?  Reducing lawmaker salaries?  I think not.  Try higher taxes...which the GOP historically places on the middle class.  The GOP wants us to apply labor union methods to healthcare.  Look how well labor unions worked for the auto industry.  Oh wait...they didn't!  

My personal favorite...

• Allowing dependents to remain on their parents’ policies. The GOP plan encourages coverage of young adults on their parents’ insurance through age 25.

There's that word "encourage" again.  Do you think for a minute that insurance companies won't slap us with more fees and higher premiums if the GOVERNMENT tells dependents they are now allowed, by law, to remain on their parents insurance until 25??  

Finally... The GOP "Scorecard"

Scorecard: Speaker Pelosi’s Government Takeover vs. GOP Common-Sense Solutions

                         Speaker Pelosi’s Bill      GOP Alternative

Job Losses          Up to 5.5 million              0 (Prove It)

Medicare Cuts     $500 billion                     0 (Prove It)

Tax Increases      $729.5 billion                  0 (Prove It)

The Bottom Line:

Just because something is stated over and over again doesn't magically make it true.  The GOP gets an F for effort and an A+ for marketing.  Too bad marketing isn't accepted as a valid form of payment at the doctor's office.

Politics As Usual

While you may think that this is my lame attempt at a Democratic smear campaign against the newly-elected Republican Senator Scott Brown of  Massachusetts, you'd be way off the mark.  I was not inspired by politics in the sense that you might expect. I was, however, shocked by the glaring double-standard represented in the photo above.

Had this been a female political candidate pictured above, not only would it be front page news, it would be reason enough to sway the vote...and NOT in her favor.  Scott Brown poses nude back in the day and he's called a "beef-cake" or "America's Sexiest Man".  Any female trying to be taken seriously in the political realm would have been labeled as someone having poor judgement or worse.  Every detail of the woman's life and choices would have have been scrutinized by pundits far and wide.  She'd have to explain her reasoning for doing the photo shoot.  She'd be made to dissect every detail leading up to the photo.  All her other decisions would be called into question because of the photo.  It makes me angry that we still live in a world where Hillary Clinton gets talked about for showing a tiny bit of cleavage on the floor of the Senate.  Scott Brown, on the other hand, doesn't really have his judgement questioned at all for posing nude.  For all the Republicans out there... let me give you an example you can relate to.  Sarah Palin... While I am not a fan, I do feel like she was overly scrutinized by the media in a very sexist way.  She was a beauty queen...made top news.  She was photoshopped into a bikini, then had to explain that it wasn't her.  She was referred to as a "m.i.l.f.".  The talk about what she was wearing was endless.  This is the type of sexist ignorance that this country still thrives on and it's truly sad.

The Bottom Line: 

The world we live in makes unrealistic demands of it's women.  We want to hold women to a higher standard but don't want to empower them to be anything other than centerfolds.  This country lauds it's progressive culture but is responsible for holding women back.  The men in this country who are responsible for the culture of "the boys" should try holding themselves to this other-worldly standard for once.  After all...it's mostly men who are making a mess of this country...last time I checked.

Health Care Hoax: Smoke & Mirrors

America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is a group of major health insurance providers that have banded together to resist health-care reform. They are now offering up a "report" which states that should health-care reform pass in Congress, it would increase deductibles for America's insured. I had to wonder why a group of major insurance companies would even have such a group. I did a little digging. The following is just a short list of some of the board members of this group. Everyone should know this...

George C. Halvorson
Chairman and CEO
Kaiser Foundation Health Plan

H. Edward Hanway
Chairman and CEO
CIGNA Corp.

Michael McCallister
President and CEO
Humana Inc.

Daniel P. Neary
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Mutual of Omaha Insurance Company


Ronald A. Williams
Chairman and CEO
Aetna Inc.

Any of those companies look familiar to you? There are also several CEOs from various Blue Cross - Blue Shield companies around the U.S.

Again, this is just a fraction of the CEOs that are a part of this "bipartisan health-care reform" group. Now why would all these major insurers be against health-care reform? Something is just "off" here...

Even more interesting...the "bipartisan" report claiming that reform would raise our rates by 111% percent in the next decade was created by PricewaterhouseCoopers, a tax, risk, and business strategy firm that all of these insurance companies are members of. This is a firm which helps the insurance companies be more profitable world-wide. Oh, and this tax firm, it's based in the UK...not the U.S. Do you really think they have OUR best interest in mind?

This same group has a tax-free research group (AHIP Foundation) set up to do research about the insurance industry. That means you and I are paying for them to research how to increase their business. Have you ever heard of such MESS???

This health-care reform bill represents massive accountability and regulation for the Insurance Industry and they are fighting it tooth and nail. They have their lobbyists and their pseudo reporting firms throwing lies at the American people and legislature in hopes of continuing to profit off the backs of every-day Americans like you and me. Don't fall for this report that premiums will increase for every American. The premiums have been increasing dramatically for years, well before talk of health-care reform. What's not being said is that insurers would no longer have a free ride at our expense and they do NOT like that idea at all. The sad part is all of this information that I've laid out here today is available to everyone. All you have to do is read. I simply went to each website and started connecting the dots. Don't just take my word for it...read for yourself.

Sources:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/10/12/health.care/index.html
http://www.ahip.org/default.aspx
http://www.pwc.com/gx/en/index.jhtml


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Nobel B.S.

It astonishes me that so many people have such an issue with President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I think some people are not familiar with the award's purpose and function. I also think there are others who are just angry that Obama is being recognized for any good deed and would find any reason to criticize the choice. It really irritates me that so many don't know anything about the award yet have so many things to say about who receives it. For more information on the history and purpose of the award please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Peace_Prize or http://nobelprize.org/index.html

I believe there are good reasons why Obama has received this award. There are many things which he has put into motion to open dialogue between countries. Communication is paramount to any effort for peace. While our previous President closed many doors to communication while fostering an isolationist approach to war, President Obama has again opened those doors and begun a new era of open communication...even where it's not popular to do so. He's had to reverse so much of the damage done by former President Bush across the globe. He's done an incredible thing taking this country off the path of isolationism.

All things said, I believe people should take it upon themselves to get more background and information on the Nobel award before they chastise the committee or the recipient. The ignorant comments I've seen in a mere few hours has left me with a desire to continue to educate myself as much as possible.

For the record: Self-education is a highly undervalued resource.


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Michael Steele: Another GOP Gimmick

I wish the Republican Party would take this election beating and do something substantial. I reserved making any judgments on Mr. Michael Steele until I had more information and could observe his actions. I was also trying to give the GOP the benefit of the doubt.

As it turns out, it's precisely what I first feared it might be...a GIMMICK.

After all these years the GOP has never had a Black Chairman. Now that we have a Black President they miraculously find a Black man to head the party? That "smells" just like adding Sarah Palin to the GOP ticket as a way to steal female voters left angry about Clinton.

Instead of learning from this election bludgeoning, the GOP's answer to their trials is to offer up yet another gimmick. As if having a Black man chair anything for them is going to make the world forget their failures to connect with the majority. As if this not-so-slight of hand is going to make the GOP look fresh and in touch again. It doesn't. In my opinion it's like dressing up in "black-face" and expecting people to really believe you are black!

The prescription for GOP future is to take about a year to first get their footing again. This would include getting MAJOR "web help" to catch up to the younger generation. Their web effort during the election was pathetic at best. They should also stop scripting their organization so much. Is there nobody in the GOP who is just naturally well spoken and articulate? I get the feeling that the GOP doesn't really want to move forward but would rather repackage old ideas and make them seem new. This doesn't really work with cell phones and it doesn't work with politics. In fact, it ends up more like reusing toilet paper. It's nasty and doesn't work!

My message for the GOP: Don't kid yourself or America. There is a reason you've lost so much ground and it's going to take more than token responses and gimmicks to help you move forward. Spend more time coming up with a plan that makes sense and less time searching for your next gimmick.

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