Some catchin' up to do.....

I have been out of town, lollygagging, chilling, somewhat abandoning my news junkie ways- listening instead to the ocean & babbling brooks, deep in the rainforest. 

Great to enjoy nature & tune in to the all ocean all the time channel. 

Of course the news cycles churned on, whether or not I was paying attention. 

So I will throw out some perspectives on recent news items, for what they are worth!

The Weiner situation: Weiner had been a real voice for progressives & I am sorry he resigned. Don;t get me wrong- what he did was stupid & out of line. I would not blame his wife for keeping the Weiner dog on a very short leash ..... but what he did was not illegal, and other politicians have done worse-- from Bill Clinton's Lewinsky affair, spewing semen in the Oval offie (actual sex) & lying about it, to Vitter's follies w prostitutes, and the GOP forgive & forget handling of that matter. Again actual sex, and in Vitter's case, breaking the law. Vitter remains in the Senate, with full Seniority & committee memberships. 

I hate the double standard, because they claimed he was otherwise doing such a good job. If blow jobs  for the president & paying for sex w prostitutes is OK & allows them to keep then jobs, then "Fruit-of the-Loom-gate" seems tame in comparison. 

I wish Weiner would have waited it out a few weeks to let the topic settle down. 

The War Act situation: For me, this is where partisanship ends. I don't care what party a politician is in, I expect full accountability & compliance with the check & balance system that is supposed to be in place. I don't want a president to feel OK with just deciding to engage in wars on his/her own. 

It was a horrific precedent G. W. Bush set, when he decided to go it alone, and act first, get permission later, and the general trashing of the Constitution. Besides loathing his Dictator like decision making, he opened the door for others to do the same. 

What is the opposite of the gift that keeps giving?

The hell that keeps looming?

Long after his terms are over, those wars are still going on, and besides bringing the country into financial ruin, we seem to be stuck in perpetual wars. 

It sucks to be a Progressive in America right now.
At best Obama is a conservative.
At worst he's turned into a Nobel Peace prize winning war monger- to the point I can't keep track of how many wars we are in right now....

Iraq
Afghanistan
Libya
Covert war in Yemen
Ever increasing attacks on Pakistan

On that front, Obama has been a total disappointment, breaking his promise to exhaust all diplomatic options before ever going to war. I voted for Obama to get us OUT of the 2 wars Bush 2 got us into,.... now we are in more wars than the Bush 2 era. 

There is now legal pressure for Obama to comply with the War Powers act, re Libya, from both Democrats & Republicans.

A Chickenhawk is defined:

A politician or other person who promotes war without having had any personal experience of it; especially those who have avoided the experience.
	chickenhawk
	Any person who is a proponent of a war while not enlisting and going off to fight in said war. A kind of hypocrite. Really, a chickenhawk is one who says: "it's okay for other mother's sons and children's fathers to go off and get shot, dismembered and incinerated, but not me or my family." Enough with the wars already. There is now an entire generation of U.S. children who have only known their country to be at war, their whole lives. It really bothers me that while Congress falls all over themselves to make tough budget cuts (mostly to entitlement programs that we the people already paid into), and ignore the big ticket items- 60% going into paying for all these wars. It is estimated the US will have spent $1 billion by September in Libya alone. Don't tell me I have to wait till age 67 to retire so we can have as many wars as the president decides.

It's all Obama's Fault-- the economy--I don't buy the repug claims that Obama screwed up the economy. Bush 2 did that & with the help of many of the repugs running for office now. They racked up the (then) $13 trillion debt, and have since then have a newfound fiscal conservancy, and moral obligation to future generations. (Where was that morality $13 trillion ago???)

The economy is similar to the sex scandal situation... lots of finger pointing, and heavy reliance on our short memory spans. 

The republicans got us into this financial mess. You can't create a $13 trillion dollar debt, then turn around & blame the next guy to take office. Well, I stand corrected, this is ust what they are doing-- but we've been paying attention. We know the truth & we need to call them out on it. 

Same for the sex capades. 

If the sexting Dem needs to resign, then so does the guy who does business with prostitutes. We should not have a different set of standards & rules for the different parties. 

Let us not be distracted!