Sheesh!

For the most part, I keep my political opinions to myself. I don't talk about them in social settings and I don't say much about them on this blog. I figure that if you, my readers, are motivated to learn the facts about economics, climate change, health care, religion, et al., you are going to do so regardless of whatever blather I put up here. And if you aren't motivated to learn the facts (preferring instead shrill talking points), then whatever blather I put here doesn't matter anyway.

But I do have political opinions. And two rather different comments posted recently to Charles Blow's op-ed piece "Genuflecting to the Tea Party" in the NY Times have pushed me to say something.

Here is the first one, from Marie Burns of Ft Myers, Florida:

Republicans think representing 90 percent of the wealth is as good as representing 90 percent of the people.

I want that printed on Tshirts, mouse pads, coffee mugs, bill boards, toilet paper. I want to buy advertising time on local TV and radio stations and have this repeated daily. I want it added to the warning labels on cigarette packages. It is perhaps the most succinct summation of the deep hole we (the American people) are in, cavalierly pushed there by the Republican party and their fellow travelers.

Sheesh.

Then there is this tidbit from JoJo of Boston, who I'm sure felt that she was drawing a really significant distinction between crazy and crazier:

...I'll have no respect for any of them, except Ron Paul -- he's extreme on some things, but he's the only one who's not a lying pseudo-religious hypocrite. 

I'm sorry to rain on Jojo's parade, but Ron Paul is one of the biggest hypocrites out there. The supposed godfather of Libertarians, he constantly espouses the primacy of individual rights to property, life, speech, action. Yet Mr. Paul, excuse me, Dr. Paul, as he is a medical doctor, is also virulently against a woman's right to have an abortion should she so choose. I've got news for you, Dr. Paul. There is no property right more fundamental than my right to control my OWN BODY!

Sheesh.

So in a nutshell, here's my blather. Fact-check everything. Don't rely on a single source for all of your information about the world. Everyone in power has an agenda, primarily one of staying in power, but their motives and results may be much darker than that. Voting is a responsibility, a burden, that we must not take lightly. Participating as a citizen in a democracy is also quite a burden. The burden is education. And that takes time and effort. Please find the time and make the effort.