So, I found this article about diversity in cities to be very interesting.  You might have read it already since it has been making the rounds the last couple of days.

Sorry, but if you’re going to call out a city for it’s diversity you’d better have more than this.  Equating the black population as the diversity of the city is a strawman argument.  Anyone think maybe Austin has a large population of Hispanics (it does) or that Seattle might have a large population of Asians (it does)?  Do those races not count as being minorities when considering diversity?  In the author’s mind they don’t:

“For example, how can a city define itself as diverse or progressive while lacking in African Americans, the traditional sine qua non of diversity, and often in immigrants as well?”

Has the author BEEN to Seattle?  Yes, it is almost 70% white.  However it also houses a vibrant Asian community that itself contains unique populations of Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.  Just because Seattle is under the national average for their black population doesn’t mean it isn’t a diverse city.  Seattle’s Asian population is just under 15% (which I would wager is well above the national average for cities).  The Author uses the cities of Cincinnati, Cleveland, Kansas City, Indianapolis and Nashville as contrasts when showing the percentage of black residents.  Hey, what do the numbers 1.4, 0.3, 1.9, 2.4 and 1.4 have in common?  Those are the percentage of Asians living in the cities above.  Should I make a graph that shows how sorry those numbers look compared to Seattle’s?

I think this is an article where the author thought of his thesis and put on blinders when it came to any facts that might not support it.  San Fransisco is a pretty Progressive city, don’t you think?  Well, you won’t see it mentioned because it’s less than 50 % white.  Sorry, it doesn’t help the argument and must be ignored.

In addition to laying a guilt trip on all the white people who mistakenly thought Latinos and Asians were minority races the author also calls out the city leadership for having no plan to increase the black population.  Of course, he offers up no plan of his own, just fault for the cities not having one.

It’s all well and good if someone wants to have a discussion about diversity and race.  But please…..bring something to the table!  All this article left me with was that the author doesn’t think cities with a large black population are diverse enough, that they can’t be considered Progressive and other minorities really don’t count when you consider diversity.

Sorry, but the guilt card has been played one too many times on this white guy.  It’s all background noise at this point.

I still have never seen an episode of their show and never will.  Sorry, I’m not a fan of 99% of reality tv and a show about a bitchy wife, an uninterested husband and 8 kids who aren’t quite old enough to realize they are being exploited isn’t part of the 1%.  However, because of your marriage troubles and the lack of important things like recession, war or health care reform to cover, the media has given you plenty of attention lately.  For that I loathe you.  It’s not so much because you waste my time with headlines and face time on tv.  It’s because of the kids.

You dragged your kids into this because it could make you money.  I don’t want to hear any other reason.  You had volunteers helping you out and were doing ok before the big bucks and hopes of celebrity filled your head.  So, you both signed on the dotted line and let cameras into your lives.  You bitched about the press not giving you privacy when you both were getting paid to have no privacy.  You complained about the paparazzi not leaving your kids alone when it was your exploitation of them that gave you the life of a celebrity.

Now, with your marriage on the rocks, you prove me right again.  You could have cancelled the show and tried to work on your marriage.  If your marriage was that over, you could have at least cancelled the show to save your children the embarrassment down the line of being able to see it all played out on the Season 3 DVD Box Set.  Nope, you’ve both embraced the idea of a “he said, she said” played out in check-out line magazines and morning talk shows.  So now, in a few years when they are already having a hard enough time adjusting, your kids will be able to see it all.  You can claim all you want that you are hiding if from them, but if the cameras are rolling, how much are you hiding.

You both suck.  I have no problem passing judgement on both of you.  Don’t say I don’t know you or understand what you are going through.  You’ve opened up your lives to the world and that excuse is lame.  Just go away now for the good of your children.

As this article shows (as usual with the Huffington Post, some of the far left comments take things to the other extreme)t he lady in question did have a sign: a picture of Rosa Parks.  The woman had taken the sign out and apparently put it away after boos and a warning about signs not being allowed.  When a photographer walked over to see what the sign was and to take a picture of it another person in the audience came over, grabbed the sign and proceeded to try and rip it apart.  The lady who was eventually led out went nuts, police came over and she was taken out.

I don’t think the police were being racist, because if you hadn’t watched the whole exchange you might have just seen the lady run after the person with her poster going nuts.  You might assume she was the aggressor and in a town hall that explosive, you wouldn’t want to take a chance with things escalating and the assumed aggressor would be taken out quickly.

However, what is with the person ripping up the sign of Rosa Parks?  What in the hell was their problem?  Many of these people protesting are already bordering on racism with some of the signs and slogans you hear and now this happens.  I’d love to see the MSM talk about this more and see someone on the right try to make a defense of tearing up a poster of Rosa Parks.  Better yet, I’d love to see the individual who took the poster come on tv and try to defend their actions without sounding like a racist.

These are your neighbors and people you might think of as friends.  I already found out one person I thought was a friend put his hatred of Obama and the left above that friendship.  Before this all plays out (if it ever does) everyone reading this will have a personal experience to share along those lines.  People’s true colors are showing right now, and I have to say it isn’t making “real” America look very good.

Of course, it’s too late now. Other than getting yelled at during town hall meetings, Democrats don’t seem to be doing a very good job of fighting back. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here are some easy steps Democrats could take that would put them back on the offensive and change the nature and tone of the debate over health care:

Break it up.

No sane person is going to totally trust a 1200 page bill coming out of Washington D.C. Even if you read it, you are bound to miss something or get caught up in the legal language of the bill. Democrats should go back to basics and push through smaller, separate pieces of legislation that will find bipartisan support. By focusing on smaller, easier to understand topics, it will make it harder for Republicans to cry foul. What kind of smaller bills should they focus on?

Take the fight to the Republicans and embrace the free market.

Republicans love to talk about the free market and individual choices. So, give it to them. Put forth a bill allowing people to shop across state lines for health care. Allow a true free market instead of being forced to choose between bad, worse or nothing at all. By giving consumers more choices you suddenly open up the market and allow more individual choice.  This is something Democrats are already advocating so it’s nothing new.

In addition Democrats need to swallow the idea of malpractice reform. I’m not sure I like the idea of putting caps on lawsuits, but there has to be some common sense way to limit frivolous law suits and drive down the cost of malpractice insurance for doctors. It probably won’t happen because Democrats are too close to the trial lawyer lobby, but if they did look for some kind of reform here, Republicans would be hard pressed to refuse since they have been screaming about tort reform for years.  Yes, I know that studies show that malpractice is only about 2% of health care costs, but we have to start somewhere, right?

Put explicit language in the bills that directly answer some of the top concerns.

There are some questions that consistently come up when people ask about health care.  Clearly spell out the limits of the bills as you put them forward.  Make it clear whether or not abortions will be funded by tax dollars via government provided insurance.  In plain language explain when someone is eligible for federally funded or subsidized health insurance.  In addition, crystal clear whether or not illegal immigrants (or even legal residents) will be eligible for government health care.  Some people will say these measures aren’t needed because if it doesn’t say something is allowed in the bill (i.e. abortion) then it shouldn’t be listed at all, but if all that’s holding some people back is something that is easily dispelled by inserting language into a bill easing concerns while giving up nothing I say do it.

Finally….be realistic.

Understand that this nation is no more liberal than it is conservative.  The majority of people fall somewhere in the middle and to push an agenda to aggressively from either side of the aisle is bound to rile up enough of the moderates to kill said agenda.  There is anger and rage out there.  All you have to do is turn on the television to see it.  I’m not saying give into the rage of the right wing, but there is no need to inflame it.  By carefully putting health care reform in place through deliberate and moderate ways, some of that anger may subside.  As to the remaining anger….that’s for another blog.

What is so hard about talking about an issue?  Why can’t people express their views in a way that allows others to still form an opinion?  If I wanted to go ask a question of my representative, I would probably be unable to because of the opponents of reform disrupting the meeting.  Is this democracy at work (as the right would have you believe) or are they adults having child-like tantrums hoping we all relent and give them what they want?

I wrote a blog a while ago about my friend Bob and his reaction to my ultimate request to stop with the politically driven emails that were so clearly false.  You know how that turned out.  There were some superficial political topics we had discussed in the past that were very civil in nature.  However, I think, when finally faced with the fact that I wasn’t buying what he was selling, he chose to burn a bridge instead of dropping the subject.  Bob was like these protesters: an adult who in the end dealt with disagreement as a child would with a temper-tantrum.

More on the health care debate in a later post, but I can’t believe that reform in an industry that almost everyone feels needs reform could go down in flames because people (most of whom ironically appear to be old enough to take advantage of Medicare) want to stifle any meaningful debate by shouting “no” as loud as they can while holding their hands over their ears.  This is the height of absurdity and a big reason why even though I agree with some Republican ideas, I will never vote for them as long as they willingly embrace the politics of anger, fear and race.

These people are so quick to latch onto anything that will confirm their twisted and delusional reality that they fell for something a little research easily proved a fake.  I’m more and more convinced nothing will ever change the mind of a committed birther.  They are nuts, plain and simple.  Don’t give them the satisfaction of being offered the chance to “prove” their point.  They have no point.  They are so far separated from reality it’s like talking to a brick wall.  You will come away frustrated and they will only be more convinced of the growing conspiracy all around them.

Punked…..I love it.

Today I read this.  As if I needed another reason to hate Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart gets a lot of people defending them because of their low prices and the “American Dream” story of the founder, Sam Walton.  All the people whining about the closing of factories here in a America, the boarded up stores on Main Street U.S.A. and the loss of wealth in our country better not be defending Wal-Mart (although I’m sure most of them are).  Wal-Mart likes to present itself as looking out for good old American values (just look for all the red, white and blue coupled with patriotic symbols the next time you walk into a Wal-Mart) but they could care less. 

If you needed any more proof that Wal-Mart is like any other large corporation only out to enhance their bottom line, you have Wal-Mart going after the Girl Scouts.  This isn’t a competitor like Target or K-Mart, these are a bunch of little girls whose money comes from cookie sales.

Wal- Mart, I loathe you, and the sooner more Americans start feeling like I do, the better.

I get that in Bolton’s world we (the USA) should get our way without compromise on every issue, but that’s not how the world works.  We saw the result of the heavy hand approach from 2001-2009 and that didn’t really work out so well for us.  Bolton tries to paint a black and white picture over this issue by raising the question of whether or not other Americans being held deserve a visit from Clinton, but the world is more nuanced than that.  The fact that Bolton was our Ambassador to the United Nations and can’t seem to grasp this as a diplomatic victory shows the utter incompetence of the Bush Administration when it came to foreign policy.  John Bolton might have been a diplomat in title, but he doesn’t seem to show much of a grasp for diplomacy.

This anniversary should stand as a reminder to everyone of what terrible consequences come from war and what hard choices leaders must face during a war.  We can go back and forth on the merits of war and when it is justified.  Many will say it is never justified, but I would disagree.   What makes war justified is a topic for another day.

It’s hard to define a black and white definition of when nuclear weapons should be used as well.  I think the list of acceptable reasons would be very, very short.  However, when faced with the specter of an invasion expected to kill hundreds of thousands of your own soldiers against an enemy that had proved to fight to the last man in countless previous engagements, this was a choice that I think ended up being pretty clear cut for President Truman.

As I said before, war has terrible consequences and this should stand as a reminder of them.  Yes, in the end there is a “winner” in war, but the human toll and lasting affects on the populations of both sides is something we should always seek to avoid.