A sobering look at the freedoms lost in this nation over the past decade.

We can, and should, do better.

Strange. It has finally occurred to the GOP, parts of it anyway, that their unconditional support for folks making money *might* actually lead to harm and undemocratic practices. Weird, I knew that by the age of five. Guess being raised by reasonable people makes a difference.

Granted, this may all be election year stunts and soon forgotten, but it is odd to be on the same side of an economic discussion with Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. Check it out here.

So, if you are Joe Paterno, you get to walk around as a free man with thousands, if not tens of thousands of people defending you and fighting to get your old job back.

Why? I honestly could not tell you.

If you are the average person, say, in charge of a few employees in a small shop. Say you found out from a reporting employee that they just saw another employee in a company restroom having forced sex with a pre-teen.

First, most of you would ask the idiot why thy didn’t try to stop it.

Secondly, you’d call the cops. Hell, call ANYBODY. Even NAMBLA probably has standards this violates. That’s right, I’ll say it. Even pedophiles don’t pull this crap in public. At least, if they do they sure as hell aren’t getting caught doing it.

Third, you follow up on the case.

Also, fourth, you do everything in your power to no longer be responsible for the character and activities of a child rapist.

What you do NOT do is wait a couple months after it turns out you barely did ANY of the aforementioned things, is try to say you sat on your hands and did not protect children because you really weren’t clear on what the policy was”.

Policy. He let a scumbag in his employee physically abuse children and didn’t do much about it because he wasn’t clear on the policy.

That, and, oh damn, he’s got cancer.

If you cannot do your job, which, let’s be fair, is to develop, train, educate, and KEEP KIDS SAFE! because of your guilt cancer, then QUIT!

But first, report the incident(s) and KEEP reporting and checking to make sure another child doesn’t get raped by your underling.

Don’t talk to me about “poor” Joe Paterno. He’s as guilty as the guy doing the acts.

I do not know what is worse, that we had a lunatic try to assassinate their elected representative and we learned nothing from it or that most of the hate-filled commenters on the story see no problem spewing their hate.

Have, at least, a small sense of shame when posting related to this story.

Fareed Zakaria points out that Romney – and the rest of the GOP and ALL American politicians to be honest – aren’t paying attention to their real long term issues.

All these lamentations about “job creators” and jobs “saved” by stripping factories of most of their value to pad investor’s pockets are missing the point. Barring selling Starbucks beverages and building things on site, America has lost the touch of making jobs that complete on the global stage. Fix THAT and you can probably save this nation from itself.

So, you DO have the right to police the police with your recording devices.

One more reason to keep these guys in office. Because you sure as hell aren’t going to get this opinion from the GOP.

A loaded headline to be sure but not too bad of an article.

I would argue that Obama is probably more of a Christian than any president we’ve had since Carter. You could argue with me, but you’d probably be wrong. He hasn’t cheated on his wife at any time we know of. Can’t say that for Reagan, Clinton, and probably Bush the Lesser. He actually hasn’t started a war. Sending bombing runs into Libya might count I suppose but it wasn’t “our” war in the traditional sense of the word.

Bush did what he could to stop profiling of Muslims after 9/11, but given the mob that elected him, that wasn’t much at all. Obama turned over DADT, belatedly, but he did.

So where is he “anti-Christian” except in expanding the rights of more Americans than others before him?

Face it, he wasn’t elected to be a secular pope. He was elected to lead ALL Americans to be more free and prosperous. No, not to let bigots reign or to let one hard-lined version of Christianity oppress people.

No, he’s a family man who acts like one probably would given the same job. Take care of the neighborhood, let the psychos down the street yell about secret Muslims, birth certificates, and whatever other BS bangs around in their tin foil hats, and just do what is right for the most people.

I wouldn’t want the job. Or, rather, you wouldn’t like me much either if I had it.

Simply put, well said.

Two things.

One, this article nails it. All this Republican bleating about almost non-existent voter fraud is all about disenfranchising folks who predominantly vote Democratic. Hell, I’d almost respect them more if they were honest about that.

Also, I like the comparison between the *fear* of voter contamination versus the actual small number of incidents as opposed to the large percentage of homicides committed with weapons. We have 14 states trying to solve a problem you need to be Sherlock Holmes to find in improper voting, yet almost anyone can legally own a weapon that can kill a person.

Strange, no?

Secondly, give the article a read. This is what I know Minnesota to be. Not Michelle Bachmann or Tim Pawlenty or Norm Coleman or folks who demand gays cannot marry while they sully their “traditional marriage” like former State Senator leader Amy Koch.

Folks like the author. Or the governor, Mark Dayton. Or Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, our senators. Or Tim Walz, our rep around these parts. Rational people, hell, even funny people despite – or maybe because of – all the challenges that face us.

Given the non-stop screeching of the GOP these days, it is good to remember that one of the reasons I moved here was to be around folks who want to make this nation better, and not just a Southern Baptist copy of Iran.

Some interesting cultural perspectives here, as well as some need to re-examine ye old “Protestant work ethic”.

You don’t have to be a Puritan to like your job and do it well. Something folks need to consider when they are sitting on their laurels as we Americans seem too busy doing these days.