Klein + King - A Political Awakening

Its looking like Sam Alito is headed to the Supreme Court… and since I have never really gotten too political on this blog.. I figured that after almost three months here... why not find out more about what makes ol’ Nate tick politically?

I grew up in a home that was not particularly politically active. My parents voted Democrat.. and that was about it. There really wasn’t much political talk. However, I did realize several years ago that my mother was more liberal than I thought when it became public knowledge that Rudy Guiliani was having an affair while still married to Donna Hanover. My mother didn’t think it was such a big deal… while I was mortified.. Maybe its because I always liked Hanover back to the days when she anchored the Action News (or was it INN News) on Channel 11 in the pre-CW pre-WB days when Channel 11 was known as 11 Alive! Boy was she hot back then!

Speaking of WB.. Now that it has merged with UPN what is going to happen to Channel 9? I can’t believe Channel 9 officials didn’t get much advance notice of UPN’s demise. Since it won’t have any more UPN awful programming it has to come up with its own prime time shows, they have to go back to the old days of Channel 9 when they aired those horrible holiday commercials where terrified kids looked in the camera saying "My daddy works at Channel 9". Maybe they can get a sports package since local NBA and NHL fans never get to see their teams on broadcast TV.. Or perhaps they might get a game show block… They might also show movies. Or will they revert back to the old days when they had such locally produced shows like Morton Downey, 9 Broadcast Plaza and The Richard Bey Show?. It will be like being back in the late 80s.

Speaking of the late 80s that was when I saw the first of two landmark events that led to my Political Awakening. Back in 1988 a Long Island family had what they thought was a private situation involving a comatose pregnant woman. Nancy Klein suffered head injuries in a car crash, and doctors determined that if they aborted the fetus the woman would be able to wake from her coma. The husband agreed. But, before they had a chance to perform the abortion, 2 local Right to Life Organizations sued to become legal guardians to block the abortion from taking place. The case actually made it to the Supreme Court but they booted the crazy guardian scheme and allowed the abortion. Nancy woke up from her coma and although she is not 100%, she now delivers speeches to Pro Choice Groups.

The Nancy Klein event was when I permanently became Pro-Choice, and realized how scary life would be if the Supreme Court ever overturns Roe v Wade. I don’t necessarily think abortion is right.. but it must remain legal. I also realized this issue doesn’t have much to do with abortion… but about morons who want to butt into personal family decisions. The Right to Lifers, as evidenced by the Klein case are out of control and need to be stopped before things get too far... especially the extreme religious right. Sadly, this hasn’t stopped Bush from being elected TWICE.. And in reality the President’s most powerful job… is picking the Supreme Court justices who will ultimately keep or reject this law.

Who knows how the courts will rule on these type of topics if Bush keeps picking justices? The Right Wingers only care about their extreme beliefs and their attempts to overturn Roe v Wade could lead to a lot of scenarios. Lets say a rape victim wants an abortion.. . Amazingly some right wingers will say the procedure is ok if she was “raped” and that means a “crime” was committed.. Which means without a conviction, there was no crime, and then we will live in a society where victims of rape and incest will be forced to carry a baby. Do you really think a rapist would be convicted before the point where it would be safe to abort a fetus?

Exhibit B … Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. A family got into a debate about keeping her alive.. Once we saw the interviews with these family members it became apparent that this was the opening of a scab caused by a long running family feud between Terri’s parents and husband that started way before she suffered her brain injury. The extreme right wingers got wind of this intensely personal and private family feud, . and the next thing you know a crazy circus started outside Schiavos nursing home. And all because the right wing right to lifers felt it was their obligation to keep Terri alive. Since her death, there hasn’t been one iota of evidence that she had any type of brain function but the last month of her life the huge protests truly showed how incredibly evil some of these right wingers can get..

I like to see what other people think about these issues so I regularly read the letters to the editor. I always find something interesting, but a letter in a recent Jewish State struck me as THE most absurd thing I have ever read. The writer was commenting about a public Hannukah lighting ceremony in Edison. The rabbi of a local synagogue led the group in the prayers for the candles and at the end threw in a comment that the participants should pray for a painful death for the President of Iran in light of his comments that the Holocaust never happened and that he wants to get rid of Israel in the context of his building up his collection of nuclear arms.

The writer criticizes the Rabbi for wishing this on the Iranian president. And he’s right.. We shouldn’t be wishing a long tortured death on this man…. We should be wishing him a quick sudden death. A long drawn out death will give these evil spawns of Satan time to get an interim government together, while a sudden death will catch them off guard. Incidentally, this president whose health this Jewish State reader is concerned about recently made Parade Magazine’s Casey Kasem like Top 10 Worst Dictators list cracking the list at No. 9. Technically it was the dictator and not the president who made the list… The so called democratically elected president who cut his teeth as a hostage taker in the infamous 1979 incident can pass any law he wants… if the Dictator doesn’t like it, he can just veto it. One of his newest Hitler-esque transgressions is a law killing all homosexuals. I’d like to send a long distance dedication that the Ukranian President’s Food Taster get a job working for some of these government leaders!

Incidentally, the Jewish State letter writer who will remain anonymous because this blog is not here to embarrass people, had been quoted in the Jewish News at the time of the event.. He actually went home and composed the letter and sent it to The Jewish State which ends with this Mary Poppins nugget… “We should pray for the President of Iran to receive the knowledge and understanding that the Holocaust was an absolute tragic event in Jewish History”…

Of course it isn’t “nice” to wish harm on others… but 4 times a year at the Yizkor Memorial Services we say a prayer for the people killed in the Holocaust and the Cantor prays in Hebrew for people"killed by the Nazis… may their names be cursed”. Nobody objects to that.. Yet why object to wishing harm on a person who idolizes Hitler and is crafting nuclear weapons pointed towards Israel that have the word “Jew” carved on the warhead? Pre World War II, a lot of Jews looked the other way just like that letter writer while the Nazis took power. Just keep in mind that according to the Drudge Report, these same Iranian leaders are hoping to put "all of Israel into the same coma that Sharon has been in". As the saying goes.. “al teera - Never Forget’!!!

Speaking of Israel we could have a Schiavo issue there too. It seems obvious that Prime Minister Sharon’s brain function is quite minimal and almost non-existent after his stroke. This is not to be confused with the Palestinians who voted in Hamas last week, and killed any chance for peace. Of course this was part of President Bush‘s brilliant idea to bring “democracy“ to the Middle East… That‘s why our boys are in Iraq.. fighting for more Middle Eastern “democracy“. Maybe the injuries suffered by high profile ABC News anchorman Bob Woodruff will wake people up to the colossal waste of time this Iraqi war has become. One would think the heartbreaking plight of Cindy Sheehan would be a wake up call…. instead she has been the target of scorn by Bush lackeys such as Bill O’Reilly.

At some point.. probably after the March elections the time will come to make a decision about his feeding tube. I’m sure a lot of the more religious groups will lobby to keep him alive at all costs. Don’t forget the Lubavitcher Rebbe was brain dead for quite awhile before the machines couldn’t keep his body going anymore. Nonetheless, the Sharon feeding tube decision will not be an easy one for his family, and its very doubtful the public will fully support his sons should they decide to remove it.

Then, there was another eye opening event that brought me to where I am today politically...The Rodney King riots. I watched them on TV and soon realized that many of these people who were stealing TVs from electronic stores did so not because they objected to the beating King endured, but because … they wanted a free TV. Some of these looters were interviewed and said they felt entitled to their new electronic windfall… ironically the so called race riots led to some black owned stores being looted. And why weren’t these petty thieves at work? That was when I realized that something is horribly wrong with a welfare system that allows perfectly healthy people to sit on their tuchises all day and not work.. And many of my Democratic brothers were just sitting there looking the other way while all this was going on clinging to some crazy liberal viewpoint about the importance of welfare.

That was around the time when the Best President of my Generation… Mr, Bill Clinton took office. Unfortunately his legacy is Monica Lewinsky’s dress and getting impeached for lying under oath when some wiseacre popped a Lewinsky affair question to him while he was testifying under oath about an unrelated subject. But, do you remember what Mr. Clinton did in his first day in office?… He overturned the first George Bush’s crazy law that outlawed federally funded Planned Parenthood clinics from even mentioning a legal abortion as an alternative for any pregnant woman who comes there for a consultation.

Clinton also did something else that was much needed… Welfare reform… and now the free ride has considerably slowed down with Workfare programs.. The King free TV sale made me realize that you can be a Democrat and not liberal.. Which is why I am a conservative Democrat like Mr. Clinton. Some liberals are morons such as Ron Kuby (or William Kuntsler Jr. as I used to call him) He gives defense lawyers a bad name with his morning show on WABC that I stopped listening to years ago. (And defense lawyers are very important since constitutionally, every accused criminal deserves a defense so prosecutors stay on their toes and don’t get lazy.)

Some liberals are nice people but I can't understand the things that bother them.. I read a column by a liberal blogger who was upset about terrorists being tortured. That boggles my mind. Who cares? They’re terrorists.. And they deserve it. And, when they catch Osama Bin Laden…. I am all for a public hanging at the World Trade Center site…I will personally tie the noose! Some say he should be hung naked by his testicles.. I don’t agree… I say hack ‘em off before the hanging, as part of a massive beating one could model after the one Stewie gave Brian on Sunday’s Family Guy, and then sell the video rights on pay per view as a fundraiser for terrorist victims.

It’s interesting that from approximately 1994 - 2000 both parties drew quite close ideologically during that overlapping period when Clinton was Prez and Christie Whitman was the governor of NJ. Politically they were almost on the same page…… but the gap got much wider a few years back when the Democrats performed poorly in the Congressional elections and the Powers that be in the Democratic party decided to embrace more left wing causes and select a liberal like Nancy Pelosi to lead the party. And look how many big shots in the GOP put the kibosh on Whitman’s attempts to move up within her party because she is Pro Choice.

Lets hope the Dems get their act together by 2008 and the Supreme Court Justices all remain healthy.