This is what the Tea Party wants… it wants inefficient local governments to take over all functions save defence and foreign affairs (even those things that local government can’t do, why?)… it will up your taxes, increase the boodle available to politicians, and allow the oligarchs to rape the environment and the working people… and the converts in Orthodoxy support this, by and large… reflect on that (are they really “one of us”… do ask yourself that).
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In the USA, in the run-up to the elections, the Republican Party has limited itself to brutal criticism of its Democratic rivals. It has no positive programme…
Only a matter of days remains until the midterm elections in the United States. Why do elections have to be held on the Tuesday after the first Monday of November? It remains unclear to me. When I asked, no one in the Congress, in the White House, or at Harvard could explain why. On 2 November, voters shall select the members of the House of Representatives, one-third of the Senate, and a large number of governors and mayors. With the midterm elections in the United States just around the corner, political analysts are in for a hot season. Most tend to believe that the Democrats are going to suffer substantial losses. However, election forecasting is a tool used to exert pressure on voters. Often, in US mid-term congressional elections, which take place two years after the presidential vote, the ruling party fails to keep many of its election promises, so, it loses a considerable section of the electorate that supported it in the last election.
The forthcoming elections are taking place in the midst of a continuing economic crisis. According to official figures, every seventh American is at or below the poverty line. Unemployment has reached an alarming figure, 10 percent, a level not seen in America for over two decades. The Republicans focus their election campaign on this, as if they didn’t have a hand in putting the country’s economy into such a plight. It’s as though they forgot that the Republican administration of George Bush drove America into the hole, by unleashing the arms race and waging a war in Iraq. The US federal debt has reached an unprecedented thirteen trillion dollars (400 trillion Roubles 9.448 trillion Euros 8.268 trillion UK Pounds), and this debt didn’t come out of nowhere. Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, said, “There is no such thing as a war that you don’t have to pay for. The Iraqi adventure has noticeably undermined the US economy. You cannot splurge a trillion dollars (30.746 trillion Roubles 726 billion Euros 636 billion UK Pounds) on an abortive war, and avoid a day of reckoning at home”.
Naturally, the pre-election rhetoric of the Republican candidates didn’t mention Professor Stiglitz (or his criticisms) during the election campaign. They also neglected to mention the fact that it was with the connivance of the sitting Republican administration that Wall Street bankers got a free hand to commit criminal financial fraud, which eventually led to the infamous banking crunch in the autumn of ’08, and it triggered a devastating crisis that first struck the American economy, and, then, assumed global proportions. The Obama administration endorsed the Banking Regulation Act, which aimed to restrict the high-handed actions of big business tycoons; Republicans on the campaign trail violently attacked this regulation.
As a result, we witness that the so-called election campaign in the USA, this democratic election, is in defiance of all internationally recognised standards, let alone elementary rules of basic human decency. As the election campaign gathered pace, President Obama came under a barrage of turgid tabloid attacks, personal innuendoes, and unsubstantiated dirty gossip. The popular networking site Facebook, visited by 250 million people daily, even placed a question, “Should Obama be killed?” This certainly costly entry hung on the site for 24 hours, and it was only removed after the US Secret Service intervened. As Election Day in the United States draws closer, the Republicans are set on seeking revenge for their ignominious defeat two years ago. They lust for power, but they have no clear programme of their own, and do nothing but violently lash out at their Democratic rivals. Thus, Americans are facing elections without a real choice.
13 October 2010
Valentin Zorin
A View from Moscow
Voice of Russia World Service
http://rus.ruvr.ru/2010/10/13/25881270.html
Editor’s Note:
What truly amazes me is how many konvertsy have climbed on the Tea Party bandwagon. It doesn’t matter that all the GOP has to offer is failed policies. Two things blind them:
- The Tea Party’s pledge to criminalise abortion
- The Tea Party’s acrid anti-gay stance
The Church has a more nuanced stance on both issues. As far as abortion goes, the Church teaches that it’s an immoral action… but it also has pity on those who have undergone it. There are situations (admittedly, very rare) where actual moral dilemmas face a woman and her doctors. That’s why we should never criminalise it. We should do our best to discourage it, to teach that it’s not a good method of contraception, and to point out the moral evils of the procedure. Nevertheless, it should remain legal for the rare cases where there is a real choice between the mother and the baby. The Church appoints a special prayer for a woman who has undergone an abortion, after all.
As far as the anti-gay rhetoric of the Sectarians (which the Tea Party parrots uncritically), I would counter it with what His Holiness teaches. He says that we respect all human choices, but there are human choices that the Church cannot support, therefore, it preaches against certain actions, but also preaches that we shouldn’t harm those who make “wrong choices”. That is, the Church isn’t going to approve of “gay marriage” any time soon (or any time later), but it’s also not in favour of civil disabilities for homosexuals, either.
In short, the konvertsy take a mindless “conservative” (actually, extremist Neoliberal) position and confound it with the Church’s position, which is downright wrong. The Church is better than that, thankfully… it doesn’t stand on the quoting of the Scriptures, canons, and Fathers in bad heterodox translations. It stands on the reality of its only Head, Christ (which is why we can NEVER support any form of papism). The Church DOES NOT support the greed, corruption, and cupidity of Neoliberal Entrepreneurial Capitalism… Patriarch Kirill condemned it as an utter fraud, and he called us to bring about a more just economic structure. You can back up His Nibs, or, you can disregard him and follow Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh, to vote for the oligarchic list (their motto is, “Greed, not need… that’s for me”). As far as I’m concerned, it’s no contest… what about you?
What a buncha maroons…
BMD
