Archive for the ‘The Politics’ Category

Mitt Romney’s tax documents were released today and a lot of people are up in arms about it. I’ll just fill you in ahed of time about me. I’m a very liberal Democrat who fully plans to vote for Obama again this year because I like him and think that he is doing the very best job he possibly can in the situation presented to him. You are welcome to tell me why this is a bad idea, but until a Republican candidate comes along that isn’t homophobic, doesn’t tell me what to do with my uterus and doesn’t want to make this the United State of Jesus Christ, I won’t be persuaded.

Anyway, back to Mitt Romney and the outrage. I am not one of the outraged. Yes, Mitt has off shore accounts, yes he only paid 14% of his yearly income in taxes, but the fact is that it was totally legal. And I can’t blame Mitt for that.

I blame Congress.

There have been many, many attempts to change tax policies. The people have spoken, repeatedly, and they want the wealthy to be taxed more to help manage the deficit. And yet, the Republican caucus continues to block all attempts to, you know, raise revenue for our badly indebted country because they are protecting the extremely wealthy. Like Mitt Romney.

Mitt Romney simply did what was legal. He paid what he was supposed to pay and he has legal bank accounts. Sure, keeping bank accounts in the Cayman Islands is totally smarmy, but we’re talking politicians here. If you’re not expecting them to do seriously smarmy things you’re kidding yourself.

Should Mitt pay more? Ethically and in terms of what’s best for the country he wants to lead, yes, absolutely. He should pay the same tax rate as his constituents. He should not be able to hide money away overseas, but this is the legal hole we dug, now we need to lie in it without blaming him.

We need to lie in it or we need to get outraged at the people who made this possible. Don’t yell at Mitt, I am an absolute believer in giving taxes to the government pay for social welfare programs, but just like anyone else, I wouldn’t pay a dollar more than asked. And I don’t expect Mitt to be any different.

Write to your congressman, tell him or her that you want fair taxes, that the wealthy should never pay a smaller percentage of their income that low and middle class families. If you can’t see how wrong that is, then I can never understand you.

We absolutely need to do something different in this country. We need to get rid of these Bush era tax cuts. They don’t spur the economy, they allow millionaires to keep more of their money that the middle class and they are preventing us from pulling in valuable revenue.

I’m not asking you to agree but for the love of all that is good, don’t vote for Newt Gingrinch because of Mitt Romney’s taxes (I mean, really don’t vote for Newt at all, but definitely not for this). Being rich and smart is unfortunately not a crime, no matter how frustrating it may be to those of us who don’t fulfill the former attribute.

Blame Congress. And in November, elect officials who are going to represent the will of the people, not the will of the elite.

On Monday, the state of Michigan was set to pass a new bill to protect kids from bullying. The law, named “Matt’s School Safe Law” was championed by a Michigan family whose teenage son, Matt, committed suicide after being bullied for being gay. Michigan is one of only 3 states that don’t have anti-bullying laws, so this whole thing sounds pretty great, right?

Wrong.

First, Michigan Republicans added some special provisions to the bill. They only agreed to pass the measure if it did not require schools to report bullying, didn’t train teachers to handle bullying and couldn’t punish principals if they didn’t do anything to stop bullying. So basically, they only agreed to pass it if it was a bullying law that did absolutely nothing to stop bullying.

But wait, it gets worse.

Because not only did they make it so that bullying doesn’t need to be enforced, but they also added a special provision. Bullying is illegal and is punishable…except if it’s done with religious motivation.

I’m just gonna let that sink in for a second.

In Michigan it’s illegal to bully unless you have a moral objection to something someone is doing. Hmmm, what kind of bullying could they possibly be protecting? Oh right, the exact kind that motivated this law. The head of the American Family Association told reporters that this religious protection was necessary for bullying because they didn’t want this bill to be “a Trojan horse for the homosexual agenda.”

The homosexual agenda.

I’m pretty sure this agenda currently consists of: prevent gay teenagers from being bullied, get closed-minded Republicans to stop hating them, be allowed to get married like all other consenting adults.

THE HORROR. Please write more laws to protect me from these horrible people and their terrible intentions.

This bill that was supposed to protect kids from bullying and was supposed to literally save lives, is now the most impotent, ass backwards law there has ever been. This law gives kids a free pass to bully gay kids if their religion opposes homosexuality. Or if they say it does.

I am trying so hard to be relatively balanced, but I am so angry at these Republicans that I can hardly see straight.

How can these adults in government possibly think that this protects anyone besides bullies? It doesn’t allow schools to crack down on bullying, it protects bullying of homosexual kids. They may as well make all bullies in charge of schools. At this point, that would hardly be worse.

I cannot begin to imagine what Matt’s parents must be feeling right now. They set forth to do something really great with their loss. They planned to protect other families from the hell they’ve been forced to live with. And their legislature, no, the Republicans in their legislature, took their mission and flushed it down the drain. They took something with the ability to do so much good and made it a Trojan horse for the homophobes, the religious zealots and the bullies of the world.

These are not the people that need protection.

If you are not outraged by this, I truly question your humanity. That any adult can stand aside and let kids get bullied to the point that they see no option except to take their own lives is disgusting to me. That we can protect that bullying is even more reprehensible. If another teen in Michigan dies like Matt did it will be the fault of the Republicans in Michigan who cared more about stopping some imaginary homosexual agenda than protecting teenagers in their state.

This is a tragedy.

(The information above comes from these two sites and my deep seated anger.)

You guys, I have tried so hard to not be political lately, but I have run out of self-control. I basically have 2 back-to-back political posts in my mind and since election day is tomorrow, I figured I should get this one out first. The other one is less pressing and a lot less dividing. So I can bring us all back together after dividing us tonight. You are welcome.

So Mississippi is voting on Personhood. The idea is that the instant an egg is fertilized it is a person.

If you cannot see through this as an obvious way that a religious organization is trying to make abortion illegal than you are blind. Because it is blatant. I’m not going to argue abortion with you because there are no winners in that debate and I just don’t feel like engaging it. Plus, there are enough reasons why this law is wrong that I don’t even have to.

For starters, there are about 800 things wrong with having people vote on what goes on in a woman’s uterus. I’m sorry, but I do not want the uneducated moron living next door to me having ANY say on my reproductive organs or health ever. Nor do I want them having a say about my children. Just no. This is not an issue that should be voted on at all, but especially not considering how vague the measure is. It doesn’t specify how far things could go, which is intentional so that if passed (and I fear it will be passed) they can make a whole host of things they don’t like, illegal.

Beyond that, there is an obvious issue of not knowing the moment of conception. You have no idea that an egg has been fertilized unless you’re doing it under a microscope.

One of the big things that keeps being brought up is how if you murder a pregnant woman you get charged with a double murder, and therefore, a woman who has an abortion should also a murderer. But I just wonder how far we can take this. If a woman drinks alcohol before she knows she’s pregnant, can she be charged with child endangerment? I mean, if the two cells in her uterus is a person, isn’t she endangering their wellbeing? Shouldn’t she be arrested and jailed?

I am personally not able to use any birth control except an IUD because of concerns about the pressure in my head. And under personhood? I might not be able to use it anymore. Some IUDs work by not allowing fertilized eggs to attach to the uterine lining, and while I get that a lot of people are offended by this kind of birth control, I am not one of them and I want my IUD back. And since we don’t want 800 kids within 8 months of each other, we’re going to need some birth control. Or would you rather pay for food stamps for my family? I know that conservatives love government welfare! Surely that’s better than a contraceptive device that wouldn’t let two cells attach to my uterus. Additionally, Plan B wouldn’t be available for purchase anymore since it would technically cause the death of a 2 celled “person.”

As far as in vitro fertilization is concerned, you’d never be able to discard fertilized eggs that cannot be used. And more troubling, “personhood” could make it illegal to use embryos for stem-cell research which is vital to finding cures for hundreds of terrible diseases.

Above all else, this movement just plain doesn’t make sense. A fertilized egg doesn’t have nerve endings. It doesn’t have organs. It doesn’t have a heartbeat. It doesn’t have arm buds or a brain. My cat is 8000 times more of a person than a fertilized egg is. I think if we’re going to start giving 2 celled organisms this many rights that we should also no longer be allowed to squash bugs or euthanize pets.

I beg of you, see through this veiled attempt to end abortion and let that issue be dealt with in court. Don’t let people vote to make decisions for your reproductive health. Don’t let religious zealots hamper the ability for us to learn invaluable information about diseases and treatments that could save real people who are living among us today.

No one wins if this amendment passes. Especially not women.

Please vote no on “personhood.”

So, before I say anything, I need you all to understand that I am a bleeding heart liberal. I voted for Obama and I will vote for him again next November. I oppose the death penalty with my whole heart, am pro-choice and opposed to religion being all up in my government. I don’t like guns and I don’t think that everyone should be able to drive to Walmart and get one. I want the wealthy to be taxed the very same percent as the middle class and I cannot understand how anyone is opposed to that.

And as far as I can tell based on what I’ve read, I support the Occupy Wall Street movement. With one exception.

I am a full time graduate student. My husband is a relatively newly graduated doctor. We are basically connoisseurs of student loans. When I finish with grad school in May, between the two of us we’ll just a hair shy of $500,000 in debt for our educations. That is no chump change. And though my husband has good earning potential (not as great as you think), I will probably never exceed $65,000 a year no matter how long I work.

And so it is from this perspective that I whole heartedly disagree with the protesters who are trying to get the government to forgive student loans. And ESPECIALLY the ones who are comparing it to slavery. Student loans are NOT slavery. And not only is it moderately offensive to say that, it’s also just stupid.

Before I go any further, I need to acknowledge that I understand that there are many new graduates who cannot find a job and I do wholeheartedly believe that there absolutely need to be better ways to defer loans for those are unemployed. Forbearance is not a reasonable option in this economy and so for those struggling to pay their loans back while unemployed, my heart goes out to you. But other than that, I cannot feel sorry for people with student loan debt. You are not slaves. You chose your school and it was no secret what the cost would be.

I don’t expect every student to be able to get scholarships or hold a full time job, that’s unrealistic. But it’s not unrealistic to expect students to pay back the money they borrow for their education. That’s called being a grown up. You make promises, you keep them. You say you’re going to do something, you do it. This is not slavery, this is adulthood. Suck it up and deal. No one expects you to enjoy giving away a chunk of your income, but you don’t get to go to college for free because you don’t want to pay back your loans.

I abhor the idea of paying back loans for the next 20+ years, I hate that we won’t be able to own a house for quite some time because our student loan payments will be prohibitively high. But I knew that when I chose my graduate program. I knew it was more expensive than other programs, I knew it was a serious financial commitment and I plan to stick by it. I made a choice and though following through with it sucks, I’m going to do it anyway. Life is a series of choices and it’s time to take responsibility for them.

I can only hope that more students, including my fellow bleeding heart liberals, can grow up and do the same. No one’s asking you to like it, but for the love of God, stop comparing it to an institution that forced a race of people into manual labor against their wills. You should know it’s not the same.

Or maybe we should be talking to your schools about teaching American history a little more thoroughly.

Picture: CNN iReport

The year was 1965. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was an African-American and the woman was Caucasian. They were citizens of the United States, he was allowed to vote, to fight for his country, but he could not marry the woman he loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated him. They quoted the bible. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites . . . you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them . . . Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.” Deuteronomy 7:1-4 (Abridged)

But they pushed on. They fought on. And in 1967, the Supreme Court of the United States declared in the decision of Loving v. Virginia that:

“Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival…. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

And so they married. And lived a long life together.

———–

The year is 2011. A man fell in love. His partner loved him back deeply, and they decided to commit their lives to one another. The only problem was that the government in the state they lived in forbade their marriage.

You see, the man was in love with another man. They were citizens of the United States, they were both allowed to vote, to fight for their country, but they could not marry the person they loved.

People called their love unnatural. They couldn’t explain it. It wasn’t something they chose, it was something they felt. They were in love just as every other couple they knew, and they wanted to spend the rest of their lives together in a marriage. Just as all other citizens of the US were allowed to.

Some people hated them. They quoted the bible. “If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.” Leviticus 20:13.

But they pushed on. They fought on. Only, unlike the African-American man, the hatred has not slowed, the progress has not been made. These men, in love with one another, not trying to convert any other men, not sexual deviants, just two men, in love, still cannot marry. The Supreme Court has not yet said that “Marriage is one the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Oh wait. Yes they have.

50 years ago the Supreme Court granted the right to marry to interracial couples, saying that the anti-miscegenation laws were a violation of the constitution, despite public outcries and outrage. And now, all this time later, we see how awful the earlier laws were. We see how unfair and discriminatory they were. We see how we have wrong. And yet, we continue to commit these wrongs even today.

I can only hope that in the next few years we wise up, we learn from our past mistakes and we expand marriage to include same sex couples. To let them have the “basic civil rights of man” granted to all other Americans.

Maybe then freedom will truly ring throughout this nation. Maybe then we will stop hating each other for our differences and celebrate those differences as the stuff makes our country great.

I was talking with friends on twitter today when someone retweeted this:

When I read it, I literally gasped out loud. I was shocked that someone would be so outspoken and proud of this opinion.

But what bothered me the most was the tone. This person sounds as though they are God’s personal confidant, as though they know exactly what is right and wrong. After many people tweeted back at him for his statement he tweeted again.

And all I can say is, bullshit.

Just because you don’t use the word hate, or don’t use slurs, doesn’t make it not bigoted. Just because it was done in such a calm manner, it doesn’t make it any less intolerant.

That is intolerance, it is bigotry. Believing that others are wrong for being who they are is simply wrong. If this man wrote this tweet about marriage between different races, people would all be appalled. If this man wrote this tweet about marriage between religions, we’d be horrified. In fact, I’d bet that if he believed either of those to be true, he wouldn’t publicly post it because the vast majority of people would immediately dismiss him as a racist, as a bigot.

But for some reason, the issue of homosexuality makes people forget their humanity. We created marriage, it’s a document, it’s a ceremony. It’s a way to say that you are part of a family and that you are committed to someone. How it can be wrong to ever commit yourself to loving someone is completely beyond me. But I know that telling others that their love is wrong, that even if they get equal rights, they are still wrong is intolerant. It’s ignorant.

We look back on our history with regret for the years of racial discrimination. We realize how entirely wrong we were, we realize that the discrimination against African Americans was unfair, and yet, we continue to allow a similar discrimination to run rampant. We pretend that homosexuality is so different. We pretend that because you can’t tell homosexuality from birth, that if you are homosexual as an adult, you made a choice and that choice should prevent you from basic rights, from basic humanity. From being judged by others for being who you are.

I have confidence that some day we will look back and be ashamed at how long it took us to allow homosexuals the right to marry, how long it took us to be accepting. I hope that some day soon people can realize that the same morals that they hide behind in disagreeing with gay marriage also tell them to love one another. I don’t know, those tweets don’t sound like love to me. They sound like disapproval, like hate.

I hope that these people who cannot see their hate, cannot see their bigotry and intolerance will someday realize their mistakes and work to make them right. And that someday I won’t have to write about this because there won’t be people who believe that love is wrong.

I posted a comment on my facebook page and on twitter the other day, and it was meant to be a little tongue in cheek, but also, kind of true. It said, “Please let me know if you’re planning to vote for Donald Trump so that I can unfollow/unfriend you immediately.” A little mean, yes, but mostly meant as a joke. And to my surprise one of my high school classmates commented that he actually thought Trump had some good ideas.

A back and forth rhetoric got us onto the topic of immigration and it took all that I had to stay quiet.

On my last clinical I had an opportunity to see a different view on immigration and all I want to do is stand up and scream about it. You see, one of my patients was an American citizen but his mother and father were not. He was 20 years old and undergoing strong chemo and radiation for a spinal cord tumor and had been in the hospital continuously since November. Alone.

He had some family in the general area, but they could only come by every few weeks and to make matters worse, he developed some infections that required him to be on isolation indefinitely. For months he was alone in his room, no roommates, nurses only allowed in when gowned and gloved. This kid could literally not have been more alone if he tried.

In a family meeting his aunt came to ask the doctor to write a note. She said that our patient’s mother had been trying, for weeks, to come up to visit him, but the United States government denied her the documentation that would make her trip legal. She wasn’t applying for citizenship, she just wanted to spend some time with her son. To take care of her child. And the government said no. They said she was not allowed to see her son unless a doctor sent a note saying that he was dying. Ironically, though he was in the hospital, with active cancer and several other problems, he was not sick enough to see his mother.

He was not sick enough TO SEE HIS MOTHER. I can’t wrap my mind around that at all.

It broke my heart and it made me disappointed because I think we’ve reached a sad and scary point. We won’t let mothers drive 4 hours from Mexico to see their sons in the hospital. It wasn’t an elaborate scheme to move here and stay illegally, she wasn’t going to collect social security or have a job and not pay taxes, she just wanted to care for her child. And we wouldn’t let her.

I am not silly enough to think that there aren’t others who have abused the system, but at what point did the almighty dollar, did our repudiation of immigration, the very thing that got all of us here, exceed our capacity to care? I was disappointed when Congress failed to pass the DREAM act which would’ve given immigrants living here already, being educated in our schools already, access to financial aid for college. While it was being deliberated, my facebook stream was filled with people who hated the idea because we didn’t need anymore people on Welfare and stealing jobs.

I feel like I might have missed something. We seem to have given up on giving anyone the benefit of the doubt anymore and last time I checked, plenty of American citizens were on Welfare, were not paying taxes. We live in a black and white world and apparently if you are an immigrant, then you must be here to steal resources, period.

And I’m calling bullshit.

We need immigration reform, absolutely, but we don’t need to close our borders, we don’t need to refuse to let mothers visit their critically ill, but not terminally ill, sons. We live in this country because our families were allowed to immigrate. We are not citizens because we passed a tests or did something extraordinary, we are here because at some point, someone in our family moved here. So why is it that we are now so willing to prevent others from doing the same?

I just wonder where we would be if hundreds of years ago, people had turned their back on my family when they came to this country for a better life. I wonder if they would’ve sat silently while mothers were kept from their sick sons, simply because of where they were born.

I read this morning that the House of Representatives was going to vote to repeal the health care reform. And while technically I knew that the issue would never make it to the Senate (or if it did, it certainly wouldn’t pass) I just felt…sad. Sad and frustrated.

I know that there are a lot of reasons that people hate health care reform, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to share a really important reason why you should reconsider your position.

I was a very healthy kid. I broke my right arm at my sister’s birthday party when I was 8 and had allergies for as long as I can remember, but I didn’t have any surgeries, I was never hospitalized. I was about as normal as any kid could be. I was on my parent’s insurance when I was diagnosed with chiari malformation in 2006, and just a few months later I aged out of their coverage and moved across the country.

I looked into my work’s insurance and was disappointed to find out that while the teachers could buy into our school’s insurance, it was costly. But when I did some more searching and I found out that because of my chiari diagnosis and my history of depression and eating disorder, I was 100% uninsurable. I couldn’t even get a price quote because no one would even pretend to be willing to accept me.

My only choices were to spend more than my monthly salary for Cobra (which would provide me the same coverage I had through my parents) or spend $350 a month and get my school’s insurance since it was guaranteed for all employees. And while it maybe doesn’t seem like it, $350 is a lot each month for a private school teacher.

When I moved back to California in 2009, I did the same research. And came up with the same answer: I am uninsurable.

If my future employer doesn’t offer insurance, I will have to go without health insurance. And yes, many people can get away with this, but if I didn’t have insurance from August 2009 to July 2010 I would’ve paid more than $200,000 out of pocket.

Two hundred thousand dollars.

So in reality, I wouldn’t have been able to get medical care at all. Not for strep throat, not for 11 months of crushing headaches. I wouldn’t have the medications that have allowed me to continue school and be functional despite headaches, I would probably be on disability, because that’s what my life would be reduced to.

I just want you to think for a minute what it would be like to desperately need medical care and neither have insurance nor money to do it.

Here’s the thing- my story isn’t unique. In fact, I’ll bet there are many of you here who share the same fears and maybe even the reality of my nightmares.

All over this country there are people who cannot acquire insurance because of their past medical history. Cancer survivors, children with birth defects or who were born prematurely, adults who’ve done everything right, but whose body had other plans. Some of them are completely healthy now, but because they once struggled with their health, they won’t have insurance to cover them if they’re in a car accident, or if they fall and break a bone.

All of these people cannot get medical care, and the great irony is that these are the people who need it the most.

Repealing this health care reform takes away our only chance at being able to get insurance without a job or a spouse whose work provides it. Millions of people who need health care will not be able to get it without this reform and to pretend like this isn’t about people is wrong. This isn’t an issue of money, it isn’t an issue of government intrusion, this is an issue of providing medical care to millions of people who cannot get it on their own.

I have heard so many complaints about the costs, both literal and figurative, of this reform, and I just have to wonder what is really more costly: health care reform, or the lives of those who will not be able to get medical care without it?

47 and a half years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave a speech in front of a crowd of people. He spoke eloquently of the hopes he held for his children, of the hopes he held for this country. He spoke about the things that divide us and the things that could bring us back together.

Martin Luther King Jr. lived in a world that was not so different from our world today. It was a time of political turmoil where the differences that separated people seemed enormous. It was a time where many were fighting for rights that others never had to give a second thought to, that seemed so very basic. It was a time when violence was common, when people were overcome by anger, by confusion. Where the whole country seemed on the brink of war.

And yet, Dr. King stood amidst the churning seas of violence and he preached non-violence to his followers, even when others were violent to them.

As I read the news today, stores of those in Tucson, stories of those around the world, I was overcome by disappointment. I think if Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today, he would be disappointed. Yes, civil rights were extended to African Americans in the United States, but the violence of the political parties, the refusal to give fairly basic rights to homosexuals scream out at me. We can do better than this.

We can extend rights to people so that when my children are old enough to marry, they can marry whoever it is they love, regardless of gender. We can extend non-violence and use diplomacy so that my children will never know a world where politics is ever even considered to be a source of violence. We can love each other, we can support each other.

We can do better. And I think we owe it to those who came before us, those who fought for what we have today, what we don’t give a second thought to, to try harder. I can’t wait for the day where Dr. Kings dreams are realized. Where children will live in a nation where all men are truly created equal. Where “‘justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

He had a dream. Let’s keep fighting for it.

Almost as soon as the shooting in Arizona was reported by the news on Saturday, accusations began floating across the internet. Soon those accusations were backed up by pictures and quotes, others were hurled out without the benefit of research. It was a mess to watch unfold.

People began to see images like the map and tweet below and things only got worse from there.

Sarah Palin’s camp has come out to say that the map and the slogan were about voting, not about violence, but I struggle to see that. I don’t know about you, but when I see pictures of cross hairs or when I hear the word reload, my first thought could hardly be farther from a ballot.

That said, I don’t think Sarah Palin and the Tea Party are responsible for this shooting and I think we need to stop blaming them. There’s no evidence suggesting that the shooter ever saw these images, let alone that they inspired him to open fire on those people. We need to stop jumping to conclusions.

BUT…

We need to question whether a young person could have been influenced by those types of things, because I don’t think the idea is all that far fetched. We need to consider the effect that images like that, that words like those could have on young people. We need to consider if we’ve taken politics a little too far.

I think that we should all stand up and demand that this stops. I think that the Palin camp needs to stop silently scrubbing their images from the internet and pretending like they were never there. They need to stand up, acknowledge that this tragedy has taught them that they need to be more conscious of their images. It doesn’t mean that they need to accept blame for what happened, they simply need to acknowledge that they were wrong in using gun images to grab voters.

And they are not the only ones responsible. For examples of violence propagated by democrats, see here and here (and thanks to commenters for supplying those examples).

We all need to stop saying that we want to kill people, even if it’s meant to be humerus. We need to teach our children the value of discourse instead of the value of tearing down those we disagree with and we need to do that by setting an example. We need to learn the power of our words- both in how bad they can make things and in how amazing they can be when used for good.

We need to stop blaming Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement for the tragedy in Tucson, but we need to hold them, and others who inadvertently advocate violence, accountable for the damage they could’ve done. We need to make sure that we all stop with violent images, stop with language that incites violence and start using words and images that focus on the issues we care about.

We need to teach our children that we don’t need to hate those who think differently that we do. Our lives are too precious to spend so much time and energy on hate. And there’s way too much at stake to not remove the violence from our children’s lives.

We owe it to the victims and families of those in Tucson to make sure this never happens again.