Day 13

The telling of a lie causes damage.  This damage may not be noticed right away and may not be understood as coming from the lies.  This to me is true in our lives as well as in the public realm.  In our lives when a lie is told it can be noticed in the loss of a family life and a home.  Lies can range from the white lie that is about how a pair of pants makes you look to the major lie of I am pay the bills in our personal life.  In a public life the lies can range from saying that baby is the most beautiful girl I have ever seen to saying this country has weapons of mass destruction.  The former causes no harm the latter great harm.  When people on a public platform speak they need to be aware of the fact that making a statement may cause great harm.  Standing and telling people to take arms to fight for what they think is right can cause people to die.  When you speak in a public forum you really have no clue of the state of mind of the people you are speaking to and what you say to someone may be the last straw that they needed to push them off the cliff.  Our country prides itself in the freedom of speech.  This is why I am able to write these words today without fear of repression.   What we forget is my freedom stops where your freedom starts sort of like little bubbles that should not be popped.  We saw this the other day when the President was speaking about the drones and a woman saw fit to interrupt him.  His freedom of speech was being stomped on by this woman and the President had to point this out to her.  She could be free to get a soap box and go speak in a public square to any who wanted to listen but the President had arranged to speak in this place to the people that wanted to listen to him.  We have been able to see how inflaming people to take action with guns by shooting the people they disagree with.  This happened to Gabby Gifford when she was out to speak to the people of her district.  The young man that shot her was mentally disturbed and the words of Sarah Palin to take aim at the people that do no believe her way may have been just enough to put someone in this mental state over the edge.  The edge he was driven off left several dead and many injured.  This was something that Sarah Palin felt was maybe a funny way to make her point but the consequence of her words were deadly.  Take this up a notch.  When President Bush lied to us about the weapons of mass destruction and used this to take us to war there have been thousands of lives lost.  Families that will never see loved ones again.  I am not so sure of the motive of this lie.  It may have been because President Bush wanted to take revenge for a war that his father did not finish or it may be even more sinister then that.  I am going to at this point make my own assumption that may have merit or not.  Dick Cheney just happened to own a lot of stock in a company called Halliburton and they provide weapons to the army.  Dick Cheney was a key figure in the telling of the lie about weapons of mass destruction and when asked even now he says he would still recommend that we go to war.  To me a profound statement that he shows a lack of the ability to realize that his actions were wrong.  What if this war was made just to increase the amount of weapons that Halliburton sold to our country and therefore make their stocks rise causing profit for their stockholders?  The thought makes me sick.   We need such sweeping change in how our political system works.  With this thought in mind I would like to see a law that says that all politicians cannot hold any stocks.  This would prevent actions from being made for their own personal profit.  The lies that are told in a political venue should have a punishment class all their own.  This would limit what both sides say about the other and end a whole lot of rhetoric coming from both sides.  Perhaps if a politician were to be faced with fines and or jail depending on the level of the lie they might think twice about what they say and do.  I am personally sick of the lies we are told and find a person like Governor Christy very refreshing.  While I do not like his political views when he speaks it is from a point of the truth comes out of his mouth like when he was confronted about where his kids went to school.  I also feel that Joe Biden also holds this ability to speak his mind and it sometimes gets him into trouble but it is refreshing.  I wish to see more of the truth being spoken to the public and a whole lot less of the lies that we are fed.