Bleeding Heart Liberal

I do not know about the liberal part, I am fairly confident that if at any point in your life you felt the correct answer was to make a crater out of all countries that are 80 % sand or more that the liberals won't have you, but bleeding heart I have been all my life.

The really funny part to me is that to this day I am both a "bleeding heart liberal," and a "right wing conservative" depending on who you ask, and yes someone related to me did give me a very square, very bleak briefcase one year for Christmas with the declaration "that since you are a Republican I thought you would like this."  I of course have also received, from someone else related to me, a briefcase befitting an English professor at Dartmouth College.  The answer is no one really knows what category to put me in, although I am fairly certain everyone has.

I have said on a number of occasions, and in a number of different formats, that my favorite commercial is the Coke commercial from the seventies where the young (hippie) girl singing the first line from "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing," and as they widen out she is at the top of a mountain with hundreds of other people standing in the shape of a Christmas tree and they are all singing.  I do indeed want to teach the world to sing, metaphorically speaking.

Without question I would like to help everyone that needs helping, be it folks in New Orleans that will have to try and recover from yet another hurricane, or the little kids I saw on the news the other night being raised in a family where the parents are king and queen and the kids literally run the household, cooking, cleaning, lunches, you name it.  There are homeless people all over the world that if they are able to work and work can be found for them great, but what about the homeless dad that has a seven year old child that needs care 24/7/265 and therefore cannot work?  Should someone like that not be helped.  How about the millions of folks that lost their homes, and the ones that would have, if someone had not stepped in to help.  I am not an economist, and I am not even that bright, so I know that there are all sorts of sides to the housing question and an incredible impact to both sides of the issue.  If you bail people out and help them stay in their homes someone has to pay for that.  If you sit back and let people default on their homes, spend the time to go through the process, someone has to pay for that as well, and you are left with a very different housing demographic when all is said and done, is that good or bad for the country.  It seems to me that both are bad, the question is which is worse for the country as a whole??  But at the same time you are then allowing people to fail, not helping people that could be helped, and where does that leave us??

What I do know that is if I won the lottery I would build a turf stadium, not lacrosse only, but lacrosse first and then everyone else as available.  If the money was great enough it would be more like a Dick's Sporting Goods kind of place like they have in Denver.  Next, I would set up a trust that would fund Boise State Men's Lacrosse forever.  Third, I would buy a really big, safe, cool car for my friend Fred Flintstones (the names have been changed to protect the innocent).  Next would be my Mom and my sisters, the Sage, my nieces and nephews, and some friends that have always been there, and once all that was taken care of the rest would go to starting a foundation, "The Bleeding Heart Foundation," to help all those that just cannot help themselves: cancer kids, homeless moms and dads, children and women of abuse, not that men are not abused, but the defenseless and the underdogs definitely come first.

I am OK with being a bleeding heart as long as those that are in need, that have had hard lives, that God threw the 12/6 curve to, are well taken care of by those can afford to help.  California would be a rich state if they ever had a governor that would tax Hollywood, but you can't get elected to that office in that state if you even suggest it.  Meanwhile the California education system, the teachers that teach there and the students that have no say in any of it have to deal with education from kindergarten through graduate school that is 100 % dependent on how much money you have and where you live.

I am not saying help those that can help themselves but choose not to, but rather help those that need the help and have no way out.  I am also saying thank every soldier you see as you travel through the airports, level any and all countries that want to mess with us, lock up and slowly torture any and all people that would do what Sandusky did.

I believe that I have just convinced myself that I am the definition of the middle...oh well!!  Or maybe I am a magnet, different polarity on each side??!!

By the way, one funny stat for all of you to ponder, in one single poll Americans said that they thought that President Obama would be better for the "middle class" (by 8 %) while Mitt Romney would be better for the economy (by 12 %).  Let that settle for a minute and then remember back to a math class you most likely had where you studied a curve that looked something like a bell.  To address the economy you have to impact as many people under the big part of the curve as possible...the middle class lives where under that curve??

I am apparently not the only one in the country that is confused!!