Lowlights & Highlights: October 6, 2012

The homophobia of the Boy Scouts strikes again. 

I know that this video presented the story in a quasi-humourous way (such is the way of The Young Turks), but let's be real here for a moment. The message that the Boy Scouts is sending to young people is that it is okay, perhaps even "Godly," to discriminate against people because of who they are. I have no idea where in the Bible God says "Thou shalt discriminate," but this notion goes against everything I believe about God and loving thy neighbour. This young man worked really hard to achieve what he achieved and now, because of the Boy Scouts' discriminatory policies, it's pretty much all gone.

People should really think twice before allowing their sons into the Boy Scouts organization.

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I know that the presidential debate from this past Wednesday featured a performance by President Obama has been almost universally panned from both left and right. My main personal gripe is that Obama left a lot of ammunition in his clip: no mention of Romney's 47% comment is the primary one that comes to mind. I want to look on the bright side though. It may be that President Obama may have given Romney just enough rope with which to hang himself. After talking about how he is going to taxes while on the stump, Romney during the debate said he will not cut taxes for the wealthy like himself. That is an utter lie. Romney's tax plan (20% across the board) will cost $5,000,000,000,000 over ten years. Romney also said that President Obama is cutting Medicare funding by $716,000,000,000. Again, not true. Conversely, there is a Medicare cut of that exact same amount in the Paul Ryan budget plan. There are several other lies that Mitt Romney told and the verdict from the fact-checkers is pretty damning: 27 lies (or myths as Think Progress calls them).

While Obama left a lot of ammunition in his clip, Mitt Romney just gave him a lot more. I anticipate that the next presidential debate will be vastly different, and I hope President Obama will come out swinging.

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Programming note: I'm going to get this feature going again on a regular basis, except probably not this coming weekend as I will most likely be out of town for a wedding.