I’m back from my summer vacation, and ready to go. The sun agrees with my hair, giving me nice natural red highlights and reinvigorating my thoughts to get back into things.

Today, I predicted a Republican president will be elected in 2016. I’m on the fence as to whether Senate will fall that way in 2014, but honestly I could see that as a very real scenario. I’m not sure if this prospect scares me or if I’m ok with it in the long run. I suppose that depends on the particular Republican or Republicans that get voted in. But I definitely see it occurring.

With a Republican, the budget might get back on track. Why? One reason is they’ll end this gravy train people are riding on. With outrage growing on all the conservative media about how much welfare fraud that exists, any reasonable person that acknowledges the problem won’t sit back and allow it. Fox News, for instance, should change its slogan from “Fair and Balanced” to “A Hand-up, Not a Hand Out” because they ram that catchphrase down your throat. And you know what? They’re right.

It’s not entirely the fault of the people who take advantage of this system that was put into place to allow people to get help when they work hard and still fall short. The loopholes that exist so people can take advantage of said system because work is “too hard” are to blame and make those people who need the help feel like they are being attacked because they need it, if they’re lucky enough to get the help as is with money being given to the “loopholes” and not the “help outs”. It’s terrible when I wait for a hospital bill that’s probably going to hit me hard, and my first thought is “my husband should quit his job, because we’d be better off that way”. And the real sin of it all? That statement is absolutely true. It’s estimated that in America, 40 states get more than minimum wage in money. In Massachusetts, it’s estimated that a person on welfare makes the equivalent of $14.66 an hour. (In Hawaii, they do much better. They get around $17.55 an hour.)  What’s the incentive to do something with your life if you make nearly double minimum wage to sit around and do nothing for it? I know some people who work hard and get help because going to school and working full-time doesn’t always pay the bills, especially if you only make $8 an hour. This isn’t to take away something that people need, this is to make a realization that something needs to change before everyone decides getting a job isn’t worth it.

That is why a Republican will win. They already care more about business than actual people, so cracking down on broken systems mean nothing to them but cutting the fat like laying off people so they can keep their pockets lined with profits. If that lined pocket is America and is going back into Social Security and Medicare or some other program that there’s a need for,  I can’t say I have too much of a problem with that. The easiest way to do that is to not necessarily raise taxes, just the number of people paying them. And to do that, they need to make getting a job and working hard more profitable to the people than not working.

This scenario isn’t all a peachy one though, as for a group that touts such anger in our civil liberties being stolen from us, they are willing to take the ones they want to take away from us too as we can see most recently in Texas. We can choose guns to kill people with, but abortion is bad because it kills. Pro-life only applies to a fetus, but death penalty for all because we can pick and choose whether we believe only God can decide matters of life and death. People should get married unless you’re gay, in which case there’s a closet waiting for you. Those are the costs people are going to be willing to pay to see real change in the financial direction of America. I don’t understand why we have to make that choice? Can’t we get real reform and the ability to keep people’s private lives private and their own business?

People say this was how Obama “bought” the election,  but I don’t buy it. If people don’t want to interfere their busy days of video games and television to work, do you really think they’re going to remember or even care to go out and vote? He won because people were terrified of losing rights to choose in their private lives and I’m certain that’s absolutely true. I bet we would have lost our private rights while listening to those poor NRA guys complaining about their precious arsenal. Complain about it with an internal ultrasound and see how you feel about your rights. If the Republicans want to win, they have to decide to leave the matters of the bedroom and women’s bodies out of the discussion and stick to the real reform they tell us they want to make. They can fix the budget without trying to reverse Roe vs. Wade or ban marriage equality. Unless they do that, I don’t see how they can win in the future.