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Is it a Bailout or is it a rich man’s Sodom and Gomorrah-out?

Look.   I want to make it clear.  I am ALL for the bailout.  But the very term bailout implies that some sort of  long term rescue.  If we are just delaying the inevitable, it really is not a bailout, is it?  Nothing that is currently happening is a bailout, but more like putting tons of money into a lemon car.  What is happening is more like gross moral sodomy on the American taxpayer rather than a bailout.  It does not seem that these people are not looking for a way to change what they are doing… they are looking for handouts.  It seems like nothing more than corporate thuggary Let’s look at some recent items of interest supporting my theory:

1. Electric cars exist.  There is no reason we should be giving billions of dollars to these guys who make junk when we could be creating jobs in the new marketthat I would guess is being suppressed by the big three.
2. People are trying to pin the mortgage debacle on government and forced mortgage.  Simply isn’t true.  It is due to greedy policies from greedy companies who are continuing extravagant behavior on the backs of the American tax payer.  I don’t care  if your bonuses are a drop in the bucket of the whole problem… why would the tax payer reward these people for doing a spectacularly crappy job.  If companies accept our money…. it should be like the IRS when they determine that the average guy owes.  The IRS will get the value one way or another.
3. CEOs of the big 3 fly in separate private jets to a hearing where they are going to beg for money.  Gee, its like giving money to the “why lie, I need a beer” beggar.  Kudos to Gary Ackerman (D-N.Y.) for saying “There’s a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands,”   Then, although their leadership has helped to fuck up the economy, would not work for a $1 in order to obtain the beggar bailout money these folks are asking for?  Surely, these people do not need to work.  They don’t care about their companies and the people at the companies THAT much.  The items shown today are a display of the kind of disgusting Sodom & Gomorrah style pigginess that most American’s hate.  — As a side note…mebbe that is the solution.  Find some way to reward the folks that are in it for the people instead of self-serving douchebags.  5 or 10 years of non-pay military style service for a select few for a lifetime of no personal tax?  Yearly reviews etc…. mebbe a final vote on who gets it and who doesn’t.  Just throwing that out there.  
4. Is the car company demonstrating a long standing policy of passion by asking for this money?  I don’t know.

These were just a few examples of the reasons why I think the current situation is not real and more of a practice in insanity (do the same thing with undesired results over and over) rather than a real bailout.  Do we need to save these insane companies from continuing the insanity?  Possibly if money is to go anywhere, we should be giving this money to the folks who are willing to earn crap and work hard for greatness. Not only individuals, but companies.

The American Nightmare is Almost Over. Post-Bush Reconstruction of American Ideals

It is a trite title, about the long American nightmare almost being over. And of course, the “nightmare” is the Bush Administration, but even more the conservative coup that has been imposed on America since 1980.

Maybe we are all still suffering from the political equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. Our captors did not arrest, imprison, or waterboard us, so we feel a little gratitude toward those people who kidnapped the American government for those eight long years. At least they did not do those things to us, so we are a little relieved.

Sure, maybe those neocon operatives of President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and those other members of the Republican leadership didn’t impact our lives very much, or at least as much as they could have done to us. Except to be in charge when America got attacked on 9/11, when the Patriot Act was passed, when we attacked Iraq to get Saddam Hussein and grab Iraqi oil and gain a strategic position in the middle of the Middle East, when Abu Gharaib happened, when the rest of the war was mishandled, when more than 4,000 Americans died as a result, when our planet finally gave us clear and convincing proof that it was warming, when our houses became worth less than only a few months before, when gas prices went above $4 a gallon, when our 401(k)’s became worthless.

And that is only a partial list of the things we know about. In the months and years to come, the full and true story will come out, even though President-elect Barack Obama is taking a Lincolnesque approach post-election: being decisive in his appointments, meeting with Senator John McCain shortly after the election, asking for forgiveness for Senator Joe Leibermann for campaigning against him, offering a significant role in his administration to his chief rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.

A view of what happened to America during the past eight years was presented by Joseph E. Stiglitz, “The Seven Deadly Deficits”, Mother Jones (http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/11/the-seven-deadly-deficits.html):

When president George W. Bush assumed office, most of those disgruntled about the stolen election contented themselves with this thought: Given our system of checks and balances, given the gridlock in Washington, how much damage could be done? Now we know: far more than the worst pessimists could have imagined. From the war in Iraq to the collapse of the credit markets, the financial losses are difficult to fathom. And behind those losses lie even greater missed opportunities…

One of the strengths of America is its diversity, and there has always been a diversity of views even on our fundamental principles-innocent until proven guilty, the writ of habeas corpus, the rule of law. But (so we thought) those who disagreed with these principles were a fringe, easily ignored. We have now learned that the fringe is not so small and includes among its numbers the president and leaders of his party. And this division of values could not have come at a worse time. The realization that we may have less in common than we thought may make it difficult to solve the problems we must address together.

As I have set forth some fairly moderate views in my submissions to this blogsite, I expected to have reactions, some favorable and some negative.. That is to be expected, especially when commenting upon an ongoing election.

But even though dissent is to expected, it was disappointing to realize firsthand that there are a significant number of people who bought into the Republican brain-washing to reject even the most basic and fundamental American principles of freedom and justice. Sadly, we have learned that the “fringe is not so small”, and we have seen what the fringe will do if given the political power.

And what Bush-Cheney did to America has been horrendous. It was nothing more than a coup, a hijacking of the American democracy.

It is well to remember the Ba’athists are still amongst us. The election of Obama as president, of 57 or so Senators, of a majority of the seats in Congress, and of Democrats in other state elections did not reverse the coup entirely. And rest assured, the vanquished remain only vanquished until the next election. Already, the plans have been made for conservative Republicans to take power and push through their agenda of suppression of individual rights.

It will take some time for the American people and our American institutions to recover from this full-frontal assault on American democracy and ideals. One does not shake Stockholm Syndrome overnight. It takes time to reconcile the horrors we have seen these past eight years under Bush-Cheney because what we, the American people, are undergoing is really a form of post-conservative stress syndrome.

The first step in our 12-step recovery program is to acknowledge what has taken place in our country since we silently sat back while the United States Supreme Court stole our election by a 5-4 vote in the infamous case of Bush v. Gore, 531 U.S. 98 (2000) and the companion case of Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board, 531 U.S. 70 (2000).

After we have acknowledged that we did not give a hew and cry to this abomination of the election process and stood by “graciously” while Bush-Cheney took over the American government, we have to accept that we were then powerless over the sway of the neocon hoards. We allowed ourselves to be powerless.

Dick Cheney had, in a grotesque Mein Kampf moment, laid out the agenda for Bush 43, in the ominously titled 1992 Draft Defense Planning Guidance. See http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1571.html for links. This early formulation of the neocon’s post-Cold War agenda into an entirely new foreign policy is chilling in its detail, especially viewed from a historical perspective of what has transpired in the last 16 years since it was written. Virtually all of the neocon agenda was implemented after 9/11, and in the context of the adoption of this Pax Americana view of American foreign policy, the Bush-Cheney lies about weapons of mass destruction promulgated as justification for invading Iraq become chillingly Orwellian in tone and structure.

And this perverted view of foreign policy, which was adopted almost in toto by the Bush-Cheney Administration, led to a plethora of other abuses of the American ideal of democracy. For one thing, it had a concomitant cultural aspect which required a blind acceptance of fewer individual rights. Even a couple of weeks ago, as this author was going through airport security, ignominiously removing his shoes, belt, and other clothing items while providing appropriate photo-identification which was inspected under a jeweler’s eyepiece by a security guard, a woman who was also in line said that at least what we were going through was for a good cause, meaning to catch terrorists. She did not even understand that what she was uttering was mere mimicry of the propagandist neocon line, that Americans would voluntarily give up their rights like so many sheep if they felt they would be somehow safer, regardless of whether they would actually be safer or not.

And under the illusion of patriotism, the Congress gave away even more of our fundamental constitutional rights. The Patriot Act, hastily adopted in the wake of 9/11, was a mistake. American had waged war with all sorts of other countries, other cultures with other customs and other religions, and other races before without changing our fundamental views about freedom, even if we made a few mistakes along the way (most notable was the United States Supreme Court decision upholding placing American citizens of Japanese descent on the West Coast into concentration camps).

But the idea of freedom seemed to die quickly, with every additional, horrible Bush-Cheney mistake. Going to war with Iraq was a $10 billion a month mistake. (What ever happened to the idea that Iraq would pay for the costs of its occupation with oil revenues?) Abu Gharaib was a mistake. Guantanamo Bay was a mistake. Giving the cell phone companies that actively assisted the government in monitoring conversations without search warrants immunity from lawsuits was a mistake.

Of course, that begs the question of whether these were merely a series of unfortunate or short-sighted mistakes, made individually and cumulatively but without an overall design or malice, or whether these were intentional and deliberate intrusions into our American freedoms.

And that is where we have some reconciliation to do. We have to reconcile the immediate past 8 years with our sense of American ideas and ideals. It will be painful.

So while we have symbolically overthrown the Bush-Cheney Administration and prevented by a surprisingly small percentage a continuation of the neocon philosophy, we are still not over the shock, the horror. It will take time to sink in. But we must start an honest and earnest examination of these past 8 years so we can see where we have been. We must make amends for the wrongs we have done. And we must be certain that those larger-than-expected fringe elements never assume power over us again.

C’mon guys… stop being stupid and get it together. This is a 21st century survival manual for US automakers

It’s really very easy.
Step one:  Make a vehicle that requires no gasoline and is affordable to buy.  If random dude can do it, so can you.
Step two:  Sell it
Step three:  Repeat
I know I might be over-simplifying this, but I tend to believe that this technology exists but just has not been exploited yet.  The oil companies certainly do not want to live in a world where oil/gas cars are not needed, right?  I am sure they are taking every step they can to prevent this from happening.  Some might argue that these same companies are spending X on research, but I say that this is like cigarette companies spending money on “quit smoking” campaigns.   They really don’t want people to quit smoking and oil companies probably don’t want people to “quit oil.”
So, why wouldn’t have the car companies come up with this?  Why?  I don’t know, but obviously what they are currently doing is working smashingly.  My guess is that historically it was a matter of expense and convenience.  They would have to make all new assembly lines and all of the other competitors would then have to make cars.  It all would be very costly.  Not to mention, I would guess that the auto industry has been in bed with the oil makers.  For decades, US automakers were king and everyone was happy.  Well, the time for complacency is over.  Any automaker that wants to make it needs to follow my instructions.  Sure, gas prices might be down today, but just wait a while. 

My prediction is that gas prices will drop below $40 a barrel to stop any alternative energy initiatives and move from there.  Once that is done they will return to record profiteering.  Car companies… use all of this bailout money that the government will inevitably throw at you and do something useful with it.  The other option is to go out of business.

Free For All Continues - 26 Things We Could Buy With Bailout Money

It has been reported that the Fed has loaned out 2 TRILLION dollars without disclosing where this money has gone.  The total cost of this fiasco is mounting and it is hard to even count the final bill.  As far as I can tell, we are in over $3 trillion buckaroos.  This is really repulsive and I just don’t understand it.  We are spending all this money on these companies, yet thousands of jobs seem to be lost every day.  We have poor and hungry in our nation except corporate parasites are having parties on taxpayer money.  I previously posted what we could buy for $700 billion bucks, but the following is a reproduction of the bailout considering $3 TRILLION dollars.

1.  Eradicate homelessness in America and buy a $857,000 home for every homeless American.  $3 trillion/3500000=$857,000.  BUY A MANSION FOR EVERY HOMELESS PERSON.
2.  Poverty in America could be eliminated for years.  In 2007, there were 37.3 million people in poverty which ends up being about $80,000 per person if the 3 trillion were distributed evenly.  According to the Census Bureau, poverty for a family of one is about $11,000.  Assuming every person is a family of one, we would eliminate all poverty in the US for about SEVEN YEARS.  NO POVERTY IN AMERICA FOR SEVEN YEARS! 
3.  Make every person in the state of North Dakota a MULTI millionaire (and I vote that I would get an extra few million for coming up with the idea)
4.  Buy 446 McDonalds double cheeseburgers off of the $1 menu for every single 6,725,792,474 humans on this planet.  BUY MORE THAN 1 CHEESEBURGER EVERY DAY FOR EVERY PERSON FOR A YEAR
5.  Pay off about all credit card debt in the US, UK and Australia.  PAY ALMOST ALL CREDIT CARD DEBT
6.  Find a cure for whatever George Bush has.
7.  Using the $1 a day standard of absolute poverty, we could stop absolute poverty WORLD WIDE for about a year and a half.  $3 trillion/1.2 billion people (older data I know) = 2500.  That is 6.8 YEARS of non-absolute poverty.  ELIMINATE HUNGER FOR ALMOST 7 YEARS
8.  Using Washington logic, we could buy $3 trillion powerball tickets.
9.  Send ALMOST $10,000.00 to every man, woman and child in the United States.  10 GRAND TO EVERY PERSON IN THE US
10.  Buy 1,315,789,473,486 shares of AIG.
11.  We could hire Almost 30 million people (40 hours a week, $30/hr, 52wks)to run around doing good deeds for a year.   That is a lot of good deeds.  Basically, WE COULD EMPLOY EVERY UNEMPLOYED PERSON PLUS A FEW 10 MILLION.
12.  Could provide health insurance for EVERY uninsured American.  $3 trillion/50 million = $60,000 per uninsured.  That is probably 5 years of insurance.
13.  Could buy 1764 space shuttles.
14.  We could buy FIVE Iraqi Wars.
15.  Buy gas for every American for 8 years at current price (Assuming every man woman child consumes gas).  Average of 500 gallons * $2.32*301,139,947 = $349,322,338,520/year.  $3 Trillion/349322338520 = 8.5 years.  FREE GAS FOR ALMOST A DECADE!
16.  Put it all down on Red of the roulette wheels at Harrahs!
17.  Could we find a cure for Cancer?
18.  Give 5 or 6 severance packages to CEOs
19.  Become more energy self reliant.  Set up 20% wind energy for the entire nation.  Looks like we could build significantly more!
20.  We could buy Facebook, Google, Apple & Microsoft.  At least if we invested in this, we might see a return.
21.  An estimated 30 million men suffer from ED.  We could provide Viagra for ALL of these folks.
22.  We could have fixed 30 Hurricane Katrinas.
23.  We could give over $300,000 dollars to every resident of Sierra Leone, one of the world’s poorest nations.
24.  We could have bought almost 3 Vietnam Wars.
25.  We could purchase every known copy of Gigli, thus removing it from the consciousness of the world.
26.  We could give it to a bunch of rich guys who were in no way involved in the problem and hope to high hell that they will devise the right solution.  Oh wait…

In summary, WTF?

Barack Obama Wins! YaY! Now, Let’s Get To Work.

It’s been a while since I have posted and quite a bit has happened since the last item.  Barack Obama won the election and will be the next president of the United States.  YAAAAAAAY!  Ok, celebrations over, yippie skippie… it’s time to get to work.   The Democrats now officially have no excuse for not getting things done.  The next election cycle will be a review on the Dems.  In my opinion, the following need to happen ASAP:

 

• 1. Explain to the American people what you meant about what we are going to have to sacrifice. I want to know what you mean… specifically. I think it is fair that we know what you are talking about so I can get to sacrificing.
• 2. Stop Torturing people.
• 3. Clarify the Military Commision Act to specifically exclude Americans. Also, there needs to be some better rights given to our Gitmo prisoners.
• 4. Stop the Patriot Act.

 

I am very happy that Obama won and we further extended our lead.  I hope they realize, however, that this is just the beginning.

JFK And Obama - A Shared Generational Experience And The 2008 Presidential Election

I have observed the 2008 election cycle through the eyes of my children and through the eyes of the young people around me.  While many people have attempted to draw comparisons between Barack Obama and John F. Kennedy-even Saturday Night Live made an allusion to this comparison in it’s spoof of the “Obama Variety Show”-the real comparison is found in the words of Caroline Kennedy when she endorsed Obama.

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Caroline Kennedy, “A President Like My Father”, New York Times ( January 27, 2008 ).

When I was a child during the 1950’s, politics belonged to the leaders, the generals, and the politicians during World War II.  The leaders of the 1950’s were already old, of another previous generation, when they governed in the 1950’s, so when the young and vital Kennedy almost burst upon the political scene, a generational change was about to occur.  Instead of a former Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, as Dwight D. Eisenhower has been, as president, now a lowly lieutenant was running for the highest office in America .  And while Richard M. Nixon, at 47, was only a few years older than Kennedy, at 43, Nixon always seemed old, just like Moe the Bartender in “The Simpsons”.

To my Baby Boomer generation, whose power had not yet been realized, politics was an old world, a world of our grandparents.  Eisenhower, a bald, grandfatherly figure, was president.  His favorite sport was golf.  Yet, he suffered a heart attack toward the end of his last four years, and that was an ailment of this older generation.  The First Lady was a kindly, grandmotherly figure who dressed and acted like a grandmother.  The White House seemed to be a cultural void, especially to a generation whose interests still centered around heroes like Davy Crockett, Gene Autry, and Roy Rogers.

I first became aware of Kennedy when I read about the candidates in the Weekly Reader, that educational tool to inspire young students to talk about current events, a topic about as interesting to most students as math lessons.  I was more familiar with Adlai Stevenson, who had twice run for president against Eisenhower, and Hubert Humphrey, the Senator from Minnesota , but there was something about Kennedy which was appealing. 

The other established Democratic candidates eschewed running in the primary elections-presidential candidates were chosen by the party, not the people, in 1960-but Kennedy ran in the primary elections, winning in Wisconsin and later in West Virginia.  And as a result, what we now call a media buzz began swirling around this young upstart politician from Massachusetts . 

Kennedy was young, photogenic, and athletic.  The public did not know about the extent of the back injuries Kennedy sustained during World War II, so the image, rather than the reality, became the public image we came to know.  He played touch football with his family, sailed, and seemed to exude athleticism.

Kennedy handled himself extremely well on television, and in the parlance of these times, he was a rock star.  Many observers, especially now, decry the relationship of Democrats to Hollywood , but in 1960 it was a sign of hipness to hang around with celebrities.  And Kennedy not only hung around with movie stars, but he looked like he could be a movie star.  Even Frank Sinatra recorded a campaign song for Kennedy, and at the time Sinatra and his Rat Pack were considered to be the hippest entertainers in Hollywood .

Kennedy understood the phenomena of television.  Just as today young people intuitively accept technology, young people in 1960 accepted television, and to see a politician who was so at ease in front of television cameras struck a particular chord with young people.  Other politicians, who had grown up with little or no experience with television, were awkward and wooden when they were on television, and therefore they sounded insincere, especially to young people.  And if nothing else, the Baby Boomers were the Television Generation.  We had grown up with television, and it became the focus of our common generational experiences.

Kennedy understood the power of television and was perhaps the first politician to have this understanding.  There was a saying that politics is Hollywood for ugly people, and for generations, politics had been the platform for people to have a modicum of celebrity, even though they might not necessarily be the most photogenic specimens of the human race.  But Kennedy was handsome, and he was at ease with the press.  His ad libbed remarks at press conferences became the thing of legend as he demonstrated an ironic, self-deprecating humor.

I remember watching Kennedy’s Inaugural Address with my parents and my brother on television.  Families actually watched events like that in 1960, together and as a family.  When Kennedy uttered that immortal and oft-quoted phrase, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”, his words moved not just me, but my entire family.

After the Inauguration, Kennedy seemed to reach out to my generation, matching his rhetoric with plans for the future.  He proposed a national fitness program, and soon we all aspired to take a 50-mile hike.  He proposed a volunteer Peace Corps, and my generation all wanted to serve abroad in the Peace Corps.  He said we would be going to the moon before the end of the decade, and we all wanted to be astronauts.  That was heady stuff for my generation.  We were going to improve ourselves, we were going to serve our country, and we were going into space.

And Kennedy seemed to reach out throughout the older generations as well.  My grandparents, two Norwegian immigrants who spoke broken English, proudly placed a cheap, dime store picture of Kennedy on their wall, right beside a picture of King Haakon of Norway.  This  picture hung in their dining room long after Kennedy had died and long after King Haakon’s picture had been replaced by his successor.  Years after Kennedy was gone, my grandfather would tear up, thinking about what a good man Kennedy had been.

My parents, who had been peripherally involved in Democratic politics before 1960, became revitalized, and our home soon became a favorite stopping place for the local politicians of the day.  Many candidates for political office or involved in political causes ate my mother’s fried chicken with our family, as my brother and I listened to them debate their positions at our dinner table.  Soon, my parents would go to Bismarck to campaign for one cause or another, or go on petition drives.  My mother became an election worker on Election Day.  We had candidates of ever increasing importance coming to our house one day and being in the news the next day.

Even Republican neighbors became much more interested in politics.  One of our neighbors, Hjalmer Nygaard, was elected to the United States House of Representatives, and my Sunday School teacher was elected to the North Dakota Legislature.  Politics became the lingua franca of our time. 

I can still see my father standing out in our front yard, talking about the issues of the day with Hjalmer Nygaard.  I almost came to believe that every small town had its own representative in Congress because politics was so accessible to us.  Politics was in the air; it was all around us.  We came to believe that almost anything was possible, and Kennedy inspired us to give, to sacrifice, and most importantly, to do for our country.

The Kennedy influence extended into other areas of daily life, even in North Dakota .  The neighbor ladies began wearing fashions inspired by Jackie Kennedy, even though sheath dresses and pill box hats did not always look good on otherwise frumpy North Dakota housewives.  My brother traded in his crew cut for a haircut like Kennedy’s, and I soon followed, exchanging my greasy 1950’s hairdo for a more natural look.  My brother and I bought records with Kennedy’s speeches, as well as records by Kennedy impersonators like Vaughn Meader.  My brother perfected his Kennedy impersonation, speaking with a nasal Boston accent, just like Kennedy.

And we all began looking at the struggles of the day in a different way.  We began to believe that we could change things.  The civil rights struggle was hitting a peak of activity, and although Kennedy had somewhat distanced himself from that pivotal struggle, it was no secret that the Kennedy campaign had arranged for Reverend Martin Luther King’s release from a Georgia jail while Kennedy was running for president.  The Bay of Pigs debacle only inspired more sympathy for Cuba , and we lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis as a nation.  We learned what CONALRAD meant, and we all yearned to have a fallout shelter in those uneasy times.  We became involved in the issues of the nation and of the world in a deeply personal way.  Instead of being urged to “shop”, like President Bush said in the days after 9/11, we participated in national practice sessions in case there really was a nuclear war.  We understood, in a way that is almost impossible to describe in this current culture, that we-each of us-had to sacrifice and participate for our country.  This wasn’t something that someone else would do for us.  We each had to do it.

All of these things became what is now called a “shared generational experience”, and we all lived and breathed all things Kennedy during those three years while he was our president.  It did not matter whether someone was for or against Kennedy in those days because Kennedy influenced almost everything our generation knew or understood, if not overtly, then on a subliminal basis. 

It may be impossible to describe this phenomena to another generation because so much has changed since then..  But the impact of Kennedy was thoroughly pervasive within American culture.  It was inspiring to have lived in those times, and we may never again have another shared generational experience like that again. 

So when I watched Jennifer watching Obama on television, I was reminded of those times in the past, when John F. Kennedy was our president, and hope and possibility were a part of our daily lives.  Maybe because this younger generation has the internet, cell phones, text messaging, cable TV, blackberries, ipods, and virtually unlimited access to information, they will have a shared generational experience.

But I feel that the nomination and apparent election of Barack Obama is about the closest I have seen to that shared generational experience.  I will leave it to others to make those comparisons, but Obama has generated an excitement in America that I have not seen in this country since those halcyon days of the Kennedy Administration.

 

 

Working Republicans - Your Guide To Undermining The Obama Tax Plan And A Surefire Plan To Implement McCain’s

As a Democrat, I have empathy for the Republican party, knowing that your candidate will likely lose this election season.  We Dems have been feeling the pain for the past 8 years, but fear not loyal McCain supporters, for I have found one way for you to undermine the potential Obama win and it is SO simple.  I know that you feel Democrats are against business, but my solution for you will rectify that.  Its clear as day.

If you make under $111,645 and are employed by someone else, give the difference of your extra Obama tax cut to your employer.

Based on the graph below, your after tax income at $111,645 under the Obama plan will put an extra $1,290 in your pocket and prevent it from being invested in small business.  The McCain tax plan will give you $1,009.  In order for you to rectify the evil that is being done to small business, I suggest that you take the extra $281 and write out a check to your employer.  By doing so, you will be helping to accomplish what John McCain is fighting for.   

The businesses of America are suffering and in need.  As a working person you can help alleviate that suffering.  For the price of a candy bar a day, you too can help give money to business.  Your Obama windfall can undermine the Democratic vote and make John McCain the winner in spirit!  It even gets better because the less you make, the more you can give!  If you make $18,000 a year, you will be able to give a whopping $548 dollars back to your employer.  It’s a win-win situation.  You get to give money to your boss and your boss can invest it.

Heck, why stop there?  You can even do MORE to help stop business suffering.  Who needs raises?  Actually, the best thing you can do is ask for a pay cut.  Think of all the businesses you can help.  I know that it might be illegal, but if you work for free under the table….imagine the possibilities.  As indicated in the graph, 60% of tax payers make under $67,000.  I am guessing that this would be in the order of 100,000,000 or more workers.  If each taxpayer is giving $650, that is over $65 BILLION dollars per year that can go directly to corporate aid and other businesses.  Imagine the joy on a CEOs face that kind of charity.  Truly touching.

The bailout package has been great for the largest businesses that obviously need the most help.  If I were you, I would applaud these companies for not using this money to free up credit. They have gone without for long enough and its about time for the tax payer to start pitching in to help them out.  Who are we to deny these people their vacations, golden parachutes and huge salaries?  It has been paramount in business rights and it has put a small dent in business suffering, but I would encourage you to do more.  The key to giving money to business is in the McCain tax package and not the Obama tax package.  Folks, the giving does not need to stop if Obama wins.

There are things you can do to help out.  Take up a collection among your co-workers.  Recycle cans for money.  Sell cookies.  Anything will help.  You see, there is a light at the end of the tunnel for the fortunate Republicans making under $111,000 a year. You can make a difference by giving your Obama windfall to your boss.  It’s the right thing to do as a Republican because government takes so much from business.

As a final note, I just want to take a stab in the dark and make a shout out to the folks who have organized some of the greatest charity events ever.  First, we had Live Aid… then Farm Aid….  Imagine… Corporate Aid.

You claim that Fox News is the least biased network? Well, Allow Me To Retort

Although I think this is a logical enough reply for a rediculous claim like that, here is a previous post with some doozies.

Why Does America Torture Children?

Today I woke up on Canal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  I’ve always loved the Big Easy, with its unique music, cuisine, history, and Caribbean atmosphere.  I hadn’t been here since Katrina, so on the way in from the airport, I paid attention to the blue tarps still covering roofs, the damaged buildings, and the closed store fronts, lingering reminders that New Orleans still has not recovered three years after the hurricane that began the slow unraveling of the Bush Administration.

I was particularly struck when the shuttle from the airport passed the Dome, where such unspeakable misery took place in the aftermath of Katrina.  There were approximately a dozen other passengers in the shuttle, and I noticed they all became silent as we passed the Dome and stared in dumb wonderment.

I came to New Orleans for a professional conference, and this morning I heard a presentation by Lieutenant Commander William Kuebler and Rebecca Snyder, who are Detailed Counsel for Omar Khadr from the United States Navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corp. 

Basically, Khadr was a 15-year-old (born September 19, 1986) Canadian citizen who was captured by American forces at the age of 15 following a four-hour firefight with militants in Afganistan.  He has spent six years in the Guantanamo Bay detention camps charged with war crimes and providing support to terrorism after allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a US soldier.  In fact, in February 2008, the Pentagon accidentally released documents that revealed that although Khadr was present during the firefight, there was no other evidence that he had thrown the grenade.  Military officials had originally reported that another of the surviving militants had thrown the grenade just before being killed, and Kuebler and Snyder indicated that more recent information indicates the American soldier died from friendly fire.

Khadr has been interrogated through a variety of means, which include methods which normally would be viewed as torture.  However, thanks to the Bush-Cheney-Gonzoles attitude about torture, these methods are considered “legal”. 

Rather than going into detail about this situation, please check out this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr.  (As much as I abhore the idea of citing Wikipedia as a “source”, the entry does give a fair and balanced overview of the Khadr case.)  There are, of course, many other websites that discuss the plight of this “child soldier”.  Please be forwarned, however.  The descriptions in some of these accounts of the torture inflicted upon Khadr is in some instances very graphic and disturbing.

Naturally, I grieve for the family of Sergeant First Class (SFC) Christopher James Speer, the American soldier who was killed in that firefight.  And I have no sympathy for the enemies of America, nor Khadr, who was a child when this firefight occurred, nor for any other adult combatants against America.

What I do object to is that America under the Bush Administration has adopted a Policy of Torture.  Generically, the methods of torture are called “water boarding”, but the levels and ranges of torture involve much more than this technique of systematically pouring water on the face of the victim, stopping short of actual drowning (in theory).  The Bush Administration calls it “enhanced interrogation techniques”.

These techniques were adopted by a Principles Committee which included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.  One of the better links on this subject is at http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256.  You can find out more about what techniques are allowed to be used.  You can even watch a video of some of these enhanced interrogation techniques being used.

In some of my previous comments to posts, I have voiced my objections to the use of torture.  Some responses to my comments have been to the effect that Iraqis have done terrible things to our American soldiers, so they somehow deserve to be tortured.  Or that somehow 9/11 changed everything and we need to have some sort approach to getting valuable information quickly to save theoretically millions of lives from another terrorist attack.

My response to this “revenge” justification and to the “Jack Bauer” scenario is that first and foremost, this is America .  Our country has historically stood for, to borrow the Superman theme, Truth, Justice, and the American Way .  We have always believed that America has been, and should be, the leader of the civilized world.

And a civilized nation does not torture anyone as a national policy.  It does not torture our criminals, it does not torture our captured enemies, and it certainly does not torture children.

Torture is an issue of morality, and a moral nation does not condone, utilize, or practice torture.  Part of what has happened to America under the Bush Administration is that we as a nation have lost our moral compass.  The same administration which condoned torture also oversaw the worst economic meltdown at least since the Great Depression, and while it is difficult to understand where we are at while we are still in the middle of this economic crisis, it appears the economy is just getting worse as we speak—more job layoffs and rising unemployment, GM and Chrysler talking about bankruptcy protection, the stock markets still volatile, and OPEC talking about lowering production now that the price of a barrel of oil is in the $60 range.

The election has not happened yet, although many of us are now doing our early voting.  As former Governor William Weld said on “Morning Joe” on October 27, he was once a supply-side conservative, but even he cannot believe what has happened during the past 8 years when the supply side principles were allowed to occur.

And this same Bush Administration led us into a needless war on false assumptions with Iraq , which is costing America $10 billion every month.  Even an amateur economist can understand that unless we, the American people, vote for a change, Al Qaeda will bring down our country, not through terror or invasion, but through poor judgment which is bleeding our country economically.  Even Al Qaeda has endorsed Senator John McCain in the belief that he will continue the same short-sighted policies of the Bush Administration, which they believe will eventually bring about the demise of the America as a superpower.  Al Qaeda believes McCain will have the same Bush advisors and the same overall approach, and will follow the same policies which have led America to this point only 7 years after 9/11.

Torture, economic crisis, needless and expensive vanity wars, unbridled supply-side greed.  In just 8 short years.  There comes a time when the American voters must vote the b****** out.

Can The Rich Help Eliminate Poverty?

For the last few posts, I have been touching on why I believe Conservative thought is inadequate when it comes to poverty.  In this post, I am going to do my best to review the conservative mindset and why this ideology does not work.   I will also review my views of the different ideologies on paying for charity. More reasons why it would be good to vote for Barack Obama and NOT John McCain

My View On Poverty and Wealth

Every society has a certain amount of poverty and social inequity.  Believe it or not, we have the same problems in the United States.  12.5 percent of our population lives in poverty according to the Census Bureau although I suspect that number to jump for the months to come.  We all understand that poverty exists in America, but many people cannot agree on how it should be dealt with.

I think that Government is  a completely viable option to ensure the welfare of the less fortunate.  It is not about Socialism or Free Market (even though we are not a complete Free Market), but it is about being a better, more moral, nation.  I feel that there is a certain level of poverty where it becomes immoral for us, as a nation, to allow its existence.  If the independent charity organizations are not able, or equipped, to deal with this kind of poverty it seems fair to me that we take care of it as a nation.  It is not about redistributing wealth, but it is about being a compassionate country for a group of people who exist in a horrible state.  I feel that is not acceptable for the greatest nation on the planet.  As long as we have the wealth, which we do, we should be making sure that the poorest of the poor are taken care of.

On the other side of the scale, we have numerous successful individuals who have “made it”, at least in part, because they were fortunate enough to be able to operate or exist in America.  They, in a financial sense, are realizing the American Dream.  It may, or may not, be through any hard work of their own and have vastly more resources to take advantage of all of the opportunities America has.  Beyond that, this class of people also has more money to hire top shelf experts to take care of things that a poor individual may not.  Paris Hilton probably has never balanced a checkbook, but it would be interesting to see how she could operate if she were a minimum wage employee without daddy’s infinity bankroll.

Ultimately, there is a group at the top who live in a state of excess.  Then, there is a group at the bottom who live in a state of poverty.  The average folk lives somewhere in-between and most of us can help keep other folks above that ‘immoral’ line. 

Conservative View On Wealth And Poverty

My understanding is that the conservative view is for government to keep their hands off of our money.  Despite the numerous social programs (Social Security, Food Stamps) that already exist and many people benefit from, I can understand that statement.  I do not necessarily agree with it.  If we were consistently taking care of the poorest people, I would completely agree with you, but we are not.  People are suffering every day in America.  Charities are necessary and great tools, but they are not completely taking care of the problem.  We need to define the line of immoral poverty and eradicate it in America and I think our government needs to lead the way.

Ultimately, there is a group at the top who live in a state of excess.  Then, there is a group at the bottom who live in a state of poverty.  The average folk lives somewhere in-between and we should all let the rich be rich and the poor be poor.  “If the poor were smart, they would just work harder or smarter and help themselves.”

I think that mindset is flawed and I do not understand.  Not everyone has the tools and capabilities to perform like most people.  Sure, I do believe that there is an element of folks that abuse the system, but there is also a group of people who honestly need it…. And more.  I would rather give money to the ‘system abuser’ and the ‘truly needy’, knowing that the truly needy person is taken care of.  To the all of the arguments about how this is Socialist and Socialism never works,  BUNK.  I will cover this in a future post, but there is a difference between being a Socialist nation and having social programs.  Just because we have Social Security, it does not mean that we are Socialist.

I hope you have enjoyed my rambling and I apologize if you do not agree.  I just hate the idea of American children dying because of inadequate care… government or otherwise.