Those Who Turned Away….

Every Senator steps forward on his first day in office, puts his hand on the Bible and then utters these words…..

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
…

The Fourth Amendment, considered by most to be part of the Constitution states the following……

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

These are those following who allowed unwarranted wire tapping by the government to continue….. five more years. It was voted in 2008 to expire on Monday.

R Andrew Alexander TN
R Kelly Ayotte NH
R John Barrasso WY
D Michael Bennet CO
D Richard Blumenthal CT
R Roy Blunt MO
R John Boozman AR
R Scott Brown MA
R Richard Burr NC
D Benjamin Cardin MD
D Thomas Carper DE
D Robert Casey PA
R Clarence Chambliss GA
R Daniel Coats IN
R Thomas Coburn OK
R William Cochran MS
R Susan Collins ME
D Kent Conrad ND
R Robert Corker TN
R John Cornyn TX
R Michael Crapo ID
R Michael Enzi WY
D Dianne Feinstein CA
D Kirsten Gillibrand NY
R Lindsey Graham SC
R Charles Grassley IA
D Kay Hagan NC
R Orrin Hatch UT
R Dean Heller NV
R John Hoeven ND
R Kathyrn Hutchison TX
R James Inhofe OK
R Johnny Isakson GA
R Mike Johanns NE
R Ron Johnson WI
D Timothy Johnson SD
D John Kerry MA
D Amy Klobuchar MN
D Herbert Kohl WI
R Jon Kyl AZ
D Mary Landrieu LA
D Carl Levin MI
I Joseph Lieberman CT
R Richard Lugar IN
D Joe Manchin WV
R John McCain AZ
D Claire McCaskill MO
R Addison McConnell KY
 D Barbara Mikulski MD
R Jerry Moran KS
D Clarence Nelson FL
D Earl Nelson NE
R Robert Portman OH
D Mark Pryor AR
D John Reed RI
D Harry Reid NV
R James Risch ID
R Charles Roberts KS
D John Rockefeller WV
R Marco Rubio FL
D Charles Schumer NY
R Jefferson Sessions AL
;D Jeanne Shaheen NH
R Richard Shelby AL
R Olympia Snowe ME
D Deborah Stabenow MI
R John Thune SD
R Patrick Toomey PA
R David Vitter LA
D Mark Warner VA
D James Webb VA
D Sheldon Whitehouse RI
R Roger Wicker MS

The world didn’t end after 2008… It may not end now in 2012.. but estimates are currently that over 10,000 Americans have been picked up and held like Joe Padilla somewhere without access to an attorney, without access to communication, without access to due process, because of the Patriot Act.

One day we will ask how this could happen. Who was too blame? Who could have stepped up and stopped it, but instead, chose to turn away?

This will be their answer.

Hey Romney! Walk Like An Egyptian….

As usual… when you tie a cow bone to a string, and a string to a used broom handle, and then, dangle that string before an American Reporter…  they jump up and down like Pomeranians…. “yip, yip, yip”…  hind leg dance…. “yip, yip, yip”.

99.0% of American news media coverage is focused on Romney the man.   And with an election approaching it is probably safe to attribute that to human nature…  Even I was  sucked in for a while.  But being an election year, that makes it rather hard for our government (yes it is still intact) to rectify its newest foreign relations problem, the  Arab Inflammation as it is now beginning to be called….

Since the more intelligent of our species tend to browse these pages, lets investigate the history, and delve into both short and long term solutions.   This may be long.

No matter what the crises,  and no matter at what level, there are some elements of truth that remain consistent.  Lack of communication always creates problems; it never solves anything.  Are you divorced?  Could be perhaps that better communication might  have prevented it?  Are you fired?  Could be perhaps that better communication might  have prevented it?  Are you in competition at work over something?  Gee, wouldn’t all being on the same team working together be much better?

In fact, most wars are started over misunderstandings.  The only truly reasonable excuse for starting a war, is…. “you have something I want, and I’m taking it by force”; and the other side’s response is… “over my dead body….”

That is one,  boiled-down reason for starting a war.

Every other excuse is superfluous.  It doesn’t  mean we don’t sometimes go to war for superfluous reasons…  But all those silly reasons can somehow be twisted back to that maxim mentioned above:   “You have something I want, (___________), and you won’t give it up unless I force you, It.. is.. on….”

There is one more thing to keep in mind.  A lot, a lot, a lot of people make a lot of money when there is fighting going on…  Therefore even in very peaceful times, you will hear made-up reasons as to why we should go to war…   They are created around boardroom tables,  they are fed to gullible people, then those people are whipped up by whips, and the leaders have no choice but attend to their follower’s needs or get replaced….   Some of those:

Pride, Prestige, Patriotism, Patrimony, Alliances, Reputation, Religion,  and Idiocy, all get exploited to further the economic gains of those few involved in producing war’s items.

This movie now at the epicenter of global outrage is a case in point.  Have you ever noticed how these hate religions now popping up in the USA preaching  hate, and have no sense of decency (as in protesting at military funerals) are always boasting they were founded by “former Marines”?  Steve Klein who produced this latest clip, is no exception.  Whether true or not, he is definitely boasting it.

Now, we all know someone who is a man of the cloth.  Some of us  are lucky enough to know many from across a very wide religious spectrum.  Not just the European religions, but those also spread across other continents and yes, sub-continents.  No matter what the name of the God is, to which they pay reverence, in every form of a religion there are consistently two types of preachers.  Those who are there for themselves; versus those who are there to help others.  No religion is immune; no religion just has only one side.

Therefore, something like this hate group, which only does have one side, fails the test of all religion.  How does or will it’s philosophy make all people better?   How could any religion that you know,  show sodomy of young children? Really?  How could any religion that you know, show cunnilingus?  Really?  As a religious person, you might at some point in your life have to allude to it, but actually show it?  It goes against your own core.   Even if you were using those scenes to put down someone else or describe evil,  as long as you had any religious bone in your body, you couldn’t do that.  Just couldn’t.  You would be worried about your own life in the hereafter.

So who could?

Is it just me, or did anyone else notice that all the acts portrayed in this movie were the exact same ones used at Abu Ghraib  in Iraq by our counter-intelligence staff as forms of torture?   Women’s periods, homosexuality, child molestation, cunnilingus, sexual arousal, falsifying  the Prophet…. Someone from that environment has a history of knowing exactly what hot buttons these are to Islam’s believers.  And I bet, they could even rank them in order of effect.  Someone from that environment who has perfected that technique upon individuals,  who has crafted the technique to elicit the desired responses, has now for whatever reason, chosen to use a broader medium, Youtube,  to foist that  knowledge upon 1/7 th of the world’s population.

It is pretty obvious to all, that this film’s raison d’etre comes from some intelligence or military network, and the easiest way to mask those origins is the time-honored way of using the untraceable networks in religion.

And from those of us who know people, (you know, like that sixth sense of when you walk into your home, and something has been done, you know who did it because you know they are the only one whose framework is wired as such that they could think of it?)  the one place on earth where you are guaranteed to find people who would see no qualms with using anything in this film to achieve their end, and who also would profit from a holy war involving West versus East,  is Arlington, Fairfax County, Virginia.  Incidentally (for those of you outside the Beltway) that is the home of the Pentagon and the headquarters of what a really good man, Eisenhower, once called the ” growing military-industrial complex.”  That is where the focal point of finding who is behind this, by the investigations of the fourth estate,  by he next wave of investigative hard copies for sale at Barnes & Noble, should be aimed.   Weird, fake, made-up  religious groups are just the patsy. They don’t make a penny if we suddenly go to war.

But to return the focus,  why the Arab violence over some really dumb film made by someone supposedly in California that surfaced and we didn’t even know about it,…  create such a fracas?  And can any of it be blamed upon any administration?

To understand the answer, there is one important thing you have to understand about Arab governments.  They killed all the liberals off a long time ago.  As autocratic powers,  anyone who challenged their religious government or was thought to one day possibly have the future presumption to challenge the religious government in the future, was made to disappear.   There are no liberals to provide a balance in Arab populations.   To even imagine what that is like as an intellectual exercise, imagine a society where there were no Democrats to say, “hey, that is not right!”  Imagine an America ruled by only Republicans headed by the Tea Party.  Give all the money to the wealthy?  No problem.  Take all the money from the middle class?  No Problem.  Instigate wars and draft and send the middle class out to fight them?  No problem.  Cut your benefits because you don’t worship our God?  No Problem.

Arab countries have what we consider as our center, anchoring the left end, and the caliphate anchoring the right.  In that environment it is easy to see, that the middle, is one who conforms with the caliphate, but provides a little balance against them by nuancing the edges.

Both Ronald Reagan and Romney would be too liberal to govern Egypt today.  Paul Ryan would be about right in the center.

Against this, no leader can go against the Caliphate.  It will take the development of a large cadre of liberals to rebalanced the power structure of every Arab nation, in order to deal with them in a rational and secular method….

It is to that development that the American foreign policy needs to point.   The very fact that America itself  has as large liberal population, speaks solidly that a free environment, wisdom tends to flourish and rise to the top.

The easiest and simplest method to accomplish this task, is to figure how to combine these liberal aspects and marry those to Islamic principals.  After all, how can the Caliphate denounce Islamic principals?  When we stress a policy we believe will help the Egyptian people become stronger,  we need to provide the Muslim framework coupled to it so they see it as part of their religion.  Failure to do so,  makes all our good ideas appear to be nothing but a method of control…  We laugh at that over here, but in our history, whenever someone tried to control how our money was spent, how our possessions belonged to us, whenever someone “far away” tried to control our life, we rebelled.  (A lot to think over in that sentence).

That is human nature.

Another prime factor that pushes Arabs to embrace the caliphate, is shame.  Yes, shame.  It is unspoken to foreigners and one has to deeply know someone who Arab before he is let in on a secret.  There is shame at being an Arab.  When one looks across the spectrum of the Muslim world, who are the successes?  Turkey.  Iran. Indonesia. Malaysia.  None of these are Arab.  Compare those successes  to Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Qatar, Ali Dubya, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and of course, now Syria?

There appears something to be really wrong with being an Arab… Really wrong. “Why can’t we get it right” is on every Arabs mind twenty-four seven.

Of course the four success stories have outside influence.  Turkey has tried hard to win EU status.  The changes it had to undergo to get there are what has propelled it forward.  Iran is Persian and as a former US satellite under the Shah, had enormous gains in infrastructure, and has been able to maintain and grow it primarily because it did keep its intelligent liberal and social force intact. The two eastern Asian countries have embraced democracy and are flourishing as a result.

Turkey is the player in Palestine.  Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, and Iran, are concerned about what Turkey does.   Iran is challenging the USA.   Palestine, Saudi, the Gulf Region, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, are day to day, concerned about what Iran is doing.   Indonesia has economic clout. China, India, and Australia keep tabs on it.

Against this.  Egypt can’t control what happens on the Sinai Peninsula.

The creators of the concept of  empire-building 7000 years ago,  a brave wonderful people who ruled the entire known world at that time , now, can’t control what happens on the Sinai Peninsula.   It hurts.   Just like it would hurt us to go to China in fifty years (5 if Romney gets elected) with hat in hand, asking for money to buy some food for our citizens.  Yes, we will have to do it so we can live… and yes, we will be grateful for our politicians who brought back the goods, but yes, it will hurt our pride still the same.

This feeling is exploited by the Caliphate.  ”Join us and be great again.  As Mohamed hath declared, we will be feared.”  or something along those lines.   So set fire to a few cars, and whoa….  television crews pop up all over your city. You are important.  Set a few more and the leader of the entire world, the most powerful person in humanity, the President of the United States, is asking to meet your feeble countries leader.. He’s asking you (for a change), not the other way around, remember?  Where you had to take a number, and then do your best to convince him to put you on his busy schedule?

Suddenly you are powerful again.  It feels good.

How does or can the US combat that influence?

Ahh ha, the trillion dollar question with no yet known answer.  But here is what not to do.

One, go to war.  That solidifies resentment, and even upon a total USA victory, you did nothing but simply reinforce the root of the problem.  They are still ashamed of how weak and non-influential they are.  And all you did, was just shove that in their face one more time again.

Two, use shame.  It too solidifies resentment.  It too, builds resolve against us.

Three,  isolation.  It proves the Caliphate was right.  We, the West, obviously cannot be trusted.  Look how quickly we turn our backs. Better to suffer in squalor of poverty and abuse, but have consistent attention, than  it is to “flee to what they know not of”.  (Battered Spouse Syndrome).

So the one method that will work, and ironically Arabs are so good at this, is to make it our policy to divide and conquer, to separate the Arab’s well-being apart from their religion.   We use the rewards of recognition,  of extending equality, of true respect,  and bestow that upon the elements of the country who are not so inclined to follow the 1000 year admonitions of the Caliphate.

Somewhere in the future, someone there will stand up, and say:  ”wow, look at all the rewards I was able tol get by disavowing the Caliphate!  How prosperous are you, who are still following them?’

Crazy as this sounds, if Obama were to visit Egypt,  not in an official capacity, but to tour the ancient ruins, and make a few remarks of how inspiring it was to see people of ancient times who then were so far ahead of  everyone else, so advanced, and to hope that he would live to see the day when the entire known world may once again come together and be prosperous as the known world was back in that time, some indirect captured  off- mic comment  like that would go a long way to counter the influence the caliphate now has over the Egyptian people.  An influence no one there really wants, but all there are powerless to now obstruct .

We then open up American colleges and universities to Egyptians, and pay their way.  We then advise them on regional disputes but allow them to make their own mistakes and revel in their own successes.

We help make Alexandria the financial headquarters of the Eastern World.  No where else, except  Israel and Iran, will you have access to a smarter bunch of people.

We then  invite their soccer teams to tour America and compete against our National League….

We invite their military to Fort Ord to teach them our desert techniques and partner with them.

All of these are aimed at building up the pride of the Arab and Egyptian.  With self pride and self confidence,  one is never defenseless.  One can grow on its own.  And as their national pride over their own accomplishment grows within themselves, the old ideas of the Caliphate are seen in their true perspective, as being  over 1000 years old.

With the Arab Spring, the USA has inherited a foster home full of growing young rambunctious teenage boys.  We have the duty to grow them into men.  As with any dad, sometimes you will have to be tough.  But to succeed, your goal has to be clearly that you do not wish to turn them into carbon copies of you, clearly.  Instead, you wish to give them the tools and advice they will need to chose, to pick through all the options in order to decide who and what they want to be.  But as it is with every child, it is always those honest and non-bullshit moments of tenderness that we remember which are actually the ones that  make the real difference in our lives.

The US Foreign Service is being very ably guided.  If  we threw our own children out on the streets to fend for themselves, every time they got mad at us, we’d have a very sorry, poor, and sinful society right now.   Obviously we don’t do that to our own flesh and blood for good reason.  Instead, we set the limit. We contain the anger. We provide a better alternative. We let them make their decision.  Then we provide the consequences, good or bad, for that decision they chose to make.  That is exactly what we are doing on the global scale under the able leadership of Obama and Hillary Clinton, and the public servants who make up our State Department, many who were hired by the previous Republican Administration.

The Republicans are trying to capitalize on violence right now.  As expected, they are failing miserably.  It would be wise to remember that it was the fruits of their philosophy that gave us  9/11, Iraq, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda,  Iran,  and super-de- dooper high oil prices.  They also sent trillions to the development and building of the tools of war.

The Democrats are responsible for calming the Balkans.   How is that going now?  Exactly.

We are on the right track.  Romney is on the wrong.  What we have accomplished so far in three years, will be views by historians as amazing.  We have inherited a home of children who have no dad, or mom.   We have the obligation to make them full members of society.  It will be a miracle if we get them all to succeed, some kids break bad.  But the obligation is there nevertheless to try for a 100% success rate.

The fact that Romney doesn’t “get it” and Obama does, is reason enough not to vote for Romney. The fact that Romney’s foreign advisors are the exact same hard core right wing people (Boulton? Seriously?) that embarrassed the USA of the Bush administration over it’s 8 years of  activity,  is reason enough NOT to vote for Romney.

You in the military-industrial complex can yell, scream, holler, hoot, high-five all you want.  But when it comes down to facts.  Romney is very bad for this country.

Mitt.  You’ve never heard of the “Bangles”?  I don’t believe it. You copy her eye motions exactly when you are before a camera.

Surveillance of the Masses

America gets up in arms when it’s privacy issues are at stake. How dare you know that about me! However when someone slips through our net and blows up a building or car, they exclaim, how did you not catch him in time?

Soon to be announced if not already out there, is our nation’s now no longer classified Trap Wire System. In the reports of its inception this package was held up as the ultimate surveillance tool. Cameras across the country would capture data from cities, highways, tolls, parks, public arenas, and everywhere else there is a camera, encrypt the data, then send it to a central point where it gets incorporated with all other data already compiled on every citizen. That data including public on line events such as dating services, chat rooms, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, as well as corporate files, employee rosters, and the vast cesspool of corporate data gleaned each and every time you use your credit card.

On every adult citizen, a computer can spit out a file of facts that even that citizen doesn’t know… The computing power is unparalleled. You are sitting at the stoplight, and for no reason a camera goes off, you think weird, no one tripped it. and instantly your face has been identified, your file pulled, and a program knows you buy Colgate toothpaste 39% of the time. And it knows you are on Zoloft. Your credit score is 593. And you are cheating on your spouse of 27 years with a 19 year old who gets something from Victoria Secret every month…..

A song comes on the radio and your mind jumps to it and you go on never thinking of that random event again…….

Of course there is the other side of the story. You pull up to the light right beside the dufus mentioned above. The same thing happens. You wonder too. Your picture triggers an alarm because your image was last seen in the lower Philippines having been traced there from Manila before paying for the boarding of a private boat off Gov. Lim Ave, then going dark 18 months ago. The alarm is because you were once an acquaintance on the third level of a Detroit sheik who propagated militancy. The file shows you worked with explosives on construction sites, you were terminated at one time being blamed for some missing C4. You denied you had anything to do with it. The camera notes that your car is low in back, and alerts other cameras on the route your are traveling that you will soon be entering their view. Your facebook page shows you liked Iran and support Assad of Syria. Your high school psychological profile says you were quiet and brooding. Your license plate is registered to a car reportedly at the gas station on Rt.273 undergoing lengthy repairs. You are unmarried. You don’t date, and your credit card has a large cash balance, yet you spend very little and that is only on food, gas, and a furnished apartment in Christiana Meadows. As you drive by a transponder, your new phone signal gets captured, and all your calls are now being pulled up. You spoke with a person of high interest, 2 times this morning, for a length of one minute each. Your visage is updated to all local cameras and all transportation portals, and put at the top of each face recognition program. Someone is dispatched to scout your apartment.

You see. That is the dilemma. We enjoy our safety, and abhor our loss of privacy.

If you haven’t noticed already, on your emails sometimes you have these buried within the routing: Abraxas and the others you see will say, Stratfor…. Bloggers are very used to seeing these on a rather regular basis. They are everywhere across the net.

One thing noticeable during the Olympics was that the Brits live this way all the time. They are used to it and prefer the cameras and intrusive software over a coordinated attack on their trains. And no one can blame them. But what the Brits have, and we don’t, is a set of rules regarding this capturing of information. If someone violates this code as did Murdoch, then the ramifications are severe; perhaps bringing down an entire corporate empire. The CEO, Vice President, and quite a few others all charged with illegal actions.

And that is the lesson we need to take. Accept the surveillance but know that if anyone, anyone breaks the code of privacy… you are going to be filthy rich for the rest of your entire life at their or their employer’s expense…. For if that is truly the case, going back to the original story up top, if you got busted for your too hot to fail 19 year old lover, and lost your spouse, for $83 million, you really wouldn’t mind too much… My bet? You would see it as a blessing in disguise. And if you still loved your spouse, don’t worry. When you are worth $83 million, she won’t go far.

This has to become the future of surveillance. Here is why.

I’ll use Facebook as an example. I can always tell when one a friend has to hand over their password to their employer. Whereas they used to be so lively, responsive, and fun, they suddenly stop posting anything showing their personality. Their presence on line becomes reduced to “look at my kid”; “here is my dog”. Whereas you used to be able to talk to them about their spouse, their parents, how they were feeling, how they liked their job, how they were doing in the lover department, how their head was, what hopes and dreams they possessed, how drunk they got, suddenly their presence is as chilled as someone passing Checkpoint Charlie in the 60′s. There is a rigidity that they must conform to. There is a corporate mentality that they must express, and most deal with it by staying silent.

That is not what America is about. America is about freedom, about life…. about liberty….. and about the pursuit of happiness…… What once was open air on the internet is now poisoned with carbon particles, so much so that it is hard to breathe.

We can’t lose our nation’s fun-loving identity. And we can’t stop protecting ourselves by our newer and newer technology. So, what we can do (and we can easily do this), is not to constrain the surveillance, but penalize any misuse of the data that gets captured.

And make the punitive damages so huge, so grand, so big, that American citizens will actually enjoy having their privacy breached when it comes time for the judge to make the monetary judgment. Which means we need to rethink all things private, and that includes the intrusiveness of the press into private lives…

I’m always saddened when someone suffers because of something got out of control on their social media, and everyone gangs up on line, saying, “well, you shouldn’t have put it on the internet.”

Really? REALLY? A person should never have a light moment with an acquaintance, one of those few joyous moments we as people treasure forever, because someone they don’t know, someone they never met, might hack into their account, and spread it across the world?

That is ridiculous. The internet IS us. If we want a fun moment, we have the right to exercise it.. Back when I was growing up, laws were passed and on the books to control the positions that went on within the bedroom. That has fortunately faded away into being ridiculous. The same needs to happen on the internet. And the easiest way, the simplest way, is to have huge, gigantic fines, ones that are so big they will bankrupt anyone, and everyone who breaches another’s privacy.

So what if some entity knows you use Colgate 39% of the time. If no one else ever knows that they know it, as far as impacting anything in the real world, their knowledge of that minutia, doesn’t matter.

We need to start the process. We first announce the problem; we offer a solution; we educate the public; we elect responsible legislators, we pressure responsible legislators, we get legislation signed, and then, we relax and really enjoy the rest of our lives.

It is past time that our personal privacy be now given a price tag that is equal to what it is worth. Something in the range of tens of millions comes to mind….. Hell, you can get $90 million for spilling hot coffee in your lap…..

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic

Photo Courtesy of US Marine Corp

Today is Armed Forces Day.  There is a parade in Newark to mark the occasion.  Take time to whisper a thank you to all who have served, past, present, and future.  I could say much more, but what’s the point.  I’ve already said, all that can be said. Just a heartfelt thank you will do…….  Words fail when emotion is real.

Taxes and The Wealthy

Right click to open full image… Pictograph Courtesy of Viral..

So, can someone tell me again, why we shouldn’t tax the rich, and instead, balance the budget on the backs of everyone else?…….

I seem to be missing that little detail where that all makes sense……

Why Progressives Should Rejoice…..

In today’s political world, the embattled progressives are ironically in the same position American forces found themselves in Afghanistan around the time Obama was sworn in………

Things do not seem to be going well at all….

They did not get the Bush tax cuts off the books. Those tax cuts are still sending jobs overseas. They did not get single payer health care; insurers still limit health care. And now, many of the federal programs supporting the economies in their districts, are about to be eradicated….

“If only” Obama had stood tough!.. “If only” Democrats were better negotiators and didn’t give up everything at the drop of the hat… “If only” the Democrats worked harder last December to get the Bush tax cuts not reinstated. “If only” Democrats hadn’t lost the House last election, things would be different. “If only” Obama hadn’t sold us out! “If only” Obama had a spine. “If only” Democrats hadn’t caved and given Republicans 100% of what they want…“If only” the media would educate the public. “If only” truth was allowed on the airwaves….

The Progressives should not base their future strategy on “what-ifs” and “if only’s” as Progressives (especially here in Delaware) are prone to do. Such an approach is not “reality-based.”

It is instead, “hope-based”, which is to say in reality … “illusion-based”…

The illusion persists that Obama can “make” Republicans do what Progressive want. It equals the illusion that the US, can “make” the government of Karzai, do what everything we want…

In both cases, both progressives and the US, can’t force the issue. Instead, what they have to do, is out-argue, snuggle-up, and win the battle of the minds; they have to convince the respective populations that if they follow their way, the population will be better off.

With this bill, we now have a “reality” to assist with that convincing…

The core of all the arguing, is the hypothesis that America needs to tax it’s wealthy a little more.

When American’s go to the polls in 2012, they will have begun to feel the effects on the economy of what happens when one cuts $100 billion a year. Just like the balanced budget deficit bill of 1937 pushed America back into depression, so will this bill.

Progressives need to be out there saying, “We told you this would happen; see? We were right all along; all you have to do is tax the wealthy and this all goes away…..”

Unfortunately (or rather fortunately), there will not be a World War III to pull us out of this next upcoming depression… We will just have to spend Federal Dollars as if there was one. Which means, we have to return to the top marginal tax rates of 1941 – 1945…

So yes, there are no new revenues in this bill. Had there been, the reality would be that the House would have allowed a default.

But the argument can now begin… anew,… starting tomorrow! That increases in taxes cause an increase in jobs….. Had another default issue been allowed to occur again before the election, that argument would have been held hostage once again…

Now, it can’t… It can’t…. The argument of “good taxation” will get out there. This future election will be all about job creation…..

The Tea Party and Progressives both make the same error. They feel that holding another side hostage to get their way, is acceptable. That is not how America works. Often we fail, to remember that America is the one who put the Republicans into the position they did. Likewise, it was the Americans who put Democrats in the same position, two years earlier.

This argument needs to be played out over the course of an election cycle. The Americans themselves need to weigh in on this argument. Each side must argue their case.

It comes down to Clinton’s way… versus Bush’s…..

Start changing minds.

Battle of the Giants…

Having recently seen the Harry Potter movie, it is scary. Ever since watching…. I now see giants everywhere. Before when I looked, I never knew they were there…

Two giants will be doing battle here in Delaware… (The recession is finally paying off for our little state.)

Papers were filed with the ITC (International Trade Commission) by the South Korean giant Samsung LED against a division of another giant this time from Germany, Siemens….. over 8 patient infringements.

Samsung LED also said it filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Delaware to seek damages and a permanent injunction to bar Siemen’s subsidary, Osram’s alleged patent infringement from entering this country.

At stake is the financial future of these two companies. One will win, and the other for lack of a better word, will be vanquished.

Since Siemens actually has a plant in Delaware, next to the Glasgow Park off Route 40 and 896, I’m putting my bets on that giant…. if they get hurt, it will cost jobs.

Hotels, restaurants, transportation companies all stand to be a little busier as this gigantic fight, gets under way…. It would be helpful to practice on the Korean and German dialects now, before the event gets under way…

Sprechen sie deutsch?

니미럴 개자식 ….

It should be an interesting fight.

A Little Bit on China

In this past month’s news cycle, the state visit by the Chinese delegation, … got little attention. Yet, Historians will probably look back on that visit as the most important finishing touch of the past decade, even though it happened a few days into this current one. (Decades begin in the 1 years).

Alas, giant snowstorms and football playoffs have the tendency to suck up America’s attention in January.

What was notable;

A. China and the US are now equal players, both dependent on what the other does.

B. Both sides recognize that the other entity will do what is best in their self interest, and that neither party can make the other change course.

C. Both countries suffer malignancies the their hard line conservative movements (the mother-in-law syndrome), that slow the machinations of better relations.

The best description we have in today’s world to describe this relationship, at least that comes to this mind, is that of a marriage.

For an enjoined relationship has now grown up between these two partners; one that appears beneficial on all fronts for us both to continue; but one, which if ever split apart, will cost us both, ….. half of everything we own ad infinitum.

With that in mind, … the unilateral dominance that America has enjoyed since the breakup of the Soviet Union, is no more. We have a marriage now, whose new rules may cause us both some internal turmoil, but one that is better resolved through negotiation and discourse, than unilateral actions to the contrary………..

The US and China relationship …. has matured.

Two Years! A Study of Comparisons

January 20th, Inauguration Day 2009.. Wow, it’s been two years…..

So…. what did he accomplish? And what did the Republicans accomplish by Inauguration Day 2002? At the same point in their tenure?

The answers are damning for Republicans, that’s for sure…

First of all, we must all remember. One president walked into a budget surplus, full employment, a roaring economy, and took over the nation that was the most respected in the world. ( That of course would be the Republican, because he had the good fortune to come in after 8 years of solid Democratic leadership ) The other president, took office that was deeply in debt, the economy was in a massive free-fall, we were losing two wars simultaneously, GM and Chrysler were belly-up, all our banks had collapsed, people could not keep up on their mortgages, and health care was out of control with insurance dropping paid-up people off their roles, simply because they got sick………..

One president had the world handed to him; the other came in owing the world….

At the end of his midterm, George W. Bush was rated by historians as the worst ever… Among some of their reasons… were:

the doctrine of pre-emptive war, crony capitalism/being “completely in bed with certain corporate interests,” bankruptcy/fiscal irresponsibility, military adventurism, trampling of civil liberties, and anti-environmental policies.

On the contrary, the Obama administration drove and got passed, the Recovery Act, which is the largest infrastructure investment since Eisenhower, the largest educational investment since Johnson, and the largest clean energy bill, since….. George Washington.

Similarly, with the help of Delaware’s Ted Kaufman, the Obama administration enacted Wall Street Reform, which empowered both investors and consumers, stopped predatory lending practices, brought trades into light, and…. ended tax payer funded bailouts…

The Recovery Act also reduced taxes for 95 per cent of working families. Very necessary unemployment benefits were extended for those who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Credit Card Reform banned retroactive rate hikes, implemented new protections for young people who were enticed to spend more than they could afford, and required credit card companies to explain their terms in plain language. It also stopped banks from manipulating your balance to trick you into going over your limit, then socking you with excessive amounts of late charge fees.

New clean emissions standards and new mileage requirements rejuvenated the auto industry, causing it to undergo rapid development and growth in that sector, making America’s cars the envy of the world again. America’s auto industry was on it’s deathbed when Obama took over. Now, that sector is doing well, even better than Toyota.

At the midpoint of his first term, …George W. Bush, had at this time, ……….

Presided over the loss of approximately three million American jobs in his first two years in office, the worst record since Herbert Hoover.

Overseen an economy in which the stock market suffered its worst decline in the first two years of any administration since Hoover’s.

Transformed almost universal respect for the United States into worldwide condemnation. (One historian made this point particularly well: “After inadvertently gaining the sympathies of the world ‘s citizens when terrorists attacked New York and Washington, Bush has deliberately turned the country into the most hated in the world by a policy of breaking all major international agreements, declaring it our right to invade any country that we wish, proving that he’ll manipulate facts to justify anything he wishes to do, and bull-headedly charging into a quagmire.”)

Misled the American public about weapons of mass destruction and supposed ties to Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Failed to follow through in Afghanistan, a military situation where we won, then abandoned that area allowing the opposition to regroup and become more powerful than ever. We are in Afghanistan today, solely because we did not finish what we started.

Insulted and ridiculed other nations and international organizations and now has to go, hat in hand, to those nations and organizations begging for their assistance.

Completely miscalculated or failed to plan for the personnel and monetary needs in Iraq after the war, so that he sought and obtained an $87 billion appropriation for Iraq, a sizable chunk of which is going, without competitive bidding to Haliburton, the company formerly headed by his vice president.

Inherited an annual federal budget surplus of $230 billion and transformed it into a $500+ billion deficit in less than three years. This negative turnaround of three-quarters of a trillion dollars is totally without precedent in our history.

Cut taxes three times, sharply reducing the burden on the rich, reclassified money obtained through stock ownership as more deserving than money earned through work. The idea that dividend income should not be taxed—what might accurately be termed the unearned income tax credit—can be stated succinctly: “If you had to work for your money, we’ll tax it; if you didn’t have to work for it, you can keep it all.”

Severely curtailed the very American freedoms that our military people are supposed to be fighting to defend. (“The Patriot Act,” one of the historians noted, “is the worst since the Alien and Sedition Acts under John Adams.”)

Called upon American armed service people, including Reserve forces, to sacrifice for ever-lengthening tours of duty in a hostile and dangerous environment while he rewards the rich at home with lower taxes and legislative giveaways and gives lucrative no-bid contracts to American corporations linked with the administration.

Proclaimed himself to be a conservative while maintaining that big government should be able to run roughshod over the Bill of Rights, and that the government must have all sorts of secrets from the people, but the people can be allowed no privacy from the government.

Against that negative backdrop, in two years Obama has done what progressives since Roosevelt have wished for: Health Insurance Reform, a simple law that returns decency and forces humanity back into the insurance industry. It returns things like they used to be.

It used to be.. if you got sick, your insurance would cover you. Thanks to Obama’s Health Insurance Reform, it is that way again. It used to be… that insurance would cover your check ups to keep you from getting sick. Thanks to Obama’s Health Insurance Reform, it is that way again. It used to be, that one’s children in school, were covered under their parents insurance… Thanks to Obama’s Health Insurance Reform, it is that way again. Since Obama’s Health Insurance Reform brings back the benefits of the Health Care we had growing up,… it is truly, the true conservative Health Care bill.

SCHIP was increased to cover 4 million more American children. Healthier children, lower medical expenses for all of us… in the future.

As for national security? Whereas Bush led us into fighting two wars, one completely unnecessary as well as a complete failure, since we didn’t get any legal oil from out that country, ( it still goes to Europe and China), under Obama, we have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, and are currently reinserting ourselves into Afghanistan, to undo the damage that Republican president created.

In education, Obama saved American taxpayers 68 billion on student loans, over the next ten years, by making student loans more affordable and less profitable for banks. Under Bush, banks were pocketing most of the Federal guarantee money covering very high interest rates.

Whereas under Bush, we had “no child left behind” which meant that “no child ever moved forward”, under Obama, we have initiatives like “Race to the Top”, “Educate to Innovate”, which have a better chance at giving our nation’s students a competitive edge against the Chinese.

Like Harry Truman, the new GI Bill makes education more affordable for our veterans. Whereas “W” Bush sought to cut veteran’s benefits, as every veteran can attest from their real life history, Obama has tried to improve the lot of America’s finest…

Likewise, Obama ended “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, provided law enforcement new tools to deal with hate crimes, and made it easier for women to challenge unequal pay practices.

And to do all that? Obama in the worst of times, has added $201 billion to our deficit. The policies of Bush “W”, are responsible for the other $1.862 Trillion spending spree towards of this nations deficit, half of which is owned by our good friends, the Chinese. Thank you China for saving our ass from what the Republicans did to our nation…….

In just these two years, it’s obvious that we have a really great man… versus the Republicans abysmal failure…

Truth talks.

(Plus I just invested a big chunk into Kimberly-Clark, the maker of Depends, because obviously, … a lot of republicans are going to be needing them……… )

Holiday Spirit: Putting Politics Aside… :)

It is such a great time. The cold front has passed, warm moist air flowing in, misty rain, not enough to get you wet, but enough to wake you up as it dances across the face. In it one can feel the snow coming two days early… For a weekend night, outside it’s peaceful… Those with money, have finished shopping. Those without, are waiting for that last check before the holidays…

The annual tradition of trading favorite YouTube’d carols over the internet, has begun in earnest… Strains of Mozart, Celtic Women, Cat Stevens, Bon Jovi, Metallica, and tons of favorite carols by assorted artists, have caused all the stress, pain, heart attacks, symptoms of short breathing,……….. to melt away somewhere into the distant future, as we float back into all those happier times as we remember fond memories of our past……..

Courtesy of All American Patriots

Courtesy of Pat Dollard

Courtesy of Theodore’s World

Things aren’t so nice for 100,000 plus Americans now fighting in Afghanistan. Things aren’t so nice for their families, friends, and lovers back home,… now that things have really heated up over there….

Take a second: Imagine you’re a Taliban fighting this foe invading from a very distant land. Imagine the hope, and shot in the arm a headline like this from the United States, would instill in you upon having it read to you. Imagine how quickly its words would resonate in your blood, and how less inclined you would be to throw in the towel against overwhelming odds? Imagine if you had rounds of waterproofed AK 47 ammo hidden in your well, how inclined you must now be to pull them up, and lay in wait for an American serviceman, any American serviceman, to come close enough to fire a killing shot.

That Headline….

Republicans Shoot Down $700 Military Appropriations Bill Funding War in Afghanistan. Bill Not Passed.

Republicans just aided and comforted our enemy…. Can you hear the Taliban cheering?

It’s the holiday season;  I’ll be honest.

David Anderson: you served. How can you stomach supporting the Republican Party when they refuse to fund American servicemen in combat?

Frank Knotts: How can someone with your passion for all that America has stood for, still call yourself a Republican when they play games with Americans living and dying for our shared values?

Hube:  What gives?  Where is the line across which the Republican Party stops supporting America, and the Tea Party begins to represent the Conservative’s cause?

Tyler Nixon: How can any ex service man, support the party that is so self centered, they have no clue of how their vote to, not fund the war, emboldens our enemies?

Kilroy of Delaware: What kind of political party would play with funding for troops in active combat? How can that be tolerated?

Oh, well, it’s not skin off my teeth. It’s your party… do what you want. I don’t care… But I’ll tell you this… This nation needs a little old one horse Tea Party for this one reason alone: so conservatives have somewhere else to go without crawling on their knees to suck up to the moral backruptiveness of the Republican Party, that’s why…

Oh, well, I’ve said too much already. It’s not my problem. I just think that:

Our servicemen deserve better.
Conservatives deserve better.
Our republic, the United States of America, deserves better.

Conservatives: isn’t it way past time to switch your parties affiliation?  It’s the holiday season!  What better gift to your kids and grand-kids  could you possibly give?