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Image direct result caused by actions of the stupid fools impersonating a US Congress
This Wednesday, on January 18th 2012, we too will be participating in SOPA Blackout Day… I encourage every true American patriot left, to do likewise.
Tommywonk does not yet endorse any candidate. Dave Burris does.
Although there is nothing wrong with either option, it does carry relevance to how their blogs are perceived.
The one that has not yet endorsed or predicted a future winner, can still be perceived as an open source of information. The other, which has firmly committed to a certain candidate, has, even if it is unfairly so, been perceived as a tool of spin.
This is not entirely negative. If someone needs information on Mitt Romney, they now have somewhere to go where they can get answers to their questions.
However, if one is looking for inspired analysis, then the Mitt Romney website would most likely be expected to present just one side of the facts. After all, it is extremely counterproductive to do your opponent’s work for him. Let your enemy find the dirt for himself…..
Therefore it is with great hope and expectation that we look to our local blog sites to remained unaligned, at least for a large part of this exceedingly long campaign.
Instead, more attention should be given by us, to what we, as a select group of individuals. want to see in our candidates.
Obviously, any candidate worth his salt, will read a short list of local blogs daily. To not do so, would put that local candidate at peril. Today, being uninformed, or mis-stating an opinion over an airwave, that has already been exposed as weak within the blog’s community, is most surely steering one’s political campaign towards scalding water.
Since the advent of TV, and its media savvy marketers, our national candidates have needed tons of money to buy points to persuade us, the voter, to “buy their product” over the “product” of their competitors………..(let’s see…..Obama packaged like Aquafresh……….hmmm……..”both will leave a ‘clean‘ taste?….”)
We know this approach does not work. America can be, will be, and has been persuaded to “buy” into a candidate who is untested, untried, and unable to run the country. This happens with late night marketing all the time….how many of us have ever spent our hard earned money on an advertised product, only to fell gypped after we inspect the goods?
So what do I propose? Being somewhat of a classicist in nature, the ideal of a proper way to choose our leader, is the Athenian one, later copied by the early Romans, and that is to utilize the forum method. In this model each of the candidates presents their ideas to a forum of citizens, who then vote yea or nay upon the outcome. Some may say, “that is what takes place now” but there is a major difference between the forum approach and the marketing approach.
When we are marketed to, we are assailed on a lot of fronts simultaneously. We are taunted with logic, emotional persuasion, fear, (sex?), etc. and prodded with any method to get ourselves to make an emotional response…….one that is both quick…and long lasting.
This is not what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they set up our government. Most of them were no more than one or two generations removed from “THE AGE OF REASON.” What was obvious to them, and is now obfuscated from us, was how REASON made clear and empowered normal people to exercise control over their own destinies.
A forum is a public area where anyone who was literate. could espouse an idea. If the idea has merit, it gains traction among the audience; if it doesn’t, then the audience’s attention shifts to one that does. But for REASON to work, it has to be done with the printed word. For when we read, we use the most critical parts of our anatomy. But when subjected to electronic and visual images, we react and judge instinctively.
Sometimes instinctive judgments are effective and necessary, especially when driving at high rates of speed. But when complex issues get brought up for review, it is often better to let REASON take all the time necessary to analyze each side of an option, and then let REASON exercise the most prudent response.
Just one example, had America focused on the actual content of the 2000 Presidential debates and less on the sighs by one of the two candidates, (which have “what” to do with running this nation”), our social security, our national deficit, our economy and our well being, could have been in strong financial state right now. Instead, as a nation we allowed ourselves to be distracted.
If the future of this nation is to rise, or do the opposite, decline, whichever course America takes, it will be due to the accumulated results of actual decisions made by our governing bodies over time. It will not be based on some hot “American Idol” quality of leadership, or star-struck persona, lifted from the likes of Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton…..
For no corporation or board of officers, upon having a financial proposal brought before them, dismiss all the informative facts and vote yea or nay based on the “clean” teeth of the idea’s proponent. Instead they argue, yes argue, the pros versus the cons of that proposal at hand. And after all arguments are heard, a consensus is formed among a majority and a new direction of action is thus decided upon.
So what needs to happen in today’s political process? We need to utilize our newest technology and return to the basics of our democracy. Instead of emotionally locking onto a candidate, and throwing our support to them long before he/she has been tested, we ought to sit back, wait, watch, discuss, even argue, and enjoy the fun.
Then using our REASON, a capacity with which we all seem to have been more than adequately endowed, we need to leave a record for the informed public to see, and follow. Then with fingers crossed, we allow them to make up their own minds, and trust ourselves for better or worse, after all is said and done, to the results of their decisions.
The opposite of this is what historians will perhaps say was the most damning trait of this Republican administration….. Whereas the Founding Fathers fully trusted the informed electorate to listen to the evidence and make the right and proper decision, this current Republican administration does not. They obviously prefer to trust an uninformed electorate……….. for they go great lengths to keep the truth away from us. But the old saying is still true: where there is smoke, there’s fire……. It stands to REASON, that anyone THIS SNEAKY, is obviously up to no good.
Yesterday, Halliburton was called before Sen. Dorgan’s committee to testify in it’s dealings with Iran. Sherry Williams, vice president and corporate secretary gave testimony for Halliburton. At her table, also invited by the committee was the N Y comptroller and one of our investigators who tracks terrorist money trails wherever they may lead around the world.
With so much news happening, this hearing will get no press. That would be a shame. For the give and take not only gave insight into the motives and operations of Halliburton, but they also through implication, gave ominous insight into the Machiavellian machinations of the Vice President.
Recently Halliburton announced its headquarters were to move to Dubai. But in the hearing today, it slipped out that the Dubai office was originally opened so that Halliburton could engage the country of Iran in business. At that time there were US sanctions against dealing with Iran. But Halliburton did not break the law; instead they called the company Halliburton Parts and Services, established a Delaware type charter in Dubai, and as a foreign subsidiary, it was legally allowed to make multi million deals with the very country that was engaged in supplying Iraq’s insurgents, or so we were told…….
Under questioning, Ms Williams admitted that the profits from Iran were the majority of the profits earned by the Dubai subsidiary, which incidentally was a subsidiary of the Cayman island branch of Halliburton. The profits were transferred to the Texas office effectively, if not legally, thereby allowing Halliburton to profit from selling to Iran, without “selling to Iran.” Currently Halliburton is under investigation by US Attorney’s office in Texas for dealings like these. Incidentally, to clarify this trail of deceit, 100 per cent of the profits of the Grand Cayman branch of Halliburton, came from Iran. Those of us trained to read between the lines know that this means that these shell companies were, despite appearances otherwise, set up to do business with Iran. It was not a case of… “we are so big, we can’t help what our subsidiaries are doing……”
What does this have to do with Cheney? He retired years ago. Yes, on paper but mentioned in this hearing, I believe by Senator Lautenberg, Cheney’s stock options do not expire until 2009, well after his term in office has expired.
This means that he benefits whenever Halliburton benefits. Example: let us give Halliburton a no bid contract………” ka ching, ka ching.” Let’s increase profits by taking government money and then, not providing the troops the service for which we were paid……”ka ching: ka-ching. Let’s keep the war going in Iraq so we can continue to secretly drill in southwest Iraq and sell the oil through Saudi pipelines……”ka ching, ka ching.” Let’s do business with Iran, despite the fact that it is supplying the very IED’s that killed a couple of Delawareans……”ka-ching, ka-ching.” Let’s send two carrier groups, instead of one into the Persian Gulf, to shake up the price of oil….”ka-ching, ka-ching………”
When asked what they were thinking as they did business with Iran, their response? If we didn’t move in, the French would do it….
Just curious, does anyone else see the irony of the very cabal (the vice president’s office) who demonized the French people with “Freedom Fries” and Franco-bashing 24 hours a day on Fox News, is now, through a subsidiary under fire, using the French to justify their own nefarious actions?
History will no doubt forever glorify Halliburton. That is what usually happens to outlaws who have balls. Many profiteers have gotten rich off suppling their country’s armies. But Halliburton breaks new ground, by being the first corporation to profit by supplying BOTH sides of a conflict that their country is engaged in, allowing them to be used by each other, against each other. And it was all done out of the Vice President’s office…………..
Hmmm. Could he turn out to be the “other rumored” Sith Lord?
Liberalgeek is throwing a party, a wind party. It is a must- read for anyone who knows deep down in their chromosomes that Delaware has to go down this future path if it wishes to survive.
Hyperbole aside, yeah we will still be around like withered figs, but as a viable state, we will not grow new jobs. Instead, our legislature will concern itself with how to survive on less and less, while our neighboring states around us, steal what should have been our opportunity and subsequently, the economic vitality that goes with it.
Ladies and Gentlemen: This decision is the BIG ONE.
You know THAT decision….. that comes around every twenty years or so. The last “Big” decision occurred in the early eighties, with the changing of Financial Center Development Act that flip-flopped us into a banker friendly state. The ” big” one before that, was the Delaware Coastal Zoning act, attributed to former governor Russel Petersen, that has kept Delaware beautiful and not looking like the shores of Brooklyn.
This trend, that of finding a gem every twenty years or so within the Diamond state, goes back to our state being the first to ratify the Constitution.
As outlined here, you can write some letters. You can also write some friends and ask them to write letters.
So how do you write a letter to a legislator or governor?
Here are some inside tips on how to get noticed………….
Don’t try to sound high minded. Be yourself. Write like you talk. Government officials spend lots of time with sycophants trying to impress them. Sometime they want to hear from someone real.
Keep it short: try to say what you want in five lines.
Don’t resort to slogans: “Wind power is great! Hooray! Boo to Coal!.” Politicians see so much of that crap, (bloggers too) that they are not only are immune, but also prone to consider the slogan’s author too stupid and too shallow to be taken seriously.
Make it personal. Before you write, think about why you, personally, believe in wind. Then say it.
So here is an example.
To The Honorable Dori Connor Senator 12th District
Dear Ms Conner:
I work forty hours a week as a Pipe welder. I want you to support Blue Water Wind’s proposal. Clean healthy air is very important to me. I have respiratory problems when Delaware City smoke settles over my house. Wind is free , but the price of coal will triple over the next ten years, and I cannot even afford to pay my utility costs now.
Again, please help us and support Blue Water Wind’s proposal.
Sincerely:
________
Open, Honest, Personal, Brief, Effective.
Is it worth the time or effort, will your letter make the slightest iota of a difference?
Well if you look at local election results, you can see that in close races, often a couple hundred votes determine who wins. In primaries, the margins of victory are even tighter. So,………. yeah, your letter makes a difference!
kavips 
