Feb

22

I received this in an email from my father. It is presented in-full.

“Hi Guys,

I don’t normally pass on political stuff, but in this case I feel that Senator Bayh needs to be read by as many people as possible.

I know some of you already read the New York Times and have seen this article.

It’s clear that Evan Bayh is a “Man for all Seasons” and is saying what a lot of us are feeling.  Some of you are Republications, some Democrats, some Independents and some are out on the far ends of both the right and left wings.  You know who you are.  I am on the far left, so you know where I stand on most issues.  However, in this case, I agree with almost everything Senator Bayh is saying.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but, at this point in time, we need a cooperative centralist view in government (both Democrats and Republications) to establish a balance and stop the gridlock.  Perhaps, even get something done.  It’s time we start supporting politicians with centralist views and put a damper on all the garbage being spewed by all this partisan crap, Tea Party garbage, filibusters and other nonsense.  There’s a time and place for radical disruptive behavior, (God knows I love a good fight) but now’s not the time.   Do what you will, but do consider what Senator Bayh has to say.

John”

…My take… 

These days in almost all walks of life we seem to have forgotten that it is okay to accept good ideas on merely the merit of the idea itself. Even people on the fringes can have a good idea. Yet, routinely we dismiss good ideas solely on there origin.

Having said all this I have one more observation to make. It takes “two to tango.” People seem to be calling for “bury the hatchet.”  If only it were that simple. What we have today is the party out of power and their base not willing to come to the table. It could very well be that only the media is reporting the extreme fringes of the conservative movement. But there would seem to be very few people speaking up.

We need to continue to have a free exchange of ideas and to do so in as civil a manner as we can. At the end of the day, and within the guidelines of our constitution and civil discourse we need to allow the party in power to govern as they were elected by the majority.

 

Feb

18

It is one thing to take a position on an issue. It is what makes our country free. It is even okay to take an extreme position on an issue. But when you advocate violence for your ideals you need to be accountable. Words matter.

There are people out there like Joe Stack and Scott Roeder and Timothy McViegh. Many more people like them. Your words matter. If you want to change the minds of the American public you need to do it through civil discourse.

Flying a plane into a building was an act of terrorism on 9/11. It still is. The size of the plane does not matter, nor does the citizenship of the pilot.

Feb

9

Medicare is clearly an entitlement program. It is also technically “socialized” medicine. We each pay 1.45% and your employer has to pay a matching amount. If you are earning $100,000 a year (close to 2 times the national average) you had a grand total of $3000.00 toward medicare. If you were 21 years old and tried to find a healthcare policy equivalent to medicare you cold not find one at 3 times that price. Try finding private insurance at age 65.

So here is my idea/offer.

I think the government should let anyone that is against socialized medicine opt out of medicare. They will rebate the 1.45% you have paid in back to you, but you are offically out of medicare and they are off the hook. I wonder how many of you tea party people would sign up for that deal.

Do you think Big Business, Rush Limbaugh, and other millionaires like Dick Armey are going to help you out? Think again. You are a nothing more than pawn in their game. And, oh how you are being played.

 

Jan

25

Today I saw an op-ed piece in the NY Times by a guy named Harold Ford Jr. The title was “Democrats, Get Down to Business.” My first thought was another right wing numb-nuts talking trash. This is how disgusted I have become with the Republican party. But, I gave myself a good talking to and read the piece. It had some good talking points in it. It had the type of dialogue we needed long ago.

(Word to Democrats. Pull your heads out and get that bill passed. Your majority and political future depends on this legislation.)

I also saw Mark McKinnon on Rachel Maddow. I really like that guy. He was McCain’s campaign advisor. I have always liked him and the way he communicates and many of his positions. It is nice to see him back on the public scene. If Republicans were wise they will bring more like him to the forefront.

Also, I find the media to largely be a bunch of dinks that are reading the wrong tea leaves. Especially regarding the election of the new Senator from Mass. Maybe more on this later.

 

 

Jan

22

Their bonus pool is only 16.2 billion dollars. Yes, only a paltry $16,200,000,000 dollars for the year. We need you to sing Fergie, Bono, Ms. Crow. We need to raise some cash for these poor souls.

We have become numb to numbers to the point that they have no meaning to us any more, so let me put this in perspective for you. According to yahoo (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/pr?s=GS) they have 35,500 employees. That bonus pool works out to $456,338 dollars per employee. Given old Lloyd and his top cronies will be getting a few hundred million of that it is safe to say that the mailroom and the admin pool will be getting stiffed.

To further put this in perspective, with the median household income around $55,000 this bonus pool represents 294,545 families in America. The 10 billion we gave these ziff-bags in TARP money could have been used to put 285,000 Americans to work at a decent wage for a year.

What exactly does Goldman Sachs do to contribute to America?

Well, they do make a contribution to our economy. For one they took risky, reckless real estate loans, packaged them up and sold them as securities, and then had balls so big they also bought hedges against the manure they sold.

Not only did they make money selling this crap to institutional investors dumb enough to buy them, they also make billions (with a B) when our economy almost went over the cliff. In fact, some of the TARP money we gave to AIG went to payoff these vile scumbags.

This is capitalism? This is so far beyond Antionette telling the poor “to eat cake” it is not even funny. Each day I dig a little deeper into the cess-pool that corporations have become the more I realize that socialism is alive and well. Socialism for the the rich that is.

Where art thou Robin Hood? 

 

Jan

19

I forget who John Stewart of the “Daily Show” asked but the question went something like this…

“What I don’t understand is why Democrats need sixty votes to pass legislation and Republicans only need fifty-one?”

This is a good question. When the Republicans controlled the Congress they seemed to get legislation passed and never once had a majority of sixty. Whether you agree with what is being passed is not the point. Republicans do not seem to need sixty votes, but Democrats do. Maybe a Democrat could share the reason why this is with us.

In a time when we need change, we have the Democrats who have the ball but have started running in the wrong direction. We have the other party being nothing but obstructionist. I would have no problem with their dissent if they actually had some alternative solutions to the problems we are facing. They have brought nothing to the table. Nothing. I have spent a considerable amount of my time trying to figure out what they are offering. They are offering nothing. They are essentially dead-wood.

I am more dismayed by the American public at large. The reward for obstructionism is putting this party back in office? I hear the American public is tired of partisanship. I have not seen that with respect to healthcare. I saw one side looking for input and overtly getting told the goal of the minority was to kill healthcare. It is hard to work and play well with others that have no desire to play with you.

Did they do it with thoughtful debate and discourse. No. They did it with “death panels” , and shouting matches at forums that were meant to be about constructive dialog. Have we really become a nation where innuendo and 30-second sound bites is all we need to form an opinion.

 I am baffled. Truly baffled.

If the Democrats really think they need sixty votes to get anything done I would suggest we just vote them all out.

 

Jan

6

We recently purchased a new car. Our credit is good. I had no doubt walking in that we would be approved and we were. If your credit is good you can borrow money.

Banks have begun lending to people and businesses that are a good credit risk. This is a good thing. People in debt are paying off their debts. This is a very good thing. Savings rates which were actually zero have dramatically gone up in the past 14 months. This is actually a good thing as banks are allowed to loan money based upon a multiplier (this is called leverage) based upon the deposits they have on  hand.  Manufacturing is up which is a good thing.

They call all this capitalism, something we have failed to practice in the last decade. 

On the flip-side. Most the banks have paid the government TARP money back. They have done this based upon these 0 interest rate loans that they invested back into the stock market that is now up. Unfortunately they still are holding many of these stocks. If the market takes another dip, guess what? We are back in the same boat.

The behavior of wall street is still reckless. We still have a mortgage crisis in both the commercial and residential sectors. This is not so good. We need to kick some ass and take names on this front.

We are still fighting and paying for two wars, this is not good.

Government deficits are out of control with no end in sight. To add to this we are between a rock and hard place in the respect that to get out of this mess for the next few years we need to keep spending more than we have. This is not good.

The biggest challenge we face is medicare and medicade expenditures. This is why healthcare reform is so damn important. The Democrats less the blue-dogs holding the party hostage actually have the 51 votes in Congress to pass real reform that will help us reign in costs in both the short term and for the future. Unfortunately the Democrats are too stupid to use reconciliation. They say doing so would take to long. Hmmmmmm, you mean like the Republicans did to you to get through tax cuts during the Bush administration when we were running two wars. They seemed to be able to do it pretty quick. For those of you with short memories Dick “Lucifer” Cheney cast the deciding vote to break the 50-50 deadlock. Hmmmmm, Tea-party people where was your outrage back then on this?

To be fair here are the republicans that voted no.

Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine,
Gordon Smith of Oregon,
Mike DeWine of Ohio and
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Voting no on a tax cut in the midst of running two wars, low unemployment, and huge federal deficits is beyond insane. These five did the right thing. Three are out of office now. That was their reward. Only the Maine Senators remain. Obviously Maine has their head screwed on straight. Maybe when we stop voting people out of office for doing the hard but right thing more of our elected officials will be inclined to do the right thing.

Anyone that tells you that they are going to increase spending and lower taxes and it will all balance out is an idiot. Anyone that thinks that makes sense is an idiot. Maybe it is time that we stop listening to idiots.

Out #1 immediate priority is to drop unemployment back to pre meltdown levels. This will require more deficit spending but is needed. On the day we accomplish this the next priority is to have a tax increase that affects every American making more than the poverty level.

Yes, a tax increase!

We also need to cut federal spending and to take the excess and pay down our debt owned to foreign nations. The only way we are going to pull this off is to give the president line item veto like Clinton had. He was able to have 4 years of budget surpluses. It worked back then it will work again. He was the last president since Eisenhower that had budget surpluses.

It is time to pull our heads out and quit living on fantasy island. I am completely aligned with the tea-party on this one. But this includes all Americans and all of our elected officials irrespective of political party.

Once we pull our collective heads out many of you could go out to your vehicles and scrape off the bumper sticker that says “We are spending are children inheritance.”

Spending tomorrows money today screws future generations. It is not funny. It is selfish. It is immoral. Knock it off.

Jan

5

“He’s said to be a Buddhist; I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’”

What can one say but Wow.

I do not wish to talk about Britt Hume. What bugs me is the lack of Christian response. As a Christian I am offended by his remarks. If you pick up and actually read the Gospels what you will find is little that represents the attitudes and actions of much of fundamentalist Christians in our country today.
Years ago a Catholic priest, Joseph Girzone, wrote a series of books where the theme was what would happen if Christ came back. The premise was that the Christian church would reject him as a crackpot, similar to what the Jewish leaders did to him back in his day.

But I also do not want to talk about how so many of these people have hijacked Christianity and turned it into something that has little to do with the message of Christ and the New Testament.

I want to talk about God. God is bigger than all our religions. God does not take sides with extremest Muslims that want to wipe blow infidels off the face of the earth. God does not take the side of suburban Christians that condemn homosexuals and make them feel that they are somehow less human than those that are not.

I find it interesting that not once did Jesus say a thing about homosexuals. The guy hung out with prostitutes and other “dregs” of his day. He called out the religious leadership of the day on numerous occasions for their hypocrisy and even for trying to get him involved in politics.

If you actually read through the New Testament irrespective to your religion, or belief in God and then answer the question, “If Christ came back today which group would he likely be tearing a new one to” the overwhelming conclusion would be a large section of mainstream fundamentalist Christian leadership.
The fact remains that everyone of us… you, me… everyone is just plain messed up. So, next time you are looking to pass judgement on your neighbor, do yourself a favor and take a good long look in the mirror. And, one does not need to be a biblical scholar to know the truth in that statement!

PS - Buddhists, please accept my apology for the insensitive remarks of Mr. Hume.

Dec

18

The Republican party to the core is morally bankrupt and obstructionist. If you work at Fox News, are named Rush Limbaugh, or are one of their shrinking base you would not think so. For the rest of American (the majority) we see you for who you are. We see that party over country is your mantra.

You are sorry excuses for Americans. You may win some seats back in the 2010 elections. Winning back seats in areas of the country that are conservative and went to conservative Democrats (assuming you can even manage this) will not be that big of a deal.

Most of America (including many in the Tea Party movement) are not so stupid and see right through you. Assuming you can survive as a party it will be quite some time and take real, substantative action on your part to get back the trust of America.

Ronnie and Dwight are rolling over in their graves! You will never again get my vote.

Dec

13

First, I cannot believe how ill informed ALL news organizations and many political pundants are when it comes to understanding basic facts. Facts that are readily available.

We live in an era when access to information and media is available for everyone. And yet, we seem to live in an age where spin and bullshit are at an all-time high.

If we want to get back to conservatism in terms of fiscal discipline I am afraid that statistically the Democrats are the ones that have been fiscally conservative since 1976.

Many of us have a hard time understanding economics. So, lets look at this in the easiest way possible. I am going to take the side of the Tea Party people that are outraged and calling for responsible government spending. So, we are going to accept their position and take the premise that the government should not spend more than it makes. (I too am for responsible government spending)

Credit and overleverage has put our nation (government, business, and the people) in the predicament we are in today. In simpler terms, we spent more than we had to spend and that is why we are where we are today.

Let us look at government spending starting first with deficits racked up during various presidential administrations. To be fair, the numbers are adjusted using the consumer price index (CPI). The consumer price index is a formula that adjusts a dollar so we can compare money from one date in time to another. This should make sense to you as prices always seem to go up.

Deficits under Democratic Presidents Since 1976.

President     Deficit (Actual $)   CPI Adjusted Deficit   Avg Yrly Deficit (CPI Adj)

Carter          227.4 billion         673.9 billion              168.5 billion

Clinton         192.2 billion         514.6 billion                64.3 billion

Deficits under Republican Presidents Since 1976

President     Deficit (Actual $)   CPI Adjusted Deficit  Avg Yrly Deficit (CPI Adj)

Reagan       1,338.6 billion        2,630.5 billion            328.8 billion

Bush I          933.2 billion         1,444.8 billion            361.2 billion

Bush II      1,630.5 billion*       1,897.82 billion           271.1 billion

* Statistics for the last year of the Bush Administration have not yet been released. In that year alone 800 billion was allocated for TARP. Also, during the Bush Administration the Wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan were not included in these numbers!

You need to go back to the Eisenhower administration to find a fiscally conservative President in terms of the Federal deficit. Eisenhower only racked up 148 billion (CPI adjusted) during his eight year administration (18.5 billion per year average). Note: He was the president that enacted the visionary Federal Highway Act, first conceived by FDR.

If we look at the last 96 years. During the 48 that a Republican was president the average CPI Adjusted spending average 140 billion per year. During the Democrats 46 years the average is 109 billion per year.

Now, since spin has become so ridiculous and NOT based upon facts I want to one other look at these numbers. We will now look at the deficits based upon the makeup of the Congress and the Senate. This is a little tricker to deal with as there are two branches. What I did to be pure is took only the years that the Democrats or Republicans held both a majority in both the House and the Senate, and the President was from the same party. Here are the numbers since 1976. Again, to be fair the numbers are adjusted using the CPI.

Democrats controlled House, Senate, President - 1977-1980

 168.5 billion per year average deficit.

Republicans controlled House, Senate, President - 2001-2006

250.6 billion per year average deficit.

Neutral (At least one of the three branches of government is the other Party)

230.2 billion  per year average deficit.

These statistics paint a simple and compelling picture. When I originally set out to gather this information I was outraged by our growing deficits. I was under the impression that the Democrats were the fiscally irresponsible party. I was outraged by our mounting deficits long before the tea party movement began and was out to prove how deficits were going to kill us as I was under the impression that our government running deficits was a new thing.

Ha!

We have been running deficits since the country was founded.

If you would like more information on this go to the following link.

http://www.everydollarmatters.com/Government_Spending.php

Our economy is a very complex beast. But, to understand it we need to put it into simple terms and come up with simple solutions. We need pragmatism, not reactionary policy.  Let me put it in these terms for you.

If you have a credit card debt of $10,000 and are unemployed (which is a situation many of you are in), would you try to pay down your debt by paying more than the minimum monthy payments?

NO, not unless you were a fool. But, once you got a job and your income started coming in you would want to start paying of this debt.

Well, currently our nation is in a similar situation. We need to spend money in meaningful ways (MEANINGFUL WAYS!!!) to stimulate the economy and jobs. If we can do this it will increase the tax base so that we can begin to pay down our debt. The debt we need to retire is the debt that is owed to foreign countries. This represents about 25% of the national deficit.

As a final note. When anyone is giving you their point of view listen carefully to what they are saying. Are they backing up their position with information and details that can readily be verfied? I do not care whether they are from the Lef of the Right or somewhere in the middle.

If all you do is get riled up by 30 second commercials. If your opinions are formed by people that are short on verifiable facts then you need to take a close look in the mirror.

 

 

 

 

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