Category: Politics

Epitaph for a Weak President and Lost Nation.

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I did not write this, but the writer who did, printed in today’s NY Times, encapsulates and summarizes my sad feelings about the state of America and the weak character of our Chief Executive:

“When George W. Bush was President, I was ashamed of my country. Ashamed that we could have elected such an anti-intellectual, war mongering liar. My friends in Europe laughed at how stupid the American people had become. The nation seemed to be traveling down a path to all-war-all-the-time, led by a torturer-in-chief with a total disregard for civil rights and the truth. There was ample reason to be embarrassed and frightened.

But George W. Bush was a winner. That man did everything he wanted to do. His administration controlled EVERYBODY, including the media, and they brooked no dissent. They spied at will, tortured at will, started the wars they wanted to start and took the money they wanted and gave it to their friends. In terms of policy victories, it can be argued that the Bush administration was the most successful in history.

Now, I am ashamed of my country and my President for entirely different reasons. We are now led by a President with neither the desire, inclination nor the ability to win anything. Unwittingly, we elected a man with a fetish for defeat. With public sentiment on his side and victory at his beck and call, he chooses to surrender. He betrays his followers and chooses to lose. From a character standpoint, he is the biggest coward and loser ever to occupy the White House. This latest surrender is the most bizarre one to date, and will prove to be the most calamitous. He has ripped his own party to shreds. He has chosen to lock in the exponentially-widening gap between rich and poor. He has chosen a path to economic ruin. Things are about to get worse. Put another way, America cannot afford to have Barack Obama as President. We desperately need a leader, and I am terrified of what that leadership deficit might bring about in 2012.”

War Costs Money. Our Money.

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Where were all these geniuses when the US first invaded Iraq, and later Afghanistan? All these wars and all the spending overseas, not to mention weapons expended on such wonderful allies as Pakistan, is directly visible in the deplorable condition of American infrastructure.

Here in Southern California we have a substandard school system, bursting water pipes, pot-holed pavement, bankrupt police and fire departments, cutbacks in every type of poverty aid; cities who are laying off park, sanitation, and medical personnel; and a public transport system which would be fine in a city of 4,000 people.

And we don’t have glorious public parks, efficient and clean streets; underground electrical, or well-patrolled and safe neighborhoods.

If you take a Google Street View of any street in Denmark, Finland, France, Sweden, Germany or Italy and compare it to many sections of Los Angles, you will have a real life story of how our nation is literally decaying and dying and how our leaders continue to pour money into useless and self-defeating war that is bankrupting us financially and morally.

Go to Google Street view and compare bombed out Dresden, Germany in 2011 to the victorious San Fernando Valley or Detroit, Michigan and see how the US treats its own.

Today is actually an Election Day.

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Thanks to an email I just received I learned something:

Today is an election.

I have no idea what issues or candidates are running. And I have no intention of voting.

But the email made me think.

Here it is:

“…That today is an election day in CA?  Probably not and who would blame you?

Today is what I would describe as an especially “offensive election.”  It’s where the powers that be, and their moneyed benefactors, try to sneak a fastball right by us.

The ballot is loaded with quality of life initiatives that will affect all of us.  This is one of those very quiet elections which will decide how police patrol your neighborhood, whether or not you receive proper fire coverage, and most importantly how and where money is spent.

And the sad fact is that those holding the elections are counting on low turnout and you not voting.

Polls are open until 7pm.  I know most of you are working your asses off, but try to ask yourself why if you are not bothering to vote?

This election will affect all of our paychecks, our homes, and the communities we live in as a whole.

If you absolutely cannot make it to a polling location please do your small part and go on Facebook or Twitter and let your friends and associates know this is happening today.

Or sit back and prep your fiddle…”

A Pure Heart and a Clean Conscience.

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It is an privilege to choose to serve and a dishonor lying to serve. The morality of keeping in place a system of bigotry and lies, against those who were born with a gay sexual orientation, is purely irrational. With blood and sacrifice, selflessness and honor, bravery and courage, have our young men and women in uniform borne the cause of freedom and justice on the battlefield. And they, who put their lives at risk, deserve to fight and serve with a pure heart and a clear conscience.

Why I don’t like Meg Whitman.

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I will not vote for Meg Whitman as Governor of California. I simply don’t like her.

I can just imagine working for her. She would be the boss that always has a painted on smile, and conducts sales meetings in motels, and talks for six exhausting, oxygen starved hours in front of thousands of co-workers, inside a windowless catering hall, motivating us.

I would be some unknown at some large company, and she would not know a thing about me. She would have an armada of assistants and a fleet of airplanes, dozens of limousines and several houses at her disposal. I would only hear about her when a mass email was sent out to the other 10,000 employees about our “most productive year yet!”

She looks haggard, but she probably is the type who functions on two hours of sleep a night. She is a go-getter, a type “A” workaholic, a sports fan, a rabid investor, a fearless leader, a hardscrabble boss, a fast talking, on her feet, off to the meeting, back from a conference kind of gal.

Her life reads like a human resources written cover letter of verbs and action words: controlled, managed, delegated, reorganized, instituted, increased, launched, negotiated, resolved, restored, facilitated, directed, encouraged.

And if we elect her in California, we too will experience action words and verbs: fired, lost, cut-off, investigated, deported, economized, downgraded, downsized, exported. The rich will applaud and tell the rest of us that it is all meant for our own good.

If I did work closely with her, it would be in some demeaning capacity, like that maid she fired who “was almost a member of my family”. If she did take notice of me, it would be to pat me on the back for something ridiculously low, like sweeping her back porch, or organizing her recyclables.

I don’t like Meg Whitman, and if I did work for her, you can be sure that she would fire me. She wouldn’t personally fire me, but she would order a “company wide cutback of 15%” that would involve firing hundreds. Someone that looks just like her, in human resources, several thousand rungs below Meg, a woman of about 40, in a blue JC Penney suit and frosted spiky blonde hair would do the layoffs.

Meg has billions and she has spent $120 million dollars to buy herself the governorship of the state of California. But there are millions of voters in this state who look at Meg and see that bitchy boss, that speeding woman in the SUV in the rear view mirror, that insurance company clerk, that mean math teacher, that ornery and self-assured Auntie, that bossy wife, that executive suite President whose office is on the top floor of a skyscraper in Century City….and they just don’t want to elect her to give her one more feather to put in her 10 gallon, eBay sized hat.

I don’t like Meg Whitman. I don’t care what she says. I don’t care what she spends. I ain’t voting for her.

Thank you, Adam Ash.

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Responding, in the NY TImes, to a Tom Friedman article on America’s decline, Adam Ash of New Haven, CT hits the nail on the head:

“The changes that Tom Friedman mentions aren’t going to happen. Nor will the most necessary change of all — a massive public works program that could employ millions to build and repair our infrastructure (smart grid, high-speed rail, broadband, big tax breaks to green-energy start-ups and folks who green-energize their homes, etc),

The corporate stranglehold over the nation’s future will continue — the fat cats of Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Agribusiness, Big Pharma, Big-Bonus-and-Golden-Parachute CEOs, the Big Military Industrial Complex. We on Main Street will remain the willing Stockholm Syndrome dupes of the Washington-Wall Street-Pentagon Axis of Predatory Fraudsters.

Let’s face it, this is what America is. This is what America has become. This is what America will be. There will be no Poor People’s Movement. No Pitchfork Uprising. No massive Middle-Class March. No national demand for the reining in of our plutocrats. No nationwide insistence on holding them accountable for ripping us off, legally and illegally. The revolution will not be televised because the revolution will never happen, One cannot get a nation of obese potatoes off the couch and into the streets. They’re happier vegetating on their behinds in front of the TV machine’s 24/7 propaganda.

It doesn’t matter which political party is in power: the fleecing of regular folk by our morally blind elites will continue. Our elites enter into their bubble at our Ivy League universities, and they never exit this bubble. They don’t have to. Life is good in their bubble. Outside the bubble, Main Street dreams turn into Pain Street ashes.

The Tea Party folks — our latest populist movement — are complaining about big spending. They are right to do so. But here’s the weird thing. While they may vent about the big spending on social services (healthcare, Medicare, and Social Security, which is solvent, BTW), there’s not a single peep out of them about our Godzilla-sized military spending.

America is looking more and more like Rome under Nero. And what do the Tea Party people do about this trend? While we’re burning and our elites are fiddling, they’re complaining about the quality of the firewood.

The decline of America will only be arrested if the greed of our elites consumes all reason, and renders our entire middle class totally desperate or jobless. Will our elites be that dumb? Possibly. Meanwhile, see you at the next financial meltdown. And get used to it — meltdowns have been, and will continue to be, our traditional way of life.”