Ciao

I expect this to be my last posting of the 2008 election cycle. There are two principal reasons for this decision. The first is quite selfish; turning out a posting every day is very difficult as I do my own research and try, while strongly supporting Obama, to be fair to the opposition, and it is not easy without a copy editor to catch my errors. I also think that I’ve made as much impact as possible on readers; everyone on the list – and I hope those to whom it has been forwarded and those who stumbled onto the site - can’t help but be clear that I support Obama and why.

My other reason for ceasing is that Virginia is a battleground state, among the closest of these. Therefore, I’m going to spend as much time and energy as possible in making telephone calls around the Commonwealth in support of Barack Obama, Mark Warner – the Democratic party candidate for U.S. Senate in Virginia - and the various Democrats running for House seats in the jurisdictions that I call.

I think that personal contact can make huge difference in whether voters turn out on Election Day, so on a cost benefit basis, I think I can do more good for Obama by making these calls in Virginia than by preaching to the choir on my blog. I know that there are McCain supporters who can’t wait for the daily post and that I was close to converting most of them to Barack’s camp, but with daily time to ponder what I’ve said over the past six or eight weeks, they’ll finally see the light and vote the correct way anyway.

I’m convinced that this is the most important election since 1932. The country is facing economic and political problems unprecedented in my adult lifetime, and this will be the third epochal change that I have lived through. The first was the New Deal, Fair Deal and Great Society periods that culminated with the great legislative achievements of Lyndon Johnson that transformed America but unfortunately ended with the Vietnam War.

The second great change was the conservative whirlwind led by such folks as Barry Goldwater and Newt Gingrich but most exemplified by Ronald Reagan. It had a run of more than thirty years and did much good in its early days. Sadly, it ended in hubristic overreach during the last eight years leading up to the election to be held twelve days hence.

The election of Barack Obama will represent not only an epochal change in policy direction but a new day for America. A black American will be the first leader of this generation long shift coming, but he will be followed by women and perhaps representatives of other racial and ethnic groups. Of course white men will preside again, but they will be elected by a very diverse and different pool of voters than those we’ve known.

America will soon be restored to prosperity and to an honored place among the nations of the world. It will be great just like always – but different.


Now it can be told: ****, the one who really goofed it is George W. Bush who, thank goodness, has only 89 days let to serve in the White House. And ^^^^ ^^^^^^ the guy who guided **** down the garden path is - I'll bet you guessed it - Darth Vader - I'm sorry, Dick Cheney.

I hope I’m around for the next election cycle as this is really fun for me.

And I ain’t b.s n’ ya.

He loves you not

Are you the owner of a small business? If so, you are revered by President **** and worshipped by Senator McCain, just ask him; no, don’t bother, he’ll reach out to tell you that you’re an American hero. You’re one of the people he’s trying to protect from the socialist ideas of Barack Obama. McCain says that Obama wants to tax you out of business and destroy your ability to create jobs for your equally worthy neighbors.

In 1997, the Congress mandated that the federal government set aside 23% of its procurement dollars for small businesses. They realized that you and yours are the engine of employment in the nation’s economy and wanted you to get a share of the tax dollars that you paid in to Uncle Sam. That’s in addition to other set asides for small firms owned by minority and other disadvantaged people. Isn’t that super; your government has a heart. You didn’t know?

When **** assumed the presidency, helped greatly by your contributions and leadership, you must have been salivating. Imagine a government headed by folks that loved you and who were committed to sending at least 23% of the huge federal pie to you. It would be for work that you could do well, so there was every reason that this would be a symbiotic relationship as well as patriotic one. How about that?

It was all bovine waste. You think you’re tight with these folks and that they love you and the ground you walk on. Wrong buffalo breathe, that policy is for show and not for go. It turns out that if you make pencils, erasers, coffee mugs or any number of products not produced by some of the nation’s largest and most powerful companies, you were welcome to apply for the crumbs. If on the other hand, you wanted to play in the sandbox occupied by the real people, it was time to cover your eyes as you were going to have the sand kicked in your face.

The Washington Post did an analysis and today ran an expose that shows the depth of the **** administration’s love for you. It’s kind of like the love that the sons of the robber barons had for upstairs maids, it kind of meant a different kind of love; you love and they shaft. The cavalier treatment was most striking with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security where the money’s big and the purchases are high tech, you know somewhere you might actually have a chance of becoming a big business if you could produce.

Some of the nation’s and world’s biggest firms such as British Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications International Corp., Lockheed Martin, Dell Computer and others got the lion’s share of your dough. Both the Post and the government make it clear that it wasn’t the fault of these firms. The contracting agencies simply didn’t care whether they followed the rules.

So when you hear John McCain sing his love song to Joe the Plumber, just remember as long as Joe doesn’t mind fixing toilets, he’s a hero, but if he – or you - want to cut out a big high tech firm, he’ll find himself in an outhouse.

Here’s the story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/21/AR2008102102989.html?hpid=moreheadlines

I ain’t b.s.n’ ya; you gottta be big to be loved by these guys.

McCain must be defeated

There are two new wrinkles to the McCain campaign. The first calls for us to vote for McCain in order to assure divided government, something that even I have advocated for many years, and the second actually denounces the **** administration and says that McCain can provide the change needed for us to overcome the damage wrought by ****.

The problem with the call for divided government is that the power of the presidency has grown so great that the constitutional checks and balances cannot be easily overcome with the wrong division of power. By that I mean a change in philosophy is needed in the executive before we can adjust the problem by electing the out party to head up the Congress. If Obama is elected and assumes the many powers grabbed by the presidency since Ronald Reagan, I will almost certainly switch parties and support a Republican, but that means that I would actually have to come to see a pattern of abuse such as that practiced by **** and ^^^^^^. I do not foresee such an outcome at this time.

I was born and raised a Democrat. Over the course of my adult life, I came to examine my support of my party and concluded that I was becoming a moderate with more than a little sympathy for republican positions. I came to see Richard Nixon as a very good president until his character flaws tipped me against him personally but not philosophically, but it was not until Gerry Ford’s run for president that I was able to break my lifelong party affiliation and vote Republican.

Much as I have maligned ****, I will admit to having voted for him in 1980. Frankly, I was quite satisfied with him in the very early days of his presidency and it was not until I was horrified by the prospect of waging a preventive war against Iraq that I turned on him with a vengeance. The folly of the venture and the radical call for massive spending and cuts in taxes turned me back into a Democrat – a moderate one.

Initially I supported Hillary Clinton in this year’s primary campaign. The centrist presidency of Bill Clinton with its moderate approach to governing – even though I had not voted for him – led me to conclude that Hillary was the one. Over the course of the campaign I became attracted to Obama and by the time of the North Carolina primary – and after some very bad campaigning by Clinton – I came to support him.

The McCain proposal to vote for divide government is based in artful but ridiculous logic. McCain clearly supports the hubristic foreign policy of the **** administration and he publicly supports retaining the **** tax cuts even on the wealthiest Americans. He supports deregulation, except in the most exceptional circumstances, and on and on. What he proposes is simply more of the same but with a promise of better management and a better outcome. In reality it is a desperate effort by Republicans to maintain power. In my view **** could not have done this rotten job all by himself or even with the exclusive the support of ^^^^^^.

This fiasco that we are experiencing came about through the concerted efforts of the administration, the Congress and Republican donors and voters. They were wrong and are now all pointing their fingers at ****. Of course, he’s a fool; of course ^^^^^^ is obsessed with imperial power for the country. But the party and its voters and sympathizers forced this mess on us. As **** and ^^^^^^ must be sent away in disgrace, so must their enablers in Congress be turned out of office.

The argument for divided government is just as bad. McCain proposes to maintain all of the powers captured from the Congress and the courts by the ****/^^^^^^ administration, only he says he’ll use them benignly, except of course for the ability to wage war unilaterally and to appoint radically out of step rightists to the courts. It won’t wash; he has to be defeated as a lesson to all enablers that they cannot step away from calamities such as those we face and that he enabled without some adverse consequence.

It’s time for a change. Vote for Barack Obama!

I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.

Trickle this

Let’s be clear, federal deficits are going to grow big time no matter who wins the election. The United States is going to embark on a huge public works program centered on roads, highways, bridges and other public infrastructure. It can’t be otherwise; it’s the fastest way to jump start the creation of jobs and for getting money – lots of money - flowing again. These programs will begin even before the new president is inaugurated, and a special session of Congress to implement such a push after the election is already being discussed – and lamented by republicans.

This doesn’t mean that John McCain has turned democrat or that Barack Obama is a hopeless leftist. It means that your new president and the Congress understand that this is a crisis and that they better get cracking. If you’re looking for a government job, start at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving; they’ll be cranking out greenbacks faster than Michael Phelps swims laps.

Tonight John McCain has to jump start his campaign if he’s to win the election, but he signaled earlier this week that he represents four more years of the **** presidency. He told the world that he’s no maverick and that his main economic thrust would be to cut taxes, all taxes. He was very clear that he supports the policies of the past eight years and would rely on the rich to create the jobs – beyond the public works program that is coming regardless of how painful it will be for him to endorse it.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, will embrace the spending on infrastructure and he will think up or go along with other measures to get money into the hands of the middle class. His tax cut proposal that was unveiled even before the meltdown of the financial market is a great example of how he thinks that the economy must grow from the bottom up. On this, his policy couldn’t be much clearer.

McCain is very clear that trickle down economics is still his game. And, of course, there’s more than a little something to the trickle down theory, if you like working as housekeepers and groundskeepers on neo-golden age mansions on the Hamptons and in Newport. For the last decade middle class wages have been stagnant at best while the rich have gained a far greater share of the national wealth, and they showed a great willingness to spend it on bashes on Long Island and in Steamboat Springs. So if you look good in a uniform and don’t shake while pouring, there’ll be work out there for you.

Make no mistake, this election is about power, naked power. As all the wags in the swamp on the Potomac know, government is about who gets and who pays. John McCain sheds tears over the class warfare symbolized by taking money from the top one percent of earners and giving it to you in the form of the tax refunds proposed by Barack Obama. If you haven’t figured out that you’re not in the group favored by McCain stop reading and go check your latest retirement account statement.

The republicans have been geniuses at convincing middle class people they’re part of the ruling elite. Get with it; they’ve been playing footsie with the masters of the universe on Wall Street who’ve been getting rich while you thought that you were, too. Sorry about that; it’s sad to realize that as you were using your house as an ATM machine to pay for what appeared to be an increase in your standard of living, they were selling all your paper to parties unknown and pulling their bonuses as the storm was building and which pumped up your 401- but not forever.

So if John McCain can convince you that every small business owner makes more than a quarter of a million dollars a year and that if Barack Obama is elected you’re mother will be laid off down at the local Dunkin Donuts, go for it. Me, I already voted for Obama and won’t need any more convincing why I did.

And I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.

Drool radio

By now you must realize the service I provide by listening to conservative talk shows for you. Running my single daily errand to a doctor’s office, pharmacy, liquor store, donut shop or barber shop – that’s what old men do to fill the day – provides ample time to sample the reason de jour the country is going to hell in a hand basket, according to those who love freedom and liberty and checking on your roommates. Surely you know that for every hour spent in this quest for knowledge hidden from you by the mainstream media I age two, a great sacrifice that I make gladly.

Yesterday, guilt by association was the topic of choice across the right wing airways. Stung by the lack of traction in attempting to connect Barack Obama with William Ayers, the bloviaters are sputtering about the unfairness of it all. Obama’s campaign has created a video that describes John McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal and the windbags cannot fathom how it is unfair for them to be charged with dirty politics while Obama’s poll numbers rise, apparently unhurt by such unfair tactics.

I listened as one blathering blowhard lamented that Obama was getting away with past associations with a terrorist while McCain’s connections with a `banker’ was killing him. Naturally, the callers screamed their support for the show’s host and that poor innocent, John McCain, and they frothed over the unethical and near criminality of the dastardly Barack H. Obama. (The `H.’ is now the snide and winking shorthand smear after being chastised for using the full middle name of Obama.)

Let me stipulate that Obama’s connections with Ayers were not smart, especially if Barack had any inkling that he wanted a career in politics that might one day land him in Washington. But it is obviously silly to attempt to connect the terrorist activities of Ayers with an eight year old Obama living more than a continent away, and the public is not having any of it thus far. There can be no doubt that Obama’s explanations of the contacts and his present association with Ayers have been bought by the voters or at least trumped by the frightening economic situation. Still, young politicians should learn from this episode.

While Obama hasn’t made a great deal of the connection between McCain and Charles Keating, it is very clear that relations between the two men are far more relevant to voters today than the smear efforts being made against Obama and his connections with Ayers. McCain’s handlers can rail about the mainstream media’s greater concern with Keating than with Ayers, but there’s no getting around the fact that McCain’s poor judgment in connection with Keating bears on his views on banking, the only topic of the election at this moment.

Keating wined and dined five U.S. Senators, including John McCain, in an effort to get them to exert pressure on federal bank regulators to permit his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association to invest in very risky and highly leveraged investments. These investments, far in excess of regulatory maximums, ultimately failed bankrupting the S&L and resulting in the losses of billons of dollars in investments by unsuspecting depositors.

McCain paid back the tens of thousands of dollars in questionable perks from Keating but has admitted that his appearance in front of regulators gave the appearance impropriety. Since Senator McCain supported deregulation of S&Ls that led to an earlier financial debacle that cost taxpayers billions, and since he has many times supported similar deregulatory efforts of the financial sector since, and since even in the present presidential race he has called for the government to get out of the way of people trying to bring prosperity to the country, his views on regulation past and present is very relevant to his candidacy.

The illogical connection of the banker and the terrorist in presidential race is having little or no traction. The importance of the financial crisis has focused the attention of the mainstream media on what is truly the issue that is of concern to most voters, the economy. My only question is, if 100% of the callers on right wing talk shows drool their agreement that Obama and Ayers are a twosome, do you think this is a random sample of those actually dialing up the chatterers? Your humble servant is beginning to so think.

And I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.

He did it

The conspiracy against you and me is clear now. Until the last few days all of my sources for information about the worldwide financial meltdown came from the mainstream media. I had no idea that such entities as Time Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, CNN, NBC, PBS, NPR, and hundreds of other sources that I had trusted were out to elect Barack Obama and ignore the truth.

Quite by accident, while out and about doing ordinary old man errands, I came upon conservative talk radio, apparently a medium being suppressed by the mainstream media and unavailable to ordinary people such as total innocents like me – and you.

Until I heard the truth from right wing luminaries I was under the impression that the financial meltdown was caused by entities pointed to by that same mainstream media. Their culprits of choice are hedge fund managers, Wall Street tycoons, **** administration regulatory officials, investment banks (now gone to hell, deservedly), mortgage giants like Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and other similar villains in Europe and Asia.

My guess is that most of you were complaining about these institutions and the men and women who ran them. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! If you would only tune in to your local right wing talk radio outlet, the answer is right there for you to learn and to hate. But no, you insist on watching CNN, reading Newsweek and listening to NPR as you go about your ordinary almost traitorous, LIBERAL lives.

Like me, some of you probably claim to be moderates but in the black and white world of conservative talk there are no such beings, so get over it; if you’re not a conservative, you are by definition a LIBERAL. A LIBERAL is far worse than a communist or socialist. I don’t really know why yet, but now that I have found the source of the information, I’ll continue to tune in and let you know in good time.

So for a couple of hours last week I tuned in and found out the name of the person who really caused the multi-trillion dollar meltdown of the global financial system. This person is the most powerful man who has walked the earth since Joe Stalin and is truly far more dangerous. A simple statement of what this person desires is enough to cause the government of the United States to completely change direction, to cause panic on the Asian stock exchanges and to bankrupt small countries like Iceland and Ireland.

The meltdown of the world financial system goes back to a time when this man was masquerading as a minor official in the United States government but spoke up and damned a proposed bill by the majority party in the U.S. Congress, the Republicans, and President ****** *.**** that would have forestalled all of the problems we now face, including acne and ingrown toenails. But this person said, “No!”

What could they do? If he said it shouldn’t pass, what could they do? You really have to understand wasn’t just `no’ it was a LIBERAL `no’. They were obviously powerless, so the leaders of the free world had no choice but to forget about preventing what they knew would be a worldwide financial meltdown and panic.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, the man who said `no’ to reining in some of the free market regulatory proposals of the Republicans caused it all single handedly, the most powerful and evil man on the planet is Barney Frank, Democrat Congressman from that LIBERAL bastion, Massachusetts. And you know what; he’s mean to Republicans and sarcastic, too. So tune in conservative talk radio and you’ll find out how you have to vote to stop this powerful enemy of freedom. Darn right!

And I ain’t b.s.n’ ya.

Choice made - vote cast

I voted Barack Obama today. By casting my absentee ballot I have decided that no matter what kind of October surprise occurs, at least one vote will be in the bank for my candidate.

I am convinced that the times are too perilous to entrust our most important office to someone too rash, impulsive, and angry and who despite his self proclamation of being a maverick has been in almost lock step with the leaders who brought us to the edge of the abyss in both foreign and domestic arenas.

John McCain’s two heroes, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, do not fit the mold of the types that give great comfort in what could be the desperate hours that face us today. T.R. was as impulsive and reckless as McCain and Reagan was the most important American leader who set us on the course that brought us to where we are today.

During the campaign, Obama has exhibited the qualities of my political hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt; he has been cool, calm and resolute in the face of the problems he will inherit from what has been an incompetent and reckless administration headed by President ****** *. **** and Vice President ^^^^ ^^^^^^. Barack Obama is the man of this hour, our hour. The times look bad and we need an intelligent and resolute hand on the tiller. The Civil War made Lincoln. The Great Depression and World War II gave FDR his stage. Barack Obama is the man for this crisis.

**** attacked Iraq based on poor intelligence. More importantly, the information used to justify the preventive war was controversial even within his intelligence community. Almost six years later, we find our selves with more than 4,000 army, navy, air force and marine dead and 30,000 wounded, many disabled to the point of damaging their ability to lead productive and happy lives when they return to civilian life.

The economic and financial situation that has become obvious to all over the last few weeks can be traced directly to the philosophy, policies, actions and inactions of the **** administration, directly aided, abetted and championed by John McCain. Even today, McCain’s most important message harkens back to Reagan’s view that the government should be moved aside and let the markets bring us unlimited bounty.

Yesterday, I listened to the radio as conservatives swore that the prosperity of the past twenty-five years was unprecedented in human history and that we should stay the course with Reaganism. That the house of cards on which that prosperity was created, deficit spending and a deregulation policy that virtually assured abuse by clever and overly greedy people is now crumbling about us and that the measures of prosperity – using the market as indexes – have given back virtually all of the gains of the years of the **** administration.

Our housing values are retreating and will soon have given up virtually all recent gains – with millions of American destroyed in the process. Retirement plans of millions have been altered, postponed and many millions will die before they can recover anything like what has escaped their desperate clutches.

All of this was enabled by John McCain. His self proclamation of being a maverick is completely unconvincing. The Republican Party has been captured by fools. They must be turned out in droves to lick their wounds and to contemplate what they have done to the nation. Only when they can demonstrate that they are true conservatives – fiscally and in foreign affairs – can they be worthy of our trust again. And it is going to take many years.

Be gone, you fools!

And I ain’t b.sn’ya.