Formercon

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

2011-08-04T10:58:00.000-07:00

The Tea Party, the debt ceiling, and white Southern extremism

U.S. Senate - Reflects "The Real America"

2010-09-06T11:52:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered why the U.S. Senate is more conservative than the House of Representatives? I hadn't thought about it much either until our family went to see "The Real American's, a one man play about the blue/red divide in the United States. The play examined in humorous fashion how divided our country is and the stereotypes that make up conservative and liberal viewpoints. One comment of a more serious nature caught my attention though: how California with a population of 37 million has two U.S. Senators and 15 states with a total population of 37 million have a representation of 30 U.S. Senators. And of course the majority of those states are conservative. So the deck is stacked in the U.S. Senate toward a conservative view of our legislation, which is why President Obama can easily get his legislation agenda passed by the House but get it bogged down in the Senate. What we end up with is health care legislation that isn't much liked by anyone. Progressives don't like it because it still depends on private health insurers to provide the bulk of coverage, while conservatives don't like it because they view health care reform as taking us down the road to "socialism". Had health care reform been taken up in a U.S. Senate where states like New York and California had representation in proportion to their population, we would have had a true "public option" in the health care reform bill. We would have also had a banking and Wall Street reform bill with more teeth in it. We probably would not have gone into Iraq in the first place with a Senate vote against it. Our founding fathers set up bicameral legislation system to protect the interests of agrarian states and they succeeded. The problem is that doesn't truly reflect who we are as a society today. We are a country mostly made up of urbanites and suburbanites but that fact is not reflected in the U.S. Senate. Another problem is the talent pool of eligible candidates for Senator in a small state are limited, thus we end up with people like Sharon Angle who couldn't get elected dog catcher in California. I don't have a solution except to amend the U.S. Constitution to just have the House of Representatives and do away with the Senate. That will never happen of course. The small states would never agree to that. Another solution would be for California to split into multiple states, along with New York, Texas, and other bigger states. That won't happen either. So what we are stuck with is a major legislative body that lags behind the times, and reflects an America that doesn't exist anymore.

Summer 2010

2010-07-24T10:34:00.000-07:00

Gosh, it has been almost a year since I wrote a formal blog and posted it. Instead of commenting using my own site, I started responding to blogs on the Huffington Post site which in my mind is the premier blogging site on the internet, followed next by Truthdig. But Truthdig seems to appeal to bloggers who lean heavily to conspiricy theory politics. Huffington Post is my primary source of information today except for my two local newspapers. I like the writers on Huffington and I mostly like the caliber of responses. I now have over a 100 fans who like my posts on Huffington. I also get a lot of negative responses from conservatives who don't like what I have to say, but they can't give me a negative rating.

Now that President Obama has been in office for 18 months, it is a good time to look at his record so far. If I was grading, I would give him a solid "B". Based on goals he outlined in his book "Audacity of Hope", I would give him an "A". Why the disparity? In his book, he comes across as a solidy mainstream moderate who believes strongly is being able to work across the aisle to get legislation accomplished with the help of the opposition party. He did exactly what he said he was going to do in his book. He did try and reach across the aisle. His reward was to get two-three Republican's to help him pass his major legislation. That's not really enough to qualify as bi-partisan. As a progressive, I'm not to happy with all of the bending over backwards to try and get Republican help, when it was obvious from day one of his presidency that that was not going to happen. Nontheless it is hard to argue that on the major issues facing us, he has delivered on his campaign promises: health care reform, reform of Wall Street and the banks, a change in war policy from Iraq to Afghanistan, and passing of a major stimulus package to get the economy back on track. Those are some pretty amazing accomplishments in a year and 1/2.

What has hurt the president is the efficiency of the right wing attack machine led by Fox News, that have attacked him and his party since he took office. Part of this is due to the relentless criticism George W. Bush took in his second term when it became obvious he was ineffectual on the war in Iraq, the economy, and Hurricane Katrina. The right wing took the criticism's personally and wanted payback once Obama came into power. The rise of the tea party movement with their concern over the cost of bailing out Wall Street (which happened on Bush's watch) and the cost of the stimulus package, has not helped either. What they don't know or don't want to know if that the primary culprit of our deficit spending has been the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afganistan, and the Bush tax cuts, not Obama's policies, which account for only ten percent of the deficit. Obama has also been impacted by his slowness to recognize that BP was not shooting straight with him on the Gulf oil spill. He should have known that BP has a bad track record in safety and has the highest level of fines of any oil company in history. Obama also got sandbagged by the Bush Administration which downplayed the severity of the recession in 2008, and led Obama to use lower unemployment percentages as his benchmark. Just as JFK got suckered by the Joint Chiefs into the Bay of Pigs debacle in 1961, so has Obama been snookered. But like JFK, he is a quick learner, and will be a lot more wiser in the future. No if he can only learn his lesson in not listening to Fox News or at least telling his department heads to ignore Fox.

Now it is up to the president and his team to get his message of success out to the electorate, especially to independent votes who seemed to have been swayed by the right wing talking points of Republican's who have opposed the Obama Administration at every step. Democrats are still behind Obama, and Republican's will never vote for him anyway. It will be an interesting Fall as the campaign rhetoric starts in full swing. I am hopeful that the Democrats will be able to get their message out in enough parts of the country to maintain their control of both houses of Congress.

Support For Public Option

2009-08-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

Dear Senator Feinstein and Boxer,

After seeing President Obama perform very impressively in his town halls this week, i felt the Democrats were regaining the initiative on health care reform. Thus I was disturbed this morning to read that the public option component of health care reform might be off the table. I can't fathom why the Democrats would do this when it is such a key to true reform. The idea of substituting an "exchange" is ludicrous. It will not accomplish the type of reform that is needed and that is to give the private health insurers some much needed competition. And if the reason we are thinking of jettisoning the public option is to achieve bi-partisanship, that is a mirage. The Republican's will not support any type of reform no matter what scraps of support they throw out in public. They sense the opportunity to sink the Obama presidency and will go all out to once again defeat reform just as they did in 1993.

Even though I fought hard for the President in 2008, I am willing to go the extra mile for health care reform also, which is why I am writing you, and also walking through my neigborhood to solicit views on health care reform. I hope you will support the President fully in fighting for the public option and not caving in to the Republicans. After all it was we who won the election in November 2008, not them and elections have consequences.

I know I am speaking for millions of other American's who want our President to succeed on the most important issue facing us today. When I saw the thousands of people lining up this week in Los Angeles to receive free medical care I was hearbroken to realize that America is the only industrialized country in the world that would have to resort to this type of care usually provided in third world countries. Our country is better than that and we need you to fight for us in passing significant health care reform this year with a public option.

The Battle for Health Care Reform - Summer 2009

2009-07-11T17:07:00.000-07:00

In 1945, President Truman proposed universal health care system for the United States. He was the first U.S. president to put his full support behind universal health care. Unfortunately, in 1946, the Republican's gained control of Congress, and had zero interest in health care reform. They said such a system would lead to a "socialistic" society, or worse yet, Communism. Sound familiar?

In 1965, Lyndon Johnson, through a successful grass roots effort, was able to get Medicare and Medicaid passed through Congress, which was a form of universal health care, that is administered by the government in concert with private health insurers. Republican's fought vehemently against Medicare.

In 1994 Hillary Clinton led a fight to include universal health care for everyone but again was defeated by the same Republican forces and the same fear tactics that defeated universal health care in 1946. In the Summer of 2009, once again the battle lines are drawn between proponents of universal health care, and the same conservative groups that were aligned against health care reform over a decade ago.

There is one major change today in the fight for health care reform that did not exist in the past: the advent of the internet and the emergence of 24/7 cable news outlets. Both have been a huge factor in getting the message out about health care reform, both positive and negative. American's if they choose to do their homework about health care will find a plethora of easily obtainable facts about the state of health care in this country and health care services in other industrialized countries.

There are certain truths about health care in the U.S. that are pretty much agreed upon whether conservative or liberal in your belief system.

1. Our health care costs are higher per capita than any other industrialized country in the world, about double the next highest country.

2. We have the best hospitals and medical personnel in the world, if cost is no object. The rich and famous usually come to the U.S. for their health care needs. If Steve Jobs needs a liver transplant, he has the financial wherewithal to get a new liver.

3. There is a strong correllation between income level and good health care availability in the United States. The wealthier you are, the chances are better that you will receive excellent health care. In countries with universal health care, like our neighbor to the north, Canada, there is no correllation between degree of wealth and access to good health care.

4. Our prescription drug costs in the U.S. are much higher than in other countries, which is why many U.S. residents try and get their prescriptions filled in Canada.

5, We are the only country in the world where it is possible to go bankrupt through excessive medical expenses. 700,000 Americans went bankrupt last year due to medical expenses.

6. One out of six Americans have no health insurance coverage at all. Millions of other Americans are underinsured.

7. Health care insurance costs that are borne by American companies are making them less competitive in global markets.

8. Our health care delivery systems are very inefficient - they do not take advantage of cost efficiencies through information technology innovation, and the claims approval process is very paper intensive, and bureaucratic. Thus health care administration costs are the highest in the world.

The bottom line is that American's are not getting their money's worth when they pay for health care. We either need to make changes to our health care delivery that reduce costs, or get better delivery of health services. The focus of the health care reform in 2009 is to improve health care access to American's who currently get no health care outside of running down to the emergency room of their local hospital, and cost containment, for American's who currently have health care coverage.

The debate this Summer over health care is being argued over the merits of making the monetary investment in providing health care coverage to all Americans, while putting in place a process to reduce health care costs over time. Universal health care advocates view the expenditure as an investment in America, whereas conservatives view it as an unnecessary expense. The question conservatives put forth is how America afford to do this reform in a time of economic turmoil. President Obama is saying how can we not do it now, when our health care costs continue to escalate every year, making the reform process even more difficult with each passing year. Obama wants a system in place with a universal health care option for those who are not happy with their current health care coverage. For those American's who are happy with their current health care, they can keep it.

Health insurers while recognizing they have a problem with health care costs are not thrilled with a universal health care option which would be overseen by the U.S. government, thereby providing competition for them, and the potential for erosion of their profit margins as they are forced into cost reductions due to the presence of a single payer option. But of course this is a key strategy in bringing health care costs under control. It is the model other countries used to contain costs and get health services delivered to all of their citizens.

Switzerland and Canada at one point had health care systems very similar to the United States. Both went to a form of universal health care - Switizerland's citizens voted by a bare majority for universal care. Today not many Swiss would go back to the U.S. model for health care, nor would many Canadians. Depending on which poll you believe, most Canadians (70-93%) like their health care and would not trade it for a U.S. version. In fact many Canadians are angry that American politicians disparage Canadian health care, when they don't really know the true facts about Canadian health care services.

The best approach for the U.S. would be to do what Taiwan did. They studied the health care delivery systems of 15 leading countries, and took the best practices from each, to come up with their own health care model. Needless to say, they were not very impressed with the U.S. health care model - too expensive and too inefficient. Michael Moore recommended this approach in his movie Sicko. He was of course ridiculed by the health care providers as a radical and a subversive. Now some are saying he was right all along.

We can only hope that in the Summer of 2009, we will at long last have the health care reform that Harry Truman fought for way back in 1945. We can't afford to wait any longer.

What we campaigned for

2009-02-23T15:43:00.000-08:00

Today was yet another moment in the first month of Obama's presidency that drove home why my son and I and millions of other Americans volunteered to work for change in America. Today's recap of the summit stimulus task force drove home just how organized and energized our new president is. In eight years, our so called "business school" president never took one step to enlist Congress and the private sector, to work on behalf of the American people, rather than their own narrow special interests. This is amazing considering this process approach is a staple of private enterprise, where people are brought together from all over the enterprise in order, in order to solve the more difficult problems. As one media person said today, "in all of his years of covering politics in Washington D.C. he has never seen an anything like this before in his life." President Obama had his fiercest critics on-hand, including Senator John McCain, Representative Eric Cantor, and Representative Darrell Issa to offer their views to the president, the assembled media, and all of America. It was our American political system at its best, which we haven't seen since 9/11. It was refreshing to hear John McCain get up and talk about bringing costs under control in the Defense Department. Dwight Eisenhower would have been proud to see a Republican start to take on the military-industrial complex. Of course now the defense establishment is complaining about how many jobs will be lost if we cut back on defense spending, as if we spend billions just to keep people employed. As McCain explained we don't need helicopters that now cost as much as Air Force One. Obama said he was perfectly happy with the helicopter he now has.

Later today, the President followed up his meeting with comments about our federal budget process. They were blunt and to the point - a budget was never set up to fund the Iraq war, even after the first year, when it was apparent we were going to be there for awhile. We have never set up a fund to account for national emergencies, even though they occur, each and every year since our nation was founded. These are prudent practices and applied every day in the business sector. Funny how our "business" president chose to ignore fiscal discipline in his eight years.

President Obama will restore confidence in America and get this country moving again with his deeds and not just his words. He is proving that every day of his presidency.

House of Cards - CNBC Must Viewing

2009-02-15T11:54:00.000-08:00

If you want to know what really brought on our current economic crisis and imperiled some of the worlds largest banks, look no further than the recent two hour documentary shown on CNBC and narrated by David Faber on the the networks market analysts. the documentary entitlled "House of Cards" is well titled, as becomes readily apparent once the housing market starts to implode. To explain in layman terms what happened Mr. Faber has chosen two areas of Southern California to drive home the severity of this economic meltdown - Orange County, the epicenter of the subprimet mortgage industry, and Riverside County, one of the areas most impacted by the meltdown. The story begins with a Riverside County deputy sheriff as she makers her rounds serving foreclosure notices on residents who bought more home than they could afford. In cryptic terms, she describes the problem by stating "middle class families buying upper middle class homes, they really could not afford". Add to the problem, homeowners who decided they wanted get into a new hobby called "flipping", and home owners who saw their increased home valuations as a resource for continued borrowing of money through an annual refinancing process. Mortgage companies were only too happy to fuel the borrowing mania because they had a new source of cheap money - Wall Street. Wall Street took the place of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as the primary lender of funds to buy or refinance homes. Fannie and Freddie were late to this party because of their regulatory problems, and slowness in abandoning the strict guidelines used to approve conventional home loans.

The normal approval process for getting a home mortgage, the process that most people are familiar with, went right out the window, once a flood of cheap money came in from other countries, looking for a safe haven to park their money. Wall Street banks invented a new financial instrument called collaterized debt obligations (CDO's), that had as underlying colleteral, home mortgages that were packaged into these CDO's and then sold all over the world. The proceeds from these CDO's were used to fund even more home loans. The profits were enormous to banks who took a nice commission on all of these sales. Wall Street began to pressure the mortgage companies to fund more loans, so they started promoting no documentation loans also known as stated income loans or "liar loans". These loans were usually variable rate loans with low "teaser" interest rates that reset to higher rates, and some loans even included negative amortization, where the monthly loan payment was so low, it did not cover the interest owed; the balance on the loan started going up each month.

An enabler of these CDO obligations were companies called rating agencies, such as Standard and Poors, and Mooney, which rated these CDO's as "AAA investment grade", which signified to investors that these obligations were almost risk free, and guaranteed a very nice rate of return. The rating agencies graded CDO's using a risk model that presumed that homes would increase in value 6-8 percent per year forever.

In 2006, the first cards in the house of cards started to fall. As interest rates on these subprime mortgages started to reset to higher rates, homeowners found they were having difficulty making the payments. Adding to the problem was the general economic downturn which led to job layoffs, which fueled the mortgage payment problem. As mortgages went into default, warning signal went up on Wall Street, and investors started pully back from CDO purchases. This dried up the funds available for mortgages, and now potential home buyers were having difficulty getting loans. The glut of foreclosures started to adversely affect mortgage company profits and many mortgage companies went out of business throwing thousands of employees out of work. As these foreclosed homes started coming back on the market, the home inventory glut started to depress overall home prices. Recent buyers of homes found they were "upside down" on their homes - they owned more on their house than it was worth. Many just stopped making payments and mailed the keys back to the lender. The result was even more houses coming back on the market further reducing prices.

Fast forward to 2008, and the mortgage crisis is now humbling investment giant like Bear Sterns and Lehman Brothers, Citibanks, Countrywide Mortgage, Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, and even Bank of America are in serious financial difficulty. Not only has this financial meltdown hurt our country, we also exported this toxic mess to countries around the world who purchased these CDO's based on their "AAA investment grade" rating. This worldwide economic problem will exacerbate the U.S. recession and we find it more difficult to get other countries to buy our exports.

"Sixty Minutes" the muckracking popular television show focused on one organization that serves as a microcosm of how we got into this mess. The company is World Savings, now part of Wachovia. World was owned by Marian and Herb Sandler, long time respected members of the mortgage lending community here in the San Francisco Bay Area. They were known for their frugal no nonsense business practices and high integrity in lending practices. However they too got caught up in the lending frenzy brought on by the flood of money from Wall Street and started bending their own lending rules. They started offering the stated income loans and new approaches such as the "pick a payment" feature which let you pay less each month than the amount necessary to amoritze principal. This meant interest not paid each month was added to principal thus increasing the amount owed. It did not take long for unsuspecting homeowners to find themselves "underwater" on their loans once housing prices started to decline. The Sandlers were smart and sold their company to Wachovia for over 2 billion dollars. Wachovia and Wells Fargo Bank are now stuck with these non performing loans, which has hurt Wells Fargo shareholders.

Now we taxpayers will have to help homeowners who were caught up in this "predatory" lending to save their homes through mortgage resets and other subsidies. The rules are strict however - only conforming loans are eligible, and the loans limit is restricted to 31% of income, and 105% of the homes current value. This won't help many California homeowners who took out jumbo loans. This program coupled with the bank bailout TARP program will help to ameliorate the housing situation but it will take a very long time to housing to approach anything close to the normal house appreciation we became accustomed to in the last decade. Those days are over until we work off the glut of foreclosed properties and banks become financially healthy once again. There will be no more "no doc/stated income loan" and no down payment loans. We will be back to the prudent lending standards that we should have kept in the first place. Shame on us and shame on our leaders for allowing "greed" to get the better of us.

We Won! Now It Gets Hard

2009-02-10T10:48:00.000-08:00

After a soujourn campaigning for Barack Obama in California and Nevada, reality has set in again. Republican's have shown little inclination to act in a bipartisan fashion to help President Obama get our country back on track again. We have been down this road before. Clinton ran into a Republican buzzsaw when he also tried to get Republican's behind his attempts to make America a better place to live. None of this should be surprising. On our most recent trip to Las Vegas we stopped to visit Hoover Dam and at the visitor center got to read some of the comments made by legislators in that time who fought against building the dam saying it would cost to much, and would only benefit the Western states. Now Republican's are trying to rewrite the U.S. history of the Great Depression saying that the policies of FDR did nothing to stop the Depression, all evidence to the contrary. All one has to do is look at the GDP growth from 1933 to 1939 to see that FDR's policies made a major improvement in our economic well being.

In his book "Audacity of Hope", Obama made his case for a new spirit of bipartisanhip and an end to the culture wars of the 1960's, which he felt were so damaging to any spirit of cooperation today. Sadly his hope for a better political climate will not work as long as our Republican members of Congress feel their districts are safe for them. The good news for the rest of us who want to move America forward is that the demographics are not working in the Republican's favor for future elections. Young people are now voting and for Democrats in big numbers. Minorities are also voting for Democrats in larger and larger numbers. The Republican base made up of older white American's from conservative states are growing less in number. Unless the Republican's change their underlying philosophy and message, they are doomed to spending decades as a minority party.

They still seem to be in denial about their message as evidenced by the election of RNC Chairman Michael Steele who is as unrepentent as his predeccessor as just as silly. His claim that our government only produces "work" and not "jobs" is ludicrous; he bases this incredulous statement on the belief that only the private sector can produce permanent jobs. It hasn't dawned on him that permanent jobs have gone the way of the DoDo bird - there is no such thing anymore, public or private. Job security went away when Wall Street CEO's discovered they could increase their pay every time they laid off workers, which in turn increased the share price in their company stock, which gave them nice bonuses for increasing the stock price. In 1990, 90% of Fortune 500 companies had official "no layoff" policies. Ten years later only five of them did. Steele and his party are out of touch with what is really happening to the middle class in this country; they need work even if the jobs are not permanent. In 1931, the Hoover Dam project provided jobs for 5000 workers for five years. Yes they were not permanent jobs but they provided a good living for half a decade, and left us a national treasure that harnessed the Colorado River and provided millions of kilowatt hours of electricity for four Western states. I bet there are millions of American's right now who would love to have a guaranteed high paying job for the next five years.

Barack Obama and the Democrats understand this and are fighting to make these types of jobs available. If we can create 4 million new jobs in this country, that will jump start our economy big time and help the rest of the world. Best of all it will restore the confidence of American's who have lost faith in our leaders, especially in the business sector. President Obama will get us out of the jam we are in, if we give him a chance. He may have to rely only on his own Party to help him and the vast numbers of average American's who are rooting for him to succeed.

Republican Party Convention Recap

2008-09-05T13:17:00.000-07:00

McCain gave a less than stellar acceptance speech that seemed a compendium of his previous stump speeches. His Vietnam experience is heroic but getting stale. And once again the cable networks were trying to spin this speech as something better than it was. Chris Matthew's was particularly bad. My question which McCain failed to answer in his acceptance speech is “Why in the world should we give four more years to a party that McCain was a part of.” We are just supposed to pretend McCain dropped in from outer space? Ariana Huffington calls McCain’s strategy the “amnesia campaign” and she nailed it. McCain wants us all to forget the last eight years, which is why he never mentioned Bush by name last night. If the media is as “liberal” as the Republican Party would like you to believe, it certainly wasn’t in evidence this week.

You could tell the delegates did not like what they were hearing from McCain. A lot of them were sitting on their hands. McCain had a very poor delivery and stumbled badly at times. Not a good night for him. He doesn't look ready for prime time. A former speechwriter for Bush thought McCain missed an opportunity to show how he would be different: there was no substance. CNN’s speech analyst called it the worst acceptance speech since the 1980 Carter speech.
Sarah Palin was the convention surprise. Her conservative credentials as Mayor of Wissalia Alaska, and Governor of Alaska were known to the base of the party but not to the country. Obviously she was not McCain’s first choice, Lieberman was, but McCain lucked out since she is an appealing presence. Of course that is great for him but bad for the country. And it makes him look hypocritical since he told all of us his primary criteria for selection of a vice president was fitness to be commander-in-chief from day one. McCain is also vulnerable to negative information coming out about her, since the vetting process on her was superficial at best. His judgement on this issue must be called into question. The Republican’s attempted to ameliorate this by spinning her resume to make it less thin and by attacking the media if they attempted to find out more about Palin’s experience and background. Accusing the media of sexism is a problem when they found no objections to the media’s sexist treatment of Hillary Clinton, going so far as to call her a “whiner”. This comment was made by Sarah Palin.

The other convention speakers had a lot of vitriol to spew out to the audience and us at home but they were light on how they were going to help the American people. Rudy Giuliani and Lindsey Graham, were downright nasty. What was especially disturbing were the disparaging comments made about community organizers who play a vital role in representing the disadvantaged against the big city bureaucracies. Republican’s should know better than anyone the value of all work in our society. It makes them look like they only care about you if you work for a hedge fund. Lindsey Graham also needs to be more careful how he tries to position the Democratic ticket as somehow unpatriotic, because they opposed the Iraq war, and want more focus put on capturing Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. These are legitimate viewpoints and represent democracy in action.

Joe Lieberman’s speech was a major disappointment since eight years ago he was the Democratic Party vice president candidate. His hawkish views and cheerleading on the run-up to the Iraq war have blinded him to the reality that the Iraq War was a major foreign policy blunder second only to the Vietnam War. More effort by Democrats to help elect Ned Lamont would have nice, so Joe Lieberman could have enjoyed retirement.

Lastly, today there was a newspaper article comparing Republican and Democratic party delegate ethnic breakdowns. Those of you who watched both conventions will not be surprised by the Republican delegates were overwhelmingly white (93%) and male (68%) versus the Democratic delegates who were 65% white and 51% male. Blacks made up 23% of the Democratic Party delegates and 2% of the Republican Party delegates. Black Republican delegates were actually lower than four years ago when they represented 7% of the delegates. So you know who the party of diversity is.

Democratic Convention Recap

2008-08-29T08:55:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama has shown incredible organizing and oratorical excellence. He and his staff did a superb job in putting together this convention and making it both entertaining and enlightening. The orchestration of this event proved to be pitch perfect. The concerns about the two Clinton’s sucking the oxygen out of the room proved unfounded. The Clinton’s were excellent and reinforced the party unity theme. They did not overshadow Obama as Thursday nights unparalleled acceptance speech demonstrated. The setting for that speech was incredible - about two hours before Obama spoke it was obvious to everyone that Obama had pulled off a brilliant move. I sat at home and said “oh my God, he is going to pull this off”. And he did. When Pat Buchanan and Joe Scarborough, both Republicans, are awe struck, you know you’ve done something right. There were very few dead spots during the four day convention run - even average folks like Barney Smith who talked about government focusing on people like him rather than “Smith Barney”. A nice touch. Tammy Duckworth, a double amputee Iraq war veteran and rising Democratic Party star was a great presence at the convention.

Joe Biden has proven to be an outstanding choice as vice president. He is experienced in domestic and world affairs, has strong family values, a compelling life story, and another great speaker and debater. This looks like an excellent fit.

From my perspective, I would have liked to seen Dennis Kucinich have a more prominent role at the convention other than as a speaker in non-prime team. He is the heart and soul of the “liberal” Democratic part of the party. He wowed the audience with his speech that hardly anybody saw. He has the ability to attack the Republican Party at all their vulnerable spots and there are many. I also had concerns about why the Democrats weren’t hitting Republican’s harder except for Kucinich. Those fears were also unfounded as Barack Obama came out fighting and delivered a speech for the ages.

There were some great slogans that emerged from this convention and one comes to mind: No way, No how, No McCain - Hillary Clinton. I had some others written down but lost my notes.

I found the best way to watch the convention on television was to tune in CSPAN. That way it was possible to watch the convention without all of the talking heads on the cable networks filtering the coverage. After the gavel came down each night, I turned over to the cable networks to get the instant analysis. It wasn’t all that great - Fox News was abysmal in their negative coverage. They reinforced why I don’t watch them for news. CNN was a little better but too cynical for my taste and too preoccupied with moving on to the Republican convention. Cambell Brown got exasperated last night and paraphrasing said “wait a minute, let’s talk about what happened here tonight” and went on to talk about how well it all came off. MSNBC had the best analysis - Matthews, Olbermann, Maddow, Todd, and Buchanan are a formidable reporting team especially when augmented by the NBC Evening News team and Tom Brokaw.

One commentator this morning summed it up: when Barack Obama came on the stage last night in that majestic setting -and he looked presidential! That’s exactly what I thought. Now its time to roll up our sleeves and get to work to make sure Barack Obama is elected as the next president of the United States.

Phil Gramm: "Nation of Whiners"

2008-07-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

I have to admit, I never cared much for Phil Gramm. He was a leading proponent of the so called "trickle down" theory of economics, which is if you give the rich all kinds of tax breaks, some of that will trickle down to the rest of us. As numerous economists have pointed out, in practice, this theory doesn't hold water, as the rich don't buy enough to really support the rest of the economy. They already have everything they need or want. The real driver of our economy has been the middle class. When they spend , the economy thrives. Now the party is over - the subprime mess created mainly by unscrupulous lenders and greedy speculators has created a major downdraft in home prices and a meltdown in the financial community, typical results of what happens when too much money in thrown at too few resources. This is not a mirage or just a "mental" problem. Houses are worth less; credit card debt is at an all time high, more people are out of work, and our economy is suffering. Just walk into a car dealer or your local Starbucks, or local restaurant. Everyone is hurting. That is everyone except the Phil Gramm's of the world, who has a pretty nice paying job as Vice Chairman of UBS Corporation, and gets a nice pension from the U.S. government as a former U.S. Senator. And his wife Wendy was on the board of Enron corporation, which engaged in economic terrorism against the State of California. Phil Gramm was the sponsor of the so called "Enron Loophole" which allowed Enron to engage in their outrageous behavior, and what many energy analysts think is behind the massive manipulation in the oil markets which are driving up oil prices to "bubble" proportions.

Now Phil Gramm in his role as chief economic advisor to John McCain has called America a nation of "whiners", because of our concerns about the U.S. economy. He calls our concerns mainly mental in nature. If I was Phil Gramm I wouldn't have any complaints either. He and his colleagues John McCain, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush all reside in the rarefied atmosphere of the .1% of our country worth 100 million upwards. They don't have a clue as to how the rest of us live nor does it sound like they care. Phil Gramm - if you really want to know how the Republican Party feels about average American's, just listen to Phil. John McCain has tried to distance himself from Gramm's comments, but the horse has left the barn John.

I'm back now that primaries are over

2008-06-20T16:45:00.000-07:00

I was perusing my old blogs today, and realized that not much has changed in our national priorities other than things have gotten worse - way worse. The only good news is that the Democrats selected Barack Obama as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States. He ran a brilliant campaign in overcoming a tough candidate in Hillary Clinton. Senator Clinton would also have been a good choice, so the reality was it was a win-win for Democrats. I think in the final analysis Barack Obama will be better for the country if he is elected, since he can set a new course for this country and break away the Democratic positions that were a drag on the party such as support for the Iraq war, and approval of NAFTA without any provisions for a level playing field for American labor.

Now the fun begins. A maverick Republican U.S. Senator vs. an articulate black Democratic U.S. Senator. Let's hope that the mainstream media and cable networks will focus on making each candidate talk about the issues that are important to American's as we get ready to cast our votes in November. So far, the results are pretty dismal - we have a lot of cheap shots coming from candidate surrogate's that don't make either party look good. The attacks against the candidate's wife are particularly obnoxious. We aren't voting for them. Nor do I really care who the candidates hung out with, nor do I question their patriotism. I don't care whether they wear American flag lapel pins or not. I do care about their plans for ending the war in Iraq. I care about how they will help end the run-up in oil prices that are crippling our economy. I want to hear how they will address providing affordable health care in this country. I want to hear how we will reverse our trade imbalances, and ever increasing national debt which is eroding the purchasing power of the dollar. How will each candidate address fixing Social Security and Medicare which threaten to overwhelm the national budget in future years. What will be each candidates position on relations with Israel and creating a stabilized Middle East. How will each of them address our relations with Cuba. These are just some of the pressing issues facing this country. We don't need to fill the airwaves with more of the garbage issues that have been fed to us so far.

Congratulations to John McCain and Barack Obama. Nobody expected either of you to win the nomination. Now come out fighting and keep it clean.

Dear Santa: Bring Daddy Home

2007-12-28T11:58:00.000-08:00

I thought this video segment expressed the true meaning of Christmas:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHZ7D-dyp64

We can only hope that in 2008, we will be able to bring more daddies and mommies home from Iraq so they can celebrate next Christmas with their loved ones.

Retirement in uncertain times

2007-11-20T13:07:00.000-08:00

The current turbulence in the financial markets, prompted Motley Fool a financial advisory firm, to republish an article they ran a year ago on the more and more elusive goal of a secure retirement. Along with the article they had a link to a Frontline PBS television show on the perils of do it yourself retirement investing. Here is the link: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/retirement/view/

The Frontline story on retirement investing focused on the major shift from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans and the increased risk that poses to employees that are in these programs. Bottom line is that corporations have shifted not only the cost of retirement cost burden to employees, they have shifted more of the risk to employees. As the Frontline story emphasizes, the 401k plan was originally intended to be a supplemental retirement investment vehicle along with the traditional retirement plans that offered a defined monthly benefit. What has occurred over the last 25 plus years is a massive shift by corporations to make 401k's the only method to save for retirement. Why is this? Corporations found they could save enormous amounts of money by shifting more of the costs to employees. The study cited in the Frontline program stated that corporations went from funding 89% of employee pensions to only 48%. The employee contribution jumped from 11% to 52%.

The state of Nebraska did an exhaustive study of defined benefit plans vs. defined contribution plans and found that the former plans provided a much greater pension to employees that defined contribution plans. One key problem with defined contribution plans is that the average employee is no match for the financial expertise of state pension programs like CALPERS which employ hundreds of expert financial advisors to manage their $ 250 billion dollar fund. In another study, it was found there was a huge disparity in how individual employees did in managing their fund. The difference in annual investment increase ranged from a low of 4% to a high of over 30% on average. And it was the higher paid employees who did the best job of managing their 401k's. What this means is that many lower paid employees will find it more unlikely that they will have enough saved for retirement and will depend even more on Social Security as their primary income after retirement. Compounding the problem is that employees treat 401k's as rainy day savings account's and periodically raid them for other expenses which draw down the funds and also incur penalties. Also employees are not even taking advantage of the maximum contributions that they can make and they miss out on the matching funds their employers make.

Several retirement financial advisors consulted for this story advised saving a minimum of 15-18% annually split between the employee and the employer. The actual rate of savings is about half that. This is not good news for millions of American's who will find they don't have enough money to retire and will be forced to work longer then they had planned.

Other disturbing points made in this documentary were the ease with which companies like United Airlines can go into Chapter 11 bankruptcy and unload their employee pension obligations on the Federal government. This hurt the United employees since their monthly pensions were reduced by an average of 1/3. Plus they had to give massive givebacks to United to even keep their jobs - Salaries for United flight attendants were also reduced by 1/3. Capping this story off is that many fortune 500 companies have underfunded pension plans, so the promised they have made to employees about their future pension benefits are in question.

What can employees do to be financially secure: Contribute the maximum amount each year to your 401k plan. Study the financial options available within the plan and discuss them with other employees who may be more knowledable about finances, or pay for a financial advisor on a hourly rate to look at your financial portfolio and advise you on your options. Resist the temptation to withdraw funds early. Save outside your plan where ever possible using the Roth IRA option and/or regular IRA option depending on your employment situation. A financial advisor can tell you in more detail the IRS regulation governing such investment vehicles. Good luck.

Moveon.org vs. General Petraeus

2007-09-22T11:12:00.000-07:00

It was no surprise that Republicans reacted hysterically to the Moveon.org ad in the New York Times with the caption "General Petraeus or General Betray Us". What is baffling is the Democratic Party response. Twenty-four Democratic Senators voted with 49 Republican Senators to condemn Moveon.org for their ad. Yet again the Democrats shot themselves in the foot by going after a group that has been their biggest supporter in trying to get the U.S. out of Iraq. Obviously these Senator's did not bother to even read the ad, which took a skeptical position of General Petraeus testimony before Congress. Better to err on the side of skepticism that blindly accept facts as presented to the U.N. by another 4 star general which led to one of the most disasterous foreign policy decisions in U.S. history.

All American's need to be wary of uncritically accepting information coming out of sources controlled by the Bush White House. Bush is desparately trying to protect his legacy in history and will do just about anything to color what is really going on in Iraq today. We must be vigilant over the next 15 months until George W. Bush is out of office and can no longer do this country harm. Thank God for groups like Moveon.org which are trying to protect this country from further debacles like Iraq. I am personally disappointed that one of my elected representatives - Dianne Feinstein voted against Moveon.org. Maybe it's time to elect some real Democrats to office.

Republicans Exposed - No Support For Troops

2007-09-19T16:40:00.000-07:00

Today, Senator Jim Webb exposed the Republican hypocrisy of supporting the troops. Because only three Republican Senators supported a bill that would have regulated the amount of time troops spend in combat, the vote fell four votes short of cutting off debate on the bill. Republicans seem to believe only in supporting the failed Iraq policies of George W. Bush. They could care less that our military is over committed in Iraq and spends up to 15 months over there and only up to nine months at home. This terrible policy puts our military families in tremendous stress leading to breakups in military families, and an increase in suicides among our combat veterans. America should not tolerate this inhumane treatment of our military. It is time to write our elected representatives to let them know that we do support the troops and want them home for one year for every year spent in a combat zone. Don't believe the Pentagon generals when they say this won't work. It can work. All Congress has to say is "do it!" For more information on how the Republican's support the troops and their actual record of serving in the military see: http://www.awolbush.com/

September 11 - Still No Osama Bin Laden

2007-09-11T11:08:00.001-07:00

As we remember the victims of September 11, 2001, we are reminded by the surreal videos from Osama Bin Laden that he is still at large six years after George W. Bush promised to capture him "dead or alive"! Yet another failed promise by a failed leader. Worse yet we are bogged down in a war that seems to have only lose-lose scenarios no matter what we do. In my lifetime I never thought we would see another Vietnam happen. I thought that event would be "seared" in our collective memories. President Bush not only forgot the lessons of Vietnam he tried to put a new political spin on it by saying we should have stayed there. How many more American lives would have been lost by that type of thinking is beyond comprehension. We can only ponder six years later the course of American history, if we elected to go after Osama instead of Suddam. We owe the answers to that question to the victims of 9/11. Instead we are getting new spin from Bush's handlers, that Osama Bin Laden is no longer that important. That is contrary to the views of most of the intelligence/security experts who state that Bin Laden is still the most dangerous terrorists we face today. Our only hope now is that the weakling Democrat's will somehow get some spine before November 2008 and really challenge Bush and his disasterous policies. Waiting until November of next year will cost us yet more precious American lives and more innocent Iraqi lives.

Dick Cheney in 1994

2007-08-15T12:19:00.000-07:00

Why didn't Dick Cheney follow his own advice? We knew all along invading Iraq would have dire consequences and cost untold American lives. See the following video from You Tube: >http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BEsZMvrq-I

Debates - Part II

2007-08-08T15:27:00.000-07:00

ABC TV had the Republicans on last Sunday for 90 minutes and MSNBC had the Democrats on for 90 minutes last night. Whatever your leanings, left, right, or middle of the road, the issues presented by the major parties could not be more different.

The Republican's focused on abortion, illegal immigration, and the war on terror. The Democrats focused on the Iraq war, health care, and the U.S. economy. The choices will be very clear in November 2008 on what we want our new president to focus on. If you are happy with the current direction of the country you will probably vote Republican in 2008. If you're dissatisfied, you will most likely vote Democratic. My vote is for change along with the majority of other Americans. If there are two reasons to vote for change, they are the foreign policy disaster in Iraq and the deteriorating state of health care in this country. Iraq had led to an upsurge in Islamic terrorists, and we have a health care system that just doesn't work anymore. Steve Skvarra expressed the current economic state of affairs in the U.S. by talking about how he not only lost 1/3 of his pension benefits when LTV Corporation declared banktruptcy, he also lost health care benefits for his wife. His story was the emotional highlight of the debates because his story could have been any of our stories in today's economic climate. Business's have basically declared every man for himself - they are only beholden to shareholders or themselves now. The employee is viewed as an expense item to be controlled, not as an asset to be cherished.

The other major Democratic theme was how to deal with extricating ourselves from Iraq with minimal losses to our military and to Iraqi's who will be left to fend for themselves. As Barak Obama said, we only have bad and worse choices, thanks to George W. Bush. Make no mistake - this war has been a debacle. If you haven't yet read "Fiasco" by Thomas Ricks, you should. It is an indictment of the Bush Administration and their incompetence in leading us into an unnecessary was in Iraq. What is especially disturbing is the degree to which Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld ran roughshod over the experts who predicted exactly what would occur once we won the war to overthrow Saddam, and had to actually rebuild the country. We had no plan for the latter. Once Saddam was out of the way, our military just stood around waiting for further orders from Washington. The war plans that the military had in place for Iraq prior to the war were totally ignored. To date, no one has been held accountable for this political folly. The Iraq war leadership has been characterized as "a bunch of lions being led by donkey's", which is what the German military said about the British generals leading their troops in World War I. Our military is currently suffering greatly in Irag - extended tours of duty and less down time at home with their families. Congressman Ellen Taucher in our district has introduced H.R. bill 3159 to stop multiple back to back deployments used by President Bush to fight the war. Ms. Tauscher is trying to really support the troops but is being attacked by Republican's for tying the president's hand in fighting this war. When Republican's talk about supporting the troops, that really is code for supporting the president and his ill conceived war. If we really want to support the troops we will make sure they have sufficient time with their families before heading back to Iraq. The troops are doing their job - unfortunately our political leaders are not doing theirs.

In the discussion last night on health care, it is pretty apparent that any of the Democratic nominees will have this issue high on the priority list - today there are just too many holes in our health care system. The Democrats want to do something about it while the Republicans decry any attempts to fix the system as "socialized medicine". They fail to see that our Medicare system and Veteran's health care system while not perfect are pretty well administered. Our president and our Congress also have a great federally run health care system. The Republican's seem to be bereft of ideas for fixing health care. Not too surprising given the fact that the Republican's opposed giving Medicare the ability to bargain for lower drug costs for us seniors.

After listening to both parties this week, I will stand by my preference for John Edwards, Barak Obama, and Hillary Clinton in that order. I like Ron Paul on the Republican side just as I like Dennis Kucinich on the Democratic side, but I don't think either of them will get very far in the primaries.

Media focus on the trivial

2007-05-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

Al Gore in his new book "The Assault on Reason" decries the short shrift given important news by the television news media and a focus on sensational events like the O.J. Simpson trial. Gore at first thought the O.J. trial coverage was an aberration, but to his dismay saw that news event followed by more like it: the Levi murder, Peterson murder, Terry Schiavo, and on and on. Add to this the daily recap by all the media of the latest American Idol, Dancing With The Stars, Lost, and other weekly T.V. serials, and the important news of the day gets shut out. The latest example of trivialization was the "dust-up" between Rosie O'Donnell and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on "The View". At issue, was whether Rosie O'Donnell called our troops in Iraq terrorists. Within the day, this event was discussed on the Glenn Beck Show, Hardball, Hannity and Colmes, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Joe Scarborough. It was also covered on the morning talk shows. Guess what got left out? The real war going on in Iraq, where our troops are dying on a daily basis. But we seemed to more concerned about a verbal fistfight on a highly rated talk show. This is not an isolated instance. Every day, especially on the cable media, we are given our celebrity worship segment, where we are priviliged to hear the latest gossip about Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan. The challenge each day is to find out any hard news about the war in Iraq. No wonder the President can spin the news anyway he pleases. We have very little facts with which to challenge him. The bottom line is the television media for sure is not doing their job in prioritizing news that is important to us citizens. The founding fathers were counting on an informed citizenry to protect our democracy. Don't count on us getting any useful information from television. Our alternatives are to go back to reading the newspaper which can also be problematic, or turn to the internet, where with the power of search engines like Google, we can dig for the information we need to make informed decisions that affect the future of our country.

Republican Candidates - Good Used Car Salesmen

2007-05-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Republican debate last evening did not shed much light other than the candidates were all prepped well to discuss the Republican talking points, while ignoring any mention of the elephant in the room - George W. Bush. You would have thought that there weren't any Republican's elected to the presidency since St. Reagan occupied the oval office. My net-net reaction after the debate was over was that all of these guys lacked authenticity - they all came across as politicians steeped in white bread Republicanism. But did they really want to come across as used car salesmen? Contrast that with the Democratic candidates who actually had positions different from each other, and ethnicity other than white. To be fair, McCain does believe in evolution but had to ruin it with his dumb comment about the beauty of the Grand Canyon (true but not relevant). And of course there is nothing much worse than a bunch of old guys talking about abortion, a subject they will only have to confront in the abstract. And where was Iraq in this debate - I had the feeling they were all getting ready to bomb Iran back to the stone age. 2008 may be the most important presidential election since 1860. I hope the electorate makes the right choice and goes for a new car not a car with too many miles on it sold by guys who don't want to tell you the miles have been rolled back and it had no maintenance for eight years.

Must Viewing - Bill Moyers on PBS

2007-04-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

Bill Moyers is reason enough to support the Public Broadcasting System. His opening show on how the media basically gave George W. Bush a pass on going to war with Iraq, was brilliant reporting. Two of our most esteemed publications come in for particular criticism: The Washington Post and the New York Times. Their coverage of the run up to the war bordered on cheerleading. This program is hard to watch at times, as it shows in agonizing detail how easily the Bush Administration manipulated the press, especially the Washington press corps.

One scene early in the program shows President Bush calling on White House correspondents to ask him questions. What was not known at the time, was that the questions were given beforehand to selected reporters picked by Bush Administration officials. That was particulary nauseating to watch. Even Oprah Winfrey participated in pushing the war by bringing on a former Iraqi dissident on her show, who had already been discredited by the CIA. She accepted his version of events in Iraq and pushed aside a criticism by an audience member as just "her opinion". Bill O'Reilly and Fox News, of course come in for much deserved criticism for their war cheerleading. O'Reilly comes across as a reincarnation of Joe McCarthy.

Only the Knight-Ridder organization seemed to do due diligence on the going to war "facts", but they did not have the same clout as the pro-war coverage in the Times and Post. The war rhetoric reached such a fever pitch that MSNBC cancelled the "Phil Donohue Show", because he was questioning the need to go to war.

The period of time perfectly illustrated "group think" in action. No one dared bring up the fact that the "emperor wore no clothes", during this time. Even Dan Rather was cowed. The neoconservative crowd around Bush lived up to their billing by touting the terrorist-Saddam connection on every talk show and on every op-ed piece in the influential Times and Post.

Senator Ted Kennedy was shown giving an anti-war speech and he "nailed" the outcome if we went to war with Iraq. He correctly predicted that we would cause even more terrorism in the middle east. What a prediction. Too bad he isn't running for President. At the end of the program - the viewer is left with the impression that Bush and Company lied to America, lied to Congress, and lied to the media. And we all bought off on their lies, except for a very few. A very sad period in the history of America. This program should be shown in every journalism school in the U.S. As one of the closing commentators noted - ust when journalists need to question our leaders the most, they failed us.

Here is the link to viewing this program: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html

Class Act - Elizabeth Edwards

2007-03-22T16:47:00.000-07:00

For a change, we saw a class act on our television screens today, when Elizabeth Edwards went on camera to talk about her re-occurrence of cancer. It was both a sad moment and a moment of immense courage. At a time of tremendous political antagonisms, Mrs. Edwards brought forth what is really important in life - your family and your beliefs. I respect her decision to stick by her husband in his fight to restore real American values in this country. My prayers are with you Elizabeth Edwards.

New Apple Products

2007-03-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

Laugh of the day: http://youtube.com/watch?v=KM_MkWgbt3k

Dick Cheney - Continued State of Denial

2007-03-13T12:09:00.000-07:00

The Vice President's comments yesterday about the U.S. Congress are yet another absurd statement by a leader who is in his own universe. He still thinks there is an 9/11- Iraq connection which has been totally disproven by all post 9/11 assessments. Cheney has the ability to create his own facts (truthiness), and disregard any real facts. He also has not been right on a single issue since he took office. This is an incredible record of outright incompetence. The best comment I have heard about Cheney was a post today on the "Truth Dig" website:

Comment #58328 by Dale Headley on 3/13 at 9:22 am

Dick cheney is a prime example of what I call, “The John Wayne Syndrome”, wherein Republicans consider to be their most iconic heroes, not the men who actually went to fight and die for America (Max Cleland comes to mind), but the ones who settled back in a comfortable chair and composed warmongering, uber-patriotic slogans. John Wayne’s friends, all of whom did in fact enlist in the service during WWII, practically begged him to join with them. He couldn’t be bothered; he was too busy getting rich by portraying war heroes on the screen. Dick Cheney was resourceful enough to get himself 5 deferments in order to avoid service. Like Wayne, Cheney has been busy getting rich on the war; his Halliburton stock has soared since 9-11. The only service either of them ever performed was “lip” service.

Thanks Dale for summing up Mr. Cheney. For further information on John Wayne and the controversy surrounding his lack of WWII service see the following site: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_004.html

Lafayette Ca - Iraq War Dead Memorial

2007-03-10T15:50:00.000-08:00

Lafayette California has become one of the major anti-war sites in the nation, along with Santa Barbara, and Santa Monica. Local anti-war residents have erected 3,188 crosses representing all of the U.S. military war dead in Iraq. While most of the sentiment has been positive, a significant minority in Contra Costa County are opposed to this memorial. The Lafayette city council made the sponsors of the memorial change the size of the signage that indicates the number of war dead, but okayed the crosses themselves. On Thursday March 9, there was a confrontation between a pro-war group organized by Melanie Morgan with got into a heated argument with their anti-war opposites. One of the pro-war individuals objected to his son's name being on one of the crosses, so it was removed. Many parents though have approved their children's names being memorialized. Whether one likes the memorial or not, it serves as a daily reminder that there is a horrible price being paid for this war.

Presidential Candidates - Wrong Ones Running

2007-03-10T10:17:00.000-08:00

In 2008, America will be voting in one of the most important elections in U.S. history. Our vote will determine whether we write the final chapter in our ill-advised war in Iraq, and rejoin the world community. Yet we have before us candidates who voted to allow George W. Bush to go to war based on evidence that would not have passed muster with a local police department. Of the 23 U.S. Senators who voted against this Iraq war resolution in 2002, none are running for president. We have John McCain, Joseph Biden, Sam Brownback, Chuck Hagel, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards who voted to allow President Bush to take us to war. On one of the most important votes of this century, they let America down. For this one reason, I'm not sure any of them should be elected presdent. We need a fresh voice who will get us out of Iraq; somebody who is not tied to the past. That leaves us with Rudy Guiliami and Barack Obama. Mr. Guiliami supports President Bush's policy on Iraq; Mr Obama does not. Enough said.

Finally - Some Democratic Backbone

2007-03-08T12:18:00.000-08:00

The voters sent a message about the Iraq war last November but the Democratic leadership in Congress still seemed afraid to put in motion legislation that would serve as a clear response to the Bush Adminstration. The time arrived today. Republicans kept asking for the Democratic plan - here it is: Withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by the fall of 2008. That is more than enough time for the Iraq government to get their act together and secure their country. Let the terrorists fall back and wait for us to pull out. That will give the Iraq military and police infratstructure enough time to thwart any terrorist reawakening. House Repubican Leader John Boehmer comment that this would telegraph to our enemy a timetable is laughable. We are telegraphing to the Iraqi government that we are running out of patience with their failure to step up to the plate. The "enemy" will try and wait us out no matter how long we stay. If Iraq can't secure their country within this timeframe, they will never be able to. The interim milestones set by Congress are also reasonable. George Bush has had sufficient time to get Iraq under control. He is being given almost two more years to establish success in Iraq. America does not have unlimited resources to stay in Iraq forever. Nonetheless, even if Bush manages to sabotage the Democratic plan, he will be out of office on January 19, 2009. At that time with a Democratic president in office, we will start the Iraq withdrawal. This plan will cost yet more American lives, but fewer than the infinite plan that Bush favors.

"Scooter" Libby - No tears at Langley

2007-03-06T14:46:00.000-08:00

Scooter told one for the team. From all accounts, he was not a very nice guy. I guess that's not surprising given he was chief of staff for Cheney, another very unpopular guy. The CIA especially resented their constant intrusion into the national intelligence process in an attempt for find any evidence no matter how minor to implicate Iraq as a terrorist threat. It is actually pretty sickening this whole sequence of events - it is just one more sorry example of how the Bush Administration put their own neoconservative ideology ahead of the national interest. Personally, I hope the judge throws the book at Libby. He represents the worst of America in my humble opinion.

Media Bashing - Unwarranted

2007-03-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

If it wasn't for the Washington Post, you would not be hearing about the horrible conditions at Walter Reed Hospital, and the mad scramble by the Bush Administration to fix the problem. For once, there were higher-ups held accountable. Possibly this had something to do with the Democrats now being in control of Congress. Or perhaps Bush finally woke up from his slumber. The only folks who still seem not to get it is Fox News. On Sunday, Brit Hume talked about the Walter Reed situation "looking bad". His fellow panelist caught him up short by saying " it is bad". Fox News said nothing about the excellent job the Washington Post did in uncovering this story. My comment is - congratulations Washington Post - you upheld the highest standards of journalism. And to Fox News - shame on you, especially for a network that purports to support the troops.

Finally some accountibility - Thank you Mr. Gates

2007-03-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

After six plus years of the Bush Administration, it looks like President Bush picked someone who will hold others accountable for mis-managment and incompetence. The new Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, looks like a winner. In rapid succession, the two star general in charge of Walter Reed hospital was fired, and a day later, the Secretary of the Army resigned. While, the general had an excellent Army record, the problems below him happened on his watch. Ditto for the Secretary. There isn't much that's more important than the proper care of our wounded military members, so these two actions are to be commended. Thank you Mr. Gates.

Veterans Care - The Hidden Story

2007-02-28T12:19:00.000-08:00

The Iraq war, horrible as it is, now appears to be even worse than reported. Thanks to Bob Woodruff of ABC News, we are just now finding out that as many as 205,000 soldiers have had war related injuries that are overwelming the capability of the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs to properly care for them. Because of the tremendous advances in our capability to rapidly treat our wounded military, many more are surviving that would have died in previous wars. The downside to this is that many more of the wounded suffer from head injuries that require extensive care and rehabilitation that can take years. This has put a tremendous strain on our military hospitals and rehabilitation services. It is now obvious that the Bush Administration has chosen to keep this situation quiet and the media did not pick up on this until Bob Woodruff recovered from his severe Iraq war wounds and started looking into how others were faring with wounds similar to his. We owe a debt of gratitude to Bob for bringing this important issue to the attention of the public. This is one issue that we cannot allow to be put on the back burner if we are to truly say we support the troops.

Tennessee Center for Policy Research: Slime Machine

2007-02-27T19:18:00.000-08:00

Wow, it didn't take long for the Republican right wing slime machine to spring into action. The so called non-partisan neocon think tank called "Tennessee Center for Policy Research" attacked Al Gore one day after his film "An Inconvenient Truth' won an Academy Award for best documentary. Somehow they got ahold of his monthly energy bill and tried to show how much energy Al Gore is wasting. What they failed to report however is how the energy consumption is based on "green" sources, which are actually more expensive than conventional power sources. It was a cheap shot at a former politician who has been at the forefront of the global warming battle for the last thirty years. For most of that time, his positions are global warming were met with big yawns or worse. Now that the rest of the world is waking up to the fact that global warming is for real, Mr. Gore is being attacked in an very underhanded way. Take a look at this so called non-partisan outfit. They are also against the minimum wage. If you look at their position papers, it reads like the Fox News roundtable and Republican talking points. Al Gore has performed a tremendous public service for the world and it is sad, that some still haven't gotten the message.

City of Antioch says no to Walmart expansion

2007-02-14T14:46:00.000-08:00

Antioch council rejects Wal-Mart expansion
By Simon Read
CONTRA COSTA TIMES
Antioch's City Council has rejected Wal-Mart's plan to expand its Lone Tree Way store into a supercenter.

Mayor Donald Freitas -- along with council members Brian Kalinowski and Reggie Moore -- voted against the expansion, with Councilmen Jim Davis and Arne Simonsen voting in favor.

Factions from both sides of the issue packed the council chambers Tuesday night and voiced their respective view points during three hours of emotional public comments. Supporters argued a 24-hour Wal-Mart Supercenter would bring jobs and lower prices to the area, while opponents cited increased crime and traffic as reasons to shoot the project down.

"Certainly, we're disappointed," said Kevin Loscotoff, Wal-Mart's regional public affairs manager. "We hoped the Council would have recognized the outpouring of support for this project from the community, and the more than 250 jobs it would have created."

The company will now "evaluate what options are available," Loscotoff said, adding no decision had yet been made as to whether the company would pursue any legal avenues.

Initially, the expansion would have added 72,980 square feet to the Wal-Mart store in the Williamson Ranch Plaza at Hillcrest Avenue and Lone Tree Way, boosting its size to 203,103 square feet.

The company, however, had agreed to an 8,000 square foot reduction to comply with size restrictions in the plaza.

What the article doesn't say is that an increase of 250 jobs at a Walmart supercenter are non-union, would be offset by the loss of good paying unions jobs at supermarkets located close to the supercenter, a vacant storefront, and elimination of shopping alternatives.

Molly Ivins - Rest In Peace 1/31/2007

2007-01-31T16:52:00.000-08:00

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war." - Molly Ivins

Walmart - Bah Humbug 21st Century Style

2007-01-04T14:20:00.000-08:00

Walmart has spent tons of executive time in the last two years trying to "spin" its abusive treatment of employees, but the public hasn't been buying it. Their same store sales are stagnant or down. Customers just don't want to shop at a store that has a reputation for treating its employees badly. Now Walmart is rolling out its latest plan for employee abuse - the flexible work plan where you are basically at Walmart's beck and call for a few measly hours of work at their measly pay scales. All in the name of serving the customer better by having more employees available when customers need them. I don't know about you, but as a customer I don't expect employees to travel back and forth to work a few hours, go home when customer traffic is light, and then turn around and come back to work again. There comes a point when enough is enough - even employees should be treated with a modicum of dignity. I understand that Payless Shoes and Radio Shack are also be going to be trying this employee flex schedule out - those are three stores that I won't be shopping at any time soon. I hope you won't either.

Sad Milestone - 3000 Dead

2007-01-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

Condeleeza Rice on December 21, said the sacrifice of our troops in Iraq was worth it to make Iraq free. Easy for her to say. As the saying goes "she didn't have any skin in the game". None of her relatives or friends were sent home in body bags. Thank God, most of America now disagrees with her and acknowledges that the Iraq war was a waste of American lives and dollars. Add to that the fact that we killed more Iraqi's in this war than Saddam ever did, and you realize the total futility of Bush's so called "War on Terrorism". Of course Rice is not alone in being culpable. Congress failed miserably is doing it's due diligence, as did our press which gave Bush a free pass on the war. If our troops are not to have died in vain, it will only be because all of us have learned a bitter lesson about freely giving unqualified U.S. Presidents the ability to wage war without proper vetting. All of us will be paying the price for Bush's fiasco for decades to come, but most of all, the relatives and friends of the 3000+ U.S. military who paid the ultimate sacrifice. We honor them for their service and courage, but shed tears for lives they didn't get to live, families they didn't get to raise, and all of the small enjoyments in life that they will never see.

The Old Timers

2006-12-28T13:30:00.000-08:00

We lost one of the good guys on December 26. Former President Ford was one of those level headed ordinary Americans that seem to be in short supply today in the leadership pipeline. It is ironic that he helped mentor both Rumsfeld and Cheney who with Bush 43 were the architects of our misguided war in Iraq. Of course, we now learn that Ford was sharply critical of the Iraq war and his two friends who helped create the frenzy surrounding the need for the war. Ford was such a nice guy that he didn't want his comments to become public until after his death. Ford represented the Republican Party that I admired and once was a part of. Now that it has been taken over by the religious right, I no longer identify with it.

On a similar note, over the weekend, I watched "Why America's Fights" which is an indictment of the military-industrial complex that another old warrior reminded us of in 1961 when he left office. President Eisenhower was extremely worried about the growing power of American corporations involved in defense contracting and the military, which both pushed for an ever increasing slice of the American government spending pie. I'm sure Ike would be appalled at how much we are spending today on the military, which is more that all other countries combined. As he noted in 1961, every dollar we spend on the military takes away from other vital necessities such as health care, education, roads, social security, and other non-military needs. In 2008, we should be debating how much we really need to spend on the military, at the expense of other needs. We should also be concerned about how easily people like Dick Cheney can move between Halliburton and the Vice Presidency. In 2008, I would settle for another Eisenhower, Ford, Truman, or Roosevelt type politicians. Where are these future leaders? We seem to have a bunch of lightweights in both major political parties today.

Finally some good news!

2006-11-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

Today America started her recovery program from six years of darkness. Karl Rove and his strategy of divisiveness finally ran out of steam. You can only fool Americans for so long until it dawns on them that they are being taken for suckers. The Fox News talking heads and other conservative shills were looking under rocks to find any small victories in this Republican disaster.

Short Takes - Tony Snow vs John Murtha

2006-11-02T15:12:00.000-08:00

I just finished watching today's Kudlow and Company show on CNBC which featured comments on the Iraq war by both Tony Snow and John Murtha. Tony Snow came across as complete political spin which he is good at based on his tenure at Fox News. John Murtha by contrast comes across as a straight shooter who is looking at the best interests of the United States of America. Murtha is a true patriot, who is extremely forceful and thoughtful. Congressman Murtha passes the BS test. Tony Snow doesn't. Kudlow being a conservative in the Reagan mold came out in defense of Bush but it was pretty halfhearted.

President Bush today again charged the Democrats with lacking a plan for winning in Iraq. Just what is Bush's plan other than "staying the course" or "changing tactics". Let's face it, the Bush Administration has no plan either. Besides it's somewhat disengenuous to say the Democrats have no plan when they are not in charge of the country at the moment. Their only real role is to serve up honest criticism of how the war is going. And it is going very bad. As Kerry reminded us on Monday, when you don't do your homework and try to run a war on the cheap, you are likely to end up in quagmires like Iraq and Vietnam.

Kerry Flap - One Week to Go

2006-11-01T13:37:00.000-08:00

The Republicans jumped on John Kerry's comments yesterday, like stink on s--t. They all got their talking points e-mail painting a Vietnam war hero as against our troops in Iraq. This looks like Swift Boat part II. Doing a dump on Kerry could backfire though if it reminds voters of Iraq yet again. Even though Kerry manages to shoot himself in the foot quite often, his attempt at a joke was heartfelt. He was obviously trying to pick up on the theme of "State of Denial" with his opening comment and ending comment about ending up in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration's lack of homework that caused a massive miscalculation about what would happen after we won the ground battle and attempted to stabilize Iraq. This issue was covered both by Bush I and Colin Powell, but Bush II totally ignored the consequences. If I was Kerry I would have apologized to the troops immediately and then followed up with a blistering attack on Bush. As it stands, it is just another sickening example of Republicans trying to get their neoconservative base all pumped up to go to the polls by politicizing Iraq yet again. Before this week is over, we will surely see more nasty smears as Republicans look at the reality of the Iraq war and the cumulative effects of incompetence in this Administration.

Final Countdown -Republican sleaze factory

2006-10-26T17:44:00.000-07:00

The Republican National Committee must not believe much in Republican family values judging by the ads they have been running on TV and radio this week. Even the individual Republican candidates have repudiated them. We all knew it would get ugly as Karl Rove ran his sleazy game plan for the final weeks just has he did in 2000 and 2004. This time it may well backfire big time on the GOP. The voters seem to be getting more and more nauseated by all this below the belt advertising and will vote the bums out. Meantime, the Iraq war has just gotten worse; even worse than reported in Woodwards book "State of Denial". What an eyeopener that book was. Why Rumsfeld is still around to run this war into the ground is a mystery. His most vocal critics are the Republicans who were forced to work for the guy. Let's hope the Democrats can mobilize the voters to get to the polls this time and beat the Republicans at their own game.

Election Day 2006

2006-09-30T16:09:00.000-07:00

Some things to keep in mind as we go to vote this November:

President Bush seems to pride himself on running a tight ship modeled after corporate principles, which emphasize process and bottom line results. Unfortunately for us citizens and taxpayers, he doesn’t walk the talk, other than showing up to meetings on time. Take for example Hurricane Katrina, the worst disaster in U.S. history. By any measure, this emergency exemplified incompetent leadership at the highest levels in our Federal government. Yet only Michael Brown, head of FEMA was forced to resign, but not until Bush told Brown, he was doing a “heckava job Brownie”. One year after Katrina, the U.S. government still hasn’t gotten its act together in restoring the Gulf region of our country. The fact that Brown was even appointed to the head of FEMA was extremely poor judgment. Brown was obviously unfit for the job and had zero experience with emergency preparedness. Of course this is not the first time that an unfit person has been appointed to a key leadership position within the Bush Administration. A 23-year-old Republican was appointed to oversee the building of the Iraq infrastructure. This person again had zero experience in such a massive undertaking. Of course the program has been a massive failure. In the interview with her, one of the questions about her qualifications was her stance on abortion. Like what in the world does that have to do with rebuilding Iraq.

In the September 21, 2006 San Francisco Chronicle, we have the story of Department of Interior auditors blowing the whistle on their superiors for not following up on fraudulent activity involving oil leases on public lands. The result has been oil company friends of the Bush Administration enjoying a 30 million dollar windfall savings at the expense of taxpayers.

Next to that story was a report on veterans being shortchanged by 3 billion dollars, because the Department of Veteran’s Affairs used the wrong data to estimate the cost of caring for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the GAO congressional watchdog agency, this shortfall was party attributable because the Veterans Department could not get accurate information from the Defense Department. It sounds like the two Departments don’t play together very well, which hurts our injured veterans.

On the Fox News Saturday September 30, 2006 “Cashin In” financial news program, Jonathan Hoenig of Capital Asset Management took issue with a Democratic Party spokesperson who complained about the billions of dollars wasted each week in Iraq that could be spent re-building America. Jonathan stated that the money was well spent since it protected us from terrorists, and was better than the billions we spend each year on Medicare and other social welfare programs. His comments reminded me of a quote from a speech given by President Eisenhower in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

My gut feeling is that Mr. Hoenig’s opinion now represents the prevailing philosophy of the Republican Party. Not only would President Eisenhower not recognize the new Republican Party, but “Mr. Conservative” himself Barry Goldwater would also have a hard time stomaching the Republican Party platform. His granddaughter C.C. Goldwater pretty much said exactly that in her HBO documentary on her grandfather.

Then, we have the example of a Republican Congressman, Representative Mark Foley of Florida being forced to resign because of inappropriate e-mails to a congressional page. Mr. Foley now takes his place alongside Mr. Delay and Mr. Cunningham in the Republican Congress Hall of Shame. And these are our elected representatives who have the nerve to talk about “family values”.

We have our President again, who at a GOP fundraiser in Alabama talked about the party of FDR and Harry Truman, becoming the party of “cut and run”. Democrats like former Major Tammy Duckworth who lost both legs in Iraq of took exception to his comment. Her response was to the point:

"Well, I didn't cut and run, Mr. President. Like so many others, I proudly fought and sacrificed," Duckworth said. "My helicopter was shot down long after you proclaimed 'mission accomplished.'"

President Bush is also hell-bent on re-interpreting the Geneva Convention language on torture and suspending habeas corpus for persons we deem as terrorists. Someone should explain to him that the former is about as productive as re-interpreting pornography and the latter is an insult to the Founding Fathers who gave us the precious gift of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, which President Bush took an oath to defend.

The Day After Labor Day

2006-09-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

Labor Day must be the one holiday the Republican Party leadership hates the most. They are forced to get out amongst the working class and give speeches extolling what they have done for labor. They pull up every statistical trick they learned in the class “How to lie with Statistics”. Just take one example; President Bush cites the 4.7% unemployment rate, while ignoring the fact that millions of Americans have just plain given up looking for work. I know for a fact they aren’t counting one of my close relatives who was laid off last year, collected unemployment for six months, and basically stopped looking for work in his field. He now sells parts he makes on E-Bay. I guess you could say that the Republicans did turn him from a worker to an entrepreneur.

And if you’re lucky enough to have a job, many experience the daily anxiety of getting the dreaded lay off notice or being told you have a job, but you will have to move a thousand miles away where wages are lower. In Harold Meyerson’s excellent article “Just what are we celebrating,” published in the Contra Costa Times on Sunday, he reports that the median hourly wage for Americans declined by 2% since 2003, even though productivity rose handsomely. He cites the New York Times article “Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity”, dated August 28 that wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of gross domestic product since 1947. In contrast, corporate profits have risen to their highest share of GDP, since the mid ‘60’s – a gain that has come chiefly at the expense of American workers. A Goldman Sach’s report is also reported on that shows “the most important contributor to higher profit margins over the last five years has been a decline in labor’s share of national income.

If you think all of these wage issues can be attributed to the economic globalization occurring in the world, you would only be partly right. As the article cites, “Since 1973 productivity gains have outpaced median family income by 3 to 1. Clearly, the war of American employers on unions, which began around that time, is also substantially responsible for the decoupling of increased corporate revenue from employee’s paychecks. But finger a corporation for exploiting its workers and you’re trafficking in class warfare.” Meyerson reports that his fellow columnists “have charged that Democratic politicians concerned about the further expansion of Wal-Mart are simply pandering to unions. Wal-Mart offers low prices and jobs to economically depressed communities, they argue. What wrong with that?” Plenty, if you read “Breaking the Chain: The Antitrust Case Against Wal-Mart by Barry C. Lynn, published in the July 2006 Harper’s Magazine. It turns out that because Wal-Mart controls 20% of all retail transactions in the U.S., it all by itself drives down wages and benefits across the economy. Another dirty little secret is how Wal-Mart ruthlessly treats it suppliers. Four of their top ten suppliers were forced to file for bankruptcy because of predatory purchasing practices. The article in Harpers is a real eye opener about Wal-Mart and how it has used its massive size to intimidate companies such as Kraft Foods and Proctor and Gamble. It is a case study on what happens when a company truly becomes a monopoly. In the past, the Department of Justice would have come down hard on such companies as they did on A&P Grocer’s. However times have changed. According to Barry Lynn, when the Republicans came back into power with Reagan they re-wrote the anti-trust provisions to significantly weaken them. It now has to be shown that company practices truly put the consumer at risk. What they left out are all of the safety valves to protect other companies that can be severely harmed by companies like Wal-Mart. What is bad is that while Republicans have been anti-union since William Howard Taft, the Democrats under Clinton became more pro-corporation. It’s no coincidence that Wal-Mart headquartered in Arkansas had little to fear from the Clinton Administration Justice Department. In fact at one time Hillary Clinton was on the Wal-Mart Board of Directors. And of course the Bush Administration is not any time soon going to go after a major corporation like Wal-Mart.

So as we celebrate another Labor Day, we should all ponder how it is workers in this country became Republicans for the most part. Maybe it’s because they felt Democrats now longer represented them either, so they may as well turn to the party who promises to keep their taxes low, and keep gays from marrying. Until that changes, get used to continued declines for the lower 90% of workers who are less and less participating in the American Dream. As Fox News reported on Sunday, there were 25 thousand applicants applying for the 300 low paying job openings at the new Wal-Mart opening in a suburb of Chicago. Fox wondered aloud, if Wal-Mart was so unpopular, where were their so many applicants applying to them for work? They were asking the wrong question. What they should have asked – If the economy under the Bush Administration is so great, why are 25 thousand people applying to Wal-Mart for work?

Ned Lamont and Hard Ball Politics

2006-08-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ned Lamont got his first taste of hard ball politics last week after winning the Democratic Party primary for U.S. Senator from Connecticut. First Dick Cheney and then Joe Lieberman let loose with blasts about Al-Qaida types being pleased about Ned Lamont winning the primary. Cynthia Tucker this morning in her column, rightfully criticized Cheney and Lieberman for such ridiculous comments. With the traditional start of the political campaigns not until after Labor Day, this attack is a good preview of just how nasty the fall campaign is about to get. Lamont appears up to the challenge. He is very articulate in front of the cameras, and can get his points across forcefully with few words, which is always an asset in a politician. Frankly, he is a breath of fresh air compared to Leiberman, who is a traditional "kiss the baby" politician who took his seat in Congress as a divine right. Leiberman is now campaigning on a theme of reducing partisan politics, but your wouldn't know it from his latest comments. Lamont actually won the debate between the two, and has very clear ideas about where the Democratic Party should be heading. And it's not to the left as the conservative talking heads have been trying to tell us, unless the left has suddenly moved to the center. I think most Americans want our troops out of Iraq, better health care for all Americans, a fair minimum wage, and an energy plan not written by the oil companies. That doesn't sound left wing to me. Good luck to Ned Lamont in waging his war on the political establishment. We need more of his type in Congress; someone bright with his feet on the ground, who wants to restore America's prestige in the world.

Theodore Roosevelt

2006-07-01T15:51:00.000-07:00

Two Republican presidents are on Mt. Rushmore - Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. If they were still alive today, would they identify with the current Republican Party? Rooosevelt might; the reason he ran on a third party ticket in 1912 was because he was so disgusted with how his friend William H. Taft took the party away from the progressive reforms of the Roosevelt years, and turned it back into the party of big business. Taft was so unpopular that Roosevelt actually came in second behind Wilson, the first and only time a third party ticket did that well. All of this information was featured last week in Time magazine which profiled Roosevelt as part of a special issue on American history. It was a good read. Too bad we don't have a Roosevelt to protect our interests today. During his last run for the presidency, he championed a minimum wage, social security, and other reforms that were shelved until his distant cousin FDR became President. Teddy as he was called, strongly believed in government protections against the darwinian instincts of large corporations. Today, there is little restraint on big business. The oil companies have reformed themselves into an oliogopoly to control oil prices and artificially constrain the supply of oil to keep prices high. What the oil companies have done of course is not against the law, but it is certainly morally questionable and against the interests of the U.S. public.

The U.S. Congress and the Bush Administration have fallen all over themselves to criticize the New York Times because they chose to run an article detailing how we followed the money trail of terrorists organizations. Of course they did not criticize the Wall Street Journal for doing the exact same thing. But how grevious is it to publicize information that was already readily available on the internet, and which had been mentioned many times since 9/11. Does anyone really think the bad guys aren't aware we trace their financial transactions? Too bad the Bush Administration doesn't save more of their wrath for the oil companies which have not done any of us any favors. In California alone, the increased price of gas cost consumers 30 billion dollars a year. Guess where that money goes - into the pockets of the oil companies and to our so called friends in the middle east who fund the terrorists. Bush is not Roosevelt of course - he is more in the mold of Taft who stacked his cabinet with corporate lawyers. Teddy would not look favorably on a party that cut taxes during wartime, tried to repeal the estate tax, and privatize social security. He would also wonder how Congress saw fit to increase it own salary several fold while denying 7 million of our lowest paid workers an increase in the minimum wage. One thing for sure - we won't be seeing George W. Bush on Mt. Rushmore.

Holocaust Museum Visit & Reflections

2006-06-10T13:01:00.000-07:00

In May, as part of our trip to the east coast to see our daughter and son-in-law, we visited Washington D.C. The purpose was to see the new museums opened since our last visit there. We saw the new Air and Space Museum exhibit next to Dulles Airport, The Indian Museum, the WWII Memorial, and the Holocaust Museum. All are worth seeing, although the WWII Memorial seems somewhat sterile; it certainly doesn’t invoke the emotional reaction that one gets from visiting the Vietnam Memorial. WWII veterans may take exception to my impression. But as someone who wasn’t involved in either war, I had a much more emotional experience the first time I saw the wall.

The new Air & Space exhibit is also worth visiting if only to see the Enola Gay, the most famous aircraft of WWII and the most controversial. The museum also contains the new McDonalds, McCafe which is their attempt to emulate a Starbuck store. They did a pretty good job, although Peet’s is still the best. It sits next to a conventional McDonalds, which is also nice, since they offer a good variety of salads now.

The Indian Museum, up the road from the original Air & Space Museum is in an architecturally impressive building, with a very interesting café, which showcases a wide variety of American Indian themed food from all over the Americas. The food was excellent with reasonable prices. If you’re looking for something different in food choices, this is the place to go in D.C. The exhibits in the Museum are hit and miss; some are very impressive, such as the hand painted converse basketball shoes, but much of what you see is not visually creative and looks like a cut and paste history of the Indians from Encyclopedia Britannica. I did like some of the material on the Spanish conquest and how the Indian population was practically wiped out by European diseases. A little known fact is that when the Indians greeted the Pilgrims in 1620, the Indian population was already severely decimated by disease.

On the first day of our visit we took in the Holocaust Museum, and spent almost a day 1/4 there, since there was so much to take in. The memorial to the holocaust victims is an emotional experience almost beyond compare. I already knew quite a bit about how the Nazi’s systematically exterminated most of the Jewish population in Europe and many others who they deemed not desirable. But I wasn’t prepared for the depth of Nazi moral depravity graphically shown, and the lengths to which the Nazi’s carried out their horrible crimes. What was perhaps equally disturbing was the degree of anti-Semitism in the world during this period, which in part caused much of the world to look away from what, was going on, including the United States. The U.S. State Department in particular was very culpable in turning away Jewish refugees who needed a sanctuary somewhere.

There was also a good analysis of which Nazi occupied countries did the most to shelter Jews from the Nazis. Denmark had by far the best record in their citizen’s sheltering Jewish families from the Nazi’s. Since I am part Danish that left me with a feeling of pride.

The museum does a superb job in illustrating via artifacts and movies the lead-up to the Nazi’s coming to power in Germany, and how the German people went along with Hitler’s crimes, in the name of state security, and the sanctity of the German state and the German vision of Aryan supremacy. Hitler over a period of less than three years took away all citizenship rights of their Jewish citizens and within another three years confiscated most of their material possessions. All the while this was happening German’s went along with the program. That all of this happened in a country that considered itself one of the most cultured in the world is almost beyond belief. In Ellie Weisels book “Night” which I read on the plane ride home, he describes how his family and friends would not believe that the German’s would do what they did, all evidence to the contrary – such evil was just not possible in the 20th Century. Not till they entered the death camps in Poland did they finally realize that true evil did still exist in this world. The museum visit left me with a different perspective on world events today, especially in the U.S. From gay marriage to illegal immigration, it gives me a very uneasy feeling about how we view our fellow man in this country, and how quickly we are to give up our liberties in the name of state security. We are also witness in our time to atrocities in Bosnia, Darfur, and other countries, to which we reacted very slowly if at all.

The most positive aspect of visiting the Holocaust Museum is the number of school children there with their teachers and parents. They made up most of the attendance at the museum that day. They were very respectful, and one can only hope when they grow up they can truly change of world for the better. There is one haunting quote in the museum which all Americans should keep in mind as we confront the war on terrorism and the affront to our personal liberties:

"In Germany, they came first for the communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists but I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time nobody was left to speak up."
Martin Niemoeller, Dachau, 1944

Talking Heads Review

2006-06-09T14:46:00.000-07:00

Now that I'm retired I have more time to monitor the various talking head programs, including Lou Dobbs, Kudlow and Company, O'Reilly Factor, Scarborough Country, Hardball, Larry King, Mad Money, Countdown, Hannity & Colmes, and Tucker Carlson. They run the gamut from extremely conservative to moderately liberal:

1. Sean Hannity: extreme conservative; one of the few to defend Ann Coulter, who insulted four women who lost their husbands on 9/11. His liberal co-host Alan Colmes is rather weak and has difficulty keeping up with Hannity who is quick on his feet. Hannity is high on the obnoxious scale but attempts humor on occasion. A Hillary Clinton hater.

2. Larry Kudlow: Conservative of the old school, as opposed to the new breed of social conservative, who backs elimination of estate tax, and allowing illegal immigration to continue because it benefits large corporations who can hold down wages. Talks about "class warfare" a lot - a hot bottom for the ultra rich who think they are being picked on by the liberal elite media and/or the liberal politicians who want to redistribute their wealth to the less worthy.

3. Bill O'Reilly - Social conservative, who claims to be for the "folks", yet hardly ever talks about issues that really impact the "folks". He constantly talks about the liberal media elites and the "flame thrower" liberals, yet claims to be middle of the road; however he is always talking about the "godless" liberals. Most middle of the roaders I know could care less about most of the social issues of the extreme right. He did chastice Ann Coulter the other night though for her intemperate comments. O'Reilly is the most obnoxious of the entire group, and tends to cut his guests off when they waver from what he what to hear from them which is a parroting of his own views. The program also tends to cover a lot of trivial issues, which are sensationalized such as Duke rape case. Hillary Clinton hater.

4. Tucker Carlson - Social conservative, but does a good job of at least listening to the other side in point-counterpoint style. Also has a sense of humor - he even wears a bow tie.

5. Joe Scarborough - Social conservative, but it open to arguments from moderates/liberals. Also took on Ann Coulter. A former U.S. Representative who have a good grasp of how Washington works.

6. Jim Cramer - Not sure where he stands but I think he is a conservative fiscally and a social liberal. Now that he is no longer part of Kudlow team, he avoids politics and focuses strictly on Wall Street events.

7. Lou Dobbs - Moderate. His views tend to mirror what I perceive to be mainstream American views. Views Nafta and Outsourcing as big mistakes, as he does offshoring. Wants to get tough on illegal immigration; keep the estate tax, and ridicules the Republican obsession with social conservatives issues like gay marriage and flag burning. Too soft on Ann Coulter though. He is also beating the illegal immigration issue into the ground.

8. Larry King. Social moderate. Good interviewer - very balanced. He has had some excellent shows.

9. Chris Matthews - Moderate. Excellent at grilling guests, both conservative and liberal. His show is much more "no spin" than O'Reilly (which is a lot of spin). Matthews is very articulate and quick on his feet. May be sharpest of the bunch. He has also been very critical of the Bush Adminitration.

10. Keith Olbermann - Liberal. Very funny and can express his emotions well; has been going after O'Reilly recently, and really took Ann Coulter to task. Mr. Olbermann has been attacking the Bush Administration very heavily in the last month.

Of the bunch, I like Lou Dobbs and Chris Matthews the best. They seem to reflect what America is really all about, and cover excellent topics. They have the ability to both praise and criticize the current admintration. Some will only praise Bush, while Larry King won't say much about what his views are - he lets his guests do the talking and then gently probes them to amplify on their answers. The conservative pundits deflect criticism of Bush by constantly bringing up Bill Clinton moral transgressions, as if they were worse than the problems Bush Administration has caused.