Republican Game Plan 2012

We live in great political times. the campaigns never cease. You win or lose based almost solely on how much money you can raise and spend on television attack ads. I can hardly wait for the foreign company spending OKed by the U.S. Supreme Court in the upcoming elections.

Well, it took a major recession to bring the Democrats back to power. It may take a continuing recession to remove them from Congress in big numbers.

What strikes me as odd, like living in Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia, is how duped Americans have been from voting for their own best self interests. I don't think any of us would individually deny a child free health care but a political party advocates doing just that and has people voting for their candidates. How is this possible in a free democratic society.

A great part of making black look like white is in how you control the propaganda, "the message". The average American watches television 8 hours a day. This gives a well-funded and determined plan plenty of time to send a message.....no matter how false that if told enough times is believed.

No one in their right mind would claim that top ranked Fox News is "fair and balanced" in their
presentation of issues. Under the direction of its owner Murdock (an Australian). It greatly influences the thinking of millions of voters. I remember back in very early 2004 Fox News was announcing each night how many days until the re-election of President George Bush.

Perhaps there should be a cult deprogramming camp for Fox News watchers.

As I see it 20 years of bank and Wall Street deregulation and soft enforcement of anti-trust laws led us to the current recession/depression. For 20 years the Republican Party was pretty much in control of Congress and the Executive Office. I remember James Watt wanting to lease public lands and he was ready to "drill baby drill" in Yellowstone National Park. Ronald Reagan compared joining Unions to being a member of the Communist Party. President GW Bush happily joked while watching American jobs and wealth sucked (Ross Perot was right!) off-shore and overseas.

We have seen the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the super wealthy in world history. The greatest deficits in our history were during the Reagan and GW Bush administrations and NOT during Democrat Administrations. I believe Democrats are to blame. As the party in opposition they enabled all of this and more while standing back and just letting it happen. The Democrats could have used the strategy the Republicans are now using in the U.S. Senate. The Democrats could have stalled the major deregulation and changes in our tax laws that benefited the super rich. But they did not. "Tip" O'Neil and Ronald Reagan were too busy slapping each other on the back to really care that their cooperation was destroying the American Dream of a prosperous middle class reached under Eisenhower. So we now reap what has been sown.

To make matters worse for the future of our economy the Republican Party instead of apologizing for their mistakes of judgement are blaming the Democrats for not cleaning up the mess fast enough. This is good strategy and appears to be working. I remember that in 2004 they succeeded in portraying John Kerry with 3 Purple Hearts as the coward while George Bush the bar stool pilot was the war hero.

Now convince us that Health Care for all Americans bad.
Deregulation is good especially for mining profits not safety.
Gas for cars is better than battery power.
Drill baby drill till it is all gone!
Jobs overseas are better than employing Americans at home.
Off-shore stashing of money to avoid taxes is good for business.
War 24/7 is good.
What is good for Wall Street is good for America
Banks should invest in high-risk ventures.
Bonuses and obscene salaries for CEOs are always good.
Monopolies for broadcasting is true blue American.

God Bless America. May her flag always wave over a home of the brave and a land of the free.

We Wanted another FDR. Did we get another Hoover?

Yes, we wanted another FDR but I am afraid we got another Hoover.

When I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 I was hoping that he would initiate another 100 day miracle just as FDR did in 1933. FDR closed the banks for a "bank holiday". While the economy then was somewhat less complicated than today this action did bailout the banks and stop a run on cash withdrawals. Obama's solution was to bail out the banks by lending them billions of dollars without immediately demanding a return to the pre-Bush banking system of tighter credit and a ban on speculation with the depositor's money. There we no banker or Wallstreet bonuses in 1933. The public would have rioted.

FDR stimulated the economy by printing lots of money by "borrowing" and by creating a gigantic jobs program to repair and build upon the American infrastructure. This was a long-term investment in American production and transportation systems which in a very short time got millions of people to work. This gave a psychological and financial boost to the nation. FDR created a social safety net with a modest Social Security Administration and unemployment insurance and a host of other proactive national programs.

In 2009 we got "cash for clunkers" and stimulus as Congressional pork. I think the money could have been better spent.

It's the economy stupid!

FDR brought America out of the Great Depression by entering a World War. Everyone could contribute to the cause and earn a living wage through working to free the world from a great evil. Everyone could contribute to metal scrap and paper drives....not to mention saving through savings and war bonds. Yes, they were all in it together. Nothing to fear but fear itself.

In 2010 two unpopular wars are still draining our national treasury and costing thousands of lives. We get a renewal of the Patriot Act.

FDR was not afraid to take off the gloves and get the country moving. It took only great leadership. Obama's great failure at this point is to let a dysfunctional Congress take the lead in trying to solve the problems we face. His greatest mistake was in trying to offer the hand of compromise to a political party out of power and unwilling to assist in setting a national agenda. They want him to fail. Obama should have remembered that this is the party that brought us the Great Depression and then opposed all of FDR's attempts to correct the wrongs of 50 years of Republican misrule. You name it ... they opposed it. Sound familiar? In addition the U.S. Supreme Court was packed with Republican appointments and overruled much of the New Deal programs.....but not before America was started on the road to economic recovery.

While attempting to recover from Polio in 1922 a very depressed FDR asked Eleanor "what if I should try and fail?. She responded "Don't!!" "Don't Try?", he replied in a worried tone. "No....don't fail". She insisted.

Obama ............ it is time to take off the silk gloves and put on the boxing gloves!!

When Failure Means Success

Only in America does failure mean success. For years american industry and the top 500 businesses have rewarded their top executives with bonus payments and stock options supplementing outrageous high salaries. The quarterly bottom line could even register in the red and these guys were rewarded for failure. Failure in the short term shows a willingness to be innovative and reaching for the long-term reward by being far-sighted and willing to risk one's career on making the right choices. Rewarding continuous failure year after year reminds one of an aristocratic elite that takes care of its own. The recent bonuses given to failed banking and wall-street executives shows failure in a big way does not result in failure of career or personal financial loss.

History teaches us that this level of enabled failure by, of and for an elite can result in violent revolution as in Cuba, Russia, Haiti and France to name just a few examples. Few revolutions evolve to the best interests of its people. The American experience is the most successful of the lot. However it is seriously flawed.

Any political system that rewards failure at the expensive of its citizens needs major political change. The success of the Republican Party to delay and filibuster and tie up the Congress and critical need for reform is a dis-service to the American ideal of compromise. Portraying any reform and change as harmful is destructive to the effective workings of our Republic. When in power the Republican Party's failure to address the long-term needs of this country should not be rewarded by letting them now place blame on those trying to correct the failure.

We know the Congress is bought and paid for by the corporations. Now the U.S. Supreme Court has recently shown itself to also be an ideological tool for the financial power elite, and many of these elite are foreign. The Court chooses to represent these destructive forces rather than the citizens it has sworn to protect.

We fight wars to bring democracy to lands that have never known its benefits, while we reject and subvert the blessings of democracy here at home for political and financial gain.

"We have met the enemy and he is us".

Tea Party means Abandon Ship?

Do you have the same reaction that I have to the Tea Party people?

The main appeal is to self-interest and greed and mean spiritedness combined with a bone-headed black and white view of the world. Calvinist Puritans come to mind.....burn witches, banish catholics and jews.

BTW, I believe the original Tea Party in american history was a raid by friends of Samuel Adams. He smuggled contraband tea to Boston to avoid the tea tax. Unfortunately the taxed tea sold cheaper than his smuggled tea. Solution was to encourage a type of "free trade" by dumping the competition's tea into Boston Harbor.

The Tea Baggers Compromise? ...... NEVER! ............Opportunists big time!

Let's take a look at recent history:

Ronald Reagan: 8 years (reverses New Deal and Great Society)

Daddy Bush: 4 years (Watt wants to drill in Yellowstone Park and sell public lands)

Bill Clinton 8 years (Congress controlled by Republicans inflict Contract on America)

Baby Bush: 8 years (A Trillion dollar refund from the U.S. Treasury for the very rich; two wars; economy in freefall while Repubicans control all 3 branches of government)

President Obama: 1 year in office (He has become the Tar baby of Southern Republican Senators)

What does this add up to?

Blame Obama and the Democrats for the failure of everything.

Bring back the Golden Age of the Robber Barons. If you tell a lie or an untruth often enough people take it as fact. Also, if you throw enough mud, some of it sticks. I just wish the Republican Party would learn to work in the best interests of all americans and not just the rich and elite. But then money is power.

The plan for the Republican Party is to draw support from the grass roots tea party fanatics while using parlimentarian tricks to tie up Congress into one big gordian knot. Make Obama and the Democrats look bad with a do-nothing looking Administration. The Republicans see failure of our Republic as their path for coming back to power.....and we all know what that means.

I understand there is a new Coffee Party to counter the elite Tea Party folks.

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Abraham Lincoln: a reflection on the man

In the bicentennial year of Abraham Lincoln's birth writings continue to examine every aspect of his life and personality. One recent writer has even assumed Lincoln was gay because he shared a bed, at times, with other men. We will probably never really know the man who was our Greatest President.

Lincoln was a very private man. Even his closest friends were never truly intimates. Melancholia best describes his personality. While few people ever saw him lose his temper or control of his emotions, he did weep on occasion. He liked telling stories and racy jokes. His sad face would often break into a generous smile with loud laughter of a type and manner indicative of his mid-western origins. He took his time in thinking through issues of all types. He spoke publicly only after careful consideration and preparation.

Lincoln had a moral and ethical nature uncommon for his time. While he could stretch his ethical views as a lawyer he was exceptional in always seeking fairness in his dealings with others. Morality was central to Lincoln's entire being. He took to the golden rule as a personal inner compass.

He loved children and animals and could not abide with the mistreatment of either. He pardoned Tom the Turkey(thanksgiving dinner) for his young son Tad. He had an aversion to executions of any type and pardoned many soldiers during the war as well as native americans tried and sentenced to death for the Minnesota rebellion.

The only major office he had ever held was as a one-term Congressman from Illinois. Yet he was a very experienced politician. In losing races he grew only stronger politically.

He was the first President elected as a Republican. He captured less than 40% of the
public vote, yet swept the electoral college.

What is the new President to do? 7 States had seceded from the Union and 4 more would shortly follow his swearing in as the 16th President. His greatest challenge would be to save the
Union from an uncompromising group of elite men determined to place their rights (States Rights) above the common good of the entire nation. This group of aristrocrat planters wanted an oligarchy and not a democracy. They would breakup the Union rather than compromise.

As a lawyer Lincoln saw secession as an illegal act. It violated the Constitution. The Constitution did not provide a provision for a State to leave the Union. Indeed if a State could choose to secede from the Union could not also a County, City, town, or individual choose not to obey the laws passed by Congress and go their own way? Prior to the Constitution and the formation of the United States the freed colonies had formed a Confederation that proved to be very unsuccessful. Realizing their mistake the founding fathers met and carefully worked out a democracy in the form of a United States.

Lincoln was pushed into a Constitutional corner. While he felt he did not actually have the authority to coerce the Southern States to remain in the Union he did have an obligation to protect and defend federal property and citizens threatened by Southern military actions.

The federal army was very small. Political emotions ran so high that when Lincoln made the mistake of calling for volunteers to supplement the army 4 additional State Legislatures voted to leave the Union. Lincoln was treading on egg shells and any further actions might result in the loss of the border States of Maryland, Delaware, Missouri, Kentucky. Then South Carolina's state militia chooses to fire upon the federal fort of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston.

At this point Lincoln could have wished the South good riddance and be gone from the Union.
But the Constitution did not allow him to do this either. In his legal opinion the South had never left the Union and certain parties were in rebellion. As a result of this thinking he never used the phrase "Confederate States" in any of his speeches or discussion. So therein lies the dilemma. To fight or not to fight. He chose to preserve the Union above all else within his power.

As a lawyer Lincoln had alway seen slavery as a legal act that had to be changed as it was immoral. The challenge was convincing others of this same moral fact. The United States remained one of the few countries in the world still recognizing the legality of slavery. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in 1857 (Dred Scot Decision) that black people were not citizens of the United States. Even though the Constitution counted them in the census as people to determine representation in Congress. The Constitution also failed to define what constituted being a slave. So, place yourself in Lincoln's situation. Slavery is morally wrong. The law and Supreme Court say that slaves are not people but property. The vast majority of americans do not care if a black man is free or a slave as long as they live somewhere else. What should he do? Lincoln did what he always did to solve an injustice. Go slow, go deliberate, but move in the right direction.

Lincoln said that if he could save the Union by freeing none or all of the slaves he would do so. Or if by freeing some and not others he would do that. He was a practical man. He saw that extremism in the actions of John Brown failed to free one slave. If slaves could be freed by buying them and sending them abroad to South America or Africa to save the Union he would do that. Lincoln even had a back up plan of compensating slave owners for their slaves and eliminating slavery in the U.S. by 1900, if that would save the Union. When war became the only option due to the South's unwillingness to compromise on State's Rights and slavery this left him only waiting for a major union army victory to impose a limited emancipation for held slaves. In the end even one of his earliest abolitionist critics Frederick Douglass praised Lincoln's approach as the one that resulted in achieving the end of american slavery.

One wonders what might have happened if Lincoln had served out his second term. As far a Reconstruction he said "let them down easy". At the time of his assassination Louisiana and Arkansas were ready to come back into the Union. President Johnson (a Southerner) only wanted to punish the planter elite of the South, rather than use them to help reunite the country. Congress reacted to Johnson's leniency by punishing the South with a big stick and impeaching the President. The South was left to fester. The rough approach by Congress did nothing to solve the deep seated problems that lead up to the rebellion but only suppressed them until they could resurface at a later time.

Would we have had the KKK and Jim Crow laws if Lincoln had lived. We will never know. Shortly before his death Lincoln had urged in his 2nd Inaugural Address that the solution was:

"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

The Two Wars and Peace

What if?

The war in Iraq were to end with the country divided into 3 or more parts. Kurds in the north,
Shites in the south and Sunni's in the west. Iraq as a nation was a creation of the British with an imposed king. Not such a good idea after all. Most americans can not even find Iraq on a world map. Oil is not worth one drop of american blood.



What if?

We just left Afghanistan and returned it to the CIA war of insurgents. A tribal country remaining a tribal country. Instead of our troops being the objects of hate and murder we simply provide what is needed and necessary to keep the Taliban and other terrorists busy fighting each other. We have been rope-a-doped into this war without end. Eye for an eye and everyone ends up blind. The terrorists have us just where they want us. Trillions of dollars spent, thousands of lives lost with no solution in sight. Are we winning? Just ask yourself that the next time you take a flight and have to remove your shoes and belt before entering security.

Creationism, Evolution or Both

(image source nigelbeale.com)

It is hard to accept that the physics and mathematics used by mankind to explain and explore the physical universe is not the result of some master plan. As a Deist I believe that an enity "God" got the ball rolling by launching the big bang. What if God is a force beyond our level of understanding without a sexual or physical nature? Yet, a force able to bring into existance physical creatures that evolve and grow and have self-awareness.

The biblical verses are stories that we have used over the centuries to explain events beyond our understanding. Perhaps we are embarked on an amazing journey, only just begun, that will allow us to evolve into a universe of beauty and goodness that has been planted and grows beyond the very primitive state that now exists on our planet.

Respect for all life, a need to learn and grow and build upon the achievement of others. The fossil remains do not lie. Mountains come and mountains go. Seas expand and contract. Animals and plants evolve. Everything that is living eventually dies.

If we were not meant to evolve we would just be a creation of mindless creatures fulfilling a script already written with the ending determined long ago. No art, no literature, no science, no civilization needed. No joy, no happiness, no sorrow, no purpose.

The future is in what all of us leave behind.