Aaaaargh! My computer is till out of action, so I’m totally out of the loop. That sucks, but it does show that total reliance on technology is a weakness.
Of course the prevailing issue in America remains stimulus package. It is more than strangely weird but not surprising how the republicans are behaving. It’s also interesting how Americans are being duped by them. A recent poll it is claimed, says that 60% of Americans support a stimulus bill, but 50% want changes.
The stimulus bill is more than 600 pages long. It is not on Barnes and Noble’s bestseller list. Not many people have had the change to read it… but they want changes. Me, I’m sure there are things to question in the bill, but I would want make changes only after reading something. It means that the republican voices are being heard, irrespective of whether it makes sense or not.
But they make sense, to themselves. Here they are against the stimulus bill which is aimed, flaws and all, to bailout people on the lower economic rungs of society. Yet, when George Bush was throwing money at the ‘fat cats’ on Wall Street, without any oversight or accountability, then the current republican politicians are all for it. The ‘fat cats’ misused taxpayer funds, the republicans never objected.
Under Bush, they had no problem with waste. $12b disappeared in Iraq… not misspent, disappeared without a trace and with no one accountability. Yet one of the current republican senators then, said the money was next to nothing… too small to be of relevance.
The current republicans including John McCain are a joke… and should be treated as such.
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Two of the diversions used by the republicans, has to do with the money for the National Endowment for the Arts ($50m) and STD education ($335m). When you hold it out just like that, it could look ridiculous, but there are reasoning behind the decisions. STD for example, is at epidemic proportions. It cannot be ignored. This is something that has to done, sooner or later. Obama is simply folding it in sooner.
Its not as if this money is going only to one person. An education campaign will hire people… teachers, nurses, administrators, graphic designers, printers, clerical workers, shippers.
As for the NEA, it is a fact that the arts give higher returns on investment than many other industries. The projects stay around longer, and are educational. History has shown that every society that moves forward, had a vigorous cultural environment.
But the republicans are idiots. They have an aversion to sex, even though more of them have scandals than has the democrats, and they treat arts like a luxury, because they want only themselves to have access to to fine art.
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Just heard some republican spokesman say that tax cuts gave America 51 months of unprecedented growth. The democrats need to come out and dismantle that myth. Within 9 months of taking office, America moved from a surplus to a deficit. Money was giving to corporations and most simply moved jobs overseas, and transferred much of the money to their own personal aggrandisement.
What they reigned over was the greatest transfer of wealth, the mass povertisation of the American people. The so-called growth statistics were fixed. They were definitely fixed in Florida.
There’s no way you can move from such as supposed high, to such a definite low in such a short time, unless the high was a delusion. Much of the Bush economic years were built around myths. Bush’s first treasury secretary Paul O’Neill, was fired because he opposed the tax cuts tot he rich as unworkable, unsustainable, and bad for the economy in the long run.
Gasoline prices have gone back over $2 a gallon. Exxon made record profits last years because much of the year, gasoline was over $3.50 a gallon. Want to guess where this is leading to?
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Some interesting solutions might very well come out of this economic crisis though some require changes of attitudes. In California, the DMV will close their offices twice a month on Fridays in order to rationalise services and save money. It will mean however, that the staff, getting unpaid leave for those days, will lose 10% of their income.
And some are complaining. Complaining. They will still have a job, and a salary. Me, I would be jumping for joy. Heck, there are thousands of things I could do on those extra days.
But the problem is that those complaining employees never gave it a thought that they could be laid off, and as such, they don’t care if others were laid off… as long as they were safe and comfy.
It never occurs to them that everyone can share the pie, that it is better for all to be working that some not working at all. Its a sort of selfish ‘me’ stupidity that I see everyday in this country.
Yet in European countries, actually all over the world even the Caribbean, they see the bigger picture. Much of Europe work less hours. Yet we criticise them for it. They have better living standards for their society, and we sneeringly look at them as ‘socialists’.
Better health care, socialism. Good public transportation, socialism. Better education, longer holidays…
Its time that the American public look beyond their failing society for some adjustment… America isn’t all that and less. There is much that they can teach others, but there is much they have to learn from others. This might be their wake-up call. The dinosaurs never reacted when the circumstances necessitated change. Now they are extinct.
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Weeks ago I said that Obama will not go forward on the impeachment of the Bush rogues, irrespective of how merited it may be. Now the CIA nominee says that the CIA interrogators won’t be prosecuted for their torturing of Iraqis. The basis he claimed is that they were following orders.
But that was never an excuse allowable for Hitler’s generals, or Saddam’s cohorts. A man should be punished for doing something he knows is immoral and repugnant. He should be held accountable. This opens a bag of worms. Who now become accountable? Only the man at the top? And if so, why is Bush running around free?
But put this is in context. There is a campaign in the black community encouraging snitching. Well, really it is a campaign against the ‘anti-snitching’ mentality in many black neighborhoods.
Now I don’t support the black community in this. I see somebody do something wrong, and my mouth is flaping like a ripped flag in strong winds. But it is hypocritical for the white community, police and politicians to be preaching about cooperating with the ‘Man’, when they themselves don’t.
Doctors don’t generally snitch against other doctors, nor lawyers. The police has the ‘thin blue line of silence’. Politicians cover each other, even if they are of opposite sides. Its only when ‘tief si tief carry long bag’, that a man of one profession might rat out his compadre.
If Obama should not only openly support, bit instigate the indictment of the Bush rogues then hey, lecture the black community all you want. But until others put up, then just shut up.
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The US government continues to be outmaneuvered and though it has happened under Obama’s watch, it is a culmination of events from the Bush past. In the past, I had informed you has to the new hostile relationship with Russia courtesy of Bush’s duplicity.
Long story, short. For the war in Afghanistan, Bush asked Russia if permission to set up temporary bases in its sphere of influence. Russia said yes. After years, Russia figured that temporary was becoming a little too permanent and asked Bush about it. Bush, not personally, laughed in Putin’s face.
Well, now Russia has orchestrated the closing of the American base in Kyrgyzstan through which America channelled supplies and stuff. Now they have offered to help by granting transit rights through their territory. And they are doing so by forcing America to discuss issues that America didn’t need to discuss previously because they were in top dog position.
Now the tables have turned.
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This leads me to a story I read in a magazine called FP (for Foreign Policy) whose new editor is a holdover from the Bush era (a former speechwriter for Condi Rice). He argues that Obama should continue Bush’s fp philosophy. Not smart. But that’s not the point. It shows that Bush’s minions have infiltrated many places of influence in the society, and they haven’t changed their thinking.
The dude is probably quite happy with the fact that so far, Obama hasn’t really deviated substantially from the Bush doctrine. Woe to us.
