Out of Iraq

After 10 years, over 800 billion dollars and just under 5,000 fatalities our president announced that we will be withdrawing all troops from Iraq by January of 2012. It's about time. Since we never should have been there in the first place, one wonders what took us so long. But bad things happen when you displace a government and attempt nation building. You'd think we would have learned our lesson in Viet Nam, an action in which in I was involved. But it has not happened. Our country has been blithely engaged in two wars for the last decade with little or no protest from the populace.

The old saying about "those that ignore history are doomed to repeat it" applies to our foreign policy for at least the last 40 years. Now, with the factually challenged warrior wannabes in charge of the congress and perhaps the senate as well (in spite of a supposed Democratic majority) we continue on the path of waste and destruction with little or no thought to the outcome or consequences.

From my perspective our leaders have lost the ability to think big enough to help the majority of the people. Most seem tied to some cause or worse, to some corporation whose only goal is profit. Witness the exodus of middle class jobs in the last 30 years. Where did these geniuses think our citizens would work when they sent hundreds of thousands of jobs to China, Indonesia, Pakistan and Whereeverthefuckistan? They didn't care then and they don't care today.

This country has been divided into two distinct classes; the investment class that owns 40% of everything and 50% of all stocks and bonds. These folks constitute just %1 of our population. The other 99% of us make up the other class. Most of us depend on employers, the government and the cycles of the economy for our well being. Since 1980 and the conservative revolution headed by Ronald Reagan our government has made it easier and more profitable for corporations and the wealthy while making it much harder for the other 99%.

This has been accomplished by applying the science of Madison Avenue (marketing) to political dialogue, with devastating effect. "Framing" has become the modus operandi of the pundit and media class. No longer are issues reported on and discussed without some variety of "framing" involved. The majority of the electorate remains ignorant of what is being done to them and this allows them to continually vote against their own self interest. Amazing!

As just one example of the duplicity of the factually challenged in power is the current buzz word "Job Creators". What a Crock! These very people are the ones responsible for millions of jobs lost, not the ones that remain. After all, someone has to do the work on the ground, don't they? The lucky folks still have jobs, though they pay less and have fewer benefits than just 5 or 10 years ago. I guess the Corporations and Wealthy think it's OK if the people who made this country what it once was, who fought in its wars, and continue to lay down their lives to this day, should struggle to make a living in the richest nation on the planet.

I applaud all those in the "Occupy Wall Street" protest for at least identifying the enemy within. It is too bad they lack a spokesman to articulate the anger and frustration felt by so many and the injustice of supplying the financial sector with over 13 TRILLION dollars in bailout money while continuing to decimate the middle class. The Greed of the ruling class in our nation is so apparent and ever present that one wonders why it took so long for the people to rise up in protest.

Perhaps it will come to something, but I remain cynical that any action will be taken to right the wrongs done to us.

Of course we are now in the election season or "silly season", where we will be bombarded with BS from all parties. Most if not all of this will be a smokescreen to divert our attention from the real and most pressing issues.

For comic relief I recommend any so called Republican debate, but only if you can turn off your critical thinking and need for facts. Just sit back and laugh for a bit. Oh, and wait for the news of our next invasion of a foreign country, its just around the corner. My guess is somewhere in Africa this time.

RT

Made to Order

Seems like there is no party, administration or person you can depend on in our current political environment. Somehow our government, which of course is really just a surrogate for corporations, keeps screwing up. This is another sad example. Of course it's almost funny when explained by Jon Stewart.

Enjoy,

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

OK, that's all I've got to say about that.

RT

Blah, Blah, Blah

The nonsense that passes for political discourse in our country has both disappointed and disgusted me. Also we've just suffered the hottest August in history here in Phoenix.

So.... I offer this bit of creativity. If you miss the rain as badly as I do, just sit back and listen.



RT

Is 8 Enough?

So...... The Iowa Straw Poll for the Republicans has a winner. And the winner is....
Michele Bachmann, really, I'm not kidding. Seriously; the Iowans who participated preferred the queen of Wackyworld to any of the other candidates who were in the running.

Amongst those were a faux news contributor, a governor from the Midwest, a gospel singer and probably a couple of flat earthers, perhaps even a birther or two. All sought to out right wing the other making the whole thing imminently unwatchable and pretty ridiculous.

To make the point here a couple of videos from "The Daily Show" on the subject.






All this fun and then Rick Perry ( another Texas Governor) (cause we all know how good the last one did, right?) announces he's running. To make the whole event totally rad Sarah Palin, serial butcher of history and all things factual rides into town on her bus of BS.

My heart goes out to those in Ames.

RT

At Least Bill gets It !

I found this clip on Huffpost today and was mildly pleased to see that at least someone else besides me understands what's going on here. As usual Bill Maher picked a very controversial way to make his point, but I agree with that as well.

Perhaps you believe that 3 years and a few months is sufficient punishment for losing your baby. If you do then Bill thinks you're probably a middle class Republican voter as well.

Here's what he has to say.




Nuff said,

RT

Critical 4th of July

I am almost too damned cynical to be writing this post today. I've come to believe that the capture of our local, state and federal government by the monied interests (read financial oligarchy disguised as the republican party and various tea-party groups) is almost absolute. Yet I still find myself making the attempt to help wake up the American electorate.

So in that vein here's some contributions from others who feel as I do and something that you the reader can do if you wish to help out.

First a little snark to start off the process. This comes compliments of Crooks and Liars. To read the entire article you can go here. To paraphrase, it is a commentary on the corporatization of our country with new words for the pledge of allegiance.

I pledge allegiance
To the Bathtub
Of the United Slates of Norquist.
And to the Republicans,
For which it scams,
One Corporation,
Under Fraud
With Liberty & Tax Cuts for All....
corporate jet-owning billionaires.

The next offering is again from Crooks and Liars and is a fictional speech ( we really wish he had delivered this speech though) that should have been given by the president on the debt ceiling and the current debate, craziness and blackmail by the radical right to further impoverish and harm the majority of our citizens. You can read the whole speech here.
Let me just say that in the speech he lays the facts out and addresses what is really going on now.

Last is a real speech given by Bernie Sanders on the house floor. It is a letter to President Obama. This was brought to my attention on the blog Time Goes By, an elder blogging site dedicated to the issues affecting folks my age.



If after hearing Bernie's speech you would like to sign the letter yourself, you can do that here.

When I signed there was a little over a hundred thousand signatures. By my count there ought to be at least a hundred million people who should be on board with Bernie. We truly face another threat to our independence this Fourth of July. This threat is to our financial freedom. The proposals of the far right will mean a further decrease in the well being, happiness and live styles of countless millions of us, while helping to increase the already tremendous gap in wealth and power between the top 1% and the rest of us.

I wish you a happy fourth and hope you'll join in what may be the most important fight of your generation.

Peace,

RT

Congrats New York, But.......

I suppose that congratulations are in order for the gay and lesbian community in New York state this week. They can now be married and have all the advantages and disadvantages associated with the institution. One wonders if they fully thought out the downside of this event. Now they will find their way into divorce courts, child support cases, and the myriad of other legal potentialities in modern marriage. Good luck with that!

Now don't misunderstand me. I really don't care about gay marriage. I am more interested in the distraction it brings that helps keep truly political and economic issues buried in media BS. In my humble opinion it would have made more sense to make civil unions legal nationally, thereby affording them the same legal status as marriage, but without offending those who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds. If you're interested, the statistics tell us that single parent families, especially those of unwed mothers are far more deleterious to our society than homosexuality. Our current group of politicians won't let these facts get in the way of their posturing on family values. Many in our government continue to attempt to legislate morality often with disastrous results.

Anyway...... There is some irony in New York state showing this level of tolerance and progressiveness considering it is the same state that houses the majority of our financial crooks and swindlers. Too bad the legislature couldn't focus on that. The chief crime fighter in that state was Elliot Spitzer who fought Wall Street while attorney general, but managed to get caught in some adulterous behavior as Governor of the state. You don't here much out of the NY Attorney Generals office on prosecutions these days, do you?

The media outlets continue to focus on moral issues which arouse the fanatics on both the right and the left. While our focus is on these issues, the more critical and important political issues are left to the insiders to handle (or not) as they see fit. Indeed the right has managed to convert purely religious issues into political dialogue, forgetting or ignoring the separation of church and state so crucial to our constitution.

This has gone on for so long now that we take it as the norm. Few people object often or loudly enough to force reporting about the real and important issues that face our country.

What are those issues you ask?

Here are just a few issues on which I think we ought to focus.

• True progressive reform of our financial system, including the FED
• A national debate on our continuing global military intervention and the costs to our military, our economy and our national character
• An accurate assessment of our nations need for infrastructure growth and maintenance
  
• Reform of the individual and corporate tax system with emphasis on creating skilled jobs in the US and penalizing those who send work offshore, (also corporations who hide offshore to escape taxes)
• Creating a realistic national drug policy and ending the so called war on drugs, (it has had a similar effect to prohibition and created drug billionaires worse than Al Capone)
• Take the money out of our elections and rescind the Supreme Court's decision to give corporations unlimited access to our politicians with no individual responsibility for the corporate officers.

There are no doubt many more issues that could be brought to mind, but if the ones above were seriously addressed we would have a much better country for our middle class.

Fat Chance? Maybe, but I continue to hope.

RT