Tuesday, February 9, 2010

My Reaction to the Huffington Post Kuttner Article

After reading this article that talks of not pointing at the people who were to blame for the financial difficulties we are facing and then in the same breath call Obama lazy and incompetent and declare that he isn't trying to change while knowing that their own party's leaders are directly responsible for the obstructionist behavior that is "NOT Allowing Change" in Washington despite his working since the day he started in Office, I am forced to remember that GW Bush was still playing golf and acting like being president was a vacation until nine eleven happened. By 2001 we had heard a few speeches by someone who sounded almost like English was a second language to him and heard his railings about his supposed "religious" convictions that most of us already knew were for campaign purposes. No one I know forgot what he did as governor of Texas. He had made some huge mistakes along the way but we were told we weren't supposed to point those out or discuss them publicly because that was a detriment to our country of some type I still don't understand. By 2001 when he was being warned about the financial crisis by actual economists, not Turd Blossoms and others with their own agenda, we complained that our jobs were beginning to decline and soon it would be unstoppable if the government didn't start creating jobs (I repeat that that was 2001 and NOTHING was done) and we kept hearing about how unemployment statistics had changed and they were going down. Those of us who lived through previous Republican administrations that crushed he working class were scared and shaking our heads wondering how blind they could be to actually think when someone's unemployment runs out he is worse off and doesn't have a job so just because he can't collect unemployment doen's mean that those statistics mean we can relax about it. But no one listened until they were standing on the white house lawn with Hank Paulson explaining that someone had to explain to them that we were having a financial crisis, as if they didn't realise that having food in the white house refrigerator doesn't signal that the country isn't suffering more and more gradually each day. When we found out that there was one news station that broadcast differently than any others, that when an AP story got to them they completely revised it to sound backwards from the way it was meant by the author. We learned that that had to do with the owner since when we are fearful or angry we will watch the news waiting for something to break and if he created unrest and controversy it created more show which means more advertising and more money, so the worse off we are the more he likes it. The previous president must have been hoping that like his idol, Ronald Reagan, he would get out of office before the financial crisis backlash hit. It didn't work out that way. He must have been hoping that it was going to happen to the future administration we were chastised and told we were being too critical and that we needed to be patient with him. When anyone pointed out the failings of the Bush Administration they were called Unpatriotic, UmAmerican, and told they were supposed to support a president who created a recession from the surplus he was handed by the previous administration, started wars in two countries at once, and knowing that we had a volunteer army started one of those wars in a country that wasn't full of people who had attacked us as we were lied to in the beginning in order to scare some people in the neighboring country to cooperate with us on our oil demand. The volunteer army we have wasn't enough to begin waging a war there, as his father had stated in the book his father wrote about why we shouldn't attack them, but evidently it wasn't enough to satisfy his father's supposed cronies and advisors to the president. His chief political strategist had quite a reputation from the Watergate era, in which he escaped indictment by leaving the country and hiding out in the Soviet Union until things died down here. We were assured that he was quite intelligent and was full of strategic wonders, although I didn't know lying was a strategie. The one sided closed minded report is seen through the eyes of someone who has already proven he dislikes the president and tries to excuse the entire problematic hugeness of the mess our present president inherited. Some people seem to think that you can start out eight years behind and fix everything in your first nine months in office. If we had been that impatient with the Bush administration then they would have all been impeached in 2001 for lying to us about who attacked us on nine eleven and using that as an excuse to attack a country that wasn't responsible by making up stories about WMD while any of us who actually do watch something besides one slighted conservative news channel remember watching Condoleeza Rice telling a security committee previously that we had been watching them with satelite surveilance and that we were sure they hadn't had a chance to buy yellow cake uranium. We were pretty much sick of this group when economics editors were writing articles showing how supply side economics don't work and hearing the president embark on what a great president the guy who came up with what his own father called "voodoo economics" was and how he wanted to immulate him. Those of us who studied that time period and lived through it realised that borrowing mass amounts of money from the Chinese and not discussing it publicly, while telling the public that it had to do with your economic policies in one instance and claiming he "forgot" or was misinformed about the Iran Contra situation, about the arms we supplied to rebels who later shot them back at us but not before redesigning the hand held missile launchers that we supplied for the gerrilla war tacticians we trained to be targeted at us later on. Somehow I don't think that was quite the best idea but more of a temporary solution to a permanent problem which we created for ourselves. That is where Al Qaida came from.
Now, I don't even have to go into the ridicule that was heaped on them when the "misson accomplished" fiasco with an attempt at a Ronald Reagan type photo op was made. And we were forced to be quiet while our rights were handed over when bills were signed to allow a force of juvenile acting police agencies took to tapping our phones and correspondence in the name of security when declared by the same people who weren't concerned with a memo that Osama Bin Laden was going to use planes as missiles to attack the United States was really valid until after the 9-11 commission hearings brought even more embarrassing admissions, including the timing of the Abu Ghraid Prison scandal involving our presidential administration down to the soldiers who intentionally tortured and sexually harrassed "inmates" who Mr. Rumsfeld admitted under oath at the hearing were not prisoners per say, they were not arrested for anything, they were not terrorists, enemy soldiers, insurgents, etc. they were just locals who MIGHT have seen something and were being held for interrogation to see what they could find, which amounted in NO new intelligence. A president who created a recession and on his watch spent more money than LBJ did during another useless war that we had to give up on, in South Vietnam. On top of that with the head of the Federal Reserve, which upon close investigation caused most of us to be terrified about the economy because we find that it is run by speculators who may or may not be anywhere accurate about which way the market or anything else will fall. We watched as the factory jobs of our nation were "outsourced" to other countries with not only his blessing but several tax breaks to encourage the decimation of the working class Americans who had grown up in places in our nation that were steeped in tradition of decades and some even over a century of their whole town being supported by " the base", " the factory", "the cannery", or "the plant" (in some cases the only military around them was munitions factories) while recruiters were scooping the unemployed young up as fast as they could for our volunteer army and acting like that wasn't a planned strategie in itself. Not enough volunteers? ( Shut down their jobs and offer them the only position open with a guarantee of steady pay if they enlist.)
Now after all that we have to listen to someone telling us that the president who has been working since the first day in office and that has had to fight with obstructionists who are playing politics just for the mere joy of making press and attempting to see this president fail while not realising or even caring how much this reconstruction of our country is needed right now while cowtowing to the meddling lobbists and bribing, corrupt special interests for a feather in the cap in hopes of campaign contributions next election. They don't have to worry about the McCain Feingold Act which Senator McCain was such a supporter of when he had no aspirations for president but now that he has thrown his hat into the ring again he seems to have changed his mind. Otherwise he might have spoken up about the nonsense and the "legislating from the bench" that recently happened from a Supreme Court judge that the conservatives convinced to declare special interests to be people so they can now offer soft money contributions that were going to be kept under control since they are merely, as was stated on Senator McCain's own website, a matter of "legalised bribery" since candidates don't have to return all the money once the election is over and which are only moderately accounted for since the regular campaign funding has to have a PAC to keep track of and report.
Now, with every bit of childishness they are trying to make his life an uphill struggle while taunting him and spreading as much dissent as possible including false statistics on his popularity rating. I don't believe any statistics they come up with. IF these same people would rig an election and do everything they can to win, no matter how much lying and undignified wallowing in mud that is slung dishonestly, amounting to nothing but a propaganda machine, why should I believe some popularity statistics they collected in the places that mostly are only visited by other conservatives? If we were as impatient with the Bush administration as they are trying to get all of us to be with the Obama administration, then most of them would have been impeached in 2001, if not brought up on war crimes charges which some countries are seeking through the United Nations. Also, if we don't get back to work, get costs like healthcare and housing under control, we will go into a greater depression than we have ever seen and the point of no return is coming soon. I would think that by now it would be evident to some of the people who created this mess that now that we are so far behind that doing nothing or even worse going backwards has a backlash effect. I guess they won't be satisfied until we are back to having soup kitchens and tent cities like the last great depression that almost wiped us out. I don't want to hear one more speech about the resiliance of the American People, I want to hear responsibility for the past mistakes. Man up and admit that you created a mess instead of continuing to blame it on everyone else. Why any of these men keep being elected is beyond me. There are two old sayings that apply here. One is, "If you aren't part of the solution then you are part of the problem." and the other is: " Definition of insanity is practicing the same action over & over while each time expecting a different result." I don't know how anyone can keep blaming the people who are trying to correct the problems for creating them. That is immature and irresponsible. It is going to be devastating eventually because as most of you may or may not know, each time we borrow more money from the Chinese, the more of our country they own, because the note already came due. They now own a lot of our public buildings and property, I'll bet most of our John and Jane Doe's out there didn't realise that. The same people who are screaming "socialism" as a propaganda move over government health care, ( which most educated people know that all industrialised countries besides us already have while paying less in taxes than we do) are recklessly sending us running directly into the waiting arms of the Communists. You might want to rethink your voting habits and quit listening to the Rupert Murdoch twisted news stations or else you might want to get a couple CDs for learning to speak Chinese and get used to the idea of carrying a red flag. If you think that it may never happen and that nothing like that could ever happen here, you might want to take a good look at Tibet. Mr. Kuttner wants to create more division between us or he wouldn't say things like, "What exactly does that mean?" In the same tradition as Rupert Murdoch and the rest of the tabloid news propagandists (like the enquirer) he knows enough to state the bogus accusation in the form of a question so he can say later, "Well, I just asked!" No, he insinuated in the form of a question which is like the headline in other tabloid news that reads "Does Britany Spears' child suffer from abuse?" or "Does Steadman secretly want to dump Oprah?" which we all know by now, if we open the cover and read the story they first talk all around the subject that the headline intimated and then change the subject to something else as soon as the first sentence is over. Poor Ms Winfrey has been a target for so long that she is hardened to it and ignores it. Things like, "Did Oprah fall off her diet?" or "Is Prince Charles ruining his chances at the thone?" or whatever that they don't come right out and make a statement is a lie.
They used to blatantly lie until Carol Burnett sued them. That is what we learned when I was in school is called Yellow Journalism which means they have no ethics. Anyone you hear on television, in the newspaper, or any other news media who doesn't make statements but instead frames questions to imply something is LYING. Armed with that little tidbit of information look back over all the news you read today and when you see that little faupax just remember that to have ethics is rare in business today and also,
For you to truly say that you are maturing and growing and being a nice person you have to ignore unethical information. Now what did you hear?

Also, I would like to mention that I do agree with Mr. Kuttner about the myth we have all heard about "bi-partisan" actions in congress. The kind of Republicans whom we have in congress now are never going to agree with anything on a bi-partisan basis. That sounds great but it is like someone telling us to really get a good head start in a foot race we must first set the starting blocks up by applying rubber cement to your shoes. Then when the race starts you notice the people passing you while you are trying to right get all the gravel stuck to your shoes hadn't taken their own advice since they never intended to. That is the same as Republicans insisting we must compromise to be bipartisan and that is what they want. Their idea of compromise is for us to do whatever they say and that is NOTHING so things will stay the same. They want things to stay at status quo 1) so they can say Obama didn't do anything, and 2) since they are the ass puppets of the lobbyists who represent the worst of the special interest groups that we started the "reform" movement to stop to begin with. That won't work because they haven't conceded anything. It is like people who cheat in grammar school. That to me is a bunch of sick people, victims of unlimited greed. I know it's hard to believe but they are blatantly corrupted by soft money contributions and there isn't an easy way to reverse that. The health care proposal needs to be reinstated at it's original state and everything on it kept the way originally because since we allowed 50 concessions to them and they gave us NONE, then why are we even debating trying to cooperate with someone who doesn't know what that word means?