I have a few simple, easy to understand, easy to implement ways to really help the American people. The "American people" seems to be one of the most common refrains our politicians say these days.  I think the only American people they give a shit about are themselves.  Here's my bailout plan:

1.  Adopt National Usury laws.  The scum sucking credit card banks are equally at fault with the mortgage banks in the overall downward spiral of the economy. A mortgage that is fixed stays fixed. Even when you miss a payment due to circumstances of everyday life in this world.  A credit card interest rate should have a max limit of 3X prime. period.  These fuckers are part of the people getting bailed out and they use the government funding to float their commercial paper.  Government funding is our money. They borrow from the fed at 3% and let us use the money at 29%.  They should be hung in the public square. The abuses of this industry are rampant. They lobbied congress hard against the interests of the American people for years and they finally got what they wanted from a Republican congress and President.

2.  Return to the days when you could deduct credit card interest on your taxes and make it retroactive to 2007 tax year. This will stimulate the economy by putting more money in our pockets.  That is the least they could do since they basically took away the right to a bankruptcy.

3.  Remove the 10% penalty on early withdrawals from retirement accounts. If we need it, we need it.  It is our money. We shouldn't have to pay additional taxes. This will stimulate the economy.

If anyone would like to add to this list please do so. And then send it to your friends.

34,220,984       303

34,108,157       219

When? / Who?

34,220,984       303

34,108,157       219

When? / Who?

I just heard John McCain answer a question a few minutes ago in a live town hall meeting about education.  He suggested that students go into those fields of study  where you can contribute to the talent shortage for those skilled in math and science.  During the same answer he recognized his daughter Meaghan in the crowd and told everyone that she was an Art History major.  Sounds a bit elitist if you ask me.  Art History majors don't need math and science to get jobs. They need rich, connected parents. 

The Obama campaign's response to the Offshore Drilling debate has been nothing short of anemic.  The sad reality is that it is physically impossible to drill anywhere due to a lack of oil rigs. The NYTimes published an article on 6/19/2008 describing this problem.  the existing Drill ships are booked solid for the next five years. I've never heard the Obama campaign explain or highlight this fact.

Why?

I have a child with autism who enjoys watching certain sections of videos repeatedly.  He really likes it when I mimic the voices of the characters in the videos.  There is a section in Bug's Life where one of the ants asks the question, "You mean to tell me that our entire defensive strategy was concocted by clowns....(later in the the same dialogue Flick says, "The bird will work!"  If you substitute Surge for Bird and McCain for Flick you have the McSame storyline.

Let's look at the Gallup poll out yesterday that showed that a significantly larger percentage of Americans believe the surge has worked. The number has more than doubled from a few months ago.  The media never mentions one or two important components of that success.  I will.

1.  (From Factcheck.org) We are paying Iraqis, some of whom were formerly hostile insurgents, to police areas and fight terrorists. In late 2006, some Sunni Iraqis began to turn against foreign terrorist groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq. This is generally referred to as the Sunni Awakening or the Anbar Awakening. The U.S. military acted on this trend, according to the Congressional Research Service:

CRS: In the course of the “troop surge,” U.S. commanders have taken advantage of this Awakening trend by turning over informal security responsibility to 91,000 former militants called “Concerned Local Citizens” (CLC’s) or “Sons of Iraq” in exchange for an end to their anti-U.S. operations.

But the Army says that these individuals are not merely sitting idle. Commanding General of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq David Petraeus elaborated on their role in his testimony to Congress in April, saying the Sons of Iraq are "under contract to help Coalition and Iraqi Forces protect their neighborhoods and secure infrastructure and roads." He went on to say that they have "contributed to the discovery of improvised explosive devices and weapons and explosives caches."

And of course, these contracts come at a cost. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. is paying about $16 million dollars a month to members of the Sons of Iraq. Petraeus emphasized during his testimony that the "savings in vehicles not lost because of reduced violence — not to mention the priceless lives saved — have far outweighed the cost of their monthly contracts."

Nonetheless, there is movement to shift these costs to the Iraqi government. In May, the Senate Armed Services Committee approved a measure prohibiting the U.S. from funding reconstruction efforts, such as the Sons of Iraq, that cost more than $2 million. And Petraeus says that "over 21,000 [members of the forces] have already been accepted into the Police or Army or other government jobs" and moved over to their payroll.

2.  Using statistics to lie. .. I've recently read but can't find the original reference to the pentagon's report omitting the number of people (US soldiers and Iraqi soldiers and civilians) killed by IEDs from the number of combat related deaths.  OF course the surge worked we're not getting shot at we're just getting blown up. IEDs aren't combat related deaths or casualties. Tell that to the families of dead soldiers and those soldiers who survived their IED injuries. If any one out there would like to help with that reference please do so. I'll find it eventually.

Greg Palast sent out an urgent email this morning with some disturbing revelations about wholesale voter purging.  He is looking for money to get a documentary produced. He wants this story out there.  If people on the ground in Colorado and New Mexico can verify these allegations please do so. 

If these are true, November 2008 will be much uglier than the "Butterfly Ballot Debacle of the Palm Beach Blue Hairs"  or the "Hi, I'm Katherine Harris and Your Votes Won't Count Shituation."

Obama is recruiting attorneys for Election day work. The fox is in the henhouse now and the chickens will be long gone by November.

Here is the text:
Obama Doesn't Sweat. He should.   by Greg Palast   In swing-state Colorado, the Republican Secretary of State conducted the biggest purge of voters in history, dumping a fifth of all registrations. Guess their color. In swing-state Florida, the state is refusing to accept about 85,000 new registrations from voter drives - overwhelming Black voters.   In swing state New Mexico, HALF of the Democrats of Mora, a dirt poor and overwhelmingly Hispanic county, found their registrations disappeared this year, courtesy of a Republican voting contractor.   In swing states Ohio and Nevada, new federal law is knocking out tens of thousands of voters who lost their homes to foreclosure.   My investigations partner spoke directly to Barack Obama about it. (When your partner is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., candidates take your phone call.) The cool, cool Senator Obama told Kennedy he was "concerned" about the integrity of the vote in the Southwest in particular.   He's concerned. I'm sweating.   It's time SOMEBODY raised the alarm about these missing voters; not to save Obama's candidacy – journalists should stay the heck away from partisan endorsements - but raise the alarm to save our sick democracy.

Maverick: "Talk to me Goose..." Johnny "894" is in a flat spin. He is neither fit nor qualified to be POTUS.

You want some rationale for his behavior...

From: Henry Lenoir - A Republican

"I have a theory about John McCain based on my twelve years in line fighter squadrons.

McCain is insane. The unimaginable sufferings he endured in Communist prisons unhinged him permanently.

Flying fighters in the 1980s and 90s, I got to know several Vietnam POWs including some who had been captive even longer than McCain’s five and a half years.

All were unbalanced. The ones I knew who were long-time POWs—with one exception and that exception I knew only very slightly—were high-functioning lunatics. Common denominators were trouble with alcohol, cars, divorces, tempers and aggressive flying verging on recklessness—a very unwelcome trait in a fighter pilot.

Bear in mind that they were all in good enough shape after prison to get back into line fighter squadrons. But while McCain was able to get flight orders after Hanoi, he was never assigned to a line attack squadron or a carrier air wing again.

Arizona Senator John McCain III went to the U.S. Naval Academy because he was the grandson and son of Admirals John McCain Sr. & Jr., both Annapolis graduates.

McCain Senior was a distinguished fleet commander in the Pacific War who rotated command of the fast carrier task force with Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher. The only reason Mitscher didn’t get his fourth star was that he died, totally worn-out, a few months after V-J Day.

Junior McCain rose to be Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific during Vietnam. Because of the bizarre chain of authority, he was nominally General William Westmoreland’s commander.

McCain III, however, was a mediocre midshipman (894 of 899 in his class) who became an average attack pilot with a history of foolish mishaps in the training command and the fleet. Without the admirals in his family tree, I doubt his career would have survived his crashes.

McCain’s getting shot down might have been as much a tactical blunder as an act of God. He was badly injured in his ejection, and the North Vietnamese Army – as was typical – gave him no real medical attention. That he was tough in captivity is beyond dispute.

McCain also – again as was typical of the long-time POWs – spent at least two years in solitary. Once he got out McCain stayed in the Navy but was not promoted to flag rank, retiring as a Captain in 1981. With his POW service, probably the only thing that could have kept him from promotion to Captain would have been raping the Chief of Naval Operation’s daughter at high noon on the Mall.

Should the fact that the Navy passed on a third consecutive Admiral John McCain tell us something? Maybe – in 1980 anyway – the collective wisdom of the Navy was greater than that of Arizona’s voters a few years later.

The combination of the moral, mental and physical injuries of years of captivity deranged McCain. Like many of the other POWs I know, McCain has a sense of superiority to those who haven’t suffered what he has.

McCain doesn’t listen. He likes to stir things up---like his “Banana Bill”--- but I don’t see any principled pattern to his outbursts. Compounding his problem, McCain must be in chronic pain from injuries that never healed properly. He may be medicated.

Anyway, although he is a Republican, I think it would be a disaster – as bad as Bush – if John McCain were to become President.

McCain does far too much harm already, right where he is."