The Time is Now. It Cannot Wait!

John, The Mangimpian Candidate, McCain has called Barack Obama a flip-flopper. He'll say anything his master controllers program him to say. McCain has Steve Schmitt, Carl Rove's disciple to program into his tortured small brain the same message brought to us by the cons from the last century. 

McCain, the nation's foremost warmonger and most visible dummy, wants us to stay in Iraq until there is victory. What does victory mean to John McCain?

As we know from the dictionaries that line our shelves, it means a full-course win. It means coming home with the prize and not the leftovers. It means no more "terrorist" insurgency interrupting the potential flow of 3-12 million barrels of oil per day, from Iraq, for the major oil companies, as well as a smooth flow of crude to the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan and Pakistan from Iraq. The deal that Bush could not seal from the Taliban insurgency when they ruled Afghanistan prior to the invasion. The war has always been about oil!

What will it take, Senator McCain, to bring about your victory? Will it cost another 500-1000 American lives? Will it bring about a Muqtada al-Sadr Shia presidency? A permanent Iranian style fundamentalist government in Iraq? What happened to your belief, since you supported Bush's noble cause for the invasion, that we went there to bring about democracy? You signed on to The Project for a New American Century's invasion and establishment of a democratic Middle East? 

I guess that no longer is relevant. It is now all about "victory". The Surge has brought us closer to "victory". So Senator Dim-wit McCain, tell all of us what victory actually means to you?

Will it be at a price of another $1 trillion? Is this what the Straight Talkin' Express' engineer means by victorious? 

Bro, I'm afraid you have been programmed with the wrong zeros and one! Your software is full of glitches. You are one big virus. You are crashing. You have been wiretapped!  One in four active duty troops are saying out of Iraq NOW! 72% were saying, in 2006, out by 2007. (Dave Lindorff, "Blood Money Democrats", Counterpunch.org, 7-1-08). Hey Maverick, we are now in 2008, and no doubt, that percentage is higher!

So, the question is why are the cowardly Democrats continuously funding the war? The most recently borrowed-from-other-nations-to-fund-the-war check was written for $162 billion? What does this war have to do with protecting America? Is it all blood money?

We progressives must ask, where is Barack Obama's courage? How long will a "careful and deliberate (fashion) withdrawal" take? Will it take a "16-month [long] staged withdrawal?"

Why so long? So Mr. Obama, who will be the last to die as they walk off the stage on their ride home from the battle ground "theater" inside a flag-draped coffin? It is not your son or daughter that will come home that way.  And will it be their 5th or 6th rotation of "sacrifice" that will bring them home with PTSD or worse?

As Bruce Springsteen writes, "Who will be the last to die for one mistake."

Democrats don't need you to move to the Right in order to keep the McCan'tsters quiet. Show them your strength and courage. They have none. They have been calling the shots for over a dozen years, anyway.

Mr. Lindorff learned from military experts that they could get all our soldiers out safely in only two weeks. Just maybe, that additional 16 month long, and last-out-soldier might actually walk through his front door and embrace his family if you follow the advice of these military experts on 1-20-09. Now, that would be a military victory! That is what victorious means in the hearts and minds of most Americans. 

So, why is Barack Obama capitulating to the warmongering Right after so many moderate, liberal, Independent and progressive voters who are tired of the Bush/McCain party candidate do not support such a shift? By moving toward the Right's center, he is alienating a great many of his supporters, even though they still stand behind him. 

Progressives, liberals, or, for that matter, Reagan Democrats have had their pin feathers ruffled when Obama began reversing his support of Democrats who protested against the White House's rallying cry for the telecom industry's  subversive Stalinesque use of their technologies to gather intelligence, without warrants, on everyday Americans. We call it spying. Stalin and Hitler  spied on their people, and now, Obama has walked that supportive tightrope. Such action is part of the neo-con battle-cry, and Obama has raised a few masts in their direction.

Another sail flapping with "Demo-con" emboldened across it is his support for government funded faith-based initiatives. Just because he believes in religious action to help people in need, does not mean it has to be financially supported through government.

There are major concerns burdening working class Americans, such as the decline of the dollar, rising unemployment, stagnant wages, a looming war with Iran, rising consumer prices and energy costs, unaffordable health care, a mounting debt crisis, and, of course, the Iraq War. Faith-based initiatives are not affecting most Americans as are these other life-threatening concerns. 

This war is draining our dollar of its worth. "Fund the war; Protect our troops" is a lie. This war is not protecting any democracy. It is not winning any war against terrorism. It is not protecting Americans. It is placing Americans in harm's way. Where is the fight for reviving this nation from the clutches of the kleptocracy--the corporate royalists financially benefiting from this war? This war is strictly to make them richer. "The wealth of US millionaires have an accumulated wealth of 30 trillion dollars. That is more than the GDP's of China, Japan, Brazil, Russia, and the EU combined. The rich have now created their own economy for the needs, at a time when 36 million Americans live below the poverty line." (Mike Whitney, "Getting to the Heart of America's Economic Crisis", Counterpunch.org, 7-1-08.)

This nation is in a colossal crisis, which is in free fall everyday the Congress stands permissively by voting for more war spending, telecom immunity, financial sector bailouts to those who helped kill the dollar,  the declining wealth of average Americans, and a race to the financial bottom.

In Mr. Whitney's article, he interviews Dr. Michael Hudson. (President of the Institute of the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends -ISLET, a Wall Street financial analyst, distinguished research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and author.) He says we are in a debt crisis build up, which is "crippling the strength in the United States." We have just read that the financial sector is imploding. The stock market is plummeting. Working America's wealth is disappearing, while the rich get richer. For most, there is no good news to report anywhere in this nation.

Barack Obama needs to be able to show such enormous strength so as to push John McCain, and the McCan'sters, aside, while telling the vast majority of Americans that the Republi-Con candidate is completely wrong and damaging for the survival of this nation. It cannot wait any longer!

Show us you really mean, "YES WE CAN!" 

Thanks for reading,  Jerry

THE MAN WITH A TAX PLAN

What is it with republicans calling everyone who has a plan for anything a Communist? I've noted that the neocons use this approach on most every subject.   So, I guess they do this so they can keep avoiding the reality of any discussion by throwing simple minded roundhouse punches and making little or no contact while diverting the discussion or topic.  It's a funny spectacle I must say.  The neocons also have a blurred historic view of the most important plan of all, taxation.  The republicans continually cite the tax cuts of JFK, RON Reagan and Bush 2 as wondrous successes.  The fact is regardless of the tax cuts, the tax structure was progressive, as the top income earners always paid proportionately their fair share under jfk and reagan.  A little history here on  raising taxes, the tax rates were RAISED under Bush I and ironically some republicans use that fact to discredit the Clinton era of balanced budgets. But the die hards neocons cost Bush I the elections by shouting "Read my lips no new taxes", shooting themselves in the foot. . These higher taxes and balanced budgets thusly lead to largest economic boom in American history. So what history really says is raising taxes and a balanced budget will grow the economy. I readily recognize also that cutting taxes across the board has and may work at times, but draconian disproportionate tax cuts that favor the uber rich that GW Bush II  passed are a disincentive to produce anything and really are voodoo economics. The amazing thing even under the current skewed system is that the uber rich are so rich that they pay more taxes in total than all other income groups combined, but not as an individual tax percentage. The super rich tax burden of today is a much smaller burden than ever in our countries history. Put in a dollar for dollar context, particularly when the economies of scale kick in on the uber dollar earned, the advantages of the few become staggering. The 500 millionth dollar earned is much more valuable precisely because its taxed at the very same rate as the 210 thousandth dollar earned by, say, a professional. It gets much worse as you go down the income ladder ultimately leading to disincentives on both ends of the economic scale to be productive. The system then begins to look strangely familiar, can you say feudal? Lump on some religion and you get the bush vision thing of a feudal theocracy.  But this factual reality is forbidden to be discussed in a deliberate and mindful way, as all discussions about good government go under the radar because as we know, thanks to the neocons, discussions might lead to plans and plans have the albatross of simply being a plans around their neck. God forbid if we have a plan for anything at all, it would be unpatriotic and communistic wouldn't it.