Day: May 30, 2008

Is It Really Time For A Change?

Yes, is the short answer to the question. But unfortunately, Americans will most likely get reform, not change. There will be NO change, regardless who wins the election in November.

Just about to the person the Big 3, candidates, are promising some form or degree of change in Washington. But the question that Americans should be asking is, which, if any, will truly bring the change they are promising? A national “hero”? A woman? Or how about the African-American? Now ask, where will the change begin? From an unsuccessful, impotent Congress? Just where would this promised change come from?

Change? As I have already said, more like some form or another of reforms, not change. These candidates want to reform Washington so that the “business as usual” will become a thing of the past. Thinking…….but does that not mean using the powers that be? if so, then why would there be any change or reform? It would mean that someone, somewhere would lose their power and that will not be happening.

Reform is more preferable in this 2 party system. Why, you ask? Reforms can be short lived, they are easily overturned at a later date and they give the illusion that change has occurred, but with limited success.

For reforms to be achievable, then there needs to be a national crisis to discredit a sitting administration. We have that–the economy. The Repubs have nothing on the economy, their proposals are nothing but a continuation of the situation that has put the economy in crisis. So they keep the dialog on national security, because their economic policies are as thin as Waffle House bacon.

The Repubs have stuck to the same lame policies they had a 100 years ago–words change, but the ideology remains the same. Defend the weak central government, deny there is a class conflict, and that business is the answer to ALL problems. On the other hand the Dems have stuck to their same lame talking points–equality of taxation, class struggles, and more control of business. And for the same 100 years of their counterparts.

Reformers do not want change, only some adjustments to what is. Reformers appeal to the sensibilities of the people to make them feel the heavy weight of the situation and to prod them into a false since of responsibility by voting. Once they are successful and the people have “spoken”, then all reverts back to the status quo.

November will usher in a historical race and the American people will participate in making that history. But unfortunately their participation will not bring the change that they say they seek. About the only thing they have to look forward to is some minor reforms to give an illusion of change.

People! People! Politics is about marketing, not about what is best for the country and its people. The word CHANGE is just part of the marketing scheme offered to the voter. Please do NOT hold your breath waiting for the promised change…..I promise you will turn blue and die before the change occurs.

State Workers Protest Wage Cuts

State workers in Illinois sent a message to Governor Rod Blagojevich Thursday.

AFSCME union workers are outraged the governor plans to cut their wages to help balance the state budget. They protested today in Marion, Anna, and 36 other sites around the state.

The union has been trying to get a contract for the past six months.
Larry Flynn has worked for the state for 23 years. He said he’s getting frustrated with the drawn out labor talks.

“Your insurance is going to go up. You don’t know if your pension benefits are going to be there. I don’t know what’s going to come out” said Larry Flynn who works at the Vienna Correctional Center.

An AFSCME local Cary Quick says, “We’re so far behind because of the dragging of the feet of the state of illinois that we’re not even done with all our language. To top it all off, we’ve got an economic proposal that’s near impossible for us to work with.”

Illinois state workers picketed 38 state buildings, two of them in Southern Illinios. Choate Mental Health in Anna and the DHS office in Marion.

Union leaders say Thursday’s pickets did not affect services. Contracts for state workers expire at the end of June

Once again it will fall on the workers to pay for a mismanaged government.  All workers should protest this turn of events with letters, calls and such to the governor of Illinois.  Support you fellow workers, for the next round of this fight may be your job!

New FLDS UpDate

The Texas Supreme Court affirmed yesterday that state officials should not have seized scores of children from the ranch compound of a polygamist sect, agreeing with an appellate court that the group’s beliefs were not, by themselves, proof of abuse.

The decision, issued yesterday afternoon in Austin, did not immediately bring the release of the more than 460 children of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints compound near Eldorado, Tex. But it did seem to make that outcome very likely. Child-protection authorities said yesterday evening that they would comply if the trial court judge ordered the children returned.

Because the case involves state law, not federal statutes, legal experts said the Texas Supreme Court was as high as an appeal could go. That court agreed with a decision last week by the state Court of Appeals for the Third District, which rejected arguments at the heart of the state’s case.

“On the record before us, removal of the children was not warranted,” the nine-judge Supreme Court ruled. The court found that the protective services department had removed all the children after an April 3 raid, disregarding less-drastic options. “The Family Code gives . . . broad authority to protect children short of separating them from their parents and placing them in foster care.”

As I have said in the past, I am not a follower of the FLDS, but I also see this as a civil rights situation and IMO the Texas Supreme Court has made a good decision.

We Have Ways Of Making You Patriotic

For months I had been bitching that MSNBC was misleading the public in several ways.  Theyt nwere on board with Romeny and Huckabee and then with Clinton and now this story has come out about the reporting to assist in patriotic fervor.

CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time leading up to the Iraq war.

Yellin’s initial comments, made during a discussion with Anderson Cooper on CNN Wednesday, shifted attention to the news media’s performance following release of a critical assessment of the Bush administration by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. He wrote that Bush’s strategy for selling the war was less than candid and honest.

During her CNN appearance, Yellin said the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives to make sure the war was presented “in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

The higher Bush’s approval ratings, the more pressure she felt from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, she said. Pushed by Cooper to explain, Yellin said her bosses would turn down critical stories about the administration and try to put on positive pieces.

She said she didn’t mean to leave the impression that corporate leadership edited her work; she was referring to senior producers who “wanted their coverage to reflect the mood of the country.” She didn’t identify any of the producers or give a specific example about how things were changed because of this.

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said Yellin was a “freelance overnight news reader at MSNBC for one year who was not renewed.” But he didn’t dispute Yellin’s claim that she did some Washington and Pentagon reports while there.

Back in the 1920’s Italian political theorist, Gramsci predicted that the mass media would become the leader in the formation of political thought of the people.  He was so accurate.

Is Bush Irrevelant?

I have found myself slightly agreeing with conserv. Pat Buchanan in the past several months.  I found this article written by him recently and wanted to share it with my readers.

After losing both houses of Congress in the 1994 election, Bill Clinton expostulated: The president of the United States is not irrelevant!

On learning his trusted aide from Texas Scott McClellan has denounced as an “unnecessary war” the same Iraq war McClellan defended from the White House podium, George Bush must feel as Clinton did.

The synchronized savagery of the attacks on McClellan as turncoat suggests he drew blood. For what he has done is offer confirmation to the president’s war critics, from within the White House inner circle, that Bush’s motive in going to war was not a clear and present danger of attack by Iraq with weapons of mass destruction, but to advance a Bush crusade to impose democracy on the Middle East.

Neoconservative ideology, not U.S. national interests, McClellan is saying, motivated Bush to launch one of the longest and most divisive wars in U.S. history.

When loyalists defect and seek to profit from that defection, it is usually a sign of a failing presidency. And, indeed, events suggest that history is passing Bush by.

Despite the administration’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, and of Syria and Iran as state sponsors of terror with whom we do not negotiate, America’s clients are ignoring America.

Israel has ignored Bush’s demand that it stop building and expanding settlements on a West Bank that is to be the heartland of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been secretly negotiating with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

When America refused to play honest broker between Jerusalem and Damascus, Turkey, at Israel’s request, stepped into the role.

The pro-American Lebanese government of Prime Minister Siniora has negotiated a truce and power-sharing arrangement with Hezbollah, giving that militant Shiite movement and party veto power in the Beirut government. Egypt is negotiating with Hamas for a truce in the Israeli-Gaza war and to effect the exchange of a captured Israeli solider held by Hamas for Hamas fighters held in Israel.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard, designated a terrorist organization by the Senate, helped to arrange the ceasefire between government forces and the Mahdi Army in Basra and Sadr City. While the United States has used the roughest of language to denounce Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president has been received as an honored guest by the Iraqi government we support and by the Ayatollah Sistani, who has yet to meet a high-ranking American.

When Bush went to the Middle East to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Israel as the Zionist he has become, he was criticized by a Palestinian leader who survives on U.S. aid. When he went to Riyadh to plead for an increase in the flow of oil, he got a token concession from the king.

In Pakistan, the new government has been negotiating a truce with the radicalized frontier provinces, which would leave the Taliban with a privileged sanctuary from which to prepare their annual offensives to overthrow the government in Kabul and expel the Americans, as their fathers expelled the Russians.

As Russia and China move closer together to oppose U.S. missile defenses and the U.S. presence, military and economic, in the Caucasus and Central Asia, Latin America seems to be going its own leftward way. The halcyon days of the Alliance for Progress are long gone.

The world seems to be waiting for Bush to depart and for the next American president. For the foreign policy differences between John McCain and Barack Obama are as real and stark as they have been since the Reagan-Carter election of 1980, or the Nixon-McGovern election of 1972.

Looking back on the years since 9/11, it is hard to give the Bush foreign policy passing grades. We pushed NATO eastward and alienated Russia. We have 140,000 Army and Marine Corps troops tied down in Iraq in a war now in its sixth year, from which our NATO allies have all extricated themselves. We have another war going in Afghanistan, where the situation is as grave as it has been since we went in.

The Bush democracy crusade was put on the shelf after producing election triumphs for Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. And the Bush Doctrine of preventive war, after Iraq, appears to be headed there, as well.

America remains the first economic and military power on earth. But after seven years of Bush, we no longer inspire the awe or hopes we once did. We are no longer the world hegemonic power of the neocons’ depiction. And the reason is that Bush embraced their utopian ideology of democratic empire and listened to their siren’s call to be the Churchill of his age.

Of Bush, it may be said he was a far better politician and candidate than his father, but as a statesman and world leader, he could not carry the old man’s loafers.

Will Tomorrow Be The Day?

Saturday the Dems will be meeting to try and solve the problem of MI and FL delegates, to seat or not to seat that is the question.

As the primary season draws to a close, the dispute has become increasingly emotional, and Clinton supporters are planning an impassioned demonstration outside Saturday’s meeting.

At the heart of the mix are Roosevelt and co-chair Alexis Herman, two longtime Democrats little-known outside party circles, both trying mightily to keep things calm and easy as they gear up for the party machinery’s moment in the spotlight.

The 30 committee members must reach a decision on how many delegates to seat from the two states, which are being punished for having held their primaries in January, earlier than the party-set primary election schedule allowed, as well as how to allocate the delegates between the two candidates.

Clinton has been changing the goal posts for winning the nomination and the beginning of the end could come late Saturday.  That is if these guys grow some cajones and make a ruling.  Personally, I think it will go to the convention floor where it will do considerable damage to the Party and possibly assist in the Dems lose to McCain.