John Lennon said it best:
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
Interpretation: it’s up to us, the masses, to monitor what political leaders do to us financially, politically, and ethically; and how they treat other countries, in the name of this nation. It’s up to us to convince our leaders to choose Peace and not war. If that is what we want.
It makes sense that after 9/11, we wanted justice. We wanted the culprits caught and tried and punished.
But according to the popular choice, no one wanted war. Especially after the alleged “weapons of mass destruction” never materialized. So why did we end up in Iraq, do we really know? And are we satisfied with that choice? If not, why is it still going on?
The upcoming Presidential nomination weighs heavy on everyone, worldwide. No one wants another Election 2000. An openly international embarassment. Since Election 2000, we are far from a “United” States. We are divided on just about everything. How do we find our way back to the strong, reputable land of freedom and democracy for all?
Maybe the question is not what do we want, but what do we need — as a nation? What’s most important to us?
We should begin by taking a look at where we are as a nation after the past eight years. The most volatile era since Viet Nam.
First, let’s look at the facts about the economy. Is it really as bad as the media reports to us? Has unemployment been at an all time low for the past 8 years? Why did the Dow drop so drastically this past week? Was the foreclosure tragedy avoidable?
The Unemployment Issue: We can answer that question for ourselves by asking three questions.
1. Are you one of the unemployed, how long, and are you and your family struggling financially more than you were 8 years ago?
2. Do you personally know someone, or a lot of people, who are unemployed and struggling more than 8 years ago?
3. Are you employed and doing worse, the same, or better than 8 years ago?
a) If you are employed and doing okay, do you care about the numbers reported to be unemployed?
b) Are you are employed and doing okay, and don’t care about the numbers reported to be unemployed?
The Dow Thing: What’s up with Wall Street really? Was that big Fall from Grace real or just a scare tactic — the machinations of puppet masters yanking our chains, inflicting fear and panic? How do we find out? Here’s a clue…
1) What happens to the money that is lost in the stock market? Does it just disappear into a black hole never to be found again?
Answer: Money never just disappears — it goes somewhere or rather to “someone”. Whom? Who is gaining from Wall Street losses? Especially concerning 401K losses. Remember, money never just disappears. Where is it going to — an incinerator? Not likely.The key: Demand answers! Find out where your money went and to whom! And GET IT BACK! Yes. GET IT BACK!
For instance, our employees, i.e. “the government”, are just a little too quick to bail out big box companies like Lehman Brothers et al. The money they use to “help” these guys comes from — you guessed it — us. So if you lost money with these guys in the stock market, you lost again through your tax dollars. Or did they just run and print up a bunch of new money? Good question.
Where does that money come from to bail these guys out? Does it place our nation deeper into debt? Are we really in debt or are they just again, yanking our chains?
How is it that these consummate professional establishments did not see the crash coming and take steps to prevent it? Was that even a possibility?
But don’t think you’re gonna be a lone voice in the night — that will never work. You’ve got to demand answers in numbers. Communication. You know what to do. Get on the horn brothers and sisters.
The Foreclosure Mess: According the media, entire neighborhoods were forced from their homes, leaving communities of ghost towns all across the country. Real or hype?
Are you one of the victims of this foreclosure debacle? If so, how did that happen? Were you in over your head? Or, where you offered a deal you couldn’t refuse? Like, finally, realizing the American Dream.
The bottom line is that no one should be forced from their home because of a bogus contract deal. Those balloon payments should have been erased, obliterated, forgiven. It’s just paperwork. Those guys knew what they were doing –the mortgage and title companies, the banks.. and you know what?
They should have allowed people into those homes. Families need homes. We all need a decent place to live. That doesn’t mean we go out and purchase mansions we can’t afford. It means the market should never have skyrocketed like it did in the first place. What kind of country allows an industry to place “owning a home” beyond the reach of the majority of it’s citizens?
Here’s a tidbit: Our employees, i.e. “the government” makes homes and apartments affordable for foreign refugees, with housing assistance for apartments, and no downs on new homes, with reasonable monthly payments. They also provide clothing vouchers and food stamps and free medical care, and very often, small business grants, some starting at a hundred grand. Why?
Because, most likely our employees, i.e. “the government” made deals with their countries’ leaders for something or other, some natural resource for instance, in which our leaders personally stood to gain significantly … and do not be fooled, not you, and the majority of the people who made that money available for the trade off.
Or maybe, let’s play devil’s advocate here, maybe they were just being good samaritans and offering a place of refuge to people who had been displaced by their corrupt leaders. And if so, our tax dollars were put to good use, but it cost us. After all, our creed decries “Come all ye tired and hungry, or something like that…and find work or something or other…” They were just being true to the promise. But what about that promise applying to the people who put the money in the pot in the first place?
A home is a terrible thing to lose. And if the foreclosure thingy was a scam — it was the biggest and most vile, inhumane spectacle of greed and capitalizing in history. Predatory and savage.
What do you care about? Yourself? Your family? Your country? The planet?
All of the above?
Hear this then before you vote: Politics is just a title of a career. Politicians are type A “Alpha Dog” personalities. Glory seeking, power hungry, and historically, status quo “old money.” And what do we know about “old money”? A term known as “robber baron” comes to mind. And those guys adopted their ways from the “old money” before them, the “aristocrats”, the “monarchy”.
Labels and titles that are synonymous with Lords of the Land ruling over the peasants. Dreadfully poor people we remember from movies like “Please Sir, may I have some more soup?” And the response was, “More soup? More soup you ask? How dare you ask for more, you peasant!” Okay you get the picture.
People who identify with conservative republican ideology want to maintain the status quo, the haves vs the have nots. Us vs them. They may not even be aware of those deeply embedded beliefs. Because even if they are not truly among that group, yet, they believe one day they will be. And they want to get a little bit more from the pot than you. It all adds up. It’s selfish actually. It’s conditioning that comes from the old Survival of the Fittest theory.
They may not be able to acknowledge that positive change and prosperity for all of us is the only way the world has evolved to this modern day environment.
Lifting up or rather giving a hand up to those “have nots” is progress. Including them opens the door for a bounty of ingenuity and a fortitude of not just an untapped mind source, but able bodies. Without them, in tip top shape, functioning and blossoming, the wheels stop turning and Empire’s Fall.
Bleeding heart liberals are defined as people who want the world to work for everyone. They are considered dreamers, idealists, foolhearted. Not staunch business people who know how to get the job done.
However, a few of our former public servants fell into this category, because they recognized the truth about all for one and one for all. Lincoln seized this concept when the opportunity presented itself. FDR grasped it firmly. JFK promoted it profoundly. And Bill Clinton, yes Bill Clinton, “attempted” to implement it, but with gorilla sized restraints. They brought down King Kong with those restraints.
And if you’re still not convinced about the dichotomy of these two groups, recall what George W. Bush so indignantly retorted about the actions of those “Democrats”: “We need to stop them from just giving money away to these people.”
Who were “these people” he was referring to? Well, you, your neighbors, your children, your parents. And that money he was referring to is “your” money– that you put into the pot– and at the first opportunity, Mr. Bush, the Conservative Republican, convinced Congress to sign it all over to him, to go and make more money for himself and his posse, by taking over another country’s only source of wealth. At least that’s what it all looks like when you stack up the real facts. Could be wrong.
Here’s a prediction to watch for: Iraq will be a third world country within 10 years. Genocide will reign, disease, wars, devastation. Just like Africa. And we will share the blame.
Like the late Mr. Reagan stated waay back in 1980, “If you don’t have at least 11 million dollars, you don’t count.” Which may have meant that you will not be first in their “trickle down” Reaganomic theory.
We learned that they meant what they said, and we never saw the trickle, and realized late that we couldn’t live off the trickle if we had gotten it. So we stood up and we made our choice. We made a change and for eight years, everybody got a little piece of the pie. The rich got richer, the middle class prospered, and the poor moved up an inch.
But we got distracted by Bill’s sex life for some reason and decided that was more important than our wallets and our well-being.
And we let the dogs out again, the status quo, the conservatives, the robber barons, and on 9/11, they went “Boo!” and we jumped out of our skins, out of our minds, went trembling and shaking back to our little peasant huts, at a time when we should have said, “We don’t think so!” And meant it.
We’ve been taught to laugh and shake our heads about dishonest politicians. We’ve been persuaded that “activists” are “troublemakers”. And they are, for politicians.
Are the days of marches and sit-ins over, passe? Simply because no one pays attention to them anymore? And if chads get stuck in crucial election booths over and over again, and if electorate votes, and biased Supreme Courts decide Presidents, what does that mean for the future of the popular, majority vote?
Is it innocent to believe that no person has the right to harm another person? Is it idealistic to not want another country to attack our nation, or that we should not attack another country for their natural resources?
Policing the world doesn’t mean stealing and bullying. It was designed for the stabilization of peace among nations. True, human beings always seem to want what someone else has and that will not change. There will always be foes. Whether it’s the Russians, the Germans, the Koreans, the Iranians, or Intelligent Squids from another planet.
Nevertheless, our military, the defense department that we pay for, should never be used for personal ambitions. They serve our country for our safety, for our survival, at the cost of their own lives. Therefore, anything else is criminal.
Who should be our next president? McCain or Obama? Do we stick to the status quo, or do we make history and take a chance on one of the have nots? And is Obama really one of the have nots, or is he …
a sly and daring ploy by the status quo, to maintain the status quo, knowing we are too brainwashed and conditioned to step away from the program? Are they betting that we are too racist and stuck in our fearful ways to allow change and will go with the same policies that have tormented and divided this nation for 8 years.
Have we learned our lesson about standing up and making a change, because, we did it once and we eventually paid heavily for it, in many many ways that only history may reveal the real truth.
The two presidential candidates we have divide us, just as the two parties divide us. Polar opposites.
Look at this recent News Release:
Obama: McCain slow to challenge Wall St salaries
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
September 24, 2008 5:38 PM EDT
DUNEDIN, Fla. – Democrat Barack Obama said Wednesday that Republican John McCain may criticize Wall Street executives now but failed to speak out against their huge salaries a year ago, and still backs policies that favor the wealthy over working families.He accused McCain of acting like a populist now that Wall Street’s meltdown threatens the economy. But Obama said that disguises McCain’s true philosophy: “The idea that if we give more and more to those with the most, prosperity will trickle down to everyone else.”
In fact, McCain has criticized executives’ pay packages several times in previous years, including at a Senate hearing in 2003 as head of the Commerce Committee. “We continue to see many examples of enormous pay packages awarded by boards to top executives,” he said then and warned: “These kinds of excesses are making a lot of Americans angry.”
Source: McCain aide’s firm paid by Freddie Mac
By PETE YOST (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
September 24, 2008 6:09 PM EDT
WASHINGTON – Almost up until the time it was taken over by the government in the nation’s financial crisis, one of two housing giants paid $15,000 a month to the lobbying firm of John McCain’s campaign manager, a person familiar with the financial arrangement says.The money from Freddie Mac to the firm of Rick Davis is on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000.
The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the nation’s financial crisis.
WASHINGTON – McCain Accuses Obama of being an instrument of corrupt power in machine, former Head of Fannie Mac
Bibble Babble Babylon. Are we the victims of one self-serving political party playing good cop bad cop? Are we being punkd?
Why haven’t we demanded more political parties? Why have we never trusted any other group of United States Citizens to have the intelligence to run this nation, but rich, middle aged white men? Most all other major countries have stepped up and allowed a woman to lead them. And they survived, and thrived.
Why is Obama the first African American Man we have taken into serious consideration? And where does that leave African America women, or Chinese American, Japanese American, Latin American men and women born in this country?
Are there no intelligent persons in any of those groups capable of leading our business, this nation? And why have they made the process so expensive that the rest of us simply cannot even consider it? And worse, why have we allowed that?
We have to keep in mind that both our current candidates are career politicians. Neither will risk their political careers to offend the “established” order of things. With that in mind, what can we expect McCain or Obama to do to ensure that all United States citizens, not just the rich, not just the middle class, not just the poor will feel safe, be well, and prosper?
If the damage is as great as the media portrays, neither man will be able to work miracles in the next four years. It will require patience on our part, faith, and the lack of fear to stand up and be heard, over and over again, until we get them to listen.
Activists are not troublemakers, they are concerned citizens. Let’s all become actively active in our business — this nation. And not let anyone call us extremists, radicals, diehards, or crazies; and if they do, ask them what are they doing for their country? Sleepwalking their way into deception?
Only history will reveal if the past eight years was as destructive as they seem. Or, history may show that Bush and Cheney were geniuses. Then again, those Intelligent Squids could show up in their high tech space ships and take over everything.
Choose carefully in November. Think outside of the box. Care about your neighbors, about the vulnerable among us. Think about what is right for our nation. And how we will affect the world. The world is looking to us with questions and wide eyes. We need to provide an answer of hope.
Ultimately, we need to take responsibility for our choices and what we allow our leaders to do in the name of our country.
And remember, violence is never an answer. If we are intimidated by other’s, that is when — and we should have learned this by now — to stand even more firm to our convictions. We have numbers on our side.
We, the People, are the largest Army on Earth.