Here is the text of a letter I sent to CNN - Chris Matthews.
" Corruption is the misuse of public power to further private objectives. I ACCUSE YOU Mr Harball of corruption. You deliberately tried to associate Barrack Obama with Blagojevich. for the purpose of creating a controversy that would improve your ratings. When the reporter from Illinois assured you that all Illinois knew Barrack was not part of the corrupt clique, you asked whether or not she was a reporter. Evidently you believe that reporters should be muckrakers.
At a time when the fate of the nation depends on the next president's ability to lead, attacks on his credibility need to be based on facts not malicious, selfserving specuation. This is no joke. So quit laughing to hide malicious intent."
I believe it is important to prevent the press from damaging the President Elect's stature by a drumbeat of inuendo. Perhaps our network needs to be vigilant and challenge the press en masse when we encounter these programs.
The real estate industry has created a measure called the affordability index. This measures or used to measure the price that the public in a particular area could afford to pay for a house. If interest rates and repayment periods remained static, the selling price of houses in that neighborhood could not increase very much unless incomes were rising. Over the past eight years average incomes of the middle class and working class have risen very little. It seems to follow that housing prices should have been very stable. How then did housing prices rise so sharply?
First Alan Greenspan lowered interest rates to levels that punished savers and blessed borrowers. This enabled people to afford more expensive houses and fuelled the first round of inflation. Then the financial industry flooded the real estate market with exotic loans enabling people to buy houses they could not afford. This tactic was based on the assumption that the buyers’ incomes would increase sharply over the next few years. Given that incomes were more or less static, this was Monopoly Money. The financial industry was increasing the money supply and concentrating these funds on the real estate market. The logical result was inflation in that market.
Now this Monopoly Money has been recognized for what it is and the result is deflation in the real estate market. If not artificially propped up, housing prices will naturally fall back close to what they were before this process started. These prices cannot be propped up except by the creation of more Monopoly Money. Even if the Government props up existing owners and enables them to remain in their houses, the resale values of these houses cannot be maintained unless Monopoly Money is made available to new buyers.
Why should prudent taxpayers underwrite this never ending bail out?
I believe that the character of the chief executive deeply affects the whole organization. If the chief lacks integrity, the whole organization will rot. President Bush, leader of by far the most military power in the world, has virtually no diplomatic influence because he has lost trust. He lied to us and the world. No one trusts him.Now we have John McCain acknowledging on The View that his campaign is based on lies and blaming this on Obama's refusal to join him in town hall meetings. He lies more blatantly than Bush ever did and has the nerve to demand respect.
If a man lies in seeking the job, why would we trust him to tell us the truth once he gets it? If a man smears his opponent to gain the presidency, once in office will he not smear those who oppose his policies?
Half of my fellow Americans do not see this sleazy behavior as a disqualifier in the man who would be our leader and represent all that's best about our country to the world.
A country run by liars must decline. So right now we have a 50% chance of going further down the drain over the next four years. That terrifies me. How about You?!
The Abortion Gorilla in the Pennsylvania Voting Booth
For years I have been deeply concerned that on account of this abortion debate, the theoretical best has been the bitter enemy of the immediate practical good, causing untold suffering for people we can see and touch. As for the unborn, I think that at the very worst they miss the chance to come to earth and their souls are back sinless with their God. He will take care of them. Those who make it to this earth are our responsibility as fellow human beings. I feel like our job is to take care of our needy neighbors like good Samaritans.
So I find myself questioning the practical sense of some of my Catholic Church Leaders' stance on abortion. I am concerned at the Church's evident preference for coercion over persuasion in its opposition to the practice of abortion.A single mother of limited educational achievement has very little social support for raising her child. She must work but certainly cannot afford decent child care. I am convinced that if many of these pregnancies were carried to birth, the infants would face a life of hardship and neglect. As a result many would become social misfits and often criminals. Or consider the situation of a poor family facing the prospect of raising a malformed child requiring lifelong medical care. That family is often facing bankruptcy as well as hardship for the other children in the family.We need social reforms that would make it possible for even a poor family to raise a crippled child in decent living conditions and also know that after they die society will not abandon that child. We need reforms that give all children including those born to poor single mothers a chance of a decent life.
Unfortunately some of the most vocal opponents of abortion are the strongest opponents of these reforms. These politicians attract Catholic support the way honey attracts flies.On the other hand some of the politicians most opposed to the coercive banning of abortion, are those who are striving to create conditions on the ground that would encourage women with unwanted pregnancies to carry the fetus to term. These politicians would like to create a social situation that would enable even a poor family to care lovingly for a chronic disability. However the practical effect of the Church's emphasis on making abortion illegal is to discourage Catholics from voting for such candidates.So we refuse to participate in the creation of conditions that would reduce the incidence of abortion in a voluntary way.
Thus we perpetuate by default the conditions that encourage what we regard as a grave sin, but like avenging angels we call for legal proscription. This seems to me too much like the oppression that was the modus operandi of the medieval Church. It's getting hard for me to support this doctrinaire approach that ignores the clearly visible suffering of the already born.As a result the pronouncements of some of our bishops are beginning to feel more like a power play than Christian Piety in action.
It does not matter what a Republican Presidential candidate says to the genera public during the campaign for once elected he will be true to the Republican base. To achieve the financial objectives of the rich, he will willingly sacrifice the rights of women, of workers and the poor.
So if you really do support the principles for which the Democratic Party stands, you cannot in good conscience violate these principles by voting for the former prisoner of war even if he reminds you of your grandfather.
NATO unlike the European Union is specifically a military alliance originally formed to face down the overwhelming ground forces of the old Soviet Union. Military alliances are formed to confront specific threats or to threaten speciic countries. It seems to me that for some years NATO, led by the United States has had a deliberate policy of recruiting former Soviet satellites. The potential effect is to surround the Soviet Union with military bases of the NATO alliance. Add to this the United States plan of locating sophisticated radar sites on the Russian Border with Poland and it is easy to see whay the Russians would begin to wonder what is NATO's strategic objective.Just suppose Russia was seeking to recruit Mexico and Canada and Cuba into a military alliance. Would we not be supicious of their objectives?!My assessment is that Russia is prepared to risk serious confrontation with the West rather than permit this to happen. Let's not deceive ourselves. Nato's policy of recruiting former Soviet Union components into the alliance is likely to create the kind of tensions that has led to two world wars.
I saw the following post at http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/08/05/1247062.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage
"John McCain keeps challenging Obama's competence to lead using demeaning comparisons. So I think it is legitimate to challenge his. Experience alone is only useful if the future is like the past. To meet new threats and opportunities one needs creativity, analytical skills, judgment and foresight and restraint. John McCain was graduated from Annapolis 4th from the bottom of a class of 898 cadets. This should give a voter pause. George Armstrong Custer is another famous American military officer who graduated at the bottom of his class, at West Point. During the Civil War he became famous for the conspicuous gallantry he displayed leading cavalry charges. However neither bravery nor experience saved his men as be blundered on to Little Big Horn. Custer lost a few hundred men at Little Big Horn. Custer in the White House today could end civilization as we know it."
Persians have played Chess for many centuries. Chess players always look several moves ahead. Let us assume for a moment that the Iranians agree to suspend uranium enrichment during negotiations with the United States. What would be our next move? We would demand verification?What would that entail? The Iranians would have to disclose the exact location of every facility connected to their nuclear program. This would make it easy for us to destroy all their facilities if negotiations fail.Since the whole world knows the Bush administration had planned to attack Iraq regardless of negotiations and inspections, the Iranians would be very foolish to fall for this ploy. They need comprehensive negotiations that include iron clad public security guarantees from the United States before agreeing to inspections. So they prefer to keep one move removed from that issue.If as some press reports suggest we are attending the negotiations simply to observe and rattle our sabers once again, the negotiations will go nowhere.
How would a President Hillary negotiate with congress or world leaders when no one trusts her.
How can Barack deal with her except at arms length. I see no prudent way to include her in his administration.
<strong>"Obamamania infects Germany".</strong>That is a headline from the Englsh language section of der Spiegel, an influential German news magazine on line.
Herr Steinmeier is the German Foreign Minister (Secretary of State in American terms). According to the magazine "..Steinmeier was impressed, and only a day later he publicly outed himself as the senator's latest fan. "Yes we can," the minister, not known for his emotional outbursts, chanted, evoking Obama's campaign slogan during a speech at Harvard University. Steinmeier used the term to express his desire for a renewal of trans-Atlantic relations. " Follow this link to see the whole article. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,555437,00.html A friend recently returned from India had to explain to his Indian colleagues that he could not accept their contributions for Obama. Some said they had tried making the donations on line but had been rejected as foreign nationals.
Evidently Hamas is not the only foreign entity rooting for Obama.
Pat Buchanan made the above statement on National TV. Click on the URL below to actually hear the comment on youtube.com.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-ptjl3ZQwM
This seems like a good quote for Barrack's confrontations with the Bush/McCain axis of lies.
I think the time has come for many of us to let the Democratic National Committee know what we think of this renewed negative, divisive, destructive and unproductive approach. First was a comment that "womens's voices need to te heard". Next was racial parsing of the North Carolina results.This kind of campaigning cannot help but make uniting the party more difficult in the Fall.I have already written to the DNC voicing my opinion. This campaign is not just about the candidates. It is about the party and ultimately the country.
Hugh
When my wife says "What flavor icecream do you want. We have strawberry and chocolate" and I choose chocolate, that does not mean I do not connect with straberry icecream. I love strawberry icecream.
Because Clinton usually wins most of the working class vote, the media keeps asking why can't Obama connect with the working class. This is totally illogical. The voter is expressing a preference for Clinton not rejecting Obama.
Faced with a choice between Obama and McCain, these voters may vote overwhelmingly for Obama based on policies that affect their daily lives.
Clinton trash talks like a boxer at weigh in. If that's the kind of toughness you admire, then vote for Hillary.I believe in a different kind of toughness. We need a candidate tough enough to say no to war when all around him are baying for blood. We need a candidate tough enough to tell us the truth rather than peddle the easy lie. We need a candidate tough enough to follow in the footsteps of America's great soldier and president Dwight D. Eisenhower who said "There is no nation, great or small, with which we would refuse to negotiate, in mutual good faith, with patience and in the determination to secure a better understanding between us. Out of such understandings must, and eventually will, grow confidence and trust......"That's why I support Barack Obama.
The more you gas you buy, the more you save. That's the McCain/Clinton sales pitch for the oil companies. Hillary knows full well that Bush will veto any bill that tries to tax the oil companies. The proposal is a direct transfer of the money for road and bridge repair to the oil companies. Rhetoric for the voter and money to the big corporations.
Food prices are rising almost as fast as gas prices. If you want to help why not give an additional tax rebate to the middle class and poor directlyto spend on what they want.
Much as I admire the Senator, I can't say his performance in debates has been extremely good. This is because he refuses to give superficial sound bite answers. His attempts to give a thoughtful reply to a complex question off the cuff sound tentative.
Therefore I recommend that he refuse to take part in any more press conference type debates. Each debate should be about a specific issue or two. All questions should be submitted to the candidates well in advance of the debate. The candidates should have ample time to present their points and to rebut attacks on their plans.
Networks should be requested to refer history questions to the campaign. That way there will be time to research and ensure an accurate answer.
I feel the Senator's campaign needs to drive home the point that the Senator is still a member of the same church and congregation he joined twenty five years ago as a penniless Community Organizer. He has never completely abandonned the mission of helping struggling communities to organize themselves to improve their quality of life. Even now he shares pews with other dedicated professionals like himself and reformed gang bangers.
In the course of a life dedicated to uplifting the disadvantaged he inevitably encountered and negotiated with and cooperated with reformed bad guys. This is an occupational hazard of Community Organizers, something elitists will never understand. Many who criticize him on this score probably do not know a single poor person socially.
Clinton has been painting the Republican Attack Machine as a mighty dragon that only a monster can slay and suggesting she is that monster.
But in the fable it was St George who slew the Dragon. Well Obama is not really a saint and the Republicans Party is not quite a dragon.
These so called debates are more like press conferences where reporters try to ask embarrasing questions. After last night's fiasco, I think the candidate should demand a list of questions the moderators would like to ask and obtain a commitment that these will be the only questions.
The senator should only accept the invitation if the list of questions is acceptible to him. He could base his refusal on the grounds that the questions do not relate to the issues of the campaign or relate to matters he has already addressed. He thinks the public deserve a considered answer to important questions, not off the cuff glib responses.
Otherwise he runs the risk of having his dignity compromised by always having to be on the defensive. The networks have a financial interest in dragging out the primary season.
