Soon as we got a Democrat in the White House, a bunch of Senators claiming to be Democrats rushed to show how independent they are, declaring they won’t necessarily vote in support of the President’s agenda that he was elected to enact. As a Hoosier, I’ll put Indiana’s Evan Bayh (pronounced “Bye” or “Buy”) at the top of the list.
Mr. Obama is right to allow politicians to vote their “consciences” (oxymoron is obvious). Where he’s wrong is in promising to raise money for them. I won’t give one penny to support ANY Senator who fails to toe the line and earnestly help the President do what he promised. Many promises were made. If they’re not kept because Democrats in the Senate support powerful banks and other lobbies against the people who support Mr. Obama’s agenda, then Bayh-Bayh to them come the primary.
If self-described Democrats in the Senate refuse to push through the President’s agenda, then it’s up to us to FIND SOMEONE WHO WILL. I won’t give money to or raise money for Evan Bayh or Arlen Spector or any of the approximately eight others who have declared themselves “independent” of this cause.
They want our money and votes only to betray us to the powerful lobbyists who own them. We need to start work right now finding better people to run against them in the primaries and start raising the money they’ll need to win.
We kept McCain and Palin out of the White House. We certain can put Bayh, Specter and those other eight “independent” Democrats OUT of the Senate. CHANGE is coming to America.
Whew, what a week. Every American man, woman and child suddently got handed a $2,333 bill for the bailout of WallStreet. Don't believe me? You do the math. Divide the estimated $700B needed to buy up all the bad mortgage debt and divide it by the total population of the United States (~300M). This debt is in addition to the already $9.6 TRILLION of debt. The United States of America is a nation maxing out our credit cards. THIS MUST STOP!We need to restore our nation to one that produces more than it consumes. We need to increase and retain our nation's wealth versus exporting it to nations around the world. We need to employ more of our citizens to build what the world needs. We need to be energy independent selling the world our technology enabling them to be energy independent. We need to provide every American with affordable health care which is second to none and selling these medical advances to other nations. We need to reinvigorate our education system insuring that our children are being taught what they need in the new economy not just studying to take a test.I know that this all seems very overwhelming but "The journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step" - chinese proverb. We must all take the first step by getting involved. NO ONE is going to do this for us. We must elect politicians who are committed to REAL change. Change that will put us back on the road to financial prosperity and security.
Why isn't Barack tying Phil Graham around McCain's neck? The albatross of this financial meltdown deserves to be there. Graham's 1999 legislation deregulating swap markets and energy markets is THE most direct cause of the current financial meltdown on Wall Street. Phil Graham is responsible for the destruction of more wealth than any war we have ever fought, and he is McCain's economic advisor! Sure they squirreled him away because he spoke his mind about us all being whiners, but is there any doubt who will be Treasury Secretary if the Palin/McCain ticket wins? C'mon this is low hanging fruit, and it has the added bonus of actually being TRUE!
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html
DFA needs to be more savy about what is worrying ordinary voters. High gas prices are the results of Oil Companies siphoning our wealth to terrorists, pure and simple. Drilling here won't make a damn bit of difference and they know that. You have the direct argument, they have the obtuse one on oil, pound it home.
McCain's chief economic advisor (still) is chiefly responsible for the greatest destruction of wealth in human history. They have no counter argument. Why are you not nailing them on this?!
I understand that the highschool-esque gotcha politics is attractive and grabs headlines but this Wall Street collapse is reality and a real big one. We need to get out in front on this and lay blame where it belongs: Squarely at the feet of Phil Graham and the anti-regulatory Republicans who caused it. This is all part of a pattern going back to Keating. Keating bribes his Republican buddies to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry, Keating defrauds the shareholders and accountholders with speculation/ponzi schemes, Keating destroys Savings and Loan industry, taxpayers foot the bill for the Cleanup.
Same thing with Enron, Ken Lay bribes Graham, Luger and other Republicans to deregulate energy, accounting, and swap markets. Enron and Ken Lay proceed, THE VERY NEXT SUMMER, to rape California by manufacturing an energy crisis, costing taxpayers billions of dollars. Enron then melts down under the weight of its own debt shell game, triggering the revelation of accounting schemes all over Wall Street and the collapse of Global Crossing, Arthur Anderson. etc. This destroys wealth to the tune of billions for shareholders, and who has to foot the bill for cleanup? The Taxpayer.
And now we are feeling the results of Graham's handiwork in the mortgage industry. Because of Graham's deregulation of the debt swap market, Republicans were able to construct elaborate ponzi schemes and defraud all of us out of billions. Now the ponzi scheme is tumbling down around our ears, as they always do, but its different this time. The Republicans haven't just killed a goose that was laying golden eggs like they did with the S&L, and Energy Markets. They have critically injured the greatest goose laying the biggest golden eggs in our planet's history. Without Capital (Money to loan) nothing works. Nothing. No one gets paid. No machines get bought. No gas gets pumped. Everything grinds to a halt. This crisis already has dwarfed the Great depression of the 1930's in terms of wealth destroyed, I pray that its effects on the nation are less severe but people such as Alan Greenspan are calling this a "once in a Century" event.
Deregulate, Defraud, Destroy, and bill the taxpayer for the cleanup. Its a pattern of behavior that Republicans have been repeating since Keating, and getting away with it. Its a pattern of behavior they need to be held accountable for. Its a pattern of behavior that needs to stop. Getting Obama elected is the only way we have right now of stopping them.
Even though it may not look like it or feel like it, you are making progress.
Continue working towards progress instead of perfection.
Nothing or no no one is perfect.
Just keep taking steps.
Keep making those phone calls.
Continue following your plan.
Remain focused on your goal.
Do what you have to do right now to get to the next level.
Complete every task.
Keep every promise and commitment.
Don't look back.
Let no one weaken your walk of faith and determination.
Remain teachable.
Place yourself in a blessing position by associating with people on-the-grow.
Talk with teachers.
Walk with winners.
Climb with champions.
Study successful people.
Something great is about to happen for you!
Start giving thanks right now before you can even see the outward manisfestation of your prayers and desires.
Everything you do from this day forward will take you further away or closer to your potential for successful living.
-by Dr. Jewel Diamond Taylor, Motivational Speaker & Author
Obama's Extra Hurdle?By ZOLTAN HAJNAL
THE WALL STREET JOURNALJuly 13, 2007The Barack Obama phenomenon has just about everybody asking: Is America ready for a black president? Overlooked in the conversation, however, is the fact that Americans have already weighed in on black leadership -- and they like it enough to vote for it.More than 40% of the nation's population lives in metropolitan areas that have had a black mayor in the core central city, or lived in states that have had a black governor. Most of the rest have learned from TV and newspapers what black officeholders have or, more importantly, have not done in office. These experiences have calmed fears and given many previously skeptical white voters reason to support black candidates.When the first black challengers ran in the 1960s and the early 1970s to try to take over positions held by whites, they faced widespread fear among white voters and opposition campaigns that were only too happy to play on that anxiety. The slogan in Atlanta, for example, was "Atlanta's too young to die." Meanwhile, the white incumbent in Los Angeles simply asked, "Will your city be safe with this man?"The result was record white mobilization and near-unanimous white opposition to black candidates. In the typical contest when a black candidate challenged to be the first black mayor of a big city, turnout of all voters averaged almost 80%, an unheard-of figure for local elections, and all but 21% of the white vote went to the white candidate.Since those days a lot has changed. Well over 10,000 African-Americans have been elected to various offices around the country. And the fears that many once felt were never realized. In almost every case when a black candidate won, there was little or no white flight, little to no movement of blacks into white neighborhoods and certainly no wholesale redistribution of resources from the white to the black community.The world under black leadership was strikingly similar to the world under white leadership. Many white voters, realizing that black politicians had the power to hurt the white community but didn't, re-evaluated their views of black leadership and the broader black community.All of this has brought remarkable change to the white electorate. The same black challengers who faced near-unanimous white opposition when they first ran almost always won re-election, and generally did so with much more white support than they first received.Today, campaigns cannot and do not play on the same racial fears that they did in the '60s and early '70s. Those scare tactics are simply no longer credible. The nation has seen too many black mayors, Congressmen and other elected officials to believe that black leadership will translate to anything like a black takeover.An even stronger sign that fears have faded away is the fact that whites are no longer mobilized to action whenever a black candidate has a chance to be a historic first. Turnout in city elections in which blacks have won the mayoralty for the first time has dropped every decade to the point where turnout in these elections averages 41%, half the record turnout of the 1960s and close to the national average for mayoral contests.Even more important, instead of fearing black candidates, white Americans have started supporting black candidates. Whereas in the 1960s no blacks were elected in big cities with majority white populations, in the 1990s more than half of all the African-Americans elected in big cities won in places where the electorate was a majority white.What does all of this mean for Barack Obama? The most recent LA Times national poll shows him running equally well among minority and white Democratic voters, but he is unlikely to get most of the white vote. Successful black challengers, at least at the mayoral level, typically win about a third of the white vote. Given that about a third of the white population sees itself as liberal, and almost all of the black candidates running in these mayoral contests are liberal Democrats, that figure seems reasonable. Fortunately for Mr. Obama, winning the white vote is not a prerequisite to winning the Democratic primaries or the presidency.If history repeats itself, the black vote will be united behind Mr. Obama. Black Democratic candidates -- and Mr. Obama is increasingly seen as a black candidate by African-American voters -- seeking to become a historic first at any level have typically won close to 90% of the black vote. That black vote, coupled with some Latino support and the growing willingness of white Americans to support black leadership, could certainly be enough to give him the election.But even if Mr. Obama loses, it won't be because white America is afraid of a black president. The nation has seen black leaders in action and most voters are no longer frightened.Mr. Hajnal, professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, is the author of "Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Political Leadership" (Cambridge University Press, 2007[Zoltan Hajnal wrote this piece for the Wall Street Journal Friday, July 13, 2007 edition]
