Well, they’ve done it. While we’ve rushed to watch the fight taking place outside our window, we’ve been robbed again. We’ve taken our eye off the the looters of Democracy and allowed the Republicans to once again steal unchallenged through Our White House.
While obsessed Obama fans were taking a last crack at Clinton with old Republican propaganda before the Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries, the Supreme Court refused to hear the ACLU’s challenge of Bush’s illegal wiretapping. Anyone notice?
While Obma supporters were busy nuancing Obama’s plagiarism and revising the definition to make it disappear, we learned that voters of all political persuasions, are tapping their 401ks for reasons ranging from using funds for normal expenses like keeping your mortgage current in the housing crisis, to pay down credit debt and for medical expenses. The end results of this being that
"People who take out a loan or withdrawal are adding to a looming retirement crisis over the next 30 to 40 years," said Eric Levy, a partner at global consulting firm Mercer. "And what implications will that have (for) our economy?"
Yes indeed, Senator Obama, do you have a contingency plan to cover this? And what is your opinion of an economy that is so bad that
"The nation's toy makers — faced with soaring energy and raw material prices and rising labor costs in China — are tweaking their new product lines and scaling back their offerings. "
Just what, Senator Obama, is your plan to keep our food supply safe? This has been an on going problem for almost a decade. President Clinton budgeted a $68 million increase for more scientific investigative methods and hiring more inspectors. Upon arrival in the White House, George W. Bush immediately began reducing the budget and inspectors. The USDA website states they employ 8,000 inspectors and yet the largest meat recall ever happened just this month.
"Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe," said Representive Rosa L. DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for the USDA’s funding.
Two other articles show the downhill slide of this consumer protection agency. This article from October 14, 2007 says
FSIS, which regulates meat, poultry and egg production, says it had 7,200 inspectors in 1992 and 7,450 now.
"FSIS ended [fiscal year '07] with the highest number of in-plant employees since 2003," Eamich stated. During the year, FSIS was approved "for more in-plant inspectors than at any time since 2003. The agency has numerous hiring initiatives targeted at recruiting inspectors for these vacancies."
Stan Painter, an inspector and union representative for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents the inspectors, said the actual number of inspectors is closer to 6,500.
The difference, he said, are unfilled vacancies that FSIS permanently carries.
"There are about 1,000 vacancies," Painter said. "It's steadily gotten worse"
Which means that there were only 1.08 inspectors for every food distributing business no matter how large they are, and when the largest meat recall in history came there were even fewer inspectors.
In March of 2002 Dr. Lester M. Crawford, Jr. gave this warning in an address before the USDA National Agricultural Research, Education,
Extension Advisory Committee meeting on Biosecurity: Preparedness Plans
Add to this the fast-growing category of people at special risk for foodborne disease -- senior citizens; people with compromised immune systems; pregnant women and children -- plus the fact that in recent years scientists have identified more than five times as many foodborne pathogens as were known fifty years ago.
The sum of all these factors spells a serious threat that was best expressed by the estimate of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that there occur in the United States about 76 million cases foodborne illness each year, causing 325,000 hospitalizations, 5,000 deaths, and a multibillion-dollar economic damage.
It is understandable that Senator Obama has a lot on his plate; what with defeating Senator Clinton and all; but if an overhaul of the way our food supply is inspected doesn’t have a high priority on his "List of Things to Do" it would be nice to know.
And how does he feel about the increasing use of tasers on citizens who are stopped for traffic violations? It is becoming routine for a driver stopped for such offenses as speeding, protesting your innocence, asking what the charges are, even spinning your wheels when pulling out of a driveway, to get tasered and arrested while your passenger is threatened with arrest just for being there. And the horrific video of the paraplegic man being dumped onto the floor because he couldn't obey orders to stand up was arrested for an unnamed "driving offense".
Is this use of violence against non violent behavior (remember, they have the videos) increasing as Our First Amendment rights decrease? Will the Supreme Court refusing to even take a case that might establish limits on government interference with our Amendment I, IV, and V rights be responsible for the harsher treatment of anyone disagreeing with authority?
And where does Senator Obama stand on these issues that are directly linked with the Bush administration’s political ideology and enforced by the Judicial Branch of our government and how does he proposed to change the legislation passed by Congress and supported by the government’s Judiciary Branch of government encompassing both the Attorney General and the Supreme Court?
Please, Senator, make a commitment to something besides "change"and tell us what you intend to do to prevent these things, because if the Supreme Court will not hear basic Constitutional matters, let alone rule on them, change will not happen.
The "good old days"
How could this have happened to us? For almost 8 years we have been focused with eliminating the Bush influence from our government. We hoped in 2004 that we could remove him from office, but we played by the political party rules and he remained. We voted for change in 2006 and succeeded in putting a Democratic majority, including Senator Obama, into our legislative branch of government and nothing changed. As legislation was presented by the Democratic majority, the Republican minority continued as if they had not lost; rubber stamping every piece of Bush legislation that crossed their desk, refusing to override the Bush veto when they did manage to get legislation like SCHIP passed or FISA changed.
Senator Obama tells us often that he was not present in the U. S. Senate when the Iraq war began. But he was there in 2006 when we expected those we elected to change the course of that war. His voting record shows that he , too, approved the continued financing of that war. He did not vote for change. You can not say your opponent is wrong to have done what she did and say you were not wrong for doing the very same thing. We’ve had enough of double standards.
What was his Chicago voting record? What legislation of "change" did he help to create in Chicago? On Tuesday (February 19, 2008) Chris Mathews was interviewing Obama supporter, Texas State Senator Kirk Watson and Clinton supporter Ohio Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones when he asked Watson to identify one accomplishment from Senator Obama’s 7 years in the Illinois senate and the man trying to persuade you to vote for Obama could not come up with a single accomplishment. "Well, I am not going to be able to name you specific items of legislation accomplishment." says he, sounding more like a disciple of Bush than a purveyor of change. He then equivocated when ask if he considered that a problem saying, "Well, no I don’t think it is. Because I think one of the things that Senator Obama does is he inspires. He’s able to lay out a vision, he’s able to lay out solutions."
Carrying out those "visions" and "solutions" is what is called accomplishments and leadership! We don’t need an architect; we need a builder!
George W. Bush had a "vision", too, he was going to bring Democracy to the undemocratic world. George W. Bush laid out "solutions", too, remember his famous "It’s over when it’s over." ?
Haven’t we had enough of leaders who want to "inspire" us? Wouldn’t we rather have someone with a machete hacking through the jungle of presidential decrees, executive privilege and signing statements that Republicans have left us in?
The New York Times has printed an article about the backlash from Mrs. Obama’s speech where she states
For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country. And not just because Barack has done well, but because I think people are hungry for change.
Many were incensed with her shortsighed statement.
Like this writer who speaks eloquently for so many of us left out of Bush’s world view and Senator Obama's vision when she says
Michelle Obama does not speak for me... You have to be terribly out of touch not to get it, or so hopelessly elitist it doesn't register...The love I have for this country makes me an American first, a Democrat second. Never before in my life have I been more aware of this fact than I was after I thought long and hard about Michelle Obama's comments, not able to brush them aside, though that was my first instinct and said so, only to hear her words flash before me again and again, finally causing something to rise up deep inside me to scream NOT THIS AMERICAN.
Michelle Obama does not speak for me.
How can anyone who has ever joined a picket line, been arrested or herded into "free speech" pins or marched down a street, joined a lunch counter sit in, refused to give up their seat in the back of a bus, risked their lives to register voters in the South, not take offense at Mrs. Obama’s words excluding their actions from the changes our country has made just during her lifetime.
People were hungry for change when Barack Obama was born in Hawaii 1961, and they were hungry for change when he was growing up in Indonesia and was immersed in another culture. But Michelle Obama was born in 1964 in Chicago and raised on Chicago’s South Side, how could she have missed the changes taking place around her? How could she possibly ignore those whose sacrifices have brought change to her life? To dare to say that she, the recipient of change brought about by the words and the actions of leaders like Martin Luther King, Medgar Evans, and ordinary people like Rosa Parks found nothing to admire about her country after all the change they worked for to ensured that she didn’t grow up "separate but equal".
And her statement, "For the first time in my adult lifetime I am really proud of my country" trivialized the deaths of great leaders like Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy who worked for change and small victims like Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14) and Denise McNair (11) who died in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in 1963 while bringing change for her. All who lived during her lifetime. Do you honestly believe that change stopped and waited for your husband to arrive on the mainland? You’re a lawyer, Mrs. Obama, you should know the struggle for change continued.
Inspiration + Implementation = Leadership
The Democratic party has taken a wrong turn once again; allowing a tit-for-tat campaign that never addresses the issues but has degenerated into a he said/she said. And yet, all we demanded of a candidate was to focus on this nation’s problems and tell us what he/she will do about them. The person we choose must do battle with an entrenched ideology of George W. Bush and the Republican party; but a candidate who had not been proven in battle, who, in fact, supporters can not identify one battle he has fought let alone win, whose leadership goals are to "inspire" and "lay out visions [and] solutions". If Senator Obama does not intend to get his hands dirty with implementation, who will his proxy be? Has he lined up a Dick Cheney in the wings?
Pretty speeches will not bring back the Nation we have lost. It will take more than inspiration to challenge the Bush appointed Supreme Court to take up the cause of our Bill of Rights. It could take impeachment of court members; is a President Obama prepared to take on that fight? We have an Attorney General who blatantly says he will not enforce Congress’s subpoenas upon the Bush regime. Does a President Obama have the toughness to change the concept of Executive Privilege now that a precedent for immunity has been established? Will he insist that we bring our troops home when his stated policy is to shuttle them into other areas to "Conduct further terrorism operations"? Iran, perhaps or Syria, there are a lot of nations to choose from. Will his proxy be strong enough to act while Senator Obama envisions solutions?
Or will he even get the chance. Senator McCain is steaming into the nomination at the Conventions and even though he wasn’t their favorite, you are not hearing any criticism of him among his party. You do not get a whiff of defeat from them. Their body language is confident, almost smirking, as they watch the united Democratic base and independent voters break apart under the the massive negative onslaught taking place within the Democratic party.
The massive propaganda machine that smashed opposition to Obama is so similar to the one used against our previous candidates by Republicans that the feeling of deja vu can not be ignored. We had the Will of the People on Our side, Republicans had Diebolt, "felony lists" and illegal election maneuvers in Florida and other states. Their party is still whole, united in the task of putting another Republican in the White House.
But the anti-Bush offensive we created for almost a decade has fractured into many pieces in just a few months. Obama supporters seem to truly believe that Senator Clinton has no right to be a candidate and should step aside and urge her supporters join the ranks of Obama loyal because they know best and it is unthinkable that anyone would doubt him. Deja vu, 2004, Dean vs Kerry. But Republicans have no plans to acquiesce to Obama campaigners. They will cast doubt and blame. And Republicans will ask. What was your 7 year legislative record? What have you done since 2005? What is your relationship with Rezko, with Muslims? And, as we have seen, they won’t be as polite as Senator Clinton has been because they show no mercy.
And if Senator Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he will have to do more than "inspire" and "lay out visions" for Republicans to critique. He can’t be so thin skinned, so quick to show his anger when thwarted and he better have a lot more facts and figures than he has presented in debates. He, and his supporters, have promised us the Moon and the Stars and he better be able to deliver before the November elections because Republicans will do to him what they have done to others and be happy to point it out.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.
Abraham Lincoln, (attributed), 16th president of US (1809 - 1865), another great leader who brought change.