The Danger That Pastor Terry Jones Of Gainesville, Florida Represents: Planned Burning Of Koran On September 11 Denounced By General David Petraeus!
It is amazing how a so called "Man of God" can be so intolerant, but as is well known, this is not all that unusual! 
Pastor Terry Jones of Gainesville, Florida, a community that houses the renowned University of Florida, is about to besmirch that university town, the name of organized religion, and arouse world wide Muslim resentment, as he plans a burning of a copy of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, at his church on the ninth anniversary of September 11!
General David Petraeus, our renowned general in charge of the war in Afghanistan, has spoken up against this action, concerned that American soldiers will be more endangered by this action, and that it will sour our efforts to improve our relations with the Islamic world, which represents a billion people in the world!
This is as evil an act as Adolf Hitler ordering burning of books during the Nazi period in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s, and should be seen as "a clear and present danger", as the Supreme Court termed it in Schenck V. US in 1919!
The action should be prevented by local authorities by any means necessary, and if actually perpetrated, should lead to immediate arrest and prosecution of Pastor Terry Jones as undermining national security!
There is no room for this kind of action in the delicate world situation we face now! Pastor Jones will be responsible for possible death and harm, and all good Christians and Jews must immediately protest his planned action!
Is Barack Obama Becoming Harry Truman? It Is About Time!
President Barack Obama has just finished a rousing Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stirring a crowd with a strong, inspirational speech, which included strong attacks on the Republican opposition, while calling for a major investment in infrastructure repair and expansion to create an economic revival!
He said that the opposition was "talking about me like a dog!", and made it clear that he did not appreciate that and would not tolerate it!
It is about time, Mr. President, for you to get out there and denounce the opposition which has contributed to the slow revival of the economy because they preferred to see you fail, rather than help the American people!
It is hoped that this speech, with its fiery delivery and passion, is the beginning of a two month campaign matching the level of Harry Truman in 1948, giving that revered President the title "Give Them Hell Harry!"
Enough of trying to work with people who don't wish to cooperate, and enough of being a gentleman! Time to become "Give Them Hell Barack!"
What Labor Day Means: Has It Been Forgotten? Sadly, Yes! :(
Today is Labor Day, a holiday first developed in the 1880s to honor the contributions of American workers to the development of our economy!
Workers then were in the process, a long struggle, to develop labor union organizations to represent the interest of workers, something bitterly fought by corporations and government, as a "conspiracy in restraint of trade!"
Only slowly, starting with the administration of Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the 20th century, did labor begin to be treated with dignity and respect, but still with many setbacks during the conservative 1920s!
During the Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, labor union organizations finally gained acceptance as partners in collective bargaining, but remained the "enemy" in the South and in many interior states across the nation!
Labor unions at one point had one third of all workers, and their influence led to state and federal legislation that made life better for union workers, as well as non union workers! Their peak could be said to be in the 1960s and early 1970s, followed by a long period of rapid decline in influence, particularly due to the administration of Ronald Reagan, ironically a labor leader himself (the Screen Actors Guild)!
Today, organized labor has only about 12 percent of the labor force as members, and workers in general have seen backwards steps in relations with their employers, particularly in these difficult economic times of the Great Recession!
Labor is now struggling to be more significant, and to help promote the agenda of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party, but ironically, many workers continue to avoid voting, or find the emotional appeal of the Republican party on issues such as gay rights, abortion, illegal immigration, and Islamophobia as their major motivation, a sad development!
So the work of the labor movement, which is always bad mouthed by conservatives and Republicans, remains a challenge for the future!
An Important Step Long Overdue! Massive Public Works Programs Promoted To Accomplish Economic Revival!
President Obama, belatedly, is coming out for a massive investment in public works projects, to expand and renovate the infrastructure of the United States!
He will announce on Wednesday the promotion of $50 billion investment on long term construction projects on roads, rail lines, and airport runways!
The projects would be over six years, with the goal being 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of railways, and 150 miles of airport runways. The investment would be over six years, with more funding as the years went by!
The problem is to gain Congressional backing, which means, unfortunately, it is unlikely any action will be taken this year, and should the Republicans win control of Congress, maybe they will refuse to support such legislation at all!
So the future of public works is debatable, just at a time when it is so urgent!
The New Deal concept of Franklin D. Roosevelt to promote public works improvement programs is essential for a long term revival from the Great Recession!
The House Of Representatives Battlegrounds: Can The Democrats Keep Control?
The NY Times has published a detailed look at the battleground states in play for the House of Representatives, which most polls now predict will go Republican in November.
As the Times portrays it, each party has 168 safe seats, with the remaining 99 in play!
However, the projection is that the Democrats lead in 47 and the Republicans in 19, with 33 seats a tossup. So if you count those that lean to one party or the other, the Democrats would have 215 seats, and the Republicans would have 187, meaning the Democrats would only need 3 more seats to keep control of the chamber!
Of course, leaning to one party or the other does not mean it is a guarantee that the elections will work out that way, and voter turnout and enthusiasm will be, as always, a key factor in the results! At this point, the enthusiasm and turnout has favored the Republicans, a bad sign for the Democrats in November if it continues!
When one looks at the key House races which are tossups, it is noticeable that Pennsylvania has four contested seats; while Florida and Illinois have three competitive seats; and Indiana, Michigan and New Hampshire each have two battleground seats! So 16 of the 33 tossup seats are in states which Barack Obama won. That plus 10 other seats in states which Obama won (Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin) would mean a total of 26 seats, and if these all went to the Democrats, it would give them a total of 241 seats, meaning a loss of 16 seats, a mild loss!
But this is all speculative, and we will simply have to see if the Democrats can change the public mood in the next eight weeks and retain control of the House of Representatives and keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House!
Why A Second Economic Stimulus Is Essential!
If you listen to conservatives, they will constantly state that the economic stimulus legislation of 2009 has failed, and that the nation does not need any more attempts at economic stimulus, a totally wrong viewpoint!
Sure, the economic stimulus has not been a panacea, but ask most economists and they will say that WITHOUT the stimulus, our unemployment rate would have been closer to 20 percent, instead of the 9.6 percent that it presently is!
We are facing an extreme economic crisis with local and state governments, undermining public safety and public education, with the anticipated dismissal of hundreds of thousands of police, firefighters, teachers and other public service fields that we all take for granted!
The first stimulus helped to prevent many of these people losing their jobs, and it is estimated that at least three million people either kept their employment because of the stimulus, or were employed when they had been unemployed due to the economic collapse that began at the end of 2007!
This is, of course, a "drop in the bucket" solution of the problem, but if we continue to act as if we have no need to deal with this crisis in public safety and education, we will pay the price in higher crime rates and worse educational opportunities for millions of school children, which will affect lives not just for a year or two, but for the long term future!
Also, extension of unemployment compensation creates consumer spending and gives the long term unemployed a lifeline until things get better, and if it is not done, we will have widespread starvation and homelessness!
It is easy to say it is someone else's problem and not care about it, but this could literally happen to anyone at anytime, and the fact that it does not is due to a lot of luck, as there is nothing inherently wrong with people who lose their jobs!
We should not be judging others, and looking down on them, as "there but for the grace of God go I!", and one does not have to be religious to realize the truth of that statement!
We must also work on creating critical infrastructure jobs, as that is a long term need and will provide many new employment opportunities, and we cannot allow the fear of deficits long term to make us paralyzed in our actions short term!
The problem is that if the Republicans gain control of either or both houses of Congress in November, the room for action on these matters may very well be lost, and the country will then suffer through a much worse economic downturn over the next few years!
We might look back in 2012 and after and bemoan what the voters did in 2010, in their moment of frustration and anger! Let us hope they do not take self destructive actions!
Female Vs. Female Political Races And More Women Running Against Men: A Record Breaking Year?
A fascinating part of the 2010 election cycle is the fact that there will be more female vs. female races than we have seen before in American history!
For the Senate, the only such race will be Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer against former Hewlett Packard CEO and Republican Carly Fiorina in California!
For the office of Governor, there will be two all female races--in New Mexico, where Republican Susana Martinez will run against Democrat Diane Denish; and Oklahoma, where Democrat Jari Askins will compete against Republican Mary Fallin! Both Democrats, by the way, have been Lieutenant Governor of their states and still are!
In Congressional races, the most notable is Republican Congresswomen Michele Bachmann of Minnesota against Democratic state legislator Tarryl Clark!
But also running in South Dakota for the state wide Congressional seat are Democratic Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin against Republican state representative Kristi Noem!
Of course, there are other women running for high office, but against men! Among them are gubernatorial candidates in California (Republican Meg Whitman), South Carolina (Republican Nikki Haley), and Florida (Democrat Alex Sink). For the Senate, we see Sharron Angle (Republican of Nevada) and Linda McMahon (Republican of Connecticut). Additionally, there are numerous Congresswomen running for reelection, and many women who are opposing men in and outside of the House of Representatives for House seats.
Will this be a major "Year of the Woman" in American politics? Maybe it will not be a record breaker, but certainly women are playing a growing role in American politics, and of course we are not talking here about the numerous women who sit in state legislatures, city councils, boards of education, and other elected bodies, or who are running to be part of these government structures!
Are The American People “Spoiled Brats?” Unfortunately, YES!
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post wrote a column yesterday that is bound to cause controversy!
He stated that the American electorate are acting as "spoiled brats"!
Wow, what a charge! Is there any justification to this accusation? Obviously, Robinson says YES, and the author would tend to agree with him, which requires explanation!
Robinson says that we want quick easy solutions to complex problems that have been built up over many years, and cannot be resolved in any one presidential term or one two year congressional term! He is ABSOLUTELY CORRECT in that assertion!
We have so many problems, as Robinson points out, including:
1. Restructuring of the economy which has been outsourced over the past thirty years (since Ronald Reagan), and with manufacturing having disappeared because we all want cheap Walmart CHINA goods, and don't want to support American made labor goods!
2. We have an infrastructure which needs a major investment, including the rebuilding of roads, bridges, canals, and other public works, but don't want to make the investment because it might cause taxes to go up, which we hate as a concept, expecting everything to be done without paying for it!
3. We need to recognize the importance of reforming entitlements, but even to suggest it is to cause hysteria and panic and anger, as again the thought is that we don't want to sacrifice, but make sure you don't cut anyone's future expectations of gaining benefits without paying appropriate level of taxes!
4. We need to plan a 21st century economy based on weaning ourselves off foreign oil, and must face the fact that fossil fuels are not the long term answer, but corporations and politicians continue to promote an outdated idea of how our future energy needs can be met!
5. After years of paying very low or no taxes, the wealthy keep on complaining about paying more taxes, even though there is no way to maintain enough revenue without their participation in the tax structure, but the attitude is "NOT ME!", and selfishness and greed rule! When one percent of the population earns 23 percent of the income, to say they should not pay more taxes means no solution in the future to solving our economic problems is possible, and instead it forces bigger and bigger budget deficits which can lead us to losing our status as a world leader, which is already under attack as it is!
6.We need to develop an education system to sustain the future, but have failed to keep pace, and again it requires willingness to sacrifice, which no one wants to do!
7. We need to realize that immigration is part of a plan for an economic future, but instead we just make immigrants and people who have different cultural backgrounds seem to be the enemy and a threat to the future of the country!
8. The country has an unsustainable burden overseas, trying to be the world's policeman, and therefore, we need to redefine our role in world affairs in such a way to make it manageable, as now our defense requirements are overwhelming our ability to sustain it financially!
As Robinson says, we want quick and easy solutions without pain and suffering, and so we are ready to "throw out the rascals" and try the other party in power, but not understanding that the GOP has no solutions either, and that likely, after they have a try at power, they will be thrown out in 2012!
So we are acting like "spoiled brats", like children who have a "temper tantrum", and take irrational steps that will do nothing to deal with the reality of the future!
That reality is that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any magical solutions, and we are going to suffer through five to ten years of trouble to undo the damage done in the past 30 years, all of it except the BIll Clinton years, under Republican Presidents who made life better for the wealthy, and miserable for the middle class and the poor!
So it is time for the American people to "grow up" and stop expecting quick, easy solutions, as they are not going to come, whether or not one party or the other controls the White House and the Congress!
We are, unfortunately, in for the toughest decade we have suffered through since the 1930s! To believe anything else is to believe in the "tooth fairy" and "Santa Claus"!