Why Are Not Republican Leaders Speaking Up Against The Koran Burning And Supporting General Petraeus?:(
The threatened burning of copies of the Koran in Gainesville, Florida on September 11 by Pastor Terry Jones has alarmed our military leaders in Afghanistan, including General David Petraeus, concerned that such a dastardly act will provoke violence against military personnel and civilians throughout the Islamic world, and will undermine our ability to promote understanding among the vast majority of Muslims who are not radicals and not terrorists! 
So under the circumstances, one would think that the Republican Party would wish to join in support of the military, since they have such strong belief and faith in General Petraeus!
Why is NOT former President George W. Bush speaking out? Why is former Vice President Dick Cheney remaining silent, when he has a problem since leaving office that he cannot keep his mouth shut?
Why is it Sarah Palin, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, and all of the other numerous Republicans who are strong supporters of our troops, do not feel a responsibility to take a moral stand against this violent action? How would they feel if a Christian or Jewish Bible were burned in public? Would they remain silent if such occurred? It is obvious the answer is NO, so therefore, by NOT speaking up, does it not indicate that the Republican leadership is willing to risk alienation of the entire Islamic world by remaining silent, and therefore by omission, alienating a billion people around the world?
Is this not evidence of the total extremism and irresponsibility of all the leaders of the Republican Party?
Where is their conscience and their common sense? How could anyone feel that such leaders deserve national power and responsibility when they seem not to give a whit about the safety of Americans, both military and civilian, overseas, as well as in this country?
Do they wish to provoke more violence and bloodshed in this country by a small number of American Muslims who will be tipped over the edge by the irresponsible, despicable burning of the Koran by this whacko evangelical Christian sect?
When will the Republicans realize that they have a MORAL responsibility to speak up?
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!
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"!
The Contradiction Of Joe Miller: The “Anti Ted Stevens” For Alaska!
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska served longer in the upper chamber than any Republican Senator in history, and when he died last month in a plane accident, he was deeply mourned by most Alaskans as the man who had done more for Alaska than any other political figure in its half century history as a state!
Alaska was the beneficiary of more federal largesse (money and public works projects) than any other state, and Alaska then and now desperately needed such funding, as it is a state which even today has very few roads and bridges and other public projects, making travel and access through much of the state extremely difficult!
Juneau, the capital in southeast Alaska, cannot be reached by land, for instance, and much of the state is isolated and poor! So Stevens was good for Alaska, but so were Senator Frank Murkowski and his daughter, Senator Lisa Murkowski, who recently lost a close renomination contest to Joe Miller!
Of course, Sarah Palin was a critic of all of these political figures, but never did anything to deal with the realities of backwardness and poverty in much of Alaska in her BRIEF time in public office! She, however, has been very effective in improving her own economic conditions, while advocating the nomination of Joe Miller, a person who shares her vision of a "new" Alaska without federal intervention!
Joe Miller portrays himself as the opponent of federal largesse, of "earmarks", and therefore is the "anti Ted Stevens"! He was able to defeat Lisa Murkowski by a razor thin margin on this basis!
It is amazing how in one month, Alaskans can mourn "Uncle Ted", who brought his state so many benefits by doing what all members of Congress are expected to do, make life better for their constituents; and then have the dominant party in the state reject that approach and nominate a Tea Party favorite, who defies the history of the American political system!
If Alaska does indeed proceed to elect Joe Miller over Democratic opponent Scott McAdams, will they have "buyer's remorse", when they realize they are putting into a position of power an individual who has no interest in benefiting the state, modernizing it, bringing it into the future, but would rather quote the Founding Fathers in a narrow, restrictive manner, evoking the states rights argument of the Civil War Era of the 19th century in the 21st century?
Joe Miller, like most conservatives and Republicans, distorts the Founding Fathers and the Constitution, failing to understand that the document they created was purposely left vague and broad, as they could not possibly predict the long term future, and so left it open to modern interpretation by Congress and the courts!
The Founding Fathers did not intend a "strait jacket" Constitution, but if Joe Miller in office follows it in that manner, Alaska will suffer, and remain a backward state without a modern public works system and large levels of poverty! Somehow, the feeling arises that Joe Miller would end up contradicting himself once in office, and therefore would have to be seen as a hypocrite who exploited the general discontent that exists, with rhetoric that is false and manipulative!