What if They Bailed Us Out Instead

As many of you are painfully aware, assuming you have not been hiding under a rock for the past five years our national treasury, and the wealth of our future generations has been hijacked in what amounts to the largest redistribution of wealth in the history of the United States (what, you thought only Democrats like redistributing the dough?).  That’s right more more than 1.3 Billion dollars of your money and the credit of future generations has been redistributed into the pockets of bankers who opposed the regulation which would have prevented the near disaster we are currently suffering through as well as the defense contractors who happened to be close friends of the Bush administration.  I realize there is divided opinion about the war in Iraq and all that jazz -and really that is not germane to the topic of this post- but considering all the money that the Bush Administration spent bailing out the wealthy who run the banks, military industrialists, and oil barons and fighting an unnecessary war I have to ask what would happen if instead of going to war and instead of bailing out Wall Street they had bailed out the American people?

Do your remember those puny little IRS stimulus checks that some tax payers got over the past summer?  You know, the little checks  that started at 300 bucks and went as high as 1500?  The reason I ask is because those checks would be  chump change compared to what the tax payer could get in return if the government had decided to equally refund the monies given carelessly to the defense contractors, oil kingpins, and bankers  to every single one of us 310 million Americans.

If all 310 million American citizens were given an equal share of the 1.321 trillion  every last one of us would get a check for 4261 dollars and 29 cents. Could you imagine how that would stimulate the economy?  I promise you that this kind of money would prevent people from missing their rent payments, mortgage payments, car payments, they could pay off debts, and they could get food for their families and if they were fortunate enough they could start a decent little savings account.

It gets even better if instead of giving this money to every American, we make it mandatory that only taxpayers could get a stimulus check.:

For a nice round number lets say America has 200 million taxpayers. If we gave every tax payer an equal share of that 1.321 trillion we are talking about 6605 dollars.

How to Cut Spending, lower Taxes, Save social programs, and Make America Stronger in the World

As you know our economy is headed towards basketcase status, but there is a simple solution to saving our economy and it doesn’t involve a single tax increase to anyone in the United States.  However, those who believe war heals all wounds and is a preventative cure all will not like this solution because quite simply the most effective way to save the economy is to drastically reduce defense spending.  The way I see it we could reduce our annual defense spending by about 500 billion. We’d still be spending about 200 billion annually on defense expenditures, but  we’d still be spending more than three times as much money per year on defense than our leading competitors, and we’d still outspend them if they all combined against us.

2 France 61,571,330,000
3 United Kingdom 61,280,890,000
4 People’s Republic of China 61,036,400,000

For what its worth out of the second, third, and fourth ranked nations in yearly military spending (we are in first place at over 700 billion) only China could be deemed as a threat to our national security and they have an annual budget of a little more than 61 billion. You wanna toss in the big bad Russkies, they must be bad because I saw Red Dawn the other day, and you get another 50 billion per year. China and Russia together (arguably our biggest rivals) spend 111 billion a year on defense.  Somewhere out there at least one hawk is thinking about the doomsday scenario of what would happen if the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Russian Federation linked up with the two remaining members of the fantastical Axis of Evil.  As far as spending goes this would not be a problem as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea combined only spend 112 billion combined.   Iran, alone,  spends six billion a year on military expenditures, and I have to say that  I have to agree with John McCain a nation that spends that little on military expenses has got to be “an exististional threat to the United States.”  The other member of Axis of Evil, North Korea, spends 5.5 billion dollars.

Of course the member nations of the Axis of Evil may be looking for new members since uber evil and overwhelmingly powerful Iraq (you know the ones who were going to take out Israel, Kuwait and make Europe into a Caliphate before they marched through Downtown Manhattan, but who oddly enough were completely occupied in less than four weeks) was squashed.  So lets say, for hypothetical purposes, that the Axis of Evil in its usual comic book style knights Cuba and Venezuela as evil enough for membership.  Lets say for a moment that both Cuba and Venezuela (two nations with governments we don’t like so surely thats recipricol and not just empty rhetoric spewed from those in the military industrial lobbyists on K-Street) should combine their spending power with the traditional boogey men countries of China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.  First lets examine Cuba, this tropical gulag is led by Castro who has to be the worst man alive considering the millions of man hours the CIA has invested, along with a billion or so dollars, over the years to kill him. Cuba spends 694 million per anum on defense. The other Latin candidate for the Axis of Evil is Venezuela. Chavez spends 4 billion per year on defense. Our biggest threats, as far as nation states go, spend a combined 127 billion a year. Which means that we could cut our spending by more than 500 billion and still nearly spend twice the amount of money a year on defense that they spend combined.

Oh sure, this would mean less foreign adventures such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. No cool quagmires or humanitarian disasters, not as many new toys either. We’d have to cancel our antagonistic manhood measuring contest, aka our missile defense shield, in Poland and the Czech Republic. We’d have to leave the Balkans, we’d have to stop training the Georgians on how to commit genocide and blame the Russians for it, but we’d still be able to have a well equipped Army, Air Force, and Navy.   Naturally, we would have to quit the cowboy diplomacy of the past eight years with actual diplomacy and we could do this and still have a defense budget that is more than three times larger than that of our nearest competitor.  We’d still be able to respond to threats and while we wouldn’t be able to do away with the yearly income tax we could give every single American tax payer a stimulus check for the amount of 2500 dollars.

So to reiterate, all we would have to do would be to cut defense spending from 700 billion to 200 billion (a slash of 500 billion) per year and we could either take that money and save social security, have universal healthcare, build new energy and transportation infrastructure, build and fund more schools and universities, or just simply give every American tax payer (all two hundred million) a 2500 dollar stimulus check.

All info regarding spending numbers was retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of…y_expenditures

He Died So For Less, and What Christmas is About

This is a season where we show thanks for what we have and consider the less fortunate, but unfortunately -like everything else in our materialistic society- this season has moved from a season where we celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus to a place of unabated avarice.  It is sad to see that in this nation we have forgotten how to love our neighbor, how to care about others, how to respect the lives of our countrymen and have become a nation of hedonistic spiritual bastards who have forgotten how to have love, kindness, self control, and basic human decency.  This “American” value system reared its ugly head on Blitz Day, current and former Wal-Slaves know the literal Hell on Earth that this is, which took place the day after Thanksgiving in a Wal-Mart Store in the suburbs of New York City.  What can only be described as a riotous mob decided that saving a few dollars on a television that they really did not need was more important than the life of another human being.

This mob literally broke down the front door to get at  bargains and stomped out the life of a guy who was doing seasonal work in overnight maintenance, which is arguably the worst position at Wal-Mart, just so they could save a few bucks.  Its really disturbing that this guy’s fellow associates were blocked by the surge of inhumanity from coming to his assistance so idiots could get bargains.  It was quite telling to watch the surveillance footage of the EMTs taking the guy to the ambulance and watching a customer just carelessly sauntering by with his 32 inch flat screen television without even giving a glance at the victim of avarice.  I really hope that the cattle who did this enjoy their Christmas and their cheap piece of Chinese crap and I really hope they are able to tell their children that they got a real steal and all it cost was a guy getting trampled to death.  What was even more shocking than the guy getting trampled underfoot was the fact that morons complained that they shut the store down to take care of the injured and the dead.  Yeah, ain’t that sad, they couldn’t get a bargain because some guy got trampled by a bunch of miserable excuses for human beings.

After the experience of working at Wal-Mart for about a year (praise Jesus that I no longer work there) and seeing what happened to this poor man I have reevaluated what Christmas is all about.  I never really took part, other than working retail, in the Black Friday insanity but I did try to get nice things for Christmas.  I realize now that this is not what Christmas is about.  This year I am going to attend Christmas Eve communion service, spend time with those I love, and I am also going to help those who cannot have a Christmas because of dire economic straits.  Christmas is not about gimme gimme gimme, its about giving of yourself.  Christmas is about emulating the love of Christ.  Its about giving to others.  This Christmas don’t shop for yourself, buy stuff for someone who has nothing.  Don’t look for bargains, but look for people whom you can be a blessing for.  If you know of someone who is struggling with their utility bills bless them by paying their bills for them.  If you know someone who is going hungry buy them groceries.  Many of us are blessed enough that we do not need gifts, heck I know this because last year at Wal-Mart lots and lots and lots of people were in the returns line trying to give back their gifts.  Instead of trying to get money for a gift you don’t want how about giving it to someone who may appreciate it.

Trust me folks there is not a foreign power strong enough to take us down, but our greed has a good chance of ripping us apart.  So this holiday season don’t be a selfish ogre, but be a blessing.  Teach your kids to be giving, this is not something they discover one day, so if they complain about what you give them then take something they love and give it to a kid who is less fortunate.  If this country does not learn about giving, generosity, kindness, love, and humility we will be brought low.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon.

After Action Report of The 2008 Campaign

As you know, unless you were in outer space for the past couple of years, last nigh America ended eight years of GOP presidency and voted its first Democrat into the White House since Clinton.   There are some who may wonder why the election went the way it did, and so I will try to break it down for you.  This election went Obama’s way and against McCain because of fund raising, management, message, platform, Palin, political climate, geography, and voter registration.

The first, and the biggest reason, Obama won was that he raised more than 200,000,000 more dollars in funds for his campaign (some six hundred million compared to around four hundred million to McCain) than McCain.  This meant that he could travel more, fund more commercials in more markets, and keep hammering home his message in many more markets than McCain did.  With the money he was able to raise he was able to keep hammering away in states such as Indiana, Virginia, Florida, and Colorado, North Carolina, Montana, and others that normally went Republican.  His money helped him conduct voter registration drives, put ads on television and kept his name in people’s minds.  McCain was forced to do somewhat less and because of this he went off the air very early in a lot of so called blue states and he even had to abandon some such as Michigan and Wisconsin all together because he simply did not have the cash on hand to go there.

Almost as important to fund raising in deciding this campaign was management, or in McCain’s case mismanagement.   Money alone is not what won this campaign, sure it was important, but managing resources and making decisions was far more decisive towards the outcome of this campaign.  Quite simply Obama’s staff did a far better job of running this campaign than McCain’s did.  Obama put together a brilliant fundraising campaign, put together a better message, a better attack strategy (the geography segment that we will talk about later), made better decisions about vice presidential choices, and did not make the so many crucial mistakes that McCain made.  McCain’s poor decision making cost him the advantage of the attackad as attack ads only work if you are above the reproach of the message of your own commercial (you can read more about this in the message section). Obama looked like the seasoned political veteran who knew how to win and McCain just looked old and outclassed.

Staying in the Ms, message and/or message confusion, cost McCain dearly.  Obama came out early as the candidate of hope and change.  McCain came out as country first and then change you can believe in.  Both had the words change in their slogans and at the end of the day this hurt McCain especially because Obama, using McCain’s own words about him voting with Bush more than ninety percent of the time, proved that McCain offered no change.  So every time that McCain talked about change people thought Barack Obama.  The negative attack ads that McCain used almost exclusively was equivelant to him shooting himself in the foot because while Obama did use attack ads he also had many campaign ads about policy and issue stances and McCain did not.  This was to McCain’s detriment as the only issue ad that McCain had was about energy.   Even worse for McCain was the fact that his decisions cost him the advantage of his attack ads.  The strongest example of this was his pre Palin ads where he attacked Obama’s inexperience, but this message was shot down when he brought in Palin who is arguably one of the most inexperienced people at any level of American politics.  McCain’s message further backfired when he linked Obama to the Wall Street Meltdown but retained Phil Gramm (the man who’s senate committee passed the legislation for the imbroglio) and was involved in the Keating Five fiasco of the late 1980s.  Even McCain’s Joe the Plumber Attack ad fell on a sour note because Joe was not Joe, was not a plumber, and was behind on his taxes anyway.   Last but not least McCain/Palin’s attack ad linking Obama to ACORN and Ayers backfired because you betcha McCain had ties to both as well.  McCain’s attack ad strategy went awry because again attack ads only work if you are not guilty of what you accuse your opponent of doing.  Ultimately McCain’s message was muddled and confused whereas Obama’s message was coherent, concises, and clear.  He simply ran on the I am not Bush ticket and he was able to deliver the death knell to McCain’s Maverick status by linking him to big oil, Bush, and the ignorance of the past eight years.  Obama promised hope and stayed on message even during the debate and in a time when McCain should have just ran away with it all (the debates) he failed because he engaged in tawdry attacks on McCain.  Oh yeah and McCain was not helped by the insipid personal attacks on Obama claiming he was not an American, was a Muslim, and all the other empty crap that only worked on a few ignoramouses.

Platform was critical to this year’s election.  McCain was forced to address an unpopular war, a horrible economy, education, energy and he had to prove he would not be four or eight more years of Bush while doing so.  This really hurt him bad because he could not.  Obama was able to shape a platform that was ultimately very similar to McCain but that did not have the stigma of George W Bush on it.  McCain tried to call Obama’s platform the ideas of congressional liberals, but he forgot that in 2006 the American people voted in those very same congressional liberals.

Sarah Palin was the decision that ultimately ended up costing McCain the election.  She did galvanize the religious right, but she scared the hell out of everyone else.  Palin took away McCain’s best shot which was to say McCain has experience to deal with the tough times ahead, but Obama is a novice.  This meant that even though McCain tried to continue the Obama “not ready to lead” attack that it fell on deaf ears.  Even worse, Palin came off as stupid (no, not Simple [one could argue Harry Truman was simple]) and in a George W Bush type of way.  People saw her and they imagined McCain dying of old age and her as the next president of the United States and they quite literally freaked out, and for what its worth so did I.  Palin literally failed in her multiple interviews with the press and came off looking as a backwoods buffoon and it did not help that in her satire Tina Fey’s impression came off as more intelligent than Palin.  Palin did get a few Hillary votes as some women voted her because she was a woman, but too many people saw her as the second Bush especially after she spouted the bit of Iraq is God’s will.  Palin also forced McCain to not even think about Jeremiah Wright, becuase Palin’s Pastor was even more bizaare (seriously her pastor in Wasilla, while in Kenya got about four people killed because he literally started a witch hunt), and her pastor had some pretty wierd (for Assembly of God Rapturists) ideas about the last day because he believed Alaska would be a refuge state in the last days and that the church must be there to support people, but thats a topic we’ve already talked about so scrounge around and enjoy what you see here.  Palin was the person who destroyed the McCain campaign.

Political climate caused McCain considerable grief as well as he had to run as Republican in a nation soured on the entire GOP because of George Bush and the legacy of the Bush and GOP congress government.  People are tired of Iraq, they are tired of bailouts for billionaires and the shafting of the poor, of ignorance and the politics of fear and so they took it out on McCain.  McCain was, politically speaking, in the wrong place at the wrong time because this election was a referendum on the Bush Administration and so people voted out Bush and it did not help McCain for going on record as saying he voted with Bush more than ninety percent of the time.

In addition to the above comes the factor of geography because as in real estate elections are made or broken by location, location, location.  Quite simply  McCain spent way too much time in Pennsylvania in the last couple of weeks of the election and there was no really sound reason for this.  McCain spending all that time in Pennsylvania would be akin to Obama spending the last two weeks of the election in Texas and it would have yielded the same results.  Obama was very smart to drop by a few of the solid blue states, but he focused most of his time in Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, and New Mexico and this really helped him win whereas McCain spent most of the final phase of this election going to Pennsylvania which hurt McCain because he threw away Millions of dollars on that state that could have bought precious campaign ad minutes and electioneering in Florida and Virgina.  Obama mastered Geography while McCain did not

Finally, but certainly not least, Obama launched a powerful voter registration drive.  It was so well ran and so effective that McCain even tried to make it an attack issue via ACORN.  Obama got people to get out the vote.  This allowed him to bury McCain.  Quite simply if you get more people registered to vote and you get them to vote for you than the other guy you win.  Obama did this very well.

To sum it up there was a variety of reasons Obama won and McCain lost and chief among these were Money, management, message, platform, political climate, Palin, geography, and voter registration.  McCain was, as the kids say, pwnd by Obama in all these areas.