3/28/2008:   John McCain's stance on the subprime mortgage disaster: "Screw you. We're not going to bail you out, and we're going raise the bar for buying a home. We're going to make the mortgage lenders apologize and promise not to do it again, but we're not going to regulate them in any meaningful way. Here's a cardboard box. Knock yourself out."

3/28/2008:   Ever since Nancy Grace harrassed a mother whose child died, accusing her of neglect and of being a bad mother, until the woman committed suicide, I refuse to watch her segments on CNN. Nancy Grace tries to take the position of moral outrage, but now I can only see hatred, spite, and just base meanness in her. Her brand of journalism is based on scraping the bottom of the barrel, shrieking at the camera and shoving the muck in our faces. She gets paid to rake people over the coals; She's a horrible human being and needs to be taken off the air.

3/27/2008:   So much hay has been made about Obama's pastor that my wife came out of her self-imposed ban on political discussion with me and asked me why the controversy didn't make me question Obama's character.

Obama's pastor said some pretty colorful, unpatriotic, and even downright racist things. Political pundits have had a field day with it, accusing Obama essentially of guilt by association. And there's certainly something to be said for not keeping company with racists.

But to be clear, there is still absolutely no comparison between electing an intelligent, inspirational, eloquent man with a great track record, which, by the way, does not include racist activities or statements of any kind, to a doddering old man with a volcanic temper and a love for George Bush's horrificly tragic policies. George Bush is a bastard, criminal, traitor, and John McCain is and has been one of Gee Dub's biggest supporters. Nay, not just supporter; disciple. He is the worst thing that could happen to this country following a fascist pig freak like George I-Like-Toast Bush.

Let me say it again: in spite of the occasional racist or anti-George Bush utterance on the part of his pastor, Barack Obama has never, in his adult life, been caught on tape uttering a racist comment, acting in a racist manner, or even implying that he sees a difference in the skin color of his constituency.

So, to make it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt, no, I do not equate the sins of the pastor with his parishioner.

3/27/2008:   Glenn Beck wrote a thought provoking and only vaguely accurate account of the incredible financial ruin that we and our prosperity will shoulder in the coming decades. I wasn't going to bother writing this month -- work has just been off the charts lately and I've been SWAMPED -- but a lot has happened recently, and what finally got me to the critical point was the thought of letting this right wing tool get away with soft-stepping the reasons and solutions for this problem.

Glenn correctly states that the $53 trillion needed to keep Social Security and Medicaid afloat constitutes a staggering burden that currently far outstrips the $14.1 trillion budget this nation operates with. But then he uses fuzzy math to intimate that these social net programs can't be saved. He throws out an average tax load of $455,000 dollars per American household to support these programs. He also states that the taxes for Medicaid would have to rise 122%, and for Social Security 26%.

What Glenn and other right wing tools refuse to say out loud is that Social Security could be made solvent forever if we simply remove the Social Security tax cap. What would that mean? Well, I pay $5600 into the system every year. So does Bill Gates. No, I don't mean proportionately, I mean Bill Gates pays $5600 into Social Security every year.

The rich do not pay to support the nation that made them rich. They do not own up to their part of the social contract. They get a HUGE break on the taxes that we all need to pay into the system in order for it to work properly for everyone. But if you lift the cap, if you make people who make over $96,000 a year pay the same percentage that we all pay, the system would immediately have all the money it needed to stay solvent. Hey, if you want, you can take all the budget overages and give the uber-rich rebate checks at the end of the year.

There were never any WMDs in Iraq.
No links to Al Qaeda.
No ties to 9/11.
Bush, Cheney, and Condie lied to you.
You ignored the facts.
You re-elected a liar and a murderer by proxy.
But now it's time to show your support for the troops.

3/27/2008:   Back when Jimmy Carter was president, the economy was recovering from a period of inflation and an artificially produced oil shortage. We were still dealing with the Iranian hostage crisis and, while negotiations were making progress, our single attempt to rescue them had ended tragically and had highly embarrassed the U.S. and its troops. The end result was that Jimmy Carter seemed okay with domestic issues, but was weak when dealing with the rest of the world. Too soft spoken and too soft on foreign relation, Mr. Carter set the stage whereby the GOP would dominate the presidency for the next three terms.

In came Reagan. A great speaker, tough on countries that had come to see America as soft, and with a supply-side economics plan that dug companies out of the inflation rut, he was what this country needed, at least for the first four years. His policies were in effect for too long, leading to the excess of the 80s, the spin from inflation to recession, and the march of the GOP towards power madness. His second term, which he spent in the first throes of Alzeimer's, was largely controlled by this second in command, George Bush, Sr., and ended with his administration flouting the Constitution, the separation of powers, the bailiwick of the federal Congress, and the rule of law itself in the Iran-Contra scandal. What should have been grounds for impeachment instead was ignored so an old man could fade from public view with his last shreds of dignity.

Then came George Bush the Elder. A WWII veteran and self-made multi-millionaire, he understood serving in the military and running a business. He should have known better than to allow Reagan's economic policies, by then derided as "Reagonimcs" and universally described as "sucks," to continue ruining the economy, but then again, his family was benefiting from the "trickle-down economics" theory, so why mess with a good thing, right? So what if the rest of rich were hoarding what, in principle, is supposed to be economic expansion funding? So what if the economy was stagnating as money was invested overseas and in luxury items? So what if the middle class was shrinking as industry moved to poorer countries through lack of regulation?

Whether it was because the DNC woke up or because of Dan Quayle's inability to spell "potato," Bush failed to get reelected.

In came Bill Clinton. He flipped the economy back to demand-side, decreasing the tax burden on the middle class that had become nearly unbearable under the GOP. He eliminated tax cuts and loopholes that had enriched Bush and his buddies for 12 years. He put the subsequent funds back into schools and social net programs. The elderly stopped having to eat cat food and live in pain with no meds. Social equity programs flourished. The economy and our technological advantage leaped up like a freed Clydesdales and surged forward. But there was a problem: the tech sector was throwing venture capital around like it was toilet paper. Things got completely out of control, and just before reality started to set in, Clinton's 8 years were up and he was handing control over the government to a man with exactly one thought on his mind: toast.

George W. Monkey Faced Frat Boy Bush ignored the programs Clinton had put in place to track down and destroy Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. He threw out every initiative for improving our education and healthcare systems. He put every national resource we have on the auction block. He was going to get rich, and he was going to stick it to whoever he could. The average American citizen went from being a valued human being to an expendable, renewable resource for the uber-rich to fence in, manage, and consume. And when 9/11 occurred, he had the only reason he needed to invade the oil rich lands his family wished so desparately to control. While he marched our military around the globe to take over as many countries in the middle east as he could destabilize, while plundered our treasury and slashed the budget to focus all our monetary resources into no-bid contracts with companies he and his staff colluded with, he lifted nearly the entire tax burden from the shoulders of the rich and corporations and placed it solidly on the middle class. And to get the money the middle class wouldn't pony up, he began borrowing on a scale that would have embarrassed even Ronald Reagan. We owe other countries hundreds of billions of dollars we simply cannot pay, and we have invaded, based on known lies, countries that have become havens and training ground for terrorist organizations.

And now we have a choice to make, and folks, I don't really care which of the Democrats gets into office, but our next president cannot be a Republican. John McCain, the presumptive candidate for the GOP, is Reagan at the wrong time and the wrong place. Trickle-down, supply side economics is raping our country, sucking all the money into the pockets of the people who need it least. We need to scale back on the saber rattling and random attacks, the bluster and lack of diplomacy. We need more soft words, less big stick, especially since our big stick is broken. We need support for education, healthcare, Social Security, Medicaid. We need to control offshoring of jobs. We need to regulate the damage being caused by NAFTA. We need to reacquire our technological edge. We need a rebuilding of FEMA. We need to finally fix the problems created by Katrina. We need to do away with signing statements, shore up the separation of powers, and make sure our president can no longer violate the Constitution without severe and immediate retribution. We need to treat the average citizen like they matter again.

John McCain will do none of this. John McCain will leave trickle-down economics burning our middle class for another four years. He will leave our military in Iraq, he will continue to let Afghanistan fester, and he will drain our resources into the pockets of contractors in those two countries. He will not help the middle class. He will not help the poor. He will empower the Republicans in his party, and the pendulum will continue to swing so far out to the right that the clock will surely tip over.

I respect John McCain's sacrifice to his country in Vietnam -- who doesn't? -- but no more than I respect John Kerry's sacrifice, and the GOP "swift-boated" him, spit on him and his service, all to hold on to power. "Swift boated," a phrase that has come to mean "a coordinated campaign of lies designed to publicly impugn one's character." So why should McCain's service make him sacrosanct? It shouldn't. But I digress...

We need someone, anyone, to heal this country, and not one person that the GOP put forward qualifies. Period, end of story.

Democrats: You must vote for whatever candidate gets the nomination from the Democratic Party. You must pool your support of the Democratic candidate, regardless of who he or she may be, and defeat the Republicans. You must show the world that America is not weak or stupid. We showed them how stupid a little fearmongering can make us back in 2004. Now it's time that we correct that. You must do the right thing.

Look, I am so in favor of Barack Obama that I just can't imagine Hillary taking the nomination. No way, no how. And yet, if she gets the nomination, I will staunchly support her against McCain. I worry that she's too corporate, that she'll lie to get to the White House, and that's not the kind of character that we need from our president, but McCain is not to be tolerated, and, if I have no other choice, I will gladly put her in office.

So let's get real people. Let's evict the evil that is the GOP.