Todd's Views: Politics

Republican economic policy:
This kind of goes without saying, that Republicans are generally the upper middle class and the wealthy doing what they can to retain that wealth by making the lower middle class and the poor pay to keep the nation solvent. Now to be fair, I find that a lot of small business owners tend to be Republican, and they are usually well represented by that party. On the other hand, I don't remember a single Republican doing anything here in California that positively affected the working class and their paychecks. If you think the "Trickle Down" theory works, you probably also believe a dam is designed to put more water in the river.

Well, that was the case up until now, anyway. Now, with the MFFB in office, Republicans have become extreme. Now they work in favor of the elite only. Even those lower in the eschelons of the wealthy are bearing some of the brunt of Bush's policies, both environmental, social, and economic. But the real money, the real fat cats, are doing just fine. They are, after all, Bush's base (this from Bush's own lips during the 2004 election campaign).

Which leads me to...

Taxes:
Personally, I really honestly think that taxes are a necessary evil. The current tax system with its exemptions and tax shelters is an unnecessary evil. We should implement a solid, across the board percentage tax and do away with exemptions all together. No exemptions. None. Period. Maybe a low end limit on income that would have to pay, but this would be determined by a percentage of the national average income, say anyone making less than 30% of the national average. And this should become a constitutional amendment. I've got more to say on this topic if you're interested...

Congressional Pay Raises:
Criminal. The people should vote on congressional pay raises. What happened to government of the people, by the people, and for the people? When did it become government for the politicians to leech off of? No, congressmen should have to be voted a raise by their constituents. Think about it. Haven't you ever seen a politican that's supposed to be directly representing your interests take a stand that you are directly opposed to? And you just *knew* it was a special interest group pushing to take that stand? Don't you think the people's views would suddenly take a much higher priority if we controlled congress' payroll rather than letting them vote pay raises for themselves? This is another thing for which I believe we need a constitutional amendment.
This ties in with the whole taxes issue...

Foreign policy

I used to have a lot to say about foreign policy, but it now it's all pie in the sky. Bush damaged the credibility of the U.N., but even more he destroyed the credibility of the U.S. What an ass. We should not be using the men and women of our armed forces like games pieces in a grown up version of the game "Risk." But that's what Bush is going at the direction of his NeoCon advisers. We should be all about being the bigger guy, and Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda didn't change that fact. The NeoCon's certainly used 9/11 to change the U.S. for the worse.

China
People are real burned up that the U.S. didn't use its political and financial might more effectively to force China to change its domestic policies and clean up its human rights violations. I for one think the Chinese government is just plain evil, but this is another situation where the world has to unite under the auspices of the U.N. to make change where change is needed, and it is certainly needed here. The U.S. can't do it alone, and we stood to suffer greatly financially if we didn't cut a deal with China since no other nation was really bothering to put the kind of pressure on China that was required. The U.K. tends to stand with us on many of the global issues, but France, Italy, Spain, etc., they tend to go all limp and suck up to whoever the bad guy is. Forget having a spine.

Cuba
Why the heck are we still picking on these guys? Does it really matter anymore? Look, if you want to get rid of Castro, throw the borders open. Let the people in Cuba get a real taste of capitalism. Teach them what they're missing. I predict Castro would last about... oh... 2 years, tops.

Iraq
We were lied to, the Department of Defense came out this year and said so, and the Pentagon followed suit in early March of 2007. Bush cherry picked the data, fed it to Congress over the pleas of top CIA managers, fed the same bull to the rest of the world, destroyed the only stop that existed on an ethnic time bomb, and created the biggest haven for terrorist extremists outside of the Pakistan border with Afghanistan. We should pack up and get the hell out of the way now. The Pentagon has released a report describing the situation in Iraq as "beyond a civil war." It's anarchy, and there's no way to tell who is the bad guy and who is the good guy until a bullet is shot or a grenade is launched. Back in November, the number of Iraqi civilians killed stood at over 600,000 -- that's one in 40 Iraqis. If you really want to support the troops, get them out of there. We have no achievable mission anymore. Face facts and quit killing our best and brightest on foreign soil.

Afghanistan
We should go back in, rout the Taliban that have come back, chase them back across the border and...

Pakistan
...then invade Pakistan and wipe out the towns where the Taliban are known to thrive. Seriously. If you want to really eliminate terrorism, make the announcement that the Pakistani border is now considered the number one threat to the world, then carpet-bomb the crap out of the towns there. Tell Musharraf that if he doesn't stand back, you'll nuke the place. Period. Once you've wiped the place clean, send in relief crews for the survivors. You don't have to actually wipe them entirely out, but you can make it clear that the Taliban will be chased, hunted down, destroyed. You hit us, we hit you. Period. Then you put one helluva a huge wall along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border.

Russia
Putin is putting up the bad-ass front because he sees that Bush has his hands tied the same way Russia did when it wasted its military resources trying to take over Afghanistan (sound familiar?). Bush's replacement needs to start off by letting Russia know we are more than willing to flatten anyone that appears to be taking a stand against us, but we're much more effective cooperating than competing.

Iran
Like Russia, Iran is enjoying America's inability to stretch itself thin enough to do anything about them. Their president, Amin Adhinajad is head and shoulders better at diplomacy than Bush, and so he's pressing on with his plan to build a nuclear arsenal, and the only thing that will stop him is bombing of all his nuclear facilities. And unfortunately, there may be no alternatives. I think Bush's replacement should do exactly that and take his lumps for it afterwards, but you can't stand by and watch a nation ruled by religious extremists acquire a weapon that would quite likely be launched at the behest of an Islamic fundamentalist whack-job. I realize the youth of Iran typically like the U.S., but that's a fad, and rather pointless to focus on. It was the youth of Iran that took American hostages back in the '70s when one lunatic Ayatollah fired up an entire nation, Hitler-style, and told them that America was the cause of their problems. I don't trust a nation that gives a religious order all the power.

United Kingdom
As soon as the Brits throw Tony Blair out on his butt and replace him with someone unsoiled by association with George Bush, we can get on with the task of rebuilding diplomatic relations with England and the rest of the world.

Europe
The European states have certainly come a long way. We need to recognize, support, and partner with their economic model if we want to have any chance of surviving the economic blitzkrieg that's going to come out of China, India, and somewhere down the road, South America.

Africa
It's a bit politically ignorant to lump all the nations on the African continent together, but the majority of them suffer from the same political and social problems. Bush's replacement needs to focus on the resources that Africa has and help to remove the roadblocks to their development. The biggest roadblocks are national instability, lack of law enforcement, and corruption. Get these in place and you have a framework within which you can start to think about building the basic systems of any successful society: education, agriculture, healthcare, transportation, communication, and industry. None of these can be built and grow because of the horrible war conditions and hoarding of resources by the governments in power. We can leave them stewing in the cesspool that is Africa or we can reach out and make a better world.

Mexico
We need to help our neighbors to the south to build an economy that is self-sufficient rather than providing a tacit welfare system for an entire nation's poorest people. We need walls on the border, a huge border patrol presence, a guest worker program complete with proper income taxation, and controls the possible influx of terrorists. But those measures may fail under the enormous pressure of people trying to get in just so they can support their families. The other half of the issue is the horrible economic condition of Mexico and the utter failure of the Mexican president, Vicente Fox, to effectively build his economy to provide jobs and decent healthcare throughout the the entire country and not just Mexico City and the tourist areas.

More later...

And George Bush is directly responsible for September 11th, 2001. He had all the warnings, intelligence documents, and action plans the former administration and his current advisors could supply him with, and he actively ignored them. And by actively, I mean he downgraded terrorism policies, demoted experts in administration to sub-cabinet levels, refused to read memos, letters, and written pleas, refused to follow-up on the FBI's determination that the USS Cole was caused by Al Qaeda, etc., etc. Just read the timeline I put together and judge for yourself who did what and who didn't.

My favorite nickname for George is Monkey Faced Frat Boy (MFFB for short). I can't believe 59 million people were so stupid, uninformed, working with a warped moral compass, or some combination of these that they would vote against ANY opponent of Bush. The 2004 election seriously damaged my esteem for general American population; so easily manipulated, so easily frightened, so easily blinded.

He's greezy. He's hypocritical on a scale that takes my breath away. He dared during the 2000 race for office to point fingers at Gore about campaign contributions while vacuuming up special interest money by the bucket load. He's in bed with so many industrial polluters, he probably pours toxic run-off onto his Cheerios every morning. Texas has the worst environmental record in the nation at this time. I don't think I have to remind anyone that Bush is a foreign policy lightweight who can't name the leaders of the European nations without an advisor whispering the answers in his ear. His campaign finance reform proposal was laughed out of existence by nearly all the major Congressional leaders and was called a "hoax" by John McCain. I could go on and on, but you'd be better off reading The Skeleton Closet. Oh, one last parting shot: Bush has plunged us back into staggering multi-trillion dollar debt with his dusted-off-and-refried-Reaganomics taxation of the middle and lower class, tax exemptions for his business buddies, and exhorbitant military spending. If you voted for him based on his baseless campaign tripe about how Democrats are "tax and spend" freaks, even though his own record is stained with his turning the Texas $6 billion surplus into a $10 billion deficit, then shame on you.

But let's not stop there. He cut funding for the environment and energy conservation. He rescinded arsenic standards, rolled back mining regulations, ignored his promises to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and is proposing opening national forests to highway projects, logging, and drilling.

And I saved the best for last: after watching Dear Ole Daddy Bush get roasted for going back on his "No New Taxes" promise, Gee Dub is determined to cut taxes and utterly kill the surplus that Clinton managed to create. Eight years of fiscal responsibility wiped out in less than one year by a monkey faced frat boy. Texas had a $6 billion surplus, and Gee Dub turned it into a $700 million shortfall. His little brother is similarly destroying Florida, turning a $3 billion surplus into a $1 billion shortfall. These states are now heavily in debt thanks to irresponsible tax cuts. Yeah, I think the electoral system should be dismantled ASAP...

Al Gore

Oh my god. Al Gore has matured, come into his own, become the world leader that the Republican Party couldn't stop him from becoming. He was destined to be a big name in history, and he has taken on the mantle of world leader without ever being sworn into the office he rightfully won and had stolen from him. To hear Al speak now sends shivers down my spine. He's amazing, powerful, erudite, elegant, confident, ... geez, this love-fest could go on for several pages. So, why did Al seem so stiff? Simple: he came off as a consummate politician. Bill Clinton had one thing in his favor, that he's so darned likeable. Remember when he and Yeltsin had their summit meeting and afterwards met the press? Yeltsin had Bill cracking up about something. Watching Bill started me cracking up. He's just likeable, and he comes off most of the time as real. You never see him sweat. He seems to be enjoying himself and in command of the situation. And that's important. Gore doesn't have that good ole boy quality. Yeah, I hear the accent back there when he's talking, but there's a down-to-earth quality that he's missing. Before, he was so stiff at the podium that he seemed slightly out of touch, slightly evasive when speaking before a crowd, and that hurt his image during the 2000 election campaign.

But now, without the pressure of running for office, he's at ease with himself and his audience. George Bush has become the consummate whipping boy, the easiest target in U.S. history for politically punditry, to the point that Gore doesn't even have to take broad-handed swipes at George. He can play the touch game, the slow and easy, and take the piss out of George all day long without breaking a sweat.

By the way, he did NOT "invent" the Internet, and never claimed to; he did on the other hand push bills through Congress that funded the Internet. Very farsighted, IMHO. I don't sense any evil from him. This is the guy who liquidated all his stocks when he entered Congress because he feels it's an inherent conflict of interest for legislator to vote on bills that affect their portfolios. Gore has an inate moral compass that I can appreciate. I think it's a real shame he didn't win the electoral vote, especially since the majority of people of this nation *did* vote for him. He'd certainly be doing a better job than Bush... But then, so could my 12 year daughter. A standing ovation to Gore and what he has blossomed into. Outstanding!

Dick Cheney

Signatory to PNAC, which contains the rants of a group of power-mad and power-hungry old men with dreams of reshaping the world in their image -- literally. You have to go to that site and read it to believe it. It's essentially Dick Cheney's "Mein Kampf," in which he, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, and two dozen other movers and shakers in the NeoCon movement, define a movement interested in tearing down nations that they are afraid of and replacing them with hotdogs, apple pie, and Chevrolet Democracy, just like we have here in the U.S. The implied notion is that people not like us want to be like us, and they pose a threat because they're different. And as long as they're different, we need to pump trillions into the military-industrial complex and steamroll those countries over and over until every bump is made smooth, every turban compressed into a Yankees baseball cap, and everyone is Christian and holds an income tax paying job.

Dick Cheney is a sick, balding, homophobic little man who can't die of heart disease too quickly. Too bad his death won't cause the entire hive of Hitleresque drones to go limp as well.

Bill Clinton

He was a great President, but he suffers from ZCDD (Zipper Control Deficit Disorder). Great domestic policies, C- on foreign policies with the exception of running to kick butt on nations that need it. Still, thanks to ole Bill my kids will have U.S. Government and Sex Ed combined into one class. Thanks a bunch, pal... On the other hand, compared with the MFFB, he was an angel and a genius.

One thing you can give him credit for is his effort to quash Al Qaeda during his administration. Oh, wait -- you're not one of those people that believes the whack jobs on Fox News, are you? You don't actually think that Clinton set us up for 9/11? Here, let me help you fight off the propoganda: read this timeline of events starting from the beginning of the Clinton era and ending with events that immediately followed 9/11.

(Former President) George Bush
Reagan Lite. All the corruption, half the popularity. He was the former head of the CIA! What did we expect? Points on Bush:

1. Had Noriega, the head of a sovereign nation, arrested and brought to trial in the U.S. This is actually illegal by international law.

2. He didn't finish the job during Desert Storm. Saddam Hussein should have been deposed and turned over to the World Court. He's evil and must be dealt with, but even though I'd love for him to find a bomb in his morning falafel, I don't think it's up to the U.S. to imprison or kill him. Still, he should have been removed from power.

3. No new taxes. HAHAHAHAHAHAAH!!!!! Yeah, right. This was unrealistic from the get go, and even if it was attainable, this was not the solution to the budget problem.

4. Republican. Four more years of Reaganomics. Nuff said. Bill Clinton, or for that matter, any non-Republican, was long overdue.

Too his credit, though, he wasn't power mad like his son, The Monkey-Faced Frat Boy. He once gave an interview about the first Iraq War, and to the question of why he didn't take out Saddam then, he replied something like, "I've heard that question a lot since then, and the answer is simple. We sat down with the coalition, which included the countries around Iraq and Kuwait as well as our European allies, and we came to an agreement that we would leave Saddam in power and Baghdad standing. And that's what we did." It was a simple, honest answer, and one I can respect. He gave his word he'd fight the battle a specific way, and he kept his word. He didn't destabilize an entire sector or the planet. He listened to the advice of his peers, came to a consensus with the members of the coaltion, and lived by the agreements made. He restored order. I admire his clarity of purpose.

Of course, given his family's deep involvement with the Saudis, there may be more to the story that his integrity and clarity of purpose, but I think his time serving in World War II left its mark, and he had no desire to risk American lives anymore than was necessary to achieve the stated reason for waging war.

Pat Buchanan
A racist. A bigot. A snake oil salesman. I found a writeup (one of many on the Web) of his record that reveals a virulently racist individual. View it at http://www.realchange.org/buchanan.htm.

Jesse Jackson
Remember when Jesse ran for president? Y'know what? I'd have voted for him. Yup, if he had stuck it out, I'd have voted for him. On the other hand, I've since learned more about Jesse and how he uses the Rainbow Coalition and his own reputation to squeeze businesses for money. He recently tried to put the pressure on Bay Area businesses, but they didn't play ball. In fact, T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor took Jesse head-on with a scorching rebuttal that really laid it all out for everyone to see and invited Jesse to a debate, and Jesse ran with his tail between his legs. Or perhaps it was between someone else's legs? Hm.....

Which raises an interesting question: Why isn't there a well-known, well-publicized political party that has as its candidate for president an experienced black politician? I don't know about you but I'm a bit tired of minorities looking at 200 years of white presidents and bemoaning their inequality in this country. If you put a minority individual into that hallowed position, you remove any perceived obstacles to success from the minds of millions of young people. You remove the perception that whites run this country alone. You give a crystal clear example to the rest of the world that democracy can, at times, represent everyone equally.

And just so I don't seem to view the races as just white and black, I feel that ANY minority would do. ANYONE that wasn't a white male would fill the bill, although it's my gut reaction that a white woman would fall just short of what's needed. Heck, an asian woman would rock the world's impression of the USA, wouldn't she?

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenneger
When people ask me if I'm a Democrat, implicit in that question is whether I am a fervent Democrats-only Democrat. While I think that Ahnold Schwarzengroper is a macho dork when it comes to women and their issues, but overall I believe he's got the long term best interests of the state of California in mind. Except when it comes to the schools (he deferred a huge chunk of the school budget and then conveniently "forgot" to pay it back, resulting in huge losses on the parts of schools and teachers) and nurses (he's been siding with hospitals against nursing unions), I've actually stated the position that I support Arnold.

On the other hand, I wouldn't give him my support for President. He's not a citizen, and no matter how great he is as The Governator, no non-citizen should ever be elected to such a powerful position.

On the other hand, he got into office on the back of a power grab by California Republicans. Which leads us to....

Former California Governor Grey Davis
I think Grey was actually doing an awesome job, but the media was spearing him with "The Power Crisis". I didn't start off a Davis fan, but I really grew to like his sincerity and go-getter attitude. He actually functioned as a representative of the people of the state. I was rooting for him to get the incredible mess PG&E and SoCal Edison had created and power companies like Halliburton had taken advantage of worked out. Put it this way: my lights didn't flickered once and my rates were just fine, thanks. It was a power grab, pure and simple, by people that couldn't give a rat's butt about the people of California. It was big money reacting to being stung.