Obama’s Recovery: Partners or Predators?

Is the President playing “Go Fish” or Chess?

Teaching neo-cons that there can more on the table besides a “carrot or a stick.” 86

Americans listened, considered and agreed with the propositions for national recovery presented in the Obama campaign. If there were any confusion, we may now conclude it arose from the painstaking media grooming of its implied image of the depth and severity of the economic looting done under the cover of the Bush autocracy. Over the decades of “conservative” administrations such as Reagan or the senior Bush, we have grown passively accepting of a routine corruption which had been presented as an "acceptable" and entirely "American," neo-con "leadership" principle.

It has gone even further than that.

We have accepted these gradually growing insults piece meal (Remember the frog who jumps from the boiling water, but remains, comfortably, in the slowly warming, tepid pan?” Yum. Boiled frog.) Americans have slowly and patiently been convinced that a great number of reactionary, neo-con principles are American values or, even, make sense.. For example, in the past couple of weeks from this writing, an “American flag” ship was “piratized” off the coast of Somalia. Its legitimate and honorable “mission” there was the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian supplies to our national friends in Kenya.

But wait.

The reason that ship was flying an American flag -- it had been temporarily renamed after the State of Alabama -- was thanks to a UN ruling. For some reason, the goods of our well intentioned altruism had to be purchased in the US at a price eight times higher than the same commodities could be purchased in the region. For some reason, those commodities had to be transported in an “American flag” ship which plied the waters of the Middle East at eight times the cost of a local alternative.

For some reason? For what reason? The neo-cons have successfully imposed their idea that any good act should begin with a good profit.

The same things happen everywhere. The Indians were persuaded to quit producing generic AIDS drugs, making the Bush Altruism Initiative of aiding African states with that disease one which purchased only “full priced,” first line, American made pharmaceuticals for the effort. Coupled with the irrational neo-con -- and now, Papal -- condemnation of prophylactic supply, promotion and use, the pharmaceutical model of “altruistic” profitability was realized, lubricated and firmly saddled astride vacuous, failed premises of abstinence and other convenient, recent appliances of the prevailing mythology.

These points are presented as example of our amazing, well developed idea that men cannot do good for any reason if it excludes profit. The possibility of assistance, altruism or even cooperation must always be offered in conjunction with an appealing, “oh, by the way,” kind of suddenly and innocently discovered profit.

With this brief account of fundamental neo-con psychology, let us move on the matter of the stimulus and its unwilling participants -- partners and predators.

Why are these participants unwilling and why are these participants, well, even participants in the first place?

First, who are they? The list can easily be extracted from the tedious, frustrating denizens of the current news cycle. There were bankers who got money to make loans and then didn’t make loans. There were health care HMO’s who received an invitation to change their ways, then didn’t change their ways. There were car company executives who were told to rationally reorganize themselves who then proposed “changes” which guaranteed the continuation of their same ruthlessly destructive past policies. There were pharmaceutical companies who were told to release their legislatively protected extortion-strangle-hold on the medical franchise. There were Wall Street “hedge hogs,” oil speculators and investment bankers who were told that they had to “take a hit” on their inflated, imaginary profit and loss statements, who, instead, scrambled around to move their imaginary “profits” off shore so they could pay all of their attention to the looting of the stimulus money (“stay the course,” “cut the taxes,” “make me whole,” et cetera).

All of them were train wreck remnants of the “If anything good is going to happen, it is going to happen to me!” greed ideology of the past. Their obsession of the moment is an arrogant example of their hubris, that is, their absolute rejection of the new “change” and “cooperate” theme of the Obama administration -- and the electorate which created it. Naturally, the first step for these brain dead felons was to purchase some Senators, which they did. By the way, some of our Senators are simply too frightened or honorable to enlist in this outrage. It seems that the real bargains in the Senate are the bourbon drenched neo-con bigots -- hillbillies with an ill advised continuing allegiance to the previous regime of Bush protected avarice.

All these folks seriously believe that what is happening to us right now is nothing more than a current model of what has happened to us in the past. Although this may be more exciting than usual to these “geniuses of capitalism” who are managing the pharmaceutical, banking, health care and other no bid contracting interests, they remain convinced that Obama’s efforts to rescue our economy present nothing new, that is, simply more of the same opportunities which have served their historical extraction practices in the past. They expect and intend to emerge from this “difficulty of the masses” with even fatter pockets and the “ownership deeds” to even more Senators.

Did we ever imagine what feelings a vampire might experience after he sucked the blood from the last living human? In this case, he would convince himself that his last victim was actually not the last living human and fly off gleefully in search of his next prey.

Obama’s proffered gambit was simple enough. “Stop exploiting our economy. It cannot survive any more of your pretend version of free marketism. All of you parasites have done unacceptably well for yourselves at the expense of everyone else, and now, the 'everyone else' is staggering along, near death, as you contemplate your schemes to extract even more from the ambulance staff which has come to rescue them.”

He has asked the bankers to take his bail out money and change their ways, take a few risks for the good of the country (for them, country = their personal finances). Instead, they have been shopping to purchase each other in the hour of peril while sitting on their bulging coffers of bail out money. He has asked the health care moguls to reconfigure their extortion to include the interest of those in the electorate who might need a doctor. Instead, those same moguls have redirected all their discretionary profits to an ad campaign to wreck his Presidency.

Obama has asked the executives of GM and Chrysler to “bleed a little” and reconfigure their business plans to something remotely rational. Instead, they have collapsed to their road weary, inflammatory “swan song” of blaming the unions for everything. He has asked the Senators to, provocatively to them, think of the good of the country instead of their “astonishingly beneficent campaign contributions.” Instead, they -- along with their neo-con progeny in the House -- have marched lockstep in a dismal phalanx of denial and greed all the while hoping in their wet dreams for Obama's failure and destruction.

Does all this describe a foolish failure of a pollyanna in the White House? Has the new President continued to “walk into the props” of a superior neo-con meat grinder whose sole claim to fame is more experience at cynicism?

Maybe not.

Who is ready to characterize Obama’s rather formidable capacity for effective political strategy based on such a short sighted view of his leadership path as it has emerged thus far? If you have this inclination, perhaps you should consider lowering your voice for a few months. If you think his embarrassing rejection at the hands of the so-called House Republicans signifies evidence of a lethal miscalculation in his political tactics, perhaps you should wait for the next act in this play.

Still, it seems that every ambitiously honorable attempt by this White House has ended poorly, that is, all the entreaties “across the aisle” have resulted in another of his restorative plans being dragged behind the truck of guffawing and boisterously emboldened, medievalist Republicans and other corporate schemers. The “Fox Conclusion?” The President is, aside from being a socialist, fascist, traitor, Muslim, gun controlling, international relations appeasing, abortion financing, gay black man, a ninny. The Foxites believe that they have prevailed. The tea baggers think that their frenzied message, whatever it was, is compelling, that is, has gained traction. The bankers think that they will be vindicated in the future, elevated by their tenacious grip on their publicly financed “McDuck Money Bins” and their complete refusal to participate in the resurrection of the economy or the country, now in a mortal, death grip peril. The AIG boys assume that tax payers won’t remember paying the cash for the outrage of their bonuses.

On the other hand, we can create this model in another frame entirely.

Obama entered his position of power with ambitions to reconfigure the economy (and a long list of other things, too) in a way that would redirect some of America’s prosperity back to those who have patiently provided the resources which support it. He knew, even before his inauguration, that those who had developed a criminal “nutrition” requirement of vast tax money in their pockets would react violently to retain their previous parasitic advantages.

They have. Just listen to them. Today, their lies could be baled like hay at harvest time.

Perhaps President Obama, not really stranded and bewildered on a side track after the neo-cons so arrogantly humiliated his efforts at reconciliation, is actually right on target. These practiced criminals have invested very heavily in their program of promoting themselves as honest “partners” in the rescue effort while disguising their more factual qualities as looters and criminals, that is, “predators,” hiding in wait to loot the life blood from the stimulus money.

Money we have paid and allocated to trying to restore the damage of their past looting.

Obama could have swung the massive hammer of electoral outrage in the first few minutes of his administration in a sweeping correction -- think of it as chasing the money lenders from the temple if that analogy is not too messianic. However, if he had taken this approach, the validity of his plan would have been supported only be his claims of its necessity. In the minds of Americans there would have remained the question: “Are these wounded victims of his really this criminal? Do they really place the prosperity and safety of our country in such a low position of importance compared to their continued wealth extraction?”

No. Obama has let these “bottom feeders,” perhaps emboldened by the likes of Carl Rove, Joe the Plumber, Sara Palin, AIG, Wall Street, Newt Gringrich and other “tea-bagger-wanna-be’s” -- well, you are familiar enough with the pathetic denizens of this long list, emerge into the light. He has allowed them to “show their true colors,” their traitorous lack of commitment to the national survival driven by a narcotic, decades long habit of successful greed.

If we were describing a “trial” of this past behavior of his now screaming critics, what we have seen so far would be the “discovery phase.” The character of these criminals had to be exposed, finally revealed to their victims, in this case the American tax paying electorate. Obama has presented the evidence we lacked before, and that evidence seems quite capable of penetrating the thrall of the controlled media’s past efforts to keep us hypnotized.

No one believes he has cock roaches until they reveal themselves in the light.

Remain calm and hopeful. All this had to happen first. The crimes had to be exposed and defined. Our national situation is, most likely, going to collapse to a truly desperate state as 2009 proceeds. We taxpayers and voters will be confronted with Obama’s compelling evidence as he ultimately makes his case for change. That will bring us to our trial’s “sentencing phase.”

To think that the foundering mess we see at this moment is a truly representative preview of that probably means that we are slowly loosing our collective hope. If any of us has decided to take that path, take it without me.

For the "media view" of the economic recovery plan,

http://cbs5.com/campaign08/obama.economic.recovery.2.904768.html

and a background look at some of the criticism of the recovery plan:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/white_house/jan-june09/obama_03-24.html
http://www.newsmax.com/us/GOP alternative budget/2009/03/27/196690.html
http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/obama/2009/02/05/president-barack-obama-fires-back-at-critics-of-economic-stimulus-plan.html

and finally, our traditional "Wiki" explanation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinvestment_Act_of_2009


MeanMesa visitors who are not well acquainted with the economic recovery plan can find a wide variety of information available in the Google entry for this topic. As Americans we are spending an immense amount of our tax money in this effort to resuscitate our "critically ill" country now that the Bush parasites have been sent back to Texas. Its our money, our President and our future. Who could remain uninterested at a time like this?

Education Reform Without the Lipstick

Another in the MeanMesa "Lipstick" series. This time: President Obama's Plan for Education Reform. 85

A Little History:

Last week the President made a speech which officially places education reform in the role of a “leg” on his three legged stool for national recovery. That speech, nestled into a daily news cycle of speeches, any one of of which would have induced uncontrolled bleeding twenty four months ago, still arose filled with phrases not dissimilar from those which have filled traditional speeches about education reform at about the same early point in every Presidential term in recent history.

The implied consequences of not “educating better” have trailed along with the string of competitors our nation has faced through the years. There were the Soviets with their relentless, cast iron, collective system which seemed to crank out legions of nuclear physicists, chess players and spies. There were the ambitious Indians who seemed to be able to duplicate the results of even our most expensive efforts with their tin cans and strings. There were the Asian youngsters who seemed to be able to almost effortlessly become industrial manufacturing geniuses whether in the poverty of their ancient homelands or the worst schools the American system might offer their immigrant parents.

Defending our side were the unfaltering voices repeating the mantra, “If they are so good, why are we still richer?” Uh, right. The United States population apparently hit its highest literacy rate in the 1950’s, one of the very few constructive results of decades of US/Soviet MAD geopolitics (Mutually Assured Destruction).

Some commentators (Thom Hartmann) cite the beginning of public education during Freidrich’s Hohenzollern Prussia. The population of orphanages had grown so large that the King became interested in developing the boys there to become obedient soldiers, loyal subjects and profitable, respectful employees. It seems that, once all that had been figured out a few centuries ago, there hasn’t really been much cause to consider the matter any more since then.

Back to the Future: 2009

Perhaps the notable departure from past Presidential education reform speeches is not to be found in the words of Obama’s speech so much as in the incredible inertia of the man who spoke them. And, notably, wrote them. Such words become more credible when we realize that they were not simply handed to the President a few minutes before air time to make sure he could pronounce everything that was going to appear on his teleprompter.

President Obama has done his part. So, let’s set aside the “lipstick,” and do our part. Let’s take a shot at “boiling the thing down to its bones.” What conclusions can we make about the essential necessities required for education reform?

As with most political questions, we immediately encounter that apparently unavoidable human trait, “humiliation avoidance.” We seem to suffer an unreasonable fear of making decisions which will turn out to be less than optimal. Those would be decisions about the nature of a “good education,” about the actual amount of resources we will need to dedicate to the effort and about means and methods of testing our proposition as it goes along. We would very much prefer to know as early as possible -- or better yet, even beforehand! -- if the decisions we have made are really producing the results we seek. Otherwise, of course, we would not be “avoiding the humiliation” of having made such bad decisions.

By the way, this “bad decision” business has grown legs. One might think that our past efforts at education have been so ill conceived and misdirected, that is, so “humiliating,” that any reasonable person would be extremely “gun shy” about even so much as attempting to ever make such plans again. Our present situation, although neither particularly reassuring nor satisfying, is not yet a cataclysmic, world ending, “Death to America” disaster. However, given its tepid results, that historical approach is, most likely, at its end.

One result of this realization has been to discourage any public participation in redesigning the system at all. As with many modern quandaries, the electorate has been carefully groomed to passively accept the idea that the solution, if one exists at all, is far too complicated for “mere mortals” to comprehend. The entire matter must be turned over, along with a very big check, to the “education experts.” Only the hyper-qualified denizens of the educational world have the background to propose some painless improvement, at its best probably only a “little better” than what we have now. We have tried this one already. Several times. Too many times.

Another result is a cowardly and thoughtless appetite to “collapse to tradition.” This plan reverts education efforts to their earlier states. Those “early states of education” might be “the way things were when I was a boy,” or “when my dad went to school,” or “when the nation was young,” or even “back in the old country.” A loftier version might reflect positively on conditions young Alexander encountered while living with Aristotle, or Scian ‘jiou while living with his dark teacher from Abarabia, Mullah Edin. We will need to learn from the past, but there is little future in reliving it.

As a culture we seem to retain plenty of the demand that things should be simplified, our traditionally American, folksy, anti-intellectual tantrum. We have watched enough old movies to have been thoroughly convinced that “good old American common sense, saturated with naiveté and an innocent, ebullient, ‘can-do’ optimism made possible by not knowing our limits” has allowed us to overcome Nazi’s, alien invaders and hopeless, impending cometary collisions. We probably should not be quite so convinced that the same approach has delivered a polio vaccine, a man on the moon, the internet, the United Nations or Viagra. Education did that.

Finally, returning the the “humiliation avoidance” idea, we have grown gangrenously cynical. We have relegated the responsibilities for defining the measurement of our educational system to the most unlikely people. Dirty shirt preachers and southern speaking coaches have been left with the task of defining educational success as they mindlessly transform adolescent boys into leaders, unthinking generals and admirals, more pastors and coaches, national league athletes, Senatorial hillbillies and the like.

We have been listening to those who say that a good education can be measured by high school graduates who are well prepared to work in factories or join the military without rehabilitative training. An occasional “star” who invents something against all odds (even a rotten education), who makes billions of dollars in the stock market or who composes a brilliant symphony drives the “last nail to seal the lid” on this case.

Don’t Trust Anybody.

The “straw man” is comprised of several parts. The most appealing of them is the almost universal insistence to test the education system in any new design to see if it is accomplishing its mission. Closely behind those voices is an unending interest in determining whether or not its product is a “good deal for the money.”

The validation derived from a testing regime has generated significant traction. Because no current educational proposal package can reach media maturity without centering on “credible testing,” elaborate testing regimes have become as central as educational substance itself. The testing systems have risen in importance until they now validate the educational systems more strongly than what is actually being taught.

The missing piece, although conveniently hidden by the testing distraction, remains the definition of the educational goal. Coaches and pastors aside, what are we willing to agree on when it comes to over all objectives for our new educational effort? The “trained up” soldiers and factory workers concept doesn’t carry much water. The “states rights” bigots insisting on education promoting a six thousand year old planet aren’t really anything we are interested in spending federal dollars to sustain.

Where does this leave us? Who will tell us whether or not we are doing the right thing?

Oh dear.

Let’s ask the teacher. That’s right. Let’s ask the teacher if the students in his class are receiving a correct education. Surely the teacher would know something like that.

Wait a minute! We can’t “just ask the teacher” because we don’t trust the teacher. Those darn teachers will trick us! They will tell us that their students are getting a good education so they can have a chance at one of those merit raises. Maybe those teachers don’t really know if their students are getting a correct education or not.

What does this mean? It means that we have teachers we don't trust and who, we think, don’t really know whether or not they are providing a correct education in charge of educating our young ones. Does this mean that we should increase funding and inject merit pay into the mix or just spend lots more money devising testing regimes that these tricksters cannot manipulate?

After all, the prevailing religious mythology has continuously promoted the idea that men are evil opportunists who can’t be trusted. Why would we expect these teachers to be any different than the rest of humanity? They’re not saints, so we can’t trust them. Since we can’t trust them, we must try harder and harder to expose their trickery (or be humiliated by winding up with kids the army doesn’t want and who can’t work in factories). It isn’t our fault if we have to work so hard on exposing them that we simply haven’t got time to worry about what kind of education is being accomplished.

We can’t even agree on a few guiding principles which might define what kind of education we want to accomplish! When that question is placed on the table, every vested interest emerges from the culture swamp to enjoy a bite of lunch! There are speciously useless text books for a $100 per copy, the products of dithering committees of experts and consultants, contracts based on political favors and “certified” by someone as being precisely the books which are absolutely, critically essential to a “good education,” whatever that is.

There are confused college students marching through a numbing chaos of education classes which avoid any relevance to the essence of the teacher’s motivation beyond the capture of merit pay, tenure and union membership. There are bellowing, cracker politicians snapping worn out harangues about waste and frivolity in the schools, all imposed by some sinister parasites with no interest other than extracting tax money.

Ideologically, we see the vacuous hilarity of those bemoaning a lack of “critical thinking.” In dull moments we can always “tune in” to the latest spectacularly depressing news about sex education or school violence. We can find common cause with those who would like to blame parents, civilization itself, poverty, teen sex or video games.

What in the hell are we doing?

This rapacious maelstrom of default thinking is not anything that will benefit from more “education reform.” Its stench has grown far, far too strong for that generosity. This is both an unavoidable wake up call and an opportunity surfacing in the teeth of calamity.

The problems we face in education seem to be incomprehensible because the grotesque thing we have created under that name is, well, incomprehensible. (Doubtful? Try to envision a future history which explains how we reached this failure state. Does your history make sense?) It is a monster consuming huge tax resources, brazenly diverting all its assets to its own protection, producing terrifyingly dismal results and worst of all, denying American youth the opportunity of their birth right to have a chance to develop themselves into something they might actually want to be.

It is clearly the intention of Great Nature that parents assist their children in every possible way to reach the age of responsibility, self-sufficiency and individualism. No amount of persuasive details or comforting, mitigating expertise exonerates a failure to accomplish that parental obligation. Parental obsessions with the goal of perpetuating religion mythology, aging, unexamined ideas or the ambitions of somehow converting their children’s futures into ideological, social or political currency are criminal.

This is childhood’s end.

But not childhood’s end for the children. Their childhood has already been through the meat grinder. Literally hundred of millions of them have had their dreams permanently crushed already by this hideous thing.

This is childhood’s end for the parents. No more being the “half-cocked,” inch deep, gushing ninny at the PTA meeting. No more being the passive, long suffering stoic without any ideas to improve things. No more being too busy to get involved. No more bitching about the property taxes. No more simply refusing to think.

No more turning the young ones over to the television for four hours a night. No more credit-card problem solving. No more “too tired.” No more exhaustion -- there is no exhaustion permitted when it comes to the little people who are counting on you to help them dream.

The following link to You Tube contains a complete video (36 minutes) of President Obama's speech in Dayton, Ohio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGcr1UZpBfA

Senator Barack Obama for President

My Unabashed, Straight Ahead, No Holds Barred Explanation
Why Barrack Obama Must Be Our 44th President 42

For most of my life I have voted for Republican Presidents. I am old enough that I have seen a good number of Presidents and a good number of elections. Right now, though, I need to talk about why I am going to vote for Obama. I need to talk about exactly why I think he is going to be a great President.

That means, I have to say why I think he is a good choice, how he is going to be different from what we have now and how he is going to compare with some of the past Presidents I liked and didn’t like. I have to “size up” Obama on pretty much three important ideas. Those ideas are completely involved in campaign politics right now. They are:

National Security
Economics
and, Leadership.

I lived through what we called the “Cold War,” and that experience really made the National Security issue a big one for me. It was a frightening time, and while it was going on, it really had a lot to do with who we chose to be President. We were always looking for someone we could trust to tell us what was happening. The stakes were very high. We were continuously, day and night, ready to have a thermonuclear war with the Soviet Union. That went on for years.

But, during that time, Americans really did know quite a bit about our situation. We were included in the whole affair, and that meant that we had a good grip on what was going on. Our leaders didn’t always have good news for us, but we had the feeling that we could trust what they were saying and understand why our country was doing what it was doing.

This really changed during the Viet Nam war. During those times, much of what we were told was simply made up to make things appear to be something they weren’t. At first, we believed what we were told, but as time went on, it got so far out of hand that most Americans couldn’t believe it anymore. This happened during the term of both a Democratic and a Republican President, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. It got so that it didn’t seem to matter what we as citizens thought, that war just kept going and going for decades.

Now, we are having more wars and, one more time, we don’t really know what is happening. We were lied to to get us into Iraq. Our War on Terror is full of secret reasons and secret plans. We have been told over and over that we have to fight, but we haven’t been told much about how it’s going.

I don’t really have a good idea whether we are winning or losing. The government is not being open about these matters. They are keeping everything secret. I have to believe that the government doesn’t really trust us, the people. If it did, it could be much more open about what it was doing, figuring that we would agree with it and support it.

We may be doing very well with this “War on Terror,” but we also may not be doing very well at all. For example, we haven’t had another attack, but does that mean we have stopped all the attacks since then or does it simply mean that there haven’t been any attempted? What’s the big deal about telling us what is happening?

I like Barack Obama for President because I think he is much more open. I think he will be much more honest with us. There are plenty of Generals to take care of the war-fighting if that comes up, but we need to have a President who will take care of that job and that includes being much more open and honest with us. We must know what is happening so we can be included in the decisions.

As for the economy, I have lived long enough to experience both good and bad times. During the 1950’s, 1960’s and 1970’s wages went up every year. By the way, there were both Republicans and Democrats running things. People paid their taxes and, as always, complained about it. Some people grew rich, but most people like us had money and pretty good lives.

Now, things seem suspiciously different. The average wage in the United States has actually fallen lately. The very richest people have gotten richer, but middle class people have gotten poorer. Prosperity at our level has been sacrificed so those at the very top could get even more.

So, does the President control all of this? Not entirely, but when the President’s incredibly rich friends just seem to always get richer and richer no matter what they do while we seem to not even be able to hold our own, I have to think that maybe who is President makes a difference. Quite a few of the rich friends of this President have, in fact, gotten richer and richer because of decisions he has made -- decisions that should have included us and our interests but didn’t.

In my memory, I have never seen incredibly rich people pay so little in taxes while folks like us, again, are having trouble holding our own. As has always been the case, everyone complains about taxes and government inefficiency, but our real complaint is about what is being done with our tax money. What we are buying for the whole country. Things like roads and bridges and dams and schools and hospitals. I have watched the current government spend roughly eight trillion dollars of borrowed money on something, but I can’t see anything they bought! All I see is rich people getting richer and the rest of us getting left out.

Part of that eight trillion dollars was spent in Iraq, part went directly to subsidize oil companies. Part went to greedy bankers who got caught in the mortgage crisis. Part went to war profiteers who are friends of the President and Vice President. The problem is that part of it didn’t go to us! Our part in this amounts to just having to pay it back in taxes for the rest of our lives. Our ideas about borrowing all this money and our ideas about what it was spent for didn’t make any difference. No one was listening to our common sense. We were not included and we damned sure weren’t respected.

Now, our gasoline costs four times more, our dollars are worth half of what they used to be worth, our houses, if we are fortunate enough to own one, are worth 80% of what we paid for them, the stock market is getting lower and lower every day and our pensions and 401K’s are going down with it, our health care is costing more and more and our wages are getting less and less. A big bunch of money seems to just be evaporating, but it is going somewhere! In the middle of all this, President Bush’s friends seem to just be getting richer and richer.

President Obama is going to include us and our interests in his Presidency. Things may not get better over night, but at least we will have someone in the White House who has actually lived like we live. He will know what things are like down here. He will understand what we face every month when we pay our bills. And our taxes.

President Bush is the son of a President and the grandson of a banker. John McCain is the son of an admiral and the grandson of an admiral. Neither of them has ever had to scrimp and budget to buy groceries or pay for a doctor. Barack Obama has. Maybe all the economic stuff going on now makes sense to someone like George Bush or John McCain. Neither one of them has ever had to pay off a student loan.

Senator Obama knows better. He just finished paying off his student loan.

That makes him a lot more like me, and I like that. That makes me trust him to be loyal to someone like me and my interests. George Bush has been very loyal to his rich oil friends for the last eight years. John McCain is already on the hook to be more loyal to his rich campaign contributors and the lobbyists running his campaign than loyal to someone like me. I don’t think I deserve to be left out. Quite frankly, I can’t afford to be left out like that for another four years of a McCain Presidency.

That goes for everyone I know, too.

The most important of the three things is leadership. Again, during the Cold War we really counted on Presidents like Eisenhower and JFK to lead us through it. We trusted them and they trusted us. We all knew that we were in that mess together and, that if we were going to get through it, we were going to do that together, too. Those weren’t times famous for “getting a good night's sleep,” but our worries weren’t about whether or not we could trust the President. Our worries were about the Russians and the missiles and the bombs.

Thank God, we had leaders we could trust. Whether we voted for them or not, we prayed for them and we loved them and we followed them and we supported them. That was our job as Americans. We could do that because, again, whether we voted for them or not, we trusted them to be loyal to us.

I can trust President Obama to be loyal to my country, to my safety and to my interests. I’m not completely sure why I trust him, but I do. In fact, my trust for him grows every time I hear him speak.

Trust in our leaders is a national value. With it we are richer, without it we are poorer. With it we are much stronger, without it we are much weaker. We are all going to decide who we can trust in November. I am placing my future in the hands of Barack Obama. That is not based solely on the incredible lack of trust I have for John McCain and everyone else who wants more of President Bush’s special favors, that is based on Barack Obama, the man. I trust him.

It is not political maneuvering that can put us back together as Americans. It is not going to be some sort of really clever trick of politics or policy. It will be trust. It will be about honor and loyalty. It will be about hope. Our path back to a strong, unified country is going to start with trust, honor, loyalty and hope. The Republicans can't say much about those things without lying.

You know. It is just going to start “feeling better.” It’s time.

It’s time for America to do better. It’s time for President Barack Obama.

We're Democrats. We live here!