Polls and Policy from TV Guide?

The neo-con effort to establish security necessities
justified by television scripts

Dreary psychopaths reinventing their integrity, their torture
and their sexual fantasies 90

A brief glimpse of the scandal as seen by MeanMesa:

As more and more details emerge from the now “out of control” scandal of the Bushite Autocracy’s torture habits, we have to wonder: “How could they (we) have been drawn into this disgusting mess?” Of course, they somehow have found the last, allegedly justifying shards of their subhuman, caustic vitriol to trot out as their last frantic vestiges of their claims to humanhood slowly disintegrate. Of course, they make desperate, whiny cries that all their midnight pornography torture episodes were effective -- and in their (our) twisted issue of odorous dishonor -- hence, justified.

It’s time to “kiss the girlfriend!”

Pundits across the air waves, both reactionaries and progressives, have tried to salve the horrifying national embarrassment with an endless addition of more and more “discussion,” always convincingly presented as if the speaker were privy to actual observation of the practices or enjoyed some other kind of credible authority about them. As with so many other matters, none of us is -- any longer -- particularly surprised to find that massive campaigns of lies and misdirection from the Bush regime have left us stunned and remorseful, again. All those who hold up the honor of our country hide our faces and ponder -- “Will there ever be an end to this disgrace?”

The psychopathies of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeldt-Gonzales “horror family” seem to emerge into the light with the sickening regularity of an episodic series of television shows, each one more hideously depressing and outrageous than the one before.

One hundred eighty terrifying, water board driven sensations of death by drowning to “uncover” the same information available on Khalid Shaik Mohammed's previously broadcast Al Jezeera television interview?

The details of these gruesome, sexual gratification fantasies and other facts are still developing, but there is an aside which may be “ripe” enough for MeanMesa’s attention today. What could have inspired this terrible indulgence on the part of someone like Dick Cheney? Although an interesting question, we now face the unnerving material task of trying to rectify the consequences of the matter. Still, we remain curious. What was the motive for all these acts? What was the source that provided the insane motives for these subhuman escapades carried out in our name?

The answers are worse than the questions. Raw vengeance can carry the day only so far. Can we discern the reasons? After all, what else would satisfy the appetite for power and ascendance amid the otherwise humiliating, self crushing boredom of being overweight, effeminate cowards armed -- thanks to us -- with the world’s most powerful army?

Now to the point of this post:

Let’s talk television. (We can painlessly include movies and novels, too. In this case, the medium is NOT the message.) A sinister cycle of carefully grooming the public, both here and abroad, with deceptions disguised as news by the likes of the Foxes and Murdoch’s is no longer a “shocking revelation” to anyone any longer. But what about the fiction? Are the equally carefully crafted themes of fictional plots designed to slowly reconfigure the glacial consciousness of the viewing masses?

For example, the codependent narcotic of CSI reassures us that police investigations can reveal the “truth” necessary to catch any criminal, no matter how ingenious or cautious he might be. We ignore the fact that prosecutors from all across the country now complain that jurors expect this fictional expertise before they convict defendants. Perhaps they simply don’t realize that the popular CSI equipment is more akin to Star Trek technology than fact.

In any event, the message is clear. “Eluding the power of the state is hopeless.” Does it have to do with deterring crime or establishing submission? "Resistance is futile!" (... the BORG...)

Fox’s Jack Bauer -- 24 Hours -- establishes the fictional foundation for the now famously cited H-bomb, anthrax, death ray, insane terrorist in Los Angeles, New York or Atlanta which justifies the necessity of ripping someone’s arms and legs off in order to “foil the plot.” We wonder if Sean Hannity has found a way to watch these films twenty-four hours every day.

The question is, “Did shows like 24 Hours successfully embed this crazy idea into the minds of the electorate? Or even, part of the electorate?”

El Cartel, broadcast here in Albuquerque on the Spanish language Telemundo Network, presents the vindicating tale of government efforts to quash drug cartels. Are these (rather entertaining) tales a move to prepare citizens of Mexico and the Untied States with a fictional model which persuades them that such programs are worth the sacrifice of enduring the inevitable violence they will precipitate? They may be effective. El Cartel may even produce a positive image and acceptance of the value of the policy. But wait, is this the rational approach to prepare a populous to take the right action?

Isn’t it a bit cynical to assume that the citizens of any country can only be convinced that the right course of action is the dramatically simplified motive presented in a fictional construction? What about the mature, educated citizen who is naturally inclined toward governments and policies which reflect his individual interests in doing the sensible, reasonable things necessary to sustain an orderly civilization consistent with his own values -- that is, values which haven’t been predigested, simplified and presented as caricatures of solutions to the real challenges he and his country might face?

It’s easier for the lazy mind to simply be frightened into agreement with the radical actions taken by a desperate, yet imminently -- and artificially -- honorable television star. This seems to be the case whether a government wishes to vindicate torture or campaigns to defeat drug lords.

Good old Jack Bauer has made legitimate all these responses as unexamined, gaseous justifications for non existential, hypothetical terror threats. Once that was accomplished, the justifications went directly to the neo-con wing nuts in the government even as the hypothetical terrors were left behind on last week’s show.

Good old Jack Bauer laid the groundwork. And from that insane foundation, after Fox “innocently” participated in its introduction, propagation and justification, there emerged all sorts of even more bizarre and grotesque further refinements. For example, Cheney’s torture program, since it apparently never produced much in the way of information, can be assigned to the ambition of terrifying the terrorists, perhaps extracting some sort of vengeance. Vengeance? Useful for national security? In the world of Cheney and Rove, any kind of outrage represented the possible utility of its use for political expediencies. That isn’t news to anyone currently still breathing.

Heh, heh, heh. Tune into channel 69. We are now listening to this same, hopefully rather nervous, idiot (Cheney) insisting that our torture techniques are national security secrets. How do we intend to frighten terrorists with his exquisite torture accomplishments if they remain secret? In his next breath, the old crook insists that the Justice Department has intentionally refused to release the documents supporting “all the lives saved” by this violent extraction of terrorist “information.” Naturally, something like that might assist in his defense in court, in his mind, even if it had to be quickly fabricated at the last minute (maybe in a way similar to the official lies he spread like sunflower seeds to start the war in Iraq...).

We must disabuse ourselves of the trash these television scripts have insinuated into our thoughts. The first step will be to finally reveal that they are no more than cheesy manipulations of our fears, vomited out to make us more accepting of the horrors of our actions and more accepting of the necessities of abandoning our ideals and our Constitutional protections.

If the neo-con monsters who so craftily deceived us before can reinvent themselves into something even remotely coherent, we will have been destroyed by our own televisions! Thanks to them, we now find ourselves not resisting external forces intent on our destruction, but instead, sorting uncomfortably through our own thoughts to detect and eliminate the toxin which has been placed there.

Yes, the Bushites created immense poison all around the world, but our first mission will be to cleanse what their incredible network co-conspirators have placed in our own minds.

Not familiar with the al Jazeera network? It is part of our world and definitely worth knowing about!
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_English

Any appetite for Chris Matthews? Here he speaks about Cheney's torture justification:
http://www.ecofactory.com/community/green-tv/cheneys-defense-torture-addressed-chris-matthews-hardball

Have we been neglecting our appropriate attention to 24 Hours or El Cartel?
http://www.fox.com/24/
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=telenovelas&message.id=1135221

Finally, for those with an "appetite" to see a "fictional" representation of an extremely troubling traditional example, may I recommend a movie. The important feature of this movie has no particular relevance to torture scenes or techniques, but rather to the outrage of the attitudes of those in charge.

CAUTION: This film is EXTREMELY PROVOCATIVE. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS LINK UNLESS YOU ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THIS WARNING!

http://www.criterion.com/films/532

Why Not Revisit 9/11 Seven Years Later?

Messages and lessons we must not neglect.
The 9/11 Attack seen through the eyes in three faces. 56

On the seventh anniversary of the attack of 9/11, 2001, only the most callous can avoid the inevitable mix of both consolation and cause. There were causes which precipitated the attack. There were causes which precipitated the responses to it. Are we finally, after seven years, prepared to examine this again in the cold -- and far less emotional -- light of the present day?

Perhaps the clearest view can be expressed by attempting to place ourselves in the momentary place of players far closer to the event. Let us indulge ourselves with speculation as to the thoughts of three people. First, of course, ourselves; next, a nondescript, common citizen of Baghdad and, finally, Osama Bin Laden.

As we watched the catastrophe in New York and, minutes later, at the Pentagon, we took the moment to invest in an uneducated but comforting question. “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?”

We have a certain sickening feeling when we recall the answer to that question, an answer which seemed to fulfill all the requirements of common sense and non-nutritious nationalism. “They hate our freedom.” That “sickening feeling” can, more constructively, be called objective remorse. After all this time we have come to know much more about why that attack was possible, and probably, even inevitable.

There were reasons which explained it, but now we realize that those were reasons we had never considered. Our intellectual curiosity, prior to the attack, was never sufficient to explore just exactly what we had done to them, or, at least, what we had done to them as it appeared through their eyes.

The matter called me to revisit the chilling admonition of a certain Marine officer. He said, “If you find yourself in the midst of a shooting match, and, if you have no clear idea of why the other guy is shooting at you, that is, no idea of what he wants, leave. You have no business there.” My conclusion: “If those are the facts of the moment, the matter has no meaning and no possible constructive outcome.”

Next, a visit -- some months after 9/11 -- to Baghdad. “Shock and awe,” evaluated by the military command of Sadam Hussein’s army had one interpretation, possibly a tactical one, devoid of very much legitimate or popular social politics. “Shock and awe” interpreted by the man walking home in the streets of that distant city has another. Unavoidably, we must assume that he had certain questions in his mind as he ran for his life. “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?”

Finally, we stop over for a moment in some chilly cave, the uncomfortable refuge of the perpetrator and planner of the attacks in New York and Washington. Osama Bin Laden is not wondering “Why is this happening? Why are ‘they’ doing this to us?” at all. He has either had reasons or made reasons to answer those questions already. His reasons and his answers had already served to inspire all those young men who were willing to sacrifice everything to carry out his deathly mission in the United States.

Could there have been more to that remote conversation and planning than a “hatred of our freedom?” Did the “wrongs and injuries” that convinced those boys of the necessity of this, amount to something more substantial? Something we missed in the history of our own behavior? Or, at least, something we had assiduously avoided ever noticing?

Here in the United States, we were not allowed to even offer a conjecture that their suicidal passion had any meaning whatsoever. Far be it from us to even speculate, much less investigate, the possibility that we found ourselves involved in an exchange of consequences instead of a crazed act of psychopathic killing frenzy.

History makes its future concrete not from sand and cement, but from details and subtleties. It also makes strange bed fellows. It pays wages to the unlikely in currencies which have value only as a result of their moment of existence. Through this dark chapter, the least deserving, that is, Bin Laden and his counterpart, George Bush, have reaped unanticipated, synergistic extra profits.

Osama Bin Laden had little interest in military success. His satisfaction came from the fear he created. Injuring the United States, for him, could be far more substantial if he could degrade our Constitution and our social fabric. He, undoubtedly, celebrated in whatever way was correct to his religion, when the Americans made “shock and awe” over Baghdad, a serendipitous and unplanned extra benefit to his initial ambitions with the jet liners.

George Bush, likewise, was handed a birthday cake without a birthday. Those falling buildings could be converted by his servant, Carl Rove, into political octane of a stratospheric quality he never imagined. Out came “cut and run” and “stay the course,” all hypnotic invitations to endorse his oil wars and his morbid, domestic machinations and propaganda. If his rich friends made their fortunes drilling out petroleum made by ancient swamps, Bush made his by ruthlessly harvesting the unexpected opportunities of this modern moment.

9/11 calls us to our own inner thoughts. What, exactly, have we as individuals concluded about the facts of this tragic matter? Are we able, or, are we willing, to attempt to examine the unmanipulated reality of this whole affair, now, with clearer heads seven years later?

Perhaps, we are simply too busy or too shallow or too comfortable in this current cess pool of nationalistic drivel and fear. Perhaps, we will need to repeat what we have done previously, experience more “baffling” consequences of it, before we are motivated to consider changing ourselves and our national behavior. This improved destiny will probably never be the result of our fear. It will much more likely be an honest return from our rediscovered honor.

Earmarks and Ear Rings

How to strike a deal with a prostitute.
How to look beyond the insult of the ear marks to the real injuries of the budget. 53

At election time we are usually bombarded with promises to relieve the burden of earmarks. It is a promise made by the man who is not “behind the curtain.”

There are indeed two great currents of our money flowing through the process in Washington. Like a tsunami, there is a small wave traveling along the surface where we can see it, but there is an immense movement below the surface, finally materializing as it ultimately inundates our coastal cities. Concerning the matter of earmarks, the situation is the same. They are little more than insulting distractions, mosquito bites on the tail end of a bull.

A short note on the meaning of term may be in order. In the old days, that is, in the days when people read books, the corner of a page might be turned to assist the reader in returning to some specific material of special interest. Translated to the hundreds of pages of a typical issue of legislation, earmarks , at least in concept, serve the same purpose. Whatever the original focus of the bill in question, earmarks typically appear in some convenient, rarely read section, thus, the name.

To the originator of the earmark, however, a convenient means to locate his “little jewel” among the great body of “other stuff” in his bill, might include folding the corner of the page containing his earmark in his copy.

The exact nature of the earmark, that is, its nature with respect to more normal and transparent congressional decisions, is interesting. The usual process of allocating our tax money through the representative process of our Congress refers, somewhere, to a kind of general (majority) agreement as to the legitimacy of the proposal. In the optimistic idealism of our Constitution, a bill is written proposing an expenditure on a certain project, the Congressional Representatives all read it, argue about it, and perhaps negotiate compromises between differing views of it and, finally, pass it.

The life story of an earmark is somewhat different. Whatever project is proposed in an earmark typically reveals certain other character traits. It is something which will assist its author’s reelection. It is usually presented as something not really meriting the attention of the entire Congress in the sense that more central legislation might. Perhaps the goal of the earmark is presented as a matter of too small a fiscal significance to “tie things up.” More commonly, the benefactors of the earmark are seeking some advantage not particularly appetizing to the taste of the full House, hence the wide variety of the things -- from short expensive bridges to doughnut museums.

One might think that such highly exclusive interests would fail to garner Congressional votes, and if so, one would be partially correct. Happily, at least for the successful ear markers, this dismal possibility is mitigated by other rather arcane traditions in the Congress. Yes, although the bridge earmarked by one voice will hardly serve to interests of a constituency a thousand miles away, there remains the prospect of “mutual back scratching.” Supporting, or at least , failing to oppose, that distant pork will inevitably arise again later as a promise by its sponsor to support something much closer to home, say, so close as to be in one’s very own Congressional district. In that case, a bridge -- no matter how exclusive its benefit -- can often be converted directly into votes in a reelection campaign.

Occasionally, earmarks really do actually serve the interests of the country in some redeeming way. Usually however, this happy exception is little more than a passing dream in a windstorm. Perhaps Mullah Nassr Edin’s political axiom that “all political possibilities can also be political liabilities if they appear at cocktail parties without their lipstick” may be applied just here.

Patience, please. We’re getting to the prostitute part. A tedious context must be presented for my readers who have lives beyond obsessive political wonkerism.

We may need to ask, “What political purposes are served by ranting and railing about earmarks?”

First things first, be advised that all the earmarks (including $350,000,000 for Sara’s on-again off-again “bridge to nowhere”) in aggregate comprise no more than a “gnat’s sneeze” when compared to the massive flow of our money through the Congressional budget process. For example, we allocate around $400,000,000,000 (four hundred billion compared to $350,000,000 -- three hundred fifty million) annually for the visible elements of our defense expenditures.

Obviously, constructive efforts to maximize the effectiveness of the much larger amount would represent a laudable legislative effort on the part of a Senator. Yet, we find him repeatedly hawking one complaint after another about the smaller amount. Earmarks enjoy the unlikely advantage of being “insulting” to voters and taxpayers far away from the bridge. In fact, at least to voters and taxpayers, earmarks can be made far more “insulting” than a couple of “whoops, we missed that one” moments revealed in the review of the incredibly more massive defense allocation, for example. The "insult" is personal! After all, most of those tax payers will never have a chance to drive across that bridge.

Finally, to the matter of the prostitute. Let us imagine a sexually repressed evangelical in a distant city to attend a meeting of, say, a Sunday School Budget Convention. It is the evening after a long day of conferencing. He finds himself in the absolutely worst part of town, piloting his rented car along dark dismal streets lined with, shall we say, “women of the night.”

There they are. Lined up one after another, each competing for his attention. We arrive at the focal question. Will he select his secret evening company based on her ear rings?

Our evangelical might glance at those baubles for an instant, but his more energetic attention will quickly migrate to other features, you know, matters of a more substantial interest.

In our tortured analogy, of course, the ear rings represent the earmarks. But what do those “other matters” represent? The invitation offered to voters by the Senator’s flammable campaign diatribe about earmarks is an invitation to be transfixed on the ear rings, ignoring all the other considerations. Once again, he will say “Those bastards over in Fartandbolt County have a fine new bridge paid for by your tax dollars! Every cent interloped from the General Fund by that crooked Senator of theirs!”

It is, perhaps, a message made all the more poignant when considered in the sight of your own delapidated bridge, that is, the one right here in Boltandfart County. The ambition of this Senator, populist hero that he is -- or claims to be, is to distract us from the fact that the defense allocation contains five hundred “whoops!” items, each with a taxpayer cost ten thousand times larger than the entire cost to replace both bridges. And, that would not be the cost of replacing them with hard bid contracts, either. That would be the cost of replacing them with “brother-in-law,” no-bid babies of the worst variety! (“We simply had to buy a fleet of Bentley convertibles to pull the gravel trailers!”)

So, we have made a comparison between the bridge costs and the Congressional budget’s defense allocation. So what? Defense spending, often, but not always, at least results in something tangible (the Osprey? As in: "It's an Osprey! Don't stand under it when it 'flies' over!") which can appear on a video. The unseen killer traveling below the tsunami’s modest surface wave is comprised of far “stinkier” matters than a wasteful defense budget. In this sense, we once again descend with the evangelical’s eyes as he sizes up those now infamous "other matters" in the process of selecting his prostitute.

Yes, we can be insulted by Fartandbolt’s good fortune at our expense, but that new bridge is little more than a “slap on the cheek” when we consider the "other matters." If that new bridge in the next county is a “slap,” there are other budget drains more akin to having a vampire inserting a permanent blood capture needle in one’s artery. The campaigning Senator works diligently to keep our attention on the slap and off the needle.

Do we really want to conduct our electoral responsibilities based on an ear ring?

What exactly are these vampires extracting from us? In a land with wealth so great that we hardly notice the needle, that is, where we seem to perpetually enjoy the ridiculously false luxury of considering only the ear ring, we can be deceived by immensely over priced “elephants” (not a Freudian slip, usually...) which seem to provide at least a “little something” for a price so outrageous that it would never bear the bright illumination of a sunny day. Examples? Of course.

The pharmaceutical bill written for us by drug company lobbyists is the polar opposite of any imaginable bargain it might promise for the price. Yes, we have a nice discount on our medicine, but the price is unfathomable. Predictably, every economizing advantage is, essentially, illegal. What a coincidence!

The "deregulation of everything" seemed to be a means to eliminate inefficient and over priced government controls. Instead of the promised reduction in our costs for everything from electricity to mortgage loans, we have wound up suffering through the total exploitative vaporization of Enron and the taxpayer bail out of Bear Stearns.

The destruction of unions, for example the air traffic controllers union, was touted as a way to really save some bucks. Now we spend money at an incredibly increased rate to compensate for labor shortages. The workers remaining are fighting to perform their life saving tasks with equipment which belongs in a land fill. The airlines, far from being able to fulfill their promise to pass such savings on to us as consumers, are now raising fares weekly amid a customer population stranded in planes unable to take off where even a bag of peanuts is now offered at a price.

No-bid military contractors performing theoretically necessary tasks of all sorts at costs beyond measure (one bottle of drinking water in Iraq: $8.80?) were proposed as a means to lower the price of war-fighting. Halliburton is no petty crook. Its corporate extraction of tax money will reach toward one half trillion dollars before we finish in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that incredible amount of compensation will be for what we taxpayers might generously consider a few billion dollars worth of honest work.

If current matters are too troubling, reach back in history. The famous Keating Five bail out money is quite possibly still financing some small part of McCain’s campaign or, at least, some of his houses. Enron’s carefully engineered brown out in California, that is, the one which suddenly required out-of-state generated power to be imported at eight times the cost of the local stuff, was not “chump change.”

These are not simple cases of building a bridge for someone else. These are major withdrawals of major amounts of our economic blood. They have been carefully crafted by the most exploitative Congressmen and Senators, executed not as earmarks but as central legislation and protected by the absolute perfidy of other legislative, judicial and executive branch crooks and criminals (Those would be the “hard working” politicians who are now retired into $50 million dollar homes somewhere nice.) who were supposedly responsible for “checks and balances.”

Once these “blood sucking” programs are in place, they can last for decades, every day promoting dynastic fortunes resourced by our tax money. (For example, California is still suffering under the burden of the desperate contracts it got railroaded into to turn the lights back on. This even after the alleged death of Enron!)

So, no matter how appealing it may be to just gaze at the ear rings, keep track of the more important stuff, too. Don’t let them lead you down the path of simply responding to insults about someone else’s bridge while they slip the needle into your artery for a permanent blood draw!

They won’t quit just because you have been manipulated to deliver another election to them. Like the prostitute. They see themselves as the gift that just keeps on giving.

Only after they win their election will they notice that you've pulled out their needle!

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!