March Round-up

So I think it's been almost a month since I was on here last, and with all that has been going on I’ve certainly been missing reading you all and writing about the currents – that is for SURE! Work has been very, very busy; and good too. So I can’t really complain about much. I came back from my fourth trip in four months almost a week ago, and I’m happy to be here (for once). I’m not really a big fan of LA, but it was enjoyable like never before after coming back from freezing New York!!!

I’m sure you‘re all on top of things as usual, and I doubt that there is much more I could contribute at the moment anyway. I have only heard (in what precious little time I’ve been able to listen to my beloved talk radio) a couple of things that I think have been overlooked.

Again, as we are dwindled down to one candidate on each side, I would like everybody to take notice of it – but REALLY take notice. Notice how there are some states that have finally become viable in the primaries, their vote has actually mattered lately (and even Pennsylvania was thought to be given some say for the first time that I can ever remember). Why must it be in the US that some states get a choice and others have none? Why shouldn’t everybody have a say in whom the Democratic or Republican candidate should be? Why is it that Americans are quite OK with this voting system, which is so obviously UN-democratic? "Hi, I'd like to place an order for Instant Run-Off Voting please...and while you're at it, can you END primaries all together? Thanks."

I just have to ask too, since it was a topic that I have put my two cents in before on…Can anybody tell me why Hillary is still running or hasn’t yet announced she is done when mathematically it’s impossible for her to garner enough elected delegates to win? Even if she won every last one that was left to obtain, it would be enough for her to catch Obama now, so why hasn’t she stepped aside? Unless…she thinks she could still steal the nomination by pandering to the Super Delegates.

I think her out and out lies about Obama “choosing to withdraw” from Michigan were totally disgusting! What it really showed was that she was desperate, and that she was willing to break her own party’s rules in order to get whatever she wants – and why aren’t people talking about how that would translate in a presidential position? Then there was the fear-mongering commercial she ran in Ohio. It just reaffirmed my thoughts on her actually being the establishment candidate, the one that is really just a Republican in disguise. I can’t believe that Democrats didn’t completely wash their hands of her after that stunt. The most disturbing thing to me is, the more she exposes the poisons inside of her, the more support she seems to get! There is yet ANOTHER lie she has been telling completely exposed in the video posted at the end of this blog, and yet nobody seems to really want to call her on it. Hmmmm…let’s see, who else seems to be getting a “free pass” from the press? Oh yeah, McBush…uh, I mean McCain, yeah.

McBush slips right on by with his uneducated statements about Iran and Al Qaeda – even though he said it more than once. Then the press turned the other way as he’s been railing against the lobbyists, even though the ones that are some of the highest officials seated on his campaign board have been exposed as being involved in various scandals. The one that gets to me the most has been talked about the least, and hasn’t even been brought up since, as far as I know – as usual I suppose.

His chief political adviser, Charles R. Black Jr., is chairman of one of Washington's lobbying powerhouses, BKSH and Associates, which has represented AT&T, Alcoa, JPMorgan and U.S. Airways. Black's current clients include General Motors, United Technologies, JPMorgan and AT&T.

United Technologies has put a “hostile bid” on Diebold (voting machines) – meaning that an unsolicited bid was placed on Diebold may actually be forced by the market to sell their voting machines to this company, like it or not! The $3 billion dollar bid they placed on it was the equivalent of $40 a share when placed; when the actual market value was just over $24. Gee, I wonder, why would this company think the voting machines are actually worth almost twice as much as the market says they are, hmmmm….

Hello? Has everybody forgotten the term, “conflict of interest”? Can anybody out there say HYPOCRITE!??!?! How about STOLEN ELECTION - remember what we get when that happens? How about a little screaming, give with some protest people – COME ON!!!

This story broke early this month, and now with the corporate bailouts being handed out for the mortgage companies going on, it sure is interesting to look back on this story now and see JP Morgan on the list of McBush’s campaign-manager’s/lobbyist’s client list. That’s the company that bought Bear Stearns Mortgage Company for pennies on the dollar. JP Morgan got a hell of a deal too! The GIANT discount price of just $2 a share was 93% off of Bear Stearns’ last closing stock price. When was the last time you’ve seen a sale sign that read, “93% OFF”? Seeing as how Bear Stearns also received a corporate bail-out subsidy, don’t you think we should have been offered an option to buy into that too? Hell, I’d go hog-wild at that price! I’d buy myself fifty shares of that for $100!!!!!!! Wouldn’t you at least want to put your lunch money down on that action? Well, yeah…except, those kinds of sales are reserved for the richest – those that don’t even need the bargain price. Don’t despair though; you really did help buy it after all - with your tax dollars! Not that you will getting anything back on that investment you were forced to make. That was perfectly fair, made all the sense in the world, right? Why should we pay for socialized medicine when we can pay for socialized corporate bailouts instead? They need the money more than we do anyway, those poor, poor corporate billionaires, awwww….a little sympathy please, they need your hard-earned dollar to keep their pockets full of million-dollar retirement plans, hedge-fund bonuses, and their mouths full of caviar – have a little compassion, please. And if you don’t like it, then you can pay them to take your job and ship it overseas, OK? Just face it already: Even when it doesn’t work, deregulation is totally awesome – for THEM.

"Hello, I'm calling to add onto my order? Ummm, yeah...I'd like some publicly funded campaigns to go with that Instant Run-off Voting, so I can have a real election please. I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!"

This round-up wouldn’t be complete without mention of our fifth year in Iraq. Nealry 4,000 Americans and more than likely over a million Iraqis - are dead. Best estimates say that there are over 3 million Iraqis displaced outside as well as within Iraq, and about a third of them continue to go without clean drinking water or electricity. We have well over 40,000 Iraq vets that aren’t getting the care they have needed for the injuries they’ve acquired in the Middle East, and somewhere between a fourth and a third of America’s homeless population are vets (even more if you include vets from all wars). And the administration has the audacity to celebrate the “successes” and claim it has all been worth it. “Um, Mr. president, and Mr. vice? Get our troops and your private corp-whores the hell OUT of the Middle East NOW - and then, GET BENT!!!”

Just so I can end this on a positive note, I have to say that Obama really came through like I always knew he could – good for him. If you’ve been reading me for more than a year, you would know that I have been listening to him for over two years now. Long before he was ever a presidential contender, I somehow discovered him (I forget how exactly) and had been subscribing to a podcast he used to have. I was just listening because I loved to listen to him speak. It was for various engagements at universities and the like, but I always found him inspirational and encouraging to listen to. When he first announced his candidacy, I was really excited – but then I went to see him live here in LA, and watched a few other campaign speeches he gave. I was really disappointed to say the least, but I figured he was tired of repeating the same thing over and over in different cities, one right after the other… That speech he gave after all the hub-bub about his preacher was truly extraordinary, and I was thrilled to see his true talents return. Not only did he respectfully dismiss the absurd allegations that his preacher’s opinions were his own by association, but he also addressed some very important issues in a way that was incredibly intelligent, and in terms easily understood by all Americans – all races & ages. Simply brilliant Obama. Just listening to you made me proud to be an American again, and to have you as president would be an honor. Thank you.

I think this particular edition of GoLeft.tv below, summed up quite a few things very well. Enjoy