To me a lot of the reporting seems biased against Israel, casting Hamas as a scrappy and misunderstood underdog. Since I don’t see any real “pro-Israel” info or any real articles that scrape this together I’ve pulled together some info as released via press release and some news media to give a different view of the conflict.
So, all those bombs that Israel is dropping on Gaza. They’re targeting terrorist sites, places where bombs are stored and where rockets are made. If Israel was really out to commit genocide against Gazans (as has been claimed) then the funerals and protests would be easy targets for Israeli warplanes.
So the Hamas/Al-Qassam website directly says that There is no justification for targeting civilians. It is against Islam to deliberately kill unarmed civilians during jihad. In addition, our doctrine is to target the enemies army, security services, and support apparatus. But it is known that Zionist society is a militarized society. Service in the army is mandatory; and reserve duty continues past the age of 40. Our determined stance is that unarmed persons on both sides of the conflict should be left out of the fighting. However, we will not accept giving the enemy a free hand against our civilians.
This war isn’t about Israel occupying Gaza; Gaza isn’t “occupied” or at least not in a traditional sense. Israeli troops do not roam the streets or impose law and order on a daily basis. That’s the job of the Palestinian Authority. The problem is the PA is not maintaining that authority or is abusing it, because throughout 2008 (and going back to 2006) Gaza fired rockets at Israel.
Obama’s infomercial has me pensive on this stuff tonight. Also, watching Jack Welsh and some talking heads on CNBC has raised my hackles.
I used to be on the right. From a libertarian standpoint on social issues; leave the government out of the bedroom and my home. Leave the market to do its work; as companies are successful they hire people and those people have jobs, and money, and buy things and the economy snowballs upwards. We saw it work to some extent under Ronald Regan and even under Bill Clinton.
Then the past 8 years happened. Or maybe the past 16. I’m not sure. At some point companies stopped reinvesting their profits into their workforce and plants. They built more and more overseas and closed doors here. That’s just one common story. Others include working on increasing margins but not productivity. Or companies that don’t provide value and innovate and only make money by merging and then cutting redundanices. They increase profit but at the end of the day there are less jobs.
This is historical, though, too. This happened throughout the 1960s and 1970s with the automakers and steel industries. They eventually were beaten by overseas production, but later were resurgent.
But that happens again and again and again. At least it seems that way.
I remember a calculus problem in high school that calculates how long it takes to empty the water a funnel. Water is poured into the funnel at a given rate and flows out at another given rate. There is also a starting volume in the funnel. As the funnel drains it is also refilled, but is it refilled at a rate enough to keep the funnel filled or will the funnel eventually run out? It almost seems that our economy is that funnel. We pour into it as it runs out, but we can’t pour into it enough to sustain the jobs and people of the country. It’s just now that we’re reaching some kind of critical mass where many, many people are worried as the funnel drains out.
So we have an American economic ethos that says government should stay out of business. At least that was the ethos professed by the right and something we kept with for the past eight years, but for some reason it hasn’t worked. Lower taxes haven’t stimulated that much growth. People are worried about their money.
Obama offers an alternative. People keep and have more of their money. This is the economics of the right to a “T” … more money in the people’s pockets means more money spent in different ways, and the economy grows. This is something the right has been professing for years, but lately has only focused on the wealthy or on businesses.
The government has given business a nearly free reign (save SOX compliance) for several years. And they have rewarded the government and American people by moving more jobs off-shore than making them at home. It just hasn’t worked.
That’s just how I see it.
This contrasts with what Jack Welsh was saying. He’s a man I like and respect. He’s smarter than I am. He said he’s a jobs voter, and thinks that Obama’s tax plans would hurt businesses to the point they’d cut jobs. I’d view it more as a wake-up call. Businesses have armies of accountants and there are enough government loopholes that an increased business tax won’t net much. With people having more money in their pockets they’ll buy more. We know this. The problem is people have less and less money in their pockets due to inflation from energy and healthcare costs. The constant refrain we hear from people over and over again is that budgets are tight and their dollar doesn’t go as far. It causes them to spend less.
I can’t follow the other logic that I’ve subscribed to in the past and that troubles me.
Governor Sarah Palin is one of the nation’s most prolific practitioners of socialism. All Alaskans, whether working or staying at home receive an annual rebate from the state due to the profits from leasing land to oil companies. Under Palin’s tenure that rebate has increased. Without question this is a Marixst-based redistribution of wealth! In Sarah Palin’s Alaska all members of society, not just those who contribute receive funds. I find it unconscionable that Sarah Palin has the audacity to rail against Senator Obama’s plan of taxing those making more than $250,000 per year and cutting taxes for 95% of the population as an unfair redistribution of wealth.
If Bill Ayers is the pariah that the Republicans portray him to be the Republicans have a big problem. After talking to a professional educator and doing some research, most of the values surrounding school reform as proposed by the Republican party are items that were studied and/or championed by Bill Ayers. These include smaller classroom sizes and smaller urban schools. So are Republicans ready to nix all their current schooling proposals to flee from Ayers ideology?
If you read here you know who I’m supporting and why, but here are some more observations of mine.
McCain wants to drop business taxes and do more of the “supply-side” or “trickle-down” thing. When it works, it works well. Goods and services cost less and businesses should invest in themselves and keep people employed and employ more people. However, in recent history businesses have kept the increased profit and invested off-shore and shuttered factories in the US seeking higher profit margins instead of sustaining their current margins and workforce. Overall this has hurt the American economy and not helped it. When a child exhibits a pattern of bad behavior the rules and circumstances surrounding him/her should be re-examined if not changed. I believe the same goes with government and economic policies. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Obama wants to shore up the business tax code essentially raising business taxes to where they were during the Ronald Reagan years. He wants to cut taxes for about 95% of the population. The difference here is that the government is seen directly serving the people instead of indirectly. There are warm fuzzies associated with this but it’s also the same logic. Instead of giving money to businesses to grow the economy it’s given to the people. This was done with the economic stimulus check and it’s also been a general rationale for tax cuts by the political right. Except the political right doesn’t like this idea; it increases taxes for the top 5%, and that’s a sound-bite to hold onto.
The debate tonight has quite a bit talking about “Joe the plumber” who didn’t know who to vote for. My answer is that it is a net-wash. McCain may give him tax breaks, but with the increased costs related to healthcare under his plan it’s probably a wash compared to Obama’s plan which would increase his taxes and cut his healthcare costs via small business tax credits.
It also boils down to who can get the job done. With a Republican president and a Democratic legislature there will be nothing coming out of Washington other than half-assed compromises. With an all Democratic suite we’ll see some progress, but also an increase in pork.
Most of us don’t know and likely don’t care who Ayers is. In the 60s he was a rich kid who ran with the anti-war crowd, boasted a lot, and wasn’t very good at bomb making. The Sun Times article referenced above does a better explanation of why it’s a non-issue than anything else.
Ayers ran with thugs in the past but was never convicted of anything. In fact, the charges against him were dropped. He was never proven guilty of anything other than being a loudmouth. Between the 1970s and now he settled down and reshaped himself into one of the nation’s leading researchers in elementary education. That’s right, this scary hippie from the 1970s redeemed himself and changed his life’s path from being a thug into a respected researcher and educator.
This is where my sister comes into play. She’s a professor of education. She instructs college students how to be teachers. So a chunk of her curriculum and the methods that she uses to get future teachers to develop their own curricula comes from the work that Ayers has done. Beyond that my sister regularly sees Ayers at annual education conferences and will occasionally chat with him.
By the Palin-McCain definition my sister’s association with Ayers makes her suspect. I’m not exactly sure suspect of what, but it makes her “one of them” and not “one of us” as explained by Palin’s recent speeches. In fact, it makes my sister more suspect than Obama. Remember, Obama has not had contact with Ayers in over two years; my sister saw him within the past 18 months.
To rephrase, my sister, who is a well-educated professor and researcher, who is also a US Army veteran, is now suspect because she attends education conventions with William Ayers. Put this way the Republican argument against Obama is so preposterous the entire presidential campaign should lose any iota of credibility.
Even worse, there are several educators who work far more closely with Ayers than my sister. Are they all suspect, too?
Juxtaposed differently, the story of William Ayers is a demonstrative tale of this country’s promise. Although not the traditional story about making something from nothing his story highlights the ability to change and grow and contribute to society after delving in the criminal. In many ways Ayers’ growth as a person, from an anti-war activist to well respected researcher should be admired and triumphed across the land. It’s a true story of redemption, one that can trace its values back to a humanist social contract or a very Christian ideology depending upon your perspective.
If the story of William Ayers is indeed a narrative that can map to Christian values I’m surprised it has not been adopted by the “value voters.” To me it’s far more compelling than the homemaker becoming governor or the pregnant teenager getting married instead of getting an abortion, it’s about the true growth of a person and them giving back to society in both tangible and intangible ways that will help shape the future for decades to come.
I wrote the following and sent it out to friends, I’m re-posting here for posterity.
All,
I’m taking time to speak out against the proposed $700 Billion bailout of Wall Street as proposed by our federal government.
On all levels this proposed bailout is wholly un-American and irresponsible. Depending upon your political viewpoint, the reasons will differ as to why this is a bad idea. Regardless of which side of the aisle you’re on you need to act now to voice your opinion to congress.
Some basic facts:
There are approximately 300,000,000 people in the USA.
$700,000,000,000 (the amount of the bailout) divides to $2300 per American.
In my household, where there are four people, that’s $9200.
I don’t care who you are, that $9200 would do my family and the economy a lot better if it stayed in my household.
From a conservative/Republican standpoint the government should remain as far away as possible from the private market. The market is there for the purpose of generating income, keeping good ideas afloat, and banishing the bad ones. The market has spoken. Those saddled with debt from poor investment choices will fail. Just like consumers are forced to bankruptcy for poor financial choices companies are as well. This proposed interference only exists to taint the marketplace and benefit a few businesses and not the population or the market at large.
Expressed as a tax cut, $700,000,000,000 is exactly 1/3rd of the $2.1 Trillion[1] collected via the federal income tax.
Also, buried within the bailout bill are provisions which would allow the Treasury Department to purchase any asset it sees fit without any kind of congressional or public oversight.[2,3] The following paragraph scares me, and it should scare you, too:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
By definition the futures, bond and stock markets are legalized gambling. If you lose, you lose. It’s not the government’s job to bail you out. I know there are several stocks where I’ve made a lot of money and several where I’ve lost all I invested. The government wasn’t there to save my skin, why should it be there to save a big bank’s?
From a liberal/Democrat standpoint the amount of money being wasted on supporting failing businesses is outrageous. Again, this is an incident of the government being used to help the wealth of the few as opposed to the masses.
8% of the $700,000,000,000 is $56,000,000,000. That 56 Billion Dollars is enough to more than DOUBLE the amount of federal funding to EVERY public school in the country.[4]
The Obama/Biden health insurance proposal (to cover the uninsured) has a basic cost outlay of 10 Billion dollars per-year over Five years for healthcare modernization[5]. That’s a sum total of $50,000,000,000. That’s 1/14th (7%) of $700,000,000,000.
Over the past 5 years $1.2 Billion of federal money has been spent on the development of Hydrogen Fuel Cells, the supposed holy grail that will get us off of fossil fuels and into clean-burning cars. If that funding was increased to $12,000,000,000 imagine what we could drive tomorrow, and imagine how that could help Detroit. [6]
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So that’s it in a nutshell. I implore you to write your legislator and let them know how you feel. Legislators are already being told what to do by the banking industry without any public comment[7]. It’s up to us to comment and not let the lobbyists win. Please forward fast & furious. Thank you.
I submitted the following to the Indy Star after tonight’s speech.
Wanting to educate myself on both sides of the current political spectrum I decided to watch Governor Sarah Palin’s speech this evening. Rather than working to promote a platform I saw a political pawn used to spew classless and caustic drivel alongside bold-faced lies and generalities about Senator Obama. Through her speech she also implied a McCain presidency would reduce debt and improve the nation overall, however this declaration is a fallacy. With no major policy deviations between the current president and Senator McCain’s platform I fail to understand how any improvement can take place.
If my observations are wrong, please direct me in the correct direction.
I didn’t realize stating “being a mayor of a small town is not the best qualification to be vice president” was a sexist statement.
I didn’t realize framing Governor Sarah Palin as an extremist Baptist Christian was sexist, either, considering she still attends the church she was Baptized in 32 years ago and many of the Church’s beliefs shape her political views.
I didn’t know that pointing out her illegal firing of a public safety director who refused to fire her sister’s estranged husband was a sexist attack.
I didn’t realize that pointing out Sarah Palin is a woman with young children and a husband who works away from home several months of the year was a sexist remark, either. The hypothetical situation of her husband being away, there being a national crisis and a family issue that needed attention all at the same time must obviously be some kind of a sexist innuendo!
I didn’t know that you cannot criticize Carly Fiorina for virtually destroying HP while she was at the helm, since that is a sexist attack. Wondering why anyone listens to her since she is a failed executive must also be sexist.
Saying Sarah Palin or my wife or my mother or my sister cannot perform the jobs of President or Vice President because they are women is indeed a sexist remark.
I think it is pretty easy to see the lines here. Maybe because I’m a rational midwesterner and not smug beltway scum.
I also submitted this to the Star, given the fact we’ve had 10 or 12 police officers arrested in the past two months…
Given the constant barrage of news surrounding corruption in our police force and among our elected officials I’d like to propose compulsory, annual drug tests for public officials. If countless private employers shell out for drug tests for their minimum wage employees it must be in their financial best interest; why can’t this philosophy be applied to the public sector? Given the “bad eggs” that we could be rid of from the City-County building, Statehouse and Police HQ the savings in salaries from a “one-strike, you’re out” policy would easily offset the cost of any testing.
