The Trouble With Lefty.

I once read that conservatives mistrust groups and trust individuals and that liberals mistrust individuals but connect to groups. In my experience, there is a great deal of truth to this. Just drive out to some rural area where people tend to be more politically conservative and knock on a few doors. Ask if you can borrow their phone because you ran out of gas. Now try that in New York City where citizens tend to be more politically liberal. See what happens there. Yet if you ask most urban dwellers if we should save a group of people they have never met, liberals tend to want to help whereas conservatives tend to turn a blind eye. Each one has its own merits and drawbacks, but taken on a national level, the liberal perspective doesn't fare well at all when it comes to reaching voters.

Take for instance today's protest which is scheduled to take place in several cities across the nation. The left, correctly, is capitalizing on a national distaste for the Iraq misadventure and attempting to show the government that the November elections and democrat's victory had a very strong message: get our troops out. The protest is designed to paint an image of a very displeased constituency for a deaf and seemingly blind Administration. This is where the left shines; at throwing a party. No one can organize a protest like a liberal and it has changed a great many of America's past disastrous policies. Vietnam & Civil Rights just to name two. Sadly, however, they are missing the individual and it will, as it has in the past (Gary Hart, Walter Mondale and Micheal Dukakis) come back to haunt them.

Is protesting the war a good thing? Of course it is. Especially this disaster. I'm with you there. Is it good to have prominent figures there? Of course it is. Faces people can identify with and relate to. Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins. All faces that we now associate with liberal causes. This protest is a no-brain win. Sounds like the perfect atmosphere to blow an easy way to make a political gain! But how? I know! Let's invite "Hanoi" Jane Fonda! And that, my friends, is the trouble with lefty. Like that self-destructive friend who just can't shake an addiction, the left simply must squander its advantage every chance it can.

I don't know if you agree with Jane Fonda and frankly it doesn't matter. This woman provided aide and comfort to the NVA during the Vietnam war. Yes, it was a loathsome conflict and ultimately illegal, but her actions were petty, vindictive and at worst, treasonous. So why, of all of Hollywood's gliteratii, would they pick her? Was the mentally deteriorating Barbara Striesand too busy? There is absolutely nothing to gain by inviting Ms. Fonda and everything to lose. Do you really think a person in Indiana, Iowa or Nebraska who is against the war is going to align themselves with her and continue their support? Or do you think that maybe, just maybe, they will remember her past transgressions and consider the fact that her judgement is perhaps not in line with their own values?

Consider when Bill Clinton was running for President in 1992. He did everything he could to distance himself from percieved left fringe elements such as Jesse Jackson because that is what you have to do in America to win elections. Is it expedient? Yes. Is it calculating? You bet. Does it work? Well, ask Karl Rove. He is the one responsible for marrying the religious right to the conservative cause and it paid off. Sadly, it doesn't work the other way around. For some reason, fringe conservatives vote twice as much as fringe liberals. Is it any surprise that the left keeps losing elections? Not when your voting base doesn't show up.

Whether or not you agree with this, the statistics bear this to be true which is why the democratic turnaround just barely gave them an edge this last election. The polls at the time of the mid-terms showed that sixty-four percent of the public thought the Iraq war was being mishandled and yet liberal victories over republican incumbents nationwide ran in the single digit margins. That is either because voters didn't understand that the Administration was behind the war (unlikely) or that they still didn't connect with democrats except that they weren't attached to the Administration's war policy (more likely). This is big problem for the liberals who need to realize, and quickly, that the "average" American does want a better life and agrees with most of what they are selling (minimum wage increase, universal health care and responsible foriegn policies) but if you think your salesperson is going to be Jane Fonda, you are not seeing the trees in a very red forest.

Why President Bush is a Genius.

I grow a little weary of everyone running around lamenting that our President is such an idiot. This is the President who actually removed Saddam Hussein from power. Despite the fact that the U.S. put him there, he at least did something about it. This is the President who, despite all earlier rhetoric of Palestinian rights, may actually give the Palestinians their own nation - something no other Arab country has even tried. This is the President, the first one in recent memory mind you, to attempt reform at the United Nations. And, lastly, this is the President who will go down in history for pulling off one of the greatest heists in U.S. history. If you thought Ocean's Eleven was big, that's chump change compared for what's about to happen.

President Bush is trying to pass legislation that will give non-Iraqi oil companies 75% of all future Iraq oil revenues. 75%. If you can't follow the money, here's how it goes: You work, the governemt takes taxes out of your paycheck and uses it to confiscate foreign assets (in this case, oil) and then takes the revenue from those assets and gives it to their friends. It's called money laundering and I think it's fair to say that those firms will look kindly on anyone responsible for handing them these contracts, wouldn't you say? The money being laundered in this case will reach into the trillions of dollars and the American people won't see one red nickel. Not at the gas pumps. Not in their "tax breaks". Not anywhere. This is brilliant on an unimaginable scale because of its complete simplicity. No elaborate bills passed in the middle of the night. No shadowy government de facto institutions. No domestic assassinations. The Administration did it with our complete and utter complicity and right in front of our eyes. Still don't believe in this man's consumate brilliance? Here's the proof:

The Administration took us into a war claiming weapons of mass destruction. There were none and they openly admit that now without a shred of retribution. The Administration then said this war would cost ... "something under $50 billion for the cost." [Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld 1/19/03]. Currently, this war is estimated at roughly 380 billion. Then, when the entire country began to erupt into ethnic strife, the Administration said they needed just twenty-thousand more troops to curb a religious conflict between ten and fifteen million people. And we're sending them.

This Administration has sold the American people a war that will cost nearly 3 to 4% of the GNP, they have sent our brave soldiers to die and they have convinced us that by appointing companies - not having them bid - for contracts to rebuild Iraq is all good for us. And we did nothing. So, at the end of the day, when your children are paying off this war and Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Rice are all laughing at us from their privately owned islands anywhere in the world bought by your money and paid for by your military's blood, I want you to ask yourself who is the real idiot in this equation.

Social Insecurity

When Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke first stepped into the glamorous limelight of the Senate confirmation hearings in November 2006 not a lot of people cancelled their vacations to watch C-Span. After all, there was a war raging and a major mid term election coming up in November. However, lest we forget, the Federal Reserve Chairman is one of the most powerful positions in a capitalist society. He essentially controls the monetary and credit conditions by which we all borrow money and by and large maintains the stability of our market system.

When one is appointed, it is important, to say the least, that this position be above any partisan opinions. Say, for instance, by lowering interest rates before a national election to aid in an incumbent President's re-election. There are a host of other tactics, but essentially playing with the economy to help a party's agenda is not only arrogant, it's dangerous and stupid.

Which is why, when Ben Bernanke "warned Congress today that the economy could be gravely hurt unless Social Security and Medicare are revamped and urged lawmakers to tackle the nation's thorny fiscal issues sooner rather than later." I was alarmed. I understand that Mr. Bernanke is worried about the economic health of our nation and that is heart-warming to me, but when the President wastes nearly 400 billion dollars for a war and a third of that in tax cuts for the wealthiest, shouldn't that also be of concern to Mr. Bernanke?

So why is Mr. Bernanke so concerned with Social Security and Medicaid? Could it be just a coincidence that the Administration had failed earlier to attempt just this same program? And weren't those reforms roundly rejected by the republican majorities? No, it is not coincidental and yes, they were rejected and, sadly, this new tactic is designed to scare people by turning a traditionally bipartisan office into another Administrative straw man. Only this one might catch fire and do some real damage to the barn. We saw what happened when the FEMA chairman became a political extension of the President, not to mention the information gathering arm of the Pentagon. One drowned over one thousand people while the other killed over three thousand American troops and counting.

Privatizing social security is one of the worst ideas to come down the pike since deregulating the banking industry. It essentially places the safety net for all our elderly citizens in the hands of the stock market. There is a reason why no one spends their entire nest egg on the stock market. It's called sanity and no responsible financial planner would ever suggest such a strategy. Yet privatization is essentially asking us to lay our entire retirement savings at the mercy of the bear and the bull.

Bernanke further added that, "Absent policy changes by Congress and the White House, rising budget deficits are likely in the years ahead to increase the amount of federal debt outstanding to unprecedented levels." I apologize for waking the Federal Reserve Board Chairman during his six year nap, but we are currently facing a federal debt that is outstanding to unprecedented levels and it had nothing to do with social security and it won't in the future even if we do nothing.

Let's talk facts. Social Security will continue to take in more money than it has to pay out through 2017 according to the latest calculations by the Congressional Budget Office. If we need to pay full benefits (and we have no idea if we do) the program will tap its trust fund. Not an ideal scenario, but that's why we have this fund. If we do turn to the trust fund, it will run dry by 2046. So there you have it. That's the emergency that Ben Bernanke is screaming about. If we don't act now, by 2046 we MIGHT run out of our social security benefits.

So the next time you hear the democrats or republicans hysterically crying that we MUST reform social security, take a deep breath, relax, and tell yourself that we have a few more problems that might need fixing before the 2044 general election.

Number Crunching

Americans love numbers. We love polls. Game statistics. The amount of calories in any given food particle and how many Americans die in any given incident. From plane crashes to bombings we have to know how many American lives were lost. Today, The New York Times' front page has a rather symbolic number for us: Three thousand.

For Americans, that number has come to mean a lot over the past five years. It was the rounded down number of those killed in the 9/11 attacks. A terrible number that will forever accompany that heinous day in the history books. The number of innocent victims taken on that day is now matched by the number of American soldier deaths from the "war on terror". It is as though the NYT is making some sort of morbid point regarding the effort of the war. As though now the war in Iraq has gone too far. As though now the media can finally report on the stupidity of the war planners and the incompetence of our leaders. As though now this milestone is when we, as a nation, can ask if this struggle is really worth it. Thank you, NYT, why don't you go back to sleep now and leave the reporting to the British press.

If you are for the war, does that number matter? Should we have pulled out of World War Two once the number of American soldiers dead exceeded that killed in Pearl Harbor? If you are against the war, the first death was one too many. Here are other important numbers the NYT will probably fail to print to allow for their assinine accounting headlines.

-On November 1st, 2001, President Bush issued an executive order limiting the public's access to presidential records. The order undermined the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which required the release of those records after 12 years. Bush's order prevented the release of "68,000 pages of confidential communications between President Ronald Reagan and his advisers," some of whom had positions in the Bush Administration.

-In December 2002, the administration curtailed funding to the Mass-Layoffs Statistics program, which released monthly data on the number and size of layoffs by U.S. companies. His father attempted to kill the same program in 1992, but Clinton revived it when he assumed the presidency.

-The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered these statistics.

-In 2002, Bush officials intervened to derail the publication of an EPA report on mercury and children's health, which contradicted the administration's position on lowering regulations on certain power plants. The report was eventually leaked by a "frustrated EPA official."

-In early 2001, the Treasury Department stopped producing reports showing how the benefits of tax cuts were distributed by income class.

You can find a million numbers on the internet that have more meaning, more importance and more weight than three thousand. How about thirty-nine? That's the approval rating for this president. Maybe you like higher numbers? Try 600,000 which is the last number reported for Iraqi deaths since this whole stinking mess began. Numbers are what you make of them, so let's hope in 2007 we can see 0 further senseless deaths. Happy New Year.