This evening the Senators walked out after passing the bailout 75 to 25 and slapped each other on the back for "working together in the manner that the founding fathers would want us to work in, with partisanship aside to work in the American peoples best interests." I'm paraphrasing Senator Chris Dodd who had only kind words for the Republicans that helped the Senate to pass the bailout, virtually unchanged from the House version. The Bill will now head back to the House for another vote, now that the Senate has put its stamp of approval on it.

Meanwhile, the people of the United States want to know one thing and one thing only. Is helping out the same parties that led us to the brink of bankruptcy really in the people's best interests? The President has said from his bully pulpit that he believes that this bailout is vitally important to prevent the collapse of the economy. This is the same man that told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that he could possibly launch an attack against this nation. We found out not too much later, after the Congress gave him the Authorization for the Use of Force that he did not. The mission was then changed to that of bringing democracy to the Iraqi people. The facts are, with 1.2 million Iraqi citizen's dead and over 2 million displaced to live as refugees in other Middle Eastern countries, with another 2 million displaced inside of Iraq, and over 600 billion dollars spent, the same amount as this bailout, people can't agree if we won the war or not. Now we are supposed to take this man's word that Wall Street needs the taxpayer's money to right the wrongs this government has let them get away with.

It was explained to me that we will pay interest on the money that the banks lend us so that we can...bail out the banks. This is some sweet racket that the bankers have. They are in a win-win situation, providing the bailout is passed. The American people buy the banking industries debt so that they can lend each other money again and become profitable. This amounts to economic socialism when it comes to debt, but capitalism when it comes to profits. We are threatened with pension plans going bust if we don't approve of our lawmakers using our money to pay for Wall Streets mistakes. These are the same Congressmen that have been using the same bankers and financial institutions to pay for their political campaigns. Meanwhile the House members that voted for the bailout that failed to pass the lower House are found out to have had 51% more campaign donations from those financial institutions that would benefit from the bailout than those that voted against it. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/ finance-sector-gave-50-percent.html

The Primary Owners of the Federal Reserve Bank Are:

1. Rothschild's of London and Berlin
   
2. Lazard Brothers of Paris
   
3. Israel Moses Seaf of Italy
   
4. Kuhn, Loeb & Co. of Germany and New York
   
5. Warburg & Company of Hamburg, Germany
   
6. Lehman Brothers of New York
   
7. Goldman, Sachs of New York
   
8. Rockefeller Brothers of New York

After two days of occasionally dropping by, so to speak, to see what my old political party was up too, I find myself no more knowledgeable about what it is the Democrats stand for than I was before this convention. The only thing that I do know is that they don't want to see John McCain elected. The arguments that they raise about a possible McCain presidency and what it will mean are at the very least perfect examples of fear mongering. I'm not saying that they are not entirely wrong either. The problem I have with the Democrats is not how they view a McCain presidency; it is how they view an Obama presidency.

I believe that the key to winning this election, is winning it with a majority that cannot be tampered with. It is no longer safe to win an election with a close popular vote count, or an electoral vote count... close races have been turned by political operatives with the help of friendly State examiners and friendly courts. Voters have been disenfranchised with no real recourse. No, elections in this electronic age of Diebold machines and artificial time limits on voter recounts must rely on winning handily, close simply will not do. This is why the Democrats must represent a real choice to the voters. The simple strategy of being "the lesser of two evils" will not draw out people that otherwise would not vote. It is very tempting for many Americans to make arrangements to leave work or home, to not bother waiting in lines, and to generally not participate in the election process that can be truly annoying, if there is not a real desire to see your candidate win. This is much more a problem for Democrats than Republicans, as the Republican voters can usually be counted to make it to the polls. Why Congress, in this day and age, has not made it easier for people to vote is a mystery.

This is the primary reason that Obama must define himself, and do it soon. I see this as an almost impossible task, simply because of the people that are involved in his campaign. If I were to put myself in Obama's shoes, I would not be very comfortable. The American people want a different direction for America. I believe that this different direction doesn't consist of moving our primary zone of combat operations from Iraq to Afghanistan, or to continue to support Israel unconditionally, regardless of what they do. It also doesn't mean propping up the military in a former Soviet Republic and prodding them to attack Russian soldiers as we have done in Georgia. I believe that most Americans want a return to financial responsibility and get our national debt under control. They want access to health care and to see this disparity between the wealthy and the middle class reversed. They want their children to receive a world class education. They also want to stop the outsourcing of American industry. They want to see jobs created by rebuilding the infrastructure of this country, and they really don't care if it is done by the public or private sectors, they just want the jobs this will create and bridges that won't fall down.

Today I heard Bill O'Reilly go ballistic when a Newsday article mentioned that a suspected murderer had a copy of the O'Reilly Factor in his house when the cops searched it. This he claims was slander. He sent one of his sycophants' to track down the writer of this article (Jenna Kern) that had "maligned" him and ambushed her in her driveway.

"Did you read the book?" He asked her.
"No, I did not read the book." She replied
"Then how do you know what the book says?" He asks her.

Well first of all, the content of the book had nothing to do with the charge of slander by Bill Bigmouth. I never read the book either, but if I were asked what kind of hateful things O'Reilly has said on the air, it wouldn't be a problem. Things like claiming that Newsday is a "far-left propaganda" vehicle. He also leveled the same claim at the Palm Beach Post when they failed to "investigate" O'Reilly's claim that Rep. Robert Wexler was really a resident of Maryland and not of Florida. Did it ever occur to O'Reilly that there are many politicians that own real-estate around DC?

I would be utterly confounded, confused, upset, hopeless and most of all, hurting like hell. Even though I'm not a Democrat, I still feel all of these particular emotions. It feels as if the end of the world is coming and there is not a thing I can do about it, and unfortunately, nobody seems to care, especially the Democrats.

I can't help but be the eternal optimist. Somehow, someway, we are all going to understand what's happening to this country and we will demand that the corporate politicians and the corporate media stop this march towards fascism and imperialism, and give this nation back to its people. There are some that believe in a second coming of a political messiah that will right all the wrongs and make the government represent the people. This is a pipedream. There is no single person, no political party and no movement that can, or will, do this. We must do it ourselves if we want to see it done.

The Democrats are wondering why their candidate's numbers are slowly circling the drain. How stupid is that? Could it be that the man chosen by the mainstream corporate media and the corporate political party is behaving like a corporatist? This entire drama between the two political parties has got to be the most expensive con job that this world has ever seen. Barack Obama is either incredibly naive, or the worst straw man that has ever appeared on the American political scene. If there was any chance in hell of America voting in a Republican after two terms of George W. Bush, the Democrats have found that chance in the hell that is the neo-con theories of war and corporate rape of America.

I'm probably no different than most people in this country in that I'm constantly re-evaluating this presidential race, especially when I am presented with information that is new (to me at least). I don't claim to know everything about all the candidates and I probably won't know what I really need to know to make a conscious, informed decision. The truth is that I'm still finding out information about past campaigns even now.

The reason for this is because now that these campaigns are over, information that was considered damaging or would confuse voters now isn't. I believe that another reason is that in order to appeal to all of the different factions that a candidate must impress in order to win their support, certain beliefs and opinions that politicians have must be suppressed, least they alienate more voters than they gain.

This is unfortunately something that's endemic to all political campaigns. The media of the 21st century makes it even more important to guard certain items of political interest in that the lack of real content about political campaigns, and the time given to pundits to talk about the campaigns, is totally skewed. The networks only understand that the public's interest in the presidential race is their top priority, so the networks allocate a great deal of airtime to it. It's up to the individual producers of these shows to fill up the time slots with interesting content, but on some days very little news emerges, it's now up to them to `manufacture"  the content they need. If they can not only succeed in producing the content they need, but they can also come up with something that grows "legs" and becomes a whole new issue, they can provide content for many more shows.

Adolf Hitler amazes me in one sense. Here he was, a brown-eyed, dark haired little man, and he convinced a large number of people that the he represented the "Aryan Race" of supposedly tall, blond haired, blue-eyed people. Nice trick. The thing about what Hitler said, and what the reality consisted of, was that people wanted to believe him. I see this desire reflected in the candidacy of Senator Obama.

When I see this "modern left" embrace Barack Obama I seem to always ask myself the same question over and over again, how can the same people that were so disgusted, and who felt so much moral outrage over the policies and duplicity of George W. Bush and company, turn a blind eye when Obama demonstrates some of the same behavior? This turn of events has truly been an eye-opener for me. Since 2001, I have read many op-ed pieces, and have written a number of them myself, that reflect moral disgust with this administration. Bush has claimed the moral high ground on many issues while he simultaneously engaged in behavior that was contradictory to the reality of the situation.

The critics of this administration have rightly called out Bush and his minions, and have expressed not only dismay, but disgust with allegations of torture, misleading the American people, and using force in place of diplomacy. The Democrats and others have opposed these behaviors. They have castigated these people while pointing out how truly and utterly contemptible and hypocritical they are. As an example, Bush decries Iran's support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and extremists in Iraq, while at the same time U.S. Special Forces and Iranian subversive groups cross into Iran and carry out missions in support of "regime change". Usually, every facet of Neo-Con duplicity is not overlooked when the administration's opponents illustrate the extent of their manipulations. I have no problem with this, in fact, to effectively counter the far-right's skewed agenda, the more lies that see the light of day, the more effective the attempts to stop them are.

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to read an article that had Fox TV News as the subject. In this particular article by David Carr, "When Fox News is the Story" (New York Times, July 7, 2008), I read how Fox News responds to bad press from other news outlets. The way that Fox responds to what it deems as damaging to its image, was a real eye-opener. Since I do not write very many articles that would capture the attention of Fox TV, reading about how other journalists deal with Fox when they circle their wagons, so to speak, was fascinating.

I had always thought that the best way to stop calling attention to a situation that could be damaging to one's reputation was to ignore whatever drew attention to you in the first place. The logic behind this was that once you called attention to whatever damaged you in the first place; you gave that particular bit of information credibility, and at the same time keeping people's attention on the damage to your reputation by the very act of defending yourself. It appears that Fox does not subscribe to that view of how to defend your credibility. In a very well written piece, Carr describes how Fox goes on the offensive as soon as a threat to their integrity surfaces. I can understand why Fox is so particular about maintaining their credibility; they are so biased towards the right wing of the political spectrum, their objectivity is indeed suspect much of the time.

One particular example of Fox slanting the news is how they defended themselves from an article that they believed was biased towards the news channel. Jacques Steinberg wrote a piece about how CNN was catching up to Fox in the ratings. Mr. Steinberg tried to reach Fox for a comment and they ignored him, while at the same time complaining to his bosses that he hadn't tried to call them for a comment on his story. This apparently was an attempt to discredit him as a journalist by not allowing Fox to comment. They also ran a story of their own, calling Steinberg an "attack dog" for his boss, Steven V. Reddicliffe, and running a picture of Steinberg that had been altered to make Steinberg appear in Carr's words; "In a technique familiar to students of vintage German propaganda, his ears were pulled out, his teeth splayed apart, his forehead lowered and his nose was widened and enlarged in a way that made him look more like Fagin than the guy I work with." Carr also described how the German's often used this technique during World War II in photos. "Media Matters" in a critique of Fox, ran two photos, one real and the one that was altered of Mr. Steinberg, this is one reason that I subscribe to their newsletters.

I have never helped to elect a president, not by voting anyway. Every vote I that I've cast has been for the loser. This is one reason why I don't gamble. This election will be no different, and that's why I won't cast a vote for president. I don't want to insure a McCain victory by voting for Obama or anyone else.

I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about impeachment. Many Democrats have claimed that impeachment could jeopardize their chances of putting a Democrat in office. If you look at recent history however, impeachment has been a very good thing for an opposition party. When Nixon was facing impeachment and resigned instead, the Democrats were able to get Carter elected. When Clinton was impeached the Republicans were able to elect Bush. That particular argument just won't wash. Impeachment has been a good thing for the political party that introduces it.

The Democrats have actually come out against impeachment because this president has such a short time left on his term. I wonder if they have ever considered this to be a reason to impeach. There are many reasons to expect that Bush and Cheney will decide to attack Iran before they leave office. The idea that they would be under indictment could be seen as a way to take the wind out of their sails. The article by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker this week illustrates exactly how serious this administration takes the idea of regime change in Iran. It is a foregone conclusion that war with Iran is one of the top objectives that Bush & Co would like to accomplish before another president takes office. The idea that Bush would like to take on Iran if it appears that Obama will succeed hi has already been voiced by Bill Kristol and other Neo-Con cheerleaders. Why the Democrats still refuse to support Rep. Kucinich and his 35 Articles of Impeachment is a mystery.