Category: Politics

RANT! Obama should use public money

RANT! Obama should use public money

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I am amazed that this is not being made a bigger issue.  I guess Obama is paying everyone off with his millions of dollars so that they don’t talk about his millions of dollars.

Obama promised that if he was nominated, he would use public money for his campaign.  Now he is backing out of that promise and is going to forgo those restrictions so that he can outspend John McCain by what some think will be 5 to 1.

Obama will run the richest campaign ever for the office of the US President!

While I have a hard time saying that people can’t give money to their favorite candidate, I do have problems with massive amounts of money being used to “buy” the campaign.  Never before has the disparity between candidates been so massive.  John McCain will only have 84M from the government to spend on the election and Barack Obama will be able to spend as much as he can raise and estimates say that could be 300-400M!

BARACK OBAMA – YOU NEED TO HONOR YOUR PROMISE TO USE PUBLIC FUNDS! DON’T BE A TYPICAL POLITICIAN AND CHANGE YOUR OPINION WHENEVER IT IS CONVENIENT!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! Left Right and Center is named incorrectly

RANT! Left Right and Center is named incorrectly

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I regularly listen to KCRW’s “Left, Right and Center” on my iPod. While I enjoy the intelligent discussion I think they should rename the program to “Left, Very Left, Ultra Left, and Pretty Far Right”. The show now has a blog so I think it is fair to chastise them a little and condemn them for not being as open as they claim that they are – if they disagree they can say so on their blog.

Tony Blankley does an excellent job of holding down the right. His opinions are typically well thought out and his intellect does a decent job in offsetting the radical left. My biggest complaint is that he always seems to have predicted everything and wrote about it months ago and it is amazing that us mortals have only just now got to where he has been for a long time. It appears that, in his opinion, if we were just smart enough to read his column every week we wouldn’t have any problems in the world.

Arianna Huffington is on so infrequently it is a joke. She used to be on the right when Bill Clinton was the President but now that we have George W. Bush, she has decided to be on the left. She does fine representing the left when she bothers to participate but she is out promoting her books or getting interviewed by the rich and famous so much that she is rarely there. When she is there it seems like she is sending emails on her Blackberry when someone else is talking.  She supposedly represents the “progressive blogosphere” (whatever that means) but this doesn’t make sense since Bob heads up TruthDig.com so they really don’t need both Arianna and Bob.

Robert Scheer is so ultra left that he is embarrassing and just saying he is on the left is insulting most of his true positions – they are farther left than just left. I assume the only reason he is on the show is that he is old, can’t find someone else to employ him and he needs the money. To him all of the ills of the world were caused by the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, and Karl Rove. He will go to great lengths to find some obscure way to link every bad thing to one, both or all three of them. He is so out of touch with mainstream America that he even supported Dennis Kucinich for President!  Bob lives up to his left title though in insisting that all taxes are good and all money should be taken from everybody and given back to those that the government thinks should deserve it.

Matt Miller is supposed to be the center and he is the moderator.  Occasionally, he is out doing something else and then we get to hear a real center as the fill in is almost almost always a true centrist.  How does someone that worked for President Clinton and is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress call himself a centrist?  He is not as far left as Bob and Arianna so I guess that gives the producers the freedom to call him center.  He must be right of the producers!

All of them do a very good job of promoting their books.  I don’t have a big problem with that but it is obvious that they see this show as a way to sell more titles.

As much as I deride their non-balanced viewpoints, the show is actually quite good.  The three of them (when Arianna shows up) try desperately to outwit Tony and, for the most part, fail miserably.  They bring up weak ideas and Tony points out that they don’t have all of the facts.  Tony usually does the show from Washington DC and I have this feeling that he is laughing at them when he is off microphone.

KCRW MANAGEMENT – FIRE 2 OF THE LEFTISTS ON THIS SHOW AND GET SOMEONE TO BE A TRUE CENTER!  FAILING THAT, CHANGE THE NAME OF THE SHOW!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

RANT! I don’t care about Sheryl’s views on politics!

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I am a big fan of the music of Sheryl Crow. I have all of her CDs and have bought each one (no, I didn’t “borrow” someone else’s MP3 files). I have enjoyed her music over the years but, to be honest, her first CD was probably her best and she could be accused of coasting since then – a couple good songs per CD with so-so songs after that.

I have listened to Ms. Crow’s latest CD several times. It is titled “Detours”. It is an apt title since it is a detour from her usual high quality work! I feel like the Democratic Party, Al Gore, and Laurie David have been injected into my brain via my ears! To think that I spent $15 for a CD of political propaganda.

I have no problem with the occasional activism song. I actually applaud this even when I don’t particularly agree with the message. For instance, Matchbox Twenty’s recent video “How Far We’ve Come” (see the bottom of this post to watch the video) is absolutely a political statement and it is excellent (I am not sure that the ending of showing Mr. Gore, Ms. Clinton, and Mr. Obama is a statement to the positive after watching the fall of the Berlin Wall but maybe that is their point).

Thankfully, Ms. Crow has put the lyrics to her songs in the CD package. I appreciate that gesture and she has regularly done this for her listeners. However, the words that she is portraying are over the top. Does she really know for a fact that the President was lying to get into a war? When I want to listen to someone exaggerate the truth, I will watch Al Gore’s movie since the British courts have already called that a political document.

Sheryl (and other artists) should limit her political statements to one or two well done messages and then spend the rest of the CD entertaining me. That is what I am paying her to do.

SHERYL – I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR POLITICS! I WANT YOU TO ENTERTAIN ME, NOT LECTURE ME ON YOUR OPINIONS!

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! What do we do with Social Security – 3 of 3

RANT! What do we do with Social Security – 3 of 3

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For the last 2 posts, I have explained that social security is in real trouble and should be euthanized. Now I will explain how to do it in the most fair and compassionate way possible.

Our current generation of retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) needs to be protected in this whole process. Therefore my plan doesn’t require them to make any sacrifices. They had a contract with the US government and we need to keep that contract. So the first step of the process is that anyone 58 and over receives all of the benefits that they are currently supposed to receive.

The second step of the process is that since everyone that is 57 today has ten years to prepare for the change, they will receive 10% less than what they were supposed to receive as of today. They need to start saving to prepare for that day and stop looking to the government for a complete handout that is not going to happen. Besides, 10% is not that big of a sacrifice.

The third step is to reduce the gift each year by 2% times each additional year under 57. So, as I said above, 57 year old people are eligible in 2017 and they receive 10% less. Then everyone that will be 67 in 2018 will receive 12% less than today’s standard. 2019 retirees will receive 14%, 2020 retirees will receive 16% less, and so on.

This means that by 2062, Social Security will be gone. Good riddance. RIP! FDR should be proud, he created a system that took almost a century and a half to kill. Think about that – how many institutions today were started at the time of the US Civil War?

The fourth step is probably the most important. For every dollar that American’s pay into the Social Security system until it it has enough money to survive until 2062 (by my estimate that will be until about 2025, maybe 2030), we will be able to set aside another dollar into a specially declared savings account that can’t be touched until we are 67 and the principle and the interest will never be taxed. That savings program will continue and hopefully become the new 3rd rail that politicians can’t touch.

MY PLAN WILL HAVE SOCIAL SECURITY COMPLETELY FIXED BY 2062! NO OTHER PLAN CAN SAY THAT!

BTW, I will be 100 years old when SS is dead! I hope that I can live that long and I will do a jig if I am still able. If I do live that long, you can be confident that I will adequately prepare my finances so that I am not a burden on my children or society.

I am done with this topic for now but I reserve the right to rant more on it someday.

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RANT! What do we do with Social Security – 2 of 3

RANT! What do we do with Social Security – 2 of 3

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My last post talked about our wimpy politicians and their fear of trying to fix the social security system. It won’t be easy and it is a little complicated so please read carefully:

WE NEED TO ELIMINATE SOCIAL SECURITY!

That is the hardest thing to accept. Once we accept that, the question becomes how to eliminate it.

You ask why we should eliminate social security. Did you read my last post? If no, please do so now then come back (click here). Don’t worry, I will wait.

…….. long pause

Now that you’re back, it should be obvious that the biggest curse that Franklin Roosevelt did was to setup a system that violates reason. FDR’s system only works if there are more workers today than yesterday and more workers tomorrow than today. Since that equation cannot continue indefinitely, the system was bound to fail eventually. Now is the time of failure and we need to face it.

Don’t worry, I am not going to leave you hanging. Next post, I will tell you how to make the death as gentle as possible but make no mistake – the patient is dying and there is no medicine that we can afford that will save it. The best thing to do is to make the suffering as minimal as possible.

More on this topic later!

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RANT! What do we do with Social Security? – 1 of 3

RANT! What do we do with Social Security? – 1 of 3

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Social Security is often called the 3rd rail of politics – touch it and you die. While that is probably true, we still need some politicians to step up and commit suicide because it definitely needs fixed.

First, lets discuss why it needs fixed. I am days away from my 45th birthday as I write this and I have no confidence that I will see a dime of Social Security money when I turn 67 in 22 short years. If I do see any money, then it will be a huge burden on the backs of my children and their peers!

Nearly everyone that I talk to on this subject are under the same impression – no money for us or at least not in relationship to the huge amount of money we will have put into the system.

You see, that is the real problem with the system – the money that I put in doesn’t get saved for me, it is almost immediately turned around and given back out to some current retiree (actually due to the way we spend money in the government, it may be going to pay for research on iguanas in Massachusetts). The Social Security system is not a savings account that is setting aside money for my use, but rather it is spent and the money that is supposed to go to me will come from some poor worker in 2029 and beyond.

So now that we know how it is broken, we need to discuss how to fix it. For that you will have to read my next RANT! But first, my infamous all caps yelling RANT!

HEY POLITICIANS – STAND UP AND MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND MAKE THIS A TOP PRIORITY!

More on this topic later!

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