I Think, Therefore I Rant!

I am sure that a year from now we will all look back at the noise and commotion regarding the corruption of Illinois politics especially regarding the selection of a replacement for President Barack Hussein Obama’s former Senate seat.  The comedy of Governor Blagojovich and his attempt to get rich off of selling the seat will surely be funny a year from now but today it is just sad and frustrating.

It now appears that Mr. Burris, the appointee of Blagojovich, may not have been totally truthful regarding his pursuit of the seat.  While I would never encourage anyone in politics to tell the truth (it would break the mold), it seems that the corruption of Illinois politics is pretty complete and total.  That should not surprise anyone though with the simple understanding that Illinois is home to Chicago and Chicago is home to Mayor Daley (the old man and the son).  If there is anyone that exemplifies dirty politics beside the legendary Boss Tweed, the Daley family would have to be close to the top.  

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There seems to be a general trend lately that Barack Hussein Obama (BHO) is not really running things in the current administration.  Let’s point out a few examples:

1. Former Senate Majority Tim Daschle, according to the NY Times, appeared to know that he owed backtaxes back in June but didn’t bother to tell the vetting team for his nomination to Secretary.  Why would he do that?  Simple, he didn’t feel the need to tell them because he already had it pre-wired that he would get confirmed even with that blemish on his record.
2. Earlier, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was nominated to his job even though he owed taxes (remember this is the guy that is running the IRS).  He sailed through confirmations.
3. And, of course, even though BHO went to the Republicans to get their help on the stimulus package and the Republicans came up with some ideas and issues, Madame Pelosi rammed the bill through the House without the aid or consideration of BHO or the other party.

Of course, as I say in my About message above, I may be wrong.  But that would mean that BHO is simply naive and foolish in his selections.  I prefer to believe that BHO does have the wisdom to do the job.  Even though this quote by Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, gives me pause: “The president believes that nobody is perfect, but that nobody is trying to hide anything.”  While the former is true, I really have a hard time fathoming that anyone over the age of 14 believes the latter – didn’t the guy ever date?

As I write this, George W. Bush is only a few days away from the end of his 8 year Presidency.  Earlier, I had graded Mr. Bush on a variety of major factors but I felt that I left off a huge number of things that he and his administration did or did not do.  This list is the result of trying to be more inclusive.  Many items on this list are actions by the Mr. Bush and his administration and some of them are inactions.  

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The web is filled with pronouncements that George W. Bush is the worst President of the United States ever (or not).  I thought I would spend a few moments on the subject. This is a multi-part post so come back later to read more on this subject.  Better yet, subscribe to the feed and you can get it delivered to your email or feed reader.

First, lets look at what the historians say about W or at least how they grade other Presidents.  Wikipedia has a pretty good write up on the subject so let’s start there.  As with all of the recent Presidents there is a lack of the number of surveys and rankings. We can see from the couple that are there that the Wall Street Journal ranked him 18th out of 42 and Siena put him at 23.  That is squarely in the middle of the pack and nowhere near the worst.  The worst Presidents tend to Harding, Grant, Andrew Johnson, Nixon and Buchanan.  Depending on your political bent, you could throw Carter or Coolidge into this mix for the worst.  W doesn’t appear to be in this company.  

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John McCain said in a speech that he would ask Congress for an American equivalent of the Prime Minister “Question Time” that occurs in many parliamentary governments. There have been some editorials on this from George Will and the New York Times as well as some blogging on the concept.

I think most people miss the point (although Mr. Will probably comes the closest to getting it right, in my opinion). In most Parliamentary Government systems, the voters elect the Parliament and they, in turn, elect the Prime Minister (in the UK countries this is slightly different in that the Monarch actually appoints the PM but in modern history the Monarch appoints the choice of the Parliament).  So in this government, the Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of the Parliament.  

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In my opinion the best way to quickly drop the price of crude oil is to announce that the US is going to build 30 nuclear reactors in the next decade.

This would send a strong message to the world community that we are serious about energy independence. One of the big perils with electric cars is the lack of availability of infrastructure to charge them.

We need to stabilize the world energy market and this would show everyone that we see serious about getting our house in order.

I know that John McCain has advocated a similar suggestion but I haven’t heard anything of this from Obama.

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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!  

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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.  

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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.  

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It is interesting that the Israeli – Palestinian problem has achieved such notoriety and in particular that the Israeli state, the United States, and UK have taken such enormous blame over the entire issue. The proposed Palestinian state has as much right to exist as the state of Israel but it is not Israel’s fault that the Palestinian’s have no homeland …

IT IS THE UNITED KINGDOM’S FAULT!
(with a helping from Nazi Germany and others as we will see as I post more on this subject)

Actually the fault truly lies with the Ottoman empire as they were the most recent to occupy the territory (I won’t blame the Greeks and the Romans). The supposed homeland to Palestinians and Jews wasn’t their homeland for hundreds of years – it was under Ottoman rule. So all of the complaining about a homeland is really a little immature – they were both out of power for a massive amount of time (in fact, the Israel nation was gone many centuries ago).  

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