They have just concluded a government investigation to the effect that China has engaged in one of the most blatent incidences of economic theft of an unimaginable scale. They have stolen designs for government aircraft and patterned their own fighters after them. They have tapped into countless computers in a whole hose of cities throughout the US. China has gained valuable secrets as to the inner strategies of US corporations and rigged the markets accordingly. It is said that China by it's actions has costs US industry 250 billion dollars in economic losses. Now they want congress to pass laws enabeling them to receive government secret information to block the espianage. Of course for people like Bachman and Herman Cain, China is our trusted friend and is incapable of wrong. Of course continued abuses in human rights continue to be exposed in China and the republicans aren't concerned about them either, just as their was almost no anti China rhetoric in any of the many Republican debates, of which we have just seen the last one before Iowa, when it all may be over anyhow. Of course 'Newt-Romney" unlike three others at the debates, have been utterly unwilling to finger Wall Street in the Great Deboccle that occurred in this country in September of 2008. Now the government has just completed an investigation of Country Wide reality, which was a company that was bought out by the Bank of America. Even though Country Wide comitted massive fraud on home buyers due to falsification, misrepresentation, and even forgery, nobody from Country Wide appears to be going to jail. But instead those who were the most culpible are in fact getting rich off of their transactions. I'm sure that's something Judy would just call "good old American capitalism". What we need next year is to elect a President who will be concerned about such things again. If the President is smart - - or if he were smart- - he would have demanded that indictments be handed down and they could sort it all out in the Courts years from now. I believe the American people are losing all patients with all of this "business as usual" and won't tollerate it any longer.
They have just handed down new regulations for US Pilots so that they don't get drowsy and crash planes. It has been a not so hidden fact that Pilots are desperately over worked and over scheduled and get little sleep between shifts. Now they have to get at least eight hours. Often pilots have to commute to their work and this adds time. Often they have "crash pads" at the airports, where sleeping conditions are altogether problematical. Pilots are required now to report to their superiors when they feel fatigued and "not up to the job". Unfortunately there are still no protections for pilots to cover them from Airline discipline should they miss work. Of course now Pilots can work beyond age sixty, and I hope this hasn't adversely affected their performance on the job. One wonders whether safety regulations in other occupations such as mining or oil rig opperations are any better. We are so much after the almighty dollar now we have reverted to a moral stance last seen in the nineteenth century where we believe that workers are expendable that profits be maximized and whether society at large suffers is not important as long as we can walk away from culpability.
We know that Congress hasn't passed the tax reduction act. But they do have time for hundreds of pork barrel projects ammounting to billions of dollars. It seems they are doing studies now on why apes throw their feces and also funding a magic museum in Michigan, as well as scheduling the completion of that "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. Again this is "bad optics" and will incur the displeasure of the American voter come next November. I'm thinking now that the American voter has risen to a heightened state of political awardness that they will no longer tollerate this sort of behavior in these troubled times. To answer that question about why the President is remaining in Washington I believe it's as if to say "Are you sure, John Boehner, that you really want to do this? "Do you really not want to pass a payroll reduction that will put an average of two thousand dollars in the hands of Americans anually they can use to spend in highly needed items in their life? Are you going to look me in the face and tell me you can really endure the political consequences of your act?"
Apparently our generation is in a frenzy to stay as young as we can for as long as we can. The media has been trying to put us out to pasture ever since 1996 when President Clinton turned fifty or something. Our generation was not even CLOSE to retiring then and even at this date most of us are STILL nowhere ready to retire. I myself am still too young for medicare even as we speak, nor am I now old enough to draw on Social Security even at a reduced rate. I'm kind of dreading that day anyhow because they will tell me because I'm on SSI I'll get penalized or something. But our generation is having one medical procedure after another to try and fight off aging from lypho suction to face lifts to knee and hip replacements. I should pride myself I suppose on having all my original parts. I haven't gotten a liver transplant. Some people seem to go through livers the way an average person goes through library books. Now they say it's the pushing of our physical limitations by "being active" with vigerous sports and work-outs that is causing stresses on our bones and muscles. When we were young we always wanted to be the ones who hold poser. Now that we are sixtyish- - we are preempted by younger people like Glen Beck, Rick Perry, and Paul Ryan. We are preempted by people with no sense of history and have no basis to form the screwball political oppinions they have.
I am not a flaming liberal as you know. On many issues Thom Hartman is to the political left of me. I am not a socialist, and I do believe in people suffering the consequences of their acts, as well as reaping the fruits of their positive acts. It's this very sense of accountability I have that compels me to oppose all these fundamentalist Christians who are in love with Newt Gingrich. It should come as no surprise that a religion founded on the premise that you do NOT have to suffer the consequences of your own acts, should in these trying times pardon the most corrupt among us. At the same time I am judged by Calvary of Anaheim by standards they would never apply to their friends or people they really cared about. Some of them in the same breath will nit pick the smallest "imperfection" they spot in my life- - all while giving Wall Street a pass for their gross financial attrocities. Now they say that these Mortgage Companies are racist on top of everything else. They will steer White people away from their bogus loans as if to do them a favor, but will invite minorities such as Blacks and Latinos to take their loans, perhaps thinking because of the mere fact of their race they are therefore stupider. I hope they are not right. The pastor of C of A used to say that when he was a kid he used to get younger kids to exchange two dimes for one nickle and tell them he was doing them a favor. It is my contention that many facets of our basic character are formed at a young age and that we never really abandon them, but merely find more "adult", socially acceptable ways of expressing them. How ironic that these "breeders" have no shortage of new recruits to fill the church pews as older ones become disillusioned and get a little sense and leave. It's I guess an apt observation that this younger generation with no sense of history- - are spoon fed a "narritive of how things are" that relies on a religion that people were beginning to consider outmoded two hundred years ago. I sometimes wonder whether there wern't more religious progressive writers in the nineteenth century than thare are now in the 21st century. These people have no sense at all that logic, science, and the world at large has passed them by, and that all over the world people are turning away in drove from their brand of "fundamental faith". (Selah)
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