Tag: rants

Thanks for giving me this opportunity to speak directly to America. I have a question that has burned my very soul in its need to be asked.

“Are you FREAKING STUPID or WHAT?”

I don’t mean to be insulting. Really I don’t. I’ve met many of you in my 45 and 10/12ths years functioning as an American Citizen. Individually, I have yet to meet one person in my years on this planet that doesn’t at least have a functioning clue what is in THEIR OWN INTERESTS yet, collectively you don’t seem to have a clue.

This is just utter confusion at how COLLECTIVELY you do everything in your power to act directly against your own interests.

I’m sorry. I asked it badly before. What I really should have said is this:

Maybe I can help you out a little here. Let me help you do some very simplistic MATH!

Suffragettes	I know that it is all the fad to use the term “progressive” in the American radical left, moderate left, and moderate right. But sometimes its used in a way that really cheeses me off.
The Secret Ballot in New York, early 1900’s	I first encountered references to progressive populism while in High School in the 70’s, while in college in the early 80’s realized that I am a progressive populist, and indeed some of my time and effort in graduate school in the early 90’s was spent in mastering the basics of the American Institutional approach, which was originally established on the foundation of the American Pragmatism that provided the philosophical underpinnings of American Progressivism.
The 17th Amendment	Someone who argues that the differences between Senator McCain and Senator Obama are not big enough to justify voting for Senator Obama may be a leftist, they may be a radical, they may be a Liberal (in the American as opposed to European/Australian sense), they may be a whatever-you-wanna-callit … but I cannot fathom how anyone can style it as “progressive”.

So, if you are talking to a Progressive Populist during the campaign, trying to talk them into voting for Nader (or trying to talk them into voting for Barr, since pragmatically it means the same thing), don’t do it by first presuming that you are speaking for all progressives. Not unless you are sketching out a pragmatic political strategy for making progress.

Well, Saint McSame has some good news and some bad news for Americans.  I would love to do a “first the good news and then the bad news” sort of diary, but with McSame, it is all bad news for those of us that pay attention to current events once again.

From CNN:

An end to earmarks, a gas-tax holiday, government-backed mortgages — they’re all part of GOP Sen. John McCain’s “big and ambitious” plan to revive a flailing economy, a top aide said Tuesday.

OK.  Big and ambitious usually means someone is making money, and that someone isn’t you or me.  Hmmmmmmm.  Could it be Corporations again?  You make the call.

The senator from Arizona is proposing an income tax system that offers two basic rates and a “generous standard deduction,” according to his prepared remarks. McCain is proposing letting Americans choose between the new system and the present one.

“Americans do not resent paying their rightful share of taxes — what they do resent is being subjected to thousands of pages of needless and often irrational rules and demands” from the Internal Revenue Service, he will say. “We are going to create a new and simpler tax system — and give the American people a choice.”

The presidential candidate also will call for doubling the federal income tax for dependents, from $3,500 to $7,000.