Economy

As always, Republicans continue to lie their way through everything they can. As you can see in the video, Newt Gingrich is now claiming that the mere talk of oil drilling has brought the prices down. Newt Gingrich isn’t a moron, but he’s definitely talking out of his ass. The oil prices went down because demand is down and let me tell you another thing - it’s going to go up again now due to the situation in Georgia because several pipelines have been taken offline as part of the ongoing conflict there.

John McCain admitted himself that he needed to be “educated” on the economy. Not exactly what I would call reassuring when you consider that the economy is one of the most important issues to most voters. It’s safe to say that most people actually consider the economy and the War in Iraq as the most important issues overall. McCain already admitted that he basically is in the dark on the economy, but why is it that he repeatedly proves that he’s also rather clueless when it comes to the War? He has to have turncoat Lieberman correct him, as even Fox News reported themselves here. Aside from getting Shias and Sunis mixed up, he gets entire time lines wrong and then claims it’s “common knowledge” that the Shia uprising occurred after the beginning of the surge. Watch Jack Cafferty seriously put everything McCain stands for in question in the next video clip. What kind of a dummy is John McCain anyway? Would you campaign for a party that annihilated you politically just 8 years earlier?

I must tell you that I’ve always thought that the US approach towards drugs is almost childish. From the beginning of the “just say no” campaign put to life by former president Ronald Reagon’s wife Nancy Reagon I’ve always mocked anti drug programs. As you can see here she admits herself that “just saying no” to drugs seems like a rather simple message. Not only is it a simple message, it’s a naive message. Only in America could you have campaigns such as “DARE to keep kids off drugs”. It’s such a ludicrous message on a society as over medicated as ours. I’ll give you an example of how utterly stupid our system is. If I go down to dark parts of the city and acquire some crystal meth and get caught, I’m pretty sure I’m in rather deep trouble, depending on my skin color of course. However if I go to my Doctor and simply ask for some prescription speed, I’m OK. Now I’m sure you can’t get anything comparable to crystal meth from the Doctor, but the point is that both items are drugs.

Let’s take another example, pain killers. We all know that hypocritical idiots such as Rush Limbaugh have shown us, that there is a market for prescription drugs. The drugs he was discovered to have been taking, were heroin. You can all it Oxy-whatever, but the bottom line is that those type of pills are derivatives of heroin and nothing else. Is Rush Limbaugh still on the air? Of course he is. The funny part of course is that he said on the air that drug addicts were supposed to be “sent down the river” as far as he was concerned.

We have spent billions on the war on drugs and the bottom line is that it has failed, it’s a farce and it costs us man power that could easily be used for other more sensible things. Projects that would actually be of some type of value to society. I’m not saying drug trafficking and other things shouldn’t be controlled in some type of fashion, however there are much more effective ways of combating the problem. If the government was really interested in winning the drug war, they would stem it at its source. How do you squelch the problem of a black market? Get into the market yourself! Instead of fighting the problem, we could just try to get in on the business. Quite frankly I’m hoping that some businessman will come along one day and realize that our current policies are simply hampering economic development.

If the government controlled all sales of controlled substances, there wouldn’t be a need for fighting the war on drugs, because we would simply have all the drugs. Sure there would be a certain extent of drugs will being made on the black market but “consumers” but soon prefer the “clean” drugs, over the stuff on the streets - just like people by Johnny Walker from the liquor store, and not from some backstreet dealer.

I must admit I’m very surprised of the move Barack made yesterday. He announced that the Democratic National Committee was no longer accepting lobbyists money.

I personally think that’s one of the biggest pieces of news I’ve heard in a long time considering that Washington is run by lobbyists. It will be interesting to see how far he can go with the change he wants to implement. One must not forget that Lobbies aren’t a Republican or Democratic thing - they’re a Washington thing and and everyone in D.C. is getting money from someone as can be seen here.

The fact that Obama was successful in running a campaign that was largely funded by very small donations does give some hope though. I’ve always said that it doesn’t really matter who gets elected, due to the heavily financed campaign process and of course ultimately the influence of Lobbyists in Washington. Obama was able to get as far as he got without big corporate donations and I think it sets a good signal for going forward.

Historically I think it’s very interesting to note though, that the Kennedy’s were assassinated for their drastic goals. In Robert F. Kennedy’s final commentary before being killed, he spoke of under privileged Blacks and Mexicans and considering that was 40 years ago, it can definitely be called visionary. Yesterday Obama announced his stance on Lobbies and let’s not forget how this country works. A great book to read in regards to what crooks run this country is “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”. It’s a book written by a former member of the economic elite of this country and he describes in detail how many of the things we do as a country, are solely driven by economic interests. The War In Iraq, which technically is an Occupation and not a war was sold to us as “bringing Democracy to Iraq” though Iraq never asked for Democracy. The Marines that entered the country really only had one mission - secure the Oil fields. It’s the large corporations and ultimately the military industrial complex who are going to be very upset what Obama said. I just hope this country doesn’t get its opportunity to change ripped away from it, again.

I’m sure I’m not that only one that’s realizing this - except for the politicians of course since they don’t have to worry about their paycheck. As a matter of fact they’re not tied to any performance quotas, nor do they do piece work though they do like to pass this type of legislation to keep others from doing what they’re doing, which is slacking.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=ggBk3xI5km4[/youtube]

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=GGiU658aSIw&feature=related[/youtube]

When I moved to this country in 1999 gas prices were at about $1.30 - for me, who was used to $6-8.00 /gal I thought that was a joke and I said at the time, there’s a lot of leeway here for the government in terms of pricing and taxes. In europe, in particular Germany, most of the money people spend at the pump is for taxes - the large part of the cost beyond the raw cost of oil goes towards taxes for infrastructures, etc. In this country however it seems slightly different. Since we’re a country that doesn’t believe too greatly in taxes, we instead have a system that gives oil companies the leeway for profit - instead of leaving some margin for the government. So instead of having a dollar per gallon go to environmental protection, the reconstruction of roads, repairs of bridges, it all goes to the oil companies. The truly amazing part is that the executives of the major Oil companies actually went to congress to tell them why they can’t stop subsidizing the oil industry due to the high exploration costs. Tell ya what - it costs me money to get to my job too and I’m not seeing any government grants flying my way paying for it - those are costs I have to absorb and the same should of course be the case for the oil companies, especially in the light of historical profits. A British newspaper goes as far as calling the profits obscene and I have to admit that I agree completely.

Now things are so bad that truckers are going on strike. When I came to this country I learned an expression which is “If you bought it, a trucker brought it”. If that’s true, I’d say it’s safe to say we’re in some deep shit. Not counting the fact that we’re at war that nobody wants to talk about, not mentioning the fact that our health care system is worse than that of Cuba, now we will soon all notice the change in this country. To me something very drastic has to happen, because the way things are going it seems the government is just going to ruin this country and then leave to Dubai to join Dick Cheney at his new corporate headquarter.

What’s very interesting is that those people who have the audacity of questioning other people’s patriotism, see no problem in taking the tax revenue of a company and moving it away. Behind closed doors the business men all know - patriotism is just a word that they can sell to the American people. While the common man/woman busts his/her ass to get by, the big companies are enjoying all the tax loop holes and incentives they can, maximizing their profit and stripping themselves from more and more pesty costs such as health care and other benefits.

Once again I have to say, I came to this country in 1999 and since then I can safely say that things have downhill at an extremely sharp angle. To all the people that aren’t paying attention to what the crooks in Washington are doing to us, I hope you will realize when you can’t afford to drive your SUV anymore, when you can’t take your kids to the make belief world called Disney World anymore and when all the luxuries you’ve come so accustomed to are gone, maybe then you will get up and raise your fist and say you’ve had enough.

Until then, I’ll be here.