Rabid Liberal Rants

It’s a sad fact but racism is still alive and well in America as these articles suggest, which will make Obama’s run for the presidency all the more difficult.

Obama effigy found hanging on Ore. campus on Yahoo! News

Supremacists distribute fliers attacking Obama on Star Ledger

Jewish Voters Receiving Anti-Obama Calls in Florida on NY Sun

Racism Could Hurt Obama in Pennsylvania on Yahoo! News

A nice, continuosly updated, writeup on Wikipedia on the current Financial Meltdown and Credit Crisis can be found here.

From The Nation:

Under Paulson’s draft plan, Congress and the courts would have been barred from reviewing or challenging his moves to stabilize financial markets — effectively making him the nation’s economic czar. That’s not just a dangerous power grab for economic and politic reasons. It’s unconstitutional.

So basically, this man is looking for $700 Billion in taxpayer money, to do whatever he thinks is right, without anyone having the ability to review or question his plan and whatever else he does with the money. ARE YOU FREAKIN” NUTS?!? This is just as bad as giving the President the blank check for the Iraq War! They’re looking for another blank check. I hope and pray this proposal does not go through and sensible minds prevail in Congress. Don’t get pushed and bullied into approving this plan.

And yet the folks that caused this mess, the CEOs and managers and those that made the loans, all go away scott free with their golden parachutes. Anybody who knowingly made loans to people who they knew wouldn’t be able to afford them, should be going to jail. Period.

Why were all these people able to do what the did? The answer is Deregulation. If you have some time, here’s a good writeup on the history of this mess.

Pat Buchanan opines on how the neocons are schooling Palin on foreign policy.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services now requires immigrants, who wish to become citizens, to be vaccinated against HPV. Read more at Think Progress…

Writeup of recent Anti-Palin rally in Alaska…

Our good former Mayor of NYC, who backed Bush in 2004, says the country would be better off with Obama, and that Palin’s record, in regards to civil and social issues, is scary.

Over and over again, I keep reading how (according to Republicans and some former Hillary Clinton supporters) the media has it in for Sarah Palin, how they’re going after her because she’s a woman. There may be instances in which that may be true but I believe that those instances are few and far between. She’s running for Vice President of the United States of America!! What are the media and everyone else that challenges her knowledge, credentials, experience, and history, supposed to do? She’s supposed to be challenged, she’s supposed to be questioned. I repeat, she’s running for Vice President of the United States of America!! Not for President of Student Council. Not for the top prize in a spelling bee contest. Bush and Cheney are criticized, questioned, and mocked, everyday and have been ever since they took office. As the saying goes, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen”.

Maybe she still doesn’t know what the Vice President actually does.

As the election season heats up I think we, as ordinary citizens, watching the convention coverage and the morning talk shows, listening to the left leaning or right leaning commentators, the pundits, the gurus, the historians, the know-it-alls, the O’Reillys, Limbaughs, Matthews and Olbermanns, need to remember that [IMHO] it’s all about one thing:

$$ MONEY $$

Democrats and Republicans alike need to give outlandish, roaring speeches, make fun of the other team, so that they can rally their base and bring in more money through donations and contributions to their respective parties and elections.

Pundits and commentators need to make bold predictions and make outlandish statements so that their value increases. They need to be loud, hard, and controversial. They need to be a part of the news and make news. They feed off of one another by bashing each other. And if they’re popular enough, they get invited to participate on the news/talk show circuit such as MSNBC, FOX News, or CNN. The more popular they are, the more they make, the more books they can sell, and the more viewers the programs get. The more viewers they get, the more the networks can charge for advertising. The more they charge for advertising, the more money the networks make. Also, the more viewers they have the more consumers big companies get to see products  they advertise through commercials, and the more money they make selling their products. The more money companies make, the more their stock value goes up, the more they can spend on lobbying Washington, the more they can contribute to politicians and political parties.

And around and around we go. Obviously, this is a simplified analysis, but you can get the essence of it. We just need to take everything we hear with a grain of salt. Understand where it’s coming from, and why.

What does that mean for us ordinary citizens? Maybe just more of the same no matter who gets elected.

Took some time to watch the RNC the last two nights. I thought Fred Thompson was good, along with Mitt Romney. However I thought Giuliani was horrible. I can’t understand how people would pay to hear him speak. And after watching him speak last night, I realize now why I don’t think Giuliani and McCain are good at public speaking. They take too many pauses for laughter. It seems like even if one person in the audience is laughing, Giuliani or McCain will stop what they’re saying to laugh with them. It just interrupts the flow of the speech. It’s worse then saying “Ummm” all the time and it becomes a distraction. The pauses for laughter last night made it hard to listen to what he was saying and made for a disjointed speech.

That said, I think Palin did what she had to do to energize the Republicans, even though there was a lot of truth stretching.

And I hope the media continues to scrutinize their statements, despite being bullied:

There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is “a task from God.” The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.