We, the PEOPLE!!

Anyone familiar with the pop super-group ABBA will recognize the title of this article. It’s from the most popular song the group ever recorded, “Dancing Queen”. The song itself is about a woman whom was thought to be a teaser, but all she really wanted to do was to dance.

Last night, Hillary Rodham Clinton, senator from New York, United States of America, and one of only two viable candidates for the democratic nomination for president of the during the primary season of 2008, danced her heart out. She spoke forcefully and inspirationally on the second night of the democratic convention, clearly, emphatically, and loyally supporting Barack Obama as her choice for president and making it crystal clear that her fiercest supporters must, for the safety of America, do the same.

If you missed it, you can watch the twenty-three minute speech HERE and read it HERE.

When the speech was over, it was clear that Hillary was having the time of her life, having given the speech of her life. But it wasn’t only her. Throughout the speech she brought the vast majority of the four thousand delegates and fifteen thousand others to their feet, cheering and applauding Hillary, regardless of whether they were Obama or Clinton supporters. When the speech was over, the response was tumultuous, demonstrating beyond any doubt that they were having the time of their lives.

Some snippets of the speech:

“No way. No how. No McCain!”

“You never gave in. You never gave up. And together we made history.”

“Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama….I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young marine and others like him?”

“We don’t need four more years of the last eight years.”

“With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they’re awfully hard to tell apart!”

And, of course, when Hillary stated “’We, the PEOPLE!!!’ not ‘We the favored few!’”, the blog just tingled with joy….

She also praised Joe Biden, whom Barack Obama has picked to be his vice-presidential nominee, and Michelle Obama, Barack’s wife. Hillary is a class act.

Of course, the republican pit bulls, as expected, immediately went on the attack, but the nature of their argument was bizarre, at best. They claimed that Hillary stopped short of endorsing Obama’s level of experience, and thus that she was agreeing with McCain that Obama lacks the experience to be Commander-in-Chief.

One might speculate that the republican spin machine selectively didn’t hear Hillary state that, “Barack is my candidate and he must be our president!….We don’t have a moment to lose or a vote to spare. Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance.”

Those are strong words, by a strong woman who won eighteen million votes during the primary season, who stated that it was really “18 million cracks representing Americans that looked beyond the biases and barriers to vote for a woman with the potential to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us.

Hillary will go down in history as the first woman to ever win more than one primary election (she won twenty-three). And she is still a viable force in the democratic party. Some think she will be tapped by the Obama Administration to shepard and guide American universal health care through to reality, perhaps in a role as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Finally, one has to wonder, after hearing that speech, why Hillary wasn’t tapped by Obama to be his vice-presidential running mate. Regardless of speculation, what’s done is done and Joe Biden will make his acceptance speech tonight. Stand by for another trouncing of McSame.

Oh, and Bill Clinton will also make a speech tonight. He and Hillary are competitive with each other. So it is expected that Bill will at least attempt to match her speech. Or perhaps, beat it as far as crowd enthusiasm is concerned. Can he do it?

One thing is certain: He, Hillary, and the delegates at the convention will continue to have the time of their lives tonight. And as wonderful a time as it will be, there is still another time that will be better:

January 20, 2009, The end of the Bush nightmare. On that night, “You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!”

Next week the first of the major political parties’ nominating conventions will be held in Denver, Colorado when the democrats meet to nominate Barack Obama. Then, a week later, the republicans will nominate John McCain at their convention in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Presumably, both candidates will have announced their respective picks for vice-president by then as well.

Knowing in advance who is going to be the presidential and vice-presidential nominees for each party renders the conventions essentially a waste of time and money. Of course, corporations that donate to the political parties would not be too happy to see the conventions gone. And by the way, more large corporations donate to big-business-friendly republicans than to democrats, You see, these corporations can deduct their political donations from their corporate income taxes.

As if to confirm what most Americans agree is the grossly unfair to the middle class, unmitigated disaster known as the tax code, the United States Congress Government Accountability Office (GAO) last week released a report entitled “Comparability of the reported Tax Liabilities of Foreign- and US- Controlled Corporations, 1998-2005″. You can read more about the non-partisan GAO HERE.

The GAO report revealed what many Americans already suspected: Most corporations doing business in the USA don’t pay income taxes. The report found that 72% of foreign corporations and 55% of domestic corporations in the didn’t pay any taxes for at least one year during the seven-year period covered in the report, 1998 through 2005. Furthermore, 80% of these corporations claimed no profit to justify their zero dollar tax bill.  You can read the GAO report HERE, and the associated news report HERE.

Remember that the report covers the period during which G.W. Bush instituted his tax cuts for corporations and the very rich in the USA. Those tax cuts were touted by Bush and his syndicate as being very beneficial to the economy. It’s not working out that way, though, is it?

Both Obama and McCain are proposing more tax cuts, but their proposals are very different.

Obama proposes to make the tax system more progressive, with tax cuts for the middle class folks making less than $250,000 a year. He proposes to close the tax loopholes for corporations, thus raising the adjusted taxable income of those corporations and folks in the top 1% of income earning to ensure that everyone pays their fair share of taxes.

McCain’s proposal is almost the exact opposite. His plan would make the tax system more regressive, even compared with the tax system in place since the Bush tax cuts for the very rich. McCain’s would provide practically no tax relief to those at the bottom of the income scale while providing huge tax cuts to corporations and to households at the very top of the income ladder. You can read and see a direct comparison HERE.

WE the PEOPLE!! supported Mike Huckabee’s “Fair Tax” plan, wherein folks only pay taxes on what they spend, when they spend, without having to file out a single tax form, instead of an inherently unfair income tax. Your can read the article HERE. While We, the PEOPLE!! continues to believe that the “Fair Tax” is the fairest possible tax plan, there is no hope that we will see it on our lifetimes.

So in the meantime, we are left with a choice between bad and absolutely awful. And since we have seen that making the rich even richer does nothing good for the country, the economy, or the middle class in general, one has to wonder why any middle class citizens would risk further financial pain and suffering for themselves and their families by embracing a tax plan that favors the rich and the corporations and the candidate, McSame, who advocates it.

But we offer a solution to all middle class citizens should another electoral disaster occur and McBush wins the presidency:

Become a corporation!!!!!! Anyone can do it! Just google “incorporate” (or click HERE) and a gazillion legal companies will pop up, chomping at the bit to incorporate you for cheap. And the incorporation fee is tax-deductible!!

Get on that gravy train enjoyed by so many rich folks and companies! Qualify for unexplainable tax breaks and loopholes! Use the money you save to vacation in Cabo!!

Coming soon: How to qualify yourself as tax-deductible shop equipment!!!

It seems the folks that have the most to lose if Barack Obama is elected president of the USA are dusting off the computers and mailing lists, and starting to exercise their perceived “right” (often extreme right) to slander and libel the democratic nominee-apparent for president of the USA.

Yesterday, Stuart Shepard, director of digital media the political arm of the conservative Christian group “Focus on the Family”, a religious-right organization that is against sex before marriage, against gay/lesbian relationships, against reproductive freedom for women, and for abstinence-only sex education was forced to remove a YouTube video where he was asking people to pray for “rain of biblical proportions”.

This prayer was for torrential rain to specifically occur in Denver on Thursday, August 28^th, on the night and at the time that Obama is scheduled to give his nomination acceptance speech in an open stadium with 75,000 people seated for the occasion at the Democratic National Convention.  You can read more about this outrageous video and watch it HERE.

It was pulled only after massive public criticism, with the claim that it was only a joke.

Of course, this is pretty tame stuff. Either you believe that you can get rain (or win the lottery) when you pray for it, or you don’t.  But what about much more seriously egregious actions, such as accusing someone of things that simply aren’t true for the sole purpose of misleading the public and assassinating the character of a political candidate?

“We the PEOPLE!!” recently received a couple of emails that sadly drive home the desire of some groups to use whatever underhanded tactics, regardless of how dishonest or disgusting, to convince the uninformed of their view of the world.  The first one uses a tactic known as the “respected elder’s view” and is presented here in pertinent part for space reasons:

“Thoughts of an 83 year old man about the destruction of the United States of America.  Profound!

PLEASE READ EVERY WORD:” We have been told by the leaders of Islam, (the likes of Louis Farrakhan,) the United States will collapse from inside itself.

We also know the terrorists plan years and years ahead on what they will do to complete one of their acts of terror. The destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers was the culmination of plans made after the first attempt at destruction failed.

Remember the terrorists are patient, methodical and determined to do it right the first time.

Now let’s examine this scenario:  We know about the uproar over Mitt Romney’s religious affiliation with the Mormon church and the opposition to electing a Mormon to the Presidency.

Knowing this, can you even imagine what an uproar would come about if a candidate was affiliated with the Muslim faith?

In the 83 years of my lifetime there has been no President of the United States, to my knowledge, elected that didn’t claim to be a Christian. If I am wrong, please correct me.

The question now arises, How does Islam get one of their own elected. Answer: pass him off as a Christian. How do they do that?

Answer: plan years ahead and carefully choose the right person for the job. Choose someone who is born on American soil, because that is a requirement for qualifying for the office. (Note it must be a male because women are not allowed to rule in Islam). Although his father is a Muslim, his mother an atheist and his step-father also a Muslim, he is sent to a Catholic school after being removed from a Muslim school.

This process of selecting someone to fill all these qualifications will take more than a decade, it will require a generation, but remember, Islam is patient.

Do we know anyone who fits this mold?  Yes, I think we do.  We know someone running for the nomination of his party for President of the United States of America who was born on American soil.

He attended public schools in Jakarta, Indonesia where his step father returned after marrying Barack’s mother.   As Senator from Illinois, he has spent the better part of the last two years not being present to vote or just voting ” present” on most legislative issues.

He has associated himself with people of questionable loyalty to the United States of America for the last 20 years and has refused to disown any of them although he has tried to disassociate himself from some of the things they have said and some of the things they have done while maintaining his relationship with them.

Who is this young man whom I believe has been selected, groomed, polished and refined by the patient Islamic extremists to accomplish the mission of destroying the United States of America from within!

I believe Barack Hussein Obama, candidate for the Democratic Party nomination as President of the United States of America , fits the mold exactly.. (emphasis added).

The second email talked about how Obama hates the American flag and loves rap music.

Of course, it is all a pack of cowardly lies designed to make the uninformed afraid of, and hate Obama.

In 2004, private groups operating under 26 USC A(1)F(VI) section 527 which is part of the hideous US tax code put out copious amounts of false information about democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, a decorated Vietnam war hero who later spoke out against that war which everyone now admits was a huge mistake.  But the “527-swift-boat” groups, as they’re commonly referred to, consisting at the time almost exclusively of extreme-right wing organizations, continued to fabricate lies about Kerry’s military record as a swift-boat captain in the Vietnam war, in an effort to turn voters against him.  It may have been just enough to give us another four horrible years of George W. Bush.

And there’s the problem:  This kind of lie-infested activity can sway an election just enough to give all of the rest of us a four-year nightmare. Possibly the worst effect of this activity is that citizens who will vote can be influenced by this kind of dishonorable activity.  The creators of this garbage know all too well that many people are either too busy or too lazy to really find out the truth about the candidates and their positions on issues, so sewage like this actually can have an impact with certain voters.

Ideally, the legal system would deal swiftly with libel and slander, but we all know that it neither has the capability nor the desire to do so. Even if a case were to spring forth in court against these groups and people, it would literally be years before it saw the light of day.  So much for prompt justice.

Although it is clearly desirable for voters to educate themselves with verifiable facts, it’s a foregone fact that many won’t bother.  In the meantime, the “527 swift-boaters” continue unabated, spewing hate and lies and character assassination, while the legal system looks on.

Thank goodness it won’t be this way if McCain is elected.  After all, as a man 142 years old with stainless steel fangs who has promised to bite off the heads of chickens and mail them to the “527 swift-boaters” as a warning against the next step he’ll take (voodoo hexes to match his voodoo economics) he’s meaning what they say he said!

Whoever “they” and “he” are.  

As reported by “We, the PEOPLE!!” last week in “What’s US$482 Billion Among ‘Friends’”, the citizens of this nation are being strapped with an enormous national debt in excess of nine trillion (that’s trillion with a “T”, folks) dollars. Much of it has come about by Bush’s incredibly incompetent “excellent adventure” in Iraq, while Bush concurrently provided tax cuts to the very rich, including the obscenely profitable oil companies.

In the meantime, Iraq now has a budget surplus of $50 billion!

This is a war, you will recall, that we were all told would pay for itself because of the oil revenue generated by Iraq’s oil reserves, the third largest oil reserves on Earth.

We were also told that invading in 2003 was absolutely necessary for the following reasons:

1. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

2. Saddam Hussein was aiding and abetting terrorists, including those tied to 9-11 (whatever “tied” meant).

3. Saddam Hussein was acquiring “yellow cake” uranium to make fission bombs.

Each of these premises was proven to be false, or in other words, a lie. Nonetheless, America rushed to invasion, and in the process, either destroyed the civil infrastructure or through the worst post-invasion planning in memory, allowed the insurgency to destroy it.

But one part of that infrastructure was repaired immediately, and every time it was subsequently damaged: The oil industry. Today, Iraq is pumping two million barrels daily, and is capable of producing up to five million barrels a day.  Yet, even at a measly two million daily barrels, at $120 a barrel, that’s a gross revenue of US$240,000,000 a day, or almost a billion dollars every four days!

For quite some time more and more people have been asking about this: How can it be that Iraq doesn’t fund its own military and civilian reconstruction and infrastructure recovery, while the American taxpayer does?

Senators Carl Levin, Democrat from Michigan and senate armed services committee chairman, and John Warner, Republican from Virginia, both wanted answers to the same question. So they asked the U.S. Government Accountibility Office (GAO), to investigate.

The GAO found that while the financially abused American taxpayer has been footing, and continues to foot the bill for reconstruction projects in Iraq, the Iraqi government has only spent a small fraction of its large oil revenues on its own reconstruction, security, military, etc. Instead, it has placed enormous sums of its money in the Development Fund for Iraq at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, earning interest a la 401K.

That’s right. Iraq has a virtual 401K fund right here in the USA, having invested thirty BILLION dollars in an American bank, earning American revenue! You can read more about it HERE.

Senators Levin and Warner issued the following joint statement: “It is inexcusable for the U.S taxpayers to continue to foot the bill for projects the Iraqis are fully capable of funding themselves. We should not be paying for Iraqi projects, while Iraqi oil revenues continue to pile up in the bank, including outrageous profits from $4 a gallon gas prices in the U.S.

At some point, even the staunchest Bush suck-up/McCain supporter has got to think, “Hey, wait just one minute! You mean I’m paying taxes to support Iraq, while Iraq is investing in its USA-based 401k to support “what??”

After all, well over five years after the US’s horribly misguided invasion of Iraq, the citizens of Iraq still endure daily massive electricity outages and only partial running water. America funds the reconstruction projects, as well as the training and equipping of the security and military forces.

And meanwhile, Iraq plays “Wheel of Fortune” in the USA with funds that could go a long, LONG way toward not only rebuilding its own country, but also relieving the American taxpayer of Iraqi reconstruction costs and perhaps an additional $50 billion being tacked onto our national debt.

“We, the PEOPLE!!” doesn’t understand what the 28% of Americans that still support Bush and the 42% that support McSame don’t understand.

If you do, please explain it to the 70% who don’t support Bush and the 56% who don’t support McSame.

We’re listening!