Thursday, November 20, 2008
Thursday, November 6, 2008
"Where's the Change?!"
The Republicans will have little ability to provide any control over the Democrats for at least the next two years. Preventing that traditional control is fear. Fear that the Democrats just might get something right and they will be caught riling against it. They should know better. There is little chance of either party ever getting it right. To provide a counter balance to how our government is now constituted with the democrats in control of both Houses of Congress and the White House, we need an active and noisy Third Party out there campaigning, armed with the truth. The truth spelled out in very simple language that the constituent base can use to bombard Congressmen and Senators as well as the President with tons of mail and email threatening to vote ‘em out in two years if the promises of Change start to fade.
Unfortunately, the constituent action and noise is limited to only one motivating issue. That would be money, their pocketbooks. Things like mass murder and the loss of our constitutional guarantees generate nary a peep. Fortunately, there will be plenty affecting the pocketbook over the next couple of years to help keep the motivation up. By usurping the pocketbook reason to get large numbers of constituents to make noise, many important issues can be addressed.
Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas has the money and much of the organization required to ramp up and carry out a campaign (right now) to be elected President in 2012. That’s but one short term of office away. President-elect Obama began his campaign for re-election in 2012 with his acceptance speech some minutes after midnight on November 5, 2008, so let’s not think it is too soon. The campaign is underway and an “opposition” party campaign is needed now. If Ron Paul doesn’t want to run for the next four years, then he should use his money to back an alternate libertarian who does. It doesn’t matter if we haven’t heard of him/her. Barak Obama was unknown to me four years ago and Sarah Palin was unknown to America three months ago. All we need is some girl singing about our candidate on YouTube and everyone will know the name. If it’s not Ron Paul, it should be someone as pretty as Barack.
The “Change” promised by the Obama campaign and endorsed by the Obama election is not enough of a change and will not have any noticeable effect on the operations of the US Government and the effect those operations have on the United States and the rest of the world. Obama’s “Change”; starting with the bailout, the continued endorsement of a belligerent foreign policy in the Caucasus and the Middle East, ongoing, hear-speak-say-no-evil business-as-usual support of Israel, the promise to conduct an all-out doomed-from-the-beginning war in Afghanistan, (Check with Britain and Russia as to the probability level of success) and continuation of warrantless wiretaps and the extension of the Patriot Act, is not the change we need, or the change that was voted for because it is not change, period. The only thing we have changed is the race of the occupant in the White House. As an aside let me say that the Obama victory is a defining moment in American politics, and it should be passionately celebrated for that reason alone, but that’s not change enough. Voters were disgusted with the entire system and the direction the country has taken. Disapproval of Bush and of the Democrats running Congress has been at the same high level. Change can’t wait for Obama to court and solidify his relationship with the centrists in order to have a leg up on his re-election bid.
If we wait, we will lose our expectation for change. We can’t let 64 million voters become complacent now their man has won. They haven’t won anything yet. A third party campaign could force those who proclaim “Change” to actually make some.
Because of who I am; I would suggest to the campaign that the issue to start with is the change that will have the biggest effect on, and is easiest to tie to, the pocketbook; war and out-of-control spending on war. Ok, we call it the defense budget, but it is being spent on war. I will skip the moralistic rant against what we’ve done in Iraq and what is being advocated for Afghanistan. We are spending and will continue to spend billions upon billions on war driving the United States further and further into debt, requiring more and more borrowing from other countries or the printing of more and more dollars backed by less and less of anything. This course will lead to significant inflation, supplemented by additional, rapid deflation of the value of the dollar. This can be explained in simple terms and tied directly to the pocketbook or even to what makes it to the dinner table of every man and woman in America. We don’t have a boogy-man like the Wall Street, big bonus, greedy fat cat to rile people up, but we should be able to find one or two really bad guys/corporations making billions off of war and show that those billions are coming right out of our pockets.
I’d like to find that little old lady, or someone just as memorable, who demanded “where’s the beef?” to make commercials demanding “Where’s the Change?!”
Unfortunately, the constituent action and noise is limited to only one motivating issue. That would be money, their pocketbooks. Things like mass murder and the loss of our constitutional guarantees generate nary a peep. Fortunately, there will be plenty affecting the pocketbook over the next couple of years to help keep the motivation up. By usurping the pocketbook reason to get large numbers of constituents to make noise, many important issues can be addressed.
Ron Paul, the libertarian congressman from Texas has the money and much of the organization required to ramp up and carry out a campaign (right now) to be elected President in 2012. That’s but one short term of office away. President-elect Obama began his campaign for re-election in 2012 with his acceptance speech some minutes after midnight on November 5, 2008, so let’s not think it is too soon. The campaign is underway and an “opposition” party campaign is needed now. If Ron Paul doesn’t want to run for the next four years, then he should use his money to back an alternate libertarian who does. It doesn’t matter if we haven’t heard of him/her. Barak Obama was unknown to me four years ago and Sarah Palin was unknown to America three months ago. All we need is some girl singing about our candidate on YouTube and everyone will know the name. If it’s not Ron Paul, it should be someone as pretty as Barack.
The “Change” promised by the Obama campaign and endorsed by the Obama election is not enough of a change and will not have any noticeable effect on the operations of the US Government and the effect those operations have on the United States and the rest of the world. Obama’s “Change”; starting with the bailout, the continued endorsement of a belligerent foreign policy in the Caucasus and the Middle East, ongoing, hear-speak-say-no-evil business-as-usual support of Israel, the promise to conduct an all-out doomed-from-the-beginning war in Afghanistan, (Check with Britain and Russia as to the probability level of success) and continuation of warrantless wiretaps and the extension of the Patriot Act, is not the change we need, or the change that was voted for because it is not change, period. The only thing we have changed is the race of the occupant in the White House. As an aside let me say that the Obama victory is a defining moment in American politics, and it should be passionately celebrated for that reason alone, but that’s not change enough. Voters were disgusted with the entire system and the direction the country has taken. Disapproval of Bush and of the Democrats running Congress has been at the same high level. Change can’t wait for Obama to court and solidify his relationship with the centrists in order to have a leg up on his re-election bid.
If we wait, we will lose our expectation for change. We can’t let 64 million voters become complacent now their man has won. They haven’t won anything yet. A third party campaign could force those who proclaim “Change” to actually make some.
Because of who I am; I would suggest to the campaign that the issue to start with is the change that will have the biggest effect on, and is easiest to tie to, the pocketbook; war and out-of-control spending on war. Ok, we call it the defense budget, but it is being spent on war. I will skip the moralistic rant against what we’ve done in Iraq and what is being advocated for Afghanistan. We are spending and will continue to spend billions upon billions on war driving the United States further and further into debt, requiring more and more borrowing from other countries or the printing of more and more dollars backed by less and less of anything. This course will lead to significant inflation, supplemented by additional, rapid deflation of the value of the dollar. This can be explained in simple terms and tied directly to the pocketbook or even to what makes it to the dinner table of every man and woman in America. We don’t have a boogy-man like the Wall Street, big bonus, greedy fat cat to rile people up, but we should be able to find one or two really bad guys/corporations making billions off of war and show that those billions are coming right out of our pockets.
I’d like to find that little old lady, or someone just as memorable, who demanded “where’s the beef?” to make commercials demanding “Where’s the Change?!”
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