4 Days before Christmas

 
I Was upstairs a while ago and heard a report on MSNBC announcing holiday retail sales down. Another estimating The value of IRAs in general down 59%. Then I hear the already known.: Unemployment is up. People still getting evicted.
 
The bad news makes me think about Robin Hood taking from the rich and giving it to the poor. And I wonder if Obama can be a Robin Hood? Could he be planning to take the extravagant wealth of the rich and give to the poor just as Sara Palin accused? And then I shake my head to dislodge the unlikely.
 
What the poor can probably expect from Obama and the democrats is a raise in food stamps, an extension of their unemployment benefits and maybe ( although in doubt ) slightly better health care on the margins.
 
4 Days before Christmas and I hope Santa is better to the children than the run of republican rule has been for the poor. btw. Good luck Barack.

Why I've Not Been Here Much of Late

 
Frankly ... I'm frustrated America.
 
As much as I'd like to have faith in and hope in you ... all my senses tell me nothing is going to happen anytime soon to turn things around. And here I speak specifically about the upcoming election.
 
Once again we are faced with choosing the lessor of two evils. And, if that were a choice I could be comfortable with, the choice wouldn't even be difficult.
 
I would vote for Barack Obama and be done with it.
 
So ... go ahead america. Cast your vote for the lessor of the evils you have been offered. More power to you.
 
However; those who follow my blog know this: I opted out of the two-party system. It is my reaction to Bill Clinton's triangulation politics, While it gained the white house for Mr. Bill, the strategy also moved the democratic party to the right, away from it's popular base and into the pockets of the corporate elite.

Have we forgotten the war?

The other day my wife of thirty years wondered aloud to me, "Why have we forgotten the war?"
 
"We haven't forgotten," I said.  "Just the other day I saw a poll showing that, although the economy was the number 1 concern of 66% of americans, Concern over the war was second at 57%.  Also, of those citing the economy as our #1 problem, a plurality stated the cost of the war was or is the primary cause of our current economic woe."
 
I don't think we have forgotten the war," I concluded.  "I think we have just, to a large extent, given up.  People had a lot of enthusiasm in 2006.  They turned out in unprecedented numbers to put democrats in congress.  The expectation was Congress would force a much needed withdrawal from Iraq.  And. we all know how that played out.  Not enough votes to override a threatened veto of an explicit timetable and, being unable or unwilling to use their constitutional power to deny funding, the democrats caved."