Time Again For Some Short Thoughts

In the race for the job of Governor of California, Meg Whitman has been blasting her opponent, Jerry Brown as a jobs killer.  If one checks the record, jobs increased in the state of California under Brown.  Alas, Whitman has no political record, including casting a vote, but she was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company, EBAY.  During her years at the helm, she successfully cut forty percent of the firm's domestic jobs and sent them overseas.  Plus, she actively engaged in some inside trading with Goldman Sachs (remember them?) allowing her to join the ranks of America's billionaires. Too bad we don't live in Missouri, you know, the "Show Me State."

I am really grateful to Senator Lindsay Graham (R South Carolina) for finally offering a solution to our immigration woes.  You see, all we need to do is repeal the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and all will be well.  After all, who needs due process and equal protection?  His rationale. . . it is just wrong to think that just because one is born in the United States one is entitled to citizenship!  Too bad his forebears didn't set this standard for themselves, as South Carolina would have only Native Americans for citizens  today.  I noticed the two senators from Arizona also jumped on this band wagon last week, but with a sudden drop in the polls, "Maverick" McCain has now backed off from his hasty endorsement of the Graham Manifesto.

Thanks to Maxine Waters and Charley Rangel (Democrats in the House of Representatives) for showing a bipartisan spirit by being charged with corruption by the House Ethics Committee. It is nice to know that Democrats are every bit as capable of being on the take as Republicans.  Now if only one of them would make some inappropriate advances toward a Congressional page or two, or get caught sleeping with a staffer's wife, we could really be on the way to a bi-partisan government.

Did anyone take a close look at the Republican solution to our economic woes?   Cut taxes and cut spending.  Not really clear on which taxes and which spending, but there is at least some real historic evidence of the viability of such a plan in a depressed economy.  This was exactly the plan of the Hoover Administration in 1930 and we all know how well that one worked.  On the other hand Obama and the Congressional Democrats, lacking the courage to stop our recession in its tracks, made the same mistake as did FDR in 1937.  Succumbing to the irrational screams from the right, they offered a half measure of economic stimulus and we are now slipping back into a flat economy.  Do any of these fools read their own country's history?

After years of analysis, the historic consensus is that America's Vietnam War strategy ultimately failed because we supported one corrupt government after another in Saigon.  It was impossible to gain enough support among the population of South Vietnam because the people had so little faith in their own political leaders, who were joined at the hip to their American benefactors.  The same may now be happening in Afghanistan.  From the grassroots to the very top of the Kabul administration of Hamid Karzai, this government is sublimely corrupt. How bad must it be if so many in this war ravaged country will turn to the savagely brutal Taliban as an alternative political solution?  Maybe instead of replacing our top commanders we ought to support a complete overhaul of the Afghan government. Fighting and dying for drug lords and sex traffickers should never be part of our military objectives.  Without a massive change in government, Afghanistan will be lost no matter how long we stay. President Obama, can you say "Lyndon Johnson?"

Who would have ever guessed that a weather disaster could topple a government?  But that may be happening in Pakistan.  Completely overwhelmed by the massive flooding along the Indus River, the Pakistani Government is on the verge of collapse.  Believe it or not, but the two outside agencies delivering the most aid to the flood ravaged peasants are the United States Government and the Taliban! I am pretty sure that our motives are truly humanitarian, but when the Taliban called for local Pashtuns to refuse any American aid, I think it became clear that their motives are less than noble. Ironic, the very societies that set us on the path of global warming have turned this phenomenon into an asset for our worst enemies.

And lastly, now that the lunatic fringe of the political right is suggesting that we get rid of the 14th Amendment, does that mean that they now believe that Barack Obama was actually born in the United States?  Is their new strategy. . . well he may have been born here, but he isn't really worthy of being called a citizen, because, well you know, he is. . . Hawaiian!