Letter to the Editor
A lot of columnists have been comparing the Romney vs. Gingrich primary battle to the 2008 primary battle between Obama and Clinton. I don’t think they are similar.
In 2008 the Democrats had two strong candidates that they liked. People who wanted Hillary to win liked Obama too. People who liked Obama also liked Hillary. Both candidates were very popular. In contrast Republicans dislike both leading candidates. It’s a battle between those who can’t stand Romney more vs. those who can’t stand Newt more. Republican have to choose between the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama vs. the guy who is going to make the third lady into the first lady. I don’t see the Republicans coming together behind any candidate this year.
I have another paradigm which I’d call the rolling yuk factor. The Republicans started with 8 bad choices none of which can beat Obama even though Obama has some serious problems himself.
Romney is known and voters don’t like him. That’s why McCain beat him last time. But the elites are behind Romney so he’s the man to beat.
Because voters don’t like Romney every other candidate surged one by one as the anti-Romney candidate and when the focus cam on them they were all flawed and fell back to the bottom (except Paul who has a small band of loyal followers)
Once Iowa and New Hampshire voted it seemed Romney was inevitable again and because of new missteps and renewed scrutiny a wave of yuk against Romney returned. Evangelical leaders met to endorse Santorum as the anti-Romney.
In a 4 person race with Ron Paul it’s down to Romney and 2 anti-Romney candidates. Santorum is weak and lacks gravitas and is only still in because he surged at the right time in Iowa. But soon it will be between Newt and Romney.
Newt has serious serious problems as well which are being brought out. But Newt is a fighter and Romney is sort of John Kerry like. Republicans like a fighter and see Newt as much more of a fighter than Obama, who the Democrats are also experiencing the yuk factor with. Obama is no Bill Clinton and Democrats are not thrilled with Hope and Change becoming Nope and Same.
So with 2 candidate that are too weak to even beat a weak president Republicans are trying to choose how they are going to lose. So the final paradigm is what I will call the “go down fighting” paradigm. With Newt they can at least lose with dignity and maybe the hope that if they put up a strong fighter they at least have some hope for a miracle.
Letter to the Editor
They say that every cloud has a silver lining. As we all know Mitt Romney hasn’t wanted to release his tax returns and explain his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. With Newt’s big win in South Carolina it looks like he may not have to.
Letter to the Editor
The news is that the justice department is going after a “pirate” web site called Megaupload and they have shut them down in foreign countries and seized their assets also in a foreign country. And the Justice Department did it without laws like PIPA and SOPA. Looks to me like the music and movie industry already seems to have powers currently that borderline on scary. I’m glad to see Congress stepping back and taking a more serious look at laws that break the Internet. Thanks to Wikipedia and Craigslist for taking a bullet for the team.
Letter to the Editor
It’s kind of interesting that so many Republicans see Mitt Romney as the inevitable candidate and the most likely to beat Obama. In 2008 Romney, who had a virtually unlimited amount of money, managed to lose to John McCain. McCain went on to lose to a previously unknown Democrat named Barack Obama. Now Obama is the incumbent president and is in a much stronger position to win. McCain lost in part due to the Bush depression, and we are still in the Bush depression. So I don’t understand why Republicans see Romney as their best hope. Losing to a loser doesn’t make you a winner.
Letter to the Editor
It’s interesting to hear the Republican candidates decry the “war on religion” when it’s pretty clear that none of the Republican candidates actually believe in God. From my point of view as a Realist, who puts reality first, if there actually was a God and people had a personal connection to that God then their lives would reflect that. Every one of the candidates are highly dishonest. They lie all the time and they use God’s name to make cheap political points. If they actually believed they simply would not behave that way.
What I see isn’t a war on religion but rather a war on reality. They don’t want you to believe there is a reality out there and that actions have consequences and that in order for humanity to survive and flourish that you have to live in right relationship to reality. It’s not us who is at war with religion. It is those who claim to believe and are lying about it who at war with religion. Religion is more threatened by fake Christians than from those who admit they just aren’t believing the story.
Letter to the Editor
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum today told a mostly white audience in Iowa that he didn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Really? I didn’t know that Wall Street investment firms had that many black people.
Letter to the Editor
The state of Iowa does a disservice to America in both having a caucus election and insisting on being the first election every presidential election year. Why should this one state always be the one the pre-screens candidates for the rest of us? And if they are going to be the first state, why have an election system that is so dysfunctional that less that 4% of their registered voters participate in it?
I don’t know how this came to be but we can do better and Iowa’s selfishness harms America because it filters candidates the rest of us might like to vote for. Iowa should step aside out of a sense of basic fairness and let other states take turns at being first.
Letter to the Editor
In all the debates and all the interviews of all the Republican candidates running for president I have not yet heard a single question about former president George W. Bush. After all, he’s the one who got America into the mess we are in so I would think the Bush issue should be discussed. I’d like to ask the candidates how they would compare and contrast their policies with that of the Bush administration. From what I see if we vote for any of them they’re just going to do the same thing Bush did. Why would we want to do that again?
Letter to the Editor
With one week to go presidential candidate Rick Perry in a bid to win votes in Iowa declares that if a woman is raped, the government should force her to have the rapists baby. I’m not sure what I find more disgusting; Parry’s pandering, or that there’s actually people in Iowa who that appeals to.
But Perry stopped short of “going all the way”, that would be demanding that the woman marry her rapist. I guess he better hope Bachmann or Santorum doesn’t go there first.
Letter to the Editor
A lot of people don’t like the idea that their taxes are going up $1000 a year but who’s fault is that. The people voted for Republicans in the last election and when you vote for Republicans that’s what happens. Republicans want tax increases on the 99% so that the 1% get to keep all their money. It’s the will of the voters. If the voters don’t want tax increases then they shouldn’t have voted Republican.
Letter to the Editor
Speaker of the House John Boehner sent us working people a message. His message is that we are pawns – bargaining chips – in their game of taking control of America. They destroyed the economy and they made it clear they control our paychecks. They have no problem raising our tax rate as long as it is in behalf of what they call the “Job Creators”. At no time did Boehner mention the working class. They want us to know that they can toy with us. Message received!
So I want to send them a message. We are not going to let you corrupt America any further. There is no way that an attempt by the “Job Creators” will succeed. Even if you get everything you want what you will have is not a self sustaining system. If we lose – you lose. Reality is on our side and when you go up against reality you always lose.
We are one nation. I remember being taught that “United We Stand, Divided we Fall”. When our country was formed our forefathers send us this message. They made it our motto. They wanted to make sure that we never forgot it. Those people were talking through time to us today, and if we are to be what they dreamed we would become, we are going to have to hear that message loud and clear. It’s time for us to step up. One can not defy reality. We already know what United we Stand means. We had better not find out what “Divided We Fall” means. The time has come to take responsibility.
Letter to the Editor
It appears the presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry retired and is now drawing a retirement annuity of $7698 a month. But wait – he’s also still the governor and he still gets his regular $150,000/year salary too, all this while he’s running for president full time. So – in Texas the governor can not do his job, collect his salary, and start collecting retirement at the same time – WOW! Texas makes California look conservative in comparison. And – OMG – he’s a Republican!
http://www.texastribune.org/texas-politics/2012-presidential-election/perry-retires-boost-pension-pay/
Letter to the Editor
Evangelicals were pretty happy with some aspects of the Bush administration. Bush was one of them, and he passed out a lot of taxpayer money to their faith based organizations, using Atheist taxpayer money to support God. They were therefore against the idea of separation of church and state. But now comes Mitt Romney who is a Mormon and now evangelicals are facing the possibility of the faith based tax dollars going to some other religion. Like Atheists, evangelicals would have to pay taxes to support a different religion than their own.
That is why the First Amendment separates church and state and that we in America have a secular society. A secular society is where all religions and non-religions are all equal. It means that the government can’t pick a favorite religion. I’m hoping that now that evangelicals are facing the possibility of a Mormon president that they can appreciate what Atheists and Realist have known, and embrace with wisdom of our founding fathers in protecting the government from religion and protecting religion from government.
Letter to the Editor
People are making a big deal over the issue that Newt Gingrich might of charged as much as $500,000 for jewelery at Tiffany’s, but I think it helps him more than it hurts him. If it were Romney buying jewelry he would have just paid cash. But Newt isn’t as rich as Romney. He’s more like you and me. Us common folk don’t have that kind of money. When ordinary people want to by 1/2 million in jewelry we have to pay for it over time. So Newt’s Tiffany bill just shows that, unlike Romney, he’s one of the good old boys.
Letter to the Editor
President Obama today defended the decision of his administration to override the scientific decision of the FDA to make the contraceptive known as “Plan B” available to girls younger that 17. Obama claims it is common sense that the medication might have an adverse effect on the health of a 10 or 11 year old. Really? That’s what you call common sense? Only if you ignore the adverse effects that pregnancy would have on a 10 or 11 year old girl. I’d like to hear what his wife and daughters have to say about this one.
Just when you think the Republicans are so stupid you can stand it along comes a Democrat to prove that they are even worse. I guess Obama thinks he can still win by throwing women under the bus.
Letter to the Editor
Obama’s Secretary of Health and Human Services today blocked the over the counter sale of the emergency contraceptive “Plan B” from being purchased by girls under 17 years old. Because the pill is most effective when used in the first 24 hours Obama is intervening to help ensure that girls 16 and under are more likely to get pregnant. I don’t know why the Republicans are trying to defeat Obama. It seems with this decision along with other similar decisions that we already have a Republican president.
Letter to the Editor
Our Congress, in their infinite wisdom, is considering passing the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA) which includes a provision making it a felony to upload a video of someone singing a copyrighted song on YouTube, with up to 5 years in prison for doing so.
Dr. Conrad Murray, the guy convicted of manslaughter for killing Michael Jackson only got a maximum of 4 years in prison. So according to the law you get less prison time for killing Michael Jackson than for singing one of his songs. This is just plain crazy.
Letter to the Editor
I’m getting tired of the news reports talking about Occupy Wall Street costing cities millions when they don’t talk about the Wall Street crash of 2008 costing the cities billions. I don’t see law enforcement pepper spraying bank executives. If they enforced bank regulation the way they do park rules we would be in this mess in the first place.
Letter to the Editor
It turns out our corporate overlords are worried about Occupy Wall Street. The American Bankers Association paid a Washington lobby firm $850,000 to conduct opposition research to discredit the movement. In their report to the bankers they revealed they are worried that Democrats will embrace the movement and that Republicans might not defend Wall Street companies.
Wall Street bankers are also concerned that Occupy and the Tea Party might find common ground. Tea Party activists are also against the government handing out trillions to banks who use the money, not to create jobs in America, but to buy European Debt Derivatives. They are concerned that the 99% on the bottom will organize and overthrow the hold the 1% has on the Congress.
Sometimes when a movement doesn’t know what to do and they find out the opposition is afraid they might do something – then that is a clue about what to do. If the banks are afraid the people will unite then the people should unite. I think those of us on the left should open a dialogue with those on the right and see where we have common ground and can work together. I think that we can find common ground that America is about “We the People” and not “We the Banks”.
Letter to the Editor
I read today Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachman putting forth her “everyone-pays” tax plan. What is her plan? Raise taxes on the poor. The Republicans seem to feel that the lower 99% need to pay more taxes. That we should be the ones to shoulder the burden of society. All of them have similar plans that have exactly the same effect. Big tax breaks for the rich, huge tax increases for the rest of us. And you think that we aren’t even smart enough to do the math?
America is not going to become a Plutocracy. Plutocracy is a word coined by Citigroup to describe what America has become. It refers to a society that is controlled by a few wealthy people. And it’s not like they earned it. They are stealing it from us. Their hands are in our pockets. When we buy a house we pay more because of their investment properties. When we buy gas and food we pay far more because the option traders are getting their third. We taxpayers loan them money at 0 percent so they can gamble and if they lose we just hand them trillions of dollars just to borrow it back from them as part of the national debt. It’s a power grab. And we are not going to let that happen.
Plutocracies do not work. That system isn’t self sustaining and when it collapses it takes the rich down too. America can not allow itself to evolve into something that is self destructive. So we’re just not going to put up with it anymore. We need to get back on the right track and I think everyone can agree – this ain’t it. Our only reasonable course of action is to form a new vision of America where we do what Americans have always done in hard times. We need to come together so that all of us come out ok.
Letter to the Editor
Tuesday the House of Representatives passed a bill declaring “In God we Trust” as the national motto, apparently to send some sort of message that they are somehow morally superior to us lowly non-believing heathens. But the way I see it, what they did has the opposite effect.
From an atheist point of view what I see is that if they use God’s name for a political stunt it just shows me that they don’t really believe in God either. If I believed in God I wouldn’t insult him using his name for personal political gain or to defile his name by printing it on money. It sends a message that God and government is all about the money.
Someone who actually believes in God and trusts in God simply would not do that. So if they really don’t believe in God – then why should I? As an atheist I find myself having more respect for the name of God than these so called Christian politicians do. If I’m damned for not believing then they are too. My message to them – see you in Hell.
Letter to the Editor
Congress has only scheduled 109 work days for next year in a time where America is in a crisis. We all know that they don’t care what happens to America because all they care about is their petty partisan squabble. But by scheduling only 109 work days they are rubbing our noses in it. I think that when they took an oath to the Constitution that they should at least be required to pretend they care. 109 days isn’t even pretending. 109 days is just wrong.
Letter to the Editor
In the last few months Netflix decided to drastically increase their prices and their customers got angry. They lost 800,000 customers in the last few months. Their stock price dropped from $300/share in July to about $75/share now. Bank of America is doing the same thing with their plan to add a $5/month fee for debit cards and Bank of America customers are very angry about that.
Making customers angry is bad for business as Netflix found out. I wonder if the folks at Bank of America are paying attention and might want to rethink their $5 fee in light of what happened to Netflix.
Letter to the Editor
It would be interesting to see a flat tax proposal that was really flat. The taxes the Republican candidates are not really flat. All their proposals exempt the capital gains tax setting it to 0. Capital gains is how the rich make most of their money. Payroll tax is also capped at incomes just over $100,000. It would be interesting to see a true flat tax that includes all income and where social security and medicare taxes aren’t capped for the rich. That would indeed be a flat tax – but the Republicans would never support that.
Letter to the Editor
Republican candidate Herman Cain has released a new tax plan that he calls the 9-9-9 plan. ( percent federal income tax, 9 percent corporate tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. But his plan is really a 9-9-9-0 plan because under his plan the capital gains tax drops to 0. Capital gains is how the top 1% – the super rich – make their money.
His plan is a huge tax cut for the rich and a huge tax increase for the rest of us. The 9% sales tax is a tax increase over the current sales tax. So here in California the sales tax would be 18%, not 9%. The 9% income tax is a flat tax with no deductions which is a huge increase for the lower middle class. And corporations which now control government and the super rich get a tax rate cut from 36% to 9%. And – the plan won’t being in as much revenue as the current tax system so the deficit will skyrocket. Cains 9-9-9 plan is just an election gimmick to try to trick people into voting for a system that will only empower the rich to take more from the rest of us.
Letter to the Editor
A Baptist preacher recently said at a political conference that Mitt Romney wasn’t a Christian and the the Mormon church was a cult. The way I see it if Mormons are not Christian and are a cult then Baptists are the same. Both religions are splinter groups that evolved from the Catholic Church which was where the Christian religions started. The degree of coercion and ritual in these two religions is about the same. So if Mormons are a cult the Baptists are a cult too.
The real question voters should be focusing on isn’t what the candidates religion is, but what kind of relationship they have with reality. Do candidates understand cause and effect? Do that believe that bad decisions have consequences. Do they respect the concepts of examining facts and evidence? Are you willing to put reality first in making your important decisions? Personally I’m not interested in whether or not your invisible friend is better than some other invisible friend. What I want to know is if you have a vision for the future of America and a plan to take us from where we are to where we need to be.
Letter to the Editor
I’m hoping that the Occupy Wall Street movement puts up some candidates and occupies Congress. I think almost all the politicians in Congress are vulnerable and can be easily replaced. America is in trouble and Congress is making it worse. We need to replace them with new people who are focused on getting America back on track rather than engaging in petty bickering.
Letter to the Editor
There are times when the government does things that are so stupid that it makes my head hurt. The Justices department was caught supplying weapons to Mexican Drug lords and now they are saying the patients who use medical marijuana in Montana don’t have the right to own a gun? It’s apparently OK to sell guns to drug lords but not to cancer patients? Kinda makes you wonder what Attorney General Erik Holder has been smoking.
Letter to the Editor
I think that the Obama Justice Department has the wrong priorities. For some reason Eric Holder is interested in stopping cancer patients in California from getting marijuana by going after pot clubs that are legal under California law. At the same time the Justice Department has been caught secretly supplying firearms to Mexican drug lords. It seems to me that it would be more productive to stop selling guns to drug lords than to stop cancer patients from getting the medicine they need.
