"about jobs, sunlight, and reelecting Obama"

I grew up in an America that had a place, a job for everyone, regardless of intelligence. I traveled from town to town and often began my first day in a new city by showing up at Manpower, or something like it, where you lined up and got sent for a day or a week to some warehouse or plant that needed a little extra help. The first time I showed up at Manpower and was told one must have an address, a phone, and a car in order just to apply was a shock to me. The first time I went to downtown Seattle for a cheap hotel and found the city "gentrified" beyond my pocketbook was a surprise.

So, as Congress took our tax dollars and used some to finance the stimulus packages, we only hear of "abuses" of the Obama administration. But the job flight from America began as far back as the eighties and much of it was financed by us, the job losers. We pay our share of taxes, the super-rich people and corporations don't. Period.

We've been lied to and our money has been stolen. So, some nuts join militias, some join nutty churches, many of the young just don't want to hear about politics - all these people are in denial. Denial of the fact that our government, as George Carlin so famously said, "... is a club, and you ain't in it." Federal education plans create jobs for top level advisors, administrators, and "administrative fees" that states and schools skim off before a single dime gets to the teacher or student. We admire ALL veterans (many from afar), yet do not protest the misuse of their lives and limbs in needless wars.

I believe the only answer to all these problems is sunlight. I want to know where every f...... dollar goes. If, all of a sudden, every government expenditure was exposed, it would overwhelm us, but in small groups and individually, we could figure it out. My old school district voted on "voucher number 111, for general student services" - things with no real meaning, and this is just a local school district. Secrecy is our enemy. Audit the Fed! Expose exactly how much money is spent on the CIA + the NSA + "Homeland Security" + all the secret-holding bodies in our government and military! Expose it and make them explain how all those trillions of dollars did not stop 9/11!

Make every millionaire professional team owner PAY for their own damn stadiums! Stop the use of eminent domain for private gain! No more "pay to play" politics! No more private jails! No more locking up of non-violent offenders who committed no crime against people or property! Let's wake up! So we thought Obama would do all this for us in one term and now we're disappointed. Waaaah. Let's grow up and take back America! For starters one must decide which party has done the most harm and which party has the ONLY members in Congress with any sense of fairness and justice at all! Sure, now, it's the Republicans who dreamed up this mess and it's yellow-dog Democrats who went along, but there's only one way out. We must reelect Obama. We must deny the Republicans. Then, we can work on the future - a future that includes well-paid professional teachers in public schools, degrees that mean something beside massive debt incurred, jobs in America - such an overflow of jobs that a person can walk into a city and at least be cleaning floors or unloading trucks the next day!

Unfortunately, POLITICS is the only way we have to cause change. And politics is not fun, it's not partying, damn it, it's a party. And Democrats from Obama down are the only hope for now. We've still got a lot of work to do after Obama. I'd like to look back some day and say, "He was a great centerist president who ran two Republican wars, and, thank God, our last centerist president."

"Jesus was right, most Christians are wrong"

This blog is more like a Sunday School lesson. Sorry, but I just can’t say it better than Jesus Christ did.

Matthew, Chapter 23, verses 12 through 14:

“And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.

The USA.

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Wow, that so reminds me of George Carlin when he said something like, “You have a right to life, but not a right to live.”

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.”

Certain corporations and banks.

Verses 23- 28

“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

The Supreme Court of the United States.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.

Congress.

Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness.

The military/industrial complex.

Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Certain select parts of the CIA, the NSA, the FED and all other secret agencies of our government.

Like I said earlier in this blog series, you can’t convince those who have been listening to hateful sermons for years. This is for you – a person of common sense. Did not George W. exalt himself? Is not Obama humble in his dealings with Congress? Haven’t the “banksters” devoured widow’s houses. Haven’t we seen those who “… for a pretence make long prayer.”? Who is it who“… have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment mercy, and faith …”  I’d say it’s the Supreme Court. Supreme, ha!

"about a return to Common Sense"

Well, here I go with an idea I’ve been mulling over for years. My argument is that there is almost nothing in our national discourse that is untainted by greed and the need to feel superior to others merely because we were born in the USA. I hold it to be self-evident that almost no American actually reads and follows the Constitution and the New Testament. What we take to be news is mostly opinion and propaganda. We, the people, have been fooled and we act like fools because of that.

At the end of WWII we were fooled, first of all, into believing that even though the US helped win WWII, the Russians were now our number one enemy, that they were out-spending us on the machinery of war, that they were brainwashing us, that they actually COULD take over the whole world. Meanwhile, The USSR was starving and in no way capable of taking over the world. And they had died in massive numbers to aid our fight against Hitler. They had been our ally for God’s sake. I bring this up, not because my blog will be about Russia, but to show an example of how we were fooled by the secret agencies that grew out of WWII. I don’t even know how many there are. Let’s see, the CIA, the NSA, they spring to mind. But do not all American military branches have their own secret agencies? Were not private companies granted the status of our military (Blackwater, aka whatever), except that they were MUCH better paid! Why was there the destruction of 9/11? Had we not paid enough taxes to support our spies, both good and bad? Shouldn’t the cockpit doors on our airliners have been reinforced, locked doors, ever since the Palestinian hijackings of the 1960s? Shouldn’t the FBI have listened to the field ops that reported middle-eastern non-citizens taking flying lessons, but didn’t care to learn how to land? Good God! And NO ONE was fired or demoted after 9/11 except the field ops?

Recently, a relative of mine died. She was in her 70s, had undergone open-heart surgery, and her husband was a Baptist minister. Guess what? An autopsy was ordered to determine cause of death! The US investigates plane crashes to the nth degree, but Bush said it would be too troubling to America to do a scientific analysis of the debris at the World Trade Center? No autopsy for the body of the only attack on America since Pearl Harbor? That makes no sense, unless there was something to hide. You see, we’ve lost our common sense. We are no longer an informed nation; we are a nation allowing the super rich to form US into what THEY want. I’m sick of it.

The same people who will believe anything a Republican says deny any truth to anything Barack Obama or Nancy Pelosi say. People admire the “Christian” act of burning the Koran and other acts of phony or ignorant preachers and can’t see with their own eyes that President Obama has spent his presidency reaching out, not getting angry  (even when called a liar during his State of the Union address). In other words, he behaves in a humble Christian manner, on our national political stage. And let’s not forget something, lest you think it’s all because he’s black. The vicious attacks on President and First Lady Clinton began immediately upon his assuming the office. Let’s see, they killed someone in the White House, and… and… and… The battle goes back, way back, yet we Americans aren’t allowed to know the truth. It’s classified Top Secret. So are the lies. How can all these people believe Obama is not a US citizen unless the CIA, NSA, and all levels of spies know it? Why do they not stir up a fuss with them? It makes no common sense.

So my blogs are about common sense and finding that common sense in two important documents: the Bible and the Constitution. Actually, I’m only using some verses from the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the RED letters (Jesus’s words) in the New Testament, and a copy of the Constitution that includes the original language as well as strike-outs of that original language as changed by amendments.

So there’s the starting point. We, the People cannot any longer know what our government is really doing. We cannot believe most of what is said on the radio and TV and written in newspapers. So, let’s go back to original documents and apply common sense to them in light of today’s America. Get your Bible (red letter edition) and your Constitution and let’s go!