***commenters, see end of entry and thanks : )
Ok, I’ll just tell you…
The following are not my words, they are Madaline’s. And it’s long, I’ve tried to edit but I’ll just apologize now, it’s well worth the read though, especially if you’re an opinionated female/male, this subject will pull you in…
So, who’s Madaline, you wonder now? Well, she’s better known as one of a, er, ‘girls’ @ http://michellemoquin.wordpress.com/ (look on left side panel and click on ‘Madaline Speaks’) and wow, you think I have attitude? I’m a mild-mannered wuss compared to her…so today I am giving her the floor, to voice her ideas here at EDGY1, she fits that profile so well : ) don’t you think? Well, you’ll see : )
My comments at the end…(in case you care)
Madaline’s words now… ‘The problem is that America is being destroyed from within by a group that controls its policies. What are the offending policies. To name a few:
1. The females and OTWs of the country are discriminated against by the laws that group enacts, by the police they select to enforce those laws and by the judges they appoint to adjudicate those laws.
2. The American people that group is supposed to represent are discriminated against in favor of corporations, insurance companies, and the wealthy.
3. The rest of the world that looks to the USA for moral guidance and general leadership is betrayed by that group’s selling out to the highest bidder for their services regardless of that country’s action toward its citizens.
4. The animals and the environment that group is supposed to protect are abandoned so they can deliver higher profits to corporations for money.
Who is this group that controls the seat of power in the United States of America and how long have they held it? White American males is the only answer that can be honestly given and they have held it since the origin of this country.
The last part of that question tells more that the who. The “how long” tells one, who would be charged with solving the problem quickly and efficiently, that this group represents several things. Some of those things would be:
1. This group is not likely to change its behavior on its own. It has held power too long to believe it will ever have power wrested from it. So there is no incentive for it to change.
2. This group got its power initially by enacting laws that would ensure that it was the power of the land.
3.Whenever those laws were threatened they sought to defuse, separate, discredit, and or defame the opposing parties.
4. If those laws were changed to force them to share their power they appointed police and judges that would interpret the new laws in ways that kept them in power.
My advice would be is to see if there is a counterbalance to diluting this group’s power hold on the country. Since that group gets it power through the “offices” it holds from which it enacts the laws, appoints the officials to enforce those laws and appoints the judges to adjudicate those laws, the obvious answer would be to take back those offices. Hence my advice would be for women for the next 4 to 5 years to vote for anyone running for office that is NOT a white male. Sure you would lose some good white males. But the message you would be sending is worth the lost.
That message would be: you white males have had 200 plus years to get it right, you have f**ked it up. Sit it out for the next 4 to 5 years and give some other Americans a shot. You will get a second chance in 4 or 5 years. At the very least when the opportunity for white males to return to office presented itself in 4 to 5 years, they would respect the power that put them there and hence think more carefully before betraying their electorate for a few dollars more.
My advice would be when selecting from non white males vote for NO one who spouts the mantra of “Less Government.” White males use that canard to deregulate an industry. The people who control that industry then have the power to rip off the American people. With no government oversight or legal power to regulate the crooks we get sky high phone, electric, gas, mortgage, etc hikes.
When politicians say they want to eliminate government red tape so that business can operate more efficiently. What they mean is that they want to allow that business to right to write the laws by which it should be governed, and they want to remove any governmental penalties that would force that business to answer to the American people if they are wronged. Any good politician can streamline government regulations and still maintain strict governmental oversight. When it doesn’t the people get a polluted environment, cancer causing products, contaminated food, and poor medical assistance.
Does any sane person really believe that competition between corporations would be a better protector of the American people’s interest than politicians who can be voted out if they fail their electorate. More Governmental regulations and control would return our country to true capitalism and free market competition based on supply and demand. What we have today is an bunch of oligopolies pretending to be in competition for the consumer’s dollar. Deregulation has allowed them to simply buy out the competition at any cost and drive up prices because they control the supply of that product.
I’ll only make this brief comment, I’m all over the sentiment of that last paragraph.
What do you think? Feel free to comments, public or private, as usual it is as you wish : )
***JohnJ, I’m glad you like my face. Not sure how I feel about posting my ‘pole dancing body’ though…I’ll think about it, how’s that?
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 am
The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers’ Party. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife, Elizabeth. Every Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976, except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat Party in Congress: The Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and, Dick Armey was an economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford, who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in 1976. The Republican Party is made up of real people doing real work. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.
The Lawyers’ Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and services that people want, as the enemies of America. And, so we have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the Lawyers’ Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains, large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life becomes all-consuming.
Some Americans become ‘adverse parties’ of our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers’ Party to provide real change, real reform, or real hope in America. Most Americans know that a republic in which every major government action must be blessed by nine unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at the heels of our defenders. Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers with more power will only make our problems worse.
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 3:16 am
The marketplace is far more responsive to punishing corporations than are the voting people in punishing politicians. Marion Barry comes to mind, as does Willie Brown.
When corporations fail they can be sued, get bad exposure, and loose profits which will not be tolerated by shareholders. The government is not accountable to it’s failures nearly as much as private industry.
You are making an emotional argument because you want the world to be a happy place. Grow up.
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Cindy
That “market place is far more responsive to punishing corporations than are the voting people in punishing politicians” is either the most naive statement a responsible citizen can make or the typical bullshit given to the electorate by a politician in the pocket of those corporations.
When has the “market place” punished a corporation for spilling oil in the environment, for maiming and/or killing its customers with bad drugs, foods, chemicals, etc. When has a corporation been punished for it hiring practices, for enslaving its labor force, for stealing the pension funds of is employees, for supporting regimes that torture its peoples?
Where have you been living the last 200 years? The politician can only hurt the people while he/she is in office. His punishment is to be forced out by recall or losing a new term. He can also receive jail time for serious wrongs if proven. Only the stupid would say that that is equivalent to not purchasing a corporation’s product that has killed human beings.
That philosophy is what has the world in the power of these criminal organizations. Just to educate you your “market place” is created by the power given to it by those politicians. They protect those corporations by the laws they enact to prevent proper oversight and who has to prove what when the other is sued.
Not counting the occasional small corporation that loses some customers when was the last time your “market place” punished a corporation? People like you who parrot the phases of those that have an agenda are the problem.
It would be nice if you WERE more emotional. Maybe it would prompt you to ask yourself before you spouted such stupidity When was the last time a cigarette company was punished for the millions of people it has killed and continues to kill? When was a corporation punished by your “market place” for lying to the FDA about a drug that killed or maimed thousands of people and continuing to do so? When was a corporation punished by your “market place” for anything serious that it has done?
Let’s be clear. You may consider it punishment to lose a few customers or to fine a corporation. The people must demand that their government add criminal penalties to the heads of those corporations. It is a disaster to the people for the government to continue to say that the corporation is a living entity for purposes of suit. The corporate heads must be also be held accountable for the actions of that “legal entity” when it causes serious harm to the people or the environment.
The next time you have a weak argument refrain from calling the other person’s emotional. Frankly, I believe it is the quote of the greedy to imply that the world could not be a happy place. That implies that some people have to suffer in order for others to be happily rich.
The world can be a happy place for all, if people like you could be persuaded that profit regardless of the cost to the people in the world and the environment of the world is okay. Absence of the ability to change the mindset of people like you, we the people and environment of the world need laws, not your “market place” bullshit, to keep you from harming us for personal gain.
One doesn’t have to destroy the rain forest for profit. One doesn’t have to destroy the environment to get more oil. My advice to you is to get more emotional; fall in love with your fellow humans and your environment. Perhaps then you will see the merits in keeping the world a happy place.
If that doesn’t work, consider that the world is a happy place unless made unhappy by the concept that money, profit, advancement is more important than the people and their environment.
Cindy how will you live to enjoy your wealth at the expense of the world if you destroy the environment and the world’s inhabitants in the process? Oh, just forget that last question. It was too emotional.
Madaline
on Jul 3rd, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Clinton
Bill or otherwise, I will be back at you soon. I do have a job.
Madaline