Doing a poll dance

The polls are interesting. President Obama still has a fairly high overall approval rating, at around 60 percent as of this writing, but his numbers are slipping when it comes to specifics. I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s poll numbers, which overall were high even as most people disagreed with his position on specific issues.

But pollsters aren’t stupid. They’re not going to ask questions that people aren’t equipped to answer. And they certainly can’t ask essay questions, which is a shame. I like essay questions, because I like to explain why I think the way I do.

So if I were asked who’s to blame for the lack of progress with the economy, jobs, health-care reform, and energy, I would want to say “Conservatives,” even though that probably wouldn’t be a choice.

I doubt if any question would be framed that way, though. It would probably be something simplistically stupid like, “Is President Obama doing a good job with the (insert one of the above)? And the choices of response would be “yes, no, or no opinion.” Dumb.

“Who’s to blame…” is a better question to ask — and the correct answer would indeed be “conservatives.” Why not Obama? Well because he has the right ideas, but he’s a little handcuffed by conservatives. So why not Republicans? Well, because conservatism isn’t the proprietary domain of the Republican party. It’s the %&#!* Blue-Dog Democrats who hold the key to the handcuffs, those so-called Democrats who represent conservative districts or states and have to promote themselves as “fiscal conservatives” in order to get elected.

Politics, we’re told, is the art of compromise — and that’s often true. But sometimes it isn’t. Obama made promises for sweeping change, and voters bought into that. Many new Democrats won seats on that platform, yet some of those may as well have run as Republicans. They are getting in the way of desperately needed change — and the have one unfortunate trait in common with their Republican colleagues: a terrible lack of foresight.

It’s easy to take a poll about the president. It’s much harder to create a poll that asks people to think. But you can’t think without information — and that’s what often slips through most people’s mental cracks.

Conservatives count on that.

Where the lunatics reside

I’m an American who happens to vote Democratic and thinks of himself as a liberal. I’m happiest when government is in the hands of Democrats, but realistic enough to know that won’t always be the case. When it’s not, I can only hope that I’ll feel comfortable with the person who was elected president. I sure don’t want to be scared because of who’s in the White House.

I was pretty scared for the eight years that George Bush was president, and Barack Obama’s election came as a tremendous relief. There was simply no logic to the support for Bush then, and there’s none today. However, while his political philosophy didn’t jive with mine, his biggest flaw, to me, was his stupidity. He simply wasn’t qualified to be president, which is why he was so easily influenced by the lunatics who advised and controlled him. We may never know for sure, but I have a hunch that Cheney was really running the show — at least for the first five years or so.

I’m sure there are liberal lunatics out there, but if there are, they’re not very visible or influential. I think the Republicans have a lock on public lunatics right now. I hasten to add that I don’t mean to hurt anyone’s feelings by referring to them as a lunatic. Being a lunatic is probably like being a diabetic. Chances are, you just can’t help it.

Some of the lunatics are not exactly in politics — they just talk about it. I refer here to people like Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, and other conservatives who really don’t know what conservative means. Such lunatics rant, rave, lie, distort, fabricate, and in general don’t care about what they say as long as it’s incendiary. Other lunatics — your John Boehners, James Inhofes, Michelle Bachmans, Sam Brownbacks, for example, are in public office. Mostly they’re just dumb. Like Bachman, they will occasionally say something outrageous, but for the most part they just don’t have their facts straight.

I’m bringing this up now because of the sheer lunacy couched as criticism of President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee. Seems like no sooner is one critique debunked than one or the other of these lunatics — Limbaugh chief among them — takes it to the next eye-rolling level. I guess I view Limbaugh as something of an intelligence test. Anyone who believes him fails the test.

Limbaugh has boasted about his income. Personally, I’d rather be poor than be considered a fool and a blowhard by millions upon millions of people.

I’m not making this up!

America was NOT founded as a Christian nation, okay? So, to all those who claim that it was, as part of their efforts to win the hearts and minds of voters, I say, “Give it up.”

How do I know America wasn’t founded as a Christian nation? Because I’ve read the Declaration of Independence. It quite clearly lists the reasons the united colonies wished to become independent of Great Britain. It lists in great detail the grievances against King George III, and nowhere in that list is religion mentioned. In other words, whatever the reasons our forefathers declared independence, religion had nothing to do with it.

And what were some of those reasons? Well, some had to do with basic liberties — the ability of the colonies to govern themselves, for instance, to have representative government, to assure due process of the law. In colonial America, citizens were forced to endure the presence of British troops in their midst, to quarter them.

But many of the reasons were economic. Our forefathers resented unfair taxes, resented being prohibited from freely trading abroad. It’s worth recalling that among the events which so inflamed our colonial leaders were such laws as the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townsend Act of 1767, which imposed taxes on colonial commerce. John Hancock, the first signatory of the Declaration of Independence, was indicted for smuggling tea into the colonies from Holland, in order to avoid paying what were considered to be unfair import taxes. In 1773 was the famous Boston Tea Party, when the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Indians, boarded the British merchant vessel Dartmouth and tossed casks of tea into Boston Harbor.

It is probable that however much the founding fathers cherished individual liberty they cherished free commerce and profit even more. I don’t mean to criticize their motives, however, for ultimately they devised a pretty decent system of democratic government.

What has evolved, I believe, is the hypocrisy of using the false notion of our Christian origins to ensure the continuation of what has become a ravaging free enterprise system, one that actually destroys many of the sought-after liberties detailed in the Declaration of Independence.

When religion did come up, it was in the Bill of Rights, and then not only to assure freedom of religion but to prohibit the establishment of a state religion. As far as I know, none of the founders ever thought of the US as a Christian nation. I wonder why some do today.

Today’s conservatives benefit from the collective ignorance of the electorate. It is in their interest to keep people undereducated and poorly informed. That so many people buy into their messages is proof of that.

To help with your decision…

All you independent voters out there, if you’re on the fence, if you’re leaning toward McCain, here’s food for thought: as the economy careens toward collapse, remember that the last time the US suffered a depression, we had a Republican president, both houses of Congress were controlled by Republicans, and the Supreme Court had a conservative majority. The 1929 crash followed a time of unprecedented growth. The Great Depression was characterized by widespread loss of jobs, foreclosures, business failures and bank collapses. And, while the Democrats now have a small majority in the House, the Senate is for all practical purposes still in conservative hands. The legislature is NOT veto-proof. Bear this in mind now, as prices rise, as jobs disappear, as free-wheeling lending practices have led to foreclosures. Independents, you do NOT want to vote Republican in the next election, no matter the office.

The results of some hard thinking

It still amazes me that there are those out there who think the last eight years have been pretty good and we should have more of the same. But there are, and among those who don’t there are a lot of short memories to go around. Me, well… I hold a grudge — and while the Constitution prevents George Bush from running again, he’s been aided and abetted by the other Republicans in government.

A lot of us are concerned about the Democrats self-destructing come convention time, somehow turning off the independents and sending them McCain’s way. Those would be the ones with short memories. We have a mess to clean up right now, and another Republican administration isn’t going to go far in the fixing department.

Neither Obama nor Clinton were my top choices, and to be honest I favor neither over the other. I’m of the mind that either would be better than any Republican. What I want is a ticket that will bring in a few more senators and representatives with it, enough in both houses prove a real mandate for change.

With that in mind, I suggest that Clinton and Obama make a deal… end the primaries and declare a ticket, real soon. It would show unity and in my mind put the interests of the country above politics. In other words, a Clinton/Obama ticket — almost a shoo-in (barring more closet bigots than we realize). They would then campaign against Republicans all the way to election day, and they should succeed.

With a successful administration, Obama would be positioned to be the natural Democratic presidential candidate in 2016. He’d be older, wiser, and more experienced.

This is what we’re stuck with, but as they say… when someone hands you lemons, make lemonade.

It’s the stupid economy?

With the economy overtaking all other issues in the primaries, the Republican candidates are fighting to wear the Reagan mantle. I wouldn’t care if voters remembered that with the “trickle-down theory” of Reaganomics, very little actually trickled down to those who needed it most. The reality was, the upper middle class was a kind of sponge, with everything reaching that level going no further. It was a periond when the rich got richer and the poor got poorer, a trend that continues today despite an intervening Democratic administration in the person of Bill Clinton, when the sponge was not removed but thinned a bit.

The belief that wealth will trickle down to the lowest classes is false. It never has, and it never will. The wealthy are greedy, and they do everything in their power to hang on to as much of it as possible. They have a disproportionate amount of influence over elected officials who are supposed to belong to all of us, and thanks to tax cuts and tax loopholes they do not pay their fair share of taxes.

I’ve long been an advocate of the “trickle-up theory,” and I sure would like to hear a candidate bring it up. The theory is simple: give the poor more money. A lot more. Make them unpoor. Raise the mimimum wage still more. Bring everyone above the poverty line. Enable everyone to afford to pay taxes, but keep tax rates much lower for those below a certain reasonable level. The poor will then have more money to spend, and they will spend it… and that money will trickle up. The poor are not executives or stockholders, but the money they spend enriches those who are. So give the poor more money and they will make those at the top wealthier. And then, raise tax rates on those above a certain reasonable income level, and close loopholes. The treasury will thrive. Problems will be fixed. And if the rich don’t like it, screw them. They will still be wealthy, perhaps just as wealthy as they were before, since their increased tax burden might be offset by the added income from all the new money the poor are spending.

But even if they take a slight hit, so what. It’s time for all good wealthy Americans — most of whom are God-fearing Christians — to give greed a rest.