Follow the Leaders

Looks like John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee for president. You have to respect a man who was held and tortured for 5 years in a Vietnam prison. But the dude is old. The word cain is in his name to remind you of that. It's great to watch the republican party pull itself apart debating if he is conservative enough though. He insulted the religious wing of the party by once referring to TV evangelists as agents of intolerance. I think he got that one right. He is soft on immigration too, according to them and the worse sin; he voted against the Bush tax cuts. Just a quick reminder on that scam. Those tax cuts were only for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. In fact, if you put his record up against Hillary Clinton's you won't see much of a difference.
All republicans do the same thing, invoke the name of the mighty Ronald Reagan. For a conservative, Reagan was something of a mystery to me. Consider that he left office 8 years latter with massive debt. He cut and ran in Lebanon after more than 200 hundred Marines were killed in a suicide attack on a base there. He also granted amnesty to million of illegal aliens. I don't know why he is seen as a towering figure of conservatism with a record like that, but he is. Oh yeah, for some reason he gets credit for the end of the Soviet Union. Part of how that was accomplished was to fund the covert war in Afghanistan. I think we all know how that worked out for us in the long run.
Obama is my candidate. He has to be yours too folks. What does it say about the worlds largest democracy if we pass the highest elected office back and forth between two families? Any place else that would happen in the world and the word Democracy wouldn't be used to describe it. No, it's time for real change.
We know the next President will be a Democrat. We know this because Wall Street tells us so. For the last 25 years the party that received the most money from Wall Street became the party that won the White House. At the moment, 57% of the money donated from fortune 500 companies has gone to Democrats. Will it be Hillary or Obama?
What Obama has going for him is that he dose not have a record the republican smear machine can go to town on. Lets face it, no one in Washington is clean, but you have to be mighty dim to think Hillary doesn't have more than a few skeletons in the closet. Whats Obamas major fault? His middle name is Hussein? He doesn't have enough experience? Well, look at the people who have had plenty of experience and where they have led us?
America is in decline. The Empire has turned a corner and for anyone who wishes to notice them, the signs are every where. You want to know how bad the economy really is? In New York, merchants have begun to accept the Euro. The dollar is so weak that New York is being flooded by European tourists. It's a bargain for them to come now. The best solution the government can come up with is to send everyone a $300 check? Honestly, to anyone seriously struggling, 300 bucks is not going to do a lot. But at least the money is finally getting into the right hands. By doing this, the Reganites are admitting that the whole trickle down theory of economics is a joke. You remember that concept, don't you? Give the rich more money and they will hire more workers, build more plants and keep the economy growing. Well, it didn't work then and it didn't work now. In fact George Herbert Bush, our current presidents dad, referred to it as Voodoo economics. Now that were seriously screwed, they want to actually put money in the hands of the masses. Guess what? When my check arrives it goes right into the bank and stays there. Thats what the rich did with their tax breaks apparently otherwise the idea of actually giving checks to everyone in the country wouldn't be on the table.
By the way, when the Pentagon submitted it's budget, it declined to place a number, any number on the amount of money it needs to keep the war going. They actually have asked for a blank check.
Guess who has received the most amount of contributions from defense contractors? Hillary. You really think she's going to pull the troops out right away?
Follow the money folks. It will tell you everything.

Valentines Day.

Valentines Day.
Buying cards for all the girls in class. Remember that? God I hated that. You would go to the local Walgreen's and buy one of those 30 packs of cards that had bright red hearts or Kittens on them. All I ever did was write, Happy Valentines Day.
Joe. That was it. I never got a card that said anything other than the same thing. Not even an X or an O. Once, in 6th grade I did get a card from a girl in class that said more. However, on closer inspection it turned out she had put the wrong card in the envelope with my name on it.
All it said was, "Your good at kick ball!"
Hey it was the 6th grade. That was pretty much the equivalent of getting engaged back then.
Then there was the candy hearts with those short romantic sayings on them. You could eat about ten of those hearts before your mouth felt like chalk and your stomach became coated in the sweet sick flavor of cheap candy. I have always thought that these little self-esteem messages printed in candy ink would look pretty good on antidepressants. The best thing about this holiday was that it took time out of class. I was always in favor of anything that did that. We had about 30 minuets where we handed out our cards and candy to each other. We sat down at our desks and opened the cards. Occasionally, someone got more than just the required bare minimum message. They turned red and when recess came, we teased them mercilessly.
Looking back on it all, I see it for the socialization that it was. Getting us ready for dating, I suppose. Or rejection depending on what your cards said. From first grade on you learned to buy something for this day. Maybe that was the real lesson after all.
I remember being jealous of anyone who got a card that said something more. But at the same time, I realized that this jealousy had something to do with wanting girls to notice me. It was about 4th grade when I started noticing that my throat got dry around a few girls.
What was that?
Did that mean I liked girls? I wanted to say something to them, but my throat would just close shut in a heart beat. Maybe I was allergic to them? It wasn't unheard of. There was that episode of the Brady Bunch where Jan became allergic to Tiger, the family dog. If it could happen with a person and a dog, why not a person and a girl? That was my reasoning capabilities at the time.
I didn't tell anyone about my diagnosis.
By 6th grade, I knew I wasn't allergic to girls. I also knew that I did indeed like them for being girls. 6th grade is also about the time that you start writing a bit more than just a quick Happy Valentine's Day on those cards. It seemed way to possible to be made fun of if you wrote something truly honest. No one I knew ever just wrote, I like you. Maybe they did. It's not like I was hanging out with the cool crowd. That seemed like you would be setting yourself up for drama.
Now I can see the start of what was later in my life to be called intimacy issues.

7th grade I was sent to a private Catholic school. They didn't do the cards at all. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it had something to do with the idea that romance and all it could lead to wasn't an idea they wanted in our heads. Still, girls would leave lunch period with roses or those big red velvet box's of chocolate tucked under their arms. They were always the ultra-hot ones too. That was a fun social experiment for anyone with self-esteem to watch.
A handful of girls walked away with prizes for their beauty while the rest of us chewed on candy hearts and sharpened our dagger stares. I remember a guy getting a huge thing of Roses one year in 8th grade. I'm not sure who looked more red, him or the roses.
Is there a holiday with a bigger mind fuck attached to it?
If you don't have a date your a looser. If you do have a date, your broke.
There was a famous study done some years back. The biggest fear of most American men is not having enough money. The biggest fear of American women is gaining weight. Have fun on your date kids! A date sparks the number one fear in both sexes. A man leaves with less money and the woman leaves with more calories.