Sarah the Shopper

Bridge to Nowhere: $298,000,000
V.P. Shopping spree: $149,000
Hearing Sarah Palin explain the Constitutional duties of Vice President: Priceless

Singin’ Those Post Debate Blues

A couple of exchanges in the debate the other night caused me to think a bit more about other people and now I’m singing the post debate blues.

When John McCain began to discuss partial birth abortions and used his fingers to “quote” the phrase “women’s health” in a mocking way, it seemed unusually cruel, even for someone on the right. Making a “Sophie’s Choice” between your life and the life of your baby has to be the most horrible and traumatic experience imaginable. I can’t imagine the pain of this decision. To mock these women on national television and demean the reason for their choice is unconscionable. It really provides an insight into the judgmental and cruel nature of their hearts. It’s sad really, and McCain seemed so arrogant about his cruelty.

The second issue was during the attack on Obama’s economic policy as “wealth redistribution”. To me, it demonstrated how out of touch with reality McCain and the GOP are on the economic reality of the last 8 years. We just went through the largest wealth redistribution in our Country’s history. When the Republicans took office in 2000, 3% of Americans owned about 90% of the wealth. Today, 1% of Americans own 90% of the wealth. Both political Parties have economic policies that produce winners and losers. Under the Republicans, 99% of Americans lose wealth, while Democrats propose economic policies that spread the wealth a little bit more fairly.

I have been very blessed in my life. I have been able to help victims get justice against Big Government and Big Corporations and earn a very good living doing so. I have no problem with the idea that if I have been blessed more than others, then I can contribute more than others for the good of our Country. I accept the proverb that for those who have been given more, more is expected. I agree with Joe Biden, paying taxes is patriotic.

Smells Like… Fear

Fear is a powerful emotion. It causes intelligent and decent people to do things you might never expect. I was thinking about fear as I listened to the news this morning. Fear is causing the world markets to collapse. Fear is being used by the McCain Campaign to get elected. Fear is being used to justify two wars and start a third (in Iran). History is instructive and in times like these, the lessons that history offers are scary.

What is happening here? Economic collapse, war and a political campaign based on intolerance – sounds like Germany in 1933 doesn’t it? Only this time there are weapons with the power to end the world. What McCain and Palin are doing now is irresponsible, dangerous and destructive to our country. They are fanning the flames of intolerance, pure and simple. If they lose, will that calm down the people who are shouting “kill him”, “off with his head” or “Arab” at their rallies? If they win, then God help us because the need for calm, steady leadership and diplomacy will never be greater.

What is our alternative? We have to trust that the principles that we have aspired to as a Country can succeed. In the words of a great president “We have nothing to fear but fear itself”. We must act against intolerance and not remain silent in the face of bigotry and hate-mongering. Good Germans allowed the Nazis to take power through their silence. I guess I just wrote myself into doing something to end the fear I see in the eyes of my employees, my clients and my family. Let’s all act without fear and speak out.

1929?

It’s hard for me to drive court in Detroit. I ride down Woodward Ave. through Detroit and see mile after mile of blight – deserted and burned out homes and businesses, homeless people pushing all their possessions in shopping carts. Even people who have jobs appear to be in shell shock. Who did this to our country, the richest country in the world? I drive across the bridge to Canada; surely, they have poverty too. But nothing like ours.

Detroit is in a depression – not just a recession. There are so many who need so much help. The people don’t want handouts, they just want the opportunity to get a job and support their family. They want an opportunity to have their day in Court when they suffer injustice. Their suffering is something that I can do very little about and that is frustrating. I became a lawyer to help people who are suffering… suffering from injustice. Yet I live in a society that has devolved in the last 8 years into one that is so fundamentally unjust and cruel, economically and socially, that the sheer scale of victims being created is frightening. The people are tired, hungry and feeling hopeless.

You would not believe the line for food at the Capuchin Soup Kitchen and other emergency shelters in Detroit. This is 1929, right? Not 2008?

I feel like I need to do more but I also feel overwhelmed and angry. The Detroit riots happened when I was a teenager growing up in Oak Park, which bordered Detroit. National Guardsmen patrolled the streets and you could see smoke billowing into the sky. You could hear gunfire through the night.

The economic and social injustice that the people of Detroit (and in other cities across the nation) are suffering now is as pronounced as it was then. There are whispers now in the media of an economic collapse. That collapse has already occurred among the poor and even a substantial majority of middle class families in Detroit. I can’t imagine by what grace these people are remaining civil and peaceful.
God help us if this election is stolen like the others.

Sarah Palin

Even if the right-wing wackos really believe that we should bomb every country that looks at us cross-eyed, pollute every river and lake we can find, abstain rather than provide birth control to a world approaching 7 billion people, and that God is going to come down tomorrow to smoke those who support a woman’s right to choose… How in the hell could they continue to support Sarah Palin? She makes Bush look like an intellectual.

Joe Six-pack

Did I just hear Sarah Palin say on a right-wing radio talk show that America wants its next vice president to be recruited out of a bar (“Joe six-pack”???)????

Publishers Clearinghouse

Please tell me that Sarah Palin isn’t the winner of a Publishers Clearinghouse contest to be the Republican vice-presidential candidate.

Tickets and the Titanic

When the Titanic went down, who got the lifeboats?

Now, those of us in the third class sections of the economy are being asked to help the rich get into the lifeboats, while we go down with the mortgage.

The more I think about it… the same financial institutions that refuse to renegotiate mortgages so people can avoid foreclosure, are now asking us to lend money to them! These same bankers are about to lose their Country Club memberships if the people they forced out of their homes refuse to lend them money.

What’s the alternative? $700 billion to guarantee health care for everyone, saving not only lives but billions of dollars for businesses to reinvest or pay a living wage to American workers… a massive infrastructure program to make public transportation available thereby cutting the use of foreign oil 10%… a Manhattan Project on alternative energy creating jobs and energy independence? I bet that those projects would stimulate the economy.

Naw… let’s give our money to the same guys who mismanaged investments so they can make some more investments.