But, did it really have to get to this point again? His own father alerted the authorities to the fact that his son was becoming “radicalized” and might do something bad, and the father was essentially “ignored”, what does that say about our intelligence gathering 8 years after the 911 Tragedy?

After the fact, we hear on the news that he should have had his visa revoked, he should have been on the “no fly” list, etc, etc….but why wasn’t this done? I will tell you why….

Its because its easier to use full body scanners on innocent people (oh no, we can’t profile potential terrorists, even when we know which countries offer them safe harbor), inconvenience people even more than they already are inconvenienced, and invade their privacy so far as to be able to look at their NAKED bodies under their clothes…..I ask who is neglecting their duties so that people can lose not only their right to privacy but their dignity to not allow strangers to see their naked bodies?

I am sorry – I desire safety just as much as the next person, but I just can’t condone the use of scanners that allow strangers to see my naked body. I am no prude, but I draw the line at this proposal.

Privacy groups have been fighting the use of these machines for a while now. I cannot help but think that someone is in cohoots with these scanner companies – that if there is a reason shown why they are needed they will be approved. The FBI/CIA negligence allowed the quick approval of a scanner to be installed (in a short 3 weeks, wow did you ever think this stuff can be done so quickly?) in the Dutch airport. Its almost as if that scanner was already in the pipeline to be installed and they just needed a good reason.

Before you go and poo poo me as a nutty conspiracy theorist, remember how Corporations control the world now. Money is to be made at the cost of lives all the time. So what if approximately 300 people have to be blown up to allow us to install our scanners all over the world….its just collateral damage.

People, remember Nazi Germany and communist Russia. People gave up their freedom in those countries also because they thought it was for their own good.

If all of the intelligence organizations around the world stopped playing macho, and started cooperating there would be no need to look at people’s naked bodies in the airports.

To the FBI, CIA, and all the others, as Nike says, “JUST DO IT!”

According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. median income is $43,318. That comes to about $27 an hour for the average blue collar worker. That is just about the same as most worker bees in banks and insurance companies. In some cases, they make even less than that.

My question is, if the salaries that these people make are so similar, what is with all the Wall Street vs Main Street baloney? As far as I can see, it’s something that the Media Whores made up to get themselves higher ratings. However, pitting the blue collar worker against the white collar worker is benefitting no one except ruthless politicians. If they can keep US citizens divided, they can perpetuate their stereotypes of blue collar/good and white collar/evil which is so far from the truth it would be funny if it weren’t so scary.

As a child of blue collar workers who became a white collar worker in technology, I can speak for myself and my parents in that they wanted something better for me than what they had. They expected me to go to college and get a better job than they had. My dad saved his money and after being a truck driver for many years, purchased his own business. It was a modest dry cleaning store, but it was his business, nonetheless. Even so, he wanted something even better than that for me, and he was not ashamed to say it. While being proud of my blue collar roots, I nonetheless, aspired to more and attained it.

When people aspire to nothing more than what the previous generation had or did,  a country does not thrive. We see that now in the United States. We are being beaten in educational standards by countries like India and China. With manufacturing jobs a thing of the long-ago past, these workers are now working at Wal-Mart for $8 an hour. They have substandard health insurance, if any at all.

The strange and sad thing is that these people want to stay that way. They revile the so-called “intellectual elite”, not realizing that they would  be better off if they too were part of that demographic. They wear their poverty and ignorance like a shabby badge of honor, never realizing how pathetic and sad they are.

Instead of aspiring to something more, they wallow in their misery and complain that other people are getting big salaries and big bonuses. What they don’t realize and probably don’t know is that the people who are making the big money are doing so because they have spent years in school learning to do what they do, and they work 80 -100 hours a week doing it. They have never worked an 8 hour day or watched the clock until it’s time to go home. I know because I’ve seen them and worked alongside them.

If “Joe Sixpack” and “Joe the Plumber” would worry more about getting a good education for their kids so that they can compete against kids from other countries with better education systems who are coming here to work, and not worry about what people who work like dogs for a living make, the United States would return as a competitive player in the world market. As it stands now, we are looking forward to a generation of dummies who will increasingly rely on the government for assistance.

Disclaimer: When I talk about white collar workers, I am not talking about CEO’s who make ridiculously high salaries and get over the top bonuses, I am talking about your average bank or insurance worker bee.

I decided that I had to speak out on it! I was an employee of Lehman Brothers for 13 months from November 2004 until December 2005 when I moved and my commute turned into over 2 hours. I left and got a job closer to home. In September 2008 the poop hit the fan.

Now folks, let us realize that it was a long journey from the time the loosy goosy ways started on Wall Street to when Lehman fell belly-up. As a banking veteran from 1988 until 2005, I saw what was happening from the start.
The first indication that the banks were getting too big was Citibank. I worked there as a manager, the first time, from September 1988 until June 1990. The lay off was caused by bad loans to South American countries that had bad credit and defaulted on the loans. Citibank underwrote the risky loans because they expected them to be paid bakc…at least that’s what the employees were told. My guess is that they made money off underwriting the loans, and the only people that stood to shoulder a loss were the employees who got laid off, myself included.

The next indication that the banking business and Wall Street were going crazy were all the mergers and acquisitions that started in the early 1990′s. I worked at Chemical through the merger with MHT and again through the merger with Chase. I saw people get laid off and others move with their jobs to new cities just to get laid off later. It was horrific. I turned to consulting, because I saw that so called permanent jobs were becoming a joke.
The last nail in the coffin came when Citibank merged with Travelers Insurance. All the deregulation that occurred during the Regan, Bush, Clinton years allowed an entity with a large commercial banking business to merge with an entity that owned both a brokerage (Soloman Smith Barney) and an Insurance Company (Travelers) to merge. Can we say, “too big to fail”?
Also, the real estate mess began a long time ago, back in the 90′s. People who are not familiar with banking don’t know this. I was once advised to buy a townhouse by putting only $3000 down on a $100,000 property. I told the person who advised this to take a walk. Insanity was rampant even back then.
So people, wake up and smell the overpriced coffee. The excess that got us into this mess didnt start yesterday and isnt going to be fixed by tomorrow. Blaming a president that inherited over 25 years of abuse of the financial markets can’t be blamed for this mess and can’t be expected to fix it overnight.
He also can’t be expected to fix it without rescinding Bush’s tax breaks, which to most people is the same as increasing taxes. I ask these crazies…how do you expect things to get better if the economy isnt stimulated somehow? They want it all….a sickness that started over 25 years ago and got us into this mess to start with. They want low taxes, they want artificially inflated real estate prices, they want it all, but they don’t want to give an inch to finance it!

These are the same blowhards who thought nothing of financing Bush’s ridiculous invasion of Iraq, a war that has decimated this country economically as well as given us additional safety concerns by angering the Muslim world even more. That was OK, but raising taxes to pay for a direly needed Health Care Reform initiative is not a good idea.

Let me tell you wackos something…WAKE THE F UP! Stop with the BS and realize that your boy, BUSH, screwed us up for 8 years. This is the fruits of his labor you jackasses…..admit it to yourselves and lets move on.

Lets spend some money on what is needed and stop the f***ing nonsense. I am way beyond pissed at the conservative talk show host who are blowing false BS out of their asses. SHUT THE F UP YOU JERKS and let the SMART people get on with the recovery!

Enough said, I have to go and have a drink to calm down.

He not only disgraced his party, he also disgraced his state. We all know that South Carolina is known for turning out hotheads, after all, it was the first state to secede from the Union causing the Civil War. I have to admit, that as I heard the shout of “you lie”, it crossed my mind that if this president were white, Congressman Wilson would NOT have disrespected him by calling him a liar. Having lived in South Carolina after graduating from college, I am fully aware that the Civil War still rages on in the minds and hearts of many South Carolinians, and I had heard on many occasions what they really think about blacks and “yankees”.

I would hope that this is not the case with Congressman Wilson, but I cannot say for sure. There has to be something deep-seatedly wrong to refuse to accept the truth when its written in black and white (no pun intended!). This only serves to drive home the incredible divide that we inherited from the Bush years which is refusing to heal like a festering wound.

Barack Obama took on a huge challenge when he was elected president. He INHERITED, he didn’t create, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We are not out of the woods yet, but we’ve come farther than I ever expected in a years time. His other challenge, one that faced every president before him for the last 60 years, is coming up with a Health Care plan that ensures all Americans can be kept healthy through wellness care, and can be cared for during illness.

It’s quite obvious that we are one of the richest countries in the world, yet people do not get quality health care. Seniors have to choose between buying food or buying medication. A mother has to wait till her kid is sick enough to be accepted into an emergency room because she can’t take him or her to a doctor. We do not live in a third world country, we live in the United States!! All Americans should be ashamed to know that their fellow Americans die because there is no affordable health care plan to keep them alive and well. 

And lastly, Americans should realize, that sickness care costs more than wellness care. An emergency room visit in a county hospital costs the taxpayers more in the long run, than setting up a affordable public option for people who need it.

If we do nothing, things will get worse. If we do something, even if not perfect at the outset, if we work at it, things will get better.

And come to think of it, we should make sure to cover the pre-existing condition of tourettes syndrome in the public option…there is a congressman who needs the coverage.

Skip forward to 2001. In the aftermath of the Tragedy of 9/11, the Media of Fear was born. Fear of terrorism was a big seller for a while. Stories were done on buying everything from survival gear and creating a bunker, to purchasing duct tape and plastic sheeting in the event of a chemical attack. Reporters practically drooled when reporting the anthrax attacks. I sat there watching the TV thinking, “These people are sick. They are actually enjoying scaring the American people.” The media acted as if they were in some cheap horror movie, but the scariest part was that it was real life.

That went on for eight years – eight years of constant fear. It got even better when the government came out with the color coded warning system and used it consistently during the 2004 Presidential campaign, most notably after the Democratic Convention. The media rattled off the color code and the fact that the “threat was not substantiated”. They knew that the threat didn’t need to be substantiated, they just wanted to get ratings by scaring people, and they did. What they didn’t bargain for was how it eventually wore off. It was like the boy who cried wolf, after a while, no one listened anymore.

At the end of Bush’s term, scarier things started to happen. In a last ditch effort to make money before Bush left office, the speculators and the oil companies artificially drove up the price of oil and therefore the price of gasoline, by pretending that there was a shortage. There wasn’t going to enough for all of us, they said. Of course this wasn’t true; it was just the way that Exxon/Mobil was able to become the most profitable company in the country. They raped the American people and the Media spouted exactly what they were told to spout. They told people that there was a shortage of oil, when they knew all along that the price was being artificially manipulated by the speculators just to make a fast buck!

This time the people learned fast. They weren’t fearful; they just stopped driving so much!! Before you knew it, the speculators were dumping the oil futures contracts and the price of oil (and gasoline along with it), plummeted. We had outsmarted them! Instead of driving long distances, the “staycation” was invented. There was no fear. In fact, people said that they enjoyed staying home and not having to deal with traffic.

At the same time, the real estate bubble was bursting. As a direct result, the economy took a direct hit. Wow, the media had something else to scare us with! They reveled in exposing the “bad guys” on Wall Street this time, which was the exact opposite of when they refused to expose the oil speculators for what they were doing. They didn’t do this because it was right, they did it because it was the popular sentiment and it got them ratings! Now they have people in a fury, thinking that just because you work in the financial industry you are a bad person. This could not be further from the truth! There are lots of people who went to work at banks each day, did their jobs, and had nothing to do with the mortgage meltdown. However, because the media types have no idea how the financial industry works, it’s easier for them to just hype things up and make it seem like the guy in the operations department had something to do with the mortgage crisis, when it was a very small group of people that actually caused this debacle. In addition, they make it sound like everyone in the financial industry has lost their jobs, when 90% of the people working in the financial industry still have their jobs.

They seem to relish talking about how the economy is almost as bad as the Great Depression and their eyes sparkle as they say this. They showcase their “tent cities” stories and practically foam at the mouth when broadcasting them. Instead of spreading hope that things will get better, they relish spreading despair and talk about how bad things are. I guess they haven’t heard about the Law of Attraction.

During the Bush years all that the media talked about was how bad things are, and they only got worse. Maybe now, they should try to talk about how things are getting better so they will.

If they don’t change, I recommend a media boycott. But maybe, just maybe, people will just turn them off because they no longer care what they are saying. We can only hope!

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?3566816&1

The reality, however, is much different.  Small town America has turned out many more “horrific” crimes than any large city in recent memory.

Consider the case of the Clutter family, who in 1959, were murdered in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas by two parolees, Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.  At the time, the Clutters lived in a remote rural area, and no one would suspect that such a gruesome crime would be committed there.    Such was the fascination with this story, that Truman Capote went down to Kansas to interview the murderers and spent six years working on the book that would become, In Cold Blood.  Hickock and Smith heard from a fellow inmate who had worked for Herb Clutter, that he had large amounts of cash in the house.  It started off as a robbery, but when the two men found no cash, they sadistically killed all four family members.  And by the way, the murderers were originally from small towns also.

In 1965, a single mother of a large family in Indianapolis, Indiana (a small town at the time), took in 2 girls that were daughters of carnival people.  She agreed to house them for $20 a week while the parents worked the carnival circuit.  The mother, Gertrude Banisezewski, started to torture one of the daughters about a month after they arrived, when their father did not send the $20 on time.  Even after the money arrived, Gertrude continued to torture the girl, and invited her kids and the neighbor’s kids to torture her also, which they did gladly.  About two months after the torture started, the girl, Sylvia Likens was dead.  Neighbors said later that they saw signs of abuse and heard some screams, but thought it better to “keep to themselves”.  

This is small town ideals?  You know something is wrong and you do nothing about it?

Fast forward to recent times – to April 20^th, at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.  Two students, considered social pariahs in the affluent small town high school, went on a shooting rampage, killing 12 students and a teacher as well as wounding 23 others, before committing suicide.  The two boys were known outcasts, who wore black trench coats, and were made fun of by other students.  Both boys seemed disturbed and the teachers had to be aware of it.  One of the boys had a website where he methodically listed everything that he hated.  Both boys were allowed to buy guns even though they were known to be troubled.  Neither the parents nor the teachers did anything to protect the other students from boys that were known to be troubled.  Could it be that they refused to acknowledge that there could possibly anything that dark going on in their “small town”?  Are we again seeing that old, let’s put our heads in the sand, it will all go away, small town mentality?  

Now to the examples that the Republicans used as their ideal small town icons…..

Let’s talk about “Joe six pack”, the guy who works at a job he hates all day, doesn’t make enough money, stops off to buy his six pack on the way home, goes home to his run down house or trailer, drinks it, and then beats his wife and his kids because he is working at a job he hates for not enough money.  If his family is lucky, Joe will drink 2 cans of his six pack, go off to his second job, (which he has to work because his first employer won’t allow a union and as a result Joe is not paid a living wage)and  then drops dead of a heart attack at 50 years old.  People will mourn Joe as a good man either way, this small town icon who struggles for a living while the Republicans support union-busting and support the shipping of good jobs overseas.  Instead of giving tax breaks to businesses that would pay Joe a living wage in his small town (and possibly keep him off the sauce cause now he’s happy), the Republicans give tax breaks to the wealthy and large corporations that shipped  Joe’s good job overseas.  It makes me laugh to think that people are actually swayed by this icon, when it really is a tragic one.  They should be offended, as was an Eskimo Congressman in Alaska, who said that he felt that “Joe six pack” glorified alcoholism, which is a hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) scourge on small town America.

“Joe six pack” was made into flesh with the unveiling of the consummate Republican joke of a working man,  Joe the plumber.  When Joe was first mentioned by Senator McCain during the third and last Presidential Debate, I sat in front of my TV, wondering how Senator McCain could know so much about a guy that asked Senator Obama, and not him, a question on the campaign trail.  By the end of the debate, I realized that Joe was just a plant.  He was from a small town suburb of Toledo, Ohio, and supposedly exemplified all the traits of the “ideal” small town American.  However, when people got curious about Joe and started to delve into his background, they found the darker side of the small town.  Joe the plumber did not have a plumber’s license and neither did the guy he worked for, which really made him Joe the handyman.  The business that he told Senator Obama he wanted to buy, and that would put him into the $250,000 tax bracket, was mysteriously closed (if it ever existed at all).  It goes unsaid that Joe never had any money to buy a business in the first place.  Further exploration into Joe’s background showed his name wasn’t Joe at all, but Samuel, he had a suspended driver’s license from when he lived in Arizona (which then should have made his Ohio license null and void), and the piece de resistance, was that Joe owed back taxes and had a lien against his house as a result. 

Gee, what wonderful small town values.  What a wonderful person to hold up to the American public as the icon of small town America.  Give me a break!!

Now let me be frank and say that I am in no way inferring that people in large cities are perfect.  Anyone with half a brain can reason that there are good and bad people all over this great country and the planet.  The point that I am trying to drive home is that PLEASE don’t try and tell us that SMALL TOWN AMERICA is the real AMERICA, that their existence is Ideal,  and infer that they are better than the rest of us. 

It just ain’t so.