Motley Moose – Archive

We are starting December with a very heavy rain… it began around midnight last nite and was still raining five minutes ago when I brought the dogs in from their 10:30 AM walk. I expect it to keep raining most of the day. The low spots on our back lot are flooded already and I imagine groundwater rises are happening all over town. I’ll find out when I go out to the store a little later.

I am curious as to what the results of the Election 2010 will leave us with. It seems likely now that the Republicans will take control of the House, likely putting John Boehner (R-OH) into the Speaker’s chair. As to the Senate, the majority of pollsters have the Democrats keeping control by at least 1 seat… but there are odds that Harry Reid (D – NV) won’t be in one of them. This makes the Majority Leader position a “what if” situation… and it looks like Charles Schumer (D- NY) might get it.

Dorgan (D – North Dakota) is the Senator who introduced legislation, S. 260, to shut down a tax loophole that rewards U.S. companies that move U.S. manufacturing  jobs overseas. The legislation would close the loophole that allows U.S. multinational companies to defer paying income taxes on profits they make from the U.S. sale of the products manufactured in foreign factories, until those profits are returned to the United States, if ever.  Manufacturers who remain in the United States receive no similar subsidy.

A new poll shows that 53% of Americans support the  ending of tax cuts  for the Wealthy 1% while maintaining them for the  Middle Class.  John Boehner , however, comes out today saying it is not time to increase taxes on anyone (so I assume he’s in that 1%… or is dominated by it.) At the same time, the US  poverty  rating has now increased by 43%… more of us are impoverished by this economy and the lack of jobs is seen as the major cause.

S0 let’s look at that Wealthy 1%. As the major business investors (in terms of money, if not in the creation of new businesses), these folks have NOT created new jobs… at least not in the US. While China and the far east have gotten more employees (for pennies!) and Mexico has received new factories that used to be in Indiana and Illinois and Ohio, the Wealthy 1% have held onto their dough and have not used it to, as the trickle-downers maintain they would, “save America.”

We are spending $2 Billion a week in Afghanistan. If you want to see zeros, that’s $2,000,000,000.00 a week. It also means $104 Billion a year.

Meanwhile, we can’t afford to keep our education budgets in functional condition. We can’t reduce our National Debt. We can’t bring down our operating deficit. And we are spending a fortune on foreign servicing (read China) of our debt.

Obama and Company are gearing up for an explanation tour of our goals in the Middle East… that we are there to keep Al Qaeda out, to stop the Taliban from returning to Afghanistan, and to WIN (whatever that means).

Trying to build a Democratic state in a Medieval mess is just not working out. Keeping the corrupt Karzai government afloat is a form of creeping suicide for our troops, which we have expanded in Afghanistan as we have cut them in Iraq.

I think the oil spill is getting us to think more about about what humankind has done to the other living creatures that make up the Gulf’s biosphere. As I was searching for something completely different (the source of the joke “Death or Moobli” which I laughed heartily over as a read a book on conversation that I picked up at the Shepherdstown Library… I’ll repeat it further down the post), I discovered this small video entitled “Tortoise helps tortoise”:

I guess we’ll know tomorrow with his “speech to the nation,” as it is being called by the TV Pundits. It’s been 56 days now since the explosion that started the oil eruption under water and just about everything that has been tried has been functionally useless (there’s a cap of sorts taking our a small percentage of the flow, but not enough to make a difference, and two relief wells are being drilled to cut off the leak itself, but we’re about two months away from it happening).

“They got everything else in the entire bureaucracy that they need to control our healthcare system … with the signing of this bill. … That’s why repealing this bill has to be our No. 1 priority.”

– Republican Minority Leader John Boehner on a live radio show announcing his intention.

Repubs are pulling this out on the week that the first b$250.00 Medicare supplement checks are going out to seniors. Tim Kaine, head of the Democratic National Committee is daring the Repubs to make this destructive repeal move the focus of their fall campaign to win back Congress and has challenged Boehner and Company to reveal the things they’d take away from Americans and give back to Insurance Companies.

OK. As we look at the alarming crisis that BP and the oil industry has brought us to, as we evaluate the amount of military spending we are pouring into the middle east for no evident return (and as we consistently apologize for killing innocent civilians with airborne missiles), as we observe politicians and lobbyists letting payoffs and focused fundraising deny the needs of voters in favor of the needs of corporations, as we see the Supreme Court gradually eliminate generations of civil rights achievements, we are getting more and more convinced that making a change in America… indeed in the whole world… is getting less and less possible.

Bummer.