I won't be voting for that bitter old man

McCain’s campaign is an irrational mix of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that’s proving scarily successful with uninformed voters. The world according to John McCain is one in which America is triumphant at home and abroad thanks to the Bush legacy, rolling to victory internationally and mastering its domestic economic problems. If daily news, like reports of the 10 French soldiers killed by a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan and the U.S. government’s imminent nationalization of much of the American mortgage-lending industry, would seem to deny such a rosy scenario, then that only shows skeptics lack the courage that sustained McCain as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

There you have it encapsulated, the McCain campaign for president, an irrational mélange of patriotic swagger and blindness to reality that is proving disturbingly successful with uninformed voters. How else to explain the many millions of Americans who tell pollsters they prefer a continuation of Republican rule when so many of them are losing their homes to foreclosure and the nation is devastated by out-of-control military spending?

The economy is in a downward spiral, the national debt is at an all-time high, the dollar is an international disgrace and inflation in July had the steepest rise in 27 years, driven by oil prices fivefold higher than when George W. Bush invaded the nation with the world’s second-largest petroleum reserves.

While the oil-rich Mideast nations we protect refuse to fully open the oil spigots as payback for our military efforts, McCain celebrates Gen. David Petraeus as his No. 1 hero for “victory” in Iraq. Aside from the reality that victory there is now defined as returning to the level of stability provided by Saddam Hussein, who the Bush administration admits had nothing to do with the bin Laden-led terrorists, even that goal requires the cooperation of our former sworn enemies, Iran’s ayatollahs.

Presumably McCain envisions a more favorable outcome for Georgia, to which he would commit the unqualified support of the United States with his outrageously overreaching statement that “we are all Georgians.” If Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama had been in contact with the leader of a nation before and after that nation provoked a war, his campaign would be a shambles. Not so McCain, who is acting as if he is already the elected commander in chief ensconced in a reconstituted neoconservative-dominated White House. By contrast, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been reduced to a blustering bystander.

That military victory in Iraq and any other trouble spot is the key selling point of the McCain campaign is odd, because McCain’s credentials derive from participation in a war that resulted in the most ignominious defeat in U.S. history. How else to think of the loss of almost 59,000 Americans and 3.4 million Indochinese in a war that even McCain has long since not seriously tried to defend. Surely McCain accepted the notion that a Communist Party-run Vietnam was compatible with U.S. security interests when he, along with Sen. John Kerry, led the fight for U.S. recognition of Vietnam.

Wouldn’t it have been grand if McCain, who made his own pilgrimage of reconciliation to Hanoi, would have drawn the proper lesson from that sad chapter in American history — that victory isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be? Or, by extension, from the recent Olympic festivities in still-Red China, where Bush was photographed quite happily near portraits of the once-dreaded Chairman Mao, whom U.S. propaganda had long described, quite erroneously, as chief sponsor of the Vietnamese communists.

We are reminded of how brilliant Republican Richard Nixon was in rejecting the neoconservative addiction to the Cold War that McCain embraces when the late president traveled to Beijing to make peace with the man previously depicted as the bloodiest of communist dictators. It turns out that the various communist movements were nationalist above all else, and when we “lost” in Vietnam, the result was not attacks on the United States, but a war between China and Vietnam.

The lesson McCain should have learned is that the world is a complex place, that today’s enemies may be tomorrow’s negotiating partners — as Obama has at times dared to suggest — and that the neoconservative idea of a Pax Americana is a dangerous fantasy. And a costly one at that, not only in lost lives and blowback from the regions we destabilize, but also in the dollars that American taxpayers must waste.

Thanks to the absurdly misdirected war on terrorism that McCain so enthusiastically supports, we spend more annually in inflation-adjusted dollars on the military than at any time since World War II, even more than during the Korean and Vietnam wars. Vote for McCain and forget about funding to solve the Social Security, Medicare and subprime mortgage disasters or for anything else that truly would make America stronger.

Just a thought

Never say, "No!", Always say, "interesting!", though, at times I am afraid of making mistakes. I want to always accept the challenges of life. After all we can't live without it. As a person I can't grow without challenges. Well, everyday is a challenge, but it really depends on how we each perceive these things. Anything can happen as I live my daily life. To be successful or not are just the possibilities I can attain by taking the risks. Sometimes I am happy with my performance on that particular day, and sometimes were not. Its just that, every day is not a perfect day. But I have to live my life over and over again without any idea on what comes next day after day. Never say, "No!", Always say, "interesting!", because I have to fill my life with experiences.

After all Life is a history so I have to make a history, day by day by day.

Stay tuned for "reflections"...

My theme this morning

To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to bear with
unbearable sorrow, to run where the brave dare not go, to right the
unrightable wrong, to love pure and chaste from afar, to try when your
arms are to weary, to reach the unreachable star -- this is my quest!

That and to find a really good beer!

The choice is clear as to whom to vote for

Whom to vote for this year? There is a differcult question to answer and originally back before John McCain took the lead position for the GOP I was leaning towards Ralph Nader. However the dangers of John McCain winning is to great to risk that so Barack Obama will be my choice this year. Over the weekend Barack Obama is contrasting Iraq’s budget surplus and America’s budget deficit as one of the reasons a change is needed in Washington. The Senator from Illinois makes the comments in the Democratic Radio Address. It's the first time he’s delivered the weekly address since becoming my party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He said, “We learned this week was that the Iraqi government now has a $79 billion budget surplus thanks to their windfall oil profits. And while this Iraqi money sits in American banks, (thank you) American taxpayers continue to spend $10 billion a month to defend and rebuild Iraq. That’s right. America faces a huge budget deficit. Iraq has a surplus.” He went on to explain that, “Now, Senator McCain promises to continue President Bush’s open-ended commitment to the war in Iraq, while refusing to pressure Iraqis to take responsibility for their own country. Let me be clear: we are well over five years into a war in a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Furthermore our brave men and women in uniform have completed every mission they’ve been given. Our country has spent nearly a trillion dollars in Iraq, even as our schools are under funded, our roads and bridges are crumbling, and the cost of everything from groceries to a gallon of gas is soaring." He made a profound point... with the following statement, “the American people are worse off than they were eight years ago” and that the choice the presidential election between him and presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain could not be clearer." Barack Obama is correct, we can either chose to continue down the same road and watch this nation go from an economic recession to a depression or we can bravely stand up and choose someone else. John McCain has spent 30 years as a Washington insider doing the business of special interests at a profit to himself. If he was the great reformer - the maverick that his advertisements claim him to be then this nation would not be in the trouble it finds itself in now. John McCain has no answers to the problems that middles class Americans are faced with - John McCain is the problem and the choice for me is not McSame but change and I intend on voting for Barack Obama.

Tis that season again

Tis that season again, it may only be a pre-season game but the Steelers' 16-10 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles is still a victory. Roethlisberger completed both passes he threw, a pair of 19-yarders, the second to Santonio Holmes for the game's first score to cap a brisk, eight-play, 80-yard drive. Donovan McNabb and the Eagles also looked crisp, and McNabb played far more than Roethlisberger but I say BOOOO to McNabb. The Eagles scored a touchdown and a field goal on their first two drives, during which McNabb completed 10 of 13 passes for 97 yards and a touchdown, but were shut out the rest of the night from ever scoring again. The two biggest questions at the end of last season were answered coming into the first preseason game.