I have to chime in. Regardless of what political affiliation we have, I strongly recommend everybody read (or re-read) Orwell's
Animal Farm. What I see is a bunch of smooth-talking, arrogant, power-hungry Napoleons telling us, sometimes
LITERALLY "we know what's best for you" as they give their speeches, then roll up, limousine chauffered, at "fund raisers", crowing to their colleagues how they feel the pain of the "little people". And they got there by a bad combination of voter apathy and well-meaning Badgers who think that who they vote for will do some good and make a difference.
And I'm not taking sides in this.
Obama scares me. Think if Reagan, during his Presidential campaign, had been found out he regularly went to radical right-wing rallies, or sermons at a church of a radical right-wing minister, then said "Oh, I didn't know that was being said or I didn't hear that"... if the press got hold of something like that, even if they were on his side, Reagan never would've been President. Yet Obama claims ignorance, said he rejected Wright's views, only when he was confronted BTW, and the press and the public continue to coo over him.
McCain scares me. I think he's more consistent in his views vs. Obama, but where's the in-your-face strength of past Republican or conservative Democrat Presidents? And he's backed off on cutting taxes. People complain about his age, but in the historical record of this country, he's hardly unique in that regard.
Short term, things don't look good for us I think. No matter who gets into the White House, if they get half of what they want approved, we on the streets could lose $250 - $600 / month in new and extra taxes, and that's in a bad economy. And very probably get nothing accomplished. There's also the special gas tax of .53 / gal to pay for global warming being proposed. Think of what THAT would do on its OWN! If it weren't for the fact that my car came off it's loan in February, and that I have a motorcycle to save on fuel with, I would literally not be able to afford to get to work with the gas prices as they are. And it's that way for a whole lot of us "little people" be it gas or utilities costs. The Napoleons in Washington talk smoothly of saving the world and us from ourselves but we don't have the economy or the tax base (because most of us couldn't pay it) to do what they so self-confidently talk about doing. To get things done we need a massive overhaul of our government on all levels. Raising income taxes or fees or the inheritance tax will not accomplish anything with an infrastructure that seems ready to collapse under it's own weight. I heard a politician on the radio say "we need a progressively scaling tax increase every year because it stimulates the economy." Yeah, stimulates THEIRS! Who was his economics prof? Trotsky? Marx? I wish to God I'd caught his name, but I didn't.
We're already basically paying off the government from January through June, which is bad enough, but it seems over the next few years they're going to extend that through September.
I don't want to come off as a radical. What I see going on in this country frustrates me to tears however. I wasn't born here. I see it all from a somewhat different view. For what it's worth, check out the situation in Europe. People are getting sick of the same old dogma and they're voting the bums out for at least more centrist governments. What's happening in the UK is awesome. The Labour Party are getting whooped at all levels because the "little people" are sick of them!:rocker: But that might be construed as personal bias.... okay my press secretary will come up to the podium now to do some bow-and-scrape spin-doctoring to get my poll numbers back up while my (now late) limousine picks me up for a... um... "fund raiser".......
Allright, back to some music!