Change has come!

Being at work it was difficult to see President Obama's speech. However I did get to hear some sound bytes of it. After eight years of less than stellar oratory it was refreshing to hear someone intelligent address the American people.

Leadership is the ability to inspire people to accomplish great things. I think leadership has returned to the White House.

My Time Off

Happy Holidays!

I apologize for my absence I have been on a self imposed blogging ban until after the New Year. I promise to make daily posts between Monday and Friday if for no other reason then to vent.

Thanks and see you in the New Year.

The First Amendment.....

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

There is no mistake that the founders added this amendment "first" to the Constitution. It is absolutely essential that Citizens have the ability to express how they feel about their Government. To that end the "First Amendment" prohibits the Government from stifling reasonable and open debate.

However the abuse of such freedom could lead to unintended consequences. Immediately after the election there have been a lot of instances where violence has been threatened against President-elect Obama and/or Democratic Members of Congress:

Such as:

The U.S. Secret Service is being asked to review a sign a Bonner County landowner put up which suggests a "free public hanging" of President-elect Barack Obama and several other political figures.

or:

Madison County, Idaho.......elementary school children allegedly started chanting "assassinate Obama" on the school bus.

or this gem:

Obama, he's a piece of shit and I told him to suck on one of my machine guns...

These people have wrapped themselves in the protection of the First Amendment mistakenly. Although Free Speech is protected, threatening or violent speech is not. I'll cite Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.
Schenck v. United States in 1919


Clearly the advocation of harm to someone or the inciting thereof is not protected speech. I am confident the authorities will give these incidents the attention they deserve.

Joe the what?

Most Americans agree when asked do you mind paying a little more in taxes to fund some social safety nets that catch people who have fallen on hard times. Some of these social programs are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and Welfare.

The generous spirit of America is boundless. What American in their right mind wouldn't want to help children, the elderly, or those of us down on their luck? However there are a few who neither have the compassion or generous spirit and would like to see these programs ended. But how do you ask someone to de-fund a program that has popular support and moral authority? You change the framing of the question!

Since the term was introduced into the lexicon by Ronald Regan "Welfare Queen" has had a largely pejorative connotation. Regan painted a picture of women taking illegal handouts from the government while they "made babies" and drove around in Cadillacs. The idea that people would sit at home and cheat hard working Americans understandably infuriated people. As his example he used a "woman" from the South side of Chicago, which is largely black portion of the city. This further deepened people's resentment since there was a widely held generalization that blacks are "lazy and shiftless" Regan never produced the name of this woman and it has been widely regarded that she was a fictional character. Not unlike "Joe the Plumber"

As most of you know by now Joe is not a licensed plumber, is not buying his bosse's business, is not named Joe. However none of this has stopped him from debating tax policy or endorsing candidates. Joe is a cartoon, and resembles the working class as much as Gayle Quinnell represents "all" McCain supporters.

However the truth about Joe is....his real name is Sam.....he's booked a publicist...is trying to get a record deal, and he was once a "Welfare Queen" himself! Oh my God....a Republican Hypocrite?

So it turns out that when Plumber Joe was a child, he was on welfare, not once, but twice, and he credits it with helping his family ultimately lead a middle-class life style. He defends having received welfare by saying that he's subsequently paid into the system.

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Also "Joe" is living off the sweat of others because he hasn't paid his fair share of taxes.

Fortunately in this election "Straw Men" like "Joe the Plumber" and "The Welfare Queen" were largely ignored!

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold...

These lines from the Yeats poem are descriptive of our recent political environment. After the historic election of Barak Obama the fight for the center has begun. The "Right" has decided that we are still a right-of-center country and he better keep that in mind while making policy.

Barak Obama was elected with a significant majority in the Electoral College and by the widest margin in the popular vote relative to the elections of 2000 and 2004. Yet we are a right-of-center country.

I think our Elected Representatives are right-of-center. As demonstrated by the graph below Conservative Representatives vote further to the right than their constituents views. On the Liberal side of the curve the the divide is not that great.




In fact another interesting fact that can be gleaned from this graph is it seems that there are more people who are center and center-left than center-right. So why are our conservative friends claiming we are a right-of-center country?

Well to intimidate and limit what they see as Obama's "Leftist Agenda". However with the facts clearly demonstrated by the graph and the Election results Obama's "Leftist Agenda" is far more Main Stream than they are.

I'll borrow another line from Yeats to close:

The falcon cannot hear the falconer......

Nieman Marxist!

I am not much for gossip but the more I hear about this woman the more I think she's like George Bush.

NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported.....According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement......An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

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Another thing about her that reminds me of "Dubya" is her incoherent ramblings....

I don't think anybody should give Sarah Palin that much credit, that I would trump an economic time in this nation that occurred about two months ago, that my presence on the ticket would trump the economic crisis that America found itself in a couple of months ago and attribute John McCain's loss to me,"

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That's right! She's referring to herself in the third person and not making sense in the same sentence.....now that's talent!

Some people are floating the idea that she is the face of the "New Republican Party". If the Republican Party makes this mistake AGAIN they deserve to go the way of the Dodo.

I have a dream......

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Martin Luther King Jr.

I have not been blogging long but I have been committed to this cause as ardently as anyone.....I have renewed faith and hope in my country. People have looked beyond the petty hatreds of the past and put the best interest of the country first.

As the election results continue to come in it is becoming apparent that there is a landslide in the making. Many people will begin to dissect this loss. However this tide has been rising for sometime. It is nothing short of a repudiation of the failed policies of the last eight years.

But more importantly people have not seen a man of mixed race running for President they only saw a man.

We have once again fulfilled the promise of this country.......

God Bless us all!