LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

Charles Grassley suggested that AIG execs commit suicide, and then Rep. Barney Frank wanted to publicize their names and addresses. It's time for a revolution in this nation, and I'm not scared to say it! Hating people isn't the same as opposing their ideas, or philosophy. I posted this radical image to show the base hatred in our politics today. Why did I want to put Barney and Chris' heads on spikes? They're not Osama and Sadam (who they replaced, from my original drawing ). I'm mad as hell at these guys, and I have no other way to communicate it. I wonder if this is what drove the Bush and Clinton-haters, and how common it must be among us to hate this way. Luckily, I'm just examining it, with an eye towards avoiding the "hate" trap. It is almost funny, if it weren't such a serious subject.

President Obama lied to the American people when he said "95% of working Americans are going to get a tax cut." What he's done is lower the amount that the government witholds from working people's paychecks. In my case, this has resulted in $10.00 more per week in my take-home pay. What he hasn't done is cut the actual tax rate, which means that my "rebate" will be that much less, when I file my 2009 taxes. Now, I should be glad about this, because I always thought that it wasn't fair that I got no interest on the excess taxes that were witheld from my paychecks. However, I got used to getting my little $600.00 check (or direct deposit, for the last few years) every February or March. While I agree that it's a good idea in principle, it is not, and never will be a tax cut. For the President to call it that is the most insulting type of fabrication. He assumes that by the time people realize that they didn't really get a tax cut next year, th...

One thing about the AIG bonuses. They're only .01% of the money that AIG got from the government. I would take the feigned outrage about the bonuses in congress more seriously if they all hadn't used a similar excuse to support the "earmarks" in the budget they passed two weeks ago. Speaker Pelosi was caught on tape calling illegal immigrants "patriotic," and stating that raids to enforce immigration law were "un-American." Maybe she's really the Speaker of the Mexican legislature? The "deregulation" canard must end. US businesses are heavily regulated, at the federal and state level. Don't believe it? Try starting a business without filing any papers with the government. You can't.

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is a shining example of the dirty relationship between the regulators and the regulated. When the president came out and defended him publicly, I heard the bell tolling in the distance. He could be the first Obama appointee to be hypovehiculated (thrown under the bus) after Senate confirmation. As the previous "bailouts" and other deals are examined, it seems that Sec. Geithner was deeply involved, as head of the NY Federal Reserve during the Bush administration. An excerpt from Newt Gingrich's latest dispatch explains it best: ( link ) As Americans' level of outraged has risen, so has the level of finger pointing by Geithner and others for the mess we're in. But Treasury Secretary Geithner is disingenuous at best and untruthful at worst when he says that he "inherited the worst fiscal situation in American history." The truth is that Secretary Geithner didn't inherit the policy of throwing billions of taxpayer dollar...

It's official: Attorney General Eric Holder has "ruled out the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique for terrorism suspects yesterday, calling it a form of torture that the Obama administration could never condone," according to this Reuters story in the NY Post ( link ). He is quoted: "Waterboarding is torture. My Justice Department will not justify it, will not rationalize it and will not condone it." That sounds fine and upstanding, but why doesn't he take exception to waterboarding being practiced on our own troops, for training purposes? As I watched a Fox News report on this story, they had video of one of their reporters being waterboarded. Why is that not a crime, but waterboarding terrorists is? I get it; "voluntary" submission to "torture" is legal, and doing it to someone against their will is a crime. Still, isn't that "justifying" torture, something the AG said his Justice Department would never do?...