Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Send Jim Packing

BY RICHARD G. POULTON

In reference to the Tulsa World’s endorsement of Jim Inhofe for re-election to the U.S. Senate, I am incensed! The justifications you cited speak only to unbending partisanship and parochialism.

As to his partisanship, it is fair to ask what percentage of the time did he vote with the Bush agenda over the past seven years. Your endorsement noted a lone instance when he broke with the president. In general, this crucial statistic should be disclosed to provide an objective means for measuring Inhofe’s true effectiveness in office.

Specifically, what voting or diversionary responsibility does he bear for legislation, or lack thereof, in areas such as deregulation of finance, insurance and bank institutions; preferential treatment for special interests; and critical environmental matters?

Your editorial staff praises the senator’s efforts on behalf of people living in the Tar Creek area. After long years of his denial and diminishment of their plight living on a toxic waste dump, the residents of Picher finally had the good fortune of being hit by a tornado. Only then did the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee take overdue action to help a population that was primarily known in terms of its cancer rate.

Finally, Inhofe has become the poster-boy for ignorance on the subject of global warming. Whether it be serious documentaries or national news reporting on this matter, he is frequently referenced as the champion for its non-existence. What kind of a tornado would it take to get his attention here?

Oklahomans should be embarrassed by this kind of representation. It’s not tough willed; it’s either stubbornly dumb or corrupt, or both.

Our country is in serious trouble today, with plenty of suffering for all. Those who were on the watch as our problems festered and exploded should be held accountable.

In recognition of this fine state of affairs, I endorse Jim Inhofe for retirement on Nov. 4th. He’s earned it!

The author lives in Tulsa

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Democratic Values

BY BRUCE TREADAWAY

My life has been spent in Oklahoma. I was born at the Fort Sill Army Hospital after my dad returned from the Big War, World War II. He was a life-long Democrat. He never voted Republican. He was a child during the Depression, and he lived first-hand the Dust Bowl, the Depression, and everything that went with those two catastrophic events.

After World War II, he never favored another war. He knew the horrors of war personally. He was one of the first to enter the Nazi prison camps, and the horror he witnessed was something that he took to his grave.

He's gone now, but he left values with me.

He taught me that taxes are a part of being a citizen. He didn't much care for them, but he paid his share. My grandfather paid his share, and my great-grandfather before him paid his share.

He taught me that ignorance causes people to vote Republican. He never understood how small farmers and teachers could vote Republican. It's a phenomena that Americans vote for politicians who are against what they do for a living.

He taught me to care about other people, and he taught me that life is a trip and I should enjoy the ride. He certainly did. My dad was special to me, as was my great-grandfather.

When politicians promote tax cuts, they insult the memory of my forefathers. The roads that we have, the schools that we enjoy, everything that this country has, was bought and paid for by previous generations. It denigrates their memories to cut taxes the way this state and nation have done. Let's not hear about tax cuts.

I'm a Democrat, and I'm sick and tired of being called a liberal pansy. If someone wants to call me that to my face, then come on, but don't lump all Democrats in one group.

My dad spent his youth fighting for this country, as did his brothers. Many of those who refer to Democrats as liberal pansies haven't worn the uniform.

Don't insult my dad's memory and all the other soldiers that this great nation has been home to by the weak practice of calling names.

It's time for us to take back this country from the perverted group in charge. What has always been good about America is that this country cares about other countries and its citizens.

It's time to return to the values that we all cherish. Vote Democrat!

The author lives in Minco, OK

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

'Politics Makes Me Sick'

BY EDWIN E. VINEYARD

Politics make me sick! I am tired of politics! I’ll be glad when this election is over! How often do we hear these expressions lately?

Well, politics do make us sick! In particular, it is the stench that emanates from John McCain’s and Sarah Palin’s dirty, stinking negative campaign that makes us sick. While we can recall some really bad TV commercials in previous elections, we cannot remember as deceitfully negative and dirty stump speeches coming from the candidates own mouths on the campaign trail.

These Republican candidates will apparently do anything and say anything to get elected. Worse, they bundle themselves in the flag and patriotism while practicing their abominations.

What is this about being “pro-America” and “anti-America?” What is this about Obama’s being a socialist because his tax plan rolls back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy to 2000 rates? What’s this about “palling around with terrorists?” And, Joe the plumber – what a red herring, and a fake one at that!

One seems to recall a quotation: “The truth is not in them.”

We have seen the Republicans during the past eight years try to label dissent as treason. “If you are not for us, you are against us,” they have been saying. Then they equate that with being anti-American.

One Republican congresswoman is declaring that the Democrats in Congress are anti-American. She also says that Obama is anti-American. Palin and McCain declare certain sections of the country to be “pro-American” and others as “anti-American.”

What kind of rhetoric is that?

Republican campaign tactics have repeatedly assured that whoever wins a presidential election will have a deeply divided, polarized, antagonistic nation to try to govern. Our country’s almost evenly divided citizens line up hostile to one another.

This has happened before. It happened in the past two elections. George W. Bush’s people fought dirty. When he could not defeat Al Gore, it went to the Supreme Court, where the case was decided on a party line vote and not on its merits. Yes, that left many of us hostile.

Bush’s second election was no better. The domination of the airways with anonymously financed advertising from the “Swift-boat” liars attacking distinguished war records turned the tide for Bush. The name has become synonymous with low-down, lying, filthy politics.

But it goes back farther to the Clinton Administration. Republicans spent eight years in legal and media harassment of the Clintons. This included bribing witnesses to give false stories to reporters and writers, investigating business dealings that were later cleared, and then trying to prosecute and impeach the president for lousy private, personal conduct.

Clinton never had a closely knit country to govern. Bush squandered a degree of mutual support after 9/ll by conspiring to falsify facts and giving spurious reasons to go into an unnecessary war against a country that had no part in the attack. His whole time has been a disaster.

Republicans have pushed a divisive agenda during these last eight years. Attempts to privatize Social Security come to mind. Tax cuts for the wealthy, particularly on income derived from wealth [dividends, capital gains, and inheritances], have proven divisive – especially as budget deficits increase and the middle class suffers lost jobs and losses in buying power.

McCain has been as much a loose chicken during this last economic calamity as was Bush during the hours after the strike on the World Trade Center in New York – from continuing to read “My Pet Goat” to flying hither and yon around the country for hours.

Who can truthfully say McCain is the one to lead the country out of this or any other crisis?

McCain’s campaign has had no focus, except to denigrate Obama. He has no finite proposals on which he can stand bravely and tell middle class people the real truth.

McCain’s choice of a vice president reveals his bad judgment. His desperate attempts to discredit Obama through any and all means, ethical or not, reveal his own character flaws.

The author, AKA The Militant Moderate, lives in Enid, Oklahoma and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The Importance Of David Letterman

BY DANNY M. ADKISON

With the last debate over and two weeks to go before the presidential election, there are two important questions to consider.

First, who asked the candidates the toughest question? Second, who made this statement during a debate? “I need to say little to convince [voters] of the necessity which presses us into a pursuit of this measure. They know that our national debt is considerable; this together with domestic debt, is of great magnitude, and it will be attended with the most dreadful consequences to let these run into confusion and ruin, for want of proper regulations to keep them in order.”

Let’s take the second question first. This is what students call a trick question. That’s because it did occur during the debate, but it was the debate over the creation of the Department of the Treasury in the first Congress in May of 1787.

It’s not just a “gotcha” question. It points out that the issues don’t seemingly change much over the decades [or even centuries].

Politicians debate taxes and spending priorities. Yet, we know that for the voters that stay undecided and are not seriously attached to any particular candidate, issues are not that important.

In spite of what your eighth or ninth grade civics teacher may have told you, most of these voters – and they will probably decide the election – are not basing their votes on the two major political parties’ platforms or the candidates’ plans for what they will do once in office. On the contrary, most vote based on how they feel about the past four years.

In these circumstances, political parties [again, contrary to your civics teachers lessons] play an important role. They provide the retrospective voter with a rational choice. If they like the way things are going, they vote for the incumbent; if not, they vote for the challenger.

The problem is that the 22nd Amendment limited the voters’ choices. Presidents Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, and Bush could not run for a third term.

This is why Barack Obama has sought to tie his opponent to the policies of President Bush. After all, John McCain is the Republican Party nominee. On the other hand, you don’t hear McCain reminding voters much about his affiliation with the Republican Party.

The proverbial Martian would think that the strong third party in America is the Maverick Party.

Which brings us to the first question.

McCain may or may not be similar to President Bush. He may or may not continue the economic and foreign policies of his predecessor. That doesn’t really matter. What matters to the voters is whether McCain will perform more like Bush or bring genuine change.

All three debates taken together should be enough to supply voters with the answer to this question. But the individual who came the closest to exposing the answer was not a journalist. It was David Letterman.

Letterman pressed McCain like no journalist has. He pressed him on three major points, all of which went to the issue of character and image.

The first was Sarah Palin. It was clear that Letterman, like most Americans, does not believe she is presidential material. He obviously couldn’t get McCain to admit this, but he made his point nevertheless.

Second, Letterman pointed out that it was ridiculous for McCain’s running mate to say Obama had palled around with terrorists. McCain finally admitted that these are just things you say during a campaign.

Then, finally, Letterman brought up Joe the Plumber.

Letterman knew from news reports that Joe was not a licensed plumber and that literally everything [that is not an exaggeration], everything McCain had said about Joe and his financial situation [both real and under an Obama administration] was wrong.

Just as the McCain camp did not know exactly what they were getting with Palin, they were surprised to discover that Joe the Plumber was what Thomas Frank, author of the book What’s The Matter With Kansas? calls a winger.

Joe, it turns out, made just over $40,000 last year, owes back taxes, and isn’t even a licensed plumber. He can’t pay his taxes but he wants to buy a business worth over a quarter of a million dollars?

Here is the overall perception with which the voters are left when viewing the McCain campaign as we head for the home stretch: Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and a rather shrill McCain.

Is McCain, to place it in the context of one of the more memorable moments of the last debate – selection of Supreme Court justices – the individual voters want to entrust the selection of justices [who serve until they die, resign, or are impeached and removed from office]?

As Frank puts it in his new book The Wrecking Crew, “Never again will conservatives shoulder the blame for catastrophes like the Great Depression or even the many blunders of the Bush years; no matter how much of it they control, the government is never theirs, and they cannot be held responsible for its actions.”

The author teaches constitutional law at Oklahoma State University and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer.

Thursday, October 16, 2008

War Vs. Children

POSTED BY FROSTY TROY

According to a book recently released by First Focus, during the past five years children have lost significant ground in the federal budget.

While overall spending on children's issues increased by about 1.4%, in real terms, total federal non-defense spending grew at nearly 10 times that rate.

As a result, the children's share of the federal non-defense budget declined from 11% in 2004 to 10% in 2008. This drop continues a trend in which the budget share allocated to children has declined 23% since 1960.

In fact, spending for children's education, welfare and youth training has been particularly hard hit during the last half decade, with total spending declining by 9.9%, 11.5% and 14.9% in each area, respectively.

Unfortunately, President Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal continues this trend.

For example, spending on children's health programs would increase by 2.2%, but discretionary spending in this area would drop by 12% from 2008 levels.

It is sad to note that of every dollar the American taxpayer pays, 42 cents goes to the military, with only 4.4 cents going toward education, training, and social services costs.

George W. Bush has not only been a fiscal disaster for America, he also will be remembered for his wanton attacks on social programs.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Gutless Wonder

POSTED BY ARNOLD HAMILTON

As a kid growing up in Oklahoma, we had a derisive term for those who lacked the courage to trash you to your face: Gutless wonder.

The moniker came to mind watching the second round of this year's presidential debates.

John McCain touts himself as the Straight-Talk Express, unabashadely speaking unpopular truths to power. But he weaseled out when given a nationally-televised platform to say to Barack Obama's face what Sarah Palin and other McCain surrogates have been spewing behind Obama's back.

The once-principled McCain -- who was himself victim of scurrilous George W. Bush rumor-mongering in the 2000 GOP primary -- is now employing those Rovian, Atwateresque attacks against Obama, a desperate act aimed at salvaging a sinking campaign.

Yet McCain doesn't have the courage to drop the gloves and deliver the punches himself, hiding instead behind a self-styled Hockey Mom who hopes to trigger a bench-clearing brawl that diverts attention from the serious issues America must confront.

McCain faces a dispiriting truth: He alone is responsible for sullying his reputation as an American Hero, a straight-talker and an anti-politician.

Perhaps such heat-of-the-moment gutter tactics will be forgiven eventually. But even if he manages to win the election, he's lost the most important battle. He's lost his soul.