Notes to my son - Introduction

I had a conversation with my older son the other evening during which I realized I had never fully explained to him what I believe and why. As I argued with him, it became clear that I had not provided him with a foundation for my point of view. These notes will be my attempt to correct that.

The ideas or concepts in these notes are not the stuff of genius except what is their genius, that they are readily gleaned from ordinary observation ... if that observation is devoid of dogma attempting to shape or explain the observation.

First, awareness comes out of existence. The body comes first and then the mind ... a mind that is undeniably human ... even to the point of creating our gods ... as explained and documented by Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth, among other works.

In my case, I realized that the dogma taught me as a child was wrong as I learned that sexuality was not a cesspool of sin but a fountain of pleasure and joy ... when experienced without coercion.

So what does this mean, awareness comes out of existence? It means we can test our awareness—what we think—by concrete means, by evidence, by the results of what we do ... remembering—as in my case— that dogma when believed will shape the outcomes of our efforts—mental and physical—by its application to those efforts.

But then the question quickly comes: What evidence can we trust to be free of dogma? Is personal faith sufficient especially when corroborated by others of like faith?

Hbr 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. - King James Bible

That opens the dialogue at its core. What is believable to me? And why to I believe it? Is there anything that I believe that isn't influenced by the "authorities"&mdashthe wise ones&mdashof my world?

And it opens the discussion of chance and necessity, the randomness of the cosmos coupled to the infinite recurrence of events or actions that will always occur with a given set of conditions, conditions—interestingly enough—that may in themselves occur randomly.

Next: Chance & Necessity

Is Obama for real?

Obama's not kidding, or is he? I mean ... he's still complaining that we progressives don't understand all the good he has done ... like championing universal health care that resulted in a gigantic windfall for insurance companies, companies whose high administrative costs will make affordable health care unattainable.

I would prefer single payer (like Medicare for all), but I can settle for the public option (Medicare for those who choose it). That is, I can settle for a Medicare-style health care plan IF it is not emasculated through unreasonable reductions in reimbursements to the health care providers who maintain life support for senior citizens like myself with chronic heart and kidney diseases.

Obama doesn't get it. Without at least a public option, our health care system is doomed because of that heavy layer of cream—those administrative costs—skimmed off the top by the insurance companies. AND because he failed to deliver a workable health care plan from the left, the right will be able to say that we on the left can't get it done. Obama burst the political energy from the left with a flawed plan.

Now Obama is up to it again. Championing a tax plan that may look good on the surface to some—and especially the extension of unemployment benefits to those facing the end of their unemployment payments ... not the 99ers, though—those who have already exhausted their extensions. But the loss of revenue because of the extension of tax cuts to rich, and, yes, the reduction in payroll taxes adding to the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare both by adding to the deficit ... is a package that has more minuses than pluses. It's the pleasure of having one's porridge upfront and losing our birthright in the long run.

If we and our leaders cannot stiffen our backbones now to actually rebuild our nation with renewable energy resources, high-speed communications, fixing of the "concrete" infrastructure in our cities and towns, and laying high-speed rail between these same cities and towns ... putting people to work rebuilding our nation when it is the only thing that will rebuild the middle class and provide jobs for all who want them ... well, if we can't do that now under a progressive program, we will be doing it next under a fascist program ... in which we will lose many, if not most, of the freedoms we hold so dear.

Because the right is going to throw our lost chance to make it happen in the left's face ... and when all the money Obama and Bernake have been printing comes back to haunt us with inflation (think Germany after WWI and Argentina more recently) ... because things of real value will be crumbling and falling further and further out of date ... including the skills of our workforce ... and things here will become worth less and less ... the right will tell the people that they, the right, can and will create the new millennium, if given the opportunity. And look, the left failed. And where has the world heard that before?

The sad truth is that Obama claimed and won the mantel of the left, and he did fail. But it is Obama's policies that are failing, not the left's. The left wanted a public option in our health care. The left wanted the stimulus to go to the rebuilding of our nation. Obama did things that sounded like they should placate the left, but did not go for the substance of what we, the left, proposed ... loudly and clearly.

Let's face it, folks. We are still rich enough as a nation to pay for a safety net out of the wealth we create ... and if we renew our nation by rebuilding it, we will be able to do continue the safety net as well as put the people back to work.

And you know what? I believe that people working under a transparent and honest progressive government is what the right fears most. It is only when the left is corrupted and loses its way that the right has a chance.

Obama gives up his hole card ... again

Obama shows a pattern, doesn't he? The failure to fight for the public option in health care ... especially onerous when we consider that he had the single payer option to use as leverage ... and he gave it all up for a health care program that is the insurance companies dream.

And now it's the failure to fight for an end to the Bush tax cuts for the rich when he has the leverage of not ending the tax cuts for the middle class.

Did someone say Obama played poker? Couldn't have, at least not very well. He keeps giving up his hole card before the betting even starts.

On the other hand, thank you, Madam Speaker! Thank you for showing some backbone in the face of President Obama's tossing in the towel.

Hallelujah! Maybe we won't be saddled with the tax cuts for the rich after all ... especially onerous after being saddled with bailing their butts out.

"We" as in "we the workers" in this country.

Diverted from progressive results to the progressive rhetoric of a black man

Something is very wrong in the leadership of the Obama Administration ... I think it goes beyond incompetence to fraud.

There was a discussion on MSNBC's program, The Last Word, last week about Obama's competence, and who it's core constituency is: those who pay to play. Check it out:

Obama's Business http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/40363218#40363218

At this juncture it has been clearly demonstrated that Obama's political purpose for the money interests behind him is to sap the political strength of progressive issues by diverting our focus and energy from progressive results to the progressive rhetoric of a black man.

It's having a job, stupid.

Unemployment is not having a job. Going 99 weeks on unemployment and still not getting a job is definitely not the same as having a job. And offering more unemployment is not the answer to not having a job.

What so hard to figure out? Individual dignity in our cultural ethics is tied to earning what we and our families need.

The common denominator for everyone living in a family that does not own enough assets whose earnings provide the economic wherewithal for a satisfying life, needs a job to earn that economic wherewithal, and wants a job that offers the opportunity to earn it.

For those who need a job to earn a living for their family, no matter our religious beliefs, our sexual orientation, or our political persuasion, we can unite on the issue of needing work for everyone who can work and who needs it.

And when are as wealthy a nation as we are, wealth that has been produced by the labor of our minds and bodies, there is no reason why everyone who needs a job shouldn't have one. We have both the resources and the need to provide these jobs.

What we don't have is a political party that articulates our common denominator as wage earners needing a job as a fundamental requirement outside any other divisive issue.

When we let the political parties divide us, the wage earners, over other issues, we let the those who own the assets of production drive the cost of labor down to below that of providing a living wage—which they now can do by producing goods AND services offshore—and further divide us over the fear of unemployment and poverty.

Note: First posted on August 20, 2010 at
http://hglindquist.blogspot.com/2010/08/its-having-job-stupid.html

What can I say? Obama is way out of his depth ...

Great leaders inspire the citizens to follow them, first with their words then with their actions. It seems Obama never got the hang of that second part.

And now Obama doesn't even speak to our concerns ... no, "concerns" is too weak of a word. He doesn't address our anxiety or our fear or our pain. You can't tell millions who are out of work and unable to support their families that Obama's economic plan is working ... not when real long-term unemployment is the highest its been since the depression and not moving ... and he and his administration moved heaven and earth to save the wealthy criminals who got us into this mess. (Is there any doubt after learning how the subprime mortgages were handled that these brilliant thieves committed fraud?)

And what about the 23% reduction in Medicare reimbursement that will decimate healthcare for many Seniors, and is now—literally—being kicked down the road month to month? (See http://www.emaxhealth.com/1506/senate-agrees-delay-medicare-reimbursement-cuts )

And when Obama doesn't address these issues except obliquely in the general sense of we should trust him to know best ... and look how much he has already done ... while we are experiencing personal catastrophe ... well?

And their is little that is more catastrophic to the average family bread-winner than long term unemployment with no real hope of getting another job that pays the bills ... or loss of specialized medical care to a Senior Citizen like myself suffering from end-stage renal disease aka kidney failure, afib (heart disease), and prostate cancer. That's pretty darn "local" as in Tip O'Neill's "All politics is local." (See http://maplewood.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/09/the-old-man-medicare-matters/ )

Obama is way out of his depth and doesn't get it ... in part because he has isolated himself from the people. He seems to think we should accept his view of the way we are when he isn't looking at it from our position. And he has not convinced us that his view is our reality, because if it were, he would be doing more to change that reality, wouldn't he? ... or is he so impervious to our pain and fear that he accepts it as necessary and unavoidable?

Obama shows no sign of feeling the pain of the unemployed family bread-winner or the fear of the Senior Citizen tethered to specialized medical care that is keeping us alive.

And he shows no sign of understanding the political fallout of blaming the troops for not understanding or supporting the battle plan ... or how that reflects on his leadership. When leaders start blaming the citizens for having lost confidence in their leadership, it is a sure sign that we need new leaders.

Whinning? Whose whinning?!

Dear Mr. President and Mr. Vice President,

You just don't get it, do you? (It's hard to think of you as being that dumb!) Many of us have come to the conclusion that we would rather either sit home or vote for someone like a Christine O'Donnell or a Sharron Angle than vote for a weasel Democrat politician. Now, doesn't that say something about what we think of you?!

We know our nation is strong enough to handle the change and get back on course ... if we start rotating the helmsmen (helmspersons) until we get someone who knows what they are doing and how to steer a course that brings working folks their fair share of the wealth they help create ... instead of treated like slaves or peons in a banana republic.

Gimme a break! Whinning?! We're not whinning. We want real change in the direction of our nation ... cause right now we are scraping the side of the iceberg ... if you get my drift.

Sincerely,
NC Swede

What's not to get, Mr. President?

If President Obama believes that government doesn't produce jobs, the private sector does, then he is as ignorant (and dumb) as those who mouth that statement.

Where should I start with the endless list of projects undertaken by government that created jobs and produced the longterm assets—like highways and dams—that have paid off many times over in greatly enhanced productive economic power for our nation? How about with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA)?

Even the smallest business borrows to buy some asset that brings in added customers that generate the revenue that pays back the loan and then some. For example, the government borrowing to create modern and more efficient energy systems isn't paid back out of our children's and grandchildren's pockets, it's paid back by the vastly increased (astronomically in the cases of the TVA and BPA) wealth of the productive economy ... an economy that can also afford a safety net for its participants ... a safety net that helps stabilize that economy, ironing out the more radical swings in its production of wealth.

Another no-brainer is that unemployment does NOT produce longterm wealth-generating assets. And—guess what?—unemployed folks cannot buy homes!

If you are going to revive "consumerism", we need homes for folks to furnish and remodel. When we are comfortable again with putting our savings into home-asset and related ownership, consumerism will revive. Cars, clothes, and travel to not store wealth for future need. Homes did and will again ... in fact, our national economic policy should be directed at maintaining the real value of our homes. (That would include dampening the speculative value of housing. Dah!)

There is nothing mysterious about this ... unless you are working with economic models for preserving the value of existing assets and the wealthy folks invested in them.

What's not to get, Mr. President?!

It's not having a job, stupid. THAT is the problem.

Unemployment is not having a job. Going 99 weeks on unemployment and still not getting a job is definitely not the same as having a job. And offering more unemployment is not the answer to not having a job.

What is so hard to figure out? Individual dignity in our cultural ethics is tied to earning what we and our families need, our livelihood.

The common denominator for everyone living in a family that does not own enough assets whose earnings provide the economic wherewithal for a satisfying life, needs a job to earn that economic wherewithal, and wants a job that offers the opportunity to earn it.

For those who need a job to earn a living for their family, no matter our religious beliefs, our sexual orientation, or our political persuasion, we can unite on the issue of needing work for everyone who can work and who needs it.

And when we are as wealthy a nation as we are, wealth that has been produced by the labor of our minds and bodies, there is no reason why everyone who needs a job shouldn't have one. We have both the resources and the need to provide these jobs.

What we don't have is a political party that articulates as a fundamental requirement—outside any other divisive issue—our common denominator as wage earners needing real jobs.

When we let the political parties divide us—the wage earners—over other issues, we let the those who own the assets of production drive the cost of labor down to below that of providing a living wage—which they now can do by producing goods AND services offshore—and further divide us over the fear of unemployment and poverty.

See We are becoming a fascist state below.

Also, Needed: a new economic paradigm
By Joseph Stiglitz
Published: August 19 2010 22:18 | Last updated: August 19 2010 22:18
From ft.com (Financial Times) via huffingtonpost.com

Obama failed to be the leader we needed.

Read Paul Krugman's column, Paralysis at the Fed, published in The New York Times on August 12, 2010

And read Bob Herbert's column, Fire and Imagination, published in The New York Times on August 13, 2010

I suspect these are a couple of the "professional" liberals that Joe Gibbs was talking about.

As Congressman Alan Grayson said (to paraphrase), "Gibbs is a Bozo, a clown", while Krugman and Herbert have been right on the money since the beginning of this catastrophic collapse of our economy.

It's simple, we needed a job creation program that was "a call for shared sacrifice and a great national mission to rebuild the United States in a way that would create employment for millions and establish a gleaming new industrial platform for the great advances of the 21st century," to quote Bob Herbert.

Obama failed to deliver, and now it's too late. It will take another two years to get to the next "leadership" election, and then at least another year to enact the substantial change we need—if it happens at all—during which time we will have condemned millions of families to the poverty and despair of joblessness ... and the accompanying setback in the skills development of our labor force that work provides ... on our way to becoming more like Mexico than Canada.

Virginia's lawsuit on health care can proceed ...

Did anybody really read the federal health care "reform" legislation before it was passed? Except the small clique who wrote it, that is.

I don't think so.

Politics has become all about winning, forget substance, as in "win" a victory on something, anything that can be labeled "health care reform" ... and just keep mangling it until it can pass (aka win).

Is it a Potemkin village? (Which might not have existed either!)

The huge windfall for insurance companies and the slashing of benefits to senior citizens plus the increase in Medicaid costs at the State level ... coming down the pike ... after the 2012 election ... so it isn't noticed for now ... all so Obama could take credit for passing health care "reform"?

Are they kidding us?

There may be a huge windfall for we the people in the Virginia lawsuit whether it succeeds or not. We may get the in-depth review of the federal health care reform legislation that we should have had in the first place.

What the Obama clique lost sight of in the rush to have the federal health care reform legislation passed in the first year of his presidency, was that peaking too soon often leads to failure to reach the real goal. I believe the passage of his package—with the objective of having something, anything pass—dissipated the political force still growing behind health care reform ... and with the growing realization of how bad the reform that passed really is ... we may not be able to overcome the backlash against a federal solution for a long time.

Plus if deflation takes hold and structural unemployment and under-employment become the accepted norm, health care reform may recede into the fog of distorted history. (See "Defining Prosperity Down", by Paul Krugman in The New York Times, August 1, 2010)

Obama, Bernake, Geithner & Summers are foxes in our hen house

The drama surrounding the opposition of the Geithner set to the possible nomination of Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reeks of a foxes in the hen house plot. Warren would expose the bankster duplicity of the Obama team aka the gang who can't tell it straight. I would say this is unbelievable but after a year and a half of the Obama administration it is all too believable.

We are becoming a fascist state.

Q: When does greed blind us to fairness?
A: Whenever it rears its ugly head.

Greed is defined by selfishness, an opposing motivation to fairness.

We must come back to understanding and applying basic, fundamental ethical values in our nation, or we face the prospect of selling our birthright of freedom-born prosperity for some new (or old) form of slavery.

Our freedom-born prosperity is based on fair compensation for our individual mental and physical efforts, our labor. Slavery is based on the minimizing of compensation for labor by the power of accumulated wealth.

Yes, it is that clear. And it is also clear which direction we are headed as a nation.

We are headed toward the ability of corporations to control the compensation for labor "based on the extreme of greed—clearly evil under the ethical values of our Judaic-Christian culture—of the for-profit business model of minimizing costs and maximizing profits." When this course is supported by government, it is fascism. Ipso facto we are becoming a fascist state.

Let me be clear in my position, "fair compensation for our individual mental and physical efforts, our labor," is not "equal" compensation. The communist slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need (or needs)" repeatedly proves to be as unworkable in the extreme, as greed.

On the other hand, our definition of a civilized society is that a society's abundance in prosperity is distributed in part to those unable to satisfy certain basic needs by their own efforts. I believe this is based on our collective awareness that the "ground" out of which a prosperous nation grows, is the common commitment to and the support of a set of political and economic values ... and that a basic role of our government as a free people is to define that common set of values and apply them to our laws and policies.

Basic ethical values

What is it about paying for what you break, or any damage you do, that the rich and powerful don't understand?

Even it if it were to "pay to the extent possible," we would be better off than what seems to be the current standard of "pay as little as possible" ... the extreme of greed—clearly evil under the ethical values of our Judaic-Christian culture—of the for-profit business model of minimizing costs and maximizing profits ... and the basis of all fraud.

I am not against private enterprise. Rather, I believe private enterprise and its fair rewards are the most productive economic engine for humanity yet developed. I simply hold that the business transaction should be based on reciprocity with a fair exchange of value, and not on fleecing the other party.

Ethical rules of fairness and justice are relatively simple. Robert Fulghum's book title. "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" says it in a nutshell.

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.

1 Timothy 6:10
KJV Bible

Frank Rich said what I said and more

Frank Rich, OpEd columnist for The New York Times, wrote in today's paper:

... only if Obama has learned the lessons of the attenuated McChrystal debacle. Lesson No. 1 should be to revisit some of his initial hiring decisions. The general’s significant role in the Pentagon’s politically motivated cover-up of Pat Tillman’s friendly-fire death in 2004 should have been disqualifying from the start. The official investigation into that scandal — finding that McChrystal peddled “inaccurate and misleading assertions” — was unambiguous and damning.

Once made the top commander in Afghanistan, the general was kept on long past his expiration date. He should have been cashiered after he took his first public shot at Joe Biden during a London speaking appearance last October. That’s when McChrystal said he would not support the vice president’s more limited war strategy, should the president choose it over his own. According to Jonathan Alter in his book “The Promise,” McChrystal’s London remarks also disclosed information from a C.I.A. report that the general “had no authority to declassify.” These weren’t his only offenses. McChrystal had gone on a showboating personal publicity tour that culminated with “60 Minutes” — even as his own histrionic Afghanistan recommendation somehow leaked to Bob Woodward, disrupting Obama’s war deliberations. The president was livid, Alter writes, but McChrystal was spared because of a White House consensus that he was naïve, not “out of control.”

We now know, thanks to Hastings, that the general was out of control and the White House was naïve. The price has been huge.

The 36 Hours That Shook Washington
By Frank Rich
The New York Times
Published June 27, 2010

Rich echoed what I wrote in Trouble is, McCrystal never should have happened


You know ... it's another repeat of the age old story of Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage:

And Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red [pottage]; for I [am] faint: therefore was his name called Edom.

And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright.

And Esau said, Behold, I [am] at the point to die: and what profit shall this birthright do to me?

And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.

Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentiles; and he did eat and drink, and rose up, and went his way: thus Esau despised [his] birthright.

Genesis 25:30-34
The Bible
King James Version
http://www.blueletterbible.org

The old men with wealth and power are selling the long term value of our great nation for their own selfish short term greed. And their decisions follow a pattern of greed rather than ethical values ... even to the point of choosing generals who will bend ethical rules as long as it advances the old men's imperialist drive for control of the globe's resources at the lowest possible unit price. Trouble is, this general began to think he could get away with bending rules beyond the limits of the old men with wealth and power.

The only real enemy we have left in Afghanistan

The only real enemies the U.S. has left in Afghanistan are those of our own making.

That's the short, clear and simple fact.

Al Qaeda has moved to Pakistan.

The conflict on the Obama team is between those who get it and those who don't. Biden versus Petraeus.

Obama gets it. He just won't admit that he gets it.

Obama is sinking in the polls because ...

Obama is sinking in the polls because of things like:

- Unemployment hovers around 10% even after Obama has spent a lot of stimulus money. In other words, the deficit is skyrocketing and unemployment isn't budging ... and he has had long enough to make a difference ... the difference being folks are running out of their unemployment benefits.

- Home mortgages still plague millions of families. (See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/23/fannie-mae-strategic-default_n_623562.html for but one plague.)

- Senior citizens like myself don't like the health care reform at all. We see our Medicare programs being cut and the insurance companies getting a windfall in mandated coverage.

- Then there's the screwup on the containment and cleanup of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill ...

- And his figuring out that he never should have appointed McCrystal to lead the Afghanistan War in the first place, nor kept him on after the leak of "General Stanley A. McChrystal's confidential assessment of the situation in Afghanistan" (see http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/05/leaking-for-national-security ).

- There's more, like keeping the foxes—Bernake, Geithner, and Summers—in our financial hen house sorting our eggs ... and ... and ... and ...

Obama's missed the big opportunities to show leadership because—IMHO—he does not know the first thing about leadership at this level. And he is not showing any signs of learning anytime soon.

Trouble is, McCrystal never should have happened

You see, after General Stanley McCrystal was directly implicated in the cover-up of slain football player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire (see http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0610/Tillman_mother_sought_to_warn_Obama_of_McChrystal.html ) he never should have been given command of the Afghanistan War.

And then with the leak of "General Stanley A. McChrystal's confidential assessment of the situation in Afghanistan" (see http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/05/leaking-for-national-security ) McCrystal double-downed on his not being in sync with Obama. Wasn't that strike two at a leadership level which means strike one and you're out?

Actually allowing McCrystal to skate on the first two meant Obama was setting himself up for strike three. In other words, it is not about how Obama handled this instance of poor judgment. The fact that McCrystal was given the opportunity to screw up this badly after already screwing up badly actually—IMHO—fostered the lack of respect he showed for Obama and Obama's Afghanistan policy team.

It's like the kid who gets caught with his hand in the cookie jar. If you don't respond appropriately you can pretty much bet on the kid doing it again. It's called human nature ... that most of learn at an early age.

McCrystal must have got to the point where he thought the bar of what he could get away with was pretty low ... and up to now he was right. Trouble is, the Obama's "bar" is still too low. McCrystal just went lower.

And the fact that Obama didn't have the command instincts to see this coming ... well, I keep saying, Obama lacks command ability at this level.

Obama is an embarrassment

I don't believe it! Do I laugh or do I cry? Maybe it's laugh at Obama and cry for the "small" people of the Gulf States. (Can you believe BP Chairman of the Board Carl-Henric Svanberg calling folks that?! See http://www.jacksonsun.com/article/20100620/OPINION02/6200308)

The next day after the nothing speech from the Oval Office on the BP Deepwater Horizon well gushing oil into the Gulf of Mexico and onto the shores, marshes, and estuaries of the Gulf States ... Obama touts his jawboning a $20 million escrow account from BP to cover the costs of the oil spill. (See http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/06/obama-bp-compensation-fund-/1) Then we learn it is $5 million a year for 4 years. Quoting from the above link:

Obama said BP is committed to ensuring that economic claims will be processed and paid out in a timely manner. According to a White House fact sheet, BP will contribute $5 billion a year for four years into an escrow account. BP is providing assurance that their financial obligations will be met by setting aside $20 billion in U.S. assets.

My god! BP's gross profit from the latest reporting period prior to the spill was $212+ Billion. (See http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=BP+Key+Statistics) $5 Billion a year is walking around money for BP aka chump change. (Walking away money?) They must be laughing all the way to the next shareholders' meeting. We won't know what BP's $5 Billion a year means until we add up the annual damages.

What we do know is that BP has promised reform before and failed to deliver. Read BP Ignored the Omens of Disaster by JOE NOCERA in The New York Times on June 18, 2010.

That should have given Obama more than enough ammunition to wrest the command of the cleanup away from BP. But he obviously doesn't know how to command and Obama received the most from BP in the way of their campaign donations. (See "Obama biggest recipient of BP cash", http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64420A20100505 )

And the person Obama did put in charge of the Federal Government's efforts is proving to be a master of bureaucratic oversight but weak on actually getting the work done. You have to read BP Oil Spill: Against Gov. Jindal's Wishes, Crude-Sucking Barges Stopped by Coast Guard then watch and listen to the accompanying video at the link.

I keep saying it: Obama does not know how to command the large-scale effort like the containment and cleanup of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Thank god we had Eisenhower for the D-Day invasion. (See my two earlier posts: Why Obama is incompetent! and I am getting tired of Obama.

We do NOT have a Commander-in-Chief

Let's face it. We do not have a Commander-in-Chief.

Obama is actually worse than Carter. Carter was at least a Navy officer and a Governor of the State of Georgia. Obama was a community organizer, professor of constitutional law, and U.S. Senator from Illinois.

There is nothing in Obama's background that prepares him for command. He definitely does not fit the leadership mold of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy ... a string of Presidents that took our nation to greatness. Then poof! and we wind up with an Obama ... bought and paid for by large corporations ... banks and oil.

(See "Obama biggest recipient of BP cash", http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE64420A20100505 )

Quoting from "Efforts to Repel Gulf Oil Spill Are Described as Chaotic" by Campbell Robertson and published in The New York times on June 14, 2010:

Closer to shore, the efforts to keep the oil away from land have not fared much better, despite a response effort involving thousands of boats, tens of thousands of workers and millions of feet of containment boom.

From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively.

“The present system is not working,” Senator Bill Nelson of Florida said Thursday at a hearing in Washington devoted to assessing the spill and the response. Oil had just entered Florida waters, Senator Nelson said, adding that no one was notified at either the state or local level, a failure of communication that echoed Mr. Bonano’s story and countless others along the Gulf Coast.

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

As I wrote in an earlier post, "Obama is proving his incompetence as a President of the United States in one word, containment!" (See "Why Obama is incompetent!")

I am getting tired of Obama.

If I had the opportunity to talk to President Obama, I would tell him, "You know, Mr. President best thinking by best minds is what got us here."

As Bob Herbert reports in his column today in The New York Times, ">A Very Deep Hole:"More than 15 million Americans are out of work, and nearly half have been jobless for six months or longer."

And the oil from the BP oil well blowout keeps spreading onto the marshes and beaches of the Gulf of Mexico.

While our President is ready to implement the best solution ... as soon as he finds it.

Maybe someone should explain to him how the Allies succeeded in coming ashore on D-Day—June 6th—at Normandy. Talk about how planning gets screwed up by reality! What saved the day was the motivation, ingenuity, and ability to improvise by the soldiers and sailors on the beaches. They didn't have to rely on someone telling them what they could or could not do. They took what they had at hand—even the rifles and bullets off their fallen comrades—as they kept moving forward under the guidance and leadership of their "local" officers on the beach with them. It was up to the generals and admirals to keep it all coming ... men, equipment, and supplies.

If Obama knew how to command he would know that there comes a time in situations like this when you have to turn your local "fighters" loose to do what they have to do ... under the guidance and leadership of the "local" leaders ... and concentrate on keeping the "fighters", equipment, and supplies coming ... as needed ... along the whole front of the battle.

It would appear that there are folks available to do this. We just need a commander to get it done.

(Note: A message emailed to Rachel Maddow at MSNBC today.)

Why Obama is incompetent!

Obama is proving his incompetence as a President of the United States in one word, containment!

His leadership on the actions necessary to contain the BP oil spill are so inadequate they are laughable.

BP caused the accident. It didn't just "happen." And the criminal and civil investigations will undoubtedly lay this out with great clarity in the months and years ahead.

But ...

Once the accident "happened," it was up to Obama to act decisively and immediately to contain the oil as quickly and as thoroughly as possible BECAUSE the best independent experts were telling us how bad it could get ... decisively and immediately.

One example of leadership in a large scale operation of this type is to treat it as the front line of a battle. The line is divided into sectors and each sector is put under the command of its own sector leader. And each sector is divided in sub-sectors down to the level of the company and the company commander ... and even further under the company commander to the platoon leader ... and squad and squad leader. The responsibility is clearly defined ... and it isn't rocket science. We've been doing it for millenia ... or at least since 300 Spartans defied the tyranny of Xerxes at Thermopylae over 2500 years ago.

For Obama to allow BP to take charge of the containment and—then—clean-up, hiring a skeleton workforce that left large sectors of vulnerable wetlands unmanned ... well ... that's the evidence of Obama's incompetence on containment.

My gawd, the global finance elite are stealing us blind!

What do I keep telling y'all (as others do also)?

Obama is either the head fox or a front for the foxes in our hen house, sorting our eggs ...

Bernake, Geithner, and Summers are three of the foxes ...

The "conspiracy" creating the fox mindset is the education that the elite receive from our "Ivy League" (elite) schools ... so they become like a group of NBA All-Stars ... seamlessly bringing the ball down the floor ... or -- in this case -- siphoning off the wealth created by we the people's labor.

My gawd! They are stealing everything in pursuit of THEIR theory of global finance ... and they believe that their accumulation of wealth and power proves that they are the top of the pecking order in the survival of the fittest ... which used to be the Will of (the current) God ... also used to justify slavery, feudalism, fascism ... earlier schemes by elites to rip off our labor.

Once again their greed will keep pushing it until we the people get mad enough to storm the barricades ... which doesn't always lead to a George Washington. We could get a Maximilien Robespierre.

The greedy elite should think about it ... seriously. Maybe some will be rational enough to put some brakes on the irrational greed now gaining control.

IMHO workers in the United States simply want equality of opportunity and fairness in reward.

An open letter to Arianna Huffington, posted today on huffingtonpost.com

Dear Arianna,

I have to contradict you on one point. It is becoming crystal clear that Obama did not expect different results. He is a front person for corporatism whose obvious first focus is to reduce the cost of global labor in order for the corporate elite to rip off more of the wealth our labor created/creates.

This corporate elite is educated in the "best" universities to think of themselves as deserving of their status ... in the continuum of slavery, feudalism, fascism, ye olde company store ... always establishing a political/economic/religious structure that makes the denial of a fair share for labor of the wealth labor creates appear legitimate ... even the describing the structure/system as the Hand/Will of whatever God is ascendant at the time.

The basic political question is the division of wealth ... going back to the tribal hunt when the spoils were divided among the tribe. IMHO.

It is time to have a march on Washington ... for Cherry Blossom time ... each of us with resources left helping a homeless/unemployed person/family make the journey with us to lobby our Representatives and Senators in Congress. This should be obvious out of the history of we the people descending on Washington to have our voices heard.

All we need is a leader of our own to call us to action. Will you be that leader, Arianna?

Best regards,
HG Lindquist