Believe It Or Not: Michael Moore Is Right

Michael Moore is out and about promoting the upcoming DVD release of his movie “Capitalism: A Love Story”. As a part of his publicity tour, he made an appearance this week on the politically progressive podcast called “The Young Turks” and he hit the nail on the head when it comes Washington doing something to fix our economy and change how things are done on Wall Street. Moore reminded listeners to the show that it’s only been a year and a half since the big crash on Wall Street and asked what’s happened in that year and a half?

“Not one single regulation has been put back in place. Not one rule,” Moore says.

“And for Wall Street, they're back to doing the crazy derivatives. They're back to the credit default swaps. They're back to all the crazy loony bin casino stuff that got us in the mess that we're in. And the Congress has not done one single thing to stop it. (And) It's not going to get fixed. There's going to be another crash. The commercial real estate bubble hasn't burst yet. That's going to burst. The credit card debt is so huge right now, it will never be repaid. That's a house of cards waiting to fall. So the crash of '08 is going to look like coming attractions. And we're in for a much, much worse time.”

I hate to say this – but Michael Moore is right. I’d like to be an optimist and think that we’re going to get out of this recession and that things will get better in this country – but I really don’t see it happening. Instead of things getting better in this country – it seems like things are getting worse.

I would a venture a guess that anyone who is reading this blog has a story to tell about how our shaky economy is affecting their life. Personally, I could get a little support group together of people I know and love who have lost, or are about, to lose their jobs because of cutbacks. These are good hard-working dedicated people who have been working twenty to twenty-five years for one company; and many of these people are being forced to make a decision before a certain day or face losing some of the retirement benefits that they always thought would be there for them. It’s hard to put a happy face on the direction that our country is going when you see your friends and family members losing their jobs and, in some cases, health care benefits that they thought they’d always have.

Maybe I was a little naive when Barack Obama was elected in thinking that he might be able to get this country back on track. His vision of “change that we could believe in” may have been too big and too vast for him to actually accomplish some of the things that need to be done. Yes, he had to do something about health care and we might actually see some real change in health care in this country – but you would have thought that Obama has enough people working for him in the West Wing of the White House that they could have tackled some sort of regulatory reform of the economy and Wall Street at the same time.

If Barack Obama is going to do anything – he’s going to have to come to the realization that he better do it now while the Democrats are still the majority party. There’s no way in hell that he’s going to get bipartisan support on anything that he wants to do – and I mean anything! If Barack Obama were to hold a press conference tomorrow and proclaim that there’s nothing purer than Mother’s milk – the Republicans would probably come out and say that mother’s milk promotes cancer or acne and would never accept Obama’s proclamation on the purity of Mother’s milk and that’s why things will never get done in Washington.

Yup, we have all seen how tough it has been to get some change in this country’s health care system – now imagine Washington doing something about how things are done on Wall Street. It ain't gonna happen and if they do something – it’ll probably be too late. It’s already to late for a lot of people I know.

Health Care Reform: It's The Same Old Song -- Different Singers

The health care debate is slowly coming to an end and what do we really have to show for it? The way that I see it – not a whole lot. What could have been a shining moment for our country only produced a lot of heated noise and rhetoric; and the end result is a reinforced feeling of powerlessness mixed and the knowledge that the “change we could believe in” promise is never going to come true.

I have to admit that on the night that Barack Obama was elected President of the United States – I got sucked into that whirlwind of belief that we were finally going to see some change in this country. I jumped onboard the Obama Change Train and was beginning to feel positive about this country after eight years of the politics of George W. Bush. I was looking forward to seeing policies made in Washington that would benefit the working class man and woman and not just the corporate fat cats and Wall Street manipulators. With Obama in our corner and a Democratic majority in both the house and the senate – there should not have been anything to stop our elected representatives from turning this country around and changing things for the better. Or so we thought.

Looking back at the past twelve months – Who won this health care battle? It wasn’t the “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” bunch from the Republican Party. The Republicans idea of leadership was to make up things like “death panels” or to try and convince people that there was nothing wrong with the health care system as our nation’s health care costs continued to rise and the people’s ability to pay for it increased.

The health care debate felt like a replay of the McCain presidential campaign – full of lies and fear mongering. People who wanted change to our health care system were branded as socialists. The opposition to health care reform could only equate change with big government, which in turn gave birth to the tea bag protest movement that fueled the health care debate with images of Obama as Hitler and comparisons of “Obama Care” to Nazi death camps.

The Democrats are not walking away from the health care debate looking much better than their Republican counterparts. In January – we were to believe that with the Obama’s change team in office things were finally going to be different only to find out in December that it’s politics as usual in Washington. It’s hard for me to look at the Democrats passing the health care bill in the Senate as a victory when two Democratic Senators were given a sweetheart deal for their states that has the other 48 states shouldering the cost of health care reform. That’s not a victory – it’s the same kind of old backroom politics that got us into this health care miss to begin with.

Now that we have seen how the Obama team has handled health care reform – what do you think the odds are for them to reform the banking system that will prevent another economic meltdown from happening again? I’ll be honest with you – it doesn’t look good – but he wanted to job – but don’t try to sell us on “Change we can believe in”, Mr. President – because we know that that’s one promise you can't deliver on.

I Was Just Thinking

I was just thinking….

We’re a little more than two weeks away from electing a new President of the United States and if the polls are correct – it will be Barack Obama who will be sworn in on January 20, 2009. I’m kind of looking forward to that day, because you know that it’s going to drive the right wing fringe of this country absolutely nuts – no longer will they be content to have the name of Bill Clinton to throw around to explain what’s wrong with this country – they’ll now have the name of Barack Obama to add to the list. And just like Bill Clinton can’t shake Whitewater – Barack Obama will always have Bill Ayers as his boogeyman in the closet for the right to point at.


I was just thinking….

If the rumors are correct – tomorrow night – Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for Vice-President of the United States will be making an appearance on NBC’s Saturday Night Live – and like about ten or so million people in this country – I’ll be watching. But, don’t you think it’s a little strange that Palin has agreed to appear on Saturday Night Live and come face-to-face with Palin impersonator Tina Fey, but she has yet to appear on such programs as “Meet the Press”, “Face The Nation”, or even “60 Minutes”?

Senator McCain told David Letterman on Thursday night that he has confidence in Sarah Palin and we could trust her to run the country should our country experience another nightmare like 9/11, but if she can’t face the press during her campaign run – what can we expect from her should she happen to be put into a 9/11-like situation? Yukking it up with Tina Fey is a lot easier than taking questions from the press (who represent the people) wanting to know what you would do – but maybe questions that would make you accountable for your actions are too much of a “gotcha” question, right Mrs. Palin?