Stop the "Bail Out" corporate welfare

This "bail out" is complete nonsense - another Bush 'wolf'!! What's with these "experts" like Ben Stein going on that the U.S. was founded on 'capitalism'. It wasn't. The Constitution starts "We the people..." not "We the corporations", nor "We the piles of gold". The intent was individual free enterprise and opportunity for all, not enslavement to the moneyed few hiding behind imaginary legal constructs.

Now the same twits that foam at the mouth about personal responsibility when someone suggests a disadvantaged citizen should have a shot at an education or medical care, are all lining up to donate tax dollars to people who have neither personal responsibility nor any real accountability.

These are the same babies that decide that drug companies don't have to pay when they kill people; that tobacco companies aren't really responsible for thousands of deaths per year - one every 6 seconds; and "we the people" have to either live with or clean up the messes left by big oil and big nuclear.

Get a grip, people. Very little of Reagan's "trickle down" trickled down and there is absolutely no reason to shove $700 billion back up to them. Make the upper 10% of these companies' executives lose everything like most of the former homeowners who were talked into bad mortgages. And I mean everything. Lose their houses, their yachts, their Beemers and their pensions. Put the beggars out onto the street and tell them to accept a bit of personal responsibility. "Get a job", as the Republicans would say.

Bankers and their screwball "enterprises" going broke? Welcome to the world the rest of us live in.

Why Sarah Who?

To understand the Republican pick for Vice President - and it is clearly a party pick not a McCain pick - one must understand Republican 'family values'. Values that completely ignore women as thinking human beings.

The McCain campaign, and the Senator himself is completely controlled by Rove & Company, the same people who put 'W' in the White House and Dick Cheney in Rasputin's place in Washington. And why not? They have proven themselves able to insert people in the Oval Office regardless of the trivial details involved in elections.

Rove & Company knows what most Americans should realize: The only chance John McCain has of surviving the next four years is an Obama Presidency. Even 'W', completely disconnected from the average American, unconcerned and with more days off than any previous President has aged twenty years in the last eight. Anyone who thinks the Office won't kill John McCain is dreaming.

Should McCain become President, when Governor Palin becomes President Palin, Rove & Company think they will be in complete control of the country. Simply because they believe a woman must do what a man tells her to do.

It's clear from their disdain for Hillary's supporters the neo-cons are certain Hillary's only connection to her supporters is gender. They do not consider it possible she thinks. Republican's find Palin 'cute', perhaps even 'feisty'. After all she's just a girl.

Commanders-in-Chief

The framers of the U.S. Constitution set the role of Commander-in-Chief in the Office of the President to guarantee civilian control of the military. Aware of the world of their time, they understood the danger an unfettered military posed to civil society. Civilian control was a brilliant initiative, its wisdom confirmed more than 170 years later when President Eisenhower cautioned against the increasing power of the "military-industrial complex".

Republicans, and conservatives in general, imagine the need of military experience for the Commander-in-Chief role played by the President. Yet, since the creation of the Union some 232 years ago only two people have held the Office who could be considered militarily qualified to be Command-in-Chief: General Washington, commander of the Continental Army and General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. President Washington chose not to wage war; President Eisenhower chose to successfully end the one he inherited. As qualified Commanders-in-Chief they understood military force is the option of last resort.

Other Presidents have served in the military, many as officers, however, only the first and thirty-fourth were military strategists. Both were 'big-picture' thinkers, concerned not with the imagined insult or perceived injustice of the moment, but with the well-being and future of the Nation as a whole.

A Commander-in-Chief must be a strategic thinker, understanding the world, it's cultures and nuances, and appreciating America's position of power and responsibility as a leader. A Commander-in-Chief must also be aware of America's limitations, financially, militarily and politically.

Those preferring the role of 'maverick' best remain in the more contained tactical arenas where their nature enables them to excel. Mavericks are knee-jerk, narrow focus thinkers. Occasionally heroes of the moment; but unsuited for larger roles where their presence constitutes enormous risk.