Ayers! AIP! Ayers! AIP!

Welcome to October, more like welcome to American politics. Whether it’s Charles Keatings, Tony Rezkos, Jack Abramoffs or William Ayers, anyone that runs for office, let alone president, in this country is going to have to get on their knees for some $hitbags along the way. There is no everyman running for president and there never will be as long as it costs half a billion dollars to get into the White House

Amazing and relevent. Take a look at the root cause of our current crisis. The Graham legislation aside, these guys feel that they don’t need to enforce the existing rules. Christopher Cox most certainly ignored multiple violations. Who elected him to change the law? This is a burning indictment of the “unfettered capitalism” theories of Milton Friedman and the conservative movement in America. We should all stop and realize that these ideas have failed us. We are all Keynesians now.

What Ayers did was bad, but what The Keating 5 did was a con job against the American people and an abuse of power.

Jed Clampett

How about those guys that were testifying in front of congress the other day. Their company was in such bad shape, that it was dissolved, yet they were giving themselves millionaire bonuses even after their lack of judgement and inaction killed the company and helped cause a $700 billion bail out.
When do the American people realize the slavers won and they need to get out on the streets to demand their country and their freedom back? In my country it took 20+ years for us to get totally fed up, a cacophany of banging pots finally got the message through.

Peace

Come on TD. You are either ignorant or being deceitful.
The Keating Five consisted of one Rep and five Dems. McCain and John Glen where exonorated by the chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee. He said McCain did nothing unethical. The other three Dems were found to have comitted serious ethical violations.
In other words, McCain refused to do anything for Keating unlike the the others three Dems.
As bad as Keating may have been, he wasn’t bombing buildings and trying to kill people. Plus he went to prison for his acts. Ayers never did any time
He got off on a technicality.

If you don’t know the facts of Keating or you’re trying to mislead, in either case you should find a new line of work.

Jed Clampett

yea, Dennis, Ayers technicality wasn’t nearly as bad as McCain’s technicality. Ayers attacked a government target during a time of near civil war. McCain only helped cause a financial collapse of the nation that cost the taxpayers BILLIONS of dollars and made lots of rich people even more powerful so that today we are almost slaves.

Wanna fix the entitlement issue. Do away with the $100 thousand a year ceiling on paying social security. If you make $2 million, you should pay social security on $2 million, not $100 thousand.

Peace

I think we’re missing something here. Oh yeah, Ayers is only a casual acquaintance. Obama has nothing to do with his crimes, nor has he endorsed them. McCain, on the other hand, admits that he acted badly by attending the meeting at all. His connection to Keating was close, also by McCain’s admission.

The difference? Obama is being attacked because he knew the guy. This says nothing about Obama.

McCain not only knew the guy, but accepted gifts and trips, and acted in his official senatorial capacity because of those gifts. This says plenty about McCain.

PC, Tim said nothing much. The video is produced by the Obama campaign. You could accuse them of being deceitful.

Jed,
Please try to refrain from using Republican terminology. This frames the argument in their terms and you’re automatically at a disadvantage. The term ‘entitlements’ is a right-wing frame.

Speaking of Social Security and Medicare: Social Security is not in crisis like Brokaw likes to say (he has a history). McCain’s most honest moment was when he told Tom that it was an easy fix. Medicare is in crisis because of the inflated cost of health care in this country. Why is the cost of health care inflated? Because of the health insurance industry which has isolated healthcare from normal market pressures. What other ‘commodity’ can you name that has not gone down in price, even when the procedures are more common and more available. This is one (of many) of my Corporate Media pet peeves.

Jed Clampett

Oh, I understand fully. People don’t quite realize how badly they are being deceived by their political leadership.

Entitlements include much more than medicare and social security and that is what the republican dissembling is all about. Those tax breaks that help these huge corporations do their business are also a burden on the treasury, and since they feel they are ‘entitled’ to them, then they also are entitlements. When you realize how much money goes to businesses that don’t really need the help (making over $1million in revenues), you understand why we can’t heal, educate or feed the population properly. If you get to read Georges Lakhovsky’s secret of life and realize how easy it could be to heal, you recognize that the expense of our medical system is that way on purpose so that the executive boards of ‘health management corporations’ can make Billions in compensation (see healthsouth). That money has to come from somewhere, it comes from denying the public proper healthcare and treating the public like piggy banks rather than people.

An example of how screwed up our healthcare system is… in Jan I had some x-rays done. the bill arrived and said the procedure was $19000, the discount for insurance company brought the price down to about $800. Talk about a fleecing! That means if I didn’t have insurance I would have had to pay $19 grand, but the insurance company gets to pay only $700. Who is getting screwed here? The public.

peace

Jed,

Dennis? I haven’t posted herein.

But you guys are returning to the REAL problem in America: healthcare, to use a shopworn term. That should be the single biggest ‘issue’ of the campaign. Of ANY campaign. And it’s not. And healthcare won’t get any better until something like the economic collapse we’re witnessing happens in that industry. But how can it, when they ‘oversee’ themselves.

Jed,
Good point. Perhaps we should refer to this largess as being ‘corporate entitlements’ thus turning the phrase (sort of like ‘corporate nanny state’). The right never refers to these issues as ‘entitlements’ because it would weaken their agenda.