USS Enterprise

This is a time warp piece back to the days of old back in World War II. I happen to love the History Channel and today they had a non stop running of Battle 360 and it covered the battles that the carrier U.S.S. Enterprise encountered in the Pacific against the Japanese during WWII. If there was ever a symbol more worthy of the American people it was this ship against the original Axis.

Those guys went through hell more than once. If you are reading this and you are a veteran of the Enterprise then God bless your heart my friend. Holy crap! From battle after battle the Grey Ghost just wouldn’t give up and at one point she was the only surviving carrier the US Navy had during the Pacific Campaign of WWII. If there is anything that comes close to defining the road trip to hell and back, then these guys can explain it all with graphic personal first hand details.

The Enterprise encountered the best the Japanese had to give and beat them back time and time again. That is a tribute to the American spirit of the time and a testimony that many should hear. These men refused to give up and they gave it their all to defend what was right and wrong in the world. Even against overwhelming force they stood and fought and persevered. It was an amazing time and in it we can all take a serious lesson in our lives today. Regardless of all the crap thrown at you at any point in your life, somebody faced a much more dire set of circumstances than we will ever think possible, and they survived to tell the world about it.

Times are tough but times are changing for the better. Things are starting to turn around in the banking industry, stocks and confidence in them shows that. Housing starts are starting to turn the corner and the refinancing of existing homes is turning a page for the better.

Now is the time for people to stop listening to the doom and gloom media and think that it is actually possible that America can survive and get past the current economic crisis. While everyone on the news is spouting more gloom and doom you don’t hear crap about the success stories during this difficult time. Something like General Motors saying that they believe that they will be okay after bankruptcy court. Or the fact that many people able to purchase an existing home from the distressed real-estate market will be launching into home repairs, renovations, upgrades, and out right rebuilds of the existing homes all across America. Then of course it is a must to mention all the folks that still have a job, still pay their bills and pay their mortgages on time as well.

All is not lost, the ship that is the American economy is still able to tread water and make headway. We just can’t barrel ahead at 25 knots and we all need to accept the fact that we have to fix the ship and know that our battle in this economic crisis only acceptable outcome is victory. Just like in WWII, we can fix this and make it seaworthy once more to make her ready for battle on the frontline again. But we can do better. We can make her torpedo proof, make her capable of defending herself, and we can make her survive the long fight ahead of us all. All that we have to do is give her a crew worthy of the sacrifice.

Thank you Enterprise and all that served on her then and now for your courage and your service. Your history and your ship earned a respect unequaled by many and wothy of many more tributes. I just hope that the America of today can live up to your courage in the face of total aniliation and see that survival is possible and you can come back to fight another day.

Papamoka

We Americans Need to Learn from Our Mistakes

Hello Papamoka Bloggers - I thought I would try an experiment today. I was talking to a friend yesterday about the stimulus package and the Republican opposition, and something interesting happened during the debate. I found myself saying that I used to love to believe what the Republicans preach - smaller government and lower taxes - until I found out it doesn't work. So, what changed my mind?

I wanted to remember, so I began to recall my political past, and how I wasn't always what Republicans like to call a "liberal" Democrat. (I personally like the term "progressive," because it describes our thinking better.) I was a Democrat, just not the same kind. I was misguided.

Growing up in New Orleans, I campaigned and worked for Representative and later Senator John Breaux (D-LA) in the mid-eighties. He was a moderate "Blue Dog" Democrat, believing in many Republican issues at the time. Smaller government and lower taxes were high on the list. I supported many of the same positions, and even voted for George H. W. Bush after leaving the Senate.

I was young and foolish, and like so many Americans believed their stories about how smaller government and lower taxes would create a fantastic economy and society where success would trickle-down to everybody willing to reach for it. Reagan was a GREAT salesman, and charlatan. After the first Bush presidency, it all started to smell like old, rotten fish.

For those of us who were paying attention, the Lee Atwater movement under the first Bush began to show the ugly side of Republicans. If anybody wants to learn more about that political period, I recommend watching "Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story." It's an excellent documentary about how Republican tactics evolved to create Karl Rove and George W. Bush. Be sure to have a friend nearby while watching - it's VERY SCARY!

Anyway, Republicans at that time started to look negative, racially divisive (their "Southern Strategy" was in full swing), and unconcerned about the economics that help ordinary people. They were looking great at getting people to vote against their best interests. It was weird. They started to divide and conquer the nation based on "wedge issues." It was also obvious nothing was "trickling down" to help Average Americans. If anything, they were shipping jobs overseas and destroying the middle-class.

Unfortunately, most Americans weren't paying attention. By and large most Americans hate politics, and would rather be spoon fed slogans than do their homework. They didn't want to know or understand Lee Atwater or Newt Gingrich during the first Bush recession; they only wanted a promise of better times.

That ignorance led to support priming the gears for the Republican revolution, but fortunately for Democrats they suffered a significant set-back when the "Man from Hope" - or Clinton - came along. He was the kind of salesman Americans love. Unfortunately, Americans eventually gave Newt Gingrich and his Republicans Capitol Hill.

Before they won the bulk of their power, Bill Clinton and the Democrats passed legislation to lower the debt and raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Republicans called it "job killer" legislation, just like they did with the stimulus this week, and voted against it en masse. Democrats called it responsible government. They focused on reducing the Reagan-Bush era debt and creating jobs.

They Republicans followed-up with their "Contract with America," and despite being bold at the time, it was pretty much ignored and dismissed in the end. They were more concerned with acquiring more power, and they knew they could if they turned their attention to wedge issues, creating a cult-like following, and impeaching the President.

The real political irony of the nineties is how the Republicans took credit for the work of the Democrats. Incredibly, they convinced their flock, and many independents, that the greatest economic boom in American history was the work of Bush and the Republicans in Congress. Clinton's debt reduction initiatives and national stabilization programs were dismissed. Despite facts to the contrary, their ignorant, sheep-like constituents believed it.

Eventually, after creating a web of lies about their "success" and tactical wedge issues like gay marriage, the Republicans stole the 2000 election. Instead of Al Gore - who we voted for, we wound up with George Bush, Dick Cheney and more Republicans. It was a very sad day for the majority of Americans who actually voted to continue with the Democrats, and the well managed Clintonian economy.

The Republicans got to work on their "ill gotten gains" and focused immediately on castrating the government. In early 2001, George Bush and his team began installing incompetent, unqualified people into positions of power - EVERYWHERE in government. They were mostly loyalists it turns out; people they could count on to shrink what they saw as a bloated, inefficient and ineffective government. Unfortunately for them, it turned out to be the opposite. It turns out that less government led to less of everything!

Their version of the US government FAILED to prevent a massive attack on 9/11, FAILED to protect Americans from predatory lenders, FAILED to enforce financial regulations that created a housing bubble, FAILED to regulate Wall Street losing trillions in American savings, FAILED to provide assistance that led to the death of thousands after Katrina, FAILED to prevent war profiteering and incredible waste, and FAILED in just about every area of running the US government and helping the American people. The Republicans would later call it bad luck.

They pretty much FAILED everywhere, leading to the LOWEST APPROVAL RATINGS of any administration in history. They said they didn't care, but what else could they say. They were failures. Overall, the Republican principles that guided George Bush and Dick Cheney led to the worse government in American history, which contributed to some of the greatest disasters in American history.

At this unique time in American politics, listening to the Republicans continue to insist their principles of smaller government and lower taxes work best for the American people, it's important for us to assess what is right and what is wrong about their sales pitch.

So, let's try something we all do from time to time. Let's create a list of pros and cons, to help us visualize it. Let's explore whether our Republican friends should continue to believe their REPUBLICAN policies and beliefs. Here are just a few of my examples for now. Feel free to add your own.

PRO: Smaller government is better government.
CON: Republicans have proven smaller government is not better government. Size isn't the issue. It's about effective government, and the best value for money. Democrats like Obama support that idea.

PRO: Lower taxes help grow the economy and create jobs.
CON: Republicans proved that lower taxes are not enough. Most economists believe growth is encouraged by multiple factors, including government assistance related to education, health care, regulation/oversight, and all kinds of government stabilizing forces. Surgically applied tax cuts are good, but Republican efforts to simply lower taxes across the board have led to lower wages and bubble economies. It's also untrue that lowering taxes on the rich creates jobs - at least AMERICAN JOBS. The rich create some jobs, but how and where is debatable. It's also true that many hoard their money; the middle-class always spends it.

PRO: Less or no regulation is better for a free market.
CON: Republicans proved that reducing or eliminating regulations can lead to bubble economies and chaos. Republican-led deregulation has led to disruptions in every major area supporting the economy, including infrastructure, transportation, state and local economic development initiatives, health care, industrial safety/mining, industrial pollution, protecting the environment [for human health], urban planning/growth, executive compensation, investor protections, and much more. Deregulation has proven to be very dangerous to both the economy and people.

PRO: Transfer payments/social safety nets are harmful to the market and society.
CON: Republicans support transfer payments and social safety nets when it applies to saving large corporations or their own investments, but call it "socialism" and harmful when it's designed to protect individual, less affluent Americans. It's obvious to most Americans now that Republicans support the "privatization of profit and the socialization of risk." Republicans tolerate the "redistribution of wealth" as long as it benefits wealthy Americans. In the end, transfer payments like Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and Medicare stabilize the economy and society.

PRO: A strong defense is critical to American power and overall success.
CON: Just like Dwight D. Eisenhower predicted, the American military-industrial complex has become a behemoth that threatens to strangle the nation. Republicans are obsessed with American power. They have grown to believe in American unilateralism and hegemony. The truth is America must work with partners in today's multi-polar world, and those partners must be forced to share the burden. The industrial-military complex needs to be put on a diet, and Republicans need to accept that America cannot continue to go it alone. America needs to invest in a renewable economy, not just bombs and guns.

That's it for now. I hope you enjoyed my little list. Feel free to add your own.

So, based on this little journey through time, I now see why I left the Republican sales pitch behind. Smaller government and lower taxes SOUND AWESOME, but are really nothing but a pipe dream when you begin to see them applied in the real world. Republicans need to realize that Milton Friedman was wrong. Republican efforts at supply-side economists are a failure. Free trade over fair trade is a failure. American jobs have become CRAP!

We took a chance on Republican principles, and Americans are overwhelmingly throwing in the towel. We're ready to go back to the principles that work. The Democrats didn't invent those principles; Democrats simply embrace what works. I hope the American people understand that and support what is right.

Michael Boh
Papamoka's Left Coast Contributor
from Our Rants & Raves Blog

Lost Wallet - Huge Reward!

Some old friends of mine contacted me very distraught and upset. They either misplaced or lost a very large some of money. There was a considerable amount of money in my friends wallet and as you can imagine, they had some serious plans for it. They have been doing some renovations around the old home and without this cash, they can not even think about finishing the projects. If you could look around and of course ask around if anyone has turned in some lost cash then I would appreciate it.

Arabs lost 2.5 trillion dollars from credit crunch: Kuwait
Jan 16 04:30 PM US/Eastern

Arab investors have lost 2.5 trillion dollars from the credit crunch, Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad al-Sabah, whose country hosts an Arab economic summit next week, said on Friday.

"The Arab world has lost 2.5 trillion dollars in the past four months" as a result of the global financial crisis, Sheikh Mohammad told a press conference following a joint meeting of Arab foreign and finance ministers in Kuwait.

He also said that about 60 percent of development projects "have either been postponed or cancelled" by the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states because of the global meltdown. - Breitbart

I’m personally going to offer a five dollar reward if you find their lost wallet. Contact Papamoka right here if you find it or have information leading to the return of their home improvement money.

Papamoka

Moments of Clarity and Clinton

While on a recent road trip Hillary Clinton is talking about the economy and now is the time to talk about the economy and how we all got into this horrible mess. The near future is not as positive as some people would like to think and a clear path through it is needed. With the latest reports coming in from all of the world stock exchanges, the “Maybe Recession” is a world wide concern when you are talking about the United States of America. World economics is the key to saving not only our own economy but the worlds.

One of the key factors to the U.S. economy is the middle class and the shear numbers of them with disposable income. The facts are simple and the middle class in America has been downsized and locked out of the “Bush” economy from benefits too salary increases. In that same time period the cost of living in America has gone through the roof. One large contributor to that lockout was the executive release of responsibility in corporate America. In the world of business it should be called a signing statement, similar to the thoughts of our current President and the Constitution. Downsizing and outsourcing of entire manufacturing plants out of the country not to be competitive but to ensure the yearly top executives bonuses are protected and of course adjusted for inflation.

In some circles it could be argued that NAFTA and every other acronym for free trade helped to boost the economy in America but they never really stipulated if it was South America or North of the border of America? In reality, free trade literally meant a migration of American middle class jobs out of America and that is yet just one more source of the downfall of our economy. When our government supports the rights of other nations citizens for good jobs at good wages you better look at your last days of employment because that is the first tax break for corporate America to send your job over the border. Key phrases for shutting a factory or manufacturing plant here in the states is “Stock Holder Value”. Largest benefactors to stock holder value are CEO’s and top executives with stock options.

Senator Clinton in her race for the White House spoke about where she thinks we as a nation need to be and it is hard to argue with her thoughts when you look at the numbers realistically. Over at the New York Times they have this interview with Senator Clinton…

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton said that if she became president, the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.

In one of her most extensive interviews about how she would approach the economy, Mrs. Clinton laid out a view of economic policy that differed in some ways from that of her husband, Bill Clinton. Mr. Clinton campaigned on his centrist views, and as president, he championed deficit reduction and trade agreements.

Reflecting what her aides said were very different conditions today, Mrs. Clinton put her emphasis on issues like inequality and the role of institutions like government, rather than market forces, in addressing them.

She said that economic excesses — including executive-pay packages she characterized as often “offensive” and “wrong” and a tax code that had become “so far out of whack” in favoring the wealthy — were holding down middle-class living standards.

Interviewed between campaign appearances in Los Angeles on Thursday, she said those problems were also keeping the United States economy from growing as quickly as it could.

“If you go back and look at our history, we were most successful when we had that balance between an effective, vigorous government and a dynamic, appropriately regulated market,” Mrs. Clinton said. “And we have systematically diminished the role and the responsibility of our government, and we have watched our market become imbalanced.”

She added: “I want to get back to the appropriate balance of power between government and the market.” - New York Times

Senator Clinton is obviously correct in stating that the markets from housing to Wall Street’s power brokers are out of control and need government oversight more now than ever. If our nation is to survive the current recession then restraints and intervention needs to come from our government. If it does not then the Robber Barron’s of days long gone will run the economy and the nation into the ground and ride out the destruction on the billions earned prior. And you can bet your last Rockefeller shiny new dime that they will pull their investments out of the stock market long before it crashes and outsource it to safer shores.

Salaries of record for one year to think about from Too Much…

$118.9 million for Leslie Blodgett, CEO of Bare Escentuals, who cashed out over 5 million option shares in her cosmetics company for a $117.6 million personal profit.

$415.5 million for Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani. To reach this total, the Times added to Irani's $52.1 million in pay, as calculated by Equilar, the $270.1 million Irani cleared from cashing out stock options and the $93.3 million he withdrew from his deferred stock plan. Irani still holds another $124 million in deferred pay.

$647 million for Apple CEO Steve Jobs

$127 million for UnitedHealth CEO William McGuire

$32.6 million for Todd Nelson, CEO of the Apollo Group, a profit-making collection of higher education institutions

$131 million for Robert Nardelli, the Home Depot CEO forced out in January

$97 million for Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis

$1.5 billion for James Simons, Renaissance Technologies

$39.1 million for Ford CEO Alan Mulally, a sum that includes an $18.5-million bonus for leaving Boeing to join Ford. Ford had six executives in the industry's top 15, despite record 2006 losses of $12.6 billion.

Some people would say that each one of these people earned their pay and in some cases I might not argue with you. In most cases though it is a race to the top of the heap and they never look back at all the folks they stepped on to get those annual salaries and mega stock options. That is not part of the horizon they are looking at when they cash out, sell out or move on to another corporate position to repeat the process all over again. Once there they never forget the politics that kept them there either with donations that max out. Atilla the Hun would have been very comfortable in corporate America but he would have owned it all.

Hillary Clinton is talking the talk and I would not be surprised if she became President that she would look at corporate politics with an evil eye but she will not hesitate to cash those campaign checks coming in till that day comes. She isn’t alone in the cashing of those check and that my friends scares me.

If your interested in seeing whom is giving political donations to whom and how much then I highly recommend NewsMeat. It’s a great search engine for political thoughts and seeing who is maxing out to their favorite candidates.

Papamoka

Posted on MichaelLinnJones.com and Bring It ON!

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