Goldwater is a Liberal in Today's America

“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C" and "D." Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of conservatism.”

When you can use a quote by Barry Goldwater as a voice of sanity and moderation, it demonstrates rather dramatically just how far to the right our country has swung. For those too young to remember, Barry Goldwater was considered a right wing extremist in the 1960s, today he would be left of Obama on many issues.

The doomsayers on the right keep telling us as a country we should do less, to aim lower, to shrink government, to invest less in the future, to spend less on education and to privatize everything from prisons to medicare. For the last 30 years the right, both Democratic and Republican, has won nearly every argument from denying climate change to achieving the lowest taxes on the rich. The right has gotten nearly everything they want at every turn and look at what a mess they have made of our country. That is what aiming lower gets you.

So here is an idea, we have tried it their way for the last 30 years and it clearly doesn't work, so let's try something different and progressive for a change. Let's aim higher. Let's try investing more in our future, more in education, more in science, more in single payer health care (medicare for all), let's extend full human rights to all people and invest more in the kind of infrastructure that will make our country a technological world leader again and pay for it by returning tax rates on the rich to the levels they were in the 1950s, 60s and 70s; you know, when we were prosperous. When the country was run by such wild eyed liberals as Republican Richard Nixon who created the EPA, OSHA, increased NASA and supported a woman’s right to choose her own reproductive options. 

Is the 99% Movement the Modern Equivalent of Storming the Bastille

Here is a startling statistic, the candidate for office in America with the most money backing him or her wins 94% of the races. In other words money buys almost every election. This fact means they really aren't elections, they are auctions. Character doesn't matter, positions don't matter, honesty doesn't matter; what matters is who puts in the highest bid and raises the most money. Guess where that money comes from and why do you think that money is spent? Any wonder our country is so fucked up? At its core, that is an extremely disheartening statistic because it says something terrible about how a democracy can be corrupted if money is allowed into the election process. That 94% statistic proves that a gullible electorate can be led to any conclusion with enough slick advertising. The Citizens United case has made things even worse, allowing unlimited corporate spending to influence elections.

We are caught in a catch-22; in order to throw off the shackles we would have to elect large majorities in the House and Senate to pass a Constitutional amendment removing money influence in elections, but we can't even begin to elect those majorities since the moneyed interests can buy any number of representatives they chose. Our hope rests with the 99% uprising or if they fail with another outraged grassroot populist movement with even greater intensity. If the groundswell of outrage grows to enough people and the outrage is sufficiently intense, maybe we can overthrow the moneyed interests despite their attempts to buy our government. This is the only way I can see that the people of America can reclaim their democracy from the 1%. Storm the Bastille!

Is Financial Collapse Inevitable

As our national debt approaches 100 % of GDP, I would just like to point out that in many respects we have been here before. After WWII we had a crushing debt of 120% of GDP. Many thought it was an impossible situation that would inevitably lead to financial collapse. But, after a couple decades of high taxes on the wealthy (90-70%), GDP growth and modest inflation, that debt dwindled in the rear view mirror into a fairly insignificant amount.

Republicans, with great wailing and gnashing of teeth, like to tell us we are in an impossible gloom and doom situation, the world is going to end, we have to cut spending and make the economy smaller (which by-the-way makes the debt bigger in relation to the economy). They tell us we can't accomplish big things; we need to aim lower and do less.

The real problem is 30 years of tax cuts, after more tax cuts, after even more tax cuts for the wealthy which has left the government starved of revenue, thus creating huge deficits. The wealthy in America pay the least taxes they have since just before the Great Depression. The resulting wealth disparity means that a bigger and bigger piece of the pie goes to a smaller and smaller group at the top leaving that much less for everyone else. Malcom Gladwell make an excellent point about how America has previously sliced up the pie in this video.

The solution is simple; raise taxes on high incomes to the levels they were after WWII. It worked before and it can work again but the problem is uncompromising, unrelenting Republican obstructionism. Almost every Republican in congress has signed a pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist. If you don't know who Grover Norquist is, he is the guy who hates the U.S. Government so much that he famously said his goal is to starve the government of revenue to the point that he can “drag it to the bathtub and drown it.” Republicans have become so consumed with protecting every penny of tax cuts for the wealthy that they have lost all sense of perspective and will go to every extreme to obstruct raising revenue, even if it means destroying the country. The only solution that remains is to remove from office every Republican (or Democrat for that matter) who has signed the pledge of allegiance to Grover Norquist or any other special interest group, and replace them with folks who pledge allegiance to the United States, in-other-words, folks that put country before ideology or party.

Godly Politics

From the look of things it seems God is a little partial to dumb Texas governors who like to wear their religion on their sleeves. Rick Perry (you know, the guy who wants to be president of the country from which he wants to secede) recently held a prayer event in a football stadium (Matthew 6:6) to ask for God's help in dealing with the problems our nation faces. Guess what? To my complete and utter surprise, according to Rick Perry, God wholeheartedly endorses Rick Perry's political ideas. Might as well spill out the goat entrails and see what Ba'al has in mind for 2012.

When you mix your politics with your religion, you wind up with a toxic stew that is poison to both; your religion inevitably gets corrupted by the lying and deceitfulness inherent in the politics and your politics must be perfect and unquestionable because it comes from God. Could the right wing political co-opting of religion be a contributing factor to why American church attendance is going down by about one million per year? When exactly did God anoint the GOP as His chosen people? If God chose George Bush as President, as many, many swore He did back in 2000, then surely God must have known that George was going to make an awful mess of the economy, so what conclusions can we draw about God from this choice? Religion and politics don't mix well because when your Godly politics fail, as they inevitably will (because they actually come from partisan humans), it calls into question your religious beliefs; it pulls your religion down into the muck of politics. If God chooses a president or a political ideology, then God owns the outcome. But according to almost all Christian doctrine, the whole point of our existence is to exercise free will, so if God is choosing our presidents, or steering hurricanes or causing earthquakes or in any other way interfering in human affairs, then we don't really have free will; Do we? So maybe God really isn't partial to dumb Texas governors; maybe it is actually people that don't understand the point of their religion that are partial to dumb Texas governors.

America Held Hostage

The Republicans are doing everything in their power to sabotage the economy and force us into a double dip recession because, as they have openly admitted, it will greatly enhance their chances in the 2012 elections. According to most economists, the debt deal recently forced on Obama at gunpoint will result in about 1+ to 2.0% decrease in GDP which in turn results in 0.5% to 0.7% decrease in employment according to Okun's law. Since current employment is 150 million, the result of the deal will be a loss in the neighborhood of 750k to 1 million jobs in 2012. Republican speaker John Boehner chortles, “I got 98% of what I wanted.” Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell admits, “I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting, most of us didn’t think that. What we did learn is this — it’s a hostage that’s worth ransoming.” To top it off, not only will the spending cuts forced on a weak economy probably push the economy back into recession and result in weaker revenue, actually increasing the deficit, but these cuts have already cost us more in projected future interest payments than the cuts were supposed to save in the first place. A lose, lose, lose situation for the nation with the only winner being the Republican Party.

So, in summary: Republicans, behaving like terrorists, hold the American economy hostage with a gun (in the form of threatening a US default on its debt) and swear they will pull the trigger if the president doesn't give them everything they want. Obama, being the reasonable moderate sort of nice guy that he is, pleads with them to release the hostage until the last minute but then gives in to almost all of the Republican demands in order to save the country (1 Kings 3:16). The Republicans, knowing that no president has ever been reelected when the economy is in recession and unemployment is rising, get rewarded with a double dip recession and higher unemployment in an election year. Evil wins. 

Thorium Reactors are Safer, Cheaper, Carbon-Free and More Efficient

With the recent unfolding nuclear reactor disasters in Japan, the public is going to turn away from nuclear power even more than they had previously. Before Fukushima, it was difficult and expensive to get approval for new reactors; now it is going to become near impossible. This may open the door for a new and safer type of technology known as the Thorium Reactor.

Thorium Reactors also known more accurately as Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs pronounced “lifters”) are a proven alternative to the present day nuclear reactors known as Light Water Reactors (LWR).

Advantages of Thorium Reactors:

1. Safer; if power is lost like in Fukushima, the reactor just shuts down with no chance of meltdown. The thorium reactor is self controlling; as the liquid fuel gets hotter, it expands and reduces the number of fuel atoms in the reactor which results in less heat. Since low pressures are used, no need for expensive and vulnerable backup cooling, control and containment structures.
2. There will be start up costs associated with the research and development of new thorium reactors but they will be cheaper in the long run. Fuel is more plentiful and cheaper and doesn't need assembly into fuel rods. Doesn't need control rods and expensive emergency systems to control the reactor. Doesn't need a massive pressure containment vessel. Since they are inherently safer, LFTRs will need less government regulation once their safety has been well established.
3. Less Nuclear Waste. LFTRs produce only a tiny fraction of the waste generated by a LWR and the waste decays rather rapidly to near background levels in about 300 years. Contrast that to the large amount of waste from LWRs that takes hundreds of thousands of years to decay. Realizing that the Pyramids are only 5000 years old; who is going to be around to warn lifeforms away from a waste site 100,000 years in the future? Fortunately, the LFTR can “burn” the waste from the LWRs down to a much smaller and manageable form.
4. More efficient. Nearly all of the thorium is used in an LFTR versus only about 0.7% of uranium in a LWR (one reason the LWR produces so much more waste). One pound of thorium produces the power of 200-300 pounds of uranium. Plus, there is a lot more thorium than uranium in the world.
5. Scalability: LFTRs can be made large or small from 100-kilowatt to multi-gigawatt. It would be possible for small communities to have their own 1 megawatt LFTR and produce their own power instead of inefficiently consuming power from lines traveling hundreds of miles from a large regional power plant.

The One Disadvantage of Thorium Reactors and the reason we have LWRs instead.

1. It's very hard, almost impossible, to make atomic bombs from the LFTR.

This one reason, the ability to make plutonium, was why we (the USA) decided to go the LWR route. Now we have about 1000 tons of plutonium in storage and about 200 tons in our nuclear weapons; so we don't need more plutonium. Therefore the main rationale for pursuing the LWR route is no longer in effect. As many people as possible need to view this informative video featuring Kirk Sorensen where he clearly lays out the history and science behind Thorium reactors.

Are Republicans Willing to Destroy America to Hurt Obama

Since the election of Barack Obama, the strategy of many in the right wing has been to promote failure for the United States. Success of the left and Barack Obama would conspicuously advertise the failure of the Republicans during the Bush administration. Moreover, success by the left would legitimize the role of government in preventing economic ruin and pulling the country back from the brink of disaster that the country was facing when Obama took office.

Evidence of right wing obstruction and efforts against America:

1. During the first two years of the Obama administration, the Republicans in the senate, in a move to delay and disrupt legislation, performed and threatened more filibusters than any time in US history.
2. Republicans are even rooting against the success of America because if America succeeds under a liberal administration their own right wing policies will be more glaringly shown as failures. Here is a video showing a conservative group breaking out in spontaneous applause upon hearing the breaking news that America lost the Olympic bid. Wow, it never occurred to me to root against the US Olympic hockey team just because Reagan was president or to cheer as the WTC buildings collapsed because George Bush was president. The Republican hatred of Obama clearly trumps any love they might have for America.
3. Day in and day out, the repeated doomsday predictions for America have an effect on the psychology of our country. There is an element of self full-filling prophesy in the calls for financial Armageddon. A recent poll shows that 79% of Americans now believe a financial disaster is looming.
4. Now the Republicans are threatening to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Practically all economists agree that even to talk about not raising the debt ceiling will have a negative effect on the economy but to actually refuse to raise it will be epic economic suicide, forcing the country into a full blown depression. The repeated doomsday predictions and the prevailing belief in economic ruin are the fuel vapor in the room while the threat of American default on our debt may prove to be the spark that sets it off.

The Republicans have clearly brought all their weapons to bear in order to make sure the Obama administration fails. Many Republicans have made a cynical calculation that if Obama, and by extension America, fails that it will benefit them politically. As Rush Limbaugh said, "Let's be honest. Every Republican in America is hoping for Obama's failure." The Republicans are holding a gun to the head of America, threatening to kill us and they are insanely blinded by hatred of Obama (Obama derangement syndrome). The peril is real.