Now that Occupy Wall Street has captured the imagination of the bottom 99% everywhere and become a movement of global stature, I'd like to know what you think of the movement.  Your opinion matters, please take this poll.

Now that Occupy Wall Street has captured the world's imagination, it's a good bet that the party of "change" would love to turn it into a vote getting machine.  To hear why that's never going to happen, visit my  Listen Here! page.

What's next now that Occupy Wall Street is so big that the mainstream media can't intentionally ignore it?  Visit my  Listen Here! page for a suggestion that could get almost every ninety-eight percenter in!

By now I hope that everyone realizes that  the main reason that the good people at Occupy Wall Street are out in the streets protesting is because they, as members of the bottom 98% couldn't get their issues addressed by the "two" party governmental duopoly in Washington!  Both parties are still deeply engaged in their usual game of good cop/bad cop.  That game has a few simple rules that effectively takes government out of the hands of we, the people and hands it over to Wall Street, Corporations and the rich.

Here are the rules to two party good cop/bad cop (a.k.a. Two Party Flim Flam) 
as played by the Democratic and Republican parties.

• The Democrats make soaring populist campaign promises, evoking images of FDR AND JFK.  
  
• When or if they get elected, they make an attempt to fulfill those promises.
  
• If they have a majority, they don't force the issue, but try to seek a "bipartisan" solution.
  
• The Republicans have their own agenda which includes wiping out all the social programs that the Democrats have put in place since FDR, so they stonewall any Democratic legislation!
  
• The Democrats, being the good cops, compromise with the bad, bad Republicans and cut back on delivering their campaign promises.
  
• Since they really want to show the Republicans what nice people they are, they offer up bits of their earlier social safety net programs for sacrifice on the altar of corporate greed.
  
• If we, as the Progressives who were their strongest supporters, ask the Democrats why they caved and abandoned their campaign promises, they will say that it was because of those big bad obstructionist Republicans causing gridlock.
  
• They will then take it a step further and act as if WE are their opposition!
  

That's the way the game is played in Washington these days.  One side tries to shaft the bottom 98% and the other side tacitly cooperates.  Let me remind you that the same  corporate lobbyists visit the electeds of both parties!  The people at Occupy Wall Street have decided to ignore the politically motivated, corporate owned middlemen and bring their case directly to we the people!  I want to thank them for being the last glimmer of hope for true democracy in America!

Did you ever watch an old movie along with a bunch of inebriated friends that was supposed to be dead on serious, but was so hokey and preposterous that every line of it's dialog evoked hysterical laughter from everyone?  You'd watch it and the laughs would come from the irony that there were actually people, perhaps your parents and grandparents who took it seriously.  That's how I felt about the GOP/Teabag debates.  I couldn't believe that there are actually people out there who took the garbage that was spewing from their hateful mouths seriously!

All of the above gives me an idea.  The Republicans are always claiming that their nonsense will create jobs.  Here's how they can directly create some jobs immediately.  The recession created unemployment in almost all sectors and the entertainment sector is no exception.  There are plenty of unemployed comedy writers out there who want to get themselves off the unemployment "entitlement" that Republicans oppose so vigorously.  The Republicans should hire some of those comedy writers as speech and debate dialog writers!

Think about the benefits and possibilities of comedy writers working for the Republicans:

• Comedy writers are unionized and will insist on working for union scale, aggravating the Republicans.
  
• Saturday Night Live could put their speeches and debates directly on the air, talk about efficiency.
  
• Finally, your average slack-jawed TV viewer will know that it's time to laugh when a Republican speech or debate is on the news, instead of taking it seriously and voting for them!
  

Let's get the Republicans to put their money where their mouth is with this new "private sector" jobs program!  I think that it will make the laughs trickle down!

In recent years, many of us started to believe that we can change a system that has evolved into what amounts to a corporate government by proxy by electing a politician with a catchy campaign slogan.   As we found out, for various reasons, things don't work that way.  Despite one man, one vote, in the present “two” party system, corporations and the rich DO have control of the hearts and minds of our electeds by way of their campaign contributions.  Therefore, throwing our energy behind ninety-nine percent of the candidates from EITHER of the two political parties is an exercise in futility.

The protesters at Occupy Wall Street are there because our electeds from BOTH political parties refuse to hold Wall Street accountable for creating many of the conditions that caused America's economic problems.  To make matters worse the people that we elected to represent US chose to give FDR's New Deal to Wall Street and the banks instead of the people who need it the most, the unemployed.  The wind up is that Wall Street is doing just fine, thank you, making those big bonuses.  The bottom 98% aren't doing that well in what seems like a permanently stagnant economy with frozen or reduced wages and constantly rising prices spurred on by greedy commodities speculators.

What galls me is that the same electeds that WASTED OUR money on tax breaks for the rich, Wall Street and Bank bailouts have the nerve to scream “we must cut the deficit!”  They want to balance the budget on OUR backs by cutting government jobs, services and “entitlements!”  Occupy Wall Street serves notice on them that our votes DO speak louder that corporate and Wall street bucks!  May this be the first of MANY protests and may it become a movement that is so powerful that we can make our electeds listen to us or replace them from a field of truly worthy candidates that are not necessarily part of the two-party duopoly!

The recent Republican/teabagger debates on CNN proved one thing, that our country has devolved to the point where potential candidates for an elected office can advocate policies that jeopardize the health and safety of their fellow Americans without being booed off the stage.   As a matter of fact, when Ron Paul was about to answer Wolf Blitzer's question about letting a hypothetical 20 year old accident victim who is in a coma die because he is uninsured, he was preempted by some knuckle dragging teabaggers in the audience who shouted “YEAH!”

Due to all the bogus political drama, Americans are at a moral crossroads.  We have to decide if the Republicans, the teabaggers and their “free” market/trickle down dogma represents patriotic ideals or unbridled corporate greed that has been distilled into a political philosophy.  We have to decide if we want to scrap government programs that protect public health, safety and the survival of American families just because the concept of safety nets doesn't mesh with an ideology that is corporate sponsored and mainly benefits the rich.  Lastly, working people have to decide if they want to support an ideology that is toxic to their well being, the future of their families and America's future or zealously defend the social advancements of the past seventy years that, up until the bogus teabag movement was started, have withstood the test of time!

On this, the tenth anniversary of 9/11, we should honor those who perished in that tragedy and spite the perpetrators by not adding any new casualties, human or financial.  We have to realize that terrorists count on our reactions to their cowardly acts to inflict further damage to and destroy the way of life of our country!  The U.S. battlefield casualty count in the middle east is well above the death toll of the original 9/11 tragedy.  Our electeds continue to spent massive amounts of OUR money funding those wars, but clamor to cut our infrastructure and social safety nets to pay for a “deficit” that could have been offset by ending the ongoing wars.

Now I'm not saying that we should leave ourselves defenseless, I'm saying that there are better ways to protect our country by using intelligence, not massive military action overseas.  We have to focus on rebuilding OUR economy, rebuilding OUR country, rebuilding the American dream for the poor and the middle-class, who are the people who actually fight and die in America's wars!  Let's get our revenge on the terrorists by making our country the great nation it once was and will be again by fulfilling the American dream!

When I was watching President Obama's Jobs Plan speech on Thursday, I thought that I saw a brief appearance of the guy that I voted for in 2008.  He was forceful, confident and all about creating a mini New Deal that grows jobs.  I was starting to feel the same old feeling of confidence in him that I has in 2008 until a voice in my head said "HEY, SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!" 

As they say, the devil is in the details and there are a couple of major league devils in the details of Obama's proposed plan:
Devil number one reared it's ugly head when President Obama said that the proposed "free" trade agreements would create jobs by helping exports.  Let me remind you that these agreements are similar to NAFTA and we know what that did to kill jobs.  "Free" trade agreements  are part of the thirty year downward globalization spiral that started under the Reagan regime!  How can doing what cost America it's jobs create jobs?  To bring America back and make corporations manufacture here, we need to re-impose the trade tariffs on imports that Reagan lowered or in some cases, eliminated!

Devil number two popped up when Obama offered up cuts in Social Security and Medicare as one of the ways to finance the jobs plan.  Mr. President, I have a better idea, let's impose a stock transfer tax on each Wall Street transaction to make the people who broke the economy fix it!  As a matter of fact, if we re-imposed trade tariffs on imports and imposed regulations that make corporate offshoring  of manufacturing difficult, we wouldn't have a jobs problem, the deficit would disappear and prosperity for ALL would return!

To sum it all up, we can continue to delude ourselves about where we're heading with this proposed economic and jobs fix or we can fix the economy and create the kind of jobs that built the middle class, the choice is yours!

I'm going to keep this Labor Day blog post short and sweet.  When you watch tonight's network newscasts, you will probably see many politicians, including the President pay lip service to unions at various Labor Day parades and functions.  They will be singing the praises of workers and unions to the skies.  In the midst of all their accolades, I want you to keep in mind that action speaks louder than words.

Traditionally, unions have backed Democrats with campaign donations and member's votes.  Lately, very few Democrats, especially the President, have returned the favor.  If our Democratic electeds were sincere about supporting workers and unions, we would already have an Employee Free Choice Act passed and wouldn't have to worry about a President who misrepresents job killing “Free” trade agreements as job creators and basically agrees with trickle down economics.

My suggestion to unions is that they deny the Labor Day photo opportunity to insincere politicians by letting them know that they are NOT welcome to make Labor Day speeches in any union's venue!
That being said, I want to wish my union brothers and sisters and all working people fighting for change a happy Labor Day.