wordsmithlind

Hussam Baayoun, a 20-year-old university student at the rally, said the U.S. raid was a “criminal act” and added: “We want the Americans to stop their acts of terrorism in Syria, in Iraq and the rest of the world.”

Not an unreasonable request if you ask me.  Since the hype around the election surpasses all news, it is not surprising that little attention has been given to the US military cross-border strike in Syria earlier this week.  In a world of porous borders (except for the US) and post-modern ideals of nationality and the nation-state, the United States has once again made it known that no border is safe from its military.  The Bush Doctrine is still in effect for another three months, and the world is going to have to deal with it.  The question is, will this policy, the next logical step from the Cold War’s US supported coup d‘etats in South America under the new president?  If Obama is elected and this complete disrespect for other nations persists, he will become the biggest disappointment in the history of the Presidency surpassing Clinton’s failed fight for gays in the military and his switch to a moderate Presidency.  If McCain wins, well, then it will be no surprise that the US military will kill more people in cold blood.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081030/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_syria_us

“We’re getting only a glimpse of what one-party rule will look like,” he said, predicting deep cuts in defense spending and efforts to shrink America’s role in the world if Democrats take over the government.  

Another classic McCain quote.  Has he forgotten the hell the United States and the World has gone through since the one-party rule of the Republicans from 2001-2006, not to mention that the Republicans controlled Congress under Bill Clinton from 1994-2000?  If you ask me, or any other citizen of the world, I think we are all willing to take a gamble on the one-party of the Democrats.   

Also, Obama had a funny rebuttal to McCain’s Socialist accusations:

McCain, he said, will soon “be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081030/ap_on_el_pr/campaign_rdp

There is a lot talk this election season of the youth of the United States getting revved up for the Obama campaign.  This is all good and grand but it will not matter if the youth of America fails to show up to the polls.  All we have to do is look back to 2004 when the Kerry campaign relied heavily on the anti-Bush youth of America to vote him into office.  What happened?  The youth failed to show up (or at least failed to increase from the 2000 election) and we all know what happened after that.  So, the moral of the story, do not count the youth of America in until November 5 when the results are in.  Until then we must be realistic, McCain still has a chance.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/03/MNG5B9KH4C1.DTL

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081028/ap_on_el_pr/obama

  PS: Young people 18-29, myself included, go out and vote for Obama on November 4

Obama, then an Illinois state senator and part-time law lecturer at the University of Chicago, defined “redistribution” as “how do we get more money into the schools and how do we actually create equal schools and equal educational opportunity.” 

According to McCain, this is something to be feared.  Yes, all of you middle-class, white people, you need to fear this—EQUALITY.  What will happen to your way of life if the dejected, the underprivileged, the poor, the needy, and certain minorities become educated?  Yep, you guessed it, a better educated, more productive, healthier society.  McCain keeps trying to associate Obama with Socialism, but any educated person would know that Socialism involves a little more than spreading the wealth so that all are entitled to an equal education.  Socialist groups have openly come out and said that Obama is not a Socialist, nor do any of his policies imply Socialism.  Not once has Obama spoken of the overthrow of Capitalism, and, well, that is a pretty basic part of Socialism.  For a man to have claimed to receive his political education during the Cold War, he sure is misinformed of the definition of the one of the basic political ideals from that time period.   Makes you wonder, could the Cold War have been dealt with in a different manner if people like McCain were not in power with their altered, jingoist definitions of Communism, Socialism, and Democracy. 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20081027/pl_bloomberg/azlunhv1tbum

In his remarks, Gurria repeatedly underlined the importance of reducing the wealth gap in order both to enhance overall economic performance and reduce social friction, stressing that the implications of current trends were “very serious”.

“(G)rowing inequality raises political challenges because it breeds social resentment, it questions the ultimate role of democracy and generates political instability,” he said. “It also fuels populist, protectionist and anti-globalization sentiments…Ignoring increasing inequality is not an option,” he added.

Among OECD countries, social mobility as measured by the relative earnings of fathers and sons was highest in the Nordic countries where the rich-poor gap was narrow, and lowest in Italy, Britain and the U.S. — all countries where the gap was significantly wider.

The report noted that while poverty among the elderly has fallen in OECD countries, poverty among young adults and families with children, particularly single-parent families, has increased over the same period. On average, one child out of every eight living in an OECD country in 2005 was living in poverty. For the U.S., the ratio is closer to one in five.

In a companion article published by the OECD ‘Observer’, Oxford University economist Anthony Atkinson argued that government will have to take a stronger role in reducing the wealth gap and creating jobs, particularly if the world economy goes into recession.

“If the government can take on the role of lender of last resort [for troubled financial institutions], then we should think about the government taking on the role of employer of last resort,” he wrote. “Put bluntly, governments have to step up to the plate, as [U.S. President Franklin] Roosevelt did in the Great Depression.
“© 2008 Inter Press Service

URL to article: http://www. commondreams. org/headline/2008/10/22-7

The report found that the U.S. is not alone in suffering growing wealth inequalities among the world’s richest countries over the past two decades. In three out of four of 24 OECD countries surveyed, inequalities between the richest 10 percent of the population and the poorest 10 percent grew.

France, where government has long taken a particularly aggressive role in the economy, saw the rich-poor gap decline over that period, while, after a steep rise in inequality under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, the wealth gap and poverty rate have declined faster in Britain than in any other country.

The greatest inequality between rich and poor among OECD countries was found in Mexico, where the wealthiest 10 percent of households had more than 25 times greater income than the poorest ten percent. In Turkey, the ratio was 17 to one, while the U.S. was just below that, at 16 to one.

The average for all 30 OECD nations in 2005 was about nine to one, with the smallest gap — less than five to one — found in Sweden and Denmark.

After Mexico and Turkey, the U.S. also has the highest poverty rate of the 30 OECD nations, according to the report, which defined poor households as those whose income was less than half of the media income in each of the member-countries.

For all OECD countries, the average poverty rate was just under 10 percent in 2005. In Mexico, the rate was highest at more than 20 percent. Turkey and the U.S. were tied at 17 percent. Lowest poverty rates were found in Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Austria, and Norway.

The new report, which found that inequality in most OECD countries — not just the U.S. — has grown markedly over the last two decades, comes at a critical moment given the ongoing global financial crisis and its impact on the presidential election here.

The crisis has sparked unprecedented worldwide criticism of the “free-market” economic model that the U.S. and Washington-based international agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have vigorously promoted since the administration of President Ronald Reagan.

That model, sometimes called the “Washington Consensus”, promised that greater reliance on markets and less government intervention would result in stronger economic growth that would also produce higher incomes for the middle class and the poor.

The current crisis, however, has called that model into question, not just overseas but in the U.S., where Democrats are urging major changes in economic and fiscal policies designed precisely to begin closing the gap between the rich, on the one hand, and the middle class and the poor, on the other.

Those changes — including increased taxes on the wealthy, greater investments in education, public services and creating jobs, and tackling child poverty, in particular — are precisely those cited by the OECD report as among the most effective in narrowing the rich-poor gap and reducing the poverty rate.

“This report does fit a certain Democratic narrative in recognizing that inequalities are a serious problem and that they’re generated in the labor market,” said John Schmitt, a senior analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) here. “The OECD recognizes that the U.S. performs poorly on social mobility, and I think that surprises a lot of Americans.
“

In yet another strange twist of McCain logic, McCain once again failed to look in the mirror before speaking.  The latest in the McCain blunders involves him accusing Obama of saying “anything to get elected.”  This is the same guy who tried to steal the idea of change from Obama, attempted to align Obama with terrorism via Bill Ayers, cancelled part of the GOP convention for a photo-op, pulled an unknown out of Alaska to be a figure head of the GOP after calling Obama a celebrity, attempted to cancel a debate in the name of national emergency (publicity stunt), tried to relate to hockey moms, tried to relate to Wal-Mart moms, tried to relate to Maxed-Out moms, tried to relate to Joe the Plumber, and tried to invoke his experience in Washington and the military as reasons to cast his vote (in direct contradiction to the first point in this list).  Whew!  McCain, you are right, Obama will say anything to get elected you erratic old bastard.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/mccain#full

A very interesting article…..

WASHINGTON - The “American Dream” of upward social mobility appears to have emigrated from its birthplace in the United States to northern Europe, according to a major new report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the growth of economic equality over the past 20 years.

Of its 30 member states, most of which are also members of the European Union, the United States has the largest gap between its wealthiest and poorest households after Mexico and Turkey, according to the report, “Growing Unequal? [1]”, which was released at OECD headquarters in Paris Tuesday.

That gap has grown particularly large in the U.S. since 2000 — that is, under the administration of President George W. Bush — according to the report, which found that the gap between the U.S. middle class and the wealthiest 10 percent has also increased.

The growth in the divide has major implications for social mobility, according to OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria, who said the report’s data had demonstrated that the notion that inequality encourages the poor to do better is false.

“Social mobility is low in countries with high inequality like Italy, the UK (United Kingdom), and the United States. And it is much higher in the Nordic countries, where income is distributed more evenly,” he told reporters.

“This means that, in most high-inequality countries, dishwashers’ sons are more likely to be dishwashers and millionaires’ kids can assume that they too will be rich,” he said, adding that governments could do much to promote mobility, particularly through progressive tax policies, greater social spending, job creation, and increasing investment in education.

It is about time.  People are beginning to wake up and see the liability that is Sarah Palin.  For numerous reasons, and through numerous polls, people are starting to question McCain’s judgment based on his pick of Palin as VP candidate.  It looks like the Palin bump is turning into the Palin hole.  We just have to hope that it does not turn into a valley with a positive upswing in the next two weeks.  Poor John McCain, what has the GOP done to him and his reputation?  Could the actions of the GOP be considered elderly abuse?   

 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/20081022/pl_ynews/ynews_pl106