Really Pissed Off!

It’s time again for RPO to give some advise to the GOP, not that they want any advise from me! Nearly all of the candidates have more baggage than you’ll find on the Orient Express! After watching most of the debates, I feel that I’ve been thrown back in time watching “What’s My Line?” with John Daley. If the Republicans seriously want to win in 2012, they’re overlooking the only candidate who can bring in the Independent vote. That’s Jon Huntsman!

What I am about to write in this article is not a proven fact. History may decide whether it is, but as we continue to live through this crisis, the evidence is there to make the assumptions that I’m about to lay out. Looking back over 40 years, all the moves made by both Wall Street, Corporate America and the U.S. Government are there to be interpreted and the more you look at them, they loom larger and larger, leaving room for little doubt that this was “The Plan!”

I’ve been so disgusted with what I’ve seen over the past several months that the last thing I wanted to do was even think about how foolish our government has acted! I just can’t take it anymore. The only comparison I can come up with is “The Three Stooges”, which were popular in the 1930s and 1940s. It was pure slapstick. You didn’t have to think about it! In the midst of the worst crisis since the Great Depression, we get a comedy act!

If anyone was wondering why RPO has been silent for the past two months, it’s due to my toxic reaction to statin drugs for elevated levels of cholesterol. For the past four months, or more, I’ve been suffering from a toxic reaction to Simvastatin, the generic form of Zocor. It took three doctors to diagnose it, as when you get old as dirt at my age, they kiss you off by telling you its arthritis. By the time I was diagnosed, I could barely walk and the pain in both my shoulder and arms was unbearable! One little pill that I was taking for 10 years turned out to be the cause of this suffering! And guess what…..It’s the most popular drug on the market and prescribed for more people than any other drug!

As I sit down to write this article, History is in the making and no one knows how it will play out in Egypt or in the rest of the Middle East. All it took was a small successful demonstration in Tunisia earlier this month to prove that the strong arm governments of the Middle East are ready to topple. Some attribute it to the social network of the 21st Century. Others would claim that time had run out with these governments. In the meantime, the linchpin of the United States’ Middle East policy has depended upon our relations with Egypt for the past 40 years. All that now is in jeopardy.

As I waste more time than I should listening to the pundits talking about the next Congress and what their agenda should be focused on, the same subject keeps coming up. It’s the budget deficit! Perhaps that deserves to be Number Two on the list. But the Number One priority is JOBS, and that’s one way to deal with the budget deficit. The more people employed, the more revenue brought in and the less unemployment benefits paid out. You can’t deal with the deficit unless you can employ America’s workforce!

For over forty years, I was a Republican. In fact, I was a Goldwater Conservative and argued in my high school Current Affairs class that I should be allowed to read the then conservative Los Angeles Times, rather than the required liberal New York Times! That was in 1957! So here I am now, in front of my keyboard, trying to defend Democrats and save their seats in Congress! The strangest of all is that my politics haven’t changed that much! Just as strange is that Democrats continue to act like Democrats while the Republicans take the vote and laugh all the way to Washington!

In all of my 70 years, I have never seen such hatred in the past several months against Islam in general! I grew up during WW II when the Japanese were referred to less than human and American Japanese were interred in concentration camps during the War. After WW II, Sen. Joseph McCarthy had us looking for Communists everywhere, while many innocent people had their lives crushed. During the Vietnam War, anti-war protesters were beaten in the streets and called traitors. President George W. Bush gave probably the best speech in his life to the nation on the night of September 11th. When addressing the world’s Muslim people, “I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.” Have we forgotten that night and how it united the nation, as well as the World! It appears that we have!

There is more anger in America today than any time other than the Viet Nam War. Those of us who lived through it saw rioting in the streets and a truly divided nation. There was no question as to what that anger was directed to: The War! Once again, Americans are angry! They have good reason to be, but they brought it on, in part, by themselves. The “average American” was sold a bill of goods that promised them “The American Dream” but they became the victims of corporate greed and that of their own.

What appeared to be a leak by BP in the Gulf of Mexico is now probably the worst ecological disaster of our lifetime! Unfortunately, there appears to be no immediate solution to stop it. The only way to stop it is to drill a relief well, which may take several months to drill, as it may have to down as much as 13,000 feet to intercept the existing well. In the meantime, it is estimated that between 250,000 to 1,000,000 gallons of oil a day is spilling into the Gulf of Mexico. What have we let loose?