Haiti

I'm going to Haiti in March to help with a volunteer mission with a group my mom is associated with called CHAI. This will be the third trip I've gone with the group and it's a good group of people. I seen the pictures and I read the reports and even though we're not going to Port-au-Prince, there is a lot of work to do throughout the country. I do not know how I am going to feel when I get there, to this country that I fell in love with the very first moment I stepped foot on it's soil. This will be an interesting trip. I will write more about it soon.

I'm Tired of It

It's been a while since I wrote anything. I wanted to see how things would pan out with our government and with our society. What I am seeing is the same old B.S.

Listen, this won't be a discussion as to the why's of what is happening. Simply put, the way our businesses operate is fundamentally flawed and needs to be changed. It is time for us to stop trying to assign blame, stop trying to figure out why it all went wrong and just work on a solution. We need to all come together to figure this out and we are going to have make changes that none of us will be comfortable with. We are talking about correcting the way we have done business here in America for a very long time, and that process has made some people a lot of money. But, when it comes down to it, what is going on here is the epitomy of what is wrong with America. Nobody today can put aside their own greed, will not spend one minute to think of more than just themselves in order to help the COUNTRY AS A WHOLE get out of this mess. We are very concerned about what is best for us, not what is best for the country. Heads of large corporations are opting out of any stimulus deals because they refuse to take a pay cut, but it's their incompetence that has lead us to economic disaster. And we the people, we just take it.

Now, my problem is not with just corporate America. This whole experience has shown that our government is fundamentally broken as well. All of this political fighting and posturing, by both parties in every level of government is killing us right now. Once again, instead of putting aside personal gain, NONE OF THESE POLITICIANS CAN DO WHAT IS BEST FOR THE COUNTRY. President Obama, I put you into that category too. It is no secret how big of a fan I am of you and I understand that you are trying to do what is best but you need to do a better job. Am I being too demanding, too hard on you? No, because we elected you in the hopes that you will change how government is run in this country and in our first moment of need, you are letting politics interfere with getting a solution. Is your similus plan that great? Probably not, but there is no other plan out there and your efforts to have more of an bi-partisan plan to fight this are failing. You NEED TO DO A BETTER JOB at working with the other aisle. Your party needs to do a better job at working with those on the other side. We need to all live up to your promise of accepting others and working together to bring America back from the brink of utter financial ruin.

That will be hard when you have idiots fighting against the preseident, posturing for the next election by refusing to work with the president on fixing this situation, flat out lying to scare the general population about the current stimulus plan and doing nothing, this whole time, to help their constituents in this great time of need. They can help, and it is their civic duty to help but they are more concerend about public image than public welfare. They are more concerned about what Rush Limbaugh and other simliar people, along with members of the media think, who in the grand scheme of things, are very inconsequential to this situation, rather than worry about what the average american, regardless of what political party they ally themselves with, think. IT IS THIS WAY OF CONDUCTING OURSELVES THAT HAS LED TO THIS MOMENT IN TIME.

This leads me to my final statement. You see, I can rant about C-level employees and politicans all I want. You can do the same and we will be all justified in doing so. But, they are only a smal segment of the population that shares the same problem. EVERYBODY, from that 20 million dollar a year CEO to the janitor cleaning the bathrooms in a grade school in Wyoming, everybody needs to put aside their own personal well being for the sake of doing what is best for our country, as a whole. We have become too selfish, too self-centered to care about our fellow americans. We do not make the efforts to try to understand those that are different, not just along racial or financial lines but geographic lines. The reason why someone in North Dakota wants to have a gun is just as valid as the reason why people in Chicago wants guns off the street. We do not understand that our society is too complex and diverse to have a blanket fix on our social and economic problems. But, we the constituents do not realize that there are laws out there that might affect me negatively or go against what I feel is right, but is for the benefit of more than just myself but for thousands, maybe millions of our fellow Americans. We can no longer afford to look in-ward and be selfish. That ship has sailed on. It is time for us to do what is best for our country. To do what is best for our future. Whatever short-term pain we will feel, and that pain will be short term, will be nothing compared to the ruin we face if we continue down our path. The choice is yours, as it has always been. Do what is best for the country and call upon your fellow citizens, your fellow Americans to do the same.

Bailing Out Companies Doesn't Make Sense

There is something fundamentally wrong with the corporate world and it's called greed. For the past 30 years and maybe even longer than that, corporations have been looking out for themselves and not caring about their workers. The bottom line is what counted. There have been countless movies that feature the bosses as uncaring jerks who is always willing to sacrifice lower level workers for healthier profit margins. All of this finally caught up with us this year and now companies are asking the government to bail them out.

Bailing out these companies is the worst thing we can do because even though the executives that ran the companies into the ground are no longer there (in most cases), the corporate mentality that got everybody to that point in the first place will not be changed. At some point in the future, we will be back here again because of greed. Also, it's not just the corporate execs that are guilty of being greedy, it's the people on "Main Street" as well, playing the stock market like if it's a low stakes gambling operation. You put your money at risk, be prepared to lose it all.

I think you should let these companies die. Lessons have to be learned, no matter how hard of a lesson it is. It's survival of the fittest and time to let those who have brought us to this point, be put down. They are all smart people and can rebound, create new companies and instill practices that they learned from this experience. It is time for a new generation of American companies to come to the fore-front and, with the lessons learned from the past, take our country to financial golden age once again...

Media Biased Against McCain???

To all of you people out there thinking that the media is reporting negatively against McCain vs. Obama, let me just say one thing. McCain made his bed and now he has to sleep in it. Most of these negative stories come about because McCain or Palin has done something to negative. This bias that you claim is out there is because McCain is running a horrible campaign. It is not like these negative stories are untrue. It seems like both McCain and Palin, since the Republican convention, have made horrible decisions (more so than Obama and Biden) and the press has called them out on it. You want to say that's a bias?

Obama and Biden aren't angels but at least, they do a good job of damage control and keeping themeselves out of trouble. They made better decisions that their Republican counterparts. If the reporting was untrue, I would be on your side, but, I see this as nothing but finding some reason to blame why you are about to lose the presidency. Grow up.

To You Republicans, I ask - So What?

I spent the last couple of weeks watching various youtube videos of people walking into republican rallies and talking trash about Obama. The one "insult" that keeps coming up is that Obama is a Muslim/that he's not a Christian. This has been something that has been hounding Obama since the start of his campaign. Well, I ask this. So what if he was a Muslim? When did being a Muslim become a bad thing? What this tells me is that there is a larger number of close minded people in this country than we are all comfortable to admit. I have to admit that there are close minded people who are supporting Obama as well but I am most disturbed by the language from the videos I seen from those McCain/Palin rallies. It is time that we admit that as a nation, we have a problem with being close minded. We need to start working on this problem so we can stop looking like a nation of idiots.

Just Wondering...

I was just wondering, why is McCain taking credit for the Surge?  Yes, we brought in more troops to cover more area but as I recall, the fact that the Sunni's decided to fight against Al-Queda had a bit more to do with the improvement of the security situation than the increase of our troop levels.  How come nobody talks about the Sunni involvement in the situation at all?  

Now, there is a call for a modified version of the surge for Afghanistan, i think by both candidates.  Will that work without the cooperation of the locals?  Do the locals like us much with all of the bombing that we do that claim innocent lives?  No matter how smart the weapon we drop, how often are innocent civilians caught in the cross hairs and killed because they had the misfortune to be standing near a high priority target for the US Military?  I was just wondering...

Presidential Debate

I just finished watching the presidential debate and something stuck out at me that McCain had said that just doesn't sit right. He said, at the end of answering the question regarding Israel and if we would attack Iran if they are attacked, that we cannot allow a 2nd holocaust. I ask why? What obligation do we have to prevent the eradication of their race and not the Hutus and Tutsis? Why do we value their lives over those in Dafur? Both candidates were asked if they would use the military to stop genocides in areas such as Rwanda and Sudan and they both said that they would be cautious about using our military. Do I want Israel to get "Wiped off the map"? No. But, I do not believe that their lives are more valuable than those in other areas.