Plessner Chronicle Blog

Here’s a new Internet game we can all play!Will Sarah Palin:

1. Write a book about her family life, political career and the McCain-Palin campaign?

or will she

2. Write a book about her religion, her life and family experiences?

3. Become an inspirational speaker for Conservative women’s groups and Evangelical conventions and churches?

4. Become an afternoon television host on a talk show aimed at stay-at-home women?

5. Become the host of a FOX News show of rightwing pundits?

6. Become a popular speaker at Republican events and fund raising dinners?

7. Complete her term as Governor of Alaska,

or will she

8. Wait and campaign for president should McCain become unable to run in 2012?

9. Become as wealthy as Bill and Hillary Clinton were, at least before they dumped all their money into Hillary’s campaign?

10. Other? _____________________________________________

In any event, this campaign is Sarah Palin’s Cinderella moment, the adventure of a lifetime and she, her “hunk” of a husband and her large family will probably do well, as they should. After all, isn’t that what the American dream is all about?

But what do you think will happen to Sarah Palin?

Go to my BLOG at geraldplessner.com and share your ideas with all our readers. And don’t be nasty! Its been a long and sometimes tedious campaign so let’s have a little fun! I really want to know what you think!And why not share this with your friends?

And if you believe that a McCane presidency will be able to reduce our military commitments around the world or significantly improve our relations with friendly nations you may be in for a whole bunch of disappointments.

A new McCane presidency will be confronted with dozens of neo-conservative war hawks planted in the White House, the Defense and State Departments. They are avid in seeing America increase and extend its imperial footprint around the globe and especially in the oil rich Middle East.

A new administration — McCane or Obama — will not be able to replace those operatives fast enough to completely stop them from advancing the disastrous initiative they created in the Bush administration.

And some of those people, because they are vital to daily operations or because they have powerful benefactors, will inevitably be allowed to stay on to “insure a smooth transition”. Its how the system works.

Then there are the American oil companies and their partners in the Arab world; Dick Cheney and his buddies who want to secure control over Iraq’s oil exports.

The Bush administration’s negotiations to secure 50 permanent American bases in Iraq is intended to secure that source of supply and profits for American companies.

If George W. Bush is able to create a document that our Congress might approve, then he will have established generations-long American imperialism and the neo-conservatives will have achieved their original goal. Then the United States will be burdened with running an imperial empire to support international corporations, and American military men and women will continue to die unnecessarily for generations.

But there’s more. The oil industry will be followed by other corporations eager to keep the war machine alive. John McCane can talk about being a maverick but he is going to need money — lots of money — to finance his campaign. And he will take it gladly from all sorts of corporations that have an interest in providing military supplies, hardware, security services in war zones, along our borders and elsewhere.

There are also the research and development companies at work on new military hardware, much of it untested and outdated even before it is finally designed.

Although many of those programs have bloated budgets, questionable value and poor management, you can be sure that lobbyists and Members of Congress who want Federal money spent in their districts will pressure a McCane administration to show its gratitude to the people who helped finance his campaign.

And when it comes to reducing our troop strength in Iraq or withdrawing entirely, which will never happen in a Republican administration, a President John McCane would be acting against everything his party and he, through his entire adult life, has stood for.

And that ain’t gonna happen!

(You can comment on Gerald Plessner’s comments at his BLOG at geraldplessner.com.)

Of course it helped that I went through college in the same dorm with some of them — veterans of the Korean War, mostly — and a rowdy and randy bunch of characters they were! I was just a kid out of high school and they were men of the world who told great stories and raised a little good-natured Hell!

But as I grew older and formed the political outlook I have today, I realized how profoundly wise the G. I. Bill really was.

Not only did it give deserving ordinary Americans a chance to climb up the ladder to economic success and a better life. It also gave our country a burst of knowledge, intellect, creativity and initiative that led to things like computers, Silicon Valley, the Space Age, today’s quality of life, great new literature and art and just about everything good(and some of it questionable), that the United States has given to the world over the last 50 years!

And it did all that by helping every kind of American, male or female, black, white or brown, urban or rural, rich or poor.

Some of that money was wasted and there was fraud in some education that wasn’t delivered, but overall I still believe that the G. I. Bill was the best social legislation in history!

And that’s probably why George W. Bush(and John McCain) are opposed to it.

They say they are concerned that making a free college education so attractive will cause young people in our military to not re-enlist and that’s probably right.

But that’s like admitting it will discourage young people in the military from aspiring to a better life and that’s wrong!

(If you think I’m being racist or classist just look at the next list of Americans lost in Iraq and count how many come from small towns or count how many Senators or Congressional Representatives have children in the military.)

We must begin to understand one truth about our current national policy and how it impacts upon other issues.

The war on Iraq, and many other military activities are acts of imperialism and imperialistic states need professional rather than citizen militaries. A professional military will, of necessity, require large numbers of younger, less educated, lower class recruits.

Giving those recruits the chance to secure advanced education and move back to civilian life will make it much more difficult to maintain a professional military.

And that’s why you shouldn’t be surprised by the president’s position. I won’t be surprised by conservatives who will agree with him.

    John McCain is a nice guy — the sort of fellow you would want to travel with on a long vacation trip. He has an inspiring life story and a great personality but he has a long history of working with lobbyists who serve the interests of major corporations.

    McCane will not come to the White House with the clout or the flexibility needed to purge the building and the government of the neo-conservative Cheney machine or the lobbyists installed by president Bush. Those people now hold important regulatory and decision-making positions which are at the root of every failure and embarrassment of the Bush administration.

    The vice president’s staff is twice a large as the president’s and it has much greater influence on Bush administration policy than the president’s other advisors, according to an excellent series published by the Washington Post. That staff either writes, rewrites of scuttles every White House initiative that does or does not fit into Cheney’s neo-conservative, imperial presidency, corporate-interests-first mentality.

    The vice president has been the force behind our so-called war on terrorism. Through his staff he has guided the development of the policies on torture and the denial of civil rights, the illegal surveillance of Americans, the use of signing statements to void the legitimate actions of the Congress and the selection of Supreme Court justices. The concept of the imperial presidency is Dick Cheney’s guiding principle.

    Along with the vice president’s office, the State, Justice and Defense departments are now managed by neo-conservatives and other rightwing zealots largely chosen by Cheney and his cohorts.

    Every new president has the privilege of keeping or replacing hundreds of appointees who fill critical roles and it will be impossible for a president McCain to reduce the influence of the neo-conservatives now placed in so many critical positions. And there is no indication that he would want to.

    Even a Democratic president will need months to complete that task, giving the Cheney gang plenty of time to continue harming America and trashing our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

    And even if John McCain wanted to reduce their influence — which is doubtful given his admitted willingness to keep American troops in Iraq for as long as 50 years — he would have to replace them with other rightwing individuals and the same kind of lobbyists which the Bush administration has used to advance their corporate supporter’s interests. McCain is just as beholden to corporate special interests as Bush and Cheney.

    Tthat would mean that a McCain presidency would probably be more of the same — a Bush-like administration that cares little for the needs and concerns of average Americans or the world at large.

    In our lifetime we have seen a number of elections described as historic and world-changing. Some of them were. But given the harm that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their Republican sycophants in Congress have done to America and the world, the coming change in Washington must bring profound change, initiated by a president and a Democratic party committed to bringing the people back into the governance of their own democracy.

    We cannot suffer another four years of Cheneyism.

Rudy Giuliani’s hard-boiled approach is appealing to many Republican voters but too many Americans don’t believe that the president’s war on terrorism has made us any safer. His unattractiveness to the Republican religious right may remain a real problem for Giuliani.