Dear fellow Older American

September 15th, 2008 by Gerald Plessner

Posted in Conseratism | Click here to comment »

I’ll bet you are a lot like me. I have eight wonderful and healthy grandchildren who give me great joy. My three children are happy and successful parents, aunts and uncle.

Except for the fact that I lost my wife to a stroke a year ago, all-in-all life for me and my family is just fine.

But I wonder just how much of that good life we are going to leave to our grandchildren. Will they enjoy the American dream that you and I have been blessed with? Will they be able to go on to college, university or a first-rate technical education program?

Will our grandchildren be able to find good jobs with rewarding wages and a retirement as safe and secure as we have? What kind of life will their children have and will the world even be livable by the time they retire?

All of these thoughts come to mind because of the current political election which has, regrettably, turned from a road show into a soap opera and now into an embarrassment, one way or another, to every American.

You and I, at our age, have one last chance to turn things around for our grandchildren and it has to do with the 2008 presidential election. We know that most people our age are politically conservative with what are called traditional values. We also know that people like you and me have tended to vote Republican since the election of Ronald Reagan. But times have changed — quite drastically — and the Republican Party of today, despite what it’s leaders or candidates tell you, is not the party you joined when you were a “Reagan Democrat” or “Reagan Republican”.

I was a Republican long before that. My great-grandmother Flora, who cared for me when I was a toddler, was a Teddy Roosevelt Republican. Great-grandma Flora lost her husband Hermann to Influenza in 1889. He fought for the Union in the Civil War and they were both members of the original Republican Party, the one that elected Abraham Lincoln!

My grandfather Edward was a Republican patronage employee in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was born, and my mom and dad were both registered Republicans. I actually voted for Barry Goldwater for president and I’ll bet many of you did the same thing!

But things have changed since then and especially the Republican Party.

Republicans have always tended to be fiscal conservatives and small business people, but today’s Republican party is more reckless than Democrats ever were when it comes to money. Just look at the huge debt they are creating day by day!

And Republicans have done everything they can to kill small business. If you don’t believe that just look around your neighborhood for an independent drug store, filling station or grocery market.

Republicans were always more interested in solving domestic problems, but today’s Republican politicians are much more interested in being imperialists, sticking our nose in other country’s affairs and helping international businesses get bigger, ultimately at our citizens’ expense. Have you checked how much more it costs to fill up your automobile when you want to visit your grandchildren? I have!

And worst of all (in my opinion) the Republican Party is being run by a class of professionals who can only be called political criminals. Just look at their lying television commercials, their organization that is run by a majority of Washington lobbyists and the McCain campaign manager who is a registered lobbyist for the nation of Georgia!

In addition, the same neo-conservative operators who got us into an unjustified war on Iraq are John McCain’s best friends and advisors on international and military affairs!

I have believed for some time that American conservatism was on a losing slide to the dustbin of history. After what has happened in recent weeks,I’ve decided that John McCain’s choice of a modestly experienced, small state governor as his vice presidential candidate is the conclusive evidence of conservatism and the Republican Party’s disintegration. I believe the Republican Party — the one that played such a big role in my family’s life — is lost for all time and that is why you and I, while mourning our loss, must vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

For America’s sake and for our grandchildren’s future, I hope you agree.

Sincerely,

Gerald Plessner

Republicans are excellent liars!

September 9th, 2008 by Gerald Plessner

Posted in Election 2008, John McCain, Republican Party, Sarah Palin | Click here to comment »

Let’s be honest! Republicans are excellent liars! Their facts may at times be accurate or about just one individual or event, but their use of those facts, usually about another subject, ends up making Republicans liars and their statements untrue.

Let’s face the facts! Republican statements or claims are often just not true. They are lies! Their use of the word “elitists” to brand Democratic candidates and liberal or progressive voters is a lie. The Republican propaganda machine(that is what the Republican-FOX News joint disinformation effort really is) has done an amazing job of smearing Democrats and liberals with crimes the Republicans have themselves committed.

Take the case of calling Democrats the party of Spend! Spend! Spend! when the Bush presidency has been the most financially reckless presidency, spending the Clinton budget surplus and then running up the national debt by trillions of dollars! And it was all done with the help of a Republican controlled Congress.

The Republicans are truly the party of the elitists, not the Democrats. The Republican party is controlled by business interests that have billions to spend on elections, billions they have received largely because of tax breaks given to them by Republicans and withheld from middle and working class Americans.

And to enhance the wealth of the members of their own elite class, the Republican party has created a new category of welfare recipients — contractors who do the work of dismissed government employees at much greater cost, while taxpayers are told that contractors are cheaper, more efficient and more competent. That’s another lie!

The other factions in the Republican party — the white lower class, Evangelicals, other conservative voters, anti-immigration zealots and people like the Alaskans who want to leave the United States and become a separate country — are manipulated into thinking they have real control over their party when they actually don’t. It is the party of the elitists.

The worst and potentially most dangerous truth about the Republican party is its anti-intellectualism. At a time in history when we are faced with the growing technological superiority of countries like India and China, the last thing America needs is unqualified leaders and a hatred of knowledge and intellectual capacity.

While our economy is in a Republican-built toilet, the last thing America needs is more of the Republican “let big business do whatever it wants” philosophy.

The Republican party uses its lower class followers — the ones who have lost their jobs because of the Republican elite’s love of “fair trade”, another liar’s catchphrase. And those Americans who have lost their homes can thank the Republican hatred of regulation of the banking industry for their plight.

Now the Republicans want us to elect two seriously deficient candidates — dare we say incompetent candidates — for president and vice president of the United States.

American voters must understand that John McCain is absolutely NOT ready for the presidency and Sarah Palin is a less qualified candidate than even Dan Quayle.

McCain’s history of impulsive behavior — as when he nominated a candidate for vice president without any real vetting— is just one example of his lack of management skills.

McCain’s record of uncontrollable anger, which he admits has bedeviled him over his entire life, makes him a dangerous candidate for president. Do we really need a president who cannot control his temper holding the passwords to our nuclear weapons?

Voters shouldn’t believe the fable that McCain is a maverick! John McCain has voted with George W. Bush 95% of the time on the issues of war and spending! The truth is that he is controlled by the same people who guide George W. Bush. They are the same power players in the Republican party’s elite.

Most troubling is McCain’s involvement with the imperialist neo-conservative movement that lied us into an illegal and immoral war against Iraq, which had no roll in the atrocities of September 11, 2001 and never held nuclear weapons. McCain’s campaign manager is a leading neo-conservative think-tanker and an agent of a foreign power, Georgia. That involvement appears to be conflict of interest and a potential cause to question his loyalty to the United States.

John McCain’s choice for vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, would be laughable if it weren’t so dangerous. During the evening when Palin’s selection was announce, Cindy McCain, John’s trophy wife stated, “She has international experience. Alaska is the state closest to Russia and Canada!”

Though Sarah Palin is both attractive and obviously intelligent, her experiences in politics limited and her knowledge of world affairs appear nonexistent. Her views on cultural and social issues, though attractive to a large group of Republican voters, are at odds with what most Americans believe is the right course for this country.

And her family, though photogenic, reflects a lack of good parental example or personal discipline. Though she is opposed to sex education in school for teenage children, she has been confronted by a daughter who became pregnant while in high school. One must wonder at her parenting skills and her lack of ability in guiding her own children, let alone the families of all Americans.

While we respect her’s and her husband’s desire to have as many children as they wish, we must wonder how a woman of her intellect, sophistication and age could have made the irresponsible decision to have another child, given the wide-spread understanding of the danger of such a union producing a Down’s Syndrome baby.

If the people elect John McCain and Sarah Palin one must fear for the survival of the United States as a nation and our society as one of justice and freedom.

We surely do not need another four years of Bush-Cheney management skills and stupidity.

The McCain Palin selection

September 2nd, 2008 by Gerald Plessner

Posted in Election 2008, John McCain, Republican Party | Click here to comment »

John McCain is the last person America needs answering that 3:00 a.m. phone call in the white House!
With his shoot-from-the-hip tendencies and his irresponsible decision to select a vice-residential running mate with zero experience in world affairs or Washington politics, John McCain has once again shown his utter lack of qualification to hold the
And this has nothing to do with Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s possible sordid family history, her religious zealotry, how many Alaskan political reprobates she has gotten rid of or her Caribou-killing or moose-stewing passtimes.
I am the father of two daughters about Sarah Palin’s age, both of whom are successful career women. The eldest owns a 900 cc motorcycle which she rides on Southern California freeways and a wakeboard power boat on Lake Mead. So don’t think for a minute that I am anti outdoors-woman or anti-feminist! (After writing the above I had to add: And neither daughter ever had a child or grandchild out of wedlock!)
John McCain’s choice of Palin has turned from dangerous to sordid to ridiculous! And the supreme irony is that it is not all McCain’s fault! He was compelled to go about it as he did because the forces within the corrupt Republican party are too self-centered, too greedy and too power hungry. And they cannot hold themselves together long enough to create a program that a majority of Americans will support.
Thankfully, American voters are beginning to understand what the miserable Republican leadership has done to America over the last twenty years. And its not only about George Bush and Dick Cheney!
This isn’t about Sarah Palin or her record either. It is about the other unqualified Republican officials rumored to have been considered. Its about the need for a deliberative, open and democratic process that chooses the best, most qualified, adequately experienced candidate for vice-president.
It is about a system that thinks about America first and about corporate greed, religious zealotry and chest-beating, imperialistic, phony patriotism dead last!
But the Republican party is so divided, so dominated by its religious factions, so controlled by big business, the neo-conservative Washington think tanks and a core of political criminals like Karl Rove, that it can’t even look out for itself, let alone the American people.
One has to have sympathy for Sarah Palin and her family. She must have been floored when John McCain called and her family must have been overwhelmed.
But now it is time to put all of that aside. And it is time for the Republican party to begin to show its good faith to the American people by cleaning up its act, in the vice-presidential candidate voting process and in how it might govern the United States of America in the future.
The most distant future we might add!