It has been a while since I posted anything. It is time I did so. We have begun a new year and it has been almost a year since a new president took office. I consider it awfully funny how his name is Obama and his VP is Biden... it seems really close to Osama (OBAMA) Bin Laden (BIn laDEN). Is that a reason to condemn the man? Of course not!! It is just curious, that is all.

Things seem pretty quiet here on the home front. Soldiers are now being sent to Afghanistan... any excuse for war machinery eh? So what is the excuse this time? Because I do not follow the daily news I do not keep up with the propaganda either. All I know is this. Soldiers for a nation that has said repeatedly we do not want to be at war are being sent in to fight yet another war. When will our 'no' mean anything? When will they finally listen to the voices of the people rather than the few who desire to control everything? When will our politicians finally do the bidding of the people who supposedly elected them to office? We need to revamp our political system obviously. Here are my preliminary plans for accomplishing just that when I am finally elected president of the US. Bear with me, I have a plan!

1) We must put safety measures in place to make sure election results cannot be rigged. I mean, that has to be the very first step or else we will continue to have mouthpieces in office who represent the minority of the people (the rich elitists I mean) who have gotten a chokehold on our country. We need to know that our votes really do count! And count the way we place them! Why not give everyone a number that they can check their vote against on a website to make sure their votes go in as they placed them? If you see where your presidential candidate is something other than the one who checked off, we know there is something wrong. And everyone should be required to show ID at the polling places. The old owner of my condo was still listed under my address as well as I was.... and I did not even have to show an ID to verify that I was who I said I was. I could have gone back later and voted under his name. What about Aunt Jenny who is in a nursing home... she certainly did not vote. Why does it show she did when I look up her social security number? (That would just show whether they voted, not their selection.)

2) We must hold politicians accountable to their campaign promises. Right now our politicians say anything to get the votes that put them in office and then they vote however the rich minority commands them to vote. So when a politician runs on the platform of say 'right-to-life' or 'pro-choice' either one, that is the way we should see him casting his votes once in office. When he or she says they will pull our soldiers, we should not see another war start before the original soldiers can even return home. We need our politicians to be accountable to US, the people who supposedly put them in office. (By the way, lobbyists need someone controlling their actions. Why should they have more clout than the rest of us? What ARE they saying when they meet with the various politicians anyway? Could it be blackmail based on information gleaned from the Patriot Act run amok? Many of us only assume they are being "bought" by the lobbyists and we even accept that docilely!)

3) We need to do away with the political party system. Why should we hold allegiance to one political party, be it republicans or democrats, just because our ancestors have been whichever for decades or whatever? And why should policies be based on your political party affiliation? Make your stand, state your case, and be your own person rather than a party person!!! Why pigeonhole yourself into mostly one of two categories when there are so many possible combination of beliefs out there??!! If I am registered as a democrat and I see someone running on the republican platform that matches my personal beliefs much more closely, I should not be sitting there hoping OTHERS choose him so that he (or she) makes it to the primaries. I should be able to choose from anyone among the throng and do my part in getting them elected.

4) We need a wider margin of error before a candidate can be elected. If there had been a wider margin of error, dunya (pardon the freudism, 'dubya') would have never succeeded in stealing the election. If it is THAT close, let's do this again!

5) There needs to be a huge 'hook' (like in the vaudeville days) where people elected can be pulled from office when it is obvious they are not doing what they were hired to do. Of course there would need to be safeguards in place or the rich minority would just use it to oust the good politicians and replace it with more of their own.

6) The political appointee situation needs to be overhauled. Politicians should not be allowed to bring in people to fill their plum positions simply because they have money, went to school with them, or whatever other reason. People should be put in these positions because they are the most qualified, not because of who they know or who they helped put in office or what they are willing to do in order to put forth a given agenda!!! The following are some examples of political appointees: the head of FEMA, the head of the FDA, the chief in charge of government procurement, and many many more. (Gee, how did Halliburton get all of those plum contracts, I wonder!)

As for the head of the FDA... Excuse me!! The head of the FDA should be the most unbased, non-prejudicial person there is!! He or she is supposed to be safeguarding OUR interests and our health. Yet according to the TIME article, Ol' dubya made a 33 year old the head of FEMA and his major claim to fame was that he expressed the belief that drugs were taking too long to get approved. Well, isn't THAT interesting! And daddy bush just happens to be on the Board of Directors for Eli Lilly while Donald Rumsfeld was the chairman of the board for Gilead Sciences... the originators of Tamiflu... which thankfully for us we had a huge supply of (well, thanks to dubya) when Obama took office. Isn't that convenient??? If you are like so many others who believe AIDS was man-made, maybe you too should be questioning whether the avian flu or the swine flu were actually man-made as well. If they were not initially man-made they could certainly be spread more prolifically in order to keep the big pharmaceutical companies rich!

As for Rumsfeld, he also made a killing off the sale of Nutrasweet. Look it up... the story provides very interesting reading. Rumsfeld was the CEO for Searle Pharmaceuticals, the same company that later bought Monsanto.

In January 1981 Rumsfeld told a sales meeting, according to one attendee, that he would call in his chips and get aspartame approved by the end of the year. On January 25th, the day the new president took office, the previous FDA commissioner's authority was suspended, and the next month, the commissioner's job went to Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes.

Transition records do not show why the administration chose Hayes, a professor and Defense Department contract researcher. In July Hayes, defying FDA advisors, approved aspartame for dry foods -- his first major decision. In November 1983 the FDA approved aspartame for soft drinks -- Hayes' last decision.

In November 1983 Hayes, under fire for accepting corporate gifts, left the agency and went to Searle's public-relations firm as senior medical advisor. Later Searle lawyer Robert Shapiro named aspartame NutraSweet. Monsanto purchased Searle. Rumsfeld received a $12 million bonus. Shapiro is now Monsanto president.

http://www.stevia.net/aspartame.htm

What is especially interesting is how Monsanto is the same company which invented "Agent Orange". They are a known CIA front or collaborator, whatever you want to call them. And that leads me straight to another political appointee - Clarence Thomas was the attorney for Monsanto when daddy bush chose him to be the US Supreme Court Justice. Hmmm, CIA front and George HW Bush puts him on the US Supreme Court. Funny... When the voting debacle went on where the US Supreme Court told Florida to stop recounting the votes, the honorable Clarence Thomas was one of the ones voting to halt the recount. He nor the others who stopped the recount could justify their actions for halting the recount. After it was too late to finish the recount in time, the Supreme Court told them they could continue it after all. One would think if they were the reason the deadline was not met, they would have allowed it so that the recount could be completed regardless of how long it took them. (Also please note that US Supreme Court Justices CAN be impeached. We do not have to keep them in office for their life.)

As a matter of fact, there are more than 3,000 positions a president can put his cronies into without going through the normal civil service hiring process. Some say the inspector generals who are supposed to oversee the process seem to have fallen in with the political games they are supposed to prevent from going on. Somebody has failed and we are all paying the price... well, everyone but the rich elitists that is. Let's stop the madness by 2012. Let's start the process right now rather than waiting though. We need OUR voices to be heard and listened to. We are, after all a democracy, right? Let's let it be a government of the common people rather than of the rich elitist people. It's going to take a lot of work but we can do it!