The Phil Staudt Blog

Phil Staudt Blog Article

2012-03-13T22:27:29Z

Phil Staudt is now posting his blog articles on philstaudtblog.com.

Offshore Drilling Disaster - What A Plan

2010-05-22T03:00:00Z

Offshore Drilling Disaster - What A Plan

By Phil Staudt
May 21, 2010

I did not vote for this administration, nor the last administration. But isn't this President the one who blamed the last President for how he handled a hurricane? And isn't this much worse? And wasn't this disaster caused by failed government policies and regulations, instead of a natural storm? We need some politicians that do their job, and this is more proof that it ain't gonna happen with Republicans or Democrats.

Republican Voters Are To Blame For Health Care Reform and Democrat Control

2010-03-22T22:25:00Z

Republican Voters Are To Blame For Health Care Reform and Democrat Control

By Phil Staudt
March 22, 2010

Or, I guess I could also say that Republican Voters are to thank for health care reform and Democrat control, depending on whether or not you like it. My opinions on the health care reform bill that was passed yesterday in The House of Representatives are being saved for when it gets signed into law, so I can see all the changes and then form an opinion.

I don't like the Republican Party or the Democrat Party, and I want to see everybody win no matter what political party they are in. I am appalled by people on both sides, who display disrespectful and childish and rude behavior, and talk and write and yell in a way that makes people think that they are not very loving and kind human beings. To people on both sides, who are convinced that they are correct and others are wrong, and want to be heard, what I would say to them, is that people do not care about how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Voting for the lesser of two evils, is still voting for evil. Until voters in America stop thinking that they need to pick a political party and be true to it come hell or high water, we are going to keep ending up with evil, more or less. All the money that is funneled to the Republican Party and the Democrat Party, guarantees us a not-so-desirable outcome.

The Democrats owe their majority rule to the Republicans for doing such a bad job when they were on top. Actually, the re-election of G.W. Bush in 2004 is what got the Democrats into power. That was the beginning of the end of the GOP, unless they can figure out a way, in the future, to win the hearts and minds of the American voters. Americans had a chance to see the Republicans show their true colors when they controlled everything, and there was record debt and record deals, favoring the super-rich and hurting average Americans, climaxed by Bush pushing through the $700 billion bail-out for his buddies who are dirty rotten bankers and AIG. Now Republicans are the minority party, and all they have to offer is trying to convince more than 40% of the country that the other side is horrible, but it ain't working. (They better come up with something better than that if they want to be in power again.) If the GOP had done what they say they are for, instead of doing what they say they are against, they would not be in this pickle.

The Republicans and conservatives are belly-aching about health care reform and the stimulus bill and all the debt has been racked up since Barack Obama became President. But the truth is, that the reason the Democrats are in control of the Senate and The House and the Whitehouse, and can hand-pick any new Supreme Court Justice they want, is all because of elected Republican officials who have abused their offices and have betrayed the American people, many times over during the 20 out of 28 years that the United States had a Bush as President or Vice President of the United States of America.

Independent voters are supposedly growing in numbers, so they say. I am not so sure that the bulk of these self-proclaimed independents are not just hard-core Republicans calling themselves "independent" in order to get the attention of people who have been turned off by the antics of the Republican Party and Bush. I would love to see a lot of truly honest independent voters in the upcoming elections, who are interested in voting based on ALL the issues, not just a few sticking points picked by a few politicians and the media.

By Phil Staudt
March 22, 2010

Stopping US Mail delivery on Saturday is Good Idea

2010-03-02T17:00:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

United States Postal Service may stop Saturday delivery


by Phil Staudt March 3, 2010

Stopping US Mail Delivery on Saturday is a Good Idea - it's about time!

Written by Phil Staudt
March 3, 2010

Who needs mail on Saturday? Who needs mail more than 3 days a week? If you want less government, start scaling down the United States Postal Service. If the US Mail finds a way to be profitable on the days it is open, and can be profitable delivering mail five days, then go for it. But there is no reason for our country to borrow more money from China to have mail delivered on Saturday, or even more than three days a week.

According to news articles today, the United States Postal service is considering dropping mail service on Saturday. It needs to pass the approval of Congress, which means all the politicians who are up for election will stand up and spout off and try to get their mugs in front of the camera, and waste even more tax payer dollars debating this. I can already hear the stories from the politicians about how their grandpappy was a mail courier, or how wonderful it was to get mail as a child.

Look, we do not need to throw away any more tax dollars. Having mail delivered on Saturday is just throwing away money.

Of course, there is the issue of jobs. The prevailing sentiment on Capitol Hill seems to be that the way to lower unemployment is to borrow money from China to pay for jobs doing useless and meaningless things. So I am sure there will be an outcry from legislators who want to keep on having the mail delivered on Saturday to save jobs. I am all in favor of jobs, and if the government is going to use borrowed money to create or keep jobs, they could come up with productive ways to do that where we would actually have something to show for the money being spent. Went Hoover borrowed money to create jobs, we ended up with a dam that is still providing power today. When Eisenhower borrowed money to create jobs, we ended up with an interstate freeway system all over America. When Reagan borrowed money to create jobs, we ended up with a strong technologically advanced military that kept our predators from planning to attack us. (And the military defense build-up was money going to United States companies, not paying workers in other countries.) But Obama and Congress have spent more money in the past year than all of those spending sprees combined. And what are we getting?

Then there is email and social network messaging. Many things that used to be delivered via the US Mail are now being sent via the Internet. It does not make any sense at all to try to keep the United States Postal Service going at the same pace, with the same expenses, of the last century. Scale it down, cut back on expenses, and let free enterprise do the rest.

The United States does not need mail on Saturday, and cannot afford it.

Written by Phil Staudt
March 3, 2010

Postal Service Could Lose $7 Billion in 2010, Top Official Says
FoxNews
The U.S. Postal Service could lose a staggering $7 billion this year, Postmaster General John Potter said Tuesday, as he began to outline a proposed overhaul of the nation's mail service that could include cutting Saturday delivery....click here

Postal Service's emerging model: Never on Saturday
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service is increasing the pressure for dropping Saturday home delivery as it seeks to fend off massive financial losses. Postmaster General John Potter is also expected to raise the possibility of higher rates Tuesday in a speech to postal-related businesses and officials....click here

Postal Service Talking Again About No Saturday Delivery; Congress Must Say OK
NPR
By Mark Memmott
There's been talk for nearly a year that Saturday mail delivery might be on the way out as the U.S. Postal Service looks for ways to cut its billion-dollar-plus annual losses....click here

U.S. Postal Service Seeks to Raise Rates, End Saturday Delivery
Wall Street Journal
By Judith Burns
WASHINGTON—U.S. Postmaster General John Potter expects to deliver more bad news Tuesday to postal customers, employees and Congress, revealing forecasts for continued losses that can be stanched only with higher prices and reduced service....click here

US Postal Service may scrap Saturday deliveries
New York Post
The U.S. Postal Service was expected to move towards reducing its delivery service from six days a week to five, according to reports Tuesday. Postmaster General John Potter said a dramatic reshaping of the agency and significant changes to mail delivery were critical to reducing its massive debt, USA Today reported....click here

by Phil Staudt
March 2, 2010

Seeking Real People for Networking

2010-02-23T00:01:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

SEEKING REAL PEOPLE SOCIAL NETWORKING


by Phil Staudt February 22, 2010

I Am Seeking REAL People Who Are Interested In Internet Marketing

Written by Phil Staudt
February 22, 2010

You don't have to buy anything from me or join any of the marketing programs I am in, but let me know if you are a real person who learned how to play with others on the playground, and want to network with others who are interested in Internet marketing. I am seeking persons with whom I can build good working business-oriented relationships. I am constantly looking for people who I can acknowledge and promote, and learn from, who are more than just one-sided billboards. Please let me know if you are real person, who is interested in sales and marketing.

One of my twitter accounts has the user name "VegasTaxiDriver". About two weeks after I started the account, I went through all of the direct messages that people sent me on twitter. It was amazing to me how many messages said, "What do you do for a living?". Pay attention people! I am not a taxi driver now, but that is obviously a canned message, just like a lot of the stuff I sort through in my inboxes, or at least the inboxes I actually go through after they go through all my spam filters.

I do not mind giving other people shout-outs and recognition, but if you are looking for another groupie to follow you around like a lost puppy dog, count me out.

SELF PROMOTION AND SOCIAL NETWORKING

What I see all the time on facebook and twitter and myspace and blogs and websites, is that the trend of today for marketers, seems to be to market themselves first, and try to impress everybody with how great they are. This approach did not make people successful before the Internet, and just because you cannot see how turned off people are, because they are looking at you on a computer screen in their home, does not mean that it is any less of a turn-off.

There are too many people who tell me how great they are BECAUSE they are an author, or tell me that I should read their book, or watch or video or join a program, because they are such a great person, instead of promoting what is IN their book, or explaining to me the value of the contents in the book, and telling me why I would like reading this book, or joining a program. Somehow they want me to think that I should read their book, or watch a video, or join a marketing program, because they are smarter than me, or more experienced than me, or just plain better than me. And I guess I am supposed to follow them around every where, and pay them money, so that I can hope to maybe somehow aspire to be almost as great as them. And this is supposed to be marketing?

Look, we are all in this together. It is not how much I know, or how much you know, or who is better. Zig Ziglar says "people do not care how much you know, until they know how much you care". That does not mean that you should put yourself down or not tell people about your accomplishments, but when you present yourself to people, who may end up being prospective customers, or may refer you to somebody else some day, don't try to portray yourself as superman or superwoman, or the saviour of the marketing world. If you take a look around in the world of social networking, and social media marketing, you will find that there are already more than enough people doing that approach. We don't need any more.

"Me, me, me, my, my, mine..."

...is what it looks like to me that so many people are saying on the Internet. It is as if these gurus and coaches and mentors and experts and authors and speakers and marketing pros, are all standing on the same street corner yelling at the top of their lungs, and they think that whoever shouts the loudest or the most wins. Maybe that is just my perception, and maybe these people might be real decent folks, but I will never get far enough to find out, because they turn me off on page one.

Work with me, network with me, respect me, and I will do the same for you. Don't follow me, because I am not going to follow you. I don't want a mentor, or coach, or a guru. There is nothing wrong with being a mentor, coach, or guru, but that is not WHO you are, that is WHAT you are, and I am more interested in what kind of person you are than what title you give yourself. That does not mean I won't read what you write or say, because I might. But what I am really interested in, when it comes to social networking and social media marketing, is being associated with, and connected with, people who I can network with, and work together with, in an environment of mutual respect and reciprocity. That is the way that I believe networking is supposed to be.

I know that it made sense to be a real person and care about others before the Internet, and when it comes to networking, it is still true today. Dale Carnegie said that "people want to have a feeling of importance", and if you can make people feel that you acknowledge them as an important person, with a unique set of circumstances and situations that they have had to overcome in life, then they are a lot more willing to actually pay attention to what you have to say.

When it comes to Internet marketing, and being up on the latest techie stuff, I am a novice. So, if being impressed with how many Rolls Royce's a person owns, or the style of their website, is what you pay attention to, then there is no reason to ever read anything that I write. But I have worked for a lot of companies and have owned a few small businesses, and I know what it is to struggle and scrape by, and I have had ups and downs, just like most people whom I have met. If you are one of the privileged people, who have had everything handed to you, then you probably would have a hard time understanding where I come from. But that is okay, you can be my friend any way.

Just Be Real!

When the Internet was brand new, those who knew how to put up a website and take an order with a credit card, had an easy time making money online. But that was short-lived. When something stinks, it attracts a lot of flies, and that is what happened with Internet sales. The more advanced and determined proprietors, kept finding out new ways to keep making money online. As the years rolled on, there was email, chat, blogging, myspace, facebook, twitter, youtube, iphones, skype, and hundreds of social networking websites along the way. But the way money is made when something is new, is not necessarily the way to build a long term sustainable business that will keep growing over time.

If a new restaurant opens up in a "hot" location, surrounded by new retail stores and big entertainment attractions, there will be an immediate surge of customers who want to try out the "new place". After nine months, then you can find out how good the restaurant is, and how good of a fit it is in that location, by whether or not it can stand the test of time, and whether it gains in popularity, or it goes out of business. Network marketing, especially Internet marketing, is no different. Don't try building a high-rise without laying the foundation.

The Opposite of the Shotgun Approach.

The shotgun approach is fine when it comes to Internet marketing, as long you keep changing and adapting to each and every new twist that major search engines put in place, or if you have a lot of extra money to throw at something. But for small potatoes like me, it is better to build some solid bridges with real people who have character and are building good business relationships with other real people. I am constantly looking for people who are interested in others. Aren't you?

One time I went to work at a small bar as a part time manager. I did not know any of the customers. I put a steno pad next to the cash register. Every time I served a new customer, I wrote down the name of the customer and what they drank. At the beginning of each shift, I studied my list of customers on my steno pad, and I visualized each one of them. As a result, I quickly had good relationships with many customers, made good tips, and went on to be the general manager, and that little dead bar became one of the busiest bars in the State of Oregon.

When it comes to Internet marketing, I have a list of real people I have met during the last year, on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook. The people are not people who just send me to a generic page with an affiliate tracking code, or send me fake messages that are sent out to everybody they can. The people on my list, who I want to network with, are real people who acknowledge that I am a real person.

The old saying is that "you have to be a friend to have a friend". That is true in social networking. Right now I am building a list of people who are interested in Internet marketing, whether they have extensive experience, or are just getting started. I am surrounding myself with people who are heading down the same path as me. By myself, I know I can get some things done; but by being a part of a network with others who have similar interests and goals, we can all succeed together.

Maybe I am totally wrong, and what I should really be doing is just throwing as much garbage on the Internet as possible, and hope some of it sticks. There seems to me like there are plenty of garbage throwers already. Even if it is the wrong thing to do, I will take a chance on doing some honest-to-goodness networking, any way.

If you are a person who is interesting in Internet marketing, and likes to network with success-oriented entrepreneur-minded people, and would like to network with me, then please join me, and tell me about yourself so we can learn from each other.

Phil Staudt has a facebook fan page,
and also has a personal facebook page.
Phil Staudt is on myspace.
Phil Staudt is on OrangeLeads.
Phil staudt is on twitter: @philstaudt @philbucks @vegastaxidriver @portaldirectors @vipwealthclub
Phil Staudt has several websites and blogs, including PhilStaudt.org, PhilBucks.com, PortalDirectors.com, 2010WorkAtHome.com, and VegasTaxiDriver.com.

The best way to network with Phil Staudt, is to send me a non-spam comment on this article or send me a private message on orangeleads or facebook.

Success to you!

Written by Phil Staudt
February 22, 2010

by Phil Staudt
February 2, 2010

Tags: networking real friends people networking real friends people

Roofing and Roof Repair in Portland Oregon

2010-02-22T22:20:00Z

FEBRUARY ROOFING SPECIAL IN PORTLAND, OREGON

If you have not heard about it, my brother-in-law, Jim Schlatter, is a licensed general contractor in Portland, Oregon, and owns a roofing company called "A Roof Above". If you were thinking about getting a new roof or getting some roofing repairs on the old roof, then you should give him a call, because he is giving discounts if you get your roofing job signed in February.

Since I grew up in the Portland area, I know how hard it can be to get a good roofer when spring time rolls around, with all the wind and rain. So right now would be a great time to get the roof taken care of, before all that nasty weather hits during the spring.

Well, I hope everybody has a nice spring up there in Portland, and hope everybody tries to stay dry. I live in Las Vegas now, and I am glad we don't have all the rain that you do up in Portland.

Have a good one and happy roofing!

Phil Staudt

Roofing and Roof Repair in Portland Oregon.

The Social Networking Media Mouse Maze

2010-02-17T19:21:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

The Social Networking

Media Mouse Maze


by Phil Staudt February 17, 2010

The Social Network Website Media Mouse Maze

Written by Phil Staudt
February 17, 2010

Social media marketing and social networking are phrases that keep popping up everywhere. Of course, I am sure that these phrases are totally cliche and out of date by now, because I am not in the know. There are as many social networking websites as there are people living in China, or so it seems. You try to pick which new ones, or even old ones, that will matter later on. But the truth, unless you are an insider in geek circles, when it comes to social networking, you are just like a blind-folded mouse trying to find some cheese in a maze, and the cheese keeps moving.

After I heard the word "blog" on the news many years ago, and people started being titled as "bloggers" on the major news networks, I figured it was time to check it out. So I started some blog accounts and figured out how to get some blog articles online, and even get them listed on google's blog search. But everybody who knew how to write a program started flooding the blogosphere with so much nonsense and garbage and re-directs, that blogging turns into a tsunami of stupidity. And my blog articles got lost in the hurricane. I learned how to do pinging to get my blog articles listed. But if you ping too much, you get banned from the blog search, but if you don't don't blog enough and kiss up to the right blogging websites, nobody will see anything you blog about.

Then I hear that Myspace was this wildly popular people magnet. I remember all the time I spent learning how to get friends on Myspace and put together the CSS and html so that my Myspace page would look presentable, because that was the future train and I was told I better be on it. I figured out how to get a whole bunch of people on my Myspace page, just about the time that I was told that I should be on Facebook instead, because that was where the good people are, and Myspace was just for kids and bands. I still have a Myspace account, but if I log onto Myspace computer that has Vista (don't even mention Windows 7) nobody can see my profile picture on Myspace, and half of the profile pictures of my so-called friends on Myspace don't come up either. I probably would have fixed my Myspace account a long time ago, but every time I go to a page on Myspace, I have to wait for 50 ads and videos and audio to get loaded.

Less than a year ago, I started my Facebook account, just because my sisters, who live in a city far far away from me where it rains all the time, are on Facebook. So I found some long lost relatives (actually, I am the long lost one), and figured out how to use it. Since then, Facebook has turned everything upside down and changed the feeds a few times. But I found out many months ago that having a Facebook Fan Page was the way to go, because it is a public page. So, I started one, for a blog I have. The day I started it, I went to settings and I was glad to see that I could select a URL. My blog was about driving taxi in Las Vegas, so I wanted my URL for my Facebook Fan Page to be vegastaxidriver. Facebook asked me if I wanted it for sure, and that a change would make it permanent, I figured why not, besides it was just my first fan page on Facebook and I wanted to see how it worked. Now, because I figured it out too late, my personal Facebook url is now permanently set to facebook.com/vegastaxidriver, with no recourse, because the Facebook gods decided that on the 2nd day of Facebook creation, or whenever it was, that just because you are on your Facebook Fan Page, does not mean that the "settings" link from there is for your Facebook Fan Page. Of course, I should have known that, but my magic wand and crystal ball were misplaced that day, and my blindfold was on and I couldn't smell the cheese. Now I finally have a Facebook Fan Page for Phil Staudt.

After building up hundreds of thousands of followers on several Twitter accounts, just by manually following and tweeting and retweeting (not even using automation), a couple of my Twitter accounts got suspended by Twitter for no good reason. I kept the ones I had, and started using some automation for posting and such. About the time i figured out to get some good responses from real people on Twitter, came up with their lists. I have used them some, but I don't really care enough about trying to keep up with the Twitter changes to invest very much in list making on Twitter.

Last week it was Google Buzz. Woo hoo! But I don't use my gmail account. The email that goes to my 100+ email accounts is all forwarded to an email account that belongs to a website I have hosted on godaddy. I know how to sort and filter and organize my email there. I don't use email much any more, for the same reason that I do not drink dirty water that is down-stream from a polluted factory. But guess what - to use Google Buzz I have to use my gmail account - even though I have Google profile and reader and blogger all set up with my personal email that is not gmail. (Didn't Microsoft have to pay a bunch of money for something like that?) I suppose I should just can all the email accounts and bow down to google for everything, but my email is good enough for what I do, and I don't need another email service. That is why I stopped using AOL.

Today I found out that Technorati had this very blog unlisted, even though I wasted a bunch of time to get my blog claimed by Technorati a year ago, and the articles on this blog were listed before on Technorati. But Technorati has made changes in the past two months on how blogs get claimed, and I was thrown under the truck with many others who were posting complaints.

Look, I understand that social networking and technology and spamming and iphones and hacking and blogging are all moving at supersonic speed, and I understand that keeping up with trends and data bases and security is way beyond my comprehension, but aren't these people, for the most part, the people who are against the impersonal robotic capitalistic people who are "ruining" the Interenet. But in order to police the Internet, so that it will be good for everyone, they have decided to pick whom they like, push everyone else aside, censor some and spotlight others, with no accessibilty or transparency or explanations or regard. And these are the people who are going to make the Internet "good"??? Yikes!!!

Here is an idea, folks. Maybe it would be nice if politicians and corporations and organizations and entities and people in power, AND the people setting up and running these popular social networks, would act like human beings with blood flowing through their veins, instead of ruthless heartless uncaring czars, the world and this country would be a better place. Hopefully, my observations are just a bi-product of my ignorance and lack of understanding, and everyone is really good-hearted and has good intentions.

Just saying. (Not like anyone will see this article any way.)

Disclaimer: If you cannot tell by my sarcasm, there is no intention to put anyone down in particular. My criticism is directed at society as a whole. File this one under "Murphy's Law".


by Phil Staudt February 17, 2010

Tags: social media networking blogging social media networking blogging

Feb Roofing Special Portland Roofing by A Roof Above and Jim Schlatter

2010-02-17T04:38:00Z

Jim Schlatter And A Roof Above Construction

Does Roofing in Portland Oregon

A Roof Above Construction is a company based in Portland, Oregon


by Phil Staudt February 16, 2010

Are you looking for a good roofing contractor in Portland, Oregon? You are in luck, because my brother-in-law, Jim Schlatter, owns a roofing company, A Roof Above Construction Company. Call him today and get a free estimate.

A Roof Above Construction is a company based in Portland, Oregon that specializes in roofing, roofing repair, gutters, skylights, solar tubes, windows, and siding. A Roof Above is a full service roofing and repair company serving the Portland Metro area and NW Oregon. We are licensed, bonded and insured, and all our installers are Master Certified. A Roof Above does all types of roofing installation, gutters, repairs, decks, windows, siding, and maintenance.

FEBRUARY 2010 SPECIAL >

A Roof Above, a Portland roofing company and lic. general contractor, is offering a 5% discount for full roofing jobs signed in February! Call 503-258-2910 in the Portland metro area, Oregon.

A Roof Above is a licensed general contractor and is bonded and insured. A Roof Above is committed to providing the homeowner with a positive experience. At A Roof Above, we know that having roofing, roofing repair, gutters, skylights, solar tubes, windows, and siding done on your home can be stressful, so we strive to be courteous and respectful, and leave the job site orderly, and answer any questions you may have. We not only promise to deliver exceptional results, we promise a pleasurable experience. We handle everything from prep to clean up. And, yes, we do leave the site absolutely clean. If there is any way we can make the experience more pleasant, please let us know and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Jim Schlatter began roofing in 1998, working for a high-end metal roofing company. He wanted the freedom to offer a higher level of customer service and reasonable prices, so he started his own business in 2001. Since then, the business has grown to several crews, and Jim has maintained his high standard of conduct for all his employees, and interacts personally with each customer. His success is proven by his reputation for quality, honesty, and satisfied customers. Jim will use his years of experience and product knowledge to give you the best price possible.

Picking a roofer in Portland can mean the difference between a happy winter and a wet mess. A roof is the covering on the uppermost part of a building. A roof protects the building and its contents from the effects of weather. Roofing is undoubtedly the second-most important part of a home. Rain, snow, dust and dirt are kept outside by roofing materials. Receive free price estimates on new roof installation, reroofing & repair. Need a Roofer? Get a Quote from a Local Roofer Today! Let a professional install and repair roofing. Jim Schlatter provides high quality craftsmanship for your roof installation, windows, and gutters. When it comes to getting a new roof, the first question is usually, "What's it going to cost?" Get a free estimate. Entrust your roof to a professional roofer. Portland, Oregon licensed general contractor for all your roof repair, installation & replacement jobs.

A Roof Above Construction Company specializes in new roof, roof repair, roof maintenance, siding, and windows. Commercial and industry roofing construction designed to accommodate all major repair needs for homes. Roofing, siding, gutters, windows, doors and decks contractor. A Roof Above offers a full-range of commercial roofing services, including re-roofing, roof repair, new construction and maintenance. Looking for a dependable residential roofing contractor in Portland, Oregon? A Roof Above is a full service roofing company based out of Portland, Oregon, doing business in Gresham, Fairview, Troutdale, Milwaukie, Boring, Happy Valley, Gladstone, Clackamas, Beaverton, Sherwood, Tualatin, West Linn, Lake Oswego, Oregon City, Sellwood, Laurelhurst, Parkrose, and other areas around the Portland, Oregon metro area. Roof repair experts providing roof repair services and roof repair maintenance. Commercial and residential repair, Portland, Oregon.

A Roof Above is committed to providing its customers energy efficient & environmentally friendly roofing solutions that are professionally installed. Jim Schlatter re-roofs residential roofs in the greater Seattle area. A Roof Above strives to provide only the highest standards of quality service. Portland roofing contractor provides roofing roof inspections and roofer repairs to the Portland area. A Roof Above works with residential and commercial customers to achieve total satisfaction for their roofing needs. Our experience and reputation with our roofing customers shows our dedication to doing a great job for homeowners, property owners, and/or property managers. Jim Schlatter specializes in roof repairs, repair diagnosis, roof inspection, preventive roof maintenance, and most types of re-roofing.

A Roof Above is a family owned residential roofing contractor serving Portland, Oregon since 2001. We understand the work we do on the outside of your house makes living better inside your house. Jim Schlatter provides vinyl siding, window replacement contractor and roofer services. There are many types of roofing materials—some of which are brand new—with a range of plusses and negatives. For something as important as a roof over your head count on A Roof Above to be your roofing contractor and roof repair company in the Portland area.

Your next roof will be exactly as good and as trustworthy as the team behind it. Consumers increasingly demand high performance roof systems that meet or exceed quality high performance and longevity standards. Whether your roof is watertight or has a gaping hole in it, or if you have a simple question or are in need of some detailed roofing advice, then call A Roof Above Construction.

In Portland, Oregon, if you need roofing, roofing repair, gutters, skylights, solar tubes, windows, and siding, A Roof Above is the company to call. Our specialty is roofing, roofing repair, gutters, skylights, solar tubes, windows, and siding.

We encourage you to check out any potential contractor, including us, with the Construction Contractor’s Board at:

https://ccbed.ccb.state.or.us/ccb_frames/consumer_info/ccb_index.htm

* Verify that their license is active
* If the contractor uses employees verify that the contractor is “non-exempt”

A Roof Above specializes in quality service at a reasonable price! Call 503-258-1920 today for your free estimate.


by Phil Staudt February 16, 2010

A Roof Above Construction
CCB#147271
jim@aroofaboveconstruction.com
503-258-1920

http://aroofaboveconstruction.com

Tags: Portland roofing Schlatter contractor Portland roofing Schlatter contractor

Las Vegas Cabbie Makes Money Online

A Roof Above Construction
CCB#147271
jim@aroofaboveconstruction.com
503-258-1920

http://aroofaboveconstruction.com

The Dreaded Poetry Book and My Creative Writing Teacher

2010-02-15T23:15:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

"I Hate Poems"

Gladstone High School

My creative writing class in 1975


by Phil Staudt February 15, 2010

Teacher of the 20th Century - Dorothy Kembel Sawyer

In 1987, I was working in a restaurant in Kansas City, and I was reading the newspaper, and I saw an article about the National Teacher of the Year Award. They had a list of all the teacher of the year awards for each State, and the teacher of the year in Oregon for 1987 was Dorothy Sawyer from Gladstone High School. I agreed 100% with their choice. I was a student in one of her classes, and she made an impact on me that I never forgot.

Written by Phil Staudt
February 15, 2010

Here is a story I have told to many people I have met many times over the years, but it has never been written down. That in itself is ironic, since the story is about a teacher I had in high school, who was a writing teacher. I think I have the story fairly accurate, even after a few decades.

About 35 years ago, in the small town of Gladstone, Oregon, I was a student at Gladstone High School. I was not a good student, by any stretch of imagination. I hated school. That hatred began in the 4th grade, many years before I met Mrs. Sawyer, but unfortunately for her, she was affected by my deep-seated dislike for the educational establishment.

During my sophomore year in high school, I picked "Creative Writing" as my language course for one semester. Mrs. Sawyer was the teacher of that class, and she was highly esteemed by all the students and teachers at school, and both of my older sisters liked her. So I was thinking to myself that I was going to enjoy this class, because I loved to sit down and write things in my journal, and I was always writing long letters to friends I had in far away in places. (That is what people did before Facebook.) I had even written a play, and produced and directed it, for the church I belonged to when I was growing up. Since I was forced to attend school, I felt good about being enrolled in a creative writing class.

In the first week of that class, Mrs. Sawyer explained what we would be doing throughout the semester. As part of that creative writing class, we would be spending most of our time doing poetry and putting together a poetry book. As this was being explained, my blood started to boil. I did not want to be in a poetry class. I wanted to learn about writing short stories. A little bit of poetry would have been fine, but not for the biggest segment of the class. I was not happy at all. Why wasn't it called "Poetry" instead of "Creative Writing"? What a rip!

Since I did not care about grades, and had already concluded that school was a big waste of time any way, I decided to protest; not by arguing or whining, but by being aloof. Day after day I went to that class and was instructed to spend time with others in the class putting together this poetry book, which was supposed to be such a big deal. Instead, I sat in that class and did my home-work for the other classes. My policy was not to do any home-work in my spare time, so this class became my study hall for getting home-work done. I did not do one bit of work on my poetry book in the class-room.

My sister, Christy, happened to be in that same class with me. There were only two classes in school where I ended up in the same class as my sister, and that creative class was one of them. My sisters were both straight A students, which was one of my reasons for being so rebellious in school. Christy asked me several times about how I was doing on my poetry book. I let her know I would get it done, sooner or later. It was due to be turned in right before Thanksgiving. The night before it was due, my family attended a church meeting, and when we got home, I sat down at the dining table with crayons, a stack of blank pieces of paper, and the list that Mrs. Sawyer had given us as to what needed to be in the poetry book. My sister looked at that scene, and she was quite disgusted. I was getting ready to knock this thing off, and I was shooting for a solid C minus.

I stayed up almost all night long working on the poetry book, because I was enjoying my protest. Somehow, I made an exception on this project of my policy of not doing home-work in my spare time, because the value of protesting this one project superceded my rebellion against the entire system. There was a theme for my poetry book, and I applied it to every poem that I wrote; the theme was simply, "I hate poetry". Every single poem I wrote was about how I hated poetry. The next day, I turned it in, knowing it would not be received well or appreciated, but also knowing that I had fulfilled every requirement that was laid out for the poetry book. I had completed the project without doing any of it in class.

The day came to get the poetry books back with grades on them. I expected that there would be a few remarks on mine about not living up to potential, bla-bla-bla, which I was accustomed to seeing. Mrs. Sawyer got in front of the class and explained to the students that she had taken a train trip over the holidays so that she could grade the poetry books from her students in her classes. She explained that she enjoyed having time to go over the poetry books on the train. She also said, that after a while it did get a bit monotonous doing all the grading, even though she enjoyed the writing and art-work. Then, she said, she came across one poetry book that got her attention. She was not sure whether she should cry or laugh.

When Mrs. Sawyer said that, I thought to myself, "uh-oh". Maybe I had gone a little bit over-board on this one; okay, maybe a long way over-board. But this was just school. She couldn't give me a failing grade, or could she? I began to worry about whether I had gone through the entire list of what was to be included in the book. About the time I was wondering if I would have to do the whole thing over, or get a failing grade in the class, she announced that she gave my poetry book an A++.

She passed out the graded poetry books back to us, except for mine. She asked me if she could keep mine. I had no problem with that. She saved me a trip to the closest waste bin. Furthermore, I guessed she may have had a dart-board at home that she could pin it up on, to throw darts at it. But what she did was get my attention. She was not just a teacher, but a psychologist, and she knew how to deal with kids like me. She knew that if she did what I expected her to do, that I would never remember her class or the poetry book. She burned that memory in my mind.

A couple years after that class, I began writing songs, because I liked playing the piano and composing music. Of course, that involved poetry. I would always smile to myself and think about Mrs. Sawyer each time I was done writing a song. I have not written a poem for decades, but today Mrs. Sawyer added me as one of her friends on Facebook, so why not?

It was entitled "I hate poems",
My poetry book in high school.
I did the whole thing in one night,
Because I was a stupid fool.

My teacher knew I was a rebel
And she had seen this one before.
She treated me with respect.
She should have kicked me out the door.

My future was her main concern
And salvaging my wasted mind.
Instead of ragging and nagging,
She was thoughtful and kind.

She made such an impression on me
That it made me always appreciate,
That it is better to give a little praise
Than it is to retaliate.

Mrs. Sawyer gets my vote for Teacher of the 20th Century.

However, my sister was not exactly ecstatic about my good grade.

Oh well! You can't please 'em all.

Written by Phil Staudt
February 15, 2010


by Phil Staudt February 15, 2010

www.ccsso.org/projects/national_teacher_of_the_year/State_Teachers/1987

Tags: creative writing poetry school creative writing poetry school

Deadliest Catch Captain Phil Harris Dead at 53

2010-02-10T21:46:00Z

Captain Phil Harris, one of the stars of "Deadliest Catch" Dies at 53

by Phil Staudt
February 10, 2010

Having lived most of my life in the Northwest, I had the opportunity to meet quite a few fisherman from Alaska. The commercial fishing boat that I bought in 1998 in Charleston Harbor, near Coos Bay, Oregon, was sold to me by the widow of a fisherman who died on a crab boat in Alaska. My friend who I bought the boat for had worked on a crab boat in Alaska. I met quite a few fisherman from Alaska at The Portside Restaurant in Charleston Harbor (my favorite seafood restaurant anywhere). Alaskan fishermen have an air about them that they have seen things that others have not seen, that cannot be explained to those who have not experienced them; they are correct.

The reality show "Deadliest Catch" is one of my favorite television shows. It is about real people living real lives. It is about pain, struggle, work, and survival; things that many of us can relate to. One of the underlying themes is also death, and losing co-workers and business associates and friends and family members.

Phil Harris was a fisherman in Alaska his whole life. Phil Harris had the opportunity to live a different life than most of us, and see things that most of us do not see. His years on this planet took him through many storms and trials.

Phil Harris will be missed by his family, friends, associates, fans, and the sea.

RIP

by Phil Staudt
February 10, 2010

RIP Captain Phil Harris, 'Deadliest Catch'
ABC News Blog > NightLine Daily Line
February 10, 2010
Captain Phil Harris, fisherman in charge of the Cornelia Marie on the popular Discovery Channel show "Deadliest Catch," passed away late yesterday nearly two weeks after suffering a stroke on Jan. 29....

Saluting Deadliest Catch star Capt. Phil Harris with his crab-stuffed mushrooms
Christian Science Monitor
February 10, 2010
Capt. Phil Harris of the Deadliest Catch TV program passed away late yesterday. We'll remember him with one of his favorite recipes....

Deadliest Catch Skippers React to Captain Phil's Death
E Online
by Josh Grossberg
February 10, 2010
Captain Phil Harris left a mark on TV viewers as one of the featured crabbers on Deadliest Catch. And now, his friendly rivals on the Bering Sea are speaking out in the wake of Harris' death at 53....

Capt. Phil Harris Death Stuns Fellow Fishermen, Fans
People
February 10, 2010
by Mike Fleeman
..."Phil Harris was called home and will forever be remembered," writes the crew of the Alaskan crab boat the Northwestern, one of many tributes pouring in for the Cornelia Marie captain from TV's Deadliest Catch who died late Tuesday at age 53 following a recent stroke....

Deadliest Catch Captain Phil Harris dies aged 53
BBC News
February 10, 2010
Captain Phil Harris, whose fishing adventures off the Alaska coast were captured on Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch, has died aged 53....

Super Bowl Commercials - Why I Hate Them

2010-02-08T15:04:00Z

Super Bowl Commercials - Why I Hate Them

by Phil Staudt
February 8, 2010

Sorry, but I hate all commercials; even Super Bowl commercials; especially Super Bowl commercials.

For the past few decades, all the media has been on a campaign to promote the popularity of Super Bowl commercials. With the threat of low-cost Internet advertising and the choice of 300 television channels to choose from, the Super Bowl commercial popularity is the one thing left that has been successful and profitable. The question I have is that if they had been telling everybody that eating spoiled food during the Super Bowl was the "in" thing to do, would everybody do that, too?
_________________________________________________

First of all, I don't like being sucked into something.

The popularity of commercials during the Super Bowl is proof positive that if the media tells people they like something, then they go ahead and like it. Every television network and ad agency and newspaper and conventional form of media, has been telling everybody for years that Super Bowl commercials are wonderful, and everybody likes it, and that watching Super Bowl commercials is the "in" thing to do. And that, and only that, is the reason why Super Bowl commercials are popular. SUCKERS!!!
_________________________________________________

Secondly, those stupid Super Bowl commercials ruin a perfectly good NFL football game.

I have not watched most of the Super Bowls BECAUSE of those stupid commercials. The game takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours longer than what an NFL football game usually is. This year I watched the last half of the Super Bowl, only because I woke up and did not feel like taking a longer nap.
_________________________________________________

Thirdly, I hate television commercials.

I set my DVR to automatically record my regular news shows so I can forward through the commercials. In fact, I spent the first half of this Super Bowl watching a couple of recorded news programs -which I watched without seeing any commercials.
_________________________________________________

Fourthly, I like watching NFL football.

I am not a huge sports fan, and the only sports I have time to watch is NFL football. I enjoy a good NFL game. . During the NFL season, the only television commercials that I consciously watch are the commercials that air during NFL football games during the regular NFL football season, because I enjoy watching what is happening in real time on the NFL football games. But no matter how much I enjoy watching NFL football, I hate the commercials enough to not watch the Super Bowl most of the time.
_________________________________________________

Did I mention that I do not like Super Bowl commercials? Of course, I have never watched one episode of American Idol or Survivor, either, so I know that I am not the one to follow if you want to know what people like.

by Phil Staudt
February 8, 2010

http://www.akaskee.com/02/top-super-bowl-commercials-2010.html Top Super Bowl Commercials 2010

http://www.nicernews.com/2010/02/in-super-bowl-commercials-the-nostalgia-bowl In Super Bowl Commercials, the Nostalgia Bowl

http://matthewcostner.com/2010/02/super-bowl-commercials super bowl caommercials

http://bloggles.org/?p=64047 Super Bowl Commercials 2009 (Top 11 Most funny)

http://respublica.typepad.com/respublica/2010/02/super-bowl-commercials-all-in-one-place.html Super Bowl commercials all in one place

http://thenextreporter.com/jg/super-bowl-ads-2010-youtube-videos/084885 Super Bowl Ads 2010 on YouTube (Videos)

http://internet-income.philbucks.com/2010/02/07/the-best-business-to-business-sales-opportunity.aspx

Just an old salesman tryin real hard to adjust

2010-02-03T03:57:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

Just an old salesman


by Phil Staudt February 2, 2010

Just an old salesman, tryin real hard to adjust.

I maintain several blogs, and this blog is NOT a marketing blog, and I promise to keep the hype and salesmanship to a minimum, but this article is more about my personal story, and since I am a sales person, this blog article is about Internet marketing and selling. I know that if I ever want to be an Internet marketing guru or big shot in the online world of mentors and trainers and coaches, that I would be advised to not really tell it like it is, but then I would not be me. I have gone through a lot of hard times, and I have also done a lot of dumb things that cost me dearly. When I was younger I went "all in" a few times in the poker game of life. Now I am not as much of a risk taker.

I also could have made a lot more money, and have had a much easier life, if I were willing to lie and cheat and rip people off. But I am picky about who I sleep with, and I have always realized that I would have to sleep with myself for the rest of my life, and I enjoy going to bed knowing that I chose to not make my living ripping off people.

Over twenty years ago, I took a part-time job as a telemarketer for Dialamerica, selling magazine subscriptions over the phone. It was a part-time gig, because I had been ripped off by a finance broker in Denver, Colorado, who lied to the finance company in California, which was factoring my accounts receivable for my business, to cover up the mistakes that were made in his office. I did not find out about his dishonesty in the matter until six months after my bankruptcy. It did not make any difference then, because the damage had been done, and he was buddies with the owners of the finance company, and I did not have the money or connections to go after him or his company. However, having to go to work as a part time telemarketer for Dialamerica, provided me the opportunity to meet one special person, who is now one of the top Internet marketers and sales people in the country, and owns several successful sales companies, and has been working independently as a full time Internet entrepreneur since 1995. So, out of my adversity, came the opportunity for me to be successful as an online marketer twenty years later, because of my association with my friend, who I met decades ago during a rough period in my life.

The first evening that I worked at Dialamerica, I was the second-to-the-top sales person in the room, which had about 40 people working. In the 1980's, we had to dial phone numbers on plastic boxes that sat on the desks that had push buttons on them (see wikipedia > push button phone; high tech version of dial phones) and they had cords coming out of them that were connected to plastic handles with speakers in them that we had to talk into. Across the room, was a fellow about my age who had a good phone voice, and obviously understood how to make sales, and he was the only one in the room who dialed as many numbers as me, and ended up making one more sale than me. Nobody else in the room was even close to the amount of sales the two of us had. I introduced myself to him, and asked him if he wanted to join me for coffee at Denney's after work. It took very little time for the two of us to find out that we had the same interests and experience being entrepreneurs and sales people.

At that time, my new found friend was experimenting with using automatic dialing machines to do surveys and get leads for sales people. He had several businesses going at that time, but he had been ripped off several times by customers not paying him, so there was little money to work with. In spite of that, I worked together with him, and he was able to get equipment, rent space and get phone lines hooked up, and put together brochures to sell leads to sales people. The operation was rolling along nicely, and orders were coming in, and then Mountain Bell notified him that they wanted deposits on all of his phone lines, including his home phone, because they said he had not a paid a phone bill from years ago that he did not even know existed. And thus ended his lead-gathering business in 1987. He and I ended up working for another telemarketing company, and they shut down their Colorado offices, and he moved to Ohio, and became a sales manager for a telemarketing room there.

In 1987, I moved to Kansas City, and we went separate ways, and lost track of each other. I worked at restaurants and sales jobs in Kansas City, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Portland.

I have been doing Internet marketing and promoting affiliate programs since 1999. But during most of that time, I was also busy managing restaurants and bars, and being the owner and operator of several small businesses.

In mid-2003, a company I had done work for, went out of business, owing me a lot of money. I had a year left on a lease for one of my offices, or I would have been on my way to Las Vegas sooner, where it does not rain all the time. Instead of just exercising my buy-out option to pay six months of what was left on the lease, I decided I would try and make some money first, which did not work out the way I wanted. Actually, the term "wipe out" comes to mind.

My trademark throughout my life has been to get up and get going, no matter what, or who, has knocked me down. Getting up and getting going after being wiped out, is something I am all too familiar with doing, because I have had an abundance of bad luck in my life, added to my own stupid mistakes and bad decisions. As a young sales person, I had a tape deck in my car (see wikipedia > "cassette tape"), and was constantly listening to recordings of Zig Ziglar, Dennis Waitley, Tom Hopkins, Earl Nightengale, Dale Carnegie, and dozens of others. So, I understood the principles of positive motivation and goal setting and being successful, which made me keep on trying, despite the odds. Now, I have a more balanced view of things, and I am more careful and cautious. Sometimes, positive thinking can you get into, and keep you in, things you never should have gotten into in the first place.

In 2004, I shut down a business I owned in Portland, Oregon, after some incidents involving some gang shootings. I am not going to say anything else about that story at this time, but that is what prompted me to decide to close up shop and move down to Las Vegas in 2004, where I had lived in the early 90's, and where I had worked for sales companies and restaurants and taxi companies. Up until then, the economy in Las Vegas was always thriving, and moving and grooving, and I knew Las Vegas would provide me with a good enough economical environment to get back on my feet. Unfortunately, it did not end up being economically favorable for me.

I worked at a restaurant on the strip for a year in 2004-2005, and then I went to back to cab driving, because I knew I could work lots of hours, so I could be able to make enough money to quit and just do Internet marketing. The time I went to work as a cab driver in 2005, was probably the best income taxi drivers have ever made in Las Vegas. But, word must have gotten out that I was going back to cab driving. From that point on, the Nevada Taxi Authority Board decided it would be good for everyone involved, if they started giving lots of extra medallions to the few cab companies in the oligarchy system of cab companies in Las Vegas, and they kept on piling on additional cabs on the streets, which resulted in continuous declines in cabbie income (http://blog.vegastaxidriver.com). Once again, I realized I had made the wrong move, and ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I wanted to stick with the same job for awhile for the sake of medical insurance and credit. Hard work is supposed to get people ahead, but that has not been the case for me in most instances.

A little over two years ago, I was surfing on the Internet on my day off, when one of the waves I was on, took me over to a website belonging to my friend whom I had known in Denver, Colorado, who I had not been in contact with for two decades. I contacted him, and we started talking to each other on the phone on my days off. He came to Las Vegas a couple months later to be a speaker at a conference, and he and I were able to spend a long time catching up on 20 years.

At that time, I was about four months away from having everything I needed saved up to quit my job, and I was planning on doing Internet marketing full time. I had constantly been working on Internet marketing and blogging, and trying to keep with things, when ever I was not working.

But two months later, on May 29, 2008, I had a stroke, and totally lost my ability to speak and write. I had to learn how to talk and write all over again, because the brain cells that made that process work, were dead. I was out of work for 6 weeks, and when I got back to work, there was a world-wide recession which put Las Vegas into a tail-spin. I stuck with the job until February 2009, but every month was worse than the last, and I was making less than I would have if I were making minimum wage. It was time to walk away from that job, even though unemployment in Nevada was at an all time high. But it was time to make a move.

Fortunately, after 20 months of hard work and speech therapy, I can say that I am about 95% back to where I was before my stroke. I went out and got hired by a few telemarketing companies in Las Vegas a year ago, more to prove to myself that I could talk well enough to do it than anything else. I tried out a cab company that said I could work part time, but I decided to just stay at home instead, and concentrate on doing the Internet marketing business I have been wanting to do full-time since 1999. For the past year, I have been promoting affiliate programs, recruiting city portal directors, and blogging. This is a great time to be self-employed and work from home.

My friend has been working on a brand new online marketing business, that he added to his other existing Internet companies, and he just launched it a week ago, and this one is going to be a very financially rewarding (http://vip-wealth-club.info). It is good to be working for businesses where nobody has to get ripped off in order for somebody else to succeed.

There are many more crazy and unusual things that have happened to me that have made my life interesting, miserable, and wonderful. When I have been dumped on or ripped off or had bad luck or taken a wrong turn, I may have been down, but not out. Zig Ziglar says that a big shot is just a little shot who kept on shooting.

In addition to selling, I have also done factory work, cab driving, restaurant management, and running small businesses, but I always end up doing sales, and I love it.

by Phil Staudt
February 2, 2010

I'm an old salesman and now I know what to do.
I can hang on to the old,
while I grab on to the new.
I'm an old salesman; my new life is not a bust.
I ain't trying to change nobody,
I'm just trying real hard to adjust.

Tags: sales telemarketer Internet marketing sales telemarketer Internet marketing

Haiti Earthquake People and Politics

2010-01-15T04:06:00Z

Haiti Earthquake, People, and Politics

This evening I have been watching news coverage about the Haiti earthquake. It saddens my heart. I cannot imagine what it would be like to be one of these people caught in this tragedy. The moment I heard about the Haiti earthquake, I just thought that these poor people in this area.

As privileged human beings, living in a land of plenty, it is normal for people to put up defenses and desensitize ourselves, and think to ourselves that somehow we deserve to not have these kind of horrible problems that these people have. It seems to some people manly or tough or smart to not humble ourselves and realize that we are just plain lucky to not be in this rotten situation that the people in Haiti are in now, as a result of this earthquake. But it is okay to let your feelings show and let people around you know that when others are hurting this much, that it hurts all of us. We are all apart of the human community.

It is distasteful and sad to see that some persons and organizations who are always pushing a certain political point of view or another on everything, would even think about using the Haiti earthquake as a way to further their politics. The political pundits should be mature enough and human enough to put down the boxing gloves and use their platforms to encourage their audiences to do something productive to help out the people of Haiti after this terrible earthquake disaster.

As I see the people who are hurting in Haiti tonight, I think to myself that it could be me.

Written By Phil Staudt
January 14, 2010

Internet Generation Gap

2010-01-14T03:37:00Z

I always tell people that when I went to college I wanted to sign up for the Internet courses, but they hadn't invented it yet. People under 30 have no idea what I am talking about - blank stares. People over 40 can relate. There is the generation gap of our lifetime in a nutshell.
- Phil Staudt

Doug Mays Company Denver Colorado - My former boss - RIP

2010-01-13T18:14:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

Doug Mays

Doug Mays Company

Denver Colorado

my former boss - RIP


by Phil Staudt January 13, 2010

The Great Salesman - Tribute to Doug Mays

Written by Phil Staudt
January 13, 2010

Things don't always end up the way that we hoped they would.

This morning I was doing some searches online, and I decided to check if there was anything on google regarding my boss from 25 years ago. It had been quite some time since I looked online for anything about him, and I have not been in contact with him since 1991. Unfortunately, my search led me to an obituary notice. Sadly, Doug Mays passed a way a few weeks ago.

I wish that things would have worked out differently for me during the past decade, because I always wanted to go to Denver and track down Doug Mays and talk to him about old times. But things are the way they are now, and the past does not come back.

According to the Denver Post article, Doug Mays passed away on December 23, 2009. I found a guest book for him online, and here is what I wrote:

"One of the best men I ever met in my life. I worked for Doug at the Doug Mays Company for a few years in the early 80's. He had the reputation of being fair and decent and hard-working by everybody in the industry. Doug Mays taught me valuable lessons that I have always cherished.

"My heart-felt prayers and sympathies go out to Ruth and Carol and his wonderful family on the loss of this wonderful man in your lives. God bless you all."

In May of 1982, I was 21 and looking for a sales job in Denver. I had decided I wanted a sales job, because I had a friend in Portland who was a sub-rep for a manufacturer's rep firm in California selling HVAC supplies to wholesalers. It seemed to me that it was a good job to have. I had been working as a restaurant manager in Tualatin, Oregon, and was engaged to be married to a gal from Denver, Colorado. I had quit my job in Oregon and moved to Denver to find a sales job. I went to the library and made a list of the wholesale companies and manufacturer's rep firms in Denver, and started talking to people and handing out my resume. One plumbing manufacturer's rep I talked to ran into Doug Mays shortly after I met him, and Doug mentioned he was looking to hire a sales person.

Doug Mays called me on a Thursday and asked me to come into his office for an interview on Friday morning. I liked him right away. He was always jovial and polite and considerate. I met his daughter, Carol Mays, and his wife, Ruth. He told me that he would train me to sell the products he represented, as long as I was willing to work in the warehouse and on the phone to start with. He told me I could start on Monday morning. He shook my hand and told me he was on his way to Pueblo to make some sales calls to wholesalers. I asked him if he wanted company. I spent that day with Doug and we went to Pueblo and back.

Doug told me that he came into the office every day at 7:15 AM, but that I did not have to be there until 8 AM. On Monday, I was sitting in my car at 7:00 AM waiting for him. I was there every morning waiting for him after that, until he finally gave me a key to let myself in. Every morning I got there before Doug, and I usually had a list of questions for him. That is how I learned things about the business.

Doug Mays taught me about sump pumps, flow regulators, plumbing tools, solder, and all kinds of supplies that were sold by wholesalers to plumbing and HVAC contractors in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. But more importantly, Doug Mays taught me the psychology of selling. Doug Mays told me that people do not buy products, people buy things because of people. If they do not like you, it does not matter how good the product is that you are selling; they won't buy it from you. There is no such thing as a product that sells itself. Occasionally, people will even buy something that they do not want or need, just because they like the person or company selling it.

Doug Mays taught me that to be a good sales person, in an industry where people know each other and talk to each other, a sales person has to be honest and dependable and willing to admit when a mistake has been made. Doug Mays considered customer complaints as opportunities to show people that he was willing to provide service after the sale, and to go beyond what was expected in solving any problems.

There was a sign on a wall in one of the purchasing agents' offices, that said, "Diplomacy is telling somebody to go to hell, and making it sound like a compliment." And Doug Mays was a master at that. A plumbing contractor would take a sump pump back to the distributors because it did not work, and the distributor would replace it with a new one. Then the plumbing contractor would come back with that pump, and declare that Zoeller Pumps were no good. That is when the distributor would call Doug Mays. Then Doug would tell me to go along with him so that I could learn. Every single time I went with him on a job, there was something that the contractor was doing wrong, and the product was fine. Sure, it was important to show the contractor how to fix the problem, but the most important thing was to tell the plumbing contractor they had screwed up without offending them. And that was something that Doug Mays was great at doing.

When I began making sales calls to plumbing wholesalers for the Doug Mays Company, 95% of the places that I went to told me how much they respected Doug and liked doing business with Doug. I learned that it is good to have a good reputation built over time of being a genuinely decent person. I learned that there will always be unreasonable jerks who just want to trample over people, and there is nothing you can do to please them. Doug Mays wanted me to let all the distributors know that his company was available to help them if they needed it. Over time, purchasing agents and owners make changes in the product lines they carry, and the important thing is to make sure they know that you are ready to help them when they need it. But Doug also said to not forget to ask for an order.

Carol Mays, Doug's daughter, was his "right hand man" at the Doug Mays Company. She is not very manly, in fact she is quite feminine and attractive, but when she was on the phone she knew her stuff. In the early 80's, almost every order was called in over the phone. All of us answered the phone, and wrote down orders. Then we had to call in the order to the factory. That seems like a lot of lost time and productivity, and it was, and I am so glad that communication has evolved into much better systems today. But, on the other hand, I am glad that I had the chance to be a sales person and learn how to communicate with people and handle customer complaints without being able to hide behind technological barriers. And Carol Mays was the person that all the regular customers wanted to speak with, because she was just as people conscious and respectful and courteous as her dad, but she was way more efficient and organized than the rest of us (thank goodness!).

Ruth Mays, Doug's wife, was the book-keeper for the Doug Mays Company. She was a stickler for details. She was also very sociable and fun to be around. They were a good couple and complimented each other well.

For two years, I was the first and only sales-person that the Doug Mays Company had that was not family. Then they got bigger and needed to add more people to their organization. I could not see myself being an outside sales person as a career, and after 2 1/2 years I moved on and pursued entrepreneurial ventures and other sales and management jobs. But I have always remembered the lessons I learned from Doug Mays.

Marketing today seems to be all about knowing the newest techie wave fad gadget platform network whatever. Individuals in charge of public relations and customer service and marketing, all too often seem more concerned about being up to date on using the Internet and iphones and software to get the job done, than being concerned about the people they are dealing with. In all of that, it seems that the role and importance of the human element has been greatly diminished. Everything is all about the bottom line, and every action and procedure needs to show up on the bottom line at the end of each quarter. But even though technology has dramatically changed since the early 80's, people have not changed that much in regard to how they like to be treated. If the young up-and-coming marketing professionals of today, could step into a time machine, and ride around with Doug Mays when he was making sales calls, they would have a perspective and paradigm that would make them better marketing professionals, technology or not.

Zig Ziglar said that a society that calls a philosopher a professional, regardless of his philosophy, and calls a plumber a non-professional, regardless of his plumbing, will have neither philosophy nor plumbing that holds water. When it comes to being a small business owner, and a manufacturer representative, a pillar in his community, a boss, and a sales person, Doug Mays was a true professional.


by Phil Staudt January 13, 2010

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/denverpost/obituary.aspx?n=loren-d-mays-doug&pid=137912720

http://www.legacy.com/gb2/default.aspx?bookid=7688129372560&cid=full

Rebounding from my stroke and aphasia

2009-12-07T22:57:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

Rebounding from my stroke and aphasia

by Phil Staudt
December 7, 2009

On May 29, 2008, I went to work as a normal healthy person that felt fine that could read and write very well, and I when I got home from work, I was a normal healthy person that felt fine that could not talk or write at all. Obviously, something went wrong, and I had suffered a stroke. I had a short dizzy spell that included loss of coordination in my right hand, but I just figured that I was just tired after 10 hours of stressful driving. I kept on working, but when I had to talk to people, nothing intelligible came out of my mouth.

Sitting in the hospital for the next week, I never ever thought that I would not be able to speak and write and communicate. It was never an option for me to not do what ever I needed to do to rebound. The first time I sat down with a pen and paper and was unable to write more than a few words at a time, I knew I had my work cut out for me. The disc was wiped out and the memory of how to say and write things was gone. For a few weeks after my stroke, I was unable to watch television, because they were talking too fast. I got up and sat in my living room reading the newspaper. I found a list of the names of the States, and it took me several hours of working diligently in order to be able to pronounce them.

But I have met people with aphasia, who have had much worse trouble than I have. There were several times when I had people in my cab after my stroke, who I would have assumed were drunk or stupid before, had it not been for my stroke and aphasia. When I asked them if they had aphasia, their eyes would brighten up, and they became much more relaxed, because I explained to them that I had had a stroke and I know what aphasia is.

Being a cab driver was probably the best job for me to have following my stroke. If I had still been a waiter or restaurant manager or sales rep, it would have been horrible. I forced myself to talk to the customers in my cab, and when stupid things came out of my mouth, I just laughed about it. The first week I was driving, I picked up a nice couple at the Monte Carlo, and when they were in the taxi, I asked them the same question that I have been asking people in restaurants and taxis and sales for decades, "How are you folks doing tonight?" However, the word "folks" did not come out right, and they were quite shocked. Once they found out that I had a speech problem, they laughed about it.

It has been10 months since I walked away from a somewhat secure job with enoughincome to pay the bills, as a Las Vegas taxi driver working for WesternCab Company. It was the most foolish thing that I have ever done in mylife, and the ramifications of my decision have not totally played outyet. But I am glad, and if I could go back and do it again, I would dothe same thing.

Being a LasVegas taxidriver was not something that I was going to do for a long time. I havespent most of my life managing restaurants and bars, and doing sales,and during the last 10 years I have also done Internet marketing. Theobject of doing a job where you can't have a life and you work 60 - 84hours a week, was to sandbag some money to do something else. I had abusiness in Portland that did not end on a happy note, and put me in afinancial pickle. But instead of taxi driving getting me back on myfeet, it knocked me on my butt.

For the record, I want to say that Western Cab Company was a good company to work for, and the people in charge are fantastic. The thing that I liked least about the job, was that during the most prosperous time in Las Vegas, and during record tourist business and convention business in Las Vegas, that cab drivers in Las Vegas made less and less money every year, on the average, because of the planning and policies of the government regulators.

Now I work 15 hours a day instead of 12. Why? After my stroke, I decided to get busy doing things that I wanted to do, and learning things I wanted to learn. I had to work on learning how to overcome aphasia, which is the result of my stroke 18 months ago. I dug in and did tasks that require me to do a lot of writing and talking. Now the work that I do daily requires me to do telemarketing, and writing email messages, and writing tutorials to tell people about the products and services that I promote.

My good friend, Timothy L. Drobnick Sr., has made it possible for me to work at home, as a rep for his online companies. I realize that there are many people who have more qualifications than I do for the work that I am doing, and I try to work harder and get things done in order to make up for my deficiencies.

My speech therapist, Kate Maxfield, did a great job of explaining things to me regarding aphasia, and she pointed me in the right direction, and encouraged me to force myself to do as much talking and writing as I could. Unfortunately for my customers and co-workers, I took her to heart. When I had a double-hernia operation 20 years ago, my doctor told me then that the more walking I did, the faster I would heal, so one week after my operation, I walked up to the top of Multnomah Falls by myself. So my speech therapist telling me that talking more was a good thing for my aphasia, inspired me to get into situations that were conducive to lots of conversations. I even went to work at a couple of high pressure telemarketing rooms in Las Vegas several months ago, for a couple of weeks, just to assure myself that I could still make sales over the phone.

Fortunately, now I can holdmy own now with conversing, and only those who know me well can tellthat my speech is not as good as it used to be.

So I guess I can thank the Nevada Taxicab Authority, and the bad economy, and my stroke, for motivating me to get out of doing things I hate, and pressuring me to do what I want to get done. And I can thank Timothy L Drobnick Sr. for giving me a bright future with oogads of potential.

by Phil Staudt
December 7, 2009

Las Vegas Marathon Videos and Pics

2009-12-07T18:20:00Z

THE PHIL STAUDT BLOG

Las Vegas Rock n Roll Marathon Videos and Pictures

by Phil Staudt
December 6, 2009

You can see the tops of the hotels on the Las Vegas strip. This is the truck that was escorting the elite men runners in the Las Vegas "Rock N Roll" marathon.

They areheading west, going away from the Las Vegas strip, on Twain between Arville andDecatur.

Look at the beautiful mountains that surround Las Vegas in all directions. The area has 2.2 million residents and housing developments that go right up to the foot of the mountains.

This is a video of Las Vegas marathon runners heading west on Twain between Arville and Decatur. It was still cold outside.

2009-12-06 las vegas marathon

Las Vegas ROCK N ROLL Marathon!

Once again, youcan see the Las Vegas strip behind them.

You can tell bylooking at the police officer that it was still plenty cool at 7 am.

by Phil Staudt
December 6, 2009

MORE Las Vegas Marathon Video and Pictures:

Dayna Roselli and Dave McCann from Channel 8 News Now hosted the event on Sunday morning, and there are some great pictures and videos of the Las Vegas Rock N Roll Marathon below.

Channel 8 News Now lasvegasnow.com
December 6, 2009
Las Vegas Marathon 2009 Attracts 27,000 click here
LAS VEGAS, Nv -- More than 27,000 people gathered in the cold Sunday morning to take part in the Las Vegas Rock 'n' Roll Las Vegas Marathon.
Las Vegas Now Videos click here

ROCK 'N' ROLL LAS VEGAS MARATHON: Kenyan wins women's race, prize for quick time click here
Las Vegas Review Journal reviewjournal.com
December 6, 2009
By PATRICK EVERSON
"Showing little sign of exhaustion, Rotich broke out a broad smile as she split the tape. And why not, as she stunned Ivanova with her late rally to claim the $15,000 first prize, while also winning the race’s male-female challenge, good for another $10,000."

Rock N Roll Marathon click here
Another Las Daily Photo Blog
anotherlasvegasdailyphoto.blogspot.com
Posted By Mo

Las Vegas Strip Loses Money Because Of Marathon

2009-12-06T19:21:00Z

PHIL STAUDT BLOG

Las Vegas Strip Loses Money Because Of Marathon

by Phil Staudt
December 6, 2009

It is true that some media companies made some money from advertiser dollars on an early Sunday morning, which is a time that the local television stations usually have nothing going on, so I understand why they promote it as a wonderful thing for Las Vegas. However, the truth is that shutting down the place in Nevada that makes money to pay all the taxes for the residents in Nevada, and doing it on the busiest money-making night of the week, is not good business. A few of the Starbucks stores had a good morning, but for most businesses on the Las Vegas strip, they were hurt by being barracked and blocked and strangled.

I heard an announcer on TV say that it was so fantastic for Las Vegas that there were 27,000 runners on the Las Vegas, and that what is a record for the amount of people on the strip, but anyone who has been in Las Vegas for New Year's Eve, and during most weekends, there are hundreds of thousands of tourists staying in the 140,000 rooms in Las Vegas. Trying to make this sound like good business seems like a huge farce to me.

Here is an article about it:

Las Vegas Marathon Is Bad For Las Vegas

by Phil Staudt
December 6, 2009

Roads, including Strip, to be closed for Sunday marathon click here
Las Vegas Sun lasvegassun.com
By Kyle Hansen (contact)
Saturday, Dec. 5, 2009 | 2:05 a.m.
"Runners will be taking over some of the area's busiest streets — including the entire Strip for much of Sunday — for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon and Half Marathon. More than 25,000 people are expected to participate in the race, which will also shut down some public bus routes."

Route Changes due to Rock 'N' Roll Marathon Sunday click here
KTNV Channel 13 News ktnv.com
Posted: Dec 4, 2009 01:18 PM

Drivers Brace For Marathon Delays, Detours click here
Closures Begin At 3 A.M. Sunday
Fox 5 News fox5vegas.com
POSTED: 7:57 am PST December 4, 2009
"LAS VEGAS -- Getting around southern Nevada will take some planning ahead for a lot of drivers this weekend...Drivers need to be aware of more than two dozen closures during the event, with the majority of delays around the resort corridor...The earliest closure begins at 3 a.m. and several last until Sunday afternoon. Some freeway ramps will also be closed for the event..."

ROCK 'N' ROLL LAS VEGAS MARATHON: Kenyan wins women's race, prize for quick time click here
Las Vegas Review Journal reviewjournal.com
December 6, 2009
By PATRICK EVERSON
"Showing little sign of exhaustion, Rotich broke out a broad smile as she split the tape. And why not, as she stunned Ivanova with her late rally to claim the $15,000 first prize, while also winning the race’s male-female challenge, good for another $10,000."

Rock N Roll Marathon click here
Another Las Daily Photo Blog
anotherlasvegasdailyphoto.blogspot.com
Posted By Mo

Buffets In Las Vegas Golf Courses In Las Vegas Las Vegas Taxi Driver Blog

Las Vegas Taxi Cab Companies Las Vegas Taxicab Fares and Prices

Nevada Taxicab Authority Info Las Vegas Taxicabs Lost and Found

Ted Stevens Case Example Of Party Politics

2009-04-02T13:45:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

PHIL STAUDT'S BLOG ARTICLES:
Why Giving Banks More Money Won't Work March 29, 2009
Obama Is Bankrupting America March 28, 2009
I Had A Stroke and God Is Mean March 27, 2009
Why I Write Blog Articles March 27, 2009
We Pay Taxes To Fix The World Plus Interest Added March 27, 2009
Clinton Blames United States For Mexico March 27, 2009
Border Violence And Drug Money And Guns March 26, 2009
Obama Has Been A Big Disappointment So Far, Just Like Bush Was March 25, 2009
Obama Says No Cash Or Guns In The United States March 25, 2009
Solves Mexico's Border Drug Money And Guns March 25, 2009
Is The United States Too Big To Fail? Another Day, Another Trillion March 23, 2009
Obama's Slip Up On Jay Leno Show And There Is My Aphasia March 21, 2009
The Real Enemy Combatants Are Greed And Selfishness March 19, 2009
Obama Knew About AIG Bonuses, But Is That The Really Big Story? March 19, 2009
No John McCain And No Barack Obama October 26, 2008
The Big Heist Of 2008 September 25, 2008

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Ted Stevens Case Example Of Party Politics

by Phil Staudt
April 2, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

The loser is the Alaskan voters and the American voters.

In 1968 Robert Kennedy was not the Democrat candidate for President because he was assassinated. Voters ended up with Hubert Humphrey instead, and America ended up with Nixon.

Paul Wellstone died on October 25, 2002, when his plane crashed less then two weeks before election day. He was a Democrat Senator in Minnesota who was extremely popular and considered a shoe-in, but the voters ended up with Walter Mondale, who lost.

Ted Stevens remained on the ballot in 2008, but the reason he lost the election was because of far-fetched charges of criminal wrong doing levied against him.

But the story is that American voters are only left to choose between two candidates belonging to two lousy political parties. The Republican Party and Democrat Party control the elections, and if one of their shining stars gets knocked out during an election year, then voters are stuck with the opposing candidate from the other party. Every Senatorial race and Presidential race should have at least five real candidates in the general election, with at least two choices from each of the two big parties, with runoffs if needed, because of the wide scope of their power over all Americans. And when there is a Presidential election, there should be several Democrat and Republican choices, along with others, for voters to choose in the general election, with runoffs as needed. That would eliminate the nonsense of having the one and only candidate from a party being taken out of the race because of bad press (based on truth or not), or death, or affairs being discovered, or any other reason.

It is tax time. Do not let any of your tax money go to the leaders of those crooked gangs calling themselves political parties.

by Phil Staudt
April 2, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

"Will Stevens dismissal undercut Alaska's corruption probe?"
MIAMI HERALD April 2, 2009 By Lisa Demer
ANCHORAGE — The government's sudden move Wednesday to drop its case against former U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens...U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder noted Wednesday, the actions of the prosecution team that gained the Stevens conviction also are under investigation...read_article

"Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens vindicated as feds drop case"
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS April 2, 2009
BY Kenneth R. Bazinet and James Gordon Meek
Attorney General Eric Holder dropped a corruption case against ex-Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens on Wednesday, saying prosecutors blew it by failing to share evidence..."The trial was politically motivated and we've had a chance to see the justice system at its worst," Keith Tryck, who testified for Stevens, told the Daily News. "It was a setup."...read_article

"Justice Department moves to drop all charges against Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens"
CHICAGO TRIBUNE April 2, 2009 By Josh Meyer
WASHINGTON—In a stunning reversal, the Justice Department on Wednesday moved to drop all charges against former Sen. Ted Stevens..."I always knew that there would be a day when the cloud that surrounded me would be removed," said Stevens, 85. "That day has finally come. It is unfortunate that an election was affected by proceedings now recognized as unfair."...In a court filing Wednesday, Justice Department officials said they had they found that one key piece of previously undisclosed evidence had been kept from the defense...read_article

"Stevens case dismissal raises questions of Justice Dept. integrity"
FREEP.COM April 2, 2009 By David G. Savage
Attorney Gen. Eric Holder on Wednesday abandoned the case against Stevens, despite his conviction by a jury. Holder said he acted “in the interest of justice” after discovering prosecutors had illegally withheld evidence from the defense...The veteran lawmaker wasn’t charged with taking bribes or payoffs in exchange for favors. Rather, he was indicted for failing to disclose as gifts the full value of the repairs and improvements on one of his Alaska homes...read_article

"U.S. drops corruption case against ex-Sen. Stevens"
REUTERS UK April 2, 2009 By James Vicini
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday said it will ask a judge to dismiss the conviction of former Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens amid allegations of prosecutorial misconduct...In October a federal jury found Stevens guilty of seven counts of lying on a Senate disclosure form to conceal $250,000 (174,000 pounds) in gifts and home renovations from an oil executive and other friends. He faced up to 35 years in prison at sentencing...read_article

Tags: Republicans Republicans Democrats Democrats

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

Impatient Plane Passenger Is A Hero

2009-03-31T20:40:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Impatient Plane Passenger Is A Hero

by Phil Staudt
March 31, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

Finally, some good news.

According to ASSOCIATED PRESS, a 60 year old man from Scotland was a bit impatient at JFK International Airport after waiting for his Las Vegas bound plane to get off the ground, so he tried to open up the emergency door and take a hike. I understand. I have been there.

He had been sitting there for an hour and literally going nowhere. He decided he had had enough. He was probably just going to take a leak and come right back. What is wrong with that? The news media makes this man sound like maybe he has loose screws or something, but I am glad to see stories of people who do things I have thought about doing myself. He probably realized that he could have driven to Atlantic City in the time he had already been sitting in the plane on the ground and he decided to walk across airport runways and flag a cab.

I can hear him saying to himself, "Screw this! Let them kick me off the bloody plane and tell me I will never be allowed to fly again. I don't need airplanes or airports or snotty flight attendants or baggage handlers that lose my luggage. These seats aren't fit for sitting in to begin with, and then these jerks want to make me sit on them for an extra hour. I'm getting out of here."

This scene belongs in "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" with Steve Martin and John Candy.

He is a modern day hero. We need more people like that today. I hope he gets on Jay Leno and David Letterman and The Today Show when he gets out. The cereal companies should give him an advertising contract so parents can point at his face on cereal boxes at the breakfast table, and tell their kids that he is a modern day rebel like Paul Revere.

Don't tell me you haven't thought about doing the same thing.

He should fit in well in New York City. Cheers mate!

by Phil Staudt
March 31, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

"Man accused of opening airplane's emergency door"
ASSOCIATED PRESS March 30, 2009
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City prosecutors have filed criminal charges against an air traveler they say got fed up waiting on the tarmac at Kennedy Airport and tried to open a jet door and get out...read_article

"Antsy flier arrested at JFK after trying to yank open emergency exit door on plane"
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS March 31,2009 BY Nicole Bode
...Robert McDonald, 60, of Glasgow, apparently had enough of the wait inside Delta's Flight 149 to Las Vegas on Sunday night when he went for the escape hatch, prosecutors said...read_article

"Scottish man en route to Las Vegas arrested at N.Y. airport"
LAS VEGAS SUN March 30, 2009 By Mary Manning
A Scottish man, frustrated after several hours of waiting on a Delta jetliner stuck in New York City on the way to Las Vegas, popped open an emergency hatch and was arrested Sunday night...McDonald was aboard Delta Flight 149 bound for McCarran International Airport at about 7:45 p.m. Sunday as it sat on the JFK Airport tarmac during a layover from Edinburgh, Scotland, to Las Vegas...read_article

"Man Charged in Opening of Plane Door"
NEW YORK TIMES March 30, 2009 By Sewell Chan
...charged with recklessly endangering the lives of passengers by opening an emergency exit door while his plane — delayed for hours — idled on a taxiway during a layover at Kennedy International Airport, the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, announced on Monday...Mr. McDonald was arrested by police officers of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport...read_article

Tags: airport Las Vegas plane New York

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

Lights Off Made Las Vegas Cooler

2009-03-30T09:52:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Lights Off Made Las Vegas Cooler

by Phil Staudt
March 30, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

The lights were turned off on the Las Vegas strip on Saturday night in order to fight global warming. Since then the temperature has been dropping and it is quite cool outside at this moment. So turning the lights off was a success. I even went outside a while ago and sprayed a bunch of hairspray to try and warm it up a bit. Maybe the "lights off" thing would work in Las Vegas in August when it is 115 degrees, as long as they keep all the air conditioning on. I have been inside a large casino when the air conditioning goes out in the middle of summer, it gets uncomfortable quite quickly.

Tags: aphasia global warming Las Vegas Las Vegas

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

Obama Is Bankrupting America

2009-03-28T18:59:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Obama Is Bankrupting America

by Phil Staudt
March 30, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

They say Obama is new and we should give him time. But by the time they stop giving him time, we all may be slaves working in Chinese compounds making products for the Chinese who are going to rule us. It is time to stop the bleeding. I was hopeful that an Obama Presidency would be better for the economy than the Bush Administration, but I do not need to wait to find out how much more he wants to spend. Our country is being sold to the highest bidder, whether that happens to be international banks or foreign countries or the owners of the big media companies or the insurance companies or special interests. It is a liquidation and everything is on the chopping block. The Democrats are determined to outdo the Republicans with their wasteful spending with the government credit cards that belong to the taxpayers in the United States. These politicians are out of control running up wild amounts of debt. I do not like either of the two big political parties, but during the Clinton years were the only time in my 48 years that The United States did not run deficits or increase debt, in fact the debt was reduced. Clinton was ridiculed by so-called conservatives because he raised taxes for people in the highest tax brackets, and the Republicans went around and told everybody that because Clinton got elected that the economy was going down and we were heading for a depression because the wealthiest income earners had to pay a higher rate than the huge reductions they got in taxes during Reagan years, which is what caused huge deficits and increased debts during those years. But the economy was great in the United States during the Clinton years, and even business owners and people earning over $300,000 had to pay a higher tax rate, they were earning more money because business was good, and their net income after taxes was better than it is now.

A year ago the big money makers in America were telling everyone that we were "talking ourselves into a recession" and that it was just a bunch a nonsense, because they were still making a fortune and they did not want change. But when the economy hurt them, because of taking care of just the highest earners and wealthiest and nobody else for eight years had taken its toll, then they started squirming and went on the war path. But, instead of doing things to make the economy good for everyone, they decided to join in the raid with Bush and rob as much from the American taxpayers as much as they could on their way out the door.

The voters who got Obama into the White house are choosing to deny facts and common sense about the way Obama is ruining the economic future of our country, and they are acting like a girl who gets beat up by her boyfriend all the time and then says "but he is really a nice guy". Many of them probably don't even know the difference between a billion dollars and a million dollars and a trillion dollars. But I understand, because I have had some girlfriends in the past that spent my money without knowing the difference between a hundred dollar bill and a twenty dollar bill. The blind supporters of Obama are just as sickening as the blind supporters of Bush were.

Now, Obama machine and the Democrat Congress are a runaway train. The popularity of Obama was extremely high when he started, because there were people like me that had hopes that his economic policies would be more like Clinton and take us closer to fiscal responsibility, but now there are a lot of Obama voters who are feeling a hangover after his first two months of partying with their money.

by Phil Staudt
March 30, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

"We Can’t Run Deficits Forever" April 2, 2009
By John Frisby
Controlling entitlements is the next priority. April 1, 2009 By STENY HOYER

"Ten Tax Facts Regarding Obama’s Budget" April 1, 2009
by Garden State Patriot

GOP Budget: $500 Billion-plus Annual Deficits April 2, 2009
by Thomas R. Eddlem

"The Obama Budget" April 1, 2009
by Bruce McQuain

"Orszag’s Alfred E. Neuman moment on debt" April 2, 2009
by Ed Morrissey
...Even the rosier White House estimates put the deficits higher each year than anything seen in the past 15 years. All of those deficits get added to the national debt, which is why reporters called it spiraling, and not spiraling downwards. No one who sees these projections can argue that we’re not rapidly adding to the national debt at a rate not seen since World War II, if then...

"Korda: The debt debacle and what it’s costing us"
KNOXNEWS.COM March 30, 2009 By George Korda
...Government pays for nothing in America Taxpayers get the bills. And they’re getting bigger. Our government is running up mind-numbing debt with impunity, principally because presidents and members of Congress get to be generous and compassionate using other people’s money – and by putting other people in debt....For whatever reason – political loyalty, ideology, or something else – our leaders seem intent on following the leader over a financial cliff. The tragedy is that they’re taking us with them...read_article

"Inflation Is Tempting for Indebted Nations "
WALL STREET JOURNAL March 30,2009 By MARK WHITEHOUSE
U.S. President Barack Obama and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown are seeking to lead the world into battle against the financial crisis, putting up trillions of dollars to revive their economies and bail out banks. Now, investors and other politicians are posing a troubling question: Can their governments handle the bill?...More pernicious, though, will be the political cost of making the interest payments on all the new debt. If interest rates rise to a moderate level, economists estimate that annual debt payments could reach 4% of GDP, an amount roughly equivalent to the entire U.S. military budget, forcing tough decisions on what else to cut...read_article

"Hiding a Mountain Of Debt"
With a bit of bookkeeping legerdemain borrowed from the Bush administration, the Democratic Congress is about to perform a cover-up on the most serious threat to America's economic future...The real threat is the monstrous debt resulting from the slump in revenue and the staggering sums being committed by Washington to rescuing embattled banks and homeowners -- and the absence of any serious strategy for paying it all back... read_article

"A history lesson for the president"
CRAINSNEWYORK.COM March 28,2009 By Alair Townsend
...It was the requirement to vote on the bottom line that sent many senators and representatives into a frenzy in 1975, and it is one of the reasons they are choking over the president's budget today. It's the perfect vote for their opponents to cite with alarm and horror...The Congressional Budget Office believes those estimates are too low. It says that the cumulative deficits over the period 2010 to 2019 will total an eye-popping $9.3 trillion. It projects that debt held by the public will equal 82% of GDP by 2019...read_article

Tags: debt bankrupt Obama government

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

The End Of Another Day

2009-03-28T05:44:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

The End of Another Day

by Phil Staudt
March 27, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

After another day of studying and researching and listening to news and writing, it is time for me to call it a night. Since it is Friday night, I am ready to sleep in a long time. I guess I will check out what is going on in the world when I get up.

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

I Had A Stroke and God Is Mean

2009-03-27T21:09:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

I Had A Stroke and God Is Mean

by Phil Staudt
March 27, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

I had a stroke while I was driving a taxi in Las Vegas. I had a couple of businesses that went bust in Oregon in 2003 and 2004, and I had to go somewhere and get a job. I went to Las Vegas where I had been a cab driver years before, because Las Vegas was a busy place and I needed to do something to finance my Internet marketing hobby-future-career-addiction. Spring is usually the busiest time for business in Las Vegas because of business conventions and trade shows, so last year I was working a lot during that time. On May 29, 2009, I had been driving for 10 hours of my 12 hour shift, and I had been feeling just fine all night long, but I got really tired. That was not too unusual after 10 hours of driving tourists around in traffic jams and working 60 hours a week, so I did not think that anything was wrong with me.

I had just taken some people to a hotel, and I had been talking to them all the way, and I headed back to the airport because they needed cabs. When I pulled up to the airport, I was feeling tired and a little dizzy, but that is the same way I felt a lot of times working many jobs where I had long hours and lots of stress. I put the passengers' luggage in the taxi and got in and started driving. But my seat belt was not going in. I kept trying to get it fastened but it would not work. So I put it under my leg and drove away. The two men in my cab were talking to each other, so on the way out of the airport I went to verify with them what hotel I thought they had told me they were going to, which had always been my policy when starting a trip. But when I started talking, all that came out of my mouth was gibberish. They looked at me weird, and so I said, "okay". I figured something was weird, but I thought I was just tired. I was driving fine and knew where I was going.

When I got to The Venetian Hotel to drop off these men, I could not get out of my seat because I was unable to get my seatbelt undone, which I had somehow fastened on the way there. After at least 30 seconds of trying, I finally got it unfastened. By that time the passengers had their luggage out and had the money ready for me. I said "thank you." I got in my cab and got back in the taxi line at The Venetian because it was busy. I tried to write on my trip sheet, but my pen kept falling out of my hand. My hand felt like it was asleep. I picked up a gentleman at The Venetian, but I could not hear where the doorman said he was going, which is common. So, I had to ask the man where he was going before I took off in the wrong direction. My words were not coming out good at all, but I was able to get something out of my mouth that got him to tell me where he was going. He was sympathetic, and I think he just thought that I had a hard time speaking, and he was right. I dropped him off at Mandalay Bay and he gave me a nice tip.

By then, there was just enough time for me to get one more ride from the airport. By this time my hand was working fine and I was writing okay and I did not even feel tired. I drove to the airport, but there were too many cabs in line, so I decided to drive up Paradise Road toward the cab yard. I was checking all the restaurants and hotels on the way to see if there were people waiting for cabs. I stopped by my apartment to drop off my briefcase, and I was starting to worry about my speaking problems. So I woke up my room-mate. I sat in the living room and he kept asking me questions, but I was not able to say more than one short word. I turned my cab in and went home.

I was walking fine. I had counted my money and filled out my trip sheet, and added the money in my head as usual, and had turned everything in properly. The only thing that was wrong with me was that I could not say more than one word at a time. The thought of going to the hospital, missing out on work, and then having a rotten messed up medical record, was the last thing I wanted to do. I hate doctors and hospitals and I had not missed a day of work because of illness in 18 years, and that was when I had to have a double hernia operation. I don't take any prescription drugs or illegal drugs. I smoke a good cigar once a year and drink a glass of red wine every few weeks. I don't have high blood pressure. My cholesterol is not high. I am not diabetic. I eat lots of salmon and vegetables. I walk at least five miles a week. But t here I was, facing the probability that I would not be able to have health insurance without being rich, or having to be employed at a dead-end job I hate. Don't think I did not consider going to bed and worrying about it the next day. But I called a taxi driver I knew, and went to the hospital.

When I got to the hospital there was a security guard at the desk. I figured I would have to fill out forms and wait for a long time in the waiting room to see a doctor, but when my room-mate told him that I was having trouble speaking, they zoomed me into the emergency room and started rolling me around from one machine to another. They take this stroke thing seriously. The hard part was knowing that my life would be screwed up from then on, even if I recovered 100%. Just more bad luck and one more rock hitting me in the head.

Maybe I have been worse off because I did not get to the hospital right away. If I could go back and do it again, I would have dropped my passengers off at The Venetian and then sat down on their driveway and looked sick until their security got me an ambulance. The problem with not being able to speak is that you can't speak. There is no way to tell anybody that something is wrong. I did not think I had a stroke, because people I know who had strokes were unable to move and needed assistance.

While I was in the hospital all I could do is think. I could not talk to anyone. When I called my dad he did not even know who I was, because I could not say anything that he understood. My mom figured out quickly what had happened because she knows about strokes and how they cause people to not be able to speak. While I was hospitalized, I thought about how it does not pay to work hard and save money so I can do things that I want. I wondered why God was so mean and cruel to me. I know I deserve it, but I think we all would like a break now and then. That is when I came to the realization that God is mean and cruel. Not just to me, but to most people, if not to everyone.

God is mean and cruel. The things that were the easiest for me to do my whole life were writing and talking. The jobs and businesses I had where I made decent money were a result of my being able to write and speak well. Now I have aphasia and the only things I was good at are bad. Whether it is God's punishment or His refining process or whatever, the truth is that God is mean. If you believe in God and have read the Bible, then you know from the lives of Jesus and Job and Joseph that God is mean and cruel. Was God punishing them? That is not what The Bible says. Maybe I am supposed to call it love, but that would not make it any less mean or cruel. I am not bitter or angry about it, because misery likes company and I have lots of company. But I have found that having bad luck and difficulties is very annoying. I do not subscribe to the "it is good even though it is bad" philosophy. I believe in being honest with myself. My life is bad enough without being struck by lightning, too. Things could be a lot worse for me, but they could also be much better. But I am not a quitter. I just get up and dust myself off and try again.

The most difficult thing for me was a couple of days after my stroke when I sat down at a table in the hospital and tried to write. Welcome to the world of aphasia. I was unable to put more than three words in a row. My hard drive's memory had been wiped out. I could not come up with words. I could understand people as long as they talked slow. I could not pronounce words that I read. It took me a few weeks to be able to understand what was said on television or on the radio because they were talking too fast for me. It took me months of speech therapy and determination on my part to be able to have conversations with people without sounding like I was drunk or confused, and I still am not able to talk as well as I could before. If I relax and just try to talk at my normal pace like I used to, then sometimes words come out in the wrong order or I pronounce them wrong. So if I am talking to people I do not know I talk slowly and over-enunciate my words in order to cut down on my goofs. But when I talk to people I know, I conscientiously talk faster than is comfortable for me, and I keep on going in spite of the mistakes, because I know that the more I do that the better I get at talking and writing.

I still cannot sing songs. I could probably do some singing if I was reading the words, but I have not done that since my stroke. I had a large memory of songs and I could sing for hours and hours by myself without music. Now the words are gone. I cannot even sing the words to the songs that I wrote when I was young. That is no big deal. I do not need to sing, but it was a way to calm my nerves in the past.

Having a stroke and dealing with aphasia is just one more experience that I may or may not be able to use for good. I will see. If God wants me to be a doormat for everyone to wipe their shoes on, what can I do? God is God. Most of my life I have been very rebellious, and I am not a shining example of what God wants people to do, but during the times when I rebelled against God, I enjoyed life and things went well for me. During the times when I sought God and searched for truth from Him, everything has been rotten, and I have had nothing but bad luck, and there is no joy. I don't know what that means, it is just the way it has been for me. I do not know what it is like to live another person's life. I only have this one.

At least I do not have to take any prescription drugs and I am not disabled. My hope is that I make enough to pay more for health insurance what most people make in a year, because I live in the United states, and insurance company profits are more important than human beings. I doubt I can find an insurance to cover me in Nevada, even though I am healthier than most of the people working at the insurance companies that deny me, and they can deny anyone who has a record of having any health problems. If I move to a state that requires health insurance companies to cover people with health problems (because the insurance companies aren't paying off the right politicians), then I will have to pay a fortune to be covered. Of course, being out of work from my stroke was followed up with a world-wide economic depression, and Las Vegas was hurt the worst with record foreclosures and high unemployment and mass layoffs and companies filing bankruptcy, and my income went way down. That is just one more of God's blessings disguised as cruelty and hardship. I just try to take care of myself and hope that I do not need medical care. Such is life.

by Phil Staudt
March 27, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

On March 29, I went over this article and tried to fix my errors. Writing was always so easy for me before my stroke, and when I go back and see errors that I made in something I have written, it makes me feel discouraged. But that is a feeling I have known most of my life.

Tags: aphasia stroke stroke aphasia

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

Paying Taxes to Fix World Plus Interest

2009-03-27T17:27:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Paying Taxes To Fix The World Plus Interest

by Phil Staudt
March 27, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

The United States should commission Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich and Ted Turner and Neal Boortz and Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich together and put them in charge of the money.

Taxpayers marched in front of the AIG building recently to protest bonuses for executives. Meanwhile, Obama and Clinton and Congress are throwing around borrowed billions for anybody and everybody in the world who they think needs it. I need some, too, but there is no money available for me, because I am a United States citizen who does not speak a foreign language and is a straight single white male who works. Of course, that puts me in the one and only category of persons on the face of the earth that does not get any breaks from the United States government. Can't Clinton or Obama or Harry Reid have one of their aides swing by my apartment and slip me a couple billion dollars? What's a couple billion? I wouldn't tell - promise! (My word is as good as a campaigning politician.)

Meanwhile, the taxes coming out of my checks are going to line the pockets of the people in charge of Mexico and Afghanistan and Iraq, because I am told that throwing money at them will fix all of their problems and make the world a happy place. I keep hearing things about how this generosity being displayed by the fools in charge of the United States will somehow make the United States better by improving our image around the world. If we sent a billion dollars a day to each and every country in the world, they would be our BFFs for about as long as it takes to get a lap dance, and then just like an exotic dancer, they will expect more, and then they will not like us again until they get more money. This is our current foreign policy.

Going back to marchers in front of AIG, why is it that nobody is organizing marches with millions of people around the White House and The Capitol? The best thing that the big cheeses in the Republican Party can come up with is mailing tea bags. That'll work, huh? But if Republicans are the only people griping about the bankrupting of our country and flushing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars down the toilet every week, then nobody is going to take them serious because they were happy as clams when Bush was in the White House and Republicans controlled everything, and they were doing the same thing with our money, and they were getting us into more debt at a record breaking rate. So if it is good for Republicans, why shouldn't the Democrats do the same thing, only speed it up and double up and go all in.

I am not one of the extremists for lower taxes, because I know it costs money to have a decent environment and basic amenities and standard of living for people living in our country who are paying taxes, and the debt needs to get paid down to reduce interest payments, which is a real waste of taxpayer money. I do not believe that if people making more than one million dollars a year have to pay the same rate of taxes as they were when Clinton was President, that it would have a negative effect on the economy except for their own personal portfolios. So I am in favor of paying taxes and increasing taxes on the top 1% income earners, but only if the debt is being paid down and the amount of interest paid by taxpayers is reduced. If the government keeps spending money the way it has for the past eight years by Republicans and Democrats, I say that everybody's taxes should be cut in half and Bush and Obama should be sent the bill to personally pay all the debt we acquired for the reckless bills and budgets they signed into law, and if they don't pay, then there should be a new bill signed into law to exile them to Guantanamo until it is all paid.

by Phil Staudt
March 27, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

Tags: debt taxes debt taxes

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

good night and good luck

2009-03-27T08:38:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck

by Phil Staudt
March 24, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

It is 1:00 AM and I am totally burned out on news and television. I have been working online for about 15 hours a day for the past 18 days in a row. I should take a break, but I have lots of catching up to do since I have been unable to work on the computer much during the past three years. Working 60 hours a week working for other people doing something I hate doing did not work all that great for me. It will be a while more before because I can make it without working for others, but I am not going to rope myself into working so many hours that I burn myself out and have another stroke, unless it is something I really enjoy. I used to work 100 hours a week and not get burned out, but that was gettign physical exercise and moving around and doing things that did not stress me out.

People all over the world are hungry and do not have comfortable places to live and have no access to good medical care, so I am thankful for what I have and I realize that I have amenities and accommodations better than most of the people on the planet.

Good night and good luck.

by Phil Staudt
March 24, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

Clinton Blames US for Mexico Border Violence and Drug Money and Guns

2009-03-26T18:37:00Z

Clinton Blames US for Mexico Border

Violence and Drug Money and Guns

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 25, 2009

Apparently Hillary Clinton has been smoking something good with Mexican President Felipe Calderón. That explains why she said, "How could anyone conclude any differently? . . . I feel very strongly we have co-responsibility," according to The Christian Science Monitor today. Hillary Clinton was taliking about her conclusion that "Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade. Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians." Have another hit, Hillary. Hillary's above statements might be the stupidest thing I have ever heard anyone say in my life. I suppose the way to stop bank robberies is to stop people's insatiable desire to have money. I suppose the way to stop people from stealing cars is to squelch the insatiable demand of Americans to want to drive cars. If we get rid of every single fire-arm in the United States, wouldn't the drug lords in Mexico just buy guns from somewhere else? And while you are trying to use this situation to drum up support for taking away Constitutionally protected gun ownership, are you also suggesting that the way to stop cash from flowing across our border into Mexico is by keeping people in the United states from having any money? I am someone, and I "conclude differently".

TAXPAYERS ARE BEING ROBBED AGAIN!

Not only do I "conclude" differently than Hillary Clinton, I think that the majority of citizens in the United States disagree with Hillary Clinton on this issue, and they vehemently oppose taxpayer money handed out in this manner. Speaking of robbing, that is exactly what the Mexican government is hoping to do to taxpayers in United States, just like every other country in the world. How did we get these people in charge of our policies?

What goes into the United States from Mexico is our problem, and keeping things and people from coming illegally into The United States from Mexico is our problem, and always has been the job of those who we put in charge of our country to protect us and to see that our laws are followed. Obviously, the United States has failed miserably in guarding our border with Mexico and has allowed tens of millions of people to break the law and to move up here from there. If The United States cannot even keep tens of millions of people from crossing over our border with Mexico illegally, and taking up residency in our country illegally, and taking away our jobs illegally, and owning property illegally, and obtaining drivers' licenses illegally, how in the world is The United States going to control illegal drugs from getting into the United States by coming in from the Mexican border?

What goes into Mexico from The United States is Mexico's problem, and it is not our problem at all. Period! The Secretary of State, who is being paid a handsome sum of money to represent The United States of America, should be making it very clear to Mexico at this time, that Mexico needs to keep their own house in order, that we have plenty of problems of our own, there is no money to hand out to anybody at all, and we are not a bunch of stupid fools. Or are we? Well, according to President Obama and Hillary Clinton, I guess we are. Mexico should be told that if they don't do a better job of keeping down violence close to our border, the United States is going to sharply curtail the ease of traffic and trade with Mexico. Mexico should be sent a bill from the United States for them allowing people to enter our country illegally from Mexico and our resulting costs from increased violence and the burden it places on our enforcement agencies. Instead, we are giving them money and rewarding them for allowing the manufacture and distribution of drugs from their country to ours? This is ludicrous.

Am I alone on this? According to polls and surveys that I have seen on the news in the past decades, the majority of legal citizens of The United States see it the same way that I do. So why do we end up with people running our country that most of us disagree with on crucial matters such as this? I think I have mentioned that in my previous articles.

Why aren't there marches in Washington right now protesting the insanity of what Hillary Clinton is saying and doing today in Mexico? How is this "open check" mental of Washington bureaucrats who think that the way to solve every problem our country has with any other country is by giving them taxpayer money (which is borrowed and we have to pay interest on). If supporters of Obama and Clinton would rise up and demand a stop to this idiocy, and tell them that they will not vote for anyone as long as they do these things, it could be ended right now. If the supporters of George Bush would have let him know in his first term in no uncertain way that they were not going to vote for him unless he changed his tune on letting anybody and everybody come here legal or not, and if he thought he might lose an election, he would have changed his tune. That is the only way this crap will end! Republican voters and Democrat voters having a "be true to your school" mentality is killing us as a nation. As long as these politicians are sure that their supporters will vote for them no matter what in order to keep their opposition out, we are all being held hostage by the crooks who are running our country and are in cahoots with each other.

CNN IS In ON THE HEIST

CNN and other networks are running specials full of propaganda persuading people to think that the reason there is drug wars and drug violence is because we have Constitutional rights to own guns to protect ourselves in the United states. Why aren't millions of people contacting CNN and refusing to buy any products or services advertised on CNN as long as they refuse to tell the truth about immigration and border control and drug violence?

The notion that The United States should round up illegal aliens who came here from Mexico and have been living here for years and send them back to Mexico is not something I would agree with at all, and I think that idea is unfeasible, inhumane, and is usually fueled by racial prejudice, which I find disgusting and ignorant. If I had been born in Mexico and all of my friends were walking right on over to The United States and getting jobs and making more money than I could ever earn at home, and if I had the opportunity to own cars and homes and make enough money to send to my relatives back home so they could live better lives, I would have done it in a heartbeat. I do not blame the people who have come here from other countries to have a better life. That is why my ancestors came here, and that is why everybody's ancestors came here, except for the American Indians, who were treated like dirt and robbed of their land. I have worked with many good and decent people who immigrated to the United States from Ethiopia, India, Vietnam, Kenya, Argentina, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Russia, China, and Mexico. The first generation of people who migrate to our country are always the hardest working and have more appreciation for their new country then the following generations. I am 100% in favor of legal migration from people from all over the world, because it makes our country stronger and better.

However, any reasonable honest citizen of The United States knows that the reason we have so much drug trafficking coming from Mexico, aside from the profits reaped by Mexico and its government, is that by allowing the migration of people from Mexico to be largely made up of people who disregarded our laws from the beginning by coming here illegally, we have allowed the worst criminals from Mexico to come here along side the good decent hard working people. Our lackadaisical enforcement is 100% to blame. But who does President Obama and Hillary Clinton blame? That's right - the law abiding people in the United States. And who should pay for it? You guessed it - the taxpayers in the United States.

SEND THE CROOKS TO GUANTANAMO

The fact that our elected officials have consciously and irresponsibly allowed illegal aliens to enter our country through our border with Mexico is an abuse of power and deriliction of duty, and the elected officials in The United states who willingly allowed that to happen should be convicted of treason and sent to Guantanamo for the rest of their lives. That is what Hillary Clinton and President Obama should be telling Mexico and the citizens of The United States of America. George Bush said in a speech he made in 2003 that anybody who wants to come to the United States to work should be able to do so, and then turned around handed out billions of taxpayers' money to Mexico from hard working people in the United States. Why do we elect these clowns in the first place? Who votes for these people? Throw the bums out!

Bill Richardson, along with others, advocates having open borders with Mexico. But does he leave the door of his house all the time? Can everybody come into his house, and raid his refrigerator, and sit down on his couch, and grab the remote, and watch whatever they want on his television any time they want? I think not. And I think he, and many others, are probably getting some money from somewhere to say these things, because Obama and Clinton and Bush and Richardson are too intelligent to actually believe the things they have said regarding Mexico. I am not accusing anybody of anything, but if I were, we all know there is plenty of money to go around.

KEEPING DRUGS ILLEGAL IS TOO EXPENSIVE

Keeping weed and cocaine illegal is not working. I do not use marijuana and cocaine, and I do not think it is a good idea for anyone else to use cocaine and weed, but the system we have now is not working at all. It is broken. It is too expensive and totally ineffective. Just because something is legal does not mean that anyone has to endorse it. Ice cream, French fries, and sugar-pop are bad things, too. I do not consume those things, and do not think they are good for anyone, but I certainly would not want them to be illegal. Do you know how many enforcement agents we would have to pay to enforce that? The case against marijuana being legal is lame compared to the case against sugar being legal. There is enough money made on selling drugs illegally that officials get paid off on both sides of the border and they can buy guns from anywhere in the world and bring the drugs in to the United States without bringing them from the Mexican border. As long as weed and cocaine are illegal taxpayers will have to see more and more of their money flushed down the toilet.

When I was in high school it was illegal to buy and sell Coors beer in Oregon, which was supposedly because of their pasteurizing process, but it was just a political ploy to keep away some competition from Oregon breweries. There was a brisk black market for smugglers buying Coors in Idaho and bringing it back to Portland, and people were paying top dollar for it. Top dollar for Coors? Why? Because it was illegal. Coors has been legal in Oregon for decades, and nobody is paying top dollar for it, and no more taxpayer dollars are being wasted at all on catching beer smugglers. Besides, the State of Oregon makes money taxing the sales of all beer, including Coors. I am not old enough to recall prohibition in America, but we know how well that worked.

The bottom line is that our country needs to get much better elected officials in charge of how things are run in this country before it is too late. If that means dismantling the Democrat Party and Republican Party then just do it, and let's all get back to paying attention to these kinds of important critical issues instead of bickering about a few pet peeves. We do not need another political party. No matter what color skin they have or what race they are, we need some candidates worth electing and a majority of voters who care.

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 25, 2009

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0327/p99s01-woam.html
"Clinton says US shares responsibility for Mexico's drug violence"
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR March 27,2009
By Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers
MEXICO CITY - The United States is at least as responsible as Mexico for the violent drug wars that are roiling its southern neighbor because of an insatiable US market for narcotics, the failure to stop weapons smuggling southward and a three-decade "war" on drugs that "has not worked," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Wednesday...They are likely to be well received by top officials in the government of Mexican President Felipe Calderón, which is battling rising lawlessness and has called on the Obama administration to do more to stop the flow of guns and cash from the United States into Mexico... read_article

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7966427.stm
"Clinton targets assault weapons"
BBC NEWS March 26, 2009
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is pledging further effort to help Mexico in its anti-drugs campaign...She also acknowledged that US efforts to ban drugs had so far been unsuccessful in stopping the narcotics trade...Mrs Clinton said the Obama administration, working with the US Congress, intended to pledge $80m (£55m) to help Mexico buy Blackhawk helicopters... read_article

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123808610753449421.html
"Clinton Tours Mexican Police Center"
WALL STREET JOURNAL AP March 26, 2009
MEXICO CITY -- U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton toured a federal police control center in Mexico's capital on Thursday in a show of support for authorities caught up in a struggle with powerful drug cartels...All that is in addition to a three-year, $1.4 billion Bush administration-era program to support Mexico's efforts. Congress already has approved $700 million of that. President Barack Obama has said he wants to revamp the initiative. Mr. Obama said Tuesday he wanted the U.S. to do more to prevent guns and cash from illicit drug sales from flowing into Mexico...Criminals are outgunning law enforcement officials, she said, referring to guns and military-style equipment such as night-vision goggles and body armor that the cartels are smuggling from the U.S... read_article

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN25454116
"U.S. to blame for much of Mexican drug violence"
REUTERS March 25, 2009 By Arshad Mohammed
Clinton says unfair to blame Mexico for drug war...Clinton acknowledged the U.S. role in Mexico's vicious drug war as she arrived in Mexico for a two-day visit where she discussed U.S. plans to ramp up security on the border with President Felipe Calderon...Clinton said the Obama administration strongly backed Mexico in its fight with the drug cartels and vowed the United States would try to speed up the transfer of drug-fighting equipment promised under a 2007 agreement...Washington on Tuesday said it plans to ramp up border security with a $184 million program to add 360 security agents to border posts and step up searches for smuggled drugs, guns and cash... reader_articles

http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/03/26/tantaros_mexico_hillary/
FOX NEWS BLOGS March 26, 2009 By Andrea Tantaros
Imagine if Hillary were your attorney — “Your honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it’s my client’s fault.”...Does Secretary Clinton think that apologizing on foreign soil will alleviate the violence of the powerful Mexican drug cartels? The Obama - Clinton foreign policy team is showing weakness. Clinton’s job is to protect the United States’ interests abroad, not concede our liabilities...With all of our fiscal challenges and the reality that developing countries are buying the lion’s share of our debt... read_article
Tags: Mexico drug cartels Mexican border drug violence drugs Clinton

Obama Is A Big Disappointment As Was Bush

2009-03-25T20:31:00Z

Bush Was A Big Disappointment

And So Is Obama

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 25, 2009

When George HW Bush was in office, I became totally disgusted with Republicans. Reagan and Bush used the abortion issue as a way to get votes from the people that they wanted to trample into the dirt. They got 'em and they did. When Reagan beat Bush in the 1980 primaries, the Bush family mob discovered that if they could get Fallwell and an army of religious folks to convince everyone that the 11th commandment was to vote Republican, and at the same time give fiscally disastrous tax cuts to anyone making over $300,000 or more (moral or not), they could get away with all kinds of atrocities and still be supported by religious voters because they were supposedly the moral choice, no matter how immoral or irresponsible or corrupt Republican politicians were. George HW Bush and Reagan ran record deficits and increased national debt, created a Savings and Loan crisis to rip-off taxpayers and funnel billions to their buddies (just like the current banking crisis), funneled billions of dollars to their buddies to supposedly fight the "war on drugs" (just like the war on terror), got rid of energy conservation programs and encouraged oil dependency, bave billions to Bin Laden (the brother of Bush's business partner, Salem Obama), came up with laws to make their insurance company buddies rich (like AIG) by ripping off consumers, sent troops to protect Kuwait because they were in the oil region at the same time that mass genocide was taking place in Rwanda (just like in Africa today), encouraged illegal aliens to flood into our country to labor costs for their buddies, and made it harder and harder for common folks to get ahead financially at the same time that they made it easier for billionaires to multiply their wealth at a disproportionate rate. The Republicans had their chance to be moral, but instead they squandered and pillaged.

The Bushes were able to get elected and stay in power during 20 of the past 28 years by supposedly being the moral choice, and all they had to do was say something like "sanctity of life" or that they are in favor of less abortions, and the flock followed them, even though morality was never high on their list at all.

Now, diehard Democrats and the gay rights folks and ecology folks and people who are against whites, are all lined up behind Obama and singing his praises no matter what he does, the same way the religious folks did with the Bushes. Obama can try to deceive Americans into thinking that he and Geithner did not know months ago that AIG was going to pay those bonuses, and his supporters are behind him all the way. He can rack up more debt in two months than Bush did in eight years, but that is okay with them. "He is still new," they keep saying, but if McCain was President they would not be saying that. If he takes away Constitutional rights for the sake of the economy and safety on our borders, or just because he thinks he should be able to, he knows that he will be unopposed by the people who fought so hard and long to get George Bush and those religious right wingers out of office.

Are Americans just stupid and easy to fool, or what? Why doesn't Obama have a popularity rating of less than 10%? Why didn't Goerge Bush have a popularity rating of less than 10%? Everybody has a pet peeve, and if their political hero or political party panders to their pet peeve, then who cares if they rob the store and sink the boat and run off with the money leaving us in the middle of the desert to die and be eaten by vultures, the important part is that the politician who supports our one and only pet peeve won. I knew a preacher and used to say not to throw the baby out with the bath water and not to major minors. Not only do American voters major on the minors, they throw the baby out to spite the bath water. When will Americans realize that the enemy is not the Republicans or the Democrats, but the enemy is the Republicans and the Democrats?

I felt good about the economy when Clinton became President because both Clinton and Gingrich, the undisputed leaders of the Democrats and Republicans, were dead set on not running deficits and paying down national debt, and that is what actually happened. Sixteen years later, after surviving 8 eight years of Bush and two months of Obama, I don't feel good at all. I feel like I am a passenger on the Titanic, and everyone is singing and drinking and have a good old time.

When I was in high school, I looked around at the people I had to go to school with, and I said to myself that the day that my peers got in charge of running government and business, our country would be doomed. Well, they did and we are. Since then, there were times when I hoped that my generation would somehow learn to become responsible and rational and disciplined, but now they are in charge, and it looks like this spoiled greedy self-centered introspective generation has only gotten worse, and has not learned anything since they were watching Dan Akroyd and John Belushi and Bill Murray on Saturday Night Live (that was all there was to watch way back then).

Rush Limbaugh would vote for anybody who gives him the biggest tax cut (so he can spend more on illegal drugs), and has made a career of telling lies and being inaccurate, but he is the one who was selected by CPAC folks as their choice to be the voice of the Republican Party. GE owns NBC and plans to make a fortune with the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to build a green infrastructure, and everything on NBC is so one-sided and misleading in favor of Democrats that it is ridiculous.

If the same people who are now criticizing Obama for his knowing about AIG bonuses and his desire to expand control by the Feds and his racking up huge deficits and piling up unthinkable debt, would have been just as vigilant in criticizing Bush and the Republican controlled Congress that was doing the same things just a few years ago, the country would be better off today.

Conversely, if the people who were criticizing Bush and the Republicans when they were in control a few years ago, were just as vigilant today in criticizing Obama for trying to deceive Americans into believing that he did not know all about those AIG bonuses months in advance, and his using the economy as an excuse to broaden Fed control, and his using the Mexican drug cartels as an excuse to take away Constitutional gun rights from law abiding citizens, and his creating record deficits and unbelievable national debt, it would be better for the country right now.

A few months after the Iraq war began, a reporter was interviewed people on their opinion was. One wise person said that if the Democrats were in office instead of the Republicans at the time, most people who were opposed to the war would have been in favor of it and the people who were in favor of it would have been opposed to it.

(By the way, wasn't the reason that Obama said he was different than Senator Clinton is that he would bring all the troops home in two months. Two months is up. I guess that was just a lie. Go figure.)

Decades ago, a waiter I was working with at a restaurant in Kansas City gave me a story about needing some money and asked me to loan him $10, and said he would pay me right back. I loaned him the money. Then, after he put the money in his pocket, he told me that people like me don't get ahead because we let anybody rip us off. He was right. But, if nobody was like him, nobody would have to worry about getting ripped off. People like him think that they are the smart ones, and the people who they rip off just have not learned to be smart like them. The United States of America has become a society of people just like him. Me me my my mine.

By the way, have you seen Obama's budget?

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 24, 2009

"Approval poll has bloggers taking sides"
Boston Herald March 25, 2009 By Joe Dwinell
The first national poll showing President Obama’s seemingly perfect political posture slipping as voters grow skeptical of his job performance had the blogosphere bloviating at a fever pitch yesterday... read_article

New poll spells doom for Obama? Nah, not really…
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR March 24,2009
...To be fair, it could be right. Even a broken clock is correct twice a day. And inevitably his numbers will go down. They always do. This poll just doesn’t sync up with others.
Rasmussen’s daily tracking poll shows the president enjoys a 56 percent approval rating. Gallup and CBS show a 65 and 64 percent approval rating for the president respectively... read_article

"Zogby poll puts Obama's rating at 'about 50-50'"
USA TODAY March, 2009
President Obama's job approval stumbles to about 50% over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy. ... Pollster John Zogby said his poll out today will show Americans split on the president's performance. He said the score factors out to 'about 50-50.' " (Gallup's latest tracking poll gives Obama a 65% "approval"... read_article

"Drive-Bys Cover Up for Obama"
RUSHLIMBAUGH.COM March 24, 2009
RUSH: The Zogby poll, which was indeed published at the Boston Herald, Zogby has his poll out today, shows that Americans are 50-50 on Obama. Some polls show him coasting with a 65% job approval, but Zogby says these numbers are going down. It's not because of the gaffes, but a combination of high expectations and that things aren't moving fast enough with the economy... read_article
Tags: Democrats Obama Republicans Bush

No Cash or Guns in US Solves Mexico Border Drug Problem According To Obama

2009-03-25T15:11:00Z

No Cash or Guns in United States

Solves Mexico Border Drug Problem
According To Obama

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 25, 2009

If stopping the drugs from going into the United States from Mexico across our border is the issue, then do what it takes to do it, and don't try to use the issue to take guns away from our law abiding citizens. Stopping cash and guns from getting into Mexico should be Mexico's problem and not ours.

Obama says that the way to stop trafficking come from Mexico is by stopping guns and cash going into Mexico. If that makes sense, then all that he has to do is to make sure that nobody in the United States has any guns or cash. Well, it seems to me that has been his plan. I am waiting for Obama to give me reasons to think otherwise, which I would like, so I can disagree with those who want him to fail, since those are the people I have disagreed on most everything for eight years.

Fighting the drug war from the point of view that we need to stop guns and cash going into Mexico sounds a lot like mandating that women should not be allowed to wear provocative clothing so that nobody will want to rape them. It is the same kind of mentality. Just because women are not allowed to be attractive does not mean that they won't be raped any more than trying to keep money and guns from going into Mexico will stop drugs from getting into the United States.

If Mexico didn't get all the money coming in from selling drugs in the United States, what would that do to their economy? So after the taxpayers pay for all this increased enforcement on the border and have all of their gun rights taken away, then the taxpayers will get to pay for bailing out Mexico's economy as a result of less drug sales, just like we did for Columbia. Since people in the United States will still want drugs, maybe Canada will become the next place that drug cartels will be based out of, and then taxpayers can pay to increase border control there, and then when their drug business subsides, the taxpayers can give Canada money.

As long as there are people in the United States who want to buy drugs, there will always be a drug market, and the drugs will come from somewhere. As long as drugs are illegal, there will be more and more criminals on our streets and in our neighborhoods, and more taxpayer money will go to catch them. What we really need is a new Federal law that prohibits people from even thinking about drugs. Maybe then nobody would want drugs. In the meantime, any reason Obama, and those who want to make us a New World Order instead of a Constitutional Republic, will find out any rational to justify taking guns away from law abiding citizens.

By Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 24, 2009

"Obama targets flow of guns, profits from U.S. to Mexico"
DALLASNEWS.COM March 25, 2009
By TODD J. GILLMAN / The Dallas Morning News
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration promised Tuesday to help Mexico fight its drug war by cutting off the cartels' supply of guns and profits, while resisting the Texas governor's call for a troop surge at the border to ward off spillover violence... read_article

"Mexico Violence Not Spilling Into Texas Border Cities"
NPR March 24, 2009 by Deborah Tedford
President Obama is mulling a request to put troops on the Texas border to stop violence in Mexico from spilling over. But officials in Texas border cities say the mayhem hasn't spread and that bringing in the military puts law-abiding citizens in jeopardy... read_article

"Border plan elicits criticism"
POLITICO.COM March 25, 2009 By JEN DIMASCIO
Officials along the United States’ southern border, concerned that Mexico’s violent drug war is starting to spill into the U.S., said a new federal effort to fortify the frontier was inadequate to combat powerful drug cartels operating in both countries... read_article

"No Troops To Be Sent To Border"
THE BULLETIN March 25, 2009 By Joe Murray
Napolitano detailed how the administration will work with Mexico to regain control of the U.S. southern border. The U.S. is attempting to assist Mexico in breaking up a number of drug cartels believed to have killed 6,500 people in Mexico last year... read_article

"US focuses internally in war on drugs"
Inquirer.net March 25, 2009 Agence France-Presse
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama's plan to fight Mexican drug cartels in the southwestern United States acknowledges that a domestic effort is needed in the cross-border war on illegal narcotics, experts say.
The plan unveiled Tuesday includes sending more anti-drug agents to the region, cracking down on money laundering, adding more intelligence efforts to disrupt Mexican drug cartel operatives and new high-tech equipment to search for illegal drugs... read_article

Tags: Mexico border drug cartels guns

Is The United States Too Big To Fail? Another Trillion For Toxic Assets

2009-03-23T21:48:00Z

Is The United States

Too Big To Fail?

ANOTHER DAY ANOTHER TRILLION

A Trillion Here, A Trillion There, And Trillions Everywhere

Is the United States too big to fail?

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 23, 2009

The DJIA went up 500 points today, which is the first time in the past nine months that the stock market went up when a big announcement was made by the government to get us into another trillion dollars in debt. Maybe Obama and Geithner should come up with a new program overnight to add another trillion dollars of debt to taxpayers so that the market will go up some more tomorrow. I felt a little better when the stock market was going up every day at the same time that the United States government was paying down debt during the Clinton years.

I was born in the United States and grew up here. I was educated by schools run by the government. I read government censored newspapers, watched government censored television, I watched movies and TV shows made by Hollywood, was influenced by advertisements for fast food and soda pop and candy bars, traveled across the country a few times, worked in various capacities for a multitude of companies, and lived in five major cities in the western part of the United States. When I woke up and watched the news for the day on CNN and FOX and CBS and NBC and ABC and BLOOMBERG and on Internet web sites, all of them owned by profit-oriented parent companies featuring their carefully screened biased analysts, I wonder if maybe I am sitting in the middle of an audience full of curious people watching a grandiose magic show. But when the show is over, will everybody get up and orderly walk to the exit and stand in line to get a taxi and go back to their hotel rooms, or will there be a big explosion on stage that catches the place on fire and everyone will rush to find exits in the smoke and panic and people trample on each other in the process while the building falls down.

This President job seems pretty simple. Keep spending a trillion a day on things like toxic assets and hope it all works out okay. In the midst of the news stories and the jousting back and forth to decide whether or not the trillion dollar toxic asset spending spree of the day will work, there is very little attention being paid to the increased debt and how, and who, will pay for all of this.

I worked for dozens of restaurants in different towns, and most of them do well at Christmas time. People are running around spending money and racking up debt on Christmas presents and Christmas clothes and Christmas travel and Christmas groceries. So, as long as people are spending more money than they know they should, and their budgets are shot, why not get out a credit card and go out to eat and spend some more?

As long as Obama and Geithner spent a trillion last week and the week before, why not spend another trillion today for toxic assets? The House and the Senate will not call them into testify like they did AIG or the car companies, as long as the politicians can get hundreds of billions for their pet projects to get themselves re-elected. It is a good time for Obama and Geithner to take advantage of the opportunity to bury the country in debt while they are unopposed, and while the average American is still in shock after losing their retirement savings and houses and jobs and hope. Besides, the Democrats are just making up for the trillions spent by Bush primarily benefiting corporations with world record profits and individuals earning over a million a year (but at least last year I got a check for $600).

When I was 18 I moved into an apartment with a friend in Denver. We both had jobs. The first week I went and bought groceries and put them on one side of the fridge. When my room-mate saw what I bought, he told me that I did not know how to buy groceries. He was older and had lived on his own for awhile, and he assured me that if we went in together on groceries that we would save a lot of money. So we went shopping. He would pick something I did not like, so I would buy something to make up for it. I would buy something, and so he would buy something else. Everything we bought was a good deal, but together we bought an enormous amount of groceries. Of course, we just made sure we ate it all, which was no problem for a couple of skinny hard working guys. We ate good. The little old ladies at church were always inviting us over to dinner, because they figured we must be eating out of cans, and we never turned down offers for dinner, but my room-mate and I agreed not to tell them how well we ate on the nights when we cooked our own food. (If only they knew.)

All of our elected officials have all been getting in on the current Christmas-style spending spree with pledged taxpayer money, and there is a rush to fill up the government shopping cart while the getting is ripe for the taking. The only reason some companies have been called on the carpet for paying out executive bonuses and spending money on Las Vegas trips or flying their corporate jets, is because they failed to give enough of their ill-gotten gains to the right officials. (They should watch some more gangster movies about Vegas.) Meanwhile, a large percentage of Americans are waving pom poms and dancing in the streets because their new hero made it to The White House, so no matter what Obama and Geithner do to ruin the country, there is no way they are going to criticize, the same way that conservative Christians and evangelicals were joyful and having potluck dinners to celebrate when Bush and the Republicans controlled everything.

Obama is certainly a socialist in one form or another, and not all socialism is bad as long as it does not hurt the ability of a society to also be capitalist in a regulated free market environment (such as roads, police, fire departments, Social Security, etc.), but this current debt increasing toxic asset program of Geithner is not very socialistic, nor is it capitalistic, but is very oligarchic. Wouldn't being socialist mean that Obama would take hundreds of billions of dollars and put it into the hands of the common folks? But we know that is only in theory and that is what is advertised by socialists, because we know that what happens in socialist governments, in practice, is that they just end up taking away from the people, and they never get around to giving to the people, because that would not be for the common good of the people, and that part of socialism is already evident all around us in the United States, thanks to our elected officials of both big political parties during the past decade.

Reagan made the economy look good by racking up huge national debt, so why shouldn't Obama? Five years ago I was criticized by my Bush supporting friends for warning them that if they re-elected Bush, after knowing what a crook and liar and scoundrel he was during his first term, that the repercussions of anointing him to run the country for another four years was going to result in having an administration in the future that would be worse than what we would have had if Kerry had won. Once again, voting for evil to fight evil is still voting for evil and the end result is always going to be more evil. It would be nice if everybody stopped voting for bad people for the sake of voting against the other bad people. That is how we got into this mess, and it is a mess, and the mess will get worse as long as we play into the agendas of the Republicans and Democrats. Until a sizable percentage of voters refuse to vote for anyone, liberal or conservative, as long as the only politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, are selling us down the river and sinking our boats, then we will keep sinking in the quick sand until it is too late.

This toxic asset program from Obama and Geithner is just another program to "take care of the rich and they will take care of us", no matter how much debt is piled up, which was the philosophy of Bush and Cheney and Karl Rove. How has that has been working out for us?

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
September 25, 2008

"Nobel laureate Krugman slams Geithner bailout plan"
REUTERS Mar 23, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman said in remarks published on Monday that the latest U.S. Treasury bailout program is nearly certain to fail, triggering a sense of personal despair.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Monday unveiled a plan aimed at persuading private investors to help rid banks up to $1 trillion.... READ_THE_ARTICLE

"Geithner Banks on Private Cash"
Treasury Secretary Says Investors Needed to Help U.S. Rid Balance Sheets of Bad Assets
WALL STREET JOURNAL MARCH 23, 2009
By Deborah Solomon
WASHINGTON -- Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the only way to remove troubled assets clogging banks' balance sheets -- which lie at the heart of the financial crisis -- is to work with the private sector, even at a time when Wall Street moneymakers are being vilified by the public and politicians.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Sunday, Mr. Geithner said the government cannot fix the financial crisis alone...the creation of a series of public-private investments to soak up $500 billion, and maybe as much as $1 trillion, in troubled loans and securities...Banks still holding troubled assets at relatively high values may be reluctant to sell for fear they won't get a high enough bid to avoid having to take a huge write-down... READ_THE_ARTICLE

"K. Denninger gets it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
MOTLEY FOOL March 23, 2009
alstry's CAPS Blog
...Now that the Treasury Plan to "cleanse" the market of "toxic assets" has been put forward, I have noted that The FDIC is the entity that will both guarantee the debt issued and vet the bidder list...The taxpayer gets hosed for the remaining $71.25 billion dollars.
This can and will be done if the "sellers" of these assets are allowed to bid either directly or indirectly as it provides a means for banks to intentionally dump bad assets at a certain loss that is much smaller than their expected realized loss over time, shifting the rest of the loss to the taxpayer.
This program has the potential to shift literally $500 billion or more in losses onto the taxpayer, not through the operation of "bad luck" but rather through what amounts to a bid rigging operation... READ_THE_ARTICLE

"Hey, It’s Only a Trillion (or More)"
FOX NEWS BLOGS March 23rd, 2009
By Phil Kerpen
...the Trouble Asset Relief Fund (TARP) bill was passed because it would have been too expensive and because there was no agreement over how to price the assets–set the price too low and banks would be hurt instead of helped by the deal, set the price too high and taxpayers get ripped off. The private part of the Obama-Geithner plan solves that problem, but the public half–the reliance on substantial taxpayer funding–is another misstep, and could ultimately cost trillions of dollars...This FDIC guarantee would be capped at a 6 to1 debt to equity ratio–but remember that half the equity came from the TARP, so private investors would actually have $12 of taxpayer funding for every dollar of their own money they put in. That’s a huge amount of taxpayer risk for every dollar of private risk-taking, which creates an incentive for funds to overbid at auction, taking a chance that loans may overperform expectations because taxpayers are on the hook for downside risk... READ_THE_ARTICLE

"Geithner Relies on Investors for $1 Trillion Plan"
BLOOMBERG.COM March 23, 2009
By Rebecca Christie and Robert Schmidt
...The plan is aimed at financing as much as $1 trillion in purchases of illiquid real-estate assets...Barely two months after President Barack Obama took office, he and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are staking much of the new administration’s economic credibility on the theory that removing the devalued loans and securities from banks’ balance sheets will help them start lending again and resuscitate the economy...Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of government attempts to end the worst financial crisis in seven decades; the Bush administration abandoned an earlier plan to buy the toxic securities in November. Obama officials still have to pick private asset managers and banks have yet to commit to selling their illiquid investments... READ_THE_ARTICLE

Tags: Geithner Geithner toxic assets toxic assets

Obama's Slip On Jay Leno Show and My Aphasia

2009-03-21T23:22:00Z

Obama's Slip On Jay Leno Show

and My Aphasia

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 21, 2009

After my stroke it took me many months to learn how to talk again. I had never heard of aphasia, much less understood it. But I have been able to pick up on it with people who I would have previously thought were "under the influence" or mentally challenged. I have asked people up front if they have aphasia, and they get so relieved that somebody understands. I was fortunate to have minimal damage from having a stroke, and I have been able to overcome my aphasia enough for most people to not notice it unless they have known me a long time. Now when I see people on television or anywhere making fun of people who have speech problems, I look at it in a different light.

It is common for people on television and in public to mimic speech problems in order to poke fun of people, and hardly ever does anybody criticize that. It does not bother me, and I am not sensitive about it, but knowing that many people have aphasia from strokes or head injuries that they have to deal with for the rest of their lives, I hope that more people will refrain from mimicking speech difficulties, or making fun of any disabilities, to get a laugh.

Obama is taking some heat for his comment on Jay Leno's show that was disrespectful to some people who have to live with special challenges. Obama is a young man, and I hope he uses his slipped words and turns them into an opportunity to get through to people about the importance of not being in the habit of saying things in a small group of friends that one would not say in front of a crowd, and hope to not slip and say those things in public. Most of us will never have to worry about what we say on Jay Leno's show. But if everything you said was recorded and scrutinized, what would you be accused of saying?

I'll bet that Obama has used that line about Special Olympics while playing basketball as a way to poke fun of himself, with no ill intent, and has never thought about himself as being mean or discriminatory. I don't think he is against people with special needs. But by being in the habit of saying words or phrases that do not harm anyone while being in the presence of friends who are not going to be affected by it can be a bad habit that comes back to bite later.

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 21, 2009

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-special-olympics21-2009mar21,0,7433169.story
LOS ANGELES TIMES March 21, 2009 By Stacy St. Clair and John McCormick
"Not bowled over by Obama's Special Olympics joke"
Despite the president's apology, athletes and others say they are disappointed with his remark on Jay Leno's show...told her that Obama had made a joke about the Special Olympics on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on Thursday and that it might have hurt a lot of people...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7956469.stm
BBC NEWS Saturday, 21 March 2009
"Papers poke fun at Obama's gaffe"
US President Barack Obama's first major public gaffe since taking office has been seized upon by the papers...The Sun says the blunder should be taken as a sign to Gordon Brown to avoid appearing on chat shows...
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1098630.html
KANSASCITY.COM Mar. 20, 2009 By DAVE HELLING The Kansas City Star
"On TV, but off-script, Obama blunders"
President Barack Obama has learned the anchorman’s axiom: Unscripted television can bite. Appearing Thursday on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” — the first time a sitting president...
http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1160031
BOSTONHERALD.COM March 20, 2009 By Marie Szaniszlo
"President’s joke strikes blow to disabled"
President Obama’s bid for a cheap laugh on national TV, when he mocked his “Special Olympics” bowling skills, has turned into a gutter ball...
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/21/2522430.htm?section=world
ABC NEWS Mar 21, 2009 By Washington correspondent Mark Simkin
The US President Barack Obama has apologised to disabled people for joking about the Special Olympics on a television chat show. Barack Obama became the first sitting US President to appear on a late-night talk show when he spoke to Jay Leno...

Tags: Leno aphasia

Greed and Selfishness Are The Real Enemy Combatants

2009-03-19T16:05:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

Greed and Selfishness

Are The Real Enemy Combatants

by Phil Staudt
March 18, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

Question: What do you call throwing all of the Democrats and Republicans out of a plane over the ocean without parachutes?
Answer: A good start.

The reason Obama got rid of using the term "enemy combatants" for captured terrorists is because it is more appropriate to save that term for our politicians in Washington.

Why is it that the major things done by our elected representatives and officials, both Republican and Democrat, are the very things that 80% of Americans wish they would NOT do, such as:

>getting the United States into more debt

>getting us involved in wars that don't make sense and we cannot get out of

>letting millions of illegal aliens stream across our borders and take away our jobs

>giving extra special tax breaks to companies who close down factories here and open up new factories in other countries

>giving extra special tax breaks to oil companies that make record profits by >gouging American consumers with high gas prices

>bailing out the banks and insurance companies that have been ripping us off for years

>protecting the Wall Street firms that lied about Enron

>protecting bankers that caused the Savings and Loan fiasco

>protecting the bankers that caused the mortgage melt-down

>lying to us about relations with orderlies in the Oval Office

>lying to us about weapons of mass destruction

>lying to us about AIG bonuses that they knew about all along

>sending hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to banks overseas

These are things that bother most Americans and most Americans wish they would NOT do, but these are the major things that the politicians we elect, Republicans and Democrats alike, spend most of their time doing.

We are being made fools of by the people we are electing. By keeping Americans divided as Republicans and Democrats, the crooks can band together in Washington by deceiving hard working honest decent folks into thinking that there is hope that their political party is on their side and is coming to their rescue. If their party is now in power, then they are deceived into believing that things that are wrong today are a result of what was caused back when the other party was in charge, and they are confident that their party is doing what it takes to solve the problems and they feel that everything will be fine eventually. But if their party is not in power, then they have hope that their party will get elected next time around, because they think that their party is wonderful and will fix everything. But, for some reason, the major things that we all expect and hope for from any elected officials are not what we are getting.

I realize that individuals and groups of people who have agendas and opinions want to pick a political party and be loyal and faithful to everybody in their particular party because they believe they will save them from the rats and scoundrels in the opposing party, but it is my belief that the politicians know that if they can keep us little people running around with a "keep true to your school" mentality, finding faults with our enemies in the other party and supporting our heroes in our party no matter how rotten and corrupt they are, then the people in power can bankrupt the country and rob it's citizens and create a panic environment that will lead to abolishing the Constitution and freedoms and rights and decency, and we will end up being part of a "new world order" instead of being the United States of America.

There are some Republican and Democrat politicians that seem like they are good and decent, but if they endorsed and/or supported the key players in either the Republican Party or Democrat Party during the past 10 years, I question their wisdom and I do not trust them. In order for them to get elected and be in a position of power in either of those parties it seems to me that they had to be dirty rotten lying crooks. In my opinion, any decent politicians would not continue to be in the Republican or Democrat parties, because they are both so corrupt.

Democrats tend to be able to see what is wrong with Republicans, and Republicans tend to be able to see what is wrong with Democrats, but somehow they never see how horrible and rotten their own party is, and that is what needs to be done for our country to move ahead in a positive direction. People have to be extremely critical and scrutinize the politicians in their own party so that we can get a better group of politicians running the country. We need to have lots of candidates on the ballot for President and Senator and other offices on every ballot on November 4 in the General Election, with lots of candidates to choose from that do not belong to a political party. Then we might end up not electing Harvard grads who have never held real jobs, such as the last two Presidents. We might even get some good people in office who do not belong to the "good ol' boys and girls club".

During the past six months we have had the opportunity to observe two different Presidents from opposing political parties with totally different policy platforms from different races, but when it comes to handling the national debt and Wall Street and banks and insurance companies and protecting our borders and the trade deficit, they end up doing the same things, which happen to be the very things that 80% of Americans are against.

I am glad that the United States elected a black President, because it shows that we are moving closer to a society that truly believes in equality for all people. But I am not happy about the particular black President that we have because he and his buddies are ruining this country and shooting holes in the boat and burying us in insurmountable debt. I understand that African Americans and gay rights advocates and women's rights activists and civil rights activists and companies that stand to profit from irrational exuberance about global warming are all happy that the Republicans are no longer in power and they think that "THEY WON", but I wish they would set aside their excitement of feeling victorious and realize that Obama and his counterparts are just as deceptive and cunning and crooked as Bush and Cheney and Rove. I have listened to some nice decent African American folks who keep sticking up for Obama no matter what, and they feel that it is imperative for the Obama Presidency to be viewed as positive because the future of black Americans is at stake and they want to "REPRESENT". But whether you are white or black or Asian or Hispanic, your loyalty to the Constitution of These United States and your freedom and the freedom of our country and our economic well being at home and international trade should supercede your desire to stick up for your President because of his ethnicity or his beliefs in any agenda you may have or his political party.

For Democrat voters that were just happy to see the Bush regime out of office and were hoping to see America get back to the kind of economic policies and progress that was made during the Bill Clinton years, I think we can all now safely say that Barack Obama is NOT a Bill Clinton President when it comes to the economy and getting the country out of debt. Don't give me this line about it was leftover from the last administration. Reagan used that line to justify his deficit spending and increasing the debt, and George W Bush used that line when he got into office. The way Obama is spending money is the equivalent to using his Blackberry and the taxpayer credit card to charge everything under the sun and buy every piece of jewelry and every stitch of designer clothing in existence, but that would cost a lot less.

The economy will probably improve while Obama is President. But whether the economy becomes fantastic or terrible, the debt will still be there. I voted for Reagan twice, because he said he was going to cut back on spending and eliminate deficit spending. He gave trillions of tax cuts to those making over $300,000 a year, but he also spent more money than had ever been spent and he racked up record amounts of debt. That is the President that Republicans look to as their ultimate hero. Any President can look good if they keep spending more money we don't have. I voted for Bill Clinton twice because he said that he was going to cut back on spending and eliminate deficit spending. And that is exactly what he did. It was the only time in my 48 years that the United States actually reduced debt. It would be nice if we had a President that did that now.

There are lots of things that a President cannot do, and there are lots of things that Presidents can do that I disagree with. But one thing that a President can do is spend a lot of money, or not spend a lot of money. Is it too much to ask to have a President to not rack up so much debt that the country goes broke? What can be more basic than that? No matter whether or not you agree with the President on issues, if he or she does not control spending, they should not be President. That should be a prerequisite in every voters mind. The current President and the last President have spent so much money in the past six months that it does not compare to any spending and borrowing that has ever been done in the history of the world, or even could have been imagined. That is what all of the news networks and media and bloggers and everyone drinking lattes at Starbucks should be talking about.

At the end of the Bush administration all of his buddies and supporters and the people who got him into office had to get paid back one last night before he rode off into the sunset, so a trillion dollars went to that. Then, once Obama got into office, he had to pay back his buddies and supporters and the people who got him into office, and the Democrats had been waiting a long time to be in control of the checkbook and had a long list of things to buy, so a trillion dollars went to that. But what's a few trillion taxpayer dollars among friends?

Obama supporters defending his reckless spending and lies about AIG bonuses are sounding a lot like the Bush supporters I have been criticizing ever since Bush told America we had to run a deficit in order to pay Enron to build 2500 power stations across the country or we would all be in the dark after blackouts mysteriously happened in California (they didn't vote for Bush) after the behind-closed-doors private meetings with Cheney where they figured out how to pay back Enron and Ken Lay for being the largest contributor to the Bush family campaigns for decades. Of course, there were a multitude of lies and shady deals after that by the Bush administration, but Obama supporters need to open their eyes and realize that Obama is just more of the same and he and his staff and lobbyists and contributors are all in the same corrupt bed together. Wake up, people, before you are all sold down the river. Obama is "change you can believe in", and believe you me that his changes in rules he is pushing for about gays and abortion and cell stem research are just a way to get people who agree with his side on moral issues to follow behind him like ducks in a row the same way the followers of Bush praised him and turned a blind eye to the lies and deception and corruption because he occasionally made vague statements that indicated that he might have been against abortion now and then.

I am convinced that if Obama read polls and statistics today that said that 80% of Americans thought it should be illegal to act gay in public, and if he was convinced that the majority of voters would vote for a candidate that outlaws acting gay in public, Obama would change his policies on gay rights tomorrow. I do not believe that Obama really cares about gay rights, any more than Bush really cares about abortion. I said the same thing about Bush for eight years. They just use these issues to get votes, and follow polls and statistics and how many kickbacks and perks they can get, and they choose their policies and supposed convictions based on popularity and votes.

Since most people get their news from CNN and Fox and NBC, things are not going to be improved if that is all people see, which is what the crooks are counting on. The big news networks are owned by corporations that make a lot more money in businesses that are not news related. Delivering the news is nowhere near as profitable as the money that General Electric, the owner of CNBC and NBC, stands to make off of global warming. The biggest advertisers of the news networks and newspapers has been the car companies and insurance companies and banks. So who's side would you expect them to be on? The point is that the news media is in the tank with these corrupt elected officials both Republican and Democrat alike. Greed. Greed. Greed.

What we need right now is people on both sides of issues like abortion and gay rights to work together to get rid of all these crooks and either change or abandon these horrible political parties that are using these kinds of divisions to destroy the Constitution of These United States of America. The bill of rights is designed for all of us to be able to play together on the same playground and get along. It does not mean that you have to get rid of your moral values or beliefs, but it also means that the bullies can not be allowed to make you change your morals and beliefs. And that means that there needs to be an attitude of cooperation in order to pass laws that affect the national debt and lobbyists and economy and ecology and law enforcement and courts and taxes and military action. What we have instead is each person and each group having one issue that they are pulling for and they are willing to give up all their rights and freedoms, and the rights and freedoms of everyone else, just for the sake of being able to trample on the rights and freedoms of people that oppose them on the one issue that is important to them. Nobody seems to be interested in equal rights. All they want is special rights for themselves and forget everybody else. But the people who having opposing views could get together and make a list what they agree on and expect for elected officials as minimum requirements. Then if we end up with politicians who do not perform adequately based on the things that most of us agree on, we could agree to get rid of anyone that does not measure up, whether or not we agree with them on other things.

*For instance, we may all disagree on how much taxes different people and companies should have to pay, but we can all agree that we need to stop piling up debt and running ridiculous deficits, and that debt needs to be paid down, and we can all agree that we are not going to vote for anybody that racks up more debt and runs deficits, even if it means not voting at all. And if elected politicians break their promise, we can all agree to call for impeachment and run them out of the country. Groups and individuals from both sides should pool some of their money and run ads on television to inform people that is basic and fundamental for any candidates from any political party.

*For instance, as long as Democrats know that they are guaranteed to get 99% of gay voters and Republicans know they are guaranteed 99% of voters who want to see abortion illegal, regardless of whether or not they promise to get us out of debt debt, neither of those groups has any say on election day regarding debt as long as they all vote. If those two groups were in agreement that they were only going to endorse candidates that promise to not get our country into any more debt, then both the Republican candidates and Democrat candidates would be forced into making that an issue and would have to promise voters to not get us into more debt. But as long as it goes the way it is now, and gay voters and anti-abortion voters will vote for anybody as long as they agree with voters on abortion and/or gay rights, no matter how much debt they get us into, then we will continue to end up with lousy candidates that will get us into more debt.

*For instance, as long as Republicans know that 99% of the voters who want less taxes for people making over $300,000 dollars are going to vote Republican, and as long as Democrats know that 99% of the voters who want to keep their food stamps are going to vote Democrat, regardless of whether or not they promise to get us out of debt, neither one of those groups has any say on election day regarding debt as long as they all vote. But if all of the voters were convinced to not vote for anyone unless they promised to not get our country into more debt, then both the Republican candidates and Democrat candidates would be forced into making that promise. But as long as it goes the way it is now, and both of these groups of voters will vote for anybody as long as they agree with voters about taxes and/or food stamps, no matter how how much debt they get us into, then we will continue to end up with lousy candidates that will get us into more debt.

*For instance, if 10% of the voters will only vote for a white candidate, regardless of whether or not they promise to get us out of debt, and if 10% of the voters will only vote for a black candidate, regardless of whether or not they promise to get us out of debt, neither one of those groups has any say on election day regarding debt as long as they all vote. But if all of the voters were convinced to not vote for anyone unless they promised to not get our country into more debt, then both the Republican candidates and Democrat candidates would be forced into making that promise. But as long as it goes the way it is now, and both of these groups of voters will vote for anybody based exclusively on race, no matter how how much debt they get us into, then we will continue to end up with lousy candidates that will get us into more debt.

If I had the opportunity to get a high paying job working for the Federal Government, doing a job that is respectful and decent, I would not refuse to take the job just because the President at the time does not belong to a certain political party, and I would not quit my job just because a different political party comes into power, and I would not decide whether or not to take the job based on whether or not the people in power agreed with me on moral issues. Nor would I expect anyone to decide which corporation to work for based solely on the personal moral values and the lifestyles of board directors unrelated to business. The aforementioned major things that I expect from the President of The United States and other elected officials should be what we focus on, and then once the car has an engine and wheels we can figure out how to get the kind of seats and stereo we want.

If you have been voting based solely on your desire for gay rights, would you vote for a candidate that promised you gay rights and also promised that in five years from now there will no longer be a United States of America or a Constitution and we would all be under Chinese rule, would you still vote for that candidate? If you have been voting based solely on your desire for gay rights, would you vote for a candidate that promised you gay rights and also promised that in five years from now there will no longer be a United States of America or a Constitution and we would all be under Chinese rule, would you still vote for that candidate? If you have been voting based solely on your desire to see abortion illegal, would you vote for a candidate that promised you to make abortion illegal and also promised that in five years from now there will no longer be a United States of America or a Constitution and we would all be under Chinese rule, would you still vote for that candidate? If you have been voting based solely on your desire for gay rights, would you vote for a candidate that promised you gay rights and also promised that in five years from now there will no longer be a United States of America or a Constitution and we would all be under Chinese rule, would you still vote for that candidate? I believe that is exactly the way that many voters in America are voting.

You and I do not have to vote for politicians that are going to ruin the country just because we want to vote against politicians that have beliefs we do not like. Voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. It is your right as a Citizen of the United States of America to not vote at all. If 30% or 40% of the voters insisted on no longer voting for the lesser of two evils, and declared they were not going to vote at all unless they can vote for candidates who explicitly promise to not to get us into more debt, no matter what else they promise to do. If 30% or 40% of the voters insisted on no longer voting for any Republicans or Democrats because they have had their chances, and have done nothing but put this country on a crash course with economic depression and moral destruction and a communist style government, then these parties would be forced to either get serious and change their practices or cease to exist.

We the people need to come up with some minimum standards that most Americans can agree with for whom we elect. Getting us out of debt would be a good start.

by Phil Staudt
March 18, 2009
The Phil Staudt Blog

Obama Knew About AIG Bonuses But Is That The Biggest Story?

2009-03-19T15:37:00Z

Obama Knew About AIG Bonuses

But Is That The Biggest Story?

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 18, 2009

If I were to watch CNN for the next 24 hours, most of the news will be about AIG bonuses, which accounts for 1/1000th of taxpayer money given to AIG. What happened to the rest of the money from taxpayers? Isn't it more important that tens of billions of taxpayer dollars given to AIG is going to banks in Europe and outside the United States? Isn't it more important that Obama and Geithner and Chris Dodd and Barney Frank all put on an act that they are surprised and angry at AIG when they all knew about it? They are just angry that the public found out about it and turned it into a big story.

The reason Obama got rid of using the term "enemy combatants" for captured terrorists is because it is more appropriate to save that term for our politicians in Washington.

This AIG bonus coverage by every news program is gross overkill. It is just business as usual, but they are talking about this almost as much as they covered Paris Hilton in jail. It is just one more way for them to entertain us and make us take our eye off the ball so they can sneak around and put some more dough in their pockets.

All CNN and CNBC and MSNBC is talking about this week is $165 million in bonuses, but that is just a diversion from the disclosure that a large portion of the $170b handed out to AIG to save our country is going outside the United States. Repeat: OVER $60 BILLION OF TAXPAYER MONEY GIVEN TO AIG IS GOING OVERSEAS! That is a more important story than what Madoff stole from investors in his ponzi scheme, and the taxpayers are not on the hook to pay for the Madoff money and taxpayers are not going to pay billions of dollars of interest to China and Russia and Saudi Arabia for Madoffs mess like we will for all of this spending. But the major networks and newspapers and bloggers are only focusing on bonuses and Madoff instead of the biggest story. CNN and all the major news networks should immediately stop their commercials and suspend their regular programming and exclusively cover the "We Are So Far In Debt That We Can't See Daylight" story. They should be telling viewers that our government is going "all in" by gambling hundreds of billions of dollars a spin on the Wall Street corporate roulette table. When hard working Americans come home from work and plop down on the couch and grab the remote, the only thing that should be on the air is accurate honest information telling them that America is going to hell in a hand basket right now at this moment, and the country is broke and if this continues that we will all be living in Chinese compounds working 16 hours a day for a cup of soup.

Any time a story takes front stage and dominates all news articles and reports, you can be assured that something else is taking place that they don't want us to know, so I bet CNN and NBC and all the news networks are covering something else up, and we may never know. The fuss being made about $165 million in bonuses being paid to AIG executives during the past four days is a fancy trick on the corner of the stage so the magicians in power can work behind the curtain to set up their next assault on the United States of America and pick your pocket and steal your furniture while you are sleeping tonight. Obama says he is angry about these AIG bonuses, but the amount of interest being paid by the American taxpayers every single day as a result of his economic recovery spending spree and his new budget and the money thrown away by the Bush and Paulson TARP, makes these AIG bonuses look like a speck of sand on the beach. That is what taxpayers should be mad about and that is the real story that the media and bloggers and networks should be talking about.

Obama and Bush and all successful politicians know that the news is only going to show their answers and not the questions they were asked. That is why when you watch live question and answer sessions that the media is allowed to have with the President, the answers that are given have nothing to do with the questions that are asked. They schedule these questions to be asked at times when most people are busy working or in school. Later on in the day the networks run their favorite clips with no regard of what they were being asked. Today when Obama was asked about the $100,000 he received in campaign contributions from AIG, he went into a dissertation about the drafting of the Constitution by Hamilton and the founding fathers and that we need to stop bad things from happening in the future. When Obama was asked if he knew ahead of time that AIG was going to pay these bonuses because they told Bloomberg and CNN and Associated Press about it on January 28, 2009, Obama did his regular "Well, look.." thing and said that he was not the one that drafted the contracts and he was not in charge of running AIG when the contracts were written to pay these bonuses. Obama should have known about it when he rushed to Washington on his jet (just like the auto executives) to vote for the TARP that benefited his contributors. They could have insisted BEFORE AIG got taxpayer money that AIG suspend all bonuses until taxpayers got paid back. But he was in on it and it was an inside job and the American taxpayers got robbed, which is what I said in September before AIG got any money.

AIG told Bloomberg and Associated Press on January 28 that they were planning to pay $450 million in bonuses because of legally binding contractual agreements. CNN did a piece on it on January 28. This is not new news. Newspapers across America printed the AP article and many of the articles are still online. (See links listed under my article.) Obama and Geithner and Barney Frank and Dodd and Bush and Paulson and Max Baucus all knew about these bonuses. Maybe Obama and Giethner and all the people working for them missed all the news reports from AP and Bloomberg and CNN on January 28 about AIG planning on paying these bonuses. Either Obama and Geithner and Dodd and Barney Frank are very uninformed and grossly incompetent or they are crooked liars. Most likely both. Geithner lied about his own taxes and it was fine with Obama, and now they are both lying about this. Obama and Dodd each received campaign contributions of over $100,000 from AIG. If giving money to AIG had to be done regardless, then so be it, but tell taxpayers the truth instead of pointing the finger at AIG and saying you did not know. Don't be mad at AIG. Be angry at the politicians for allowing this to happen.

The government giving money to either auto companies or AIG is bad, and neither auto companies or AIG should be giving bonuses or paying executives or employees as if everything is going fine under these circumstances. AIG should have been required to tear up contracts or defer bonus payments and reduce executive pay before AIG got a dime of taxpayer money. But the government screwed up by giving money to AIG and then trying to make up some rules and hope that AIG goes along. They could have insisted that bonus contracts be null and void BEFORE the deal, and the recipients would have had to agree. Instead, they are trying to collect a new cover charge from the patrons who have already been in the bar and drinking for hours. It is not AIG's fault, but politicians knew what they were doing, and took care of their buddies with our money, and that is why AIG is legally obligated. The laws and Constitution should not be ignored, even for a good cause. That kind of thinking brought us The Patriot Act.

It is scary that the rule of law and The Constitution does not matter to people. Obama and Geithner and Barney Frank all say they are "shocked that gambling is going on here". These contracts were in place before Liddy was the CEO of AIG, and AIG is obligated to pay what they agreed to, whether the people are shmucks or swindlers or bums. This situation should have been addressed by Bush and Paulson and Barney Frank before the taxpayers were on the hook for anything, and this should have been addressed by Senator Obama and Senator McCain and Senator Clinton when they voted in favor of the package that made it possible for their buddies to take care of each other. But the politicians were taking care of their own and they know it. Do not blame AIG for fulfilling its legally binding promises. Blame the people who gave taxpayer money to AIG knowing good and well that they were legally obligated to pay these ridiculous scandalous bonuses. Blame whoever authorized the money going to a company with these stupid deals. If giving money to AIG had to be done regardless, then so be it. Tell taxpayers the truth instead of pointing the finger at AIG. And no, The President of The United States and Congress do not, and should not, have the authority to mandate that these companies not be legally obligated to follow the law just because they got some taxpayer money. As taxpayers we should spend more time scrutinizing money being spent by our elected officials and blame them. Be angry at the politicians for allowing this to happen.

Meanwhile, Obama and Democrats are coming up with a new plan every day to spend another trillion dollars and hope it helps, and people making millions of dollars a year like Rush Limbaugh only care about their personal tax rates and will say anything to keep their taxes low and are in denial that the tax cuts by Reagan and Bushes at the same time that Republicans were spending money on programs to benefit the wealthiest people and most profitable corporations have put this country in very sad shape.

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
March 18, 2009

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/03/17/dodd...
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday March 17, 2009 17:59 EDT
The dishonest "Blame Dodd" scheme from Treasury officials
...But now that a political scandal has erupted over these payments, the White House is trying to deflect blame from itself and heap it all on Chris Dodd by claiming that it was Dodd who was responsible for that exemption...
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/03/18/politics/politicalhotsheet...
CBS News March 18, 2009 11:28 PM
Dodd: Treasury Insisted On Grandfathering Bonuses
Posted by Ken Millstone
...As CBS News and others have documented, that outrage is disingenuous coming from lawmakers who have known about the pending bonuses for months.
In particular, it's disingenuous coming from anyone who voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (a.k.a. the Obama stimulus package). The stimulus bill included provisions to limit executive compensation at companies receiving federal bailout money. But it also stated explicitly that the limits would not apply to bonuses agreed to prior to Feb. 11, 2009...
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087...
AIG’s Liddy Takes ‘Offense’ at Congress Bonus Blame
By Erik Holm March 19 (Bloomberg)
...Liddy told the hearing that he had asked employees paid bonuses exceeding $100,000 to repay half...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/18/...
What to Do About AIG?
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A former AIG executive and others suggest better ways to aid ailing businesses.
MAURICE R. "HANK" GREENBERG
Chief executive of AIG from 1967 to 2005
CEO Edward Liddy believes that dismantling AIG, once the world's largest and most successful insurance company, is the only way to repay the taxpayer money...
http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml
The Way We'll Be
AIG Bonuses Are Costly For Obama
John Zogby, 03.19.09, 12:00 AM EDT
Sure, they're legal, but they're also wrong.
Outrage about the $165 million in bonuses paid to executives at AIG may represent a tipping point in public attitudes...
"He is making all the right moves in terms of playing a bad hand," the president said. Mr. Obama took ultimate responsibility for the bonus flap, saying "the buck stops with me."
http://hillbuzz.wordpress.com/2009/03/17/this-is-a-damn-lie-obama-claims-he-didnt-know...
This is a damn lie: Obama claims he didn’t know about AIG bonuses until this month
March 17, 2009 Posted by hillbuzz
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123721970101743003.html?mod=rss_whats_news_us
MARCH 17, 2009
Political Heat Sears AIG
Obama Vows to Block Bonuses, but It May Be Too Late; Firm Pressured to Repay U.S.
By JONATHAN WEISMAN, SUDEEP REDDY and LIAM PLEVEN
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Frank-assails-bonuses-paid-to-apf-14646988.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/business/16aig.html?_r=1
http://www.cnbc.com/id/29717766
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2009-03-15-summers-aig_N.htm
http://tbm.thebigmoney.com/features/todays-business-press/2009/03/17/lives-danger-aig
"Lives in Danger" at AIG
By Bernhard Warner and Matthew Yeomans Posted Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - 4:56am
...The epicenter of the outrage Monday was Washington. Even though Treasury officials knew of the planned payout for months, they only voiced their indignation just as the checks were being cut over the past few days. President Obama added his outrage to the AIG bonus furor, vowing to "pursue every single legal avenue to block" the payouts. But, the Wall Street Journal reports, "hours later, administration officials said the payouts made Friday couldn't be extracted from their recipients without a legal fight that would cost the taxpayers even more." Shortly afterward, in stepped New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who said "he would subpoena A.I.G. for the names, job descriptions and performance evaluations of the employees receiving the bonuses," the New York Times reports. The AIG bonus fiasco appears as if it will devolve into a matter of who knew what when.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/aig-payments-to-banks-stoke-bailout-rage.html
http://www.businessethics.ca/blog/2009/03/aig-bonuses-ethics-and-rule-of-law.html
http://boortz.com/nealz_nuze/2009/03/the-aig-bonuses.html
http://prontherun.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/aig-and-obama-duped-again/
http://lolfed.com/2009/03/16/not-expecting-this/
http://racinenews.org/?p=25894&cpage=1#comment-3175
http://jdeanicite.typepad.com/i_cite/2009/03/the-aig-bonuses-furor-the-class-issues.html

JANUARY 28, 2009 ARTICLES:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?...
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg)
AIG Said to Offer $1 Billion in Retention to Workers (Update1)
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., the insurer saved from collapse last year by government money, may have committed more than $1 billion to employees to keep them from leaving the company. About 400 workers at New York-based AIG’s financial products unit may get $450 million in two installments...AIG is trying to hold onto employees while it sells businesses to repay a government loan...AIG said the program was disclosed before the government rescue, which is now valued at $150 billion..."
http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20090128/NEWS01/90128013/1002
www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20090127/aig-bonuses/
AIG will still pay swaps team retention bonuses
MADLEN READ | January 27, 2009 05:28 PM EST
Associated Press
NEW YORK — American International Group Inc. said it is paying retention bonuses as planned to employees in the unit that sold credit default swaps...$450 million is being offered to a group of about 400 employees...We adopted and disclosed this contractual retention program months before the government provided support to AIG. We did so because it was clear, given the market environment, that we would need to retain employees...But the bonus system is still firmly in place on Wall Street..."
http://berniehund.com/2009/01/28/aig-to-give-out-bonuses-tarp-money-gone-wild/
AIG to Give Out Bonuses, TARP Money Gone Wild?
By sinde on January 28th, 2009
According to Bloomberg news, AIG, the insurance giant too big to fail is going ahead with plans to give out bonuses to to some 400 Wall Street employees to the tune of $450,000,000...
http://hawtaction.com/2009/01/jlf-bailout-disaster-how-aigs-spending-your-money.html
JLF: Bailout Disaster - How A.I.G.'s Spending Your Money
By Johnny Lead Foot on January 27, 2009 8:30 PM
http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2009/01/28/kanjorski-calls-bonuses-for-aig-executives-outrageous/
January 28, 2009
Kanjorski: Bonuses for AIG Executives 'Outrageous'
@ 3:45 pm by Hill Staff
Kanjorski, a member of the House Financial Services Committee, slammed ailing insurance firm American International Group (AIG) for paying some $450 million in retention bonuses
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/jan/27/aig-bonuses-012709/?zIndex=43844
http://www.rickroot.com/blog/1/2009/01/AIG-to-pay-450-million-in-bonuses--using-Taxpayer-money.cfm

obama

No McCain and No Obama

2008-10-26T18:40:00Z

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

No McCain and No Obama

by Phil Staudt
September 25, 2008
The Phil Staudt Blog

Once again I have decided to not vote for the Republican nominee or the Democrat nominee for President. There are a myriad of reasons, but I will state my main reasons.

In the 2008 Presidential election, I believe that we have been victimized by polarization, and with either choice we end up with policies that use taxpayer dollars and increased debt and higher deficits, either for favoring the rich while suppressing the disadvantaged, or for favoring the poor by suppressing the rich. Either way we end up with more debt.

I decided to not vote for John McCain and Barrack Obama on the day that they both voted in favor of using $700 billion dollars to let Hank Paulson give taxpayer money to banks and insurance companies and Wall Street. The interest alone that the taxpayers will have to be burdened with to pay for the money that will be borrowed from China and Russia for this handout for the biggest crooks of our time, will add up to enough money to pay for basic health care for American citizens who are below the poverty line in our country.

The fact is that the health care plans of John McCain, Barrack Obama, Mitt Romney, and Hilary Clinton are unworkable because they are designed to make insurance companies richer. It is okay if insurance companies get richer, but not because of government policies that force individuals and companies to pay them a big fat cover charge. Basic life-and-death health care needs to be available to everyone, the same way that fire departments and police departments and paramedic services are available for everyone, with the expectation that people who are using these services need to be in the United States legally, and if they are not here legally, they need to leave. Middle class workers who are working for businesses that do not have health insurance, and small business owners and self-employed contractors who are struggling to put gas in the car and food on the table, should not have to file bankruptcy and have their lives ruined because they have a stroke or break their leg. That is IMMORAL in the wealthiest country in the world. Shame on people who try to call that socialism or communism.

Both John McCain and Barrack Obama (along with George W. Bush) are weak on illegal immigration. I agree that we should have a stern strict policy that makes it possible (and costly) for some people who are here illegally to become legal taxpayers, because they are here because of bad government policies in the past, but it is useless and in vain if we don't secure all the borders and put in place and actively enforce policies that keep illegal immigrants from getting into the country and setting up camp and taking away jobs from legal taxpaying citizens. George Bush invited Mexicans to come on over because he said that everybody who wants to work in this country and do "jobs that Americans don't want" should be able to do so.

Barrack Obama supported the handgun ban in Washington DC. When his anti-gun V.P. choice was announced, Barrack Obama and Joe Biden stood beside each other and criticized the fact that John McCain owns several homes. When a Presidential candidate thinks it is bad for individuals to own homes and be rich, and he wants to take away handguns from law-abiding citizens, I get worried, especially when his biggest campaign slogan is "we need change". Read your history books, kids, and be very cautious.

John McCain supports the spending of a trillion dollars in a war that shouldn't have been waged in the first place. Every thing that we have done in Iraq could have been done with 25% of the money if it wasn't for the padding of every cost for the sake of Blackwater and Haliburton and other friends of the Bushes. John McCain now says that we need to make the George W. Bush handouts for the rich permanent, which he voted against, because they were tax cuts that he used to say "unfairly favor the rich". With tax cuts that favor the rich and trillion dollar wars and trillion dollar bailouts for Wall Street, John McCain wants to lead us into more debt. It is ludicrous to disagree with the policies of George W. Bush and then support McCain. Every Republican politician in the country is distancing themselves from Bush, even they supported him and voted for him. Will you believe that they are different? Have you ever heard the saying that "fool me once...".

I voted for Reagan twice because he said that we needed to balance the budget and reduce the debt "for the sake of our kids and their kids". Then he gave the biggest tax cuts for the richest people in the world in history while cutting out programs to help the sick and elderly, and then took out the United States American Express Card and kept charging until the economy looked good, and left office with the most humungous deficits and debts in history until then, but is nothing compared to the debts and deficits racked up during 12 years of Bushes.

I voted for Clinton twice (and I would vote for him now, if he could run) because he said he was going to balance the budget and reduce our debt, and he did it. All the lying crooked talk show hosts and lower-taxes-for-billionaires advocates were saying when Bill Clinton got into office and raised taxes for the rich that the economy was going to be horrible and unemployment was going to go up and small businesses would suffer, but just the opposite happened. For 90% of Americans, the Bill Clinton years were the best economic times during the past 60 years, and unemployment was the lowest in my lifetime. Bill Clinton's tax hike was nothing compared to the amount of the disastrous tax cut for the richest people that Reagan gave. Tax cuts that are designed to give 90% of the tax cut money to people making over a million dollars a year do not stimulate anything but the elimination of the middle class, and puts the average worker out of reach of being financially successful and financially secure. Giving millions of dollars a year each to the likes of Britney Spears, Jim Carrey, Tiger Woods, Oprah, movie stars, rap stars, porn stars, owners of strip clubs and casinos and Hollywood studios, is not going to help anybody get a job or be able to make enough money to get ahead. I am in favor of having low unemployment and a balanced budget and no wars and paying down the debt, and that is what we had with Bill Clinton. Nobody is going to lay off employees because of taxes.

Rich people who have to pay more taxes don't stop hiring or buying equipment. In fact, they do just the opposite. They need to hire more people and buy more equipment and do more advertising so that they can make more money to make up for paying more taxes, and they have the money to do it. They pay more money to CPAs to figure out how to invest their money to avoid taxes, and that benefits the markets. They decide that instead of paying more taxes they will put the money into their businesses and make them better and more efficient and more productive. Unemployment then goes down, and the average worker has a good work environment, consumers have paychecks and raises and money to spend on goods, which results in higher sales and profits for companies that make and sell these goods. That results in more tax revenues from everyone. The lying crooked talk show hosts and regulars on Fox are trying to say that is Socialism and Communism. Bill Gates made billions during the Clinton years selling software to consumers, and he would have made much less if the consumers were broke and could not afford to buy anything, like now. Billionaires that own businesses that sell services and goods to common people thrive in a Bill Clinton economy.

The truth is that there is a handful of people who have enough money to control a lot of media who have been trying to convince people that it is good for the country for everyone to just take all of their money and all the taxpayer money and put it into their money bags and trust them to make the world better for us, and then they say that if you disagree with them then you are a Communist. That routine has been going on way before I was born with McCarthyism and the likes of it. If they can't sway you to vote for them and their evil ways, and if you are not concerned about the economy and the good of the country, they hope you are against abortion so they convince you that they are too, even though all they want to do is to be in charge so that the money gets stuffed into their bags for their getaway. We have had Republicans in charge of the Supreme Court during the past few decades and abortion is legal all over the country, so if you are suckered into voting for Republicans because you think they are going to make abortion illegal, then you have been duped for the sake of those rich guys with the masks on that are trying to get everybody to put all the money into their bags because they say that they are the "moral choice".

I am 100% against abortion and I hate abortion. But I am not convinced that making it illegal solves anything, and would create new illegal black markets and gangs and new government costs, and tie up courts and jails, and there would be just as many, if not more, abortions in this country. I believe most Republican politicians agree with me in practice, but they use the abortion issue to get more votes and money into the pockets of the few people who control their party, because they have to have something to convince poor people to vote for them and support their policies that hurt poor people and unjustly use taxpayer money to help themselves.

Barrack Obama is no FDR or JFK or Bill Clinton. John McCain is just another Bush. And I am not going to vote for either of them.

by Phil Staudt
September 25, 2008
The Phil Staudt Blog

Tags: McCain Obama

Phil Staudt - not Republican, not Democrat, concerned, opinionated

good night, and good luck.

The Big Heist of 2008

2008-09-25T19:50:00Z

The Big Heist Of 2008

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
September 25, 2008

Last night our President made a speech. As I listened to the wise words of George W. Bush, and as I observed him saying the opposite of everything he has been saying about the economy and Wall Street and banking for the past eight years, and as he was speaking as if we are all so stupid that we cannot see this, all I could hear him saying was, "SHOCKED!!! I am shocked that gambling is going on here!" Maybe he then slipped away to check his Swiss bank accounts to make sure that the deposits were made.

These things happen in politics, and they are all crooks. In fact, the Democrats who are currently bellyaching about the Big Heist of 2008 are going to eventually vote in favor of it for the sake of their personal portfolios and those of their friends. There is no way they cannot okay this thievery because they are going to benefit from it. Of course Wall Street analysts are saying it is necessary, because they are going to benefit from it. They are telling us about corporations not being able to get credit and will fold if we don't act now. The banks are holding the country hostage until we pay them the ransom money, and it is an inside job by the Federal Government.

When Billy Clinton was in office he pushed to get China restored back to most-favored status, and then China had to kill all their chickens because of disease, and then China had to buy all their chickens from Tyson, based in Arkansas, where Billy had been Governor. You can expect politicians to do deals that benefit themselves and their buddies. There have been many "bridges to nowhere" built at every level of government. But this Republican administration is orchestrating the ultimate bridge to nowhere, and this Democrat Congress is going to okay it.

I have been waiting and watching to see how our current lame duck would get his piece of the pie. But this scenario is over the top. For all those who have said that Bill Clinton lied to the American people, and therefore it was imperative that we should vote for our President based on "character", which was the GOP code word in 2000, I have never seen more lies coming out of a politician's mouth then what came spewing out of GW Bush last night. Go ahead. Play the tape back. I am in the camp of those who believe that all of our politicians are a bunch of crooks, but he just won the top award. Either he was lying to us last night, or he has been lying to us for eight years, but everything he said last night opposes everything has been saying about our economy, and opposes everything he has said he would and would not do, and how can anybody believe anything he says.

Remember the energy crisis of 2001 that we had to take care of right away when the power was going out and there were mass blackouts? Cheney met behind closed doors to formulate a strategy while G.W. told us that he needed Congress to act quickly to pass a huge spending bill that included having Enron build 2500 power plants across the country, or we would all be in the dark. He wasn't in office for six months and he was already telling us that it was okay to run a deficit and borrow money (so much for the surplus) as long as we were at war (which we weren't at that time) or in times of a "national crisis". Unfortunately for Enron, they got caught with their pants down because we ended up having a real national crisis on September 11th, and Congress was out of the office because of anthrax and wasn't able to get the "energy-crisis-we-need-it-now" bill passed. We know what happened to Enron, whose chief was one of his biggest contributors to GW Bush when he was running for Governor and President. The lights are still on, but they found better ways to sucker Americans out of their tax dollars, except for those making over millions of dollars a year. I am not against people getting rich or getting richer, but I am against borrowing trillions of dollars from communist countries in order to benefit those who have the most and need tax breaks the least.

Any time we hear that the government needs something to get passed right now without questions or answers or ramifications or add-ons or subtractions or anything else that seems like good common sense, we know there is a heist taking place. Remember the fake gas shortages in the '70's? Remember the savings and loan bailout, which included a S&L that had as its director the brother of the man who gave us the speech last night from the White House? Remember the weapons of mass destruction? Remember how the tax cuts for billionaires was going to make the economy strong and make the markets go up, and at the same time we were going to balance the budget and pay off debt?

And we know about John McCain's record with the banks and the "Keating Five". Earlier this year, Andrew K McCain, son of John McCain, served on the board of Silver State Bank, but resigned in July, less then two months before the bank failed. I am sure that all of these ties to bank failures by the Bush's and McCain's are coincidental, and there was nothing that they did wrong, but they were failures, and that is a fact.

For 20 out of the past 28 years we have had a Bush as either President or Vice President. Every one of those years was a deficit year that increasingly piled up astronomical amounts of debt for our country. The only years in my lifetime where this country did not plunge into more humongous debts was the years that Clinton was President. I can understand those who will not vote for a political party or candidate because of their views on abortion or gay marriage, which ever side they are on, but for goodness sakes, don't keep voting for these lying crooks who are bankrupting our country, or our country might end up being run by the Chinese, and then you will see a lot of abortions. Borrowing money from China, including another $700 billion, is financing a government that has forced abortions and mandatory abortions, so if you vote for the party that gave us the debt, and keeps on giving us more debt, you are supporting forced abortions in China. How moral is funding and financing forced abortions in China, and borrowing money from China to finance the invasion and occupation of a country that did not attack us, and lying about weapons of mass destruction, all for the sake for oil and the profits of Haliburton and other contractors. Maybe it is not a good idea to put the wolves in charge of watching the sheep any more, no matter how good their disguises are.

For the past few decades there has been a pattern of coincidences surrounding this bunch that have been selling themselves as the "moral choice". Just for fun, here are a few Google or Yahoo searches you can do:

     andrew mccain silver state savings and loan

     neil bush silverado state savings and loan

     john mccain lincoln savings and loan

     george w bush oil company texas

Some people will not vote for Democrats for one reason or another, and that is justifiable, but voting for the crooks in the Republican Party is even worse. I did not vote for a President in the last two Presidential elections, and I have not decided on this one. But I sure ain't gonna vote for a Republican, and the Heist of 2008, combined with their record over 30 years, is the reason why. I voted for Reagan twice because he said that he was going to balance the budget and pay down debt for "the sake of our kids and our grandkids". Well, he lied. (You had to be there to appreciate that pun.) I was young and stupid and actually believed that giving enormous tax breaks for everyone making over a million a year was good for the economy. Nothing trickled down then, and nothing is trickling down now. I have been saying for the past two decades, that you know that you are in a trickle down economy when the economy is down to a trickle. We had four of the last eight years with the Republicans in charge of everything, and now we are there.

I voted for Clinton twice because I believed that he actually did want to keep the budget balanced, and that was the only reason I voted him for him. It was also the only time in my life that the country reduced its debt. The economy did not go down because the richest folks didn't get big tax breaks; in fact it was also a very good economy for most people. When people talk about good times during the years when the Bushes and Reagan were in office they are talking about times when the government borrowed record amounts to make the economy feel good, which is what they are doing now. A country cannot borrow its way out of debt, and somehow the debt needs to get paid for, and I feel it is fitting that people making over a million dollars a year should get the bill and work out a payment program until the debt is paid off, because they benefited the most from this borrowing frenzy. Once the debt is paid for, then they can get their tax cuts.
I am not a big fan of any political party (I guess that makes me a party pooper), and I was going to be quiet this time and not say anything about this election because many of my peers and relatives disagree with me, but then I listened to the President's speech last night and I was appalled (but not surprised). To my family and friends, my apologies.

by Phil Staudt
blog.philstaudt.org
September 25, 2008

Tags: Bush McCain