A few things to think about

Just a few things to think about this afternoon. First, I think people need to overlook all of the hype over Sarah Palin for just a few minutes to really examine who she is. One of the big questions needs to be "why is Sarah Palin being so greatly shielded from the media; why does her campaign not want her speaking to reporters?" Great pains have been taken to keep her "rehearsed" and even yesterday during her meetings with Hamid Karzai and Henry Kissinger, her handlers only wanted photographers, no reporters. Why the secrecy and privacy here? My guess is she talked with Kissinger about how to get grass stains out of children's sports uniforms. Seriously though, I think the American people have a right to interview ALL of the candidates and ALL of the candidates should field tough questions from reporters not just of FOX News, but any agency. Clearly, there are people who do not wish to expose the governor to this process and that, my friends, is disturbing.

The next revolting thing on my mind has to do with the bailout plan drawn up by Sec. Paulson. From section 8: "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." Folks, this kind of attitude toward the spending of your money should frighten you. The Bush administration is pushing for a plan to spend 700 billion dollars without any contingency to help out people suffering from foreclosure or bankruptcy. Additionally, when this plan was first rolled out, Bush and friends were (and still are, at heart) against placing any kind of limits on executive compensation. If Bush and Paulson had their way, the poor taxpayers who are struggling as it is, would not only not recieve any assistance from it, they would be forced to help monetarily reward the poor performance of Wall Street executives. Another hasty, ill-conceived idea shoved down the throats of the American people without much thought for consequences. An idea sold by fear and threats of widespread financial ruin. The whole "shoot now and ask questions later" approach to this bailout sounds oddly familiar; kind of like another plan that Mr. Bush had a few years ago that had to do with war. Let me be clear that I think the bailout is probably (unfortunately) necessary, but it needs to have oversight, it needs to help Main St. as much as Wall St., and it needs to severly limit executive compensation for irresponsible actions. It needs to be carefully considered, and Mr. Paulson's wording of this plan (section 8) is certainly not anything except a demand for a blank check which only one man can cash and spend how he wants, with no input from anyone else. Not good. Let's hope that Congress will stand up to the demands of the rich for a change, and do something that makes sense for Wall Street as well as the people footing the bill.