The supplemental Iraq War finance bill clearly illustrates that the Democratic “leadership� is continuing the established 6 year Republican trend: undermining the US Constitution, while giving our tax monies to their special interest groups.

 

Many Democrats think that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi offers hope for America. Wake Up! The first thing she did after Democrats won control of the House was to throw a $1,000/person dinner with hundreds of lobbyists present!

 

To gain enough support to pass this bill, Speaker Pelosi probably needed to include several Democratic earmarks in exchange for votes. The Democratic “leadership� also overstepped their Constitutional authority by including in this bill mandates that dictate how the President should run the military in a war that was condoned with bipartisan support!

 

I am a registered Democrat and to my knowledge this Republican administration has made every wrong decision possible. However, the Democrats are also not representing me or America. My point is that the Democratic and Republican “leaderships� are similar in that they do not serve America’s best interests or even Americans of any political ideology; these traditional politicians only serve their special interest group masters and that point needs to be illuminated and blind party loyalty questioned, if not outright abandoned by all Americans.

If elected as President, I guarantee specific performance to the American people. The first guarantee is to end special interest group influence on our government. If as President I fail to perform up to achieving my guarantees, I will resign at any time that by polling of the American people, a majority desire my removal from the office.

Ex Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson, who is an actor on Law & Order is thinking about running for President in the 08 election. This makes the AP news, BUT they also include his positions "on the issues:"

- Pro-life

- Anti-gay marriage

- Anti-gun control

- Pro-Iraq troop surge

- Pardon Lewis "Scooter" Libby from jail

(full article)

These are the issues that are important for people to know about a president?! These issues are the areas that people want leadership for America?? I guess that is what I am doing wrong - I thought people wanted direction for things like fiscal responsibility in government, barring special interest group control, stabilizing social security and medicare, upholding our constitution, energy independence, improving our economy, and the like as issues a President should bring detailed visions for America's improvement.

The media and Democrats are in heaven over the 8 US attorneys fired for not tampering with elections by indicting Democratic candidates prior to the 2006 midterm election. Add into this that the Republican members of Congress that pressured these US attorneys, also Republican Bush appointees, potentially could be legal due to an aide of Senator Arlen Specter slipping language into the Patriot Act that gave more presidential power.

Many aspects of this reaffirm the values and ethics of Republicans in Congress and the administration. However, the media is so far completely missing the most disturbing aspect of this whole issue:

All members of Congress signed the Patriot Act into law without reading it! This is their one job and none of them are doing it!

My previous statement about Social Security was too conservative. The impact of the prescription drug program is far more severe than I originally estimated. According to the Congressional Budget Office it will increase the burden to Social Security by 12%, My estimates factored this in as noise.

In examining Medicare alone, the expense for this program will consume all of the US revenue by 2014. Toss in all of Social Security and Medicare and this expense will consume all of our nation's revenue by 2012.

Another report on the Colorado River shows that its shrinking water level will begin impacting the 25 million people over seven states that depend on this water source by 2011. The report stated that this problem has gone so long without being addressed that technology and conservation are no longer able to fix it and trade-offs will now need to occur - lives, livestock, farming, golfing, lawns, non-native plants. This region is a major economic area of the US and this type of disruption will hurt the economy at the very least.

2008 will be the focal point for our nation to address these problems and other critical issues that continue to mount or change forever the face of America. Perhaps the bluntness of my words and candidacy is not appealing, but are the more pleasant visions of the other candidates more appealing because visions and dreams is their offering as usual, that is politics as usual. 

Has anyone noticed that traditional politicians are not leaders and if they were would be ill-suited for getting elected and re-elected. Why? They need to compromise and pass accommodating legislation that alleviates their obligations; those that enabled them to raise the money for their campaigns. That means back door deals, pork, and earmark arrangements with other legislators so that multiple legislators can pay the obligations to their special interest benefactors. The upcoming presidential election demonstrates the level of obligation as the major candidates will spend $1 billion – supporting and voting for any major politician for president is simply embracing a lie. They are not leaders and even if they had some leadership ability their obligations to special interest group benefactors will prohibit them from implementing any substantive changes that are needed to solve our critical problems.

 

A clear example is Social Security (which includes Medicare). Every election Social Security reform is promised by candidates that will fix the problem, but after the election – nothing. As a brief aside, George Bush’s proposal would actually break the system faster instead of helping it. However, the problem has been known for decades because it is a simple financial projection with reliable variables – annual cost of living increases, annual inflation rate for healthcare expenses, and aging demographics of Americans. This allows for a simple projection that Social Security will grow to a point that in 2019, this program will consume ALL of our national budget. It will continue its growth due to baby boomers enrolling into this program over the next 30 years from now and in 2037 will consume almost 8 times our nation’s budget!

 

This problem alone will quickly bankrupt America!

 

However, the obligations to powerful special interest groups like insurance and pharmaceutical companies and AARP are strong and these groups want the system to stay as it is if not have it expanded. When was the last legislation that actually was an improvement for a major problem facing America?

 

Social Security is not the only critical issue facing America and none of the special interest group puppets that are the traditional politicians will be able to address them, even if they have the vision giving them the ability to adequately do so.

 

The media is slowly unearthing the information I have been yelling about for months – from Newsweek articles about the Social Security problem as well as explaining that even a complete halt to the emission of greenhouse gasses would still cause global warming for decades as well as a Time article that spoke about the US Economy’s strength due solely to deficit spending and the abundant growth in the federal government over the last 6 years and without these our GDP would be negative.

 

The problem is informing people is only half of the battle, getting leadership with the vision and freedom to act is the real issue.

This is the first podcast with the new mic a Sennheiser MD46 and it was great! The voice almost sounds like me. It was such a good quality I did not have to edit every other word in the podcast - a dream. The podcast is about campaign reform. In addition to the podcast further information can be found at my website about campaign reform as well as the role of special interest groups.

It's just a local weekly newspaper, but I am surprised that I was able to get any media attention at all this early. I have two paragraphs written up about my effort from the Good Times Weekly. This is a good first step. I just need people to show their support by signing up at my website. I have placed the story at digg, so if you want to digg it - feel free. Patrick armchairpresident.com American policy for America's interests, not special interests

Our Country was founded on ideals and principles, one of which is that we can not rely on their always being good men governing our country. So, the founding fathers designed our checks and balances system to be a country that was based on good laws. Unfortunately the founding fathers also designed our government to be run by inexperienced politicians; the role of congress was very part-time and not supposed to interfere with the senators' and representatives' real full-time jobs and careers.

Today, the landscape is so different that the Founding Fathers could never have imagined what our government would evolve into and I believe that they would not be looking at it with pride. A recent article in The New Republic describes the character of today's politicians. The article seems to portray our great and virtuous politicians go into this place of depravity and temptation where the interns are described as looking almost like hookers. That could be true and this appears to be a 'which came first, the chicken or the egg' type of situation. That is, were our politicians, virtuous boy scouts that were corrupted by evil lobbyists and hooker-esque interns? Or perhaps, does a career in politics attract people that have, shall we call it - dubious character, to begin with? Or does success and building a career in politics actually select for people with dubious character? For full disclosure, I don't think our career politicians were virtuous boy scouts prior to politics, that's my bias.

Career politicians have changed the dynamic of our government so far from what the guiding principles were, that the system has become overwhelmed and dominated by special interest groups running career politicians, who in turn run America. It comes back to the career politician and campaigning. Campaigning has turned into expensive media campaigns, most of which are attack ads and smear and fear tactics. This expense makes the election process dependent upon special interest group support, which essentially translates into policy that benefits that special interest group, usually at the expense of America's interests.

The bottom line is that campaign reform is needed to remove special interest groups from campaigns and thus having politicians that can act for America's interests. America's interests should be first and foremost for every policy. As a byproduct, policies will benefit special interests. This little nuance is the defining difference between good policy and most of today's policies that are primarily to help a specific special interest group.

However, with the current status of our government, we need to rely upon a good president to push campaign reform to make the election process special interest group money free. One solution is that campaigns could be funded directly by the government. Each candidate would be allotted the same, low amount of resources to strategically manage for their election and that is all. My preference is to supply a low amount of resources because if a candidate cannot effectively manage resources in their campaign then that should work against them in the election. I do not want politicians managing the resources of our country if they can not show a track record of effective resource management. There are several solutions for successful campaign reform and this nationalized funding is just one possibility because we end up paying for all campaigns with tax dollars right now. They are just hidden in legislation or really, not so hidden in legislation. So, it seems that this type of transition may be the easiest for reform to embrace.

Hilary Clinton announced that she was either getting the full party backing or she would go it alone and already has staff in place in several states to do so. This is bad characteristics of a presidential candidate. This is the reason Bill didn't get as much done when he was president. Bill could handle a republican congress. He couldn't handle the selfish-ass wife. This is why America hated hilary as the first lady. She should wakeup, she got the Senate seat out of pity for going through Bill's philanderings. This is bad news for the major democratic hopefuls, but good news for my campaign and the Republicans must already be looking at campaigning for 2012 because with this I bet they think whoever they nominate will win a completely divided democratic party. However, this division also has a benefit in making it easier for my campaign to succeed in the democratic party. I just need your support - so register at my website.