The Seattle Times April 16 headline read:

"Shareholders' Fury Forces Policy Changes at WAMU".

Underneath this headline describing the rage shareholders of stock in Washington Mutual Bank felt as they saw their investment in one of the biggest banks in the U.S.A. collapse, the article continued to explain how this devastating economic meltdown shattered their faith in Washington Mutual Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger.

But before Killinger announced another huge loss of $19 billion in more bad loans, Alan Henry, a retired radio executive, blasted Killinger's record as Washington Mutual's CEO.  Directing his diatribe to the bank's stockholders, he reminded them, "You're the owners, not them (referring to the bank's executives).  They're employees."

The so-called debate presented in Philadelphia this week consisting of moderators George Stephanopoulous and Charlie Gibson substituted what should have been a serious analysis of the major topics facing America and the globe and substituted frivolity and absurdity, reducing the issue of presidential politics to a laughable side show.

The major issues were the ones that were not tackled at all.

People throughout the world would like to know what will be done about a war of occupation launched on provable lies, chiefly that Saddam Hussein must be stopped before he can wage nuclear war on America with weapons he did not possess, and that according to the respected British journal Lancet has documented that over 1.2 million Iraqi lives have been lost.

How about the U.S. debt that exceeds the amount of all of our previous debts combined?  How about the largest debt in the history of the planet that now exceeds $9.3 trillion as it approaches an astronomical $10 trillion figure?

On the March 30 edition of "60 Minutes" it was revealed that a German citizen who was in Pakistan was fingered by some Pakistanis as a suspected terrorist.

The German man was hastily taken to Afghanistan by U.S. authorities and tortured to force him to tell any secrets that he might be concealing.  This process continued for 3 years.  

The truth of the matter was that he was not a terrorist and had no secrets.  The U.S. was offering Pakistanis $3,000 to finger suspected terrorists.

This torture continued 2 years longer in Guantanamo.  

The old cliché "The chickens have come home to roost" accurately describes the economic disaster born in the U.S.A.  Now it is spreading worldwide as the government failed to supervise the U.S. banking system.

A noted biblical admonition also accurately describes the current economic disaster, "If you sow to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind."

But we need not worry!  When Bear Stearns was about to go bankrupt, its CEO had waltzed away with approximately $40 million during the last few years of his mismanagement.  Investors were reaping the whirlwind that Bear Stearns had generated.

"Life isn't always fair" is another cliché appropriately fitting today's monumental meltdown in the mortgage market.

Study post-World War Two and you see the tragic example of right wing Republican smear artistry at work in which Cold War passions raged and loyal Americans were constantly smeared, many with their lives destroyed in the process, by Joseph McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

Look at how it all ended with Nixon, someone a misguided Bill Clinton saw fit to provide with a hero's sendoff after his ultimate demise.  The same Clinton who sees the Bushes father and son as good and dedicated Americans is so beholden to the New World Order that he fails to appraise history realistically.

A hypothetical question to raise is what would have happened if a liberal Democrat seeking the presidency had placed an agent of the government of Communist China in the law firm where he worked, which did lucrative business with foreign governments?

After that, when this same liberal Democrat achieves the presidency, he does such a whopping amount of business with this same individual, who now occupies a stronger position than ever as a leader of a major international funding group, to the point where this person and the Red Chinese government he represents hold sufficient leverage to ultimately bend the government to serve its nation's will.

If you feel U.S. oil companies should receive the $16 billion tax break Bush believes they should receive then by all means vote Republican!

If you believe that U.S. oil companies' profits of $250 billion in 2007 represent a good result for America, then vote Republican.

George W. Bush does not believe that this $250 billion profit is excessive.

If you believe Social Security should be privatized, believing that investment banks and Wall Street are safer than the traditional conservative federal government approach represented to this point, then do vote Republican.

Why isn't the U.S. public safe anymore?

That question is repeatedly asked why the mentally ill freely roam the streets in American's major cities.  What happened that allowed mentally ill people, all too many with killer instincts, to roam the streets?

The mentally ill hold the U.S. population as victims.  For years mental hospitals confined the mentally ill to state run institutions.  While it was true that there were all too many instances of relatives committing some family members to avoid taking care of them when they were probably not insane, some of today's experts make the absurd claim that these were not isolated instances but the general rule.

Take the sweeping statement of a Washington State Mental Health Director that appeared in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer March 26:

Hillary and Bill Clinton have been literally shell-shocked as first term senator from Illinois Barack Obama has virtually sewn up the Democratic presidential nomination, no matter how much spinning Clinton's forces attempt to generate to argue with that result.

Hillary Clinton began with a big war chest and significant name edge on Obama, whose biggest national moment was his brilliant speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.  

So how did this major turnabout occur?  Apart from Obama's oft-mentioned gifted speaking style, which gives him a fresh and vibrant dynamism reflective of John F. Kennedy circa 1960, the big factor was having the correct message for the time.

Obama's major support has come from a group much akin to Howard Dean's supporters in 2000, frustrated citizens, in Obama's case among younger voters in the under-30 range, who believe that the political system is broken and that we need a fresh beginning.

There are Americans so disenchanted with democracy that when the political party they voted for does not win, they fuss and fume, refusing to show much respect for the democratic process that made America great.

For example, it often happens when a president such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt appears on the political scene, making sweeping changes during the Great Depression.  The stock market had crashed with Wall Street excesses such as people buying on Wall Street excesses such as people buying on margins, with money they didn't have.

Banks were going bust.  FDR courageously took charge with a bank holiday, enacting new laws to make sure such an economic debacle would never happen again.  But in 1987 there was another economic debacle which Wall Street called a "correction."  

The savings and loan industry had lost billions along with stock market investors.  The government acted swiftly to bail out the U.S. financial system.  Corruption had generated these economic losses for many Americans.  

As the right that has bellyached ad nauseum about Reverend Jeremiah Wright, his comments need to be taken in context and analyzed in a way that they will never do.  They thrive on snippets and howls with no analysis.

One thing we do know.  Jeremiah Wright is responsible for no deaths.  If even such a possibility existed the Fox Fixed News hordes would have tumbled on the information by now, whether true or not.

One thing we do know and the mainstream media has run away from this simple and unavoidable truth in the same manner that they have pounced on virtually every snippet, comment or sigh emanating from Jeremiah Wright's career in the pulpit.

The media has run and run hard from discussing the tragic fact that the neoconservative administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is currently responsible for over one million deaths in Iraq.  Add to that a figure of another 2 and a half million refugees who have fled as a result of the conflict.

U.S.A. Today on Tuesday, March 18 headlined the reality of recession, bordering on worldwide depression:

"If the U.S. economy were a car, all its warning lights would be flashing red.  The breathtaking collapse of investment bank Bear Stearns over the weekend is the latest and perhaps the most alarming - indicator to flash on the economy dashboard.

"First the crisis in subprime mortgages - loans to those with poor credit - infected the credit markets.  The home prices started sinking.  The mortgage defaults rose and the economy began to sputter.  Now the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to stabilize the credit market before a failure of confidence can poison the entire U.S. financial system."

The stock of Bear Stearns sold for $2 a share, collapsing 93%.  

Those attempting to determine the Obama factor in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential sweepstakes have an easy road to travel.

It has puzzled some how Hillary Clinton, ordained by most of the mainstream media as being the winner before the initial competition in the form of the Iowa Caucuses occurred, based on numbers appears well on her way to being upset by Barack Obama, a recent Illinois state legislator who did not enter major national politics before being elected to the U.S. Senate just four short years ago.

Obama's meteoric rise is tied into amateurish blundering by a Clinton campaign that received such mainstream media boosting that important columnists and commentators interviewed sang Clinton's early debate performances and declared that she was winning them regularly and decisively.

A large legion of voters, many of them young and attuning themselves for the first time to the political process, refused to be conned into making a decision based on flimsy media propaganda.  For one thing, with enough candidates on stage to constitute a political "cattle call," how can any one candidate decisively win such joint appearance efforts?

The answer to that question is simple!  War preparations are big business.  It involves billions in air defense.

Take Boeing's $40 billion air tanker aircraft, allowing the aircraft tanker to refuel in the air.  When the $40 billion contract went to a French company located in Toulouse, France, the Seattle based Boeing Company was outraged and demanded congressional hearings.  

Then there are two big war business giants - Halliburton and Bechtel.  Halliburton benefited in the Iraq War debacle to the tune of billions of dollars.  Cheney, the U.S. vice president, worked for Halliburton at one time and his services provided millions for his bank account.  

There was some superficial debate regarding the "conflict of interest" factor when after being a Halliburton CEO, and then when he became vice president Halliburton was provided with governmental contracts benefited by no-bid contractual deals, to show the company's loyalty to big bucks instead of the U.S.A.  The Halliburton Company fled to Darfur to cut their U.S. tax obligations.

The burning question is whether the Bush Administration desires war or peace.

The Seattle Times answered that question in its March 12 front page story about the sudden resignation of Admiral William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, who oversaw wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The story concerning this abrupt resignation is captioned as follows:  "Fallon seen as Bush policy critic.  Admiral's resignation comes as U.S. plans course in Iraq, he urged diplomacy with Iran."

The choice is clear, diplomacy or more death, destruction and debt.  The Washington, D.C. article continued:

Does the U.S. Constitution hold any meaning at all in today's Bush-Cheney neoconservative Washington?

The answer that the politically alert are well aware of is that the answer is a loud and highly resounding "No"!

Why does the Constitution hold no current meaning?  That answer is simple to those who have been paying attention.  The Constitution holds no meaning because it has been replaced by Washington's speedy new way of doing business.

For those who have not been paying attention the Constitution has been scrapped for executive decrees, so many of which are imposed by George W. Bush signing statements.  Who cares what the letter and the spirit of legislation involves.