Colin Powell's endorsement of Obama

There should be little surprise that Powell endorsed Obama. Powell had a long and distinguished career as a public servant, but this career contained one embarrassing blotch on it. When he was secretary of state just before the Iraq invasion, he came before the United Nations and gave a speech describing the efforts to produce weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He was putting his great personal prestige behind the Bush administration's justification for starting a pre-emptive war.
The only problem was that the facts he quoted in the speech were lies, fabrications. They were fabrications by Iraqi expatriats, opponents of Hussein, who hoped that they would become the new leaders of the country with Bush's help. They concocted a fancy tale of chemical weapons being created in mobile labs semi-truck trailers. They concocted links between ben Laden and Sadam Hussein. They created tales of attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. Now, expert weapons inspectors from the United Nations had been trying to find weapons of mass destruction for months but had failed. This did not matter to the Bush and Cheney and their neo-conservatives who did not trust the UN anyway. In their defense, our intelligence community had very few "on the ground" operatives in Iraq. A previous administration had ended this work, believing that electronic survelience and satelites were enough.
Bush and his friends, on a mission to protect and spread democracy (and to protect our oil supply and companies), were ready to believe any wild thing they heard about Iraq and they disregarded CIA and other warnings that they should not trust these ambitious expatriats. Bush and friends convinced Colin Powell that the evidence was overwhelming and he should make his speech. That speech was perhaps the most convincing part of Bush's propaganda campaign to promote his war. Why did Powell endorse Obama?

Get the government off my back

At the Republican convention, loud cheers went up when a speaker said we need to get the government off our backs. That has been the philosophy of much of this administration and its appointees to the EPA, CDC, etc., etc. We see the results with global warming, automobile mileage requirements, "drill, baby, drill."
That philosophy is now going to cost you and I and our grandchildren $100 billion as we have to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac. Banks were giving mortgages to people they encouraged to lie about their income. Banks sold mortgages with "teaser" variable rate mortgages that would go up in two years and the buyers can not pay the real rates. Banks issued mortgages where the buyer was paying only the interest. Experts were telling us this would spell disaster but our regulators wanted to get government off our backs. Now the bailout will cost up to $100 billion or perhaps even more. Mutual funds, pension funds, and individuals who invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mac or in some of these lousy mortgages are now losing billions more.

My father was what he called a "professional pest." He was an auditor for a state. He checked to make sure businesses paid their unemployment compensation tax and registered their employees. His job was to be sure that when someone was laid off, there was help for them. One businessman tried to get him "off his back" by choking him, but a very distinguished businessman said dad was fair and tried to help out the businesses. There are good "pests" who can help prevent disasters for families and for the economy.