Memorandum dated November 4, 2008: Subject – Election Day. What Americans will decide today is either their reward or punishment tomorrow.

     The reward is survival against terror.  The punishment is a painful economic backlash.  It is a choice between economics and national security.

     The candidates to elect: McCain, a war hero, is ready to be Commander-In-Chief who would lead our troops in Iraq to victory.  Obama, without experience in the military, would command our troop withdrawal from Iraq in defeat. Which simply means, that if the inexperienced Obama is Commander-In-Chief, terror wins.

     This boils down to even a simpler choice: To Obama, elect McCain and prepare for more economic punishment.  To McCain, elect Obama and forfeit the reward of survival from terror.

      In economic ism, McCain is fundamentally Capitalism, Obama is ideologically Socialism.

      Obama’s wealth redistribution plan foments a class war.  The Middle Class and “the poor” that comprised 95 % of American taxpayers, are pitted against the 5%-10% “rich”,  thus Obama becomes the popular choice in the polls.

      McCain pampers the 5%-10% rich that create millions of jobs for the Middle Class and “the poor”. The 1% super rich pays the government 60% of the entire national tax revenues. They are the ones mainly responsible for generating tremendous wealth, making this nation the richest and mightiest on the planet. Unfortunately, this is not a popular or even a well-known reality among average Americans in America.  It is hardly a known choice in the polls, thus McCain’s rating is down.

     Also hardly understood is that unlike Obama, McCain does not want to punish “the rich” with Obama’s retributive taxation.  When corporate power leaves the country to find a foreign home where business is not “killed” by higher and multiple taxes, millions of jobs are lost. It is in this sense that the Middle Class is severely punished, and “the poor” plunged to a deeper destitution and grinding poverty.

     In effect, Obama pampers “the poor” for their votes by “killing” the rich and in the process “kills” the poor, and McCain befriends “the rich”, entices them to stay in the country to save “the poor” while losing their votes to Obama.

     All issues other than these are neither definitive nor as crucial.  American voters will get their usual election dessert on the wherewithal of economics on account of the Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac-triggered financial devastations, but even that is only the icing of the cake, not the pudding itself, so to speak that would direct them to decide which way to go.

     Putting it in another way, being a Republican or a Democrat does not influence the critical outcome of what the American public is deciding now.  We are all in the same boat on those main issues. With this life-defining question on healthcare that threatens the well-being of every American, and the life-threatening doubt cast upon our military operations in Iraq that divides the nation, the boat we rock will either float or sink.

      Let’s not cite statistical figures anymore to mar the vision of those who are not arithmetically inclined.  We take it as public knowledge – and it is -- that the cost of healthcare, i.e., health insurance, prescription drugs and medical services, had tripled since the Republican leadership became the tenant of White House.  Similarly, our losses and gains in Iraq, are incapable of monetary estimation, so let’s deal out econometrics, and present this dichotomy of choices between McCain and Obama in the simplest way possible.  

     The American public recalls to mind the last presidential election that politically brought us to the present state of affairs. It is an important background we need, in order to decide whether this nation will continue to remain under a GOP leadership or if, indeed, as we hear them in the streets, it is now time for the liberals to take over the power to govern.

      In the last presidential election, we were made to choose between a wishy-washy Democrat presidential candidate on one hand, and a Republican presidential candidate on the other who was accused of being over-zealous in his determination not only to keep the nation out of harms way, but also to wipe out from the face of the earth those described by the protector of the realm, as “those bloody rejects from hell that have no respect for human life.” Out of this, the issue of our military engagement in Iraq to change Iraq to our side and an Iraq away from the side of terror, dramatically surfaced.

       In those debates, the Republicans won on the issue of our homeland security. We the American public voted George W. Bush as the less objectionable leader to lead us in this war on terror.  Americans expressed their rejection of a greater evil -- a flip-flopping vision of a liberal leadership that would compromise their security.  This was true yesterday, it is likewise true today.

       At the same time, the Democrats won the issue on how the rising cost of prescription drugs and healthcare should be made affordable to the average American.  There was no doubt about it -- the American public was enamored of this economic euphoria when the Democrats brought this issue home closest to the heart of the people. If the polls are correct, Obama is successful in doing this, just as McCain is successful in securing the feelings of the American people over the issue of national security.

      There had been a persistent underlying economic issue on tax cut and joblessness.  I think the Republican think tank had given up Social Security as a dead issue where they are almost sure to lose. But average Americans simply shrug shoulders when high-polluted economic technicians start to lecture the public how their figures fit into their soliloquies to charm votes. For example, we understand why in the debate, the audience yawns when listening to those kilometric economic dissertations.

      If I put an economic sense to tax cut and unemployment – and I am sure a few non-politicized economists paddle their way through this murky water in their  attempt to inscribe some sense into it for the average American to comprehend – the opposing political camps are about negatively even  [with minuses in both sides]. Their respective claims on job creation and joblessness were as muddy as the flooded streets of New Orleans at the wake of hurricane Katrina.

     On tax cut, Republicans will make the 1% billionaires richer – understandably because that’s where they source their political campaign funds, and where the nation derives its incomparable amount of wealth.  But Democrats will tax more the rich as well as the financially struggling Americans alike, to support their government programs for the poor, and perhaps bring down the cost of prescription drugs and healthcare.  Good for the poor, but loathsome to the rich who carry on their shoulder the bigger load of the tax burden. Their reward for carrying the heavier tax load, is despise from the instigated poor in a class war socialists like Obama instigate.

      So let’s cut short this far, our recollection of those issues that we the American public had decided on when George W. Bush was re-elected to office.

      With this background, where then goes our choice now? In this November 2008 election, your life and mine will become a creation of our own critical judgment of the moment.

      To me the choice is very simple, which I am sure many will agree and I don’t care if even many more disagree: My survival and yours against terror is our utmost concern, the main concern of the American public.  If in deciding to go Republican all the way through from now on up to the year 2012 means that we should shoulder the high cost of medicine, health insurance and healthcare, we would prefer to do that, rather than be a dead meat as a result of Al Qaeda attacks under a president who works with terrorist bomber like Bill Ayers. 

      I have no doubt that the liberal way would make your healthcare and mine affordable, but what good is that to you and me if we are a coroner’s statistics of another attack deadlier than 9/11?  The way extremist leftwing liberals attack our war on terror, emboldens terrorists to blow us up to kingdom come. 

      When radicals and Liberal-Democrat extremists call the death of our soldiers in Iraq “murder” and attached to it the unsavory complement that the President of the United States George W. Bush is a “war criminal”, the choice to make is clear. Obama is not the way to go.

      A president with a notorious bomber as his long time associate makes that choice translucent, and even more crystal clear to the three out of five Americans [the polls that favor national security over the economy] who are concerned, disquieted and fearfully apprehensive as they continue to look over their shoulder when they walk the street to spot an assassin in the crowd.

      In spite of the politically choreographed street protests mounted against this country’s war effort in Iraq, deep in their heart Americans are thankful to have elected this man -- George W. Bush -- to office who put the enemies of freedom on the run since 9/11 and for not giving those barbarians -- and because of their animalistic savagery are being hunted down like animals -- a chance to kill more Americans from that time on up to the present.

     It is true that on the flip side we ruffled feathers among ourselves because war is war, a war we did not want, a war we did not start.  We do not include opportunists on this groundswell of protest against the war in Iraq because their reason to kick the bucket while on the road of protest is something else. On top is political expediency, as well as personal enrichment that opportunists would grab anytime and run away with under the cover of a war protest.  This makes the radical Media with a price absolutely blameworthy.

     Look how they go after Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin for a price.  Palin is a newly discovered political sensation. She is game to the leftist Media for a price – overt and covert sensationalism that captures the public’s imagination … that pours in billions of dollar worth of advertisements and patronage among others, to say the least!

     But the opposition against war will always gain ground in the un-American mind of Americans that is not long enough and deep enough to measure the length as well as the depth of our need for survival.  We live in fear for our safety every day as terror alerts are often times raised to the highest level of alarm across the country. 

     This realization comes to us like a sword that hangs on a threadbare string over our head even as we lie down on our bed in the privacy of our bedroom that at night to many of us, had turned into a torture chamber since 9/11 had become a daytime nightmare.

     It is also true that we are paying the high cost of confronting terror not only locally but also globally. But with this supreme sacrifice, there is no doubt in my mind that a true American who does not denigrate the role of this nation in spreading the good life and the better concept of freedom and liberty at such a great price, value freedom that high or even higher, or even larger than life itself. 

     The fact that the un-American among us are free to instigate riots in the streets is testimonial to that unmistakable conclusion that this nation had indeed sacrificed in blood to insure their freedom to gather in the streets, in the parks and   in the premises of targeted establishments, to protest.  Our soldiers’ death in the battlefield that they themselves criticized and demonized as “murder” of which Bush is blamed, insured their being able to march down the street and cry their lungs out in protest.

     Since 9/11, do we continue to worry about our security?  Certainly we do.  Those who cannot see that we do or those who tell us that we shouldn’t, perhaps have a problem with hindsight. The springboard of all issues related to war in Iraq, is all about our national security since the terrorists started our national insecurity on September 11, 2001. 

      We may divert attention from this fear of insecurity and migrate to other developing issues, i.e., from the right to protest, to the rising cost of gasoline, to the ridiculous issue of whether or not President Bush is popular in the way he handles the war in Iraq and the like.

      For example, Obama does not distinguish McCain from Bush. Every time he denigrates Bush in public on the war on Iraq, he steps on McCain like a doormat.

     Those who want Bush’s head in the 2008 presidential election because of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, are free to do so, but not on my account and your account.  We want the likes of Bush – Republican or Democrat -- to go after those Islamic fanatics who believed that killing Americans would earn them a pass to heaven. 

     There is no other issue in politics and economics gravely worth our time than what I have just roughly discussed here.  We will be on the issue of war on terror throughout the storm, and we will continue to be there for as long as the auguries of war are in the graveyard of our soldiers who have fallen in battle. 

     We see the likes of U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s stubbornness in this vision of persistence and endurance – that this war on terror will be long and protracted, until the political dynamic in the Middle East is changed, and terror would no longer haunt us like a thief in the night for our survival.

       The heart of those rich in spirit but only with nickels in their pocket is much closer to the platforms of the Democrats because they cater to equal opportunity; they champion the cause of the common man versus that of the powerful moneyed elite across the spectrum of American society who because of their wealth holds the balance of power in their favor. That’s what Obama is harping about in his redistribution of wealth agenda – to change and recreate America into an equal, no rich or poor, classless society.

      However, if in their espousal of extreme radical liberalism we should die in the hands of terrorists that they are helping win this war on terror against us, the coast is clear for the continuing Republican national leadership to re-occupy White House one more time around for as long as it takes.

      For, the critical decision we make today is either our punishment or reward tomorrow. #

© Copyright Edwin A. Sumcad. Freedomsphoenix access October 29, 2008 

The writer is an award-winning journalist. Know more about the author by reading his published editorials and feature articles or you may e-mail your comment at ed.superx722@yahoo.com.sg.