Well…after the victories of the tea party candidates on Tuesday, it’s official, the Republican party is now the party of the know nothings with no place left for the moderates that are necessary for the country’s political life to function. I have never seen a slate of less qualified people than then ones the tea party is proffering as the “saviors” of the country. I blame John McCain for unleashing this plague on America with his elevation of the chief idiot Sarah Palin; who would have been laughed off the stage when I started to follow politics or would have been the mainstay of the John Birch society…the far-right loonies whose policies look like they have been resurrected in the guise of the new populism on the right.
Don’t believe the pundits that have proposed the false equivalency that the left has made the same type of lurch toward extremism…do you see anyone on the left carrying signs that advocate the overthrow of the government? It’s that increasingly crazy right turn that makes the moderate policies of the Obama Administration look like they fall way to the left of the spectrum…but these policies have many aspects of repub ideas from just a few years ago and are centrist in nature.
We used to want our politicians to be smarter than us but with the rise of the tea party, ideology has trumped intelligence as the litmus test for inclusion…geez…
Well…out for a little while last night with K and C and had a lot of fun…had a little argument about the scientific method and the conflict between science and faith (yeah, we do talk about more than hockey) and I guess I went off a little…but I’ve been so good lately about politics and religion that I think I had one coming. I am getting back to resting the liver starting today and it will probably last until Monday, or at that’s the hope. Not a lot to do today…need to get back on the bike and work out, then clean a little…the kitchen needs some work that I have been putting off so that will be a goal…more later…
Well…yeah, I know, I’m late…have just had unexpected things come up all morning and now at 1:30 I’m finally able to sit down for a minute…so this isn’t the topic for the afternoon, since my head is really empty right now…going to go back through the papers later and try to get some ideas but I don’t know if that is going to work either. I’m trying….
Well…got my butt kicked at pool yesterday….but that’s okay…have had a pretty good run and there is always next week. I have found out one thing…going to stay away from drinking for while…didn’t sleep at all last night and feel like crap again today…don’t want to have to just survive my days…I’d gotten used to feeling okay when I got up and want to keep that up, so I think the liver is going to get a rest for a while again. That’s not even mentioning the empty calories that come with booze…I need to drop another 10 pounds before the end of the biking season and taking in an extra 1000 calories a day really gets in the way.
Not much else to do today…just coffee and a workout…no bike ride today since it’s raining and I think it’s a good idea to let the legs rest at least one day a week…well…if the weather gets better late on, I’ll probably take a leisure ride with no sprints…and I may meet up with K later…so I’ll have a couple of beers today but that will be it….then dry for the weekend…except Sunday Funday if that happens…so you can see how hard it is to be good…more later…
Well…I haven’t laughed so hard in a while…saw a youtube clip that Glenn Beck has been playing (no, of course I wasn’t watching his show) that supposedly, someone took during his rally in DC a month or so ago showing a flock of geese flying in a v over the reflecting pond. Of course, Beck the messiah couldn’t let it go at that…that it was a cool bit of nature to be savored and enjoyed for what it was…geese looking for a place to land. He has now inflated it by saying that it was the great invisible man in the sky (or God if you like) that sent the geese to do a “flyover” in the shape of a v signifying that he will be victorious in his crusade to restore honor to the US. Really, Glenn…haven’t you ever seen geese before? Did you know that they always fly in a V when they are migrating?
This kind of delusional behavior has been the haven of charlatans over the years and Beck is no different….I wonder if he was the one that bought the grilled cheese with the image of Jesus on it….people that hear voices in their heads used to be called crazy…in his case, I think it fits…geez…
Well…as you can see from the earlier post…I was up pretty early this morning…I think it was about 5:30 or so but I feel okay since the liver rest program is still in full swing. That will not be the case later today, though, have lunch plans with T and then the normal wed out to Ada to shoot pool…this could be 5 weeks in a row if I win…but last week Tom gave me almost as many games as I won so I really can’t feel too good about it. The roast in the slow cooker was not as good as the traditional way…not anywhere near as much flavor so I’ll probably go back to the tried and true…but the bottle of Cabernet that I got cheap from Meijers almost made up for it.
Not a lot else to report right now…so I’ll end it here…more later…
Well…it’s pretty early and I could say that this burning issue has kept me awake all night…and part of it is true, I was awake part of the night….and it is early…oh, said that already. I did want to get into deflating the bullshit that the repubs have been pedaling about the continuation of the Bush tax cuts and how they are asserting that we need to renew those for the rich to get the economy going again. First, do they still think that anyone believes “trickle down” economics work? They have tried this little gem in every administration they’ve controlled since Reagan and the only results have been larger deficits and rewards for the least productive part of our economy. Let’s get to the lies next, that not extending the tax cuts for those making over 250K will hurt small business. Well…eliminating those tax cuts will affect only about 3 percent of what they call small business, but their definition of small business, includes some Fortune 100 companies….Fortune 100 means they are in the top 100 largest companies in America and includes some of the huge Wall Street firms and many of the super rich like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. It’s just another instance of the repubs protecting their own and lying to cover it up. Another little fact that they don’t want you to understand is that the 700 billion cost of continuing the cuts for the rich will need to be borrowed…yep, and pushed on to yours and my kids and increasing the deficit that they now seem so concerned about…
Then, we have the spectacle of Mitch McConnell yesterday saying that he will filibuster the tax cuts that Obama proposes for the other 98 percent of Americans, lying on the floor of the Senate that most of the American people support extending the cuts for the rich when it is just not true…polls show that from 52 to 65 percent of the public want them to expire…so, if you’re looking for true class warfare..look no further than the repubs…
Yeah, I’m still going to get to the Keynes stuff later…maybe not today but it is still something that I feel the need to comment on…
Well.. it’s been a long day…have had things to do all day until right about now…and I’m not used to that so that’s why no more posts…I’m trying to pull something together for later but it will probably be tomorrow….need to take a break and veg on the couch for a while…more later…
Well..there are so many things in my head right now that I sometimes think that the thoughts are going to bleed out my ears…or maybe that is happening right now…I’ll have to check…nope…nothing but soap from the shower after the bike ride. But, maybe that explains why I forgot about this bit of weirdness that happened yesterday…out on the bike and normally, there are a few grasshoppers on the pavement but they are easy to miss and I always try…but, yesterday, there were thousands of them everywhere; jumping into the air when I got near and it reminded me of the videos of that river in Illinois that the carp jump out of when boats go by. I must have had 20 or 30 of them plastered to the front of my shirt and had to keep my mouth closed or I would have eaten at least a few of them. Compounding that strangeness, today they were back to normal and it looked like any other day….match that one….
Oh, the observation. Well…part of my trail runs along M-6 and this morning, I looked up to see the coolest semi-truck I’ve ever seen…it was a modern one but looked like an update of a 30′s truck with a v-shaped, chrome, art deco like grill that resembled the front end of the streamlined trains of the same period. I still think things should look good….
Well…have a bunch of topics for the day and, as you can see, I’ve already weighed in on one of them….but I think it may be time to tie together a theme for the fall elections…or maybe I’ll get sidetracked again…geez…I feel like I’m watching fireworks; that new ideas are exploding above me but they flash and then are gone…leaving me to try to make sense of the afterglow and turn it into some sort of lucid commentary. It’s not as easy as it looks…especially working without a net. But…that’s enough of that, if you’ve read these at all, the date in the title means this is supposed to be about my life so I’ll get on with today’s mundane description of the obvious…you can probably recite these in your sleep….
Not much to do today (see I told you…but it’s not a re run) but I do have to get groceries since I’m making T’s pot roast recipe in the slow cooker today and I’m going to try to use veggies from C s for all of the aromatics…I even have heirloom carrots that he grew that actually taste like carrots….then, I actually have some stuff to get done today…yay, and the 6th day of resting the liver was another good one…but, I am going to get a bottle of cabernet to have with dinner…maybe class this place up a little bit…is it wrong to still drink milk with dinner when you are 57? Don’t know where that came from…damn…do you ever type form when you meant from? In this post, and I guess every one….it seems that form comes out every time and I have to go back and correct it. Well….you know I’m weird…