Well…I need another cup of coffee…be back in a minute….okay, I’m back…I have been somewhat prolific this morning…this is the third one so I’ll say look down again…there are two others you haven’t seen. Not much of a day yesterday…just kind of going through the motions but I did get the kitchen cleaned….I hope I have all of the clocks reset with the end of DST…we’ll see in a couple of minutes…I did find the instruction booklet for the one in the car so I’ll tackle that one later. It was nice to have a running conversation via text with T yesterday…she always makes me laugh and we are both such big Michigan geeks…the Wings lost last night but they went two for three on the west coast swing so that’s not bad…but any time you let a team score 6 goals against you, there are problems with the defense….not time to be concerned yet, though.
Not much to do today…haven’t been on the bike in two days so I am itching to get out when the temp gets over 40…and there is the Lions, I guess, oh, and formula 1 at 10:30 so that will be something. Need to go check on some clocks so I’ll end here…more later…
I’m back for just a second….finally remembered that HULU exists..thanks, Tom, and signed up for it…it is nice to not have to remember to tape anything (yeah, still not into the DVR yet) and to be able to watch some stuff that I’ve never seen because it’s on opposite the few shows that I regularly watch…but we’ll see how much I use it…kind of like my twitter account…okay at first but a bore after a while…
Well…I’ve already gotten another post out before this one so look down if you want…or not if that is too much work. Boy that was kind of a strange day yesterday with the Michigan football team playing a basketball game…when was the last time you saw a score of 67-65 in a football game? I found it funny when one of the press columnists said that the Michigan defense won the game for them…really? Did you watch the same game I did? The Michigan defense made exactly one play…the last one that save the two point conversion in the 3rd OT. Other than that, there was no defense played by either team…I mean, c’mon…over 1200 yards of offense? Bo must be spinning at 10,000 RPM at that result…and I think Rich Rod should be gone at the end of the season…he has been a disaster for Michigan..not just for the crappy teams, but for his staining of the reputation of U of M…I think that may be the most important thing to me..it may be quaint but I feel that you can win even when following the rules…Bo did it, Lloyd Carr did it, and I don’t care how much college football has changed..honor is honor.
That said…it was one of the weirdest games I’ve ever seen…Go Blue!
Well…have been reading some of the postmortems of the recent election and there are a couple of things that I find striking about the election here in Michigan. First is the turnout…where only about 50% of the people in Kent country voted versus about 66% in the 2008 election…a drop that is significantly larger than normal for a mid-term. But, the second thing are the excuses and rationalizations that are being offered by the non-voters on why they didn’t vote this time. “It doesn’t matter who is in charge”, “I was turned off by the negative ads”, “I had too much to do”, “I forgot about it”….were just a few of the excuses that were offered in the Press this morning…and what this says to me is that apathy, not the repubs message is what lost this election for the dems.
But, what is more important than voting? What is more important than keeping this country on the path back to equality in economic possibilities…what is more important than voting in your own self-interest? What these excuses have done is to make certain that income inequality will get worse, that the richest one percent will continue to steal more an more of the economic pie that should go to the people that make the profits possible. We are now in an experiment here in Michigan where we go back to the bad old Engler days of unbridled capitalism and the god-like reverence that the repubs have for the “free market”…a market that is always rigged for their rich buddies while the middle class disappears with a whimper and not a bang…geez…
Well…have been reading a lot of newspapers today, and over the last few days and a new idea has popped into my head…that whatever the cost in seats that the Dems paid in this election, it was worth it to get the legislative victories that they got in this congress. It was worth it to get started on reforming healthcare…and I don’t believe that the law as enacted is perfect by any means, but it is a good basis where the normal process of implementation and change that almost all legislation goes through can begin. It was worth it to get consumer protection where there was only big business dictates before….and it was worth it to get some little financial regulation back in place on the banks that ruined our economy.
Now, I don’t know if that was a political calculation on the Dems part; I’m sure no party wants to lose seats and give up control of any part of government they used to get these accomplishments, but, to me, it was certainly worth it to push the balance of power just a little ways back towards you and me….and lets hope that the repubs don’t waste the country’s precious time with the nonsense they are promising..or we’ll have the house back in 2012…
Well…a couple of thoughts on the suspension of Keith Olbermann from MSNBC for make unauthorized political contributions in the last election. First, if it’s in his contract that these donations have to be approved before they are made, then MSNBC has the right to do exactly what they did…in corporate owned America, even workers as well-known as Keith still have to honor the contracts they sign no matter how much they disagree with them. This kind of thing happens every day across the country and no one should be surprised at the flexing of the power of the modern corporation…and I might not be fair in castigating the parent company NBC for trying to protect the brand they have spent years creating; especially with the media’s false equivalency that MSNBC is just as biased as Fox….but there were no multi-million dollar donations to the Dems from NBC as Fox did for the repubs so that explodes that little myth.
One of the traps that I think Keith has fallen into is that he has gotten big and feels like the rules don’t apply to him…but, one other thought came to mind in my coffee fueled mind today…what if he did it on purpose? What if he did it to highlight the differences between his company and Fox…I certainly think he at least did NBC a favor..it gave their management the opportunity to put to rest the idea that MSNBC is the mirror of Fox on the left….and I feel that the old model where news was news and opinion was opinion is a better one than we have today…today’s news world makes it too hard to discern between the two and people don’t like to work that hard…making it easy for the demagogues to rule…geez…
Well…running a little late this morning but there’s no reason for it…I feel pretty good and I wanted to make coffee and read a couple of newspapers before I got to this. It was a normal type of night last night…stayed in and watched the Wings game…they looked pretty good but I would like to see a little more offense from them…the D looked great though and Hank and Pavel were looking mid-season form so it’s going to be fun to watch. Was supposed to go out with C for a couple but didn’t hear from him but that might be a good thing…saved some cash and got up feeling great. Not much to do today…Michigan plays at noon and I am going to watch that one even though I think a bunch of 8 year olds could play better defense. No food to cook since I ran the cooker yesterday and have lots of leftovers…still trying to reset the metabolism after I’ve been an idiot and let my calorie intake fall to under 1200 a day which basically just shut down everything..it is harder than it looks to get back to 2K a day and keep it healthy. Still getting the stares when I go out in the morning in shorts to get my papers…only 3 more weeks and I’ll get the jeans out again…but it looks like a nice week this week and it won’t be too much of a bother to keep shorts alive…I do have a topic or two today…have to get to the whole Keith thing today…and maybe some politics..or sports..who knows?
Well…with the passing of Sparky Anderson this week, the title question came to my mind…”where have the nice guys gone?” When I was younger, there were nice guys in every avenue of life here in America; there were nice sports figures, politicians, and newsmen who did their jobs with an innate goodness that didn’t make them any less effective. What happened? Why are today’s versions of those people so nasty and brutish…why do we now have guys like Boehner and McConnell in politics who believe that the only way for them to win in politics is to demonize and crush their opponents? Then, to gloat about their wins and play to their troglodyte bases that they have created by making it acceptable to be an ass in public…making it a virtue to be unreasonable. And, we see this kind of behavior in sports where it is looked on as quaint to show sportsmanship; to let their play talk for them on the field…and this is compounded by the epidemic of inflated self-importance from guys that just play child’s games for a living.
I don’t know where this country went wrong…but I sure liked it better when guys like Sparky Anderson were in it…when politicians understood that compromise is the life blood of any democracy…and that we the people understood and supported people who could be reasonable….like Jerry Ford from our neck of the woods…geez…
Well…another day of feeling like crap yesterday but it’s much better today…at least for now but I do have the grocery shopping to do since there is only a bag of frozen peppers in the freezer and I don’t think it’s enough to get through the weekend. I did have HH with K last night and that was fun…I need to get out of here more but I don’t want to spend any cash right now…so, a conundrum…I just love that word…not much to do today, as always, but C may be coming into town to hang out so that may be something for later. And, of course, cleaning, but I’m not too motivated to do that..we’ll see. I do have some topics for later but I’m not sure what they are yet..you’ll have to come back to see…more later…
Well…I have to thank the Who for the title of this one…and I hope I don’t get sued…but it fits the new political landscape here in Michigan so well that I just had to use it. This idea was spurred by the headlines in the Michigan newspapers since the Tuesday election that are trumpeting that governor-elect Snyder is bringing in “top aides’ from the Engler administration to run his transition to governor. You have got to be kidding me…we threw those idiots out 8 years ago after they screwed up Michigan so badly that we still haven’t climbed out of the mess.
These are the same folks that tried to kill public education here just because they hated the teachers unions with such blinding rage that they didn’t give a damn about the collateral damage they were doing to our children. A legacy that we still see today with decaying schools and huge class sizes that are necessary along with the wide-spread layoffs of teachers to balance the budgets of tax limited school systems. And now, Snyder has already said that one of his first priorities is to cut taxes even more for businesses that already have the highest retained profits in the history of the world. Does that sound like they are overtaxed? When did it become necessary to bribe companies with tax cuts or they’ll take their ball and go home?
Now…this isn’t my last word on the subject….and I’ll give these new guys exactly the two years that was given to Obama…if unemployment isn’t down to 5 % or less by 2012, these guys should be sent back to their country clubs and out of our lives.
Well…late night last night…it was a hard fought battle in pool that came down to the last game that I won…then, back here to watch the Wings game…feel like crap today and might just skip the coffee shop since I’m running late and can’t get going; both in the body and brain as you can tell. But, I guess I don’t have to keep to the normal schedule, do I? Not much to do today…have had a Netflix movie in the mailbox for a couple of days and should get to that…and I should start reading about the political changes that are happening so I can get to the commentating…but that does not sound like fun right now…nothing sounds good so I’ll stop here for now…I will be back later…