Well…yeah, I know…my stuff hasn’t been as good as I like lately and it’s weird when the brain just goes off the rails and nothing I do helps at all…but, I guess that means I just have to keep trying, to keep doing this until the dam breaks again and I can be somewhat lucid. Good luck, huh? There is a bit of irony that I have to pass on that has been making me amused today…as you know, I replaced the dsl yesterday with cable internet to be able to use the internet like normal folks; to be able to watch videos and other media online without the buffering that the dsl needed. Well…I did get through a couple of movies on Netflix yesterday…no death screens or resetting the player at all…pretty cool…but, today, the whole damn Netflix site is down so I still can’t watch the movies I’m paying for…but, I am taking an amused view about the whole thing…part of the “trying to not get upset” process that I am trying out to some small success. There wasn’t a lot to do today…yay…I got it in…so I didn’t do much….still feeling crappy but, as I said before, I think there is a bug component there since I still have a fever…or it feels like it anyway. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it…there are some plans for this evening..may be meeting G for a couple and then I have to stay out for a while to see part of the Wings game…still haven’t found a site that I can use to stream the game…and the dish people and Fox are still working on the contract so I can get FSD again…oh,well…maybe I should do a Wings update later? Or that Nascar one that I promised…who knows?
Let’s connect some dots…
Well…you know I’ve talked about the Citizens United case here before but with the new information that is trickling out of the blackout wall erected by the right, I feel there is enough to start to connect the dots on how our democracy has been hijacked by the unholy trinity of business, repubs, and the supreme court. Late in the day yesterday, the guest list from one of the Koch brothers soirees whose purpose was to plot strategy to regain control of congress was discovered. Guess who was on the list? Well.. Fox News, of course, and the RNC, and reps from the Citizens United group, but there were two people that were supposed to be kept secret: Justices Thomas and Scalia of the Supreme Court. Yep, that’s right, Supreme court justices at a political strategy meeting for the right-wing takeover of the Congress. Doesn’t anyone else see the conflict of interest here? Do you think it’s just coincidence that just a few months later, the Court overturned over a hundred years of settled law on the rights of corporations and the will of the people that the money of corporations could not be used influence elections?
Now, I’m not saying that the justices were bribed to make this decision, but, I do think their political leanings are affecting their judicial duty and they have become the most activist court in the history of the US. But it’s not activist for you and me, when cases come to them that deal with individual rights, they are all too willing to shred the fourth amendment and others; always deferring to their ideology instead of the law. We have become a worse nation for it…geez…
October 21st
Well…kind of a strange day yesterday….not really strange but…yeah, strange. I did get the cable internet set up and it is so fast I can’t believe it..watched a couple of movies on Netflix and no “red screen of death” and it only takes about 10 seconds to load versus the 5 minutes or so that it took with the dsl. I still feel pretty crappy today so it must be a bug or something…so I’m going to take it easy today and just hang out….not much to do anyway…I’ll put the grocery shopping off until tomorrow but I will get to some topics today…there is a new one about the Koch brothers and their buying votes on the supreme court that could be interesting if I can flesh it out enough…we’ll see…more later…
October 20th
Well… a come from behind victory in pool last night and had way too much fun..so, I feel kind of crappy today and I think it’s probably one of the last times…I’ve gotten used to feeling good when I get up and this is just not fun. Not much to do today….I think I’ll just watch a movie and veg…and I will get to a new topic later when I feel better…
Okay…got the workout and ride in and feel quite a bit better…even had lunch and got the cable modem set up…I can’t believe how fast the movies load from Netflix…I think I’ll be a hermit for the next couple of days and get caught up on movies that I haven’t been able to watch with the dsl….and, I really don’t have a topic for right now but I am going to try later…I do have a whole chicken in the slow cooker that smells really good but won’t be done until about 4 or so…and my son is coming over to set up the wireless router that he is giving me around 3:30 or so…then, maybe out with G for a couple but I am going to take it easy tonight…more later
October 19th
Well…there are a couple of new ones that are dated the 18th since I started them yesterday and just finished them this morning..so look down and you’ll see some new stuff…and you night even see some more new ones today, depending on how I feel…but I am working up some outrage that I need to vent somewhere. It was quite a busy day yesterday but another Monday that G skipped…I guess I’ll just have to start finding other things to do..it’s the same change thing that I’ve talked about quite a few times before but this one kind of puts a coda on what was left of the relationships from the old group. But is this to be mourned or to be celebrated? I think we can become too dependent on our routines, on the comfort of the known, and it is not always a good thing especially when the routines become a substitute for living your life. Just some musings…don’t make too much of them…
Not a lot to do today…I think there is pool out in Ada but I also have to buy the cable modem so I can dump the dsl and get that hooked up…plus, cleaning this joint up…there are spiders everywhere again and I need to get the webs vacuumed up and the bathroom done….so, boring as it is, that is the life right now…more later…
Gotta stop watching Keith…
Well…this one is going to be written tomorrow too, and I do need to stop watching Keith…just like reading “Bushwhacked”, I am quickly losing my faith in this administration with their decision to fight the decision of one of the appeals courts to allow a lawsuit against John Ashcroft for unlawful detention and breaking a bunch of other laws…geez…
Well…the gist of my anger with Obama and his administration is their decisions to allow people to blatantly break the law and then do nothing to hold the perpetrators accountable..the latest one has to do with John Ashcroft, as I said above, but it is a pattern of political calculation that goes back to their decision to not prosecute anyone in the Bush administration for their outright admission that they authorized torture; in direct violation of international and American law. Just think if this mindset was in use when Watergate was going on…the same ideas and actions would have let John Mitchell walk free…along with everyone else that was involved. What has happened to us? Why have we stopped holding criminals accountable? This latest action puts me about an inch away from giving up on Obama and withdrawing from the political process. I thought this country was a country of laws, a country that everyone from the president on down was subject to these laws…but I guess politics now trumps the law…and we are so the worse for it…geez…
Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican…
Okay…has there ever been a more hypocritical bunch of folks than the current crop of Republicans? If you’ve been watching television at all over the last couple of months, you’ve no doubt seen the political ads that state with ominous certainty that the stimulus package has failed. It is a staple of the ads here in Michigan; second only to the repugs use of Nancy Pelosi as the scariest thing since Dracula, but, there is a little glitch in those attacks…it seems while McConnel, Bachmann, and Sessions hammer on their fake facts that the stimulus didn’t work, they have written letters to the agencies that are administering these funds touting the effectiveness of the spending in creating and preserving jobs in their districts. Now, what is it? Did the stimulus not work or did it add jobs? I am so tired of the American people believing this blatant hypocrisy…and I am just as tired of the “mainstream media” not running these inconvenient facts on the front pages of newspapers across the country. When did lies and hypocrisy become acceptable? Now I know you’re going to say that everyone lies and the Dems are just as culpable…but that in itself is not true…the repugs have raised it to an art form because they know that people just don’t care, that the American public lives in a world of sound bites and superficiality that will allow them to take back control of the country….and finish killing it. Geez…
Molly Ivins was right…
Well…started reading the book ‘Bushwhacked” by Molly Ivins, the late columnist for the New York Times and all I can say is my depression has returned with the realization that she was right…not just about the “Shrub”, but about how business has bought this country…from the Supreme Court down through the state legislatures. The book is nominally about ole GW, but I see it as more an example of how pernicious the effect of money is in our election process, but not only that, it is a succinct indictment of the power that business wields in out society. And now I see that some of you that voted for Obama and change away from the wholesale theft of America, are leaning toward voting for the crooks that are rigging the game against you…that are using the secret money that is flowing into the repubs hands to steal this election. I now see this fight as one where we won a round in 2008, where we started to take the country back from the rampant business interests, but it was only one round…we need to be in this fight for the entire bout, until we can take the thumb of business off the scale and run this country for “we the people” again. But, we can’t do it if you fall for the lies of the right and big business…it is not better to have 50 million Americans without health insurance, it is not better to continue to give tax breaks to companies that move our jobs overseas, it is not better to have our elections stolen by secret money that is buying the legislators they are supporting. It’s up to us….
I think this is going to be a serial as I get deeper into the book and try to connect things that have happened like Enron, Adephia, Harken Oil, and others, to what you can expect if you vote for these guys again.
October 18th
Well…it did end up to be a bore of a day yesterday..but I guess that’s my fault since I invested time in watching the Lions instead of putting the bike on the back of the car and doing something….the weather was nice anyway….it’s kind of weird that I have been quite happy for a couple of weeks and then it just goes away…not doing anything differently either…I was even going to write a post about being happy…good thing I waited…and things are back to normal so that post won’t happen…don’t have a lot to do today but I do have things to do at G’s today so the bike ride will have to wait until later….I am going to go out for coffee since I really do need that…and I also need to start finding more things to do…yep, that will include fishing, Tom, but I have a bunch of stuff to do this week…going to buy a cable modem so I can dump the dsl and get service that I’ll be able to use to watch Neflix online…but the son has to come over before he moves to set up the wireless router and I think that looks like Wed…it will be weird to have web pages load faster than 15 seconds…that’s about it…I do have a topic for later that is quite depressing but reading “Bushwhacked” by Molly Ivins has crystallized some thoughts that have been brewing for a while…more later…
October 17th
Well…an okay day yesterday but fighting the boredom is getting a little harder…especially when Michigan looks so bad..but the Wings broke the 2 game losing streak (well, a loss and a tie) so that’s a plus..still can’t see the games here but when they get back to the normal 7 or 7:30 starting time, I’ll have to go out to watch a few. It’s only 7:48 and I have almost everything done I wanted to do today..I do need to clean this joint up some since the maint guys are coming tues to work on the furnace so I don’t die of carbon monoxide…not a lot else to do today…might have a short SF but am waiting to hear from K about it…and there is the Lions, I may need to watch to see if last week was a fluke…yeah, we all know it was but there’s that damn Lions optimism coming back again…almost delusional in it’s scope I’ll admit. No races since it was run last night…and I have a comment on Nascar and the half-full Charlotte track…boring, boring race…I wonder if it’s the races or just me that finds it boring…especially when racing used to be one of my favorite things in the world and now I can take it or leave it….so, look in sports later and I’ll solve all of the ills of the sports world…in one fell swoop…I’m going to go back and read the paper again like I used to since the morning run through is usually just a skim…but, you know it’s quite rare that I have a topic for Sunday….more later…