Politics

I think it was worth it…

Leave a comment

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…

Misc

A Special Comment on Keith…

Leave a comment

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…

My Life

November 6th

Leave a comment

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?

Misc

Where have the nice guys gone?

Leave a comment

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…

Misc

November 5th

Leave a comment

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…

Politics

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss…

Leave a comment

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.

My Life

November 4th

Leave a comment

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…

Politics

Had to get to Rand Paul….

Leave a comment

Well…after getting out to Kava I feel quite a bit better and might even be lucid enough to make some sense so I’m going to give it a try. I just have to comment on Rand Paul’s speech last night…where the true colors of the Tea Party have finally been allowed to come out. The gist of the speech was that Paul was going to personally block any legislation that he doesn’t like…no talk of moving the country forward, no talk of creating jobs, just a screed that stakes out the position that his vision is government of, by and for Rand Paul. If it wasn’t so dangerous, I would just laugh at this kind of thing…of the tea party’s supposed reverence for the Constitution until it get’s in the way of their radical right-wing agenda. I, for one, don’t want the senator from Kentucky setting the direction for this country, when he has stated his hatred for anything progressive…including the Civil rights act…Social Security, and basically anything that the government does. They want to go back to the days of child labor, industrial poisoning of workers, and sweatshops…the time that these nuts revere.

A thought came to me as I was mourning today…with Michigan going back to the bad old days of the repubs…that the Red Wings will still play, that it could have been worse and the Senate could have fallen, too. But, it didn’t and it may be a pretty interesting couple of years…and I know it’s going to give me a lot to write about and some of it is going to include “I told you so”, but I’m going to try to maintain the reasonableness that has been a goal…so, go about your lives…I’m going to try….more later…

Oh, one last thing, it made me feel good when I saw that the richies that tried to buy elections in many places generally failed to do it…especially in Cali where Meg Whitman lost after spending 140 million of her own dollars…and Carly Fiorina also lost…but the best news was that the know-nothings queen, Sharron Angle lost to Harry Reid in Nevada….silver linings in the cloud that now covers this country…

My Life

November 3rd

Leave a comment

Well…I was going to start the day with a post that went on about the political changes that we are going to see but it’s not ready in my head yet. So, I’ll just do this one….crap…not thinking again today…don’t know if it’s the BV but it is something. I did avoid all of the political reporting last night and just watched comedies….and did not sleep for crap…up really early and I think I want to take a nap already. Not much to do today..out to Ada later and that should be fun…okay…no flow to this stuff this morning so I’m going to stop…more later…

Politics

A running commentary…* *

Leave a comment

Well…I think I’ll keep going with a running stream-of-consciousness commentary on the day since it is an important one…I did get out to vote and it only took about 15 minutes even though my polling precinct had changed….and I have to thank the people that man the polling places and keep a smile on their faces through the crushes and the boredom. I forgot that I had finally updated my address…but the new precinct is in sight of my place so that is really convenient. I have to thank T for setting lunch for today and I think that will offset the gloom that I am feeling…but I will still believe that we can come through this as a nation…but the question is: “will it be better for folks like you and me?” If we can go by history, we are in for at least two years of gridlock and posturing where the repubs highest stated purpose is to defeat Obama in 2012. Is that any plan for governance? Nope, and we have seen they don’t care about that…my hope is that the dems (or some middle of the road third party) will take the next two years to sharpen their message that will further define what the repubs really are….and if all goes well…the repub leadership will anger the tea partiers and drive them away. The knives have already come out against Palin from the repub establishment but is Karl Rove any better? Questions, questions, questions…more later…but I may just edit this one..look in the title for stars…if you see one, I’ve added or edited…

I think a kind of resignation has set in this afternoon but the lunch and talk with T got me down off the ledge….it’s going to be a bad night so the BV will flow later and I may have to just turn the tv off and watch a couple of movies on the computer, but, being the political animal that I am, I don’t think I’ll be able to completely avoid all of the political stuff. If they lose badly….I think the Dems should scrap the healthcare plan they passed and go for broke in the lame duck session..to a single payer system that cuts the parasite insurance companies out of the loop and pays them back for the unlimited money they spent buying the government through the repubs. And, a disclosure law that forces this money to be identified…then we in the middle can make them pay in their profits; since it is the only thing they understand. More later…

Okay…here’s the last one for the day….I will say this…I like the BV…it’s one of those things that I told my kids and I have to remember….don’t worry about things until they happen…I know it’s been predicted that it will be a bloodbath for the Dems…but, I’m going to take the rest of the night off from thinking about the election…since the losses haven’t happened yet…I think the sun will still come up tomorrow…but I’m not sure…

What you never want to be….