Well…this topic popped into my head when I was reading an article about Robert Plant and his new band on tour this morning. It wasn’t really the article which was pretty complimentary but then, like an idiot, I have to read the comments that were posted by other readers. Why do people hate so much? I know I’ve touched on this subject quite a few times but it still confuses me when there are these nuclear reactions to what was just a fluff piece. Some the respondents even went so far to think anyone his age should never be seen doing the music that has been their lives work. When are you too old to entertain? Doesn’t the marketplace determine when you should stay home? Should we stop reading books or enjoying paintings done by people that are in the later stages of life?
I just don’t understand the psyche of people that can’t enjoy entertainers just because they have aged. Would you have Neil Young stay home and never tour again because he over 60? I know you may feel that I have these feelings because I’m getting up there and I have started to think about my age and how I relate to the world, but good music is good music and great writers are great no matter what their age. Music has given me so much enjoyment and extra understanding of life through that shared experience and I want to keep the ones I love around until they can’t do it anymore…and maybe longer than that. What do you think?
Well…had to comment on this piece from the USA Today….they have a point-counterpoint type of editorial every day where the paper takes one side of an issue, and a guest columnist takes another. The topic of the day was that a man was charged with a felony for video taping an officer that had stopped him for reckless driving. That, in itself, is disturbing, but the defense that the union of police officers uses to justify the charge is even more disturbing since they seem to want to place police officers on a different plane when it comes to their rights versus the rights of those they interact with. They argue that videotape needs a context for it to be reliable for evidence against police officers; using it to hold officers accountable for their actions but doesn’t when it is being used as evidence against the public. And, they go on to argue, that no one except a police office can interpret what is on the tape….well..tell that to Rodney King and the myriad of other who have been abused by the police…I think they are just angry that they will be held accountable for their actions and can’t place themselves above the law anymore….geez….
Well…Michigan residents got another slap in the face from the Michigan supreme court last week when they ruled that insurance companies can use credit scoring to help set rates for the insurance they sell here. I know they have statistics that show that people with higher credit scores cost them less in claims and thus should pay less…but I’m sure that if they looked at height, hair color, or weight, there would be a correlation there, too. I probably should correct something I said earlier, too…it’s not that those with higher credit scores will pay less…no,no,no…it’s that those with lower scores now will pay more…the rates will never go down for anyone.
If you are not from Michigan, you wouldn’t know that the insurance industry here has basically bought and paid for the decisions in the Supreme court since we have elected judges, along with buying the repub controlled senate to get whatever they need in the form of rate hikes and sweetheart laws. This last one hits just when another article in the paper this morning noted that credit scores in general have taken the largest downturn since they were invented due to the severity of the recession. So, through no fault of their own, and in no relation to the risk that the insurance companies have to bear, millions of Americans will now have their insurance costs raised just to give more profit to these companies.
When are we going to wake up and stop this kind of thing? When are the repubs going to start siding with the people over their business cronies? Geez….
This is a place keeper…the idea is: why do we have to have everything tainted by politics? Why can’t we just do the right thing?When did political advantage trump doing what is best for this country?
No longer a place keeper…I’m back with a few thoughts about what’s going on in the economy and the country as a whole…can’t we agree that unemployment is a problem? That people losing their homes their lives work, and their healthcare is a problem? That the concentration of wealth in the top 1% is a problem? That the middle class as an endangered species is a problem?
Where are the solutions when we can’t even get the right and left to agree that any of the problems listed above are important? Why do we keep wasting time, money, and American lives in two wars; one that has been won and the other that can’t? And why do we keep supporting the hatred that makes even attempting to solve this country’s problem by compromise political death?
Political advantage is the refuge of scoundrels who don’t care a damn about this country and would rather see it burn to the ground than tell their rabid followers that they are wrong and we do all need to work together and sacrifice together…that’s what made this country great and could again….geez…
Well….as I said in an earlier post, I am trying to lower the outrage quotient and try to be a more reasoned voice…in fact, the name that I proposed for this site was “A Reasonable Voice” but when my son was putting it together for me, he thought the title should be “Overeducated and Unemployed” and when I got a look at the first template, I had to agree. It also made me laugh…
I know this isn’t the topic that I promised but sometimes I have to write what is in my head or I’ll lose it…I promise the one on the political middle tomorrow.
There were a couple of articles in the newspapers over the last couple of days that made a connection in my brain that I haven’t seen anywhere else so here goes….of course, you know about the Supreme Court decision giving corporations the same rights as citizens to give money to political campaigns? Then today, I read that the profitability of corporations is back to where it was before the economic meltdown and they are sitting on “mountains” of cash but no one is investing to create more jobs. This could be a leap, but with the rights that corporations have been given as “citizens”, doesn’t that mean that they have responsibilities, too? And not just to their shareholders, but to the society as a whole? I’ve talked about the flipside of the people screaming and demanding their rights; that it has to be balanced with the responsibilities to this society.
I think it also points out the fallacy of the reliance on the private sector to create jobs where there is no check on their power to do whatever they please….using the Chinese model to wrestle more and more work out of the individual; thinking only of their bottom line and of the obscene bonuses that are granted to their ceo’s while they complain about “government interference”. If they are being interfered with, why are their profits the same as when the Bushies were running the show? Geez….
Well….saw a headline in Car and Driver this morning that triggered a flash in this old brain. The title was ‘when did roads become pork?” And, in my fevered brain, that immediately became “when did everything become pork” in our society? There was a time that I can still remember where we were proud of new roads, schools, and other parts of our shared, communal infrastructure and people understood the value to our society of these kinds of projects. Now it seems that any necessary project to keep us even with the rest of the world is met by the excess tax crowd with loud cries of pork, pork, pork, and the projects are deferred by scared politicians who only think as far ahead as their next election. When did we lose our guts to take on the hard projects? And, when did the idea that we are all in this together go away?
Have we become so simplistic in our capacity for thought that slogans are the new thinking? This country became great by big politicians and big citizens who could see past that next election, that could see past the day that their kids grew up and were no longer in school, that could see that the ideal of America IS that we are all in this together and could put their selfishness aside and see that there are limited resources but didn’t mind paying their fair share of the tax burden when it is necessary for the country to go forward. Progress for the whole of the country cannot be left to the private sector whose very existence is based on the “I’ve got mine” premise….as a country we need to stop wasting time and energy on bitching and start doing again….geez….
Well…this one is another placekeeper since I’m getting ready to go out for lunch…the comments that I’m reading about the new GUIDELINES for salt intake are really showing me how deranged this country is getting. WOW….back later..
I’m back…had a nice lunch and a bike ride….I think it was yesterday that I saw an article that stated the recommendations for salt intake were being revised downward given some of the new studies that have been reported recently. Folks, these are just recommendations to help people stay healthy…just like how many calories a person should eat, whether or not to smoke, etc. but to hear the loonies out there, Obama is now going to have “salt squads” go around and arrest people and close down restaurants that put too much salt in their foods. One extreme idiot who I guess thinks he’s clever, even went so far as to say that he expects to be arrested for bringing his own salt shaker into a restaurant and using it. Really? Can anyone be so stupid?
I guess these cretins really think “ignorance is bliss” and what they don’t know can’t hurt them. I say to them, keep eating spoonfuls of salt every day, and burgers, lots of burgers loaded with bacon, and then sit on your couch and wait for the heart attack to come…it will be the best form of natural selection to let these morons die out young. Geez…
Well…haven’t been paying to much attention today and this story just appeared like a quick thunderstorm…the commanding general in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, in a far-ranging interview with Rolling Stone Magazine has shown his true colors..or I should say has re-affirmed his true colors by again being insubordinate to President Obama. This guy needs to be removed and immediately. President Obama, do not think about this, do not mull it over, do not study it…just do it. This guy is acting like Bush is still president…when they could talk a good game and not accomplish anything and still keep their jobs. And, it appears that he has the same infection that the rest of the Republicans do…that makes them do and say irrational things whenever Obama is involved. Just look at the tea partiers….
I wouldn’t be surprised if McChrystal lands a new job as the Fox News military consultant.
He’s acted like a spoiled child throughout his career when he didn’t get his way…the definition of insubordination…he has to be taught that the military is under civilian control…geez…
Well….haven’t worked up any outrage today but I do have some observations that I have been nurturing for a while….something that has been congealing is the the idea that when you pull up to stoplight, never get in line behind a Buick if you can help it. Invariably, it will be in the left lane and will take off like there is the last egg of an endangered species under the gas pedal; forcing everyone to pass on the right since the people that own Buicks think that speed limits are never to be broken…or even equaled for that matter, and they get special points in heaven if they go 10 to 15 under. Today, I pulled up to a light with the Hobson’s choice of a huge dump truck in the right lane and a Buick in the left but the two-fer was the Buick also had handicapped plates on it…never a good sign and when the light changed, the truck handily outran the Buick even though its top speed was about 25. Geez…