Well…it was a fun day yesterday even thought it snowed…didn’t get the bike out and now it looks like it will be next week before I get on it again…I did get out for a couple with G last night and it was a chore coming home with all of the ice and snow…I didn’t get back here for a political one yesterday and I don’t know why..I just didn’t have the outrage necessary, I guess but I will try to do better today…not much to do today…it’s only 6 degrees outside right now so I do need to warm the car up before I go out for the papers…then I’m just going to clean this place up and do laundry…yeah, exciting, I know…
One thing I forgot to mention is the soccer day that is going on this morning..just watched Man U beat Liverpool and Chelsea and Everton are coming on in a few minutes…and I really want Everton to win since they have 2 Americans on the team and it is good to root for Tim Howard and Landon Donovan….oh, and it is only 5 degrees outside but I was out cleaning off the car in shorts..kind of a badge of honor but there was no wind so it didn’t feel that cold…I am going to try to come back and do two later but who knows?
Well…it was a day yesterday but there wasn’t much to report….just the normal crap and more rejections of the resume…so I had cocktails last night and slept pretty well…I guess that’s a good trade off…but it looks like the weekend is going to be somewhat of a bore with K out of town and being broke…but I do have some new recipes to try that will keep me somewhat amused…and there is a Wings game tonight to look forward to…not much to do today…I want to get one last bike ride in before it goes extremely cold for the next few days and I may even have the shifters fixed…at least it shifts when the bike is upside down here but if it doesn’t work out on the trail I’m going to be a little irritated…more later…
Well…if you have been following politics at all over the past couple of weeks, you can see that a change is brewing in the tactics of the repub party….the tired old nonsense of the culture war has risen it’s ugly head again but this time, I think they may have miscalculated and it is not going to work except for with their base. We’ve seen that the republicans look worried with their current crop of candidates and their lack of competitiveness in a head to head matchup with Obama…so what do we see again? The GOP rolling out the gay marriage card…the repubs trotting out the faked battle on contraception, and the continued attacks on Planned Parenthood that are designed to appeal to the ignorant haters in their base…but, what they are failing to see in 2012 is that base is the only place these attacks resound…all of the polls show us that America has become more tolerant and accepting and we are tired of the nonsense the repubs are peddling…but, I hope they continue it since these shenanigans have driven the approval of the repub controlled congress down to historically low levels at 10%…only 10% of the people in the US approve of the obstructionist crap the repubs are using to keep the economy from improving…and I hope they pay for it by losing control of the house this fall…they deserve it….geez…
Well…The Grand Rapids Press has been apart of my life since I learned to read so many years ago and, with that history, I have to comment on the changes that have come to that paper in the past few weeks. I know that the newspaper business has been in decline for the past couple of decades but why do the owners of the Press want to speed that decline? That is exactly what will happen with the de-contenting of the paper…making it just a compiler of articles that you can get in many other places. Don’t these people understand that the reason people read newspapers is to get something unique; that will deal with news from the local community but to also have depth of national and world reporting along with commentary that reflects all of the differing points of view? Over the past few years, the Press has abandoned it’s guise of fairness to pick up the banner of the far right with people like Michelle Malkin and the rest of the Fox News propaganda machine that do nothing but hate Obama and do everything in their power to minimize the initiatives that he has proposed to benefit all Americans…not just those that Fox News gets paid to shill for. One of the last comments I want to make is that with the proliferation of sources for news, the idea is that people will pay for value in those sources…but yesterday, when I picked up the Press to purchase it and noticed that it was about 20 pages worth of nothing for the new price of a dollar, I finally realized that there is no longer value there…so, after more that 50 years of reading the Press, I will have to say goodbye….the million plus people in west Michigan deserve better…geez…
Well…it was an okay day yesterday with getting out to play pool, which I won in a championship game…and the Wings won last night, too so that was great…it was a no cocktail night so I feel okay this morning…I think that dislocated feeling I had yesterday was caused by not eating enough but we’ll see today as the day goes on…I did have a really weird dream about East Grand Rapids and donuts that cost 50 dollars for 4 of them….of course I told them they were nuts and wouldn’t pay that much so there was a police chase that ensued, then I woke up….yep…I am strange…but you knew that….not much to do today…I do need to get a few groceries since I am going to make a homemade chicken penne alfredo this weekend…I will come back for a political one for later since I kind of slacked off yesterday and I do need to keep up….
Well..it was another no cocktail night but still no sleep so I guess I feel okay today….but I’m not thinking clearly yet so this one may be short…it was a nice day yesterday but I still don’t have the shifters fixed on the bike so it is getting a little frustrating but we’ll see when I take it out today….okay…I do have some things to do today…going to go out and shoot pool today…I’ll be back later to finish it…
Okay…have been out to get coffee and read the papers and I still feel really strange…like I’m disconnected from the world and really weak….might be not eating enough or it could be that I only slept about 3 hours last night with all of the tossing and turning…whatever it is, it is really disconcerting….and it’s not getting better….maybe I’ll feel better after I work out…more later…
Well…started to think outside the box with my conspiracy hat on tonight (no, it’s not made out of tin foil) and came up with this wild idea that I haven’t heard anywhere else. What if Komen was trying to put a competitor out of business? Hear me out….most of the services that the two organizations support are similar and there is quite a bit of overlap in the communities they serve….so what if Komen wanted to be the only provider so they threw their support behind the right wing conspiracies to destroy Planned Parenthood. I know, it’s something out of “The Sopranos” but it could be happening…you heard it here first….and probably last…
Well…I just wanted to comment a little on some things that really don’t have the meat to be an entire article here….yeah, I know, I’ve turned really small ideas into whole columns before but I don’t feel like it today…so, here goes…I am a little heartened by the unemployment numbers that came out the other day and my hope meter for ever finding another job went up a little but I know I have to temper it a little since this has happened before and I’m still not working…I did like the poll numbers that came out a few days ago, too…where Obama is 6-7 points ahead of ole Mitt in the general election polling but I do understand that a lot can happen in the next 10 months…one of the striking things from one of those polls is the results of a question that asked if people liked ole Mitt more the more they heard him….and 54% of the people didn’t…so now ole Mitt is going to not say anything the rest of the election cycle? Then there was the study done over the past couple of years that found that conservatives in the US are much less intelligent than the rest of the population…things that anyone would know if you ever listen to them…Oh, one last thing, the right wing idiot that was coordinating the attack by Komen on PP has resigned (or was fired)…I say good riddance….there is no place for politics in health issues, especially womens health that has been the hotbed of controversy since I was little…
Well…it was a nice day yesterday except that the Wings lost….had the night off since G had homework to do so with no cocktails, I feel pretty good this morning…and I had this repeater of a dream about flying into some isolated Italian island where you have to twist and turn the small plane extremely violently and, in this flight, the pilot actually scraped the side of the plane on the rocks coming in… could have reached out the window and touched them…pretty cool. Oh, and I forgot that I had the nicest lunch with T and that left me smiling the rest of the day…I did get the bike cleaned, too, and I think that has helped the shifters some…but, I’ll see later this morning when I get out again….not much to do today…more resumes, of course, but I have enough leftovers that I don’t have to cook so that is a little disappointing…I will be back later for more…
Well…I missed the big Clint Eastwood ad during the super bowl yesterday but I had heard that it was something special so I just went out and watched it…and a big part of the reason was that Karl Rove was offended by it saying that the phrase “it’s halftime in America and it’s time to play the second half” is just a thinly veiled endorsement of a second Obama term. Karl, any time you are offended by anything just tells me that who is speaking is on the right track…why would anyone care what ole Karl thinks anyway? This is the guy who brought us the nastiest, small politics in American history and planned and abetted the outing of Valerie Plame which put many of our CIA people at risk just to cover up the lies about African uranium that the bushies pushed to get us into war in Iraq. My take on the ad was this: that America has fought through the problems of the past few years and has stayed in the game…has gotten to the second half of the biggest game in our lives and now can build on what we did in the first and keep fighting to win…Karl…you ignored the fact that this was an ad that ran at halftime of a football game…what a more appropriate place for the metaphor that was used? I applaud Chrysler for trying to strengthen the American value that we are all in this together and we can win if we keep working together…something that ole Karl or the rest of the repubs will never understand…geez…