Well…got this idea just a few secs ago and thought it sounded like a good idea at the time…let’s do a daily watch on ole Rush and count the advertisers who have left the show…right now, as of March 6th, the count is up to 20 and shows no signs of stopping…and, I for one, am reveling in the bully getting what’s coming to him….now I urge Clear Channel who is essentially Rush’s boss to at least suspend him…and, to Clear Channel, who thinks ole Rush is the top rated show in most of his markets, take a look at the latest metered results on listeners, not just the paper diaries that Arbitron uses…ole Rush comes in 8th in DC..far behind even NPR….maybe it’s time to send this bully back to his pill mills in Florida…okay, that’s not really fair….I’ll try to stop the personal attacks…but he does deserve it…after all, I didn’t call him a fat f*** loser…
One last thing…I think we should boycott any show that Patricia Heaton is in…during the attacks by Rush…she did the same thing on her Twitter account, although not quite as despicable as Rush’s comments, it again showed the ignorance and mean streak that the right displays every day and should not be supported….
Well…after doing almost 1500 of these things over the past two years, you would think I’d have it pretty much down by now…one of the strange things that I just noticed is that the letters on the keys of my computer are starting to wear off from use with the N and the D being the worst ones and the M not far behind…I guess you can tell that this one is not going to be the political one that you were probably expecting but there is just nothing that is cranking me up these days on that subject…how many times can you call the repubs idiots and not sound like it’s the only thing you say? You and I both know they are, but it is getting to be a little like stealing candy from a baby…anyone can do it and it’s not really special anymore. Was this ever special? Not sure…but, I am going to try to get back in the groove later this afternoon and do another one….
Well…I had this idea after reading quite a few articles on what is happening in Europe with the bailout in Greece and the continued focus on austerity and cutting spending. All of the statistics that we see from studies there that cite lower growth and the distinct possibility that Europe will fall back into recession (Portugal and Spain are already there) do nothing but to confirm what Keynes said about spending cuts….that in a recessionary environment government should deficit spend to replace consumer spending and keep the economy growing. But, what all of the governments of Europe have done is listen to the fiction about the bond hawks and the crazy notion that cutting spending will make economies grow…what they have done with the massive contraction of government spending and the severe cuts to wages and benefits of the workers is to ensure that their economies will contract…forcing another round of austerity that will further feed this downward spiral. At least here in the US, we have made a half-hearted attempt at a stimulus and have not listened to the nonsense of the repubs that cutting spending will spur growth…this only works when the economy is growing at a sustainable pace and inflation is a threat….and that is not true here with only a .2% increase in prices on January…leaving an acceptable 2.4% inflation projected for the year…geez…
Yep… a placeholder but it could be a good one so come on back tomorrow morning…it’s another no cocktail night so I may be lucid early…
Okay…it’s early but I thought I’d better get on this one before I get to the daily update…I hope you’ve heard of the latest repub response to the contraception controversy…well…they are going to propose a bill that will allow any employer to refuse health coverage for any reason if it is based on the faith of the employer..yep, you heard it right…this bill will allow employers to stop offering coverage to any group or individual they don’t like…this means that if they don’t think interracial couples should be allowed to marry, they can refuse to cover them….if they don’t think any one should have surgery (which some sects do)…they will be able to prevent coverage under this bill….I hope everyone else here is as outraged as I am and if this attack on America is passed, I hope it will end up in the courts and rejected as soon as possible….it is another case where the repubs think that government should not be involved in anyone’s life except when they want it to be to enforce their warped view of the world…I am almost speechless on this idiocy…another in the long line of cases for eliminating employer sponsored healthcare and moving to a single payer, medicare for all world so the politics can be taken out of it forever…
Well…during this whole contraception nonsense that has been roiling the waters in DC over the past couple of weeks, one thing that gets lost is the fact that it is the system of healthcare and insurance that is employer provided that is causing the problem. The patchwork of the types of employers from straight business to religious based organizations and making rules that fit all of them just raises costs for everyone in part because that patchwork requires many more regulators and administrators than a Medicare for all plan would do…and, as I’ve said many times before and that studies have shown, the overhead costs of Medicare for all is around 9% of the program; not the almost 30% that private insurance costs. There is one more thing that most people who have jobs and insurance don’t understand…that when you get older like me, employers won’t hire our cadre since they think it will inflate their healthcare costs…something that could be taken away if there was a single payer system…then we could be hired on our merits, not on an age issue that we have no control over….geez…
Okay…I did want to add one last thing…nothing to do with politics but it WAS Joe Walsh on the Grammys Sun night…it wasn’t just a cocktail induced haze….yay…going out to see if I can find the actual footage….
Well…it has been a crushingly boring day today so I’m back to just do anything to get my brain working again…I’m just not a basketball fan but that is the only thing that is on…I’ve even read the paper twice already so that is done for the day and it is only 3…and it is 4 1/2 more hours until the Wings come on…there has been no help on the political side, either, so I can’t really report anything there…so, what to do? I’ve got the Post up on another tab so maybe I’ll go over there and look for a minute…okay, I’m back from there and I could write one about the whole contraception controversy…one of the things that I find startling is that all of the repub candidates are against women’s contraception…how can this be in 2012? How can the party of limited government want to take away a basic right from 50% of the population? I guess it’s because they always want to limit the rights of people they don’t agree with….and that, I think, is the problem with the repubs these days…when they get elected, they only govern for those who voted for them…they lack the big vision necessary for such a complex country but also continue with the damn doom and gloom every day…I just don’t want to hear it anymore…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…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…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…