Well…after the release of the new TSA screening processes, I feel heartened that there is a growing group of us that are saying enough. We do not need to be molested in the name of safety by a government agency that has become as much a terrorist organization as al-Queda. Well…that is a bit of hyperbole but these folks use fear to change peoples behavior just like the terrorists; the TSA continues to inflate the threat of attack to raise their budgets and consolidate power over the people. But, as I said earlier, the people are starting to revolt, they are starting to actually think and realize how much of their freedom they have given up…completely disproportionate to the chances of any danger to any traveler from the terrorists. I think this is the pendulum starting to swing back to the American values of toughness…and people are seeing that fear is no way to live their lives and want to challenge these cave-dwelling idiots that want to do us harm. I, for one, am completely willing to take increased risk to protect the values that made this country great..after all, life is a risk…you are 100 times more likely to die in a car accident than from a terrorist attack. Are you going to stop driving?
With the lessons of 9/11 still clear in our minds, I wouldn’t want to be a terrorist going up against a planeload of pissed off Americans…please government…let us take care of ourselves…geez…
Well…have been feeling out of sorts lately, even more than normal which is a lot for me. The peace that I had found a few weeks back has eluded me and I don’t know what to do about it…because I don’t know how it happened in the first place. Oh, well…I am glad to not have the filth in the political ads bombarding me anymore…damn…I don’t know if this is writers block or not but I can’t seem to get going…there were weird dreams last night…but all I can remember is giving all my stuff away…okay, this one is crap…need to take a break and try, try, again…
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…
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…
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…
Well…this one is a change of pace from the normal stuff, but it is something I wanted to pass along..was watching “countdown” last week and there was a segment about a violinist who had just purchased a Stradivarius violin for $3.5 million dollars..but that is not the remarkable thing…because, how do you really value a treasure like that? It’s provenance? I really don’t care who owned it before…what I do care about is that majestic sound…that, even through the tiny little speakers on my tv, it was one of the most glorious things I have ever heard. Luckily, the segment is still available on the “Countdown” site and it is worth seeing…and I have added “hearing a Stradivarius in person” to my list….those of you who know me know that getting on my list is important…to me at least…
I know this one is a little different but I have to take time off to see and hear the beauty that still exists in the world and I have to remind myself that this Strad will still exist even if the repubs win the election…and Steely Dan won’t disappear, and Led Zeppelin won’t disappear….at least I hope they won’t…
Well…I was going to label this one “October 29th part two” but I thought better of it…because I’m going to explain a little bit why I feel so depressed about what is happening in politics today. I think part of it was the euphoria that came with the ending of the eight years of hell under ole GW and having possibilities for this country to go forward again, to have the fingers of business lifted from the scale of life, and to see that maybe, just maybe, we could have a government that governed for people like you and me. And now, for reasons that I cannot comprehend, we are poised to go right back to those bad old days…to a governmental philosophy that can be best described as by the republicans and for business; the rest of the country be damned.
I know, I learned a while ago to not let these things take so much out of me, to not get so invested in things that I can’t control, but this one feels different…it’s like this is it for the country and the resilience that we have shown over the years is coming to a end. I’ve lived through the cold war, the communist scares, mutually assured destruction, and Watergate and I have never felt that we couldn’t come back until now…this time the people have killed the idea of America….they have bought into the lies and made them the truth of their reality even when it’s not so….we are no longer in this together…and I’m so depressed…
Well…have been thinking about this since Ford reported it’s quarterly profits in the last week or so, making it almost 6.5 billion dollars in profit through the third quarter; eclipsing all of the other automakers combined. And, guess what? They did it with union organized plants that pay a wage that keeps their workers solidly in the middle class. Take that you right wing union bashers….you that have done your best to destroy organized labor here in the US….saying that the only reason the automakers can’t or haven’t made money is the overpaid, lazy union workforce. But the question that immediately comes to my mind is: if Ford can do it, why can’t the rest? Why is it necessary for GM and Chrysler to have a two tiered wage scale that pays new workers half of what their old ones make? What is different that they can’t do what Ford does, especially when they have come through bankruptcy with little of the debt that Ford carries? I don’t think there is a difference other than, with the bad economic times, GM and Chrysler are still hanging on to the adversarial labor relationship that existed before the downturn and their management just doesn’t get that their workers are not the problem. But, with the return of the know nothing repubs…that is all we have to look forward to….they are going to keep their feet on the necks of the middle class as long as America stays so damn stupid and keeps electing them….
One other observation that just popped into my head…why are police and firefighters unions okay, but teachers and industrial unions are constant targets of the repubs. I’ve never heard them say one word about the police unions in any of the big cities that have them…so, again, if unions are so bad, why are police and firefighters given a pass by the repubs? Just asking….
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…
Well…I hope the latest profit numbers from Ford will blow up the repubs tired old arguments that everything that is wrong with American industry can be traced back to the supposed greed of the union represented workers that are the backbone of the auto industry. 3.1 billion dollars in profit…yep, that’s right…so far this year Ford has made 3.1 billion dollars on it’s North American car business…a completely unionized manufacturing company with fairly paid workers sharing in the success but also giving back when the company was in trouble. How did they do it? I know, the repubs will point to the pay and benefits of the unions as the reason that GM and Chrysler filed for bankruptcy…but let’s look at it closer..it was just bad management from the top down at those companies….and a failure to look farther into the future than the next quarterly statement. Plus, they just made cars and trucks that no one wanted and were of lower quality than their competitors.
Unlike their competitors, the Ford family recognized that things were changing in the industry a few years before the bottom fell out and and also recognized that a different kind of management was needed for the coming downturn. But, they also recognized that new, better products were needed as well and embarked on programs to make better cars that the public wanted. Personally, I think the right moves were made, to a large part, because the family’s name was still on the side of the building, and there was pride that all of the workers, salaried and union shared. It’s that dynamic that the repubs don’t care about…that there can be successful companies where both labor and ownership are successful; and the Ford family recognizes that without their skilled and dedicated union workers, their success would not be assured if the only labor plan was to bash the unions and take all they can with no regard for their workers. But, the repubs only know that labor is their mortal enemy, to be crushed at all costs….geez…