The Need for a Public Option

We elected the Democrats to solve several problems. Until the stock market tanked the most important was health care. Without a public option we won't have medical reform. This is a call to the Democrats. Grow a pair!!!!!!!!!! and stand up for what you stand for. Nuff said

Grow a Set

So Bush (I won't call him president because he wasn't really presidential) is now speaking against President Obama. The Democrats are backing away from a public option when it comes health care because can't get republicans to buy into a public option. The Democratic appointed head of the CIA has backed away from criticism of Cheney. Obama has backed away from getting out of the wars and lastly they are giving into the republicans on several other issues.

I voted for the current set of rulers because I felt we needed to change the direction of the country. If I had known that the Democrats had no balls I may have had second thoughts. I would like to see these gutless wonders stand up for what they supposedly say they do believe in and tell the minority party that either they can go along and contribute to current legislation or shut up and just gripe. Although I consider myself liberal unless the Dems start standing up for their principles I will vote for the other side in the next election.

So Who's Going to be Coach When Coach is Dumb

So this week Craig T Nelson who played coach on television went on Glen Beck and tried to complain about the Bailouts of the Auto Company's. His dumb statement was played on many talking head shows. He said nobody ever gave him a bail out and he was on welfare and food stamps. The Dumbo doesn't even know that welfare and Food stamps is a bail out for normal people. For your stupidity on the Glen Beck show and for Glen Beck allowing you to make this statement with out challenge I crown you both idiots of the week

Treating Each Other as Countrymen

Well today's subject came to my conscience as I was listening to several people not only on television but also on the radio. It seems that in this country people really don't have a feel that we are all in one family. We treat each other like strangers and we are out to get one another. even those people that call themselves patriots and good Americans don't treat their fellow Americans as country men.

You hear it all the time. This person is going to get that person. Madeoff steals Billions from people whom he should count as brothers. The executives of Enron set up a whole plan to steal the hard earned money by falsely creating energy shortages. Mass shootings have taken place in our collages and high schools. Poor people are killing each other for almost no reason at all when they should be helping each other out of their situation.

The strange thing is that many of the most egregious act are perpetuated by those who call themselves Christians. I have no idea why we don't have sympathy for those of us other people who call ourselves Americans, but it has become a large flaw in our countries psychology. Someplace we have start acting like we're in this country together and that we all have a steak in seeing to our mutual well being. When we start doing this perhaps our country will again become the attractive flame to the world it once was.

Idiot of the week of 5/20/09

Today's idiot is the 21% of the people that still call themselves republicans. There leaders today wasted their time by meeting and deciding that they should rename the Democratic Party. I don't understand why they think that calling names is the way to grow their party. Truth is they have offered no alternatives and they think that people are so stupid that this diversion will attract anybody. Its sort of like when they offered an alternate budget without any numbers. So if you are still a republican please change your leaders and get them to take their politics seriously. We really need a second party that's a loyal opposition (just to let you know I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat)

IOW for 5/15/09

This weeks IOW is Nancy Polosi. All she really had to do was tell the truth about her knowledge of water boarding. Everybody already knows that she knew all about it. She could have simply said it was information that was classified and she couldn't discus it. Instead she decided to parse words and change stories several times. All this was going on while the president was trying to get legislation to protect people from the predatory practices of credit card companies. The country should have been paying attention to this instead of hearing her tortured explanations

5/9/09 A new Idiot

This weeks Idiot is pretty obvious. Its the newest Democrat in the Senate. Yes its Arlen Spector. First he changes parties because he says he can't be elected as a Republican. Second he then goes on all the talking heads and says he is not going to be a loyal Democrat. Then He claims that he'll retain all his seniority. Then to insure that he gets none he says he would like Norm Colemen a Republican to be seated in Minnesota over the Democrat Al Franken. ......... Congratulations you idiot.

Idiot of the week

I watch a lot of political shows. I actually enjoy listening to them. From time to time these shows broad caste a story that deserves special mention. I will strive to remember where this article came from so that you might know the source. The articles that catch my attention are ones that are so silly you'd have to be an idiot to believe them or that the person that is the main subject of the article had to be an idiot to say or do what he or she did. The first week I have three outstanding idiots

In third place is the federal and state and local governments that called the current swine flu a real threat ..... This came from all the news on television that devoted most of the week trying to panic the public about this story. By the end of the week scientist were reporting that this flu was not very virulent and that it wasn't as bad as any normal winter flu outbreak

Michele Bachmann is in second place for an article from the Huffingtonpost. Miss Bachmann linked the swine flu to the Democrat party and used the last outbreak as proof. Not only does this linking show she's an idiot, but she got the history wrong. The last outbreak of swine flu was during the Ford administration.

The winner of the week comes from "Real Time" It concerns Governor Rick Perry. After he appointed a creationist as the head of the Texas board of education showing that he doesn't believe in evolution and suggesting that the State might succeed from the union. He now wants the federal government to give a large share of the Flu vaccine to help him fight this new strain of flu that has evolved. Governor Perry ...... You get the Idiot of the week award

Grading the Republican

We always grade the president after 100 days. On television and in talking head land they have spent a lot of time grading how the president has done during the first hundred days of his presidency. Nobody has talked about grading the Republican Party during this first 100 days of being a minority party. Are they doing what a strong minority should be doing during this time.

Its important that the Republican party be more than the party of “no” They are needed to have a healthy discussion of the issues that are coming up. So how have they fared during this time. The other day when Senator Spector changed parties, Chris Mathews on hardball gave his assessment by saying that they are quickly becoming the party of the South, The Religious and the intolerant.

So here goes…….. For coming up with alternate ideas they get an “F” Mostly because they haven’t come up with any.

Helping to raise the psychology of the country. They get an “F” because they continue to fear monger and look for enemies under any rock they can find

Finding new and interesting leadership into the national conscience, they get an “F” because they continue to defer to the tired and old leadership they have had in the past. They seem to love the old and the dumb leader because that about all they have shown.

All and All the republican party gets an “F” as the minority party and it’s the main reason that they have sunk into a regional party with a narrow focus.

No Guns Please

The other day I was watching the local news on television. The first five articles were about shootings. They were shootings of young people: Shootings of old people: Multiple shootings: School shootings and other articles where guns were used aggressively. All the while I'm sitting on my family room couch wondering why we can't do anything about it.

Wayne LaPierre on the NRA's web site is warning that its just a matter of time before guns are outlawed by the Obama administration even though they have never mentioned anything about doing so. At gun stores the news tells us that the pin heads that own guns are buying ammo at a record pace because they are afraid that guns or ammo will be banned. Again Wayne LaPierre is arguing that there should be no laws limiting or banning any kind of gun or rifle. While he's making this argument our American citizens are being shot at a record pace. We are losing more young people to gun violence on out own shores that were are in Iraq or Afghanistan.

People what we're doing about this kind of crime is not working. I consider myself intelligent and as an intelligent person I know that if something doesn't work you should do something different. Why don't we put a real limit on the ownership of guns so that maybe the streets will be a little safer than they are now.

Guns anybody

On “This Week” George Will made a very typical right wing statement that showed the basic difference between the left and the right. The said there is no community of nations, and that we don’t get along. He said that harmony is not natural and that we could never get along. He said conflict is natural. Its here where the right wing stops they’re thinking. They refuse to go to the next step. It’s the next step that the leader of their religion introduced to the world. Wasn’t it Christ who was called the King of peace? So as far as I can tell one of the major differences between left and right is that the right always think some one is out to get them. The left on the other hand always feel that there is hope that we all can get along. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two extremes.

Well if that’s the case it explains Shawn Hannity, Bill O, Rush, Beck and all the other Right wing nuts that they love listening to and following without stopping to ask them selves why? It also explains why those wing nuts are out buying guns at a record pace. They believe that the Obama administration will put a stop to owning guns even though nobody in the administration has suggested such a move.

The truth is something does need to be done about the availability of guns. The US has more gun deaths than the rest of the world combined and strangely enough we also have the easiest gun ownership in the world. With the recent rash of mass murders by guns it would seem like we have to do something different. We are supposed to be a smart country and I always believe that smart people take responsibility for what they are doing wrong and then do something different to make it better.

We are the most dangerous and violent country in the world. People are shot to death for just riding on the freeways and just sitting in class in school. Our neighbors blame us for their rise in violence they say that the guns being used by the drug cartels are coming directly from the U.S. We have a need to limit the use of guns and the ready access to guns that we have now. That way we can all be a little safer.

Just a Business

The other day I took my grandchild on a school field trip. Now my grandchild attends a middle school that is located in a lower middle class neighborhood. Its a good school and the children that attend the school are nice children. They have all the normal problems any school has in this day and age. This particular field trip involved the students working on a community project. In this case they had volunteered to stuff envelops for the community orchestra. I sat down at a table near where the children were doing the stuffing and started listening to their conversation.

I found it interesting, but soon the boys turned toward sports. The conversation centered around the current basketball season. They argued over who was the better player. Bryant or James. What team would make the playoffs and what was the best team in the NBA.

Soon I began to realize that these children really were arguing over only the professional teams. There wasn't one word said about the collages or any other level of sports. I turned toward them and asked what collage team they were for in the NCAA's tournament. They really had no answer for me. Then I asked them what was their favorite collage team. They couldn't really name one. Out of frustration I told them that what they were admiring was no more than a business and that the Lakers and Kobe Bryant had no thoughts of them except how much can you spend on their merchandise and clothing. That if they could make more money by moving to another city they would and that the players care less about the people who are fans. They move from city to city to make as much money they can make. Labron James just said he wants to have the first billion dollar business of any sportsman. The truth is The Lakers, the Cavileers, the Celtics, are in sports they are nothing more than businesses.

A Letter from my Congressman

live in a Gerrymandered Congressional district. This is a Republican dominated district that has close to 90% registered republicans. In many elections the democrats don’t even bother to run a candidate. Our Representative is Garry Miller. He used to be on my residential city council and found a way to run for congress when our last republican congressman was guilty of accepting illegal campaign contributions leaving this sure republican district open to a new congressman. He’ll probably keep this job no matter what anybody in his district fells or says until 2012 when the district will reapportioned under a new system that’s suppose to end gerrymandering in California. I hope it works.

I tell you this information so that you can understand my frustrations over voicing my opinion to my congressman. It true I can voice it, but he will never take me serious because he only has to satisfy of part of the constituency. I wrote him and email asking for some cooperation when it came to the budget and the recovery act. And that he actually consider the bill before voting against them and not just vote as a republican but as a representative of our district.

I received an answer that was as frustrating as any answer I had ever read. It made me wonder as to the intelligence of this district I live in when this congressman can send me a letter so insulting of my intelligence and think its acceptable. He told me he voted against the 700-dollar plus bill because of three provisions that constituted less than 2% of the whole bill. The issues he chose to tell me about were probably among the most innocuous of all the provision in the bill. He didn’t like that one billion dollars were going to be dedicated to Wellness and disease prevention. He also wanted found that $335 million to help prevent sexually transmitted diseases and sexual education wanting even though we have a higher teen pregnancy rate than India. He also objected to $50 billion on art. He complains that these spending plans wouldn’t create one job. I don’t know but I think people have to be hired to deliver all these services. Lastly he told me that he supported his party’s stimulus package but he never told me of one provision in that bill and when I researched this bill I couldn’t find it.

We have to do something to get rid of these kinds of representatives. Gerrymandering is the most anti democratic institution in our country. Please hurry 20012.

Living in the Bubble

We all live in a bubble and the recent plunge of the stock market is proof. At over 1400 the DOW was really over evaluated. It was in the same state as the housing market and the Dot.coms of the nineties. Do you remember the savings and loan bubble that burst during Reagan’s administration? They were the first to feel the pinch of a poorly thought out tax plan. We have had a tax plan that has slowly choked the middle class for the benefit of the upper class.

We also live in a bubble of misinformation and diversion. Often our politicians give us diversions so that we don’t notice how they are fixing things up for the over-class. Recently the politicians were grinding on about earmarks. To hear them talk you would think that if we got rid of these earmarks we would solve the fiscal problem that our federal government faces. Once you add up all the earmarks in the recent budget you find that it was only 1% of the total budget. So instead of figuring out were the real waste was in the budget, we spent all that time talking about the minutia of earmarks.

Our politicians do this with other responsibilities they have. They yell about welfare fraud from people who take hundreds out of our economy, but ignore the Enron’s who take Billions, but every once in a while they get caught and we can see what they’re really doing. Today AIG gave they’re top management bonuses while they were taking billions from our pockets. It was such an egregious move that there was no cover up for their greed. So, we heard about it and everybody has shown the proper amount of anger. You hear all the talking heads telling you about how terrible AIG is. Soon you can expect some trivial incident to be talked about to divert our attention, but you will not see our tax system fixed.

To Say or not to Say that is the Question

Words, words, words, that’s what this blog is about. I’ve started this blog entry many times because I find it very hard to write about the subject I present in this entry until I realized that the subject was words. Words bring a simple question to mind. Why aren’t the words of the president enough to get the congress to work together and come up with reasonable solutions to the countries economic, health, and educational problems? Why can’t the members of our congress meet and confer and produce reasonable legislation to get our country moving toward solvency again?

 

When you hear the words that are used by both the left and the right to communicate it becomes clear that the present political coterie can never solve a problem. Each group exaggerates the position of its opposing cabal and belittles them for that position. A good example of this is what Bobby Jendal is saying about a planned high-speed train that runs from Los Angeles to Los Vegas. He has said that it’s a train from Disneyland to Los Vegas. The fact that he inserted Disneyland as a starting point gave him fodder to ridicule the Recovery Bill. Ronald Reagan was particularly good at this. He made being a Liberal a dirty word when he called Mondale the “L” word. Since that time conservatives have used the word Liberal to discount anything people who take an opposing view of any issue. I could find so many more examples of this kind of talk by conservatives, but this doesn’t expunge liberals from blame. They might have even started all this nefarious language in the sixties. It was the “peace movement” that called the conservative establishment a demonic group of people. During the Bush administration I heard certain left wing broadcasters call President Bush head of a crime family. They called Cheney Darth Vader who everybody knows is the embodiment of evil.

 

As long as the fringe on both sides of the isle are allowed to be the spokes people and our political leaders defer to these people as the prime movers of their political philosophy our problems will not be solved. All of us need to tone down the rhetoric and open our ears and show respect to those whose ideas are different than our own. Not only will we have a better chance to solve these problems but also each of us might learn something to make our personal lives better.

 

The Peoples Work

So the other day John Boehner stood before the cameras and had the nerve to decry the spending habits of the new Democratic congress. Michael Steele the new chair of the Republican Party sat in front of a TV commentator and said the stimulus bill doesn't create jobs it only creates work and then he gave a tortured explanation of the difference between work and a job. Even over the objection of the commentator he rationalized his explanation. It seems to me that these men really haven't understood the meaning of the last election. After residing over the greatest give-a-way in our countries history these people stand up and say that they are fiscal conservatives and look to keep spending under control. 

The truth is that these old Republicans are ecclesial partisans that put their party ahead of the country. Most of them have "safe seats" so the peoples business comes secondary to self-enrichment. They often look to enhance a narrow group of friends or a small group of supporters. They have no respect for the truth or even the welfare of the general population of their constituency because they know that their districts are constituted that they have a safe seat and will elected no matter what. 

As of now they constitute a small minority of congress and are becoming less and less of the Senate. The real problem is that the same minority resides on the left side of the isle of congress. Those on the left that reside in safe seats do the same as those on the right. When they are in the minority they give the same tortured explanation and definitions as the right does. The real problem with all of this is gerrymandering of the districts. I live in district That's so gerrymandered that part of it is separated to allow a safe seat. 

The most important cure that would facilitate our representatives working on the peoples business rather than partisan business would be to pass a constitutional amendment that would demand that all congressional districts be competitive. That at anytime if the representative doesn't do the peoples work they can be voted out. Then the people could really have a vote them out policy. The representative would have to take their responsibility to their district seriously.

No Brains

So "The House" voted on the stimulus bill. Not one Republican voted for it. They all followed the party line. In the Senate their version of the stimulus bill attracted three Republicans. This shows either two things. One, that these silly people are not smart enough to decide the merits of bill without being told how to think about it. Or Two, that the Republican Party and its representatives puts the party ahead of the country. Personally I believe that the people that represent the Republican party are both of these. They are dumb and worried more about their party than they are about the country. 

It's really time to stop being a Republican or a Democrat and start being an American. We don't really care about political parties anymore because we know that they are all bought and paid for by interest groups. I find that most of the people that get into the positions of representative or senator or any other high political position are very remote from the population as whole. To combat this I've developed a system of voting that over a period of time should get the politicians closer to the people. It really a simple scheme. If they are in I vote them out regardless of party affiliation. So remember vote them out.

Try and Remember the Past this Time

We have a new president. Most of us look forward to the new person it marks the beginning of a new era in our country. Maybe it will mark a kinder gentler era. We certainly need that. It’s an cinch that Obama is trying to usher in a kinder gentler era. He started out forgiving a fellow Democrat (Lieberman) for backing his opponent in the election and he invited a preacher whose views are certain opposed too much of what he believes.

 

These signals haven’t been enough to stop those who ply the party out of power. They are continuing their vitriol through their stealth emailing. But worse than that they are starting to revise history. You can hear it on the Sunday talking heads programs as they start talking about the Bush legacy as they crow about the legacy of the last eight years.

 

First they talk about “No child left behind” as a successful program. You can asked almost any teacher and find the fallacy in that statement. Not only have the schools not improved during the Bush years, they’ve become decidedly worse.

 

Two, you keep hearing how we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. To believe that you would have to discount almost very other attack since then, plus discount the over 4000 people we’ve lost in Iraq. These people conveniently ignore the attacks against those who support us such as Spain, England, and India. They don’t count the less spectacular attacks that are meant to soften us up. They don’t count the years that we have been caused to live in fear of being randomly attacked. THEY ALSO DON’T COUNT THE ATTACKS AGAINST OUR CONSTITUTION.

 

Three, I’ve heard talk about keeping taxes low and growing the job market. Truth about this has been the opposite. The job market has shrunk and jobs have paid less and less money during the Bush years. Today most people have to have at least two jobs to supply their households with the goods and services. We are receiving less pay and fewer benefits.

 

Lastly, I would like to remind you that we’ve now had two Bushes and each has left office in disrepute and very low approval ratings. Each has left office with an economy that’s in trouble. Each has left office with a list of failures that make for a long list. With the first Bush history was rewritten and his time in office remade into a successful period. We shouldn’t allow this to happen with this Bush. And people ………. Lets never allow a third Bush into the office of president.

Change?

This month in this country we are going to witness a great momentous occasion. As a country we will swear in a man of a different ethnic origins than the tradition president has been. This will be the culmination of a struggle to change people’s ideas of what constitutes an American that has taken almost fifty years. Through out human existence two things have always been a constant. One is that human thought will mature and change. Two, is that many humans and many institutions will arise to resist that change and therefore slowing the new thoughts acceptance in society as a whole. Indeed even as Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence,  it is difficult it is for people to change and people are resistant to change.

Among the leading institutions that are resistant to change are the religious institutions that permeate all societies.  These institutions are so completely resistant to change that often they maintain their dogma until this dogma causes the institution itself to wither and die. Often the older religious institutions don’t completely die off they just wane until they are unique pictures of past thought.

A second resistant institution of change is government itself. While the halls of government are many times populated brilliant forward thinking people, the engine of government is filled with narrow thinking bureaucrats whose main purpose in life is to ensure there personal place. To attain this they make sure that all change is resisted and discarded. The older the government is, the larger and more entrenched the bureaucracy becomes until that government stagnates.

I was a teacher for 35 years and I was proud to be on the first staff of the new school I opened. We were a shining light and people came from all over this country to see how we presented our curriculum. Young and competent teacher would apply to be on the faculty of this school and parents would line up early to make sure their child became students at our school.

I taught special education at this school for the first seven years. By the end of the seventh year I burned out as a special education teacher and took advantage of an opening that occurred that year. When the school was eight years old, I started teaching language and history. By that time the culture was set and I was seen as an outsider (special education teacher are mostly seen that way).  The real problem was that this established bureaucracy in the school had taken hold and innovation of any kind became discouraged. The same people remain in charge for the next twenty years. Consequently, the wonderful start the school had atrophied and slowly but at a quickening pace the student population of the school began the shrink. As principals changed, they would sometime try and change the schools culture but was largely unsuccessful even when they knew that the people in leadership positions were the ones causing this stagnation

What does this have to do with Obama being inaugurated the 20^th of this month? Well he promised us change. He will have to fight a more established bureaucracy than the one I just talked about in my old school. We people should be holding his feet to the fire about this change. We can see already that his appointments are mostly rethreaded Clinton people. This doesn’t seem much like change to me. He’s already modified some of his campaign promises. We all know that compromise is what makes government function. It doesn’t take much of a genius to see that he’s choosing function at the expense of innovation and tradition over redesign.

 

I hope that Obama is successful and that we as country are able to see our way out of this mess we’re currently embroiled. Perhaps his choices are meant to bring back competence in government. It a sure thing that after these last eight years we badly are in need of a competent government. Then I hope that he will start working on the reforms he promised us. For what its worth I’m keeping my eye peeled.