A couple of themes I've been sharing with people lately.

One is how I'm so unimpressed with physically sculptured young men with nice clothing who buy their convenience store items with a welfare card.

And that I'm not surprised or disappointed so much with how our leaders act, its how we voters act that is sad to me.

For eight unceasing years I heard so many people complaining about 30 and 40 year old problems, but now they don't cry anymore! I presume that the fact a Democrat occupies the White House gives those malcontents solace enough to shut up?

Yea like that is helpful. If you can't get your own party to address your complaints, why for any reason would someone of the other party, again I presume who doesn't share you concerns, be the one to address them?

And they get angry because a Republican isn't addressing them! Get angry with the
Democrats who stoke the anger and discontent when they are out of office, while in office they do nothing.

Until the politicians receive more pressure and uproar from their own voters(which ever party that be)we aren't going to solve any problems. If a politician feels safe with his or her loyalist he or she is complacent. If the loyalist are as unhappy as the loyal opposition, then something will get done.

"What do you think of this," asked my wife while showing me an email that points out that Mr. Obama does not use American flags nor the traditional red, white, and blue that past American Presidents have staged with at press conferences.

The email in facts contends that the current resident of the White House uses tradition Muslim colors in stead, and quite on purpose.

In my now typical indifference I answered that's his prerogative.

Its really not indifference, its cynicism.

I don't like it at all. Just like I don't like much of what he is doing, or not doing for that matter.

Especially the bowing to foreign leaders.

But in order to live in sane complacency, I've been viewing my government as the biggest horror/tragedy story of all time on the big screen.

Its a real frightening tale of corruption and ineptitude abetted by a grand facade of security and faux vision.

When your expectations are low, as the quality of our leaders mandate, it shouldn't be an enraging moment when the star of the show can't deliver the imagery and on-screen strength of a mighty empire.

I've heard politics are for bad and ugly actors.

Evidently so.

Whats all a do about the Mosque site in NYC?

Isn't freedom of religion a constitutional right in this country?

Don't act like a liberal and massage the argument to fit your bias.

Some one had a sign that read Muslims build Mosques where they conquer, yea and so did every other religion too.

Frankly, I'm not particularly fond of the idea myself, but it seems to be all paper worked and processed.

The government couldn't allow this to happen if it were wrong, right?

Recently Ursula Burns(Xerox CEO) was asked about the state of education in the U.S., she replied "Very, very, very poor."

Further more:

"It's one of the most important structural problems we have in this nation. The world is full of opportunities -- everyday there's something new that you can do. . . We are structurally creating an underclass that will be hard to fix. If we don't have people who can create value, they will be servers forever. This is not an insurmountable problem. . . If you look at the list of the top nations and try to find out where we are in reading, math, and any science, it is stunning. I don't look at the list anymore because it's an embarrassment. We are the best nation in the world. We created the Internet and little iPods and copying and printing machines and MRI devices and artificial hearts. That's all science and engineering. Who's going to create those thing?"

By now all this shouldn't be so stunning to anyone, but I like the quote. It is embarrassing after all.

Recently I read a book on Presidential facts by Dr Knowledge (Knowledge in a Nutshell) where he informs that Theodore Roosevelt had a simple mantra, to lead a strenuous life.

Coincidently, old T. R. was called a Progressive back then, 100 years ago. Today Liberals increasingly wish to be called Progressive.

While one could draw a few comparison I'm sure, I'd rather draw the distinction that so called Progressives today don't champion anything remotely strenuous.

Despite, and perhaps in spite of, the many wealthy who are drawn to the Democrat party and the liberal idealogy, in practice the left today are more intent on conspiring to increase the nanny state than they are inspiring self-esteem, self-motivation, and hard work.

Improving our schools and our collective intelligence? We could use that kind of progress.

I was reading a Fortune magazine blurb reporting on the apparent increase in happiness across America.

I talk politics, so I'm, by nature, cynical about any metric based on people's opinions.

Is it coincidental that more American's are happier now and that there is a new President?

Here's what my mind's eye is seeing: I'm seeing a lot of Democrats answering that question in the affirmative, "Yes, I'm happier."

I envision a lot of Republicans say the opposite, "No, I'm not happier."

This is a topic that could use a lot more developing, but considering nothing has substantially changed in the last 2-3 years, and you gotta wonder why people are happier now.

In fact, all of our long term problems have only gotten worse. More deaths in wars, more deficit, more debt, more unemployed and 'dropping out' of the work force.

Even health care reform won't kick in right away for most of us.

Why are people happier?

My theory is because the squawking and cackling of the news media and Liberal leadership has unceremoniously stopped, many Americans are freed from a negative tyranny that prohibited them from being happy.

But a lot of Conservatives and Republicans where quite unhappy with Bush back then too. We all had a lot be unhappy about, the metric reflected that.

Today, Democrats are allowed to be happy.

A lot of people are just happy anyways, so there is a steady base.

And many Conservatives won't be unhappy just because some people on the Right want to play the same game the Liberals did for the 8 years of Bush -- keep a steady stream of negativity rolling.

I'm part of that last group.

The metric reflects our happiness right now.

I would hope that the Democrats and Liberals who don't pout and whine so much anymore, will realize how good they have always had it, even when their President didn't have a 'd' next to his or her name.

As for the Conservatives who are unhappy now.

The Christian among you should remember your faith and the agnostic remember this too shall pass.

Don't give the politicians so much power, influence, or credit over your life, to allow them to coerce you to be unhappy.

That, and vote.

After this weekend's back and forth between Rush Limbaugh and Bill Clinton, I must ask the rhetorical, "Why give Bill Clinton the opening?"

Recently I've been affronting people with my belief that most Republicans and Conservatives have been acting just like the Democrats and Liberals had acted during the 8 years of the Bush Administration.

Mean, angry, hateful, anti-government, and even more.

Its not pretty, and now its being exploited by the Master of the Game.

Instead of taking the high road, we've taken the base road.

I'm not against airing all the dirty laundry that escapes network and liberal media scrutiny, but I'm against all the deviant personal attacks and hysterical hyperbole about the end of society as we know it.

Newsflash: Society as we know it changes everyday as norm, and as fact, the finances of this country are in such poor state due to both parties' negligence.

I don't wish to ascribe that much power to Obama, he hasn't ruined us, but I don't think he is helping much either.

Back to Clinton v. Limbaugh.

If Mr. Limbaugh is going to play his cards just like he did during Mr. Clinton's 8 years, well, I think it would be reasonable to expect the latter learning something about how to neutralize or even turn the tables on the radio Maestro.

And by taking the stand he did, I think Clinton scored one for his team. It was reasonable and somewhat indirect. Direct enough to prove a point, but reasonably general in his target, so that he doesn't look partisan.

Collectively, we Conservatives do a poor job of imitating Liberals. We ought to stick to the intelligent conversations, not the ugly paranoia and implied anti-Americanism.

The facts we can win with, acting like them just plays into their hands.

I read this report just now about President Clinton, as a stand in for President Obama, at the Gridiron Club's annual dinner.

Quite the comedian.

My thoughts turned to the 1990's and how much the conservatives and Republicans would vilify Clinton. I bought into some of that vitriol, but I've come to learn that what I really got was a facade.

Anyone willing to pay attention now a days to Mr. Clinton's goings on would have to admit that the man is interesting, accomplished, and self-deprecating.

Self-deprecating, I like that.

He showed a lot of respect to the elder Bush and was, considering the hyperbole then, quite mum during the term of the younger Bush.

It's all just a reminder that we sometimes take politics too seriously and misconstrue the other side. We sometimes forget that their opinions may differ from us, but in fact, usually, they have only the best intentions in mind.

Even Barrack Obama!

While the Limbaugh's, Hannity's, and Moore's of the airwaves excite us to anger at each other for siding with the Clinton's, Bush's, and Obama's, they all enjoy a nice dinner together, and a handsome stipend, at our expense.

Have you read that at least two states' Attorney Generals are planning to sue over the health care bill?

This is a splendid development.

If the one good thing that comes out of this package deal is a renewed fight for states rights, then I may be for it.

What can you do to help the cause? If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

When I was younger, and never too shy for a good political argument, I would often end a dialog by acknowledging that although I don't agree, at least we both vote. It seemed a rather tidy and polite way of ending a laborious and circuitous banter.

Not anymore.

If I don't agree with someone, I'm even more polite than I have ever been!

But now I'll quickly go to alternative dialog "B". That's the one where I get real bitter about the whole process and government. In fact I'm so turned off by the whole establishment, that I want you to be too.

While I still vote, and as early and as often as possible, I make a half decent effort to disenfranchise the opposition.

This is great advice for the nascent Tea Party movement. You can accomplish better results if you identify an intractable nature in conversation, and discourage him or her from voting at all.

But you got to find out early on if you can reach these people with your limited government ideology.

Just trying to help. . . .

That Massa is quite zany, and he's the latest example of the problems with commenting on what you read.

The truth is never easy to ascertain. I'm just looking for a good laugh anymore.

Where are all the crazed lay Democrats who were led to hysteria over how Bush strong armed his political opposition?

Did you see this strong armed tactic by the President's right hand man?

I can't be entertained by the politicians anymore, I expect nothing but the worst from them.

The lay people, now they are bad too, but I can laugh aloud at them.

The light bulb is dim I realized. Literally, figuratively, and metaphorically.

Early last summer I went to the local hardware store and came across those new compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL). The marketing was such that it moved me to purchase a sizable quantity and replace some of the incandescent bulbs that were in high use in my house.

It wasn't that hard of a sell, I've always considered myself an early adopter, that guy that buys in early on new consumer tech products. I was being increasingly exposed to the inefficiencies of the old light bulb -- mostly heat, little light for all the energy one consumes -- in print and t.v., and like the perfect mark, I bought into it all. The savings were going to be great!

That is until Day Light Savings Time came to an end and I realized I couldn't see as well with these fancy things. And did you know that if one should break, you need to call the local Haz-Mat Team?

Is it only coincidence that advertising for these new bulbs seems to disappear during winter when the deficiencies of the light is inescapable?

Metaphorically speaking, I hope the filters in your life are allowing the dimming of the whole Al Gore/Environmental/Global Warming bulb to be seen in your home.

I'll talk to you later, I just bought a pack of the old Edison bulbs to replace the replacements. I just may break one on purpose, to see that explosion, while I still can.

"Why We Fight" is a title of an episode of HBO's Band of Brothers. Its a particular moving episode, on the discovery of a concentration camp in Germany, by the Americans, in the waning days of WWII.

My mind wondered to that series when I was asked recently if I've been on an Olympic hiatus from battling the dastardly villains of the liberal left.

The easy answer would be yes. I've been lax because I've been maxed out on Winter Olympics. I can't get enough of the Hockey and Curling Tournaments!

The harder answer is that, in this era of full-bore disgruntled, enraged, and engaged partisans, I'm not entirely.

Even more so, I have trouble finding inspiration from the genre to write about.

True inspiration, not the self-serving, media driven, cult of personality that is passing for inspiration now a days.

In fact, I'm equal parts indifferent and outraged, but they short each other out.

This affords me a sober response to the rhetoric.

I can't trust either side to get the job done, and it needs done like yesterday, if not yesteryear.

I'm a conservative and I vote, its not apathy, its that the GOP can not incite me where they'd rather I'd be incited, all the while I'm rather excited to the point of pulling that voting lever real hard next time around.

I can't follow anything real close anymore not just because both sides get nothing done, but also because all the while they're doing nothing, its claimed the other side is the obstacle and is distorting the issue.

The reality is that when the Republicans were clearly in power, they got nothing done and in 2010 the Democrats can't get anything done. I'm going back decades with some of these issues that neither side has made positive nor substantive change to.

I'm cynical about the whole establishment.

Truth they say is out there, but I can't trust anyone really has a grasp of it to tell me, and inspire me with it.

Book Review: Rome 1960

For a good read on some Summer Olympic history, try Rome 1960: The Summer Olympics That Stirred the World by David Maraniss.

The Pulitzer Prize winner also wrote Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero and When Pride Still Mattered : A Life Of Vince Lombardi.


What you'll find is a swift moving history of the waning weeks of summer in 1960 when the games played out in Rome. Who you'll find is a cast of Americans that include the young and energetic boxer, Cassius Clay; the noble decathlete Rafer Johnson; and the elegant sprinter Wilma Rudulph.

Also in this retelling of a transitive period in global sports during the Cold War adolescent period, you'll meet members of the Soviet Union team and the last unified German team.

You'll learn about the beginnings of steroids in sports and how geopolitical battles were contested not only on the field, but in the International Olympic Committee meetings as well.

Not to be out done by the East - West rivalry, the two Chinese get catty, not for the first nor last time.

There was also Abebe Bikila, a bare-footed, gold medal marathon runner from Ethiopa.

A most fascinating bit of history to offer my readers is the nugget that after these Olympics were concluded, Americans began to worry about their overall competitiveness and physical fitness.

The new President, John Kennedy, appointed a 'special consultant' to "make it clearly understood that the promotion of sports participation and physical fitness is a basic continuing policy of the United States." p. 386.

Soon schools were testing children across the country in athletic prowess.

Which reinforces my belief that Government can't really do much right. Its been 50 years since, while obesity and sloth have only gotten worse.

Fix health care? Good luck with that one.

Its easy to target the President in politics, but I'm not intending to blame Obama for everything. In fact, I'm quite lenient on him. I rather not act like he and his party did for the eight years of the Bush presidency. I'm not going to be that guy.

Most problems we faced were around before Bush, and even before Clinton and Bush the elder. Our problems have been lurking for decades.

Instead of solving our problems the two sides agitate the other, the disciples are led down the road of good intentions, bedazzled yet angry at everyone else for the problems that are du jour right now.

Professing to trust none, yet committed to the heard, we split our vote on one of two candidates that increasingly are inches apart, not the miles they'd have us believe.

Have you read this oped from John Brennan, Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism in the USA Today?

With all due respect Mr. Brennan, but where were you while your boss and his cronies were emasculating the President, and the office of the presidency, all the while Bush was there?

Its a Bizzaro World, the GOP does exactly what the Democrats had done for years, and now again, the Obama Administration uses the same logic as the Bush Administration.

Change?

George Washington was right and these political parties are destroying the promise of America.

He said in his Farewell Address of 1796:

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty.

Reflect on how the founding principles, and in deed the founding fathers, are continuously under attack, ridiculed, and ignored by the cohorts of the Progressive ideology.

One way to counter act that regression of our shared and communal intellect, our degenerative body politic, is to reveal what placed these founders in such high regard in the first place.

George Washington, to be sure, wasn't one of the 'best and brightest', if we can borrow that misnomer from a later era. He didn't write the Declaration of Independence nor draft the Constitution. He was a natural leader of men, a General and President, and when he left public service he shared a lot of advice he learned from a tumultuous time period.

Sadly, we haven't paid heed to much of that advice in recent decades.

The Tea Party movement looks in some way to re-arouse the spirit of Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton.

The biggest obstacle they'll face is the entrenched party apparatus', but I fear they are our last best hope of salvaging our future.

Any honest projection of the course of our nation going forward will acknowledge the dismal state of our finances: the debt, the deficit, and the obligations.

Neither party can claim superiority over the other in managing our books.

The Democrats have been in charge of the pocket book since 2007, when they took back the House of Representatives. They have failed miserably to not only make an effort to restore balance in the federal budget, but they have also failed to steer the nation toward prosperity.

It seems their leaders are doing their best to emulate Ayn Rand's government of Atlas Shrugged. Surreal is what it is, and frightening.


For their part, the Republicans lost their fiscal discipline at some point in the early '00s and it was not until they lost power that they were born again. Or so they would have us believe.

Consider that I'm only addressing our finances, and not our foreign policy, trade, education, health, or immigration problems!

Is this nation ready to support a third party? I'm a skeptic. In the 1990's I committed myself to voting third party whenever possible, and I'll argue night and day that it has never been a waste of my vote.

Unfortunately, millions have wasted their vote on the same old same old. The reasons are wonderfully articulate, and they have been voiced by such statesmen as Arlen Spector and the late Ted Kennedy.

One strident Democrat, filled with nothing but hate and contempt of Republicans, clued me in that he would vote third party, but there was no one to vote for. I replied, I voted third party all my life.

We live in the same district.

Washington had the courage to do great things, do we have the courage to do the little things, like vote for someone other than a Democrat or Republican?

Political uprisings are not for the faint of heart.

We've got the Tea Party Convention going on right now, and the political undulations which will play their way out from that center can beget some serious unintended consequences.

Like splitting the Republican and Conservative vote, which would allow a second term for Barack Obama, which as they see it, is one of the big problems we have right now.

And don't think that the character assassins from both parties aren't sharpening their knives as I type this. Stepping up and out, an attempt to wrest power from either political party will attract all kinds of the wrong attention, 'they' will not go down quietly.

Sarah Palin. She's already damaged goods. Katie Couric saw to that.

Who will bravely stand up next? We shall see, but be sure, whomever it is will attract the most villainous enemies, those that use their words to destroy a career.


Unintended consequences abound.

More thoughts forthcoming. . . .

Benjamin Franklin:

"The more I discovered of the former, the more I admired them; the more I know of the latter, the more I am disgusted with them. Men I find to be a sort of beings very badly constructed, as they are generally more easily provoked than reconciled, more disposed to do mischief to each other than to make reparation, much more easily deceived than undeceived, and having more pride and even pleasure in killing than in begetting one another, for without a blush they assemble in great armies at noon day to destroy, and when they haved killed as many as they can, they exaggerate the number to augment the fancied glory; but they creep in to corners, or cover themselves with the darkness of night when they mean to beget, as living ashamed of a virtuous action."

p. 307
A Great Improvisation

The latter being his contemporaries in government.

Who can you learn more from, an eight year old or an advisor to the president?

My son is a budding herpetologist, he wants to study snakes and other reptiles.

The presumpted sensei is "Charles E. Phillips — president and director of the tech conglomerate Oracle Corporation and a member of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board."

Today my son asked me to pick a snake that I wanted to learn about and he'll gather information from his books on that snake for me.

I picked the Boomslang, which I learned is the only species in the Dispholidus genus. A Colubridae, Dispholidus typus.

With a max length of about five feet it can be a few different colors, but deadly poisonous. The name means "tree snake" in Afrikaans.

What Mr. Phillips taught me is that billboards in major metropolitian areas will cost about $50,000, and having an eight year affair is even more costlier.

And while its good to know about the cost of advertising in Times Square, I think the eight years I've spent with my son is of more value than the same years Mr. Phillips spent with Ms. Wilkins.

Advantage: The herpetologist.

Plus all this I'm learning about snakes!

My son, following in my footsteps. I studied snakes in college -- Political Science.

Funny thing I heard today:

Erstwhile Republican, now Democrat, Arlen Spector asks Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.)to state what she stands for!


Read the story and the audio here.

There is more, he tells her to "act like a lady."

If only we knew where dear Arlen stands.

He's up for re-election. Its widely understood that he needs years 31 - 36 in the Senate in order to accomplish something for the people, besides the "single bullet theory."

Did I mention he was a Democrat before he was a Republican, now Democrat again?

In the business of information, truth raises to the top. It may take time, and the sitting champ will fight back, but time is on the side of the more honest contender.

I read that a long time ago, and have believed it ever since.

I had a short conversation a few weeks ago, political conversations with the duration of short require focused generalizations, when my colleague quipped that he doesn't listen to a certain news station.

"They have an agenda," he said.

I appreciated his concern for fair and balanced journalism, but as the news station he shuns is the ratings leader now a days, I dropped my opening line on him.

That is all.

Oddly, today I viewed a number of news sites, wanting to see the coverage on the Brown win in Massachusetts.

The ratings leader had a story on the victory, even an image on the front page of the smiling victor.

The news site preferred by my friend on guard against agendas had a story of the loser's faulty campaign and a story on the first year of the Obama Administration. Nothing on the Brown triumph! No kidding.

You know what, my friend never seen that clip of Brown rebuking the debate moderator about the seat not being the Kennedy's nor the Democrat Party.

Should I let him know who won last night? I hate to come off as a Republican mouth piece. . . .

Could we be seeing the beginnings of a movement to "traditionalize" certain seats of Congress?

What I'm talking about is that I've read and heard, over the last few times a Democrat seat went open, is a notion that it was someones seat, so only someone with those sames views is appropriate for it.

Like only a liberal and a health care proponent is worthy of the seat in Massachusetts.

It's not said outright, implied little more, but the language by the pundits and the candidates assume the sale.

It gives me pause, I think, could the long view be that of a large number of seats in Congress entitled on a tradition?

New Year, New Focus

Just read Beck's "Common Sense". In general I like this book better than Levin's "Lyberty and Tyranny". The argument differ slightly, but the conclusions are the same. That we are on the wrong path as a nation is fairly self-evident, the degree to which the cancer is pervasive is unsettled and unsettling in any event.

A must read, a call to action.

I especially love the notion that to dismiss third party voting as a waste implies that we can't do any better than what we got. Heaven forbid.