The moment we Nebraskans have been crossing our fingers over for so long that we nearly went blind is finally here! Bob Kerry has informed Democrats to inform MSNBC to inform people to inform people from Nebraska that he has decided to run for the Senate seat that Nebraskans allowed Ben Nelson to occupy for twelve years. For those broken hearted Democrats that have longed for this day, after being rejected so many times for better opportunies, Bob is apparently ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel and give us his representation.
Archive for the ‘politics’ Category
Who’s keeping them honest? The relationships between the media and politics
February 17, 2012How many in the media had an absolute fit when former Fox News broadcaster Tony Snow was hired as the press secretary for George W. Bush? How many of them had a fit when Karl Rove was hired by Fox as a commentator? How many of those same people had a problem with James Carville and George Stephanopoulos going into the media?
When Snow was hired as press secretary, the liberal media proclaimed that this was evidence of the fact that he was always biased. They claimed that if there wasn’t an incestuous relationship betweeen Fox News and the Bush Administration, there was at least collusion. Then when Karl Rove was hired as a commentator for Fox News, the liberal media proclaimed that this was evidence that Fox News was biased all along. When Clinton advisors Carville and Stephanopoulos were hired by the CNN and ABC respectively, if the liberal media said anything about it at all they said Tim Russert worked for Moynihan and Mario Cuomo and Diane Sawyer worked for Nixon. These incestuous relationships have been occurring a lot lately, and it only appears to be getting worse.
Charley Reese’s final column on how Washington D.C. operates
February 15, 2012There is an op-ed that is flying around the internet lately? It has gone viral as they say. Author Charley Reese, formerly of the Orlando Sentinel, calls it the Frankenstein column. He says he calls it that, because people rewrite and update it with current politicians’ names, but it could also be said that brilliant, common sense pieces such as this one never die.
The title of Reese’s column is 545 versus 300,000,000 people. It was Reese’s final column for the Orlando Sentinel, and it appears as though it unleashed the libertarian frustrations that had built up in him over the years regarding how our beloved country is being run.
It was written back on February 3, 1984, but you’ll swear it was written yesterday. Writing such as this is called beautiful by writers such as myself, because it’s brilliantly simplistic, and beautiful, brilliant, simplistic writing is timeless.
It was written during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure as president, but it is non-partisan in its condemnation. It was written after a tumultuous year (1983) of spending that led to a mountainous 1.4 trillion dollar debt. That was a leap in the debt of nearly 6.6% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from President Carter’s last days. The final amount of the debt as a percentage of the GDP that enraged Charley Reese enough to write this prescient column in 1983 was 39.9%. The debt that we currently have, as presented by the fine people at skymachines in the link below, is nearly 16 trillion, as of 12/31/2011. The final amount of the debt as a percentage of the GDP for 2011 is currently listed at 99.7, a percentage increase of 15.6% for Barack Obama thus far.
Can Mitt Romney transform America?
January 19, 2012Former Governor Mitt Romney claims he’s going to give it one, last ditch effort to try and save America. Mitt has made a claim that he’s willing to be a one-term President if it means overturning everything that’s been done the last twelve years—particularly the last four.
Personally, I’m a little tired of hearing Romney say he’s going to overturn Obamacare. It’s probably why I would not make a great politician, a musician, or an ad man. I loathe repetition. I can’t stand it, but I do know that if you want a human being to know your message, you have to repeat it over and over and over again, until it sinks home. Congressman Michele Bachman’s warning also doesn’t sit well with me when I hear Romney simply state that he will overturn this effort to transform America into a socialist country. Her warning is that this mammoth piece of legislation, we call Obamacare, cannot be overturned in the manner Romney is suggesting. She warned that by the time a Republican takes the seat, parts of Obamacare will be so entrenched that it will have to be fought line by line. Her point was that no one had the temerity, or the knowhow, to do what needed to be done to fight the leviathan. Her point was that only a legislator that knows the minutiae of legislation could successfully weed out the damage that Obamacare promises to do to this country.
The things I hate about humans
January 12, 2012I hate people who think entirely too often with their heart. I understand that the heart, the emotive component of the brain, has a lot of say in what we do and think, but some people just let that emotive component have far too much sway in what they do and say. I’m a man who believes that logic rules. Logic, to my mind, is the idea that you try as hard as you can to view matters objectively. You attempt to view matters not only from your own perspective, but from others as well. The latter is difficult to do, because it involves viewing matters from a perspective that is not a part of your conscious and subconscious mind. It involves removing the nature of who you are and viewing it from another’s perspective, then adding the ingredient of who you are back into the equation after the fact. I like to think that this is what I do, but it’s tough to do consistently, because you are the one who has to live with the ramifications of your actions regardless what the other minds around you think. A friend of mine recently inserted a third component into the equation: the gut. Gut instinct, my friend said, introduces a combination of experiences from your conscious and subconscious mind that take into account the emotions of the heart combined with the logic of the mind that has been ingrained into the nature of the person that’s relative to that person’s upbringing, his heritage, and everything else that makes him the man who he is today. Regardless which of the latter arguments is correct, they’re both superior to the man whose thought process is ruled by the heart. The man whose mind is overruled by his heart tends to think anecdotally, and while he may resolve the matter in the short-term for the object of his affection, he does little good in the overall for the long-haul.
Mitt Romney and electability
January 7, 2012“The idea that you pick the most right-wing candidate without any concern over who can win is suicidal,” Ann Coulter said in an apparent flip-flop over the presidential run of former Governor Mitt Romney.
Coulter is receiving a lot of flak for this comment. The reason is Coulter has been saying, for years, that Republicans shouldn’t fear electing conservatives to the White House. In recent years, she has railed against the Dole and McCain nominations. She is now saying that remaining stubborn on a right-wing candidate is suicidal. The comment is charged, of course, but what Coulter comment isn’t. The question is is she right? All of us have our issues, be they the second Amendment, Romneycare, or the silly flak developed over the $10,000 bet Romney issued to Perry. We all have our specified reason for being against Mitt Romney. For many Romney will be another, in a long list of presidential elections, in which the voter votes for the lesser of two evils (if he wins the GOP nomination of course). Others have said that they won’t vote. Whether it be their devotion to principle, or the vain pursuit of being perceived as the smartest person in the room, some have said they won’t vote at all because Romney doesn’t adhere to their pet issue in a manner that’s conservative enough. This is what, in my opinion, Coulter was referring to as suicidal.
