Archive for the ‘Simple Truths’ Category
February 17, 2012
How 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.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths |
Tags: bias, Careers, politics, Relationships, the media, Washington
Leave a Comment »
February 1, 2012
Now that Romney has won Florida, it appears to be what some French would call a fait accompli. A win is a win, as they say, but with the figures we now have rolling in, we may not want to don the FA cap on Romney just yet. I’m not saying that Gingrich or Santorum have a shot at this point, but I’m talking about the celebration that would surely ensue if any other such victory by any other candidate. There is still plenty to fear with Romney.
It took Romney a ton of money to put what many consider a group of lackluster candidates away in Florida. Estimates have that figure to be roughly sixty-five to one in favor of the former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney. A win is a win, and Romney did whatever it took in this case to win, but every time the Yankees have won the World Series in the past decade, the sub story has always involved how much money they spent versus their opponent and the rest of the league. The underlying story was, what happens when the Yankees run across a team that is able to spend as much as they are? When the Red Sox reached that point, they beat the Yankees as often as they lost to them. The Yankees lost their mystique. When the Yankees won the Series, however, there was never a next day, a next opponent. If Romney is the Yankees in this scenario, he just won two games, on the road, against the Royals in the Championship Series. (No offense intended to the Gingrich, Santorum and Royals fans, I’m talking money here not quality.) In this money scenario, there are no comparative Red Sox analogies, and there really are no NL analogies, for no team has spent as much as the Yankees or The Sox in the past couple decades, but let’s just say for the purpose of this scenario that the Dodgers were on a scale comparable with the Yankees economically. Let’s just say that Obama is the Dodgers. Romney has just beat the Royals twice on the road. The sub story is Romney has done nothing to connect with voters more than Gingrich or Santorum, and he has done little to nothing to combat his opponents if they were on equal footing.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues, The Thoughts of Neighbors |
Tags: barack obama, Elections 2012, Florida, Mitt Romney, money, negative ads, negative campaigns, policits, primaries
Leave a Comment »
January 27, 2012
Warren Buffet, the oracle of Omaha, and chairman of the Berkshire Hathaway mutual fund, launched his secretary into the limelight by saying that it’s unfair that she pays more in federal income taxes than he does. The first question many have had is if we’re going to reform this nation’s tax code based on how much this particular secretary pays in federal income taxes, shouldn’t we know how much she makes? Both Buffet and Ms. Bosanek have said that that’s private information. Buffet did announce that she’s paying 35.8%, and he’s paying 17.4%. Based upon those numbers, the next logical question is how are each of you declaring your taxes, as total income or dividend or capital gains? Buffet’s response to these questions, thus far, has been to call them personal attacks against Ms. Bosanek. He’s amplified his response by saying these criticisms are ‘ridiculous’.
In an interview with The World-Herald, Buffet said none of the online guesses about Bosanek’s salary are right, and the critics are missing his point. The next logical question to that statement is what is your point? Do you want to raise capital gains taxes and discourage investment in this country? Knowing Mr. Buffet’s position and stature in this country, one would think that that would be anathema to him, as he should understand how vital private investment is to the companies in this nation and the nation as a whole. Buffet has decided not to illustrate his point for us in this manner. He simply wants his complaints about tax rates out there, and he wants the statements he makes about the general unfairness of the tax code to be left as a general statement.
“I’m saying she is being treated unfairly in the tax code, as are tens of millions of others, compared to me,” Buffett said. “They shouldn’t change the rates on all the other people. They should change mine.”
Posted in Nebraska Issues, politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues, The Thoughts of Neighbors |
Tags: capital gains, income, taxation, unfairness, Warren Buffett
3 Comments »
January 26, 2012
Omaha is one of the top telemarketing markets in America. I’ve heard that this is due to the fact that we are one of the most plain spoken people in America today. Me thinks it also has something to do with the fact that the cost of living is low in Omaha, and as a result so are the wages.
Restaurants are also huge in Omaha. The marketing line on restarurants in Omaha is: “If you can make it in Omaha, you can probably make it anywhere.” Again, this may be due to the wages and the cost of living, but Omaha has also been said to have some of the most common tastes in America.
I list the traits of Omaha in this manner to lay the foundation for the fact that I know that working in Omaha is the same as working in Duluth, Albuquerque, Monroe, and Pocatello. If something is going right in America, it’s usually going right in Omaha, likewise if times are getting tough. Telemarketing and restaurant jobs are all over America, so I know that my plight in the workforce is no different than any other unqualified worker in any part of America, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to hold back. I know I’m lucky to have a job, but I’m over that. I usually get over it about two weeks in when the reality of what I have to do slides down on me.
Posted in Nebraska Issues, Simple Truths, Social Issues, The Thoughts of Neighbors |
Tags: employees, employment, job market, labor market, Omaha, sales, strategies, telemarketing, unqualified
1 Comment »
January 24, 2012
Even in the local, Omaha media outlets one never hears who is funding ads designed to make Republicans look bad. How many Nebraska ads are characterized as those run by George Soros? When it’s a Democrat that looks bad, we get sources and characterization of those funding the ad, and we get attempts to diminish the ad before we even read the article about it.
If you’ve read the stories of Kerry’s mulling, you’d think that the only people against Kerry’s proposed run are Karl Rove and the Koch brothers. From what I hear that’s not the end of the list. People from small town Nebraska and…Omaha are saying that this guy has a long road ahead of him if he hopes to win my vote. Ask Nelson how easy it is to win a Senate seat without Omaha, ask Pete Ricketts.
Everyone knows that the only reason Ben Nelson isn’t running for re-election is his vote for Obamacare. Everyone knows that Tea Party pressure dug at Nelson to such a degree, over the vote, that he couldn’t take it anymore. Why someone who publicly supports the same health care initiative that Ben Nelson wouldn’t even consider mentioning in a pizza parlor would run for the seat Nelson once occupied has many Nebraskans scratching their head. He may as well wear a Longhorn cap to a press conference just to see if he can secure the Longhorn constiuency here. (There are some here, trust me.)
Why would the DNC turn to Kerry in a last ditch effort to secure the seat with someone more prone to vote for the Health Care bill than Nelson? Is it celebrity status? Do the Democrats think that we yokels in the cornfields will get so impressed with him that we’ll fall all over ourselves to get some star-studded representation in the Senate? Do they think that Nebraskans will greet him like Elvis returning home to Memphis?
Kerry’s new tag line is: “I’ve probably paid more income and property taxes than all the Republican candidates combined.” Ok, fair enough, you have made a ton of money in this state, but how many times, while president of the liberal New School, did you espouse conservative, Nebraska views. How many times did you even mention this state in your time in the Big Apple Bob?
Posted in Nebraska Issues, politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues, The Thoughts of Neighbors |
Tags: Bob Kerry, carpet bagger, Senate
Leave a Comment »
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.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths |
Tags: Ann Coulter, electability, Elections 2012, Mitt Romney
Leave a Comment »
December 29, 2011
It was that one vote from Nelson that did him in. It was political suicide in the minds of Nebraskans. It was taking one sixth of the economy and nationalizing it. Nelson could’ve survived other votes, and he has in the past. He could’ve survived voting for the Obama stimulus in 2008, but voting to change the face of this nation was unforgiveable in the minds of most Nebraskans. Others (above) can say that Obama is popular in Nebraska, but he’s not. He won one district, Omaha’s district. In 2006, Ben Nelson lost just about every county in Nebraska, in his bid for re-election, except for Omaha. The votes were so overwhelming in Omaha that Nelson won re-election.
For all of his conservative votes, Nelson still decided to vote for one of the most partisan pieces of legislation this country has ever seen. The pressure must have been intense for him. After casting the vote, Nelson started getting booed out of Omaha pizza joints, and he started ordering protestors’ cars towed away from in front of his offices. It hasn’t been pretty for him, and I’m sure he’s just had enough of it.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues |
Tags: Ben Nelsen, Elections 2012, political chaos, Senate
Leave a Comment »
December 23, 2011
Some have called Steve Jobs the billionaire hippie, or the hippie with a business brain. As Bill Maher has said, Jobs smoked pot and did LSD. Jobs considered dropping acid one of the most important moments in his life, and he insisted that creative types who hadn’t dropped acid at one point in their lives could never be truly creative. He often walked through Apple without shoes, he didn’t bathe often, he washed his feet in urinals, and he existed for many years on what he called a fruitarian diet. He was also ambitious, a college dropout, delusional, egotistical, arrogant, tyrannical, and a self-described a whole (sic!). For all those interesting eccentricities, it is the politics and philosophies of Steve Jobs that fascinates most of us.
Some have said that the creativity exhibited in the halls of Apple computers was an example of how hippie creativity could change the world when moderated by one with a corporate exec’s mentality. Others have said that Apple computers was one of the most controlled atmospheres in corporate America. Whatever the case was, Steve Jobs brought both mentalities to Apple, and he took great pride in the fact that Apple products combined liberal art with modern technology to change our world.
Posted in politics, Reviews, Simple Truths |
Tags: agenda, Apple, business, philosophies, politics, Steve jobs
Leave a Comment »
December 19, 2011
So, Holder’s take on The Fast and Furious fiasco is basically, if we did anything it’s the racist, “most extreme segment” of the other side pursuing a punishment for it, and to all those others who are investigating the charges to see if they are severe enough to warrant punishment, Holder simply says: “Stop it!”
One does have to wonder if administration officials worry, behind closed doors, if they’re overusing the charge of racism. One does have to wonder if there are some voices in the administration cautioning top officials to use it sparingly. If that’s the case, then the top officials don’t appear to be listening.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths, Social Issues |
Tags: charges, Eric Holder, fast and furious, politics, power, punishment, racism
Leave a Comment »
November 28, 2011
In his studies of child development stages psychoanalyst Donald Woods Winnicott, found that children need a transitional object to assist them during a developmental phase that exists between psychic and external realities. A wubby is often used, he says, when a child is forced to accept the fact that he must evolve from complete dependence on the mother. In the phase that occurs before the wubby phase, the child simply wishes for a product, and the mother produces ‘the whole world’ for it without delay. In this phase, the child falsely believes that he and the mother are one organ acting to fulfill his desires and leave him satisfied. Winnicott called this phase, and the satisfaction the infant derives from what it perceives to be its creation of the product through desire, the ‘moment of illusion’. When this moment of illusion is eventually shattered, and the child is forced to acknowledge that simply wishing for a product does not create it, the result is anxiety and frustration.
Liberals are similarly frustrated by the external reality that the government cannot produce ‘their whole world’ for them without delay. In a manner similar to a child, the liberal believes that they and the government are working in concert for their satisfaction. The concept that the government could not fulfill their end of the bargain were it not for other people’s money is completely foreign to most liberals. To others that recognize these dynamics, the idea that this money is earned by tax payers and taken by government is seen as a natural, altruistic course of action conducted by the government, and anyone who bemoans this cycle is accused of being either racist or rich and detached from the common man.
Posted in politics, Simple Truths |
Tags: liberalism, progress, progressivism, wubby
1 Comment »
