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"... and then the low income guy says to the other low income guy..."

In the recent Republican debate Mitt says Newt is a career politician, Newts comeback is equally true.  He said, “The only reason you didn’t become a career politician is because you lost to Teddy Kennedy in 1994.”   I think intention is as important as an achieved result in most cases and this is one of them.  Newt succeeded where Mitt failed, still both of these pots were calling the other black!  And I believe Mitt would have been very happy to have been a career politician had he won in ’94!

Although I am largely conservative in my politics (definitely not Republican) I cannot see either of these two ‘pots’ winning against a sitting president.  If the Republican base is serious about changing the fortunes of our country why do they keep turning to the tired, duplicitous, fat cat politicos? Read the rest of this entry »

No need for crowd control

Witnessing history is not something one should do casually, although that is precisely what happens more times than not.  For instance, the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk, I wonder how few were actually in attendance on the beach that day to see that moment in time.  Another, the first successful phone call by Alexander Graham Bell, prior to cell phones and the internet it was the single most influential advancement effecting communication.  Who could argue the sweeping changes in civilization because of Thomas Edison and the light bulb.  As an aside, did you know that Edison bought the famous light bulb patent from a Canadian?  Were you also aware that Bell was Canadian too? Read the rest of this entry »

Making pitches, fielding questions

Much like baseball’s annual spring training leagues in Florida and Arizona, the early positioning for Presidential hopefuls has already started. The election isn’t until 2012 and spring training for The President’s League is in full swing.

The ‘games’ are largely held in Iowa and New Hampshire because they are the  “impact states” due to their early primary elections.  This year, it’s mostly the Republicans and a few independent politicians that attend the political spring training since no one in the Democratic party wants to signal a run at the White House this early.  That would be political suicide, to run against your own party’s sitting President.  The 2008 President’s League was far more interesting due to the wide participation by all parties.  We hope that President Obama will have some strong challenges from within his own party too, competition is good for what is at stake.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this year’s President’s League, it’s important to know who is attending, what they are saying, and who ISN’T attending and why.  Remember, our stand is to remove all incumbents from office until we have a fresh, uncompromised congress to count on.

Most discussions about American history eventually touch on the famous Boston Tea Party.  Few people truly recall that most of the Tea Partiers disguised themselves as Mohawk indians, you know, the ones with one center strip of hair while the rest of the head remained bald.  We laugh at hearing this, it seems so unnecessary, through today’s value system, to conceal ones identify like that. What they did was actually against the laws of the land, all of the hooligans would have surely been put in jail over the affair, had they been caught.  Ironically, we admire them for their convictions, despite the “cloak and dagger” tactics.

By contrast, in our times we look at such stealth actions as highly questionable at best, at worst, worthy of full investigations and prison.  Equally ironic is the apparent fact that the Tea Party movement of today is slowly being cast as a bunch of hooligans, worthy of jail for their misguided movement against taxation.

At what point did it become a bad thing to side with a movement that wants to keep money in your pocket?

Read the rest of this entry »

Standing Tall

“Put up or shut up”, “Put your money where your mouth is”, “Go big or go home”, “The piper always needs to be paid” or it’s variation “Time to pay the piper” … and now, “Vote your mouth” should be joining the crowded list of cliches on the public landscape.  With all the talk of voting out the hooligans in Congress all the rhetoric stops in the voting both.

As an advocate for change among all political groups I find it refreshing, liberating and a bit lonely to be voting my convictions this season.

If you are wondering, I did not vote for a single incumbent!

For me, the journey to standing tall, albeit alone at times, began when I was 10 years old. It was during my tenth summer that I refused to go with my brother into the near by woods to light up some ill gotten smokes.  Like many kids of my day, we’d swipe our parent’s cigarettes and steal away to a near by wooded area to act  “older than our years” by smoking them.  I was never able to tolerate inhaling the Read the rest of this entry »

The ballot box

I submit to you a list of seemingly random statements and observations.

• Single issue voters, the political scene is never short of their kind.  Politics is replete with politicians that curry their vote.
• Politicians conveniently adjust a soft political position to that of a hardliner to gain the advantage of single issue voters just waiting to be heard.
• Remember when politicians would chair public meetings to discuss the subjects on the minds of their constituents, I don’t.
• The Pro-Life crowd, all willing to sacrifice their living children for those not yet born
• The Pro-Abortion (oops, Pro-Choice) activists, defenders of the right to enthusiastically recommend the termination of life.
• The Pro-Green troops, willing to destroy anything that appears to be a symbol of earth’s destruction.
• The Pro-Industrialist (oops, Capitalists) who believe they can actually take from all the planet has to offer without some future consequence. Read the rest of this entry »

Clowns to the left...

Ever get a song in your head, then you can’t get it out?  I have days like that.  One morning I can recall waking up and out of nowhere I started singing a variation of The Birthday Song. An obscure version that most have never heard and this sorry piece of lyric writing commands my attention for the better part of the morning.  I even passed the “curse” on to a few others.

So, the other day I’m watching the news and pondering my navel when I turn to my wife start singing the lyrics from the Stealers Wheel song “Stuck in the Middle with You.”

Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you

This morning I am reminded of that song once again.  I work from home, often finding myself, legs up on the coffee table, reclined on the chesterfield (that’s for my Canadian family), laptop whirling away as I program, with the national news on the television.  The mind is an amazing thing, I can be head-down writing code and I hear something totally outrageous being reported oinly to have it jerk me out of my programming moment to listen more intently.  This day was such a day.

It’s no secret that I am “done” with insider politics, today’s news beckons a national voter response.

Read the rest of this entry »

Congressional housing?

This morning while driving my wife to the train station I tuned-in a talk radio station with Glenn Beck ranting about congressional salaries. I listened as he express a bit of outrage over the fact our congressmen each get an annual salary just over $170k. The last increase of note came as an “automatic” pay increase. The only way this increase could be stopped would be by another congressional vote to repeal it. Thus, flying under the radar, in our tough times congressional representative are doing fine. I’m guessing the last discussion of pay increase came during the Bush years and everyone loved the idea of an automatic increase to avoid much fanfare about it all when the time came.

This got me to thinking about our early years as a country. Being a representative was not for the casual person. In fact, historians generally agree the business of running the government was meant for the wealthy, educated folks of the day. The few elected representatives from modest means were often discounted due to the curious class distinctions of the day.

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Walking in a smoke screen

One of the definitions of the phrase “smoke screen” is : [noun] an action intended to conceal or confuse or obscure. In military terms it’s a way of preventing the other side from precisely seeing your movements in time to take action. I couldn’t find the exact origin of the phrase, but I discovered references to it that predate World War I.

In time of war we have to believe a smoke screen is a wonderful tool to reach an end goal. It’s used when few other options still exist and is, frankly, easily implemented. However, in regard to the creation of laws by politicians, the smoke screen tactic should be viewed as unethical. In our long political history as a nation we can find only a few examples of this practice prior to World War I. Perhaps it was the advent of modern communications that seduced law makers to use smoke screens to enact their agendas because in the light of a clear battle field their plans would be shot down.

I can cite a number of occasions that the smoke screen was used to enact laws that ended up being very unpopular once the smoke cleared. By then, the challenge to repeal a law was even more difficult.

The entire discussion of federal income tax is one such occasion. One side of the political aisle claimed it was a way to make the wealthy pay to help the poor, that the taxation would never be applied to the middle and lower class. In point of fact, federal income tax has never been fully ratified by two thirds majority of the states, yet, here we have it. The reality is that once adopted we all were required to pay taxes on our income. It took a bit of time to trickle down, but no one can deny this fact.

Read the rest of this entry »