02.07.09
The utter poisonousness of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome
And is there a more tragic site that Harry Ried praising Susan Collins?
I’ve done what I can over the last two days. Called the offices of both of my state’s Senators – Bayh and Lugar – to, as I put it to the staffers who answered the phone, “advise, beg, implore, cajole and demand” that they vote no on anything that has this model for a bill as its core. Got through to the offices of Specter and Murkowski and did likewise. The voice mailboxes for the Maine ladies – Snowe and Collins – were filled up.
The fight goes on. Always.
MR. Dings said,
February 8, 2009 at 12:50 pm
Hyperbole and name calling only get in the way. We all know you guys are sore losers. Just get in there and fight, just maybe it might make a difference.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/07/opinion/07herbert.html?em
Republicans in Washington have behaved like a milling crowd standing in the way of firefighters trying to respond to a devastating blaze. The best that can be said for the party is that a few senators seem to have been able part the crowd enough to let the rescuers begin to inch forward.
President Obama addressed Republican inflexibility on Thursday night when he said at a gathering in Williamsburg, Va., “Don’t come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis.” He added that without swift action on the stimulus bill, “an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe.”
The report of January’s enormous job losses came roughly a dozen hours later. It was the latest in a long and hideous pattern of employment woes, much of it resulting from the G.O.P.’s obsession with destructive supply-side economic voodoo.
“Since the start of the recession,” as Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, points out, “the U.S. economy has shed more jobs than the total population of Chicago.”
I am doing my taxes and can think of many ways to spend the money I’m giving Washington, so would prefer to have the tax break, but, short of that, if a stimulus bill becomes the law of the land I might as well get in line and try to capitalize on it. I especially need affordable health care insurance heading into my 6th decade, and if I cannot retire yet (not ready to anyhow), I think it would be nice to be able to keep at least the principle of what I have saved. Expect huge cuts in education everywhere, if that makes you happy. My daughter and son-in-law to be, sophomore and junior teachers, might lose their jobs. Oh well. Winners/losers. For now, the auto workers are getting buy-outs and maintaining relatively affordable health insurance. It’s a FUBARred mess, I tell you and there are no quick cures. You even blame the Dems for the mess, as well as the provisionally botched cure (even before it’s a bill). Boo hoo. Fight on, brave fighters all.
MR. Dings said,
February 8, 2009 at 1:06 pm
“The essence of human society is interdependence. No matter how powerful a single individual may be, it is imposible for that person to be successful all alone.” from Becoming Enlightened by HHDL (Atria Books, 200*)
Bentnotesmanhisself said,
February 8, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Well, you’d expect a hard-core Marxist-Leninist like TCM to call pro-freedom ideas tired and worn out. And he’s determined to not let the American people hear them, much less reap the benefits of their enactment.
Damn straight I’m gonna keep fighting. That’s what you do when your freedom is under assault from a regime that is uniformly bad and wrong.
MR. Dings said,
February 8, 2009 at 7:53 pm
Perhaps they will reinstitute the Federal Writers Project.
The plight of the unemployed writer, and indeed anyone who could qualify as a writer such as a lawyer, a teacher, or a librarian, during the early years of the Depression, was of concern not only to the Roosevelt Administration, but also to writers’ organizations and persons of liberal and academic persuasions. It was felt, generally, that the New Deal could come up with more appropriate work situations for this group other than blue collar jobs on construction projects.
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=428819dc-f4bf-4db3-a6e8-1b601c8fe273
Gifted FWP alumni who went on to distinguished literary careers include John Steinbeck, John Cheever, Nelson Algren, Saul Bellow, and African Americans Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright. The recent death of Studs Terkel– a FWP veteran who went on to use the skills he developed in the program to chronicle the working- and middle-classes on his long-running radio show and in his Pulitzer Prize-winning books–is a reminder of how valuable this kind of experience can be. Ellison used his FWP research in Invisible Man, and Steinbeck and John Gunther relied on the FWP state guides for Travels With Charley: In Search of America and Inside U.S.A., respectively.
Think you might think about getting in line? That is if you can’t beat ‘em? It might be my bridge back to librarianship. That is, if I can’t beat ‘em. Or put on my workshirt and roll up them sleeves building bridges and highways. Think they’ll take a 59 yo college educated white boy? Bennies to include health ins. I presume?
MR. Dings said,
February 8, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Calling BO, for all he is and is not, a hard core, mind you, hard core Marxixt-Leninist might get you punched out in some quarters if they understood what you are saying. Any evidence to support that claim? I submitted a link to a Marxist site that indicates they do not claim him eithere.
MR. Dings said,
February 8, 2009 at 8:19 pm
How would it work? Administering the new FWP as an individual grant program through community colleges and universities could minimize bureaucracy and overhead. In consultation with the Obama administration–perhaps through the National Endowment for the Humanities–and Congress, guidelines could be established and a small staff assembled in Washington to oversee the projects, in the form of grants, rather than hourly wages. Projects could be pitched locally to colleges, or suggested and posted by them, vetted preliminarily and then approved or rejected by the national staff.
Perhaps the Reservoir Dogwoods are in a good position for a grant. Note: this is only if this thing gets as bad as I think it is headed. Where more and more people are out of work, unable to pay for housing and food. I hope it does not get that bad, but I fear we have much more bad news ahead about the overall mismanagement and fraud brought to us by the American businessperson.