Posts Tagged ‘Politicians’

We got none…clear enough? We got POLITICIANS…who really only want to get re-elected, and that puzzled me for a long time. I mean, when they’re stumping around begging for money and votes, they always talk about the country and what they want to do for it, but when they finally crawl into the marble halls of power, they kind of get hypnotized. I think it takes only a couple of ritzy cocktail parties cocooned in all the priviledge they enjoy to convince them that somehow they’re SPECIAL, stratospherically above the rest of us proles.
And they LIKE it; who wouldn’t? It’s all wrapped up in the power corrupts thing. After they get to the Nirvana of democracy, they grow fingernails and imbed themselves into the nearest marble column. Got a flash for you dreamers. After they slide their asses into those soft, cushioned seats of power, they don’t give a damn about what WE want, but they give a BIG DAMN about what they want. Napoleon started it…reach and grab…reach and grab, but where does it leave the rest of us?
Frustrated, mostly. We work hard, balance our budgets, make sacrifices, and live within our means…we have to…but they DON’T. They promise EVERYTHING to EVERYBODY, and usually make those promises good when they can, even if they have to do it with borrowed money, TRILLIONS of dollars of it. A dollar is 6.12 inches long. I tried to calculate how long a train of a trillion dollars would be, but my calculator maxed out. IT’S A BIG NUMBER, probably enough to go to the moon and back a couple of times, and that’s just one trillion. We’re working on FOURTEEN TRILLION!
I keep wondering about it. Don’t those guys pay their bills? Don’t they KNOW you have to? What the hell is going on over there? I’ve decided most of those guys are fueled by fantasy, or illusion, or maybe alcohol. It sure as hell isn’t reality. Take Social Security, for example. People PAID into that system…all their lives. They sort of saw it as a contract, and now they’re being told the government may not give them what they’ve earned…and in most cases what they NEED to survive.
And what about people working now? Why should they pay through the nose for a program they’ll NEVER benefit from? I’m a writer. I live from day to day, but if I was working, I’d think twice about paying stuff to the government I knew I’d never get back. It would be like pissing in the wind. Of course, those marble-hall people only see it as reliable income they can splurge with, waste, and NEVER be held accountable for.
I heard a really great quote from Margaret Thatcher the other day. She said, “Socialism is great…until you run out of OTHER people’s money,” and that’s where we seem to be…out of other people’s money…your money, my money, your cousin’s money, your yard man’s money, your checkout lady’s money, your parent’s money, EVERYBODY’S money…except for those idiots clinging to the marble halls on the Potomac.
Lincoln bucked a lot of people, but he had a VISION…and it proved to be the right one. He went on until John Wilkes stopped him, but when I look around these days, I can’t find anyone like him who seems to be able to look beyond the immediate present and plan for the indefinite future. I find it funny how they ALL keep quoting Reagan over there. I liked Reagan, liked Clinton, too, because they TOOK CHARGE and did good things for our country.
And as I see it, that’s a big part of the problem. The people in charge these days seem to be the pollsters. Before making any move, every damned one of them seems to check it out first to see how it might impact them in the next election. I know their lives are cushy and will be secure forever, but why do they do it? To STAY there…they like that life and those cocktail parties, that exposure on TV, and they LOVE enhancing their cherished concept that they’re better than the rest of us. They’re modern-day gods while we’re DIRT.
Nowadays, that’s all they seem to think about…getting re-elected, and it looks like they’re willing to sacrifice the country to do it. I got tired of phone calls from political parties begging for money…and my vote, so I changed my registration to INDEPENDENT. After all, I’m about as independent as you can be, and now when they call, I tell them proudly. After a few stutters, they always hang up, which is exactly what I had in mind, and I gotta tell you. It makes suppertime a lot more pleasant.
That’ll work for me as long as I can AFFORD supper. The way things are going these days, it may not be long before I’ll be fondly remembering those times before the great fall, those times when I could still grill a steak or bake a chicken to give my family something nourishing to eat. When our dollars can’t buy piss, when we are hunkering down in abject poverty, when we’re all wondering where it all went, those guys will be living a live of luxury. They’re like that.
They’re POLITICIANS…lapping up whatever dregs they can in a world CRYING for people who can rise above temptation and the seduction of power, crying for STATESMEN. Give up, America because they ain’t there, and the way things are going, I don’t think they’ll ever be. Face it; we’re screwed.

My Lady's Collection of Carousel Animals. Round and round, going nowhere. I like the metaphor.

“Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts ABSOLUTELY.”
Don’t those guys in Washington know that? They should…if they read or study history, but to me, it seems like they’re intent on making the same mistakes over and over again. Go figure.
“Those who will not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”
The factor I worry about is intelligence. I mean, just how SMART are those guys over there on the east coast cocooned in all that marble? From what I’ve seen, my answer has to be NOT VERY. Yes, they know how to win elections; it’s easy. Just rev up enough people with grievances and tell them you’re going to get even for them and you’re a shoo-in…but is THAT really what it’s all about, exploiting animosities and gaining advantage?
God, I hope not…or we’re doomed…like Rome and countless other societies showing promise only to fail and fall flat on their faces. To make matters worse, there’s the money angle; we’re running out of it. At least partly, the United States was created in response to “taxation without representation,” but what do we do with taxation WITH REPRESENTATION when it’s coupled with wanton irresponsiblility?
A huge part of our spending involves supporting the military…and exactly WHAT has that done for us lately? I mean…besides involving us in endless, unwinnable wars, alienating about half the planet, and getting a lot of promising young men and women killed without any clearly definable reason. A lot of our lawmakers seem to think we’re the worlds policemen…I say, mostly because they have a military itching to show off its toys. The military is like that; it EXISTS to blow things up, and it has a low frustration threshold.
I’ve said it before. Democracy is messy. If what we’re witnessing in the Middle East is REALLY a drift toward democracy…and we’re FAR from sure about that…what the hell are we doing picking sides? If the dissenters are too weak to prevail, they’re going to lose anyway…and leave us mired in another ugly war in the process. If they’re strong enough, they’ll do it without our help, and personally, I think helping them AFTER they’ve won is money better spent than blowing it all just to show off how strong we think we are.
If we keep on going the way we are, pretty soon we’ll actually go broke…then where will we be? Our infrastructure is in worse shape than many third-world nations, and those entitlements politicians love so much will wither away. Don’t get me wrong; I think some entitlements are necessary and good and see failure to grant them as a disaster, but we have to be realistic and put our house in order if we REALLY want to continue them.
Where the hell do they think the money is going to come from? With gas heading for $5 a gallon, foreclosures on homes dotting every neighborhood, millions scraping by, and other millions unemployed, they ain’t gonna get it. We’re too busy treading water just trying to stay alive. Spendthrift ways, stupid allocation of funds, megalomaniacal dreams of BUYING off the rest of the world just isn’t going to work. It’s not only tacky, it’s dumb.
And while I’m at it, what is all that foreign aid about? We need DOMESTIC aid, Guys. I just recently learned we’re sending aid to Russia and Cuba…WHY? Because they’re ALMOST in as bad shape domestically as we are? Our lawmakers seem entirely focused on the rest of the world, ignoring what’s KILLING us here. Another thing I’ve said before…there seems to be something about marble halls that’s toxic to the human brain.
We have POLITICIANS, not statesmen…and politicians are all about winning the next election. Division is a good idea to them; it gives them an advantage. The sad fact is a true statesman is unelectable today. FDR smoked, had high blood pressure, and was confined to a wheelchair. I can only guess what his opponent would do to him today.
Washington had bad teeth, never smiled, and tended to be pompous…but he was also brilliant. Lincoln was a bumpkin, Jefferson a libertine with one of his slaves, and even humble Harry Truman had his faults. Scratch any of our past great leaders you like, and you’ll find a fallible human underneath. That’s not what it’s about. They had VISION…and the steely determination to do the right thing when it counted.
Virtually NONE of them would look good on TV today, not with the opposition’s talking heads giving them a once-over, so we’re stuck with pretty faces promising the moon then back-pedaling like mad when they get into office. The great promise of America has always been the intelligent consensus of wildly differing ideas. Driving a wedge into our diversity only provides a lopsided, unproductive, hopelessly unwise path.
You people in the toxic corridors of Washington better rethink your strategy, maybe even revisit the words of other imperfect men who did a far better job than you. Otherwise, like Rome, our country will soon become a nation of naked, ignorant, penniless, homeless fools lugging a GIGANTIC sword around.

It seems like every day somebody is walking up to a crowd and opening fire on innocents, like the attack on the congresswoman from Arizona this weekend…which included the murder of a nine year old girl. My heart bled for her family, and after prayers for her young soul and the others senselessly gunned down, I watched the Sunday news shows with great interest…mostly to see what thoughts are floating around in that event’s turbulent wake.
Of course, everybody was horrified about it…as they should be, just as they are about suicide bombers taking out equally innocent people. Nobody mentioned innocents living in a war zone and killed as “collateral damage,” which bothers me, too, but I understand why commentators turn a blind eye in these days of political correctness. They don’t want to piss off ANYBODY these days, particularly those people in power. We get precious little from them as it is.
Somebody on TV went on and on about gun control; get rid of ‘em all, but that disturbs me, too, like a lot of people I know. When everybody is disarmed, only criminals will have guns…and cops, but that ain’t going to help a lot when somebody’s breaking into your house and you’re afraid they might kill you. People want to keep their guns, not because they intend to do harm but because they aren’t completely hopeful about the level of protection they can expect…or how quickly it will be provided. We’ve all heard those panicky 911 calls on the evening news.
A lot of panels and commentators said the shooting was a result of all the hateful political rhetoric we hear. I find it interesting because some of the loudest voices had been some of the worst offenders before all this, but while I don’t think that was really a factor, I agree with them…in a way. People flock to invective spewed on their behalf and develop walls, widen gaps, create resentment and fear. It seems somewhere along the path of subdividing citizenship…Italian Americans, Chinese Americans, African Americans, Euro Americans, Native Americans…the list goes on FOREVER…we forgot we’re all collectively AMERICANS.
The tent-pissing analogy comes to mind. It’s better to piss out of the tent on somebody else than inside where you’ll have to deal with it, but when you piss on a Whatever American, YOU’RE PISSING IN THE ONLY TENT WE ACTUALLY HAVE! It’s time for ALL OF US to take a hard look and decide what kind of country we want…if we want a country at all, but I gotta tell you. It’s better to have a tent to wander in than to wander around outside wishing you had one.
Our politicians don’t do well when we leave them to their own devices…easily distracted…lemming-like…sometimes not extraordinarily bright. You’ve got to lead them, slowly, sometimes painfully. TELL THEM in no uncertain terms, what kind of country you want, how you want them to place EVERYBODY’S concerns before their own agendas or the insipid pursuit of party advantage. If a couple of people say it, they’ll ignore them in a New York minute, but if almost everyone is saying it, they’ll listen…they’re politicians.

Tone down the aggressive oratory, you guys in Washington; whether it motivated the shooter or not, it’s hurting us, having an adverse effect on our shaken country…which is kind of fragile right now. Put PEOPLE first, all people…as you should be doing anyway…as you constantly say your are…but not really…and remember; the best laws, like the best actions, are those which DO NO HARM.
Find a different ethnic brand of American, people you might ordinarily avoid, and talk to them, but don’t forget to listen. I can pretty much tell you what you’ll learn. Except for the packaging, they’ll turn out to be just like the rest of us…same desires, same hopes, same disquiet…and same fears, and at the same time, you might find friends you didn’t know you could make. The way I see it, the greatest potential strength of our country is its DIVERSITY. In a democracy, division is complete IDIOCY!
Maybe I have an edge there, growing up and living in Louisiana. We’re diverse as hell, I think more than almost any other area, and we learned a long time ago it’s a PLUS rather than a minus. If you don’t believe me, just look at gumbo. It took the combined cultures of the French, the Africans, the Cajuns, and the Spanish to create that dish, and if you don’t think it was worth it, you haven’t had good gumbo.
Of course, we have a lot more than food to show for our tolerant diversity. It was just the first thing to pop into my head, but what I’m trying to say is diversity adds color, interest, and almost unlimited potential to our lives. All you have to do is go out there and ENGAGE. When I was young, the powers that were decided they didn’t want youngsters speaking French. You could actually be punished if you spoke it at school.
Naturally, the language died out pretty quickly, and it took a lot of years before somebody noticed we had lost something valuable in the process. Now, it’s being TAUGHT in the same schools that would have punished you just a few years ago…and language brings up another point. Almost daily, I hear somebody complaining about all the Spanish they hear spoken all over the place, but I only agree with part of what they’re saying.
Yes, they should learn English…just like we should learn SPANISH. What the hell’s so terrible about learning a new language? Europeans have to know three or four just to hail a taxi…and it hasn’t killed them. There’s a French axiom which says…loosely translated…”A man who speaks two languages is worth TWO MEN.” Two for one? Sounds like a plan to me, so buck up, quit limiting your horizons and bad-mouthing the others in our tent. EMBRACE diversity; it’s our ace-in-the-hole.
I have no idea whether the rhetoric flying around in the electronic ether influenced the shooter in Arizona, but I wish it would stop either way. Personally, I think he was just a garden variety fruitcake, a screwball, and I’ve had to deal with a lot of those in my life. I’ve seen cukoos motivated to action by things as innocuous as weather reports; they don’t need anything that makes sense…they’re nuts. It’s up to the rest of us, the SANE ones, to do something about potentially homicidal, deranged people running around in our free society, but I’ll save my thoughts about mental health care in this country for another blog.

The gusher in the gulf has been stopped, but it doesn’t feel like it around here…or on the beaches of the gulf coast. People are avoiding our seafood and refusing to swim in the surf, and I understand. I’m not eating seafood either…even though I love it. Actually, I’m lucky in a way because I’m allergic to shrimp…and calamari, but I can devour crabs and oysters in complete safety.
Think about it for a second. What I can eat are BOTTOM DWELLERS…living way down there where all the oil is settling. Louisiana oysters are particularly wonderful, but they’re filter-feeders, immobile, unable to escape. They stay alive by taking in stuff floating by, including microscopic oil droplets and whatever toxic chemicals were in all those tons of dispersant they used when they bombed the gulf. It was bad enough when we had to worry about viruses, but this…this is an abomination.
Oysters live down there with crabs, luscious, fat, delicious blue-point crabs. They’re scurrying around in the muck right now, but at least in their case, it isn’t theoretical any more. Crab larvae have already been shown to be attached to microscopic oil droplets. True, they’re little bitty droplets, but we have no idea what harm they might cause, even in those tiny amounts…not to mention stuff you can’t see, potentially dangerous stuff like those chemicals.
A few years back, there was a lot of concern about toxic bacteria and viruses in the oyster population. One guy, a really prominent, media-savvy guy, decided to PROVE oysters were safe to eat, and he ate several dozen, raw on the half shell. He died about a week later. The ever-spinning media machine kept saying there were other reasons for it, but we knew. Those oysters had killed him.
Nobody ate raw oysters for a long time after that. I still don’t…well, that isn’t completely true. About a year ago, my lady and I were at a seafood restaurant, and at the table next to us diners were noisily enjoying platters of raw oysters. You gotta understand…I LOVE raw oysters…with a little hot sauce, horseradish, and a drop or two of ketchup. I ate a dozen.
They were wonderful, just like the oysters I enjoyed out in the gulf when I was a boy, sweet, salty, and delicious…eaten with bland crackers not to blunt their taste. That meal awakened long dormant memories for me, and the next week when my lady suggested we dine out again, I knew where I wanted to go…back to those raw oysters. When the waitress came, I ordered them, but she answered, “I’m sorry. We can’t serve them any more. Last week, they made a lot of people sick.”
Last week? LAST WEEK? I was THERE last week…and ate raw oysters! Great God, I had dodged a bullet I didn’t even know was looking for me! Since then, I’ve only eaten cooked oysters…and I even worry about those a little. Things are changing so fast, it’s hard to keep up, and I sure as hell don’t blame the rest of the country for not sharing our pain.  They don’t really understand.
Oysters and crabs remain fairly localized, but fish and shrimp go all over the place. They can be swimming through oil one day and in clear, unpolluted water the next. The only way to be completely sure they’re uncontaminated is to test each and every one…and there are millions of them. It’s impossible. The only way around it is to say that the oil is all gone, and that’s why there’s such a big argument between academics and politicians. Professors tell us there’s a lot of oil still in the gulf, as much as seventy-five percent, but our elected officials tell us it’s all gone…magically, like a miracle. I know, I know…miracles happen, but in this case, I don’t really think so.
It’s interesting, even kind of amusing in a macabre sort of way, to watch government people on TV assure us everything’s SAFE. Really? What crystal ball did they get that from? That guy who ate those raw oysters thought so, too, but we’ve learned to be a bit more cautious. You can’t believe everything you hear…especially from government people. I mean, what does a death or two mean to them? It’s collateral damage while they’re trying to kick-start an economy, but while I appreciate it, I wonder about their judgment.
Maybe there’s no judgment involved. Maybe it’s all SPIN, and that’s the painful crux of it all. WHO’S TELLING THE TRUTH? To me it seems like it’s nobody, and I think a lot of people are beginning to feel the same. We aren’t blaming you, guys; we just want an honest answer, but we’re beginning to understand we won’t get anything even close from carefully parsed, precisely worded statements…mostly designed to protect you in your next elections.
Truth is a funny thing…IT’S REAL. You can lie if you like, but if you buck truth, it will come back and bite you in the ass…like I said, it’s unusual. That’s something I don’t think politicians will ever learn…but the rest of us live by it. You guys in Washington and Baton Rouge may spin it, distort it, even try to dispel it, but if you only said it like it is, we’d respect you. You might lose an election now and then, but we’d RESPECT you!
Respect? What the hell am I thinking? They don’t want respect…they want POWER. We’re screwed.