Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Mitt Romney’s has a definite “Nixon Problem.”







Let’s start out by stating CLEARLY; Mitt Romney by all accounts, is a good man, both publicly and privately.

However, Mitt in his zeal to become POTUS is moving away from what he ideologically is, a slightly right of center wealthy, consensus-building politician who was born to privilege and never looked back.

Mitt, as with every other American, should perceive that there is nothing wrong with his station in life, or for that matter where he began. Wealth is not a disease and being born the son of a public servant, most likely gives one a certain insight to the lives of citizens in a beneficial way.

Although, as a matter of prudence, it might be advantageous to not highlight the years at Bain Capital, as a point of pride, it must be said that Bain is a legal, enterprise and while Romney was employed there, he was doing business in the acceptable manner of the times.

Romney’s Nixon Problem” stems from the similarity of his rise, to that of the "public" Richard Nixon. That public image of President Nixon overtook the real Richard Nixon.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Choking on The ** fill in the blank here ** Industrial Complex



The Educational Industrial Complex


President Eisenhower famously warned us about the dangers of the Military industrial Complex. Prior to that, General Smedley Butler opined a similar warning, as well as numerous others.

Is there any similar eerie toll currently forewarning us all to the malignant injection of capitalism which is building  leviathan like crisis to our education system to a level from which we may not be able to recover.

While this burgeoning national apocalypse looms, far too many of us reflexively knee-jerk our selves right back into our self incarcerating political boxes where we are easily managed and led by As Yeats called them “The worst (who) are full of passionate intensity."

Capitalism should only play the most miniscule part in the education of our young people. However as it stands currently, there seems to be more concern for the money students bring in than cultivating their young minds.

This problem should galvanize the nation into a NASA like focus. Instead, we’re so myopic in our public vision and so off-base in what our goals are, we actually aid the problem.

Monday, July 11, 2011

ARCHIVES FROM THE PAST -- Let's not be too hasty protecting Westboro's angry speech


To tidy up some of the scattered orphans that I've sewn throughout the universe of blogs, I'm resettling some of the best of my pithy little missives right here.  ((The ones that I thought stunk. . .. you'll have to search and destroy on yer own)))


As I read Gary Baumgarten’s blog about protecting offensive speech (((not to mention the nooumerous news stories))) I am struck as to the overwhelming narrative on the need to protect hateful, hurtful expression, and the paucity of thought on the fact that not ALL speech is protected.

It is absolutely correct to protect the dissenting and angry expression, yet that anger and that dissent has to be tested and based on that test society can better discern whether the expressed thought should be protected or whether it presents a “clear and present danger,” thus falls outside of legal protection.There are two areas of unprotected speech that I think might come into play here, one is obscene language, the other is “fighting words.”

ARCHIVES FROM THE PAST -- President Bush. . . The Ranking, The Legacy, The Sadness


To tidy up some of the scattered orphans that I've sewn throughout the universe of blogs, I'm resettling some of the best of my pithy little missives right here.  ((The ones that I thought stunk. . .. you'll have to search and destroy on yer own)))


Let’s talk legacy.
I know the President flatly states that he doesn’t worry about such things, but be assured, he surely does.
There is one thing that he does not have to worry about though, and that is his spot on the totem pole of the 43 men who have held the office so far.
Sad to say, this President, George W. Bush, will no doubt be ranked near the very bottom of the list.
When you look at the men who, let’s face it, were just plain bad for the country,  most of them could’ve had decent administrations, if not great ones, if it weren’t for usually one or two glaring, horrible confutations with administrative progress.
At the bottom are names like Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, James Buchanan, Lyndon Johnson and most of the mid nineteenth century president’s.
Now, we have George W. Bush.

ARCHIVES FROM THE PAST -- slouching toward the puisne



T
o tidy up some of the scattered orphans that I've sewn throughout the universe of blogs, I'm resettling some of the best of my pithy little missives right here.  ((The ones that I thought stunk. . .. you'll have to search and destroy on yer own)))



 To play off of the title of an excellent book by Judge Robert Bork, which itself was taken from an excellent poem by Yeats titled The Second Coming,  the conservative movement better start working on civility lest they find themselves in the throes of a death spiral toward insignificance.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

Are conservatives, as a group starting to fracture? Yes. mainly because of massive fusillades on anything not endorsed by the right wing of the political ideal.

Let's take the big issue of the day; How many times have we witnessed a true and proud conservative get mauled for simply expressing his or her view that the Iraq War is a misguided?

William Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard, doesn't just disagree with James Bakers Iraq Study Group's findings, he has to heap obloquies at the messengers.

ARCHIVES from the past -- Johnny’s Flying Circus - Starring Sarah Palin or ((Now for Something completely strange))


To tidy up some of the scattered orphans that I've sewn throughout the universe of blogs, I'm resettling some of the best of my pithy little missives right here.  ((The ones that I thought stunk. . .. you'll have to search and destroy on yer own)))

   In one fell swoop, senator McCain has given up ownership to just about every tactic and strategy that the GOP had in their arsenal.
With Sen. McCain’s Pick of Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, he has taken away the “experience”argument that would’ve been mildly effective in this time of über uncertainty on so many issues.
   
   Also, by getting not only an inexperienced running mate, but one who’s only experience has been on the small frozen stage of being Mayor in a small town for a brief time before moving on to the barely larger stage of governing a state with a population smaller than some of our large cities, McCain has ceded the talking point to Obama.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

There is looming trouble in C-SPAN land



For the uneducated, the Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network, better known as C-SPAN is one of the last literate islands of mostly unadulterated quality, scholarly programing left for the common and casual viewer to both view and participate in on television.

Although it is geared toward the political realm of public service television, C-SPAN often lets us enter into the gilded halls of Federal power in a totally unfiltered way. C-SPAN airs gavel to gavel coverage of both the house and the senate. It offers a sophisticated look at judicial policy and arguments from the Supreme Court and gets us vicariously as close as possible to the executive branch.

One of the other superior aspects C-SPAN has endeavored to do, and up into this point I thought excellently, was to hold the panel discussions and forums on various topics that are national in scope.

This is where we seem to have run into a bit of trouble.