From Yes We Can to No We Can't

My first clue should have been the health care bill.  Yes, it was great we were finally getting a health care bill but without a public option it was a gift to the insurance industry.  I have no idea why the Right isn't thrilled with it since it's entirely privatized. It's much like Bush's Medicare Part D only funded and phased in slowly.  It sure as hell isn't socialism. 


Hope is hard to give up on.


Yes. He's done some good things. He rescued our auto industry. He proved we can manufacture cars here and make a buck doing it. We bailed them out and they paid us back. It's a shame the banks didn't didn't treat us as well as the auto industry.  But that's the difference between blue collar thinking and hedge fund thinking. It's interesting that Republicans are still bitching about bailing out the auto industry, since it's the most successful part of the bailout.


Then there was the negotiation over extending jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed. The Republicans insisted the President give them an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy in exchange for some pitiful extension of unemployment benefits for people looking for jobs—but not the 99ers. Oh no, if you were unemployed that long you were just shit out of luck, but the rich folks got their tax break extended. That one broke my heart and made me worry for the future. 


Negotiation isn't one of his strong suits. He seems far too willing to cave to the least bit of Republican arm twisting. Why? This is our first black President. This is the President who located and killed Osama Bin Laden while roasting Donald Trump.  What the fuck? 


Turns out President Obama either isn't a very good negotiator or he's a really a moderate republican. He's far to willing to give in to the wishes of conservatives. He is certainly not a progressive. At every turn he seems to move a bit farther to the right.


Yes, there have been things on the good side of the balance sheet, but the list of on the side of disappointments is so huge that it tips the scale to the right so horribly I won't be voting with much enthusiasm this time. I'll be voting in fear of a Rick Perry Presidency more than likely. 

Dear Tom

It's almost your birthday and I always think of you this time of year. This is not to say I only think of you this time of year. I get mail for you at least once a week so I'm pretty much forced to think of you on a weekly basis and sometimes I find myself either thinking of you fondly or not so fondly as I curse you for not changing your mailing address.  Remember when we had that conversation about my place not being your real legal address? That was a long time ago. And yet... AARP still thinks you live here.  Ditto the DMV. So does Harold Clark. Wonder when he'll give up sending his bills here? I even got a certified letter recently. Can't remember what bill that was. When will they get a clue?

I kept your last long distance phone message on my phone and listen to it now and then. It was left as you left the country from some airport like LA or Dallas or Miami. I'm guessing you were headed back to Costa Rica. I know I've said and done some heinous things in my time and to make them worse, in public and/or in print. Keep in mind that over the years we lived together you, my dear, did and said some heinous things as well. Maybe you didn't say and do them in print and in such a public way, but they hurt every bit as much. But now I offer you my sincerest apology for whatever it was I said that made you stop speaking to me.  It was said in a moment of stupidity the way we all say stupid things. We all say stupid things sometimes, remember? Tell me what it was, and I'll do a public retraction.

Wherever you are, I hope you have a very happy, healthy birthday.

Maybe it's finally time to change your mailing address.

PS. I'm getting all your viagra spam as well, along with everyone else on your email list which gets forward to me too.

Downgrade

I give myself a downgrade for the prolonged silence here. I've been paralyzed by the freak show of the spectacle of the Congress in Paralyse. The horrible prolonged haggling over the debt ceiling and the President's caving to the Tea Party's hostage taking of our future has led to a downgrade by S&P.  Frankly I think it's long overdue.  Today they've downgraded Fannie & Freddie who happen to hold the Mortgage on my house. This doesn't make me feel too terribly safe, but I've never felt terribly safe so...nothing new here, move along, nothing to look at, just another old wreck...

Friday anybody watching news (like I do, obsessively) saw the Dow fall off a cliff and then, when the Market's closed, heard the news that S&P dropped our Credit Rating from AAA to AA & 1/2.  Is this a wake up call to the Tea Party that their brinkmanship is disastrous as a governing strategy? Fuck no! It's exactly what they wanted. Bring us to our knees, starve the beast! And in so doing defeat Obama! Well then, mission pretty much accomplished!

Now it's Monday, a little after noon and the Dow is plummeting again. The news is bad all over the world. Happy Tea Party?