28 July 2011

The Right Stuff

Ah! The new season of Project Runway has begun. If you've ever watched the show, you must have been amazed at the ingenious torment the show's producer/creator, Heidi Klum, invents for the contestants, and the way she is able to get these poor souls to expend such prodigious amounts of energy and creativity. I used to think Heidi should run GITMO. She'd get those bastards to talk! But no. Now I think she should run Congress. Together, she and Tim Gunn might be able to get those other bastards to, "Make it work!"

26 July 2011

Just Do It

If you are a US Senator, a member or the US House of Representatives, or the President or Vice President, I have two words for you: NO INCUMBENTS!

You clowns, and I mean all of you clowns, are creating an artificial crisis with real consequences by playing politics and blaming the other party or anyone but yourselves, instead of getting on with the business of governing. Raise the damn debt limit, because you have to let the Treasury pay out the money you've already spent. Then get on with tax reform, entitlement reform, and government reform as a separate issue.

And cut the crap with your damned stupid "big" ideas. You always enact them in some great thoughtless, sudden spasm, after a prolonged struggle, instead of sober and thoughtful consideration. You never try a series of small things with opportunities for course corrections if they don't seem to be working as you intended. Fix what needs to be fixed with incremental changes. Broaden and flatten the tax base, little by little. Set up a sliding scale for Medicare co-payments. Do the little things that have big leverage as to their effects.

And get over yourselves. I hold each and everyone of you responsible for the failure of all. If you fail to pass a bill to raise the debt limit, and if the President fails to sign it by August 2, I will work to unseat as many of you as possible regardless of party affiliation.

At this point, you're all more concerned with fighting each other to get yourselves re-elected than you are with the common good. I don't care whether you're a Democrat or a Republican.

15 July 2011

Love and Death

At wedding receptions, children play, while teens and young adults dance 'till dawn. The parents lay down at last the burden of child-raising, and contemplate playing with their grandchildren to be. The grandparents sit quietly, enjoying the joy of others, marking those who are missing.

Dance like there's no tomorrow, young ones. For while you dance, your elders grieve, and your tomorrows will take them from you and put you in their places.

14 July 2011

Hit and Run

I confess. I'm a Tour de France junkie. I know what it's like to ride hard for 100 hilly miles, and I enjoy watching those guys work so hard, while I relax in my recliner with my remote and my iPad. But I take vast exception to the French TV car driver who whacked two riders into a barbed wire fence the other day.

So, maybe I should restrain myself from hit and run blogging. Nah. The Republicans and the Democrats deserve it. They are both attempting to manipulate public opinion against each other instead of raising the debt limit. Raising the US debt limit will not give the legislators permission to spend more money. It only lets the government borrow more money to pay for what they have already committed to spend. Failing to raise the debt limit is like going on a credit card binge, and then refusing to pay up at the end of the month.

The Democrats are trying to do anything to get the Republicans to go back on their pledges not to raise taxes, hoping to split the Republicans into two or more parties. The Republicans are doing anything they can to avoid this. The idea of actually balancing the federal budget is lost in the struggle.

I have news for the Republicans. I think most Americans will support a flatter (but not flat), fairer, simpler tax code that incidentally raises revenues. Starving the beast (of big government) is not as important at this time as making sure that most Americans pay taxes. If we become a nation in which the majority of people pay little or no tax, then they can simply vote to raise taxes on the minority who do pay. We could become a nation of pickpockets, as it were.

And for the Democrats, it's time to end the binging. You can face it now by controlling spending, or precipitate a disastrous decline in Americans' standard of living, from which there won't be any recovery in your political lifetimes. As for raising revenues by taxing lower income people more - you have already voted to take money from them one way or another, and that fact can only be hidden for so long.