The present may well be the future

Democracy is a cool word: It means, simply, the power in government rests with the people.

That’s America of the past. America today and in the foreseeable future is different, with a plutocracy taking shape and forging the image of government.

Plutocracy is the ruling of a government by the wealthy class. It is the government of the day, the government that is making decision for you and me, the government that is ruled by the rich individuals and corporations who push massive amounts of money into the political process to control it.

We have a distinct separation of the “common” folk in this country and the privileged class; a majority of those money-holders are making sure that the division between the two classes remain a chasm, a growing chasm, with the economically middle and lower class becoming lower on the financial food chain.

The foundation of this country for laid by the mental and physical labors of highly educated (for the time) men, landholders and relatively wealthy individuals who wanted to control their own destiny. The foundation was solidified by these believers in freedom joining forces with Everyman, all believers in the limitless opportunities this country had to offer.

Over the past 250 years or so, there has been shifts in the individual political power bases of the legislative and executive branches of government, but, mostly, those elected leaders worked together to ensure that the principles on which this country took root were sacrosanct.

Now, due to the philosophical divisions inside both political parties, and the amount of rabid anti-Obamaism exploding from the ultra-conservatives in the Republican Party, the gap between common sense and senseless partisanship is as wide as any time in our history.

The Republican Party is being held captive by a bevy of fledgling members, a corps of Tea Party aginners elected in the past four years. These professional naysayers have pledged to run the country’s economy and the nation’s future aground rather than work for compromise on key issues: education, continued economic recovery, hand-up funds for the nation’s poor and disadvantaged, the future of foreign aid, immigration reform and right-to-vote issues.

No longer does the art of compromise have a prominent place in political discourse; the legislative miracles accomplished with Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Tim O’Neill are ancient history. President Bill Clinton, despite his personal problems in the White House, built a legacy of compromise with Republicans via the passage of the bipartisan welfare reform act and the bill that unregulated the financial institution (not the best piece of legislation to pass during his presidency.)

Clinton was not a political chameleon as many opponents charged, then and now; he was a civil rights liberal and a fiscal conservative…perhaps the last of that particular political species we will see in our lifetime.

In a positive political environment, Repubicans and Democrats prosper, as both sides use compromise as a way to get at least part of individual party (and individual lawmakers’) agenda items enacted. In today’s heated environment, which is a buttress of pettiness, rock-hard immovable stances on key issues and political division is commonplace. Civility is something found only in a dictionary; bile and bitterness flows down the aisles of both houses of Congress like stagnant floodwaters.

As a people, we are into using “labels” for individuals and ideas rather than look at different ways to build a coalition of different ideas that would form the basis of compromise legislation.

The overall political picture is further clouded by deep-pocket lobbying groups and special interests that back candidates based on single-issue stances rather than what is best pathway for the country.

In a word, the present political melting pot is a mess of unappetizing ingredients, heated over a coal-fire of personal dislike and further fueled by a fear of being removed from office by a demanding constituency that puts short-term interests over long-term national gains.

Is it too late to stop the slide that could end up with America as a non-player on the global scene? No, but with the present crop of legislators, and with no way to get them out of the way sans term limits, the present is looking more and more like the future.

Butts, bed sheets and horizontal gravity

 

I’ve never claimed that a certain percentage of my thoughts are what one might call “normal.” It is (pick one) A) a blessing, or B) a curse to have thoughts that sometimes fall outside the realm of those shared by a vast majority of people.

Since I have them on occasion, I go with A.

An example: Have you ever been sitting up in bed, leaned against the headboard, pillows at your back, thumbing the heck out of a good novel and all of a sudden … you realize you have slid down in the bed without realizing it? Instead of being in a sitting position, you find yourself practically supine! How did that happen?

I surmise it’s a little known and totally misunderstood element of physics – horizontal gravity. As you might surmise, there’s got to be more to it than just the fact that scientists and philosophers have overlooked this phenomenon for the past several thousand years, ever since the invention of sheets with thread count over six. Not 600, but six.

I have come to the belief that there is a direct correlation between the thread count of sheets, the square inch-ary of butt surface and the theory of horizontal gravity. Check that. It is my contention that horizontal gravity is not a theory, but an existing condition that has not been properly studied.

That’s about to change.

I am writing a federal grant to study the phenomenon and, with the bringing-home-the-bacon money available from my elected officials, I expect to get started as soon as my grant can be approved, which should be as soon as this latest, silly Middle East conflict question can be resolved. Knowing members of congress like I do, I know it's easy to stick this type of expenditure as a “tail-er” on a bigger bill about nuclear proliferation or some such.

I have already done sufficient research to warrant the grant that I value at about $49,750. (I am convinced if I keep it under $50,000, it is such a fiscal pimple as to be invisible in any General Account Office audit.)

You want proof of my initial reasoning and research? How’s this: Sheets vary widely in thread count, as well as material from which they are constructed; 300-, 600-, 800-thread count sheets are commonplace. It is easy to buy higher thread count sheets of up to 1,800 threads per square inch (900 vertical and 900 horizontal). A higher thread count than that and you have Sarah Wrap.

A portion of the study will have to do with the surface area of butts on bed sheets. I am firmly convinced that the total surface area of a butt will slide horizontally in direct proportion to thread count; the bigger the butt surface, the faster the horizontal movement.

Of course, the study will have to include the movement of bare buttocks vs. clothed; the type of covering material or lack thereof and its affect on rate of horizontal movement will have its own section in the final report.

Those of you who may scoff at my research grant proposal do not know the depth of federal grant follies. Do you know whether or not it is economically feasible to create bite-sized bales of hay for cows? It is not economically feasible according to a 1980s federal grant to the University of Michigan.

What is the composition of 17^th Century violin varnish? We know this important fact due to a federal grant.

Surely, a study to research the theory of horizontal gravity is just as important.

Obama rolling the dice on Syri

 

It doesn’t take long to get tired of dangerous games.

President Obama’s credibility and legacy is in tatters today because of his indecision and penchant for playing politics rather than executing the duties of the presidency in a forthright manner.

His on-again, off-again Syrian stances have him jitterbugging more than a dance line of Zoot Suiters at the Bellicose Ballroom in New York City back in the 1930s. His so-called “red-line” associated with the use of chemical weapons in that country is a pastel shade of pink with ragged edges; there is little definition and absolutely no strength in his statements.

Obama has the executive power to order limited military strikes into that country, whose dictator undeniably used sarin gas to kill more than 1,000 of its citizens, including more than 400 children. Assad used something akin to napalm to blast another “rebel stronghold,” resulting in horrific burns on citizens. But, in a crass political move calculated to force members of Congress to vote on military intervention, Obama is in a situation of ‘be careful of what you wish for, because …”

The American people do not WANT another military engagement; that’s a pure and simple fact.  The latest polls show that more than half of the people want the U.S. to disengage from military fronts – which Obama has done for the most part in Iraq and is doing in Afghanistan – and bring our soldiers home. The American people also WANT the country to protect innocent civilians who are the targets of demagogues and dictators.

One can only surmise that Obama is betting that the members of the Republican Party in Congress will look beyond its ideological and mean-spirited pettiness and personalized hatred of Obama, and do what it is right in this case: Vote to give their permission for strategic, surgical strikes at the military infrastructure of Syria.

The intricacies of the Syrian situation are mind-boggling; which group fighting is in the best interests (long-term interests) for the Middle East and rest of the world? The present dictator is a “known” factor; the rebel forces are led by various individuals and directed by myriad factions, including al Qaeda, Who wants to climb into bed with that bunch?

Obama is taking a calculated political gamble that if Congress votes next week to allow intervention (which, in the case, the President does not need), the vote will be ….what?

The president has painted himself into a corner and regardless of the outcome, he’s going to get dirty. The chances today are that Congress will vote against the president’s plans to attack Syria. Who wants to vote to expand the war in the Middle East, even from the air or from rockets heaved from warships?

He is also counting that the Republicans – led by the strident voices of newbies Ted Cruz and Rand Paul – will put their proverbial “necks in nooses” by denouncing intervention even on a surgical strike scale, leaving the American people aghast that America is not protecting Syrian children from the big, bad dictator and his bombs, bullets and poisonous gas.

This is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t ploy by the president. And, the way things are stacking up right now, the divided Congress is going to hand him his hat and tell him to “fill it up.”