I'm annoyed, so now what?

I've literally been a political junkie for 37 years.  In 1972, I followed the presidential election.  That election became immortalized in the very famous book, All the President's Men.  2 years before that, I had memorized all the presidents. I was either a child prodigy or an insufferable nerd.  But there's something that really works againts reformers. 
When you reform you change things, and when you change things, there are winners and losers.  The losers are bound to be very angry at what they lost due to reform (& you know they won't call it reform but rather the nation going to hell on them).  The winners will be happy.  But happiness doesn't inspire action the way anger does.  How many times have you ever heard someone fighting out of happiness?

Let's suppose you were mayor of a town of 1,000 registered voters.  You were up for re election and you liked your job well enough that you wanted another term as mayor.  Suppose you had 520 people who liked the job you did and were supportive of your policies where you righteously got rid of corruption.  Then there were 130 people who didn't care if you were the mayor or Daffy Duck were the mayor (yes, there's people like that!).  Then there was 350 people who hated you, were hurt by your great work in cleaning up the town.

You would think you were in good shape and would win something like 500 to 300.  WRONG!!!
First, if you were lucky you would only get about 60% of the 550 who like you.  That's 312 votes.  But since your opponents are so angry they have 90% turn out.  Do the math!  You just lost the election 315-312 to someone who is actually greedier than Daffy Duck!

Here's another example.  The US government subsidized the production of mohair from 1954 to 1995.  By all accounts, it meant very little if US produced a little or a lot of mohair.  & yet, we spent millions and millions of dollars in the 41 years the US government gave money to mohair producers.  Why?  Because if your legislator or president saved you money by cutting out the mohair subsidy, you would be happy but you would hardly be much of a reason to re-elect him.  But the person who was hurt by no more subsidy would be so pissed off he wouldn't be content until you were soundly thumped in the election. 

Another example.  Western farmers are allowed to let their animals graze on land belonging to the federal government.  Normally, if a farmer had his animal graze on your lawn, you would get money for it (provided you were desperate enough to need the money).  But Western farmers pay a pittance to allow their animals to graze on millions of acres of land at the expense of tax payers who must pay income and other types of taxes, and at the expense of people overall who pay on a deficit b/c the government doesn't get as much revenue as it spends and we pay interest on that deficit. 
If we raised, the grazing rates, people who aren't Westerners wouldn't give it a second thought.  But the Western farmers affected would howl for the blood of those politicians raising the fee.  Very ironic that Western farmers get so much help but pride themselves on "individualism".  How proudly rugged and independent should you act if you demand a major contribution from Uncle Sam?

You can have all sorts of people agreeing with you, but that doesn't necessarily win elections.  You need your supporters to break away from the bonds of their routine and help you out.  If you reform and don't inspire that, you're screwed.
& that's why it's so hard to reform America from greedy bastards like the health insurance industry.  An industry where the facts show that their industry is not as effcient or cost effective or contain inflation as well as Medicare.   

does anyone know anything about nuance??

There are far too many people out there who are either crowing or crying that 2010 is going to be just like 1994.  A Democrat president gets elected, people "supposedly" don't agree with his policies the 1st year, Republicans make a bunch of promises and sweep in as the majority party in Congress a year after the President assumes office.  Even that small summary of events tells very little of what happened in 1994 and ignores the fact that Clinton's much-criticized tax increase of 1993 helped and contributed to the nation's longest period of prosperity ever! 

So, now we have a Republican senator in Massachusetts.  & they are predicting that there will now be no healthcare.  I wouldn't go that far.  First, there is still momentum for healthcare reform albeit not as much as before.  Secondly, reform can be passed by 51 votes in the Senate, not necessarily 60.  They can still pass things that cannot be filibustered.  I honestly don't know if healthcare will be passed, but either way, it's not certain whether it will pass or fail. 

Thirdly, last night isn't November, 2010.  We don't know how much the people reject or accept Obama's policies until Election Night of 2010.  If your in the playoffs and your team is up by 10 points after the 1st quarter, you are pretty stupid if you are "100% sure" of victory at the end of the game. 

Here's the most important part of the post.  Conservatives and even some liberals are talking about 2009 as being a "failure" for Obama.  What a load of nonsense!  Obama passed a stimulus package that has helped in ways too numerous to ennumerate here, he passed a budget that finally uses intelligence after 8 yrs. of fiscal insanity and willfully pushing the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer, he passed credit card reform.  But now all that means nothing to some people.

Obama didn't accomplish all that he set out to do in 2009.  He wouldn't consider what happened last night to be good news.  But, please people, why not use a little bit of nuance??!?  Why can't people accept that good things as well as bad things are happening in this nation today?  We can't say if Obama is a success or a failure for a long time.  Further, 1994 didn't mean that  the Contract w/ America became law.  People and the people that elected them weren't that crazy about a Republican program either. 

Also, what happened last night confirms my view that journalists who last year predicting the Republicans demise were very foolish. I might be able to partially agree with the idea that the nation is more liberal now than it was in 2000, but that is not yet clear.  There were articles that really predicted the demise of the Republican party.  The fact is that anytime there is a businessman complaining about too much government regulation or too much bureaucracy, there's going to be a future for  Republicans.

the holiday season

Going home to see my parents on Thanksgiving has been sobering. It used to be when I went home to my hometown of Ithaca, WI, I felt much younger, b/c it was the home of my youth.  Seeing old classmates, seeing the school, seeing certain old shops in Richland Center,  I am reminded of when I was young.
But not so anymore, my Dad has Alzheimers and it's sobering. It reminds me of what happened to his Mom, it forces me to recall that Mom had to deal w/ the brunt of Grandma's disease and now she is doing the same thing w/ my Dad but even moreso b/c she obviously lives w/ Dad 24/7.

Personally, I feel old, and it's not such a stretch to think that there's a good chance that I might get Alzheimer's if I become old. That's reason number 5 why I would just as soon die when I'm 79.
Still, I love going to Ithaca, and my kids don't go there enough. I want them to have a strong connection with MY side of the family. There's a built-in disadvantage b/c they are hundreds of miles away, and they can see MB's family by going a mere 3 miles.

In the last part of my 3 day stay in Ithaca for Thanksgiving, I worked at chopping wood and stacking it in their basement. I absolutely love "cording" wood, stacking it. I would venture to guess that it's one of my favorite work activities and probably my favorite physical work activity. Plus, I used it as a way of burning calories. I wish it had helped more b/c I ended up gaining over 5 pounds.

But that was ok, b/c I ended up burning the weight off when I went back to work.

The turn-of-the-year holidays came at a good time. I was working extra, extra hours at work (what's funny is that when I was finally paid for working all those extra hours, this past Tuesday, my ofc. manager said if I ever worked that much overtime again, he would have me murdered).
 
XMAS and New Yrs. were nice b/c Maribeth was with us to celebrate the holidays as I didn't go to WI to celebrate. The big criteria of a "successful" XMAS is that the kids like their gifts, and to our relief, they did. The problem is that we couldn't take XMAS pictures, b/c our cellphone is making all the pictures miniature. We can't send them in any family e-mails or to my blog! It's a real pain in the ass, and I don't know how to solve the problem!
I must take this opportunity to once again say that I really enjoy and am grateful for my inlaws. If I got along w/ MB as well as I get along w/ my inlaws, we would have never been divorced!!!
So I enjoyed celebrating XMAS w/ MB's sister, her daughter and MB's father. I received the gift of money which is my favorite gift of all!! Ted made sure that I got a gift card from Walgreens.

On New Yrs., I usually don't get to celebrate the coming of the New Yr w/ Maribeth b/c she always works the next morning on New Yrs. Day. But since she had her surgery, she has been off. We celebrated New Yrs. Eve for the 1st time since 1999-2000!!
Better yet, the kids stayed up, and they celebrated with us. We had a fun time and the 3 holidays: Thanksgiving, XMAS and New Yrs. Day were a nice, relaxing time.

a little update, need a little help

I haven't been able to be very active here, b/c work has been so "out of hand" busy that I have been taking work home w/ me.  Hopefully, with more clerks (I was the one teaching/tutoring the clerks so that has made me even more busy),  I will have less work to do and more time to be active here. 

I also wanted to blog hop and hopefully you'll be seeing me more on your blog as well. 

As you can see, I Google advertises on this blog. I would like to ask each and every reader to please, please click onto the ads shown.  Here's the deal, they pay out in $100 increments.  This blog has some good features but it's not the most popular website in the Internet. (Really! I'm not kidding!), so it has taken me over a year to get even close to $100.

So, please, I'm getting close, can you click onto the ad and  help put me over $100?  Pretty please, with sugar on it? I need that 1st payout!