We got another 4-6 inches of snow last night (December 15, 2007). That snow is lying on top of God only knows how much more snow that has been falling for weeks. We are in this cycle of cold and dry, than warm and wet which produces snow or freezing rain, than back to cold again.
Today all of that fluffy white snow that fell all day yesterday will be blowing back onto the sidewalks and streets from which we removed it last night and this morning. This Wisconsin in the winter. This is how it should be. We are latitude of seasons. Our summers are hot and winters are cold. it is part of the environment that produces the hardy and optimistic people we are.
I know, you hear people that live here complaining about our weather, but than people in good families complain about their relatives also. We complain about the weather because it's fodder for small talk. Secretly, we are proud of the fact that we experience these extremes. I for one do not know how much I would appreciate a great day in the summer if I had not gone through the splendor of fall, the white fury of winter and the rebirth of spring.
Wisconsin has not experienced winters of white fury as of late. The season has opened with a historical record for snowfall. Since these trends seem to get stuck in a cycle, we have no reason to believe this trend won't continue. If the jet stream moves a few miles north or south, if the arc of it's structure loops further north or south, it can change our weather in days, sometimes hours. What I'm saying is that we may lose all of this snow in a week and never see anymore until next December, but that is highly unlikely.
What makes this opening act noteworthy is that we haven't had a winter like this for years. Young people think it's unusual. More experienced residents know better. This is the kind of winter we could count on almost every year. This winter is like hearing your favorite oldy done by a new group in a movie sound track. The memories come in rush and you wonder if it was that vivid in the reality or if the event only rests in your mind in the filtered form you currently feel.
I sound like an old coot when I talk about a winter in the early sixties that had thirty plus days where the temperature never went above zero degree's . When I tell about winters where the city not only plowed but hauled snow away because there was no pace to plow it anymore. And yes, horror of horrors, we actually built tunnels and ice igloos in the drifts.
I don't know if we are going to see that kind of winter this year, but the severity of this winter should not be looked at as unusual. It's actually the kind of winter we used to have. It's the kind I remember
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
You Better be Paying Attention
Dear Non Involved Potential Voter;
I'm telling you that better become involved. You better start paying attention because the man or woman you will have the opportunity to elect president of the United States is being selected and according to the national pools, you are not paying attention.
The thing is that no one is going to tell Iowa or New Hampshire voters how to vote. It's true that their influence is beyond their political importance and numbers. However, if voters who are not involved in early primaries, work for and support the candidate of their choice, candidates will have the reason and resources of continue campaigning. Those of us who sit on the sidelines waiting patiently for our turn, will find that the person we want to lead us is already out of the race.
I'm telling you that better become involved. You better start paying attention because the man or woman you will have the opportunity to elect president of the United States is being selected and according to the national pools, you are not paying attention.
- It's to early.
- My states primary is not until next spring.
- I've got lots of things to worry about until then.
The thing is that no one is going to tell Iowa or New Hampshire voters how to vote. It's true that their influence is beyond their political importance and numbers. However, if voters who are not involved in early primaries, work for and support the candidate of their choice, candidates will have the reason and resources of continue campaigning. Those of us who sit on the sidelines waiting patiently for our turn, will find that the person we want to lead us is already out of the race.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
President Obama, Get used to it.
I'll be the first to admit he doesn't have the kind of experience that we normally look for when we select or President. But that my friends is why I think, he is the best choice. Because the kind of people we have been electing for the past few years have not been getting the job done and just as only Nixon could go to China, only Obama can change the direction of the ship of state far enough to make a significant and necessary change.
The direction of government for the last eight years, and for sure and to a great extent since 1980 with the election of Ronald Regan, has been less government. Even a bleeding heart liberal like me has to admit in retrospect that maybe government was too intrusive. Time after time we have seen State and local governments come up with solutions to problems that the federal government could not. My issue with the Reagan approach was to throw the baby out with the bath water. Seeing government wasn't effective in certain area's he reasoned that eliminating the government all together was the proper response.
We have had trickle down economics and starve the beast legislative agenda's since then, except for the eight years Bill Clinton was in office, and the average person is less well off because of it. We are not keeping up income wise. More and more of us are falling behind in savings and health care costs. We certainly have given up our individual freedoms out of fear from our latest bogeyman, fundamental Islamist terrorists. The average guy is getting the shaft and I think finally we are waking up to it. We are getting a grasp on the idea that middle class is evaporating and the lower class is getting to be a larger more inclusive group.
Families who are relatively secure are fewer in numbers and are making astronomical amounts of money in comparison to most of us. The differences in the salaries makes no sense other than to reward managers for making sure the work is done at the lowest cost by the least amount of people, regardless of the social consequence of high turnover and job insecurity.
My favorite cartoon is of the boss complaining to an associate that he can't get any loyalty out of his temporary workers. The insecurity in the job market feeds a paranoia that encourages a shut up and take what you can get attitude. This feeds the cycle of "let them eat cake" postures by management.
There seems to be nobody that speaks for the most of us as most of us were dreaming that just any day now our ship would come in and we be one of the fat cats at the country club and weren't listening to the folks that raised the alarm. "Free Market' economics is just another closed loop kind of thinking that says we are right and concern for anything other than the free flow of dollars from the street to corporate accounts is not acceptable. Like fundamentalist religion there is no room for dissent or disagreement.
But now there is a voice. Obama has struck a chord with the millions of people who are slowly but evermore vocally realizing that the deck is stacked and system isn't working for them. Forget the man behind the curtain. Bush has wrought havoc on our concept of democracy and res assured he will do his damnedest to reward his supporters by trying to extend the perks he got for them this past eight years. No doubt no matter who becomes President, much of the work of this next administration will be undoing the mess Bush has created.
None of he candidates with the notable exceptions of Obama and Edwards are even discussing the issues that should be foremost in the minds of voters. We need to level the playing field. We have to deal with the failing infrastructure, out of reach health care costs, and welfare costs, corporate welfare that is. We have to give what's left of the middle class some hope and we have to give the underclass, which at this point maybe bigger than the middle class, more than hope.
Obama has what I refer to as the Tiger effect. No, I don't mean that he is multiracial. When Tiger Woods became a professional golfer, he brought people into the sport that never felt they belonged. Professional golf was a sport for rich old white guys. What Obama is doing is bringing people into politics that think that it's time that rich old white guys move aside. The telling point will be if this constituency organize, work and vote for him
The direction of government for the last eight years, and for sure and to a great extent since 1980 with the election of Ronald Regan, has been less government. Even a bleeding heart liberal like me has to admit in retrospect that maybe government was too intrusive. Time after time we have seen State and local governments come up with solutions to problems that the federal government could not. My issue with the Reagan approach was to throw the baby out with the bath water. Seeing government wasn't effective in certain area's he reasoned that eliminating the government all together was the proper response.
We have had trickle down economics and starve the beast legislative agenda's since then, except for the eight years Bill Clinton was in office, and the average person is less well off because of it. We are not keeping up income wise. More and more of us are falling behind in savings and health care costs. We certainly have given up our individual freedoms out of fear from our latest bogeyman, fundamental Islamist terrorists. The average guy is getting the shaft and I think finally we are waking up to it. We are getting a grasp on the idea that middle class is evaporating and the lower class is getting to be a larger more inclusive group.
Families who are relatively secure are fewer in numbers and are making astronomical amounts of money in comparison to most of us. The differences in the salaries makes no sense other than to reward managers for making sure the work is done at the lowest cost by the least amount of people, regardless of the social consequence of high turnover and job insecurity.
My favorite cartoon is of the boss complaining to an associate that he can't get any loyalty out of his temporary workers. The insecurity in the job market feeds a paranoia that encourages a shut up and take what you can get attitude. This feeds the cycle of "let them eat cake" postures by management.
There seems to be nobody that speaks for the most of us as most of us were dreaming that just any day now our ship would come in and we be one of the fat cats at the country club and weren't listening to the folks that raised the alarm. "Free Market' economics is just another closed loop kind of thinking that says we are right and concern for anything other than the free flow of dollars from the street to corporate accounts is not acceptable. Like fundamentalist religion there is no room for dissent or disagreement.
Note however in these politically correct times, the mantra of most organizations is that their most important asset is their employee's. And this is true, but not so true that the working people in an organization should profit from prosperity. That should go to the managers and stockholders, who under examination one sees have usually done the least.
But now there is a voice. Obama has struck a chord with the millions of people who are slowly but evermore vocally realizing that the deck is stacked and system isn't working for them. Forget the man behind the curtain. Bush has wrought havoc on our concept of democracy and res assured he will do his damnedest to reward his supporters by trying to extend the perks he got for them this past eight years. No doubt no matter who becomes President, much of the work of this next administration will be undoing the mess Bush has created.
None of he candidates with the notable exceptions of Obama and Edwards are even discussing the issues that should be foremost in the minds of voters. We need to level the playing field. We have to deal with the failing infrastructure, out of reach health care costs, and welfare costs, corporate welfare that is. We have to give what's left of the middle class some hope and we have to give the underclass, which at this point maybe bigger than the middle class, more than hope.
Obama has what I refer to as the Tiger effect. No, I don't mean that he is multiracial. When Tiger Woods became a professional golfer, he brought people into the sport that never felt they belonged. Professional golf was a sport for rich old white guys. What Obama is doing is bringing people into politics that think that it's time that rich old white guys move aside. The telling point will be if this constituency organize, work and vote for him
Choosing Our Next President
Peering across the ruins on the political battle field one does not see a pretty scene. Year of partisan politics's and loose leadership have left the field strewn with victims; some of these people deserve their fate others probably don't.
Hillary Clinton is a case in point. Clearly and ambitious women, Hilary is often described as being strident and cold. Politically, she is divisive. For various reasons, she is either loved or hated, with very few in the undecided category. She got the reputation for being a person who would do anything to get ahead, by not divorcing her meandering husband when he got caught with his pants down in the company of a White House Intern. She also tried and failed, as the first lady, to organize and legislate the first major health care reform in this country since Medicare.
In the first case, her loyalty was challenged by right wing "Christians" who taut the divorce rate in this country as one of the reasons for our moral demise. Let me note here that right wing Christians are selective in their application of morality, since many of their leaders and representatives have been caught in similar or worse circumstances. Suffice to say if Hillary Clinton had chosen to divorce the sitting President of the United States, she would have been equally vilified. The horns of that dilemma are wide and tips are sharp.
Her opponents don't like her because she is not an in-the--kitchen woman and does not bow with unqualified reverence to the ole boy establishment. The press and more importantly her constituents give her high marks as a Senator from New York State. The predictions of her inability to get along with the opposition being dashed, she now suffers from getting along to well with the enemy in a horribly partisan arena.
Representative of Bill and Hillary Clinton's two for one Presidency was the Health Care fiasco. Granted her tactics were suspect, but building support for a democratic bill of this magnitude with a ardently opposed republican controlled legislature would have been difficult if not impossible. And that may have been Hillary's first big lesson in Washington politics. You can be right, health care still needs an overhaul, but overreaching without building a consensus is folly and half a loaf is better than none. She took some great idea's and unwittingly turned them into fodder for late night comedians and right wing pundents.
Hillary Clinton could be a fine President and Leader of the Free World. She could turn around the terrible aftermath of the worst president we have ever had in a shorter time than almost any candidate we have running, except one. (I intend to clarify this in another blog soon) To redirect this country from an over reaction to world terrorism and redirect the fight from a unilateral contest to a true coalition of the free world and to face directly the horrible results of the so-called free trade global economy and mend the infrastructure here at home, she would need the support of the congress. If she got a mandate of 60% of the vote she might scare the republicans into being more the loyal opposition instead of ardent obstructionists, but that scenario is unlikely.
What is more likely is she would win by a slim margin and have to depend on what is so far a demonstrably weak democratic leadership and more embattled and cornered republican minority, that never showed the ability to lead even when they had the power, to work with and that spells disaster.
I like Hillary Clinton. She is to me a good leader. She has good ideas and she has showed she can work with others and get things done. The world will be a better place after four years of Clinton even though the poor woman is going to have to spend most of that time cleaning up after her predecessor.
The irony of seeing George Bush standing in the door of the White House giving back the keys to the Clinton's might be worth giving her a chance.
Hillary Clinton is a case in point. Clearly and ambitious women, Hilary is often described as being strident and cold. Politically, she is divisive. For various reasons, she is either loved or hated, with very few in the undecided category. She got the reputation for being a person who would do anything to get ahead, by not divorcing her meandering husband when he got caught with his pants down in the company of a White House Intern. She also tried and failed, as the first lady, to organize and legislate the first major health care reform in this country since Medicare.
In the first case, her loyalty was challenged by right wing "Christians" who taut the divorce rate in this country as one of the reasons for our moral demise. Let me note here that right wing Christians are selective in their application of morality, since many of their leaders and representatives have been caught in similar or worse circumstances. Suffice to say if Hillary Clinton had chosen to divorce the sitting President of the United States, she would have been equally vilified. The horns of that dilemma are wide and tips are sharp.
Her opponents don't like her because she is not an in-the--kitchen woman and does not bow with unqualified reverence to the ole boy establishment. The press and more importantly her constituents give her high marks as a Senator from New York State. The predictions of her inability to get along with the opposition being dashed, she now suffers from getting along to well with the enemy in a horribly partisan arena.
Representative of Bill and Hillary Clinton's two for one Presidency was the Health Care fiasco. Granted her tactics were suspect, but building support for a democratic bill of this magnitude with a ardently opposed republican controlled legislature would have been difficult if not impossible. And that may have been Hillary's first big lesson in Washington politics. You can be right, health care still needs an overhaul, but overreaching without building a consensus is folly and half a loaf is better than none. She took some great idea's and unwittingly turned them into fodder for late night comedians and right wing pundents.
Hillary Clinton could be a fine President and Leader of the Free World. She could turn around the terrible aftermath of the worst president we have ever had in a shorter time than almost any candidate we have running, except one. (I intend to clarify this in another blog soon) To redirect this country from an over reaction to world terrorism and redirect the fight from a unilateral contest to a true coalition of the free world and to face directly the horrible results of the so-called free trade global economy and mend the infrastructure here at home, she would need the support of the congress. If she got a mandate of 60% of the vote she might scare the republicans into being more the loyal opposition instead of ardent obstructionists, but that scenario is unlikely.
What is more likely is she would win by a slim margin and have to depend on what is so far a demonstrably weak democratic leadership and more embattled and cornered republican minority, that never showed the ability to lead even when they had the power, to work with and that spells disaster.
I like Hillary Clinton. She is to me a good leader. She has good ideas and she has showed she can work with others and get things done. The world will be a better place after four years of Clinton even though the poor woman is going to have to spend most of that time cleaning up after her predecessor.
The irony of seeing George Bush standing in the door of the White House giving back the keys to the Clinton's might be worth giving her a chance.
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