Flipping and Flopping

Sarah Palin is touted as a bureaucracy buster who once said "thanks but no thanks" to the Alaska Senator Ted Stevens (see: Anchorage Daily News) "Bridge to Nowhere" connecting a 50-resident island to Ketchikan, AK, at a cost of nearly $400-million, including Stevens' $223-million earmark.

But, like the salmon her husband catches during fishing season, Palin is bouncing around on her governmental philosophy according to the Detroit Free Press. The newspaper reports that Palin is quoted by the Ketchikan Daily News the project was necessary to "help this community prosper" during a campaign visit to the community October 22, 2006.

Her flip flop during her first visit with the public after being selected the vice presidential candidate has even eaten at the Alaskan backing (see: Reuters).

The Stevens bridge was initiated as an earmark against the 2005 highway spending package under the Republican Senate (see: Salon) before Imbecile in Chief became a foe of such spending when the Democrats took over the house in the 2006 election.

Palin altered the plan by changing Alaska's spending priority for its share of the project (see: CNN). However, the earmarked Federal funding remains in the Alaska budget though not allocated to the bridge (see Wikipedia).

Take care,

jim

Saved by Gustav

While the Republican's debated whether the imbecile in chief, George W. Bush, should attend their convention, Gustav intervened.

When a similar hurricane named "Katrina" hit the Louisiana coast, John S. McCain, the equivalent of a cuckold from the tactics used to give Bush a victory in the North Carolina 2000 Republican primary ( see: Boston Globe ), was sitting on Air Force One enjoying his 69th birthday with the Cuckolder in Chief.

This year, the duo decided to separate for McCain's birthday celebration, allegedly to show concern for citizens of Louisiana, who meant little when Katrina hit in 2005 long after Bush was in office and before McCain gained the Republican nomination for the top office in the nation.

There had been talk during the campaign about what the Republican's could do with George -- titular head of the party who is enjoying the lowest public approval rating of any national figure, including Herbert Hoover who watched the nation sink into depression, over the last 100 years. It made bad TV if Bush raved about his "legacy" when a majority of the thinking public (the 27-or so percent who don't have the capacity to understand the damage he has done aside) know the nation is worse off today than it was in 2000 when Bush took office with a budget surplus paying down on a $4-trillion debt his daddy (George H. W.) and Ronald Reagan created to "trickle down" prosperity on ordinary American's by giving tax breaks to the top three percent of those receiving income in the country.

Part of the reason Bush isn't "persona grata" at the convention is to hide the legacy he established by undermining the US Constitution, leading the US into a war largely conceived in lie and fantasy, losing the world's recognition of the US as a leader in human rights, watching middle class jobs escape overseas to international corporations which pay no taxes to the nation, presided over the decay of the national infrastructure even as contractors bilked the government to restore Iraq's, and taking the nation another $4 trillion in deeper debt (in addition to the "emergency appropriations" he used to hide the costs of Iraq and after he threw the Clinton surplus at his corporate backers) over the past eight years.

It would be difficult for McCain to build on the Republican legacy if anyone looked at the facts surrounding Bush, but the sitting President deserved his honor in a manner that Hoover deserved the honor to speak at the 1932 Republican convention which marked the depths of the economic collapse he watched unroll as he said the government should do nothing to rescue the economy.

Another reason McCain may not have wanted Bush to attend is to avoid scrutiny of John McCain's campaign(review: Arizona Republic ), which markets him as an honest broker for the nation, when, in fact, he's the only one of five Senators accused of accepting the influence dollars from Charles Keating to call of Federal Regulators from investigating his savings and loan scam who remains in office.

George W. is under scrutiny for his manipulation of the rules starting with his alleged "service" in the Alabama Air National Guard; continuing with his title as the "compassionate conservative" (as those who suffered in Katrina); following with his assertion of McCain's "illegitimate child;" continuing with the statement that Saddam Hussein, a non-sympathetic figure, supported the attack on the World Trade Center; rolling through "signing statements" which recognize a law has been enacted, but declare the President won't recognize it; and continuing today as the economy collapses while he prates "the 'conomy is fundamentally sound" to avoid blame for the increase in costs caused by his borrowing while still in office.

McCain no doubt would have liked Bush to stand down at this year's convention.

Gustav gave him the excuse to excuse the Bush cement shoes from arriving at McCain's celebration.

Take care,

jim

The Vacuum Cleaner

I happened to be home early today, and while upstairs working on the computer, the door bell rang.

I’d already gathered the mail, so I assumed that someone from UPS or FedEx was ringing the bell to let me know that there was a package on the porch. Expecting to hear the roar of the engine while the delivery truck moved along, I was surprised to look out into my driveway, and spy what appeared to be a van that my brother or sister-in-law had driven to family events in the past.

Was there some problem in the family?

Did they need to go to the bathroom?

How did they know I was home?

I opened the door.

Dancing on my porch was a early-twenty something Chris Farley look alike hopping from right foot to left and left to right while waving a roll of Bounty towels at full left arm’s length and his open palm at full right arm’s length as though he was performing the “I’m a little teapot” ballet.

“A free gift for the house?” he shouted through his wide mouth smile.

As my thoughts ran through various stops -- “$3 towels,” “goofy dance,” “is he dangerous?” – the overwhelming desire for something free forced me to open the storm door.

“Thank-you sir. I only want a few minutes of your time to talk to you about some of our products. Let me tell to my boss.”

As he walked back toward the van, I suddenly realized what a trout which sucked in a tasty looking morsel to discover the food nabbed its lip as it tried to spit it out felt.

Like the trout shaking its head, I considered throwing the towels out on the porch and shutting the door, but couldn’t let go.

As he opened the driver’s side door of the van, a just post-high school girl climbed out of the rear seat and opened the hatch back. He lifted a large black box from the rear while she grabbed a smaller black box and some kind of shoulder pack before returning to the porch.

“Are you familiar with Kirby Vacuums?” he asked.

I was trying to run with the current while the stabbed lip was pulled back toward the man standing in the middle of the stream with the rod high above his head.

Towels in right hand, and left on the storm, I pushed the door open for him to hold while he let someone he introduced as his assistant “Tracy (or was it Stacy?) my quickest sweeper” into living room.

“We won’t take too much of your time. I know you won’t buy one, but she gets paid for doing a presentation,” he said as she held a limp hand out for me to shake. “She’s my quickest vacuumer and you’ll get the house cleaned as part of the demo.”

“If, by chance, you do want to buy one, she’s competing for a trip to Orlando, and will make you a real good deal to win it!”

Stacy / Tracy stopped just beyond the door and said, “Let me take off my shoes.”

In stocking feet, Tracy / Stacy reached for the big box and began spilling what appeared to be countless mechanical parts on the floor. I decided to put the towels on the dining room table and guarded the kitchen door with my arms folded.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said as he backed out the front door.

I could feel the net lift me from the stream as he got back into the van and backed down my driveway.

Stacy / Tracy assembled the vacuum in a couple of minutes chirping “I know you don’t want to buy one, but . . . “about once every twenty seconds. Each “I know . . . “would be followed by some platitude like “thanks for letting me get out of the rain” (it was wet, but not raining that I could tell), “this is the most beautiful house I’ve been in all day” (where have they been peddling these things?), “are you retired?” (I’d come home early), “how nice you can get off work early.”

Then, she asked, “Are you married?”

I hesitated to answer, wondering which would get me in the most trouble before opting for “yes.”

“Oh, it would have been so nice to show this to your wife too,” Tracy / Stacy chirped.

Looking through the hole in the creel, I could see the man in the stream begin the next cast.

“Is there a plug I can use?”

I pointed toward one on the wall next to the front door. “Is this your family?” she chirped as she looked at the pictures on top of the table. “What a beautiful picture! It’s so good to be out of the rain!” (no drops on the windows yet).

She pried at the childproof plastic cover we keep in the plugs to preclude curious two-year-old’s fingers from probing the depths of the socket. Her shirt lifted from the back of her pants as she leaned into the task.

As I gasped at what this would look like, she whined “This is too hard, do you have another plug?”

I grabbed the cord and plugged it into the wall plug behind me in the kitchen backing from the toxic bare back.

Stacy / Tracy began vacuuming, catching excessive dust in the fixture replacing the bag on the vacuum. “This is typical,” she said, as she handed me the two screens with what appeared to be a bushel of dust recovered from about two square feet of rug.

My mind flashed back 20 years when in the same circumstances, a brother in law brought over his best friend to run the same demonstration. I’d let that demo go on for an hour and a half to learn that the Kirby was expensive unless I compared it to what I’d already paid for my furnace, air conditioner, the washing machine (for the curtains which could be vacuumed), the dryer, and an air purifier.

Tracy / Stacy was taking the dirt revealer off and was starting to vacuum the front room saying, “This won’t take long” when I said, “I only have five minutes.”

“You’re home early from work!”

“I came home to get some work done where it’s quiet!”

“Well, I get paid for the demonstration. Can I show you one more thing before I call my boss?”

I’d figured out how to escape the creel. I don’t remember what she showed me except she asked, “When he gets here will you tell him I didn’t do anything to shorten the demonstration?”

I agreed.

Dancing bear came to the door, and as I opened it, said, “So, did Stacy (or was it Tracy) make you mad?”

I assured him she’d been good, while she somehow put the gear back into what now looked like too small of a package.

“One last thing,” he said as he went out the door. “Could we come back some time when your wife is home?”

I told him no, shut the door, and locked it.

Take care,

jim

Random thoughts on why I’m a liberal:

Crime -- A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.

Bush administration -- Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.

Why the government should help the unemployed -- Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Why school taxes aren’t bad -- I am a part of everything that I have read.

Wall Street investors -- I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.

Bush administration (2) -- I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Corporate tax breaks -- It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.

Unions -- It is essential that there should be organization of labor. This is an era of organization. Capital organizes and therefore labor must organize.

Bush’s background -- Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

Terrorists’ Constitutional rights -- No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it.

Terrorists’ Constitutional rights (2) -- No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

On the 2000 and 2004 Presidential Elections -- No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

Bush administration (3) (Scooter Libby’s commutation) -- Obedience of the law is demanded; not asked as a favor.

Terrorists’ Constitutional rights (3) (Patriot Act) -- Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.

Bush administration (4) -- People ask the difference between a leader and a boss. The leader works in the open, and the boss in covert. The leader leads, and the boss drives.

Bush administration (5) -- Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.

Bush accepting responsibility for mistakes -- The boy who is going to make a great man must not make up his mind merely to overcome a thousand obstacles, but to win in spite of a thousand repulses and defeats.

Terrorists’ Constitutional rights (4) -- The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

Bush administration (6) (Katrina relief failure) -- The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.

Terrorists’ Constitutional rights (5) -- The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Bush administration (7) -- To announce that there must be no criticism of the president... is morally treasonable to the American public.

Now that I've got it down, I have to admit.

There's an irony to all this.

I stole the thoughts from a Republican leader:

Teddy Roosevelt!

Take care,

jim

Journalism

I am a journalist.

I was trained how to find information, how to balance that information when portraying it, and how to craft the message portrayed to get the “hard news” across to a reading public.

The foundation of every hard news story was answering “who,” “what,” “why,” “when,” “where,” and “how” – summarized the “5 Ws” (somehow that “H” in there wasn’t counted, but a part of those “Ws”).

My university studies involved exploring the principles of journalism and writing in search for style to make reading information more interesting.

The creative part of journalism was how to use language – creating “the style” which separated one writer from another -- not creating the facts.

Journalists dealt in “fair and balanced” presentations out of respect for the reader and “style” to catch the reader’s attention.

Balanced meant a person wanted to say someone thinks “black,” that someone was offered the chance to say why he thought “white.”

If someone responded the person had an ulterior motive for painting someone’s position black, the person was asked to comment on the statement.

That’s the minimum effort for “fair and balanced” -- at LEAST a binary “yin and yang” sought out on every new topic. The better journalist explored the space between the binary thinking – potentially finding the consensus position most readers accepted.

Looking for consensus was the interesting part of the work, because it addressed the core question print journalists addressed in behalf of their readers – “what does it mean?”

It dealt with Jefferson’s concept of a free press – the service the media provided the American citizenry the information they needed to understand and run their government. Government, by the way, is that thing theoretically owned by “We the People” in the United States.

Journalists didn’t dictate what readers should think – they offered a range of what others who had opinions were thinking.

Back when I practiced professionally, being proven “biased” by mistakes in handling the facts was a failing grade. It meant there wasn’t enough exploration of the range – at least the extremities – of facts before the information was printed.

But those who wanted to control opinion threw the term out at a reporter when their viewpoint wasn’t aired to the exclusion of all other opinion. “Fair and balanced” goes out the window when the ego, rather than logic and fact, controls thinking.

It’s something a journalist was trained to understand.

I was reasonably successful as a practicing journalist – able to raise some critical issues in the community where I reported, with sufficient skill that the community was able to reach some consensus decisions.

It was a happy, exciting time in my working life because I got paid for something I enjoyed.

Like most careers, however, the happiness perspective was changed as I learned more about the business end of earning a salary.

My pay wasn’t in exchange for service, but to address a necessary part of marketing a business.

It started with reporting on those seeking votes in elections – the ones among them who wanted to control opinion rather than explore it.

They used the “bias” accusation to get their story aired to the exclusion of their opponent’s story.

It was a shock the first time the advertising manager – a guy who was friendly with me because he’d occasionally ask for a story in the on one of his accounts for the business section of the newspaper– started talking to me about local politics.

He didn’t live in the community, and appeared to be apolitical based on not taking sides in discussions of national politics.

But somehow he had an interest in a new city council candidate who was running a loud campaign in behalf of a yin perspective to the greater community’s yang. The campaign made a “good” story because proposing yin resulted in more in depth discussion of yin, yang, and ranges in between.

I didn’t realize the “yin” included some regular newspaper advertisers until inquiries about the loud candidate became more frequent and directive in nature.

“I don’t want to tell you what to do, but . . .”

Before too long, the question was asked by my editor -- an ambitious but introverted woman way in over her head in terms of managing what she perceived as discord. The advertising manager, while remaining friendly to my face (I suspect because of the business section bits) had raised the issue with the editor.

In time, the matter moved to the general manager’s office, where I was informed how the newspaper needed its business base, and the complaint was harming it.

My first response was to discuss “fair and balanced.”

My second was silence.

It became obvious that the news writers were viewed as people who filled the space between the ads – a space which grew as ads waned.

Ads waned because circulation dropped. Circulation dropped because stories were more and more truncated to avoid upsetting advertisers.

One which hurt was a ban on any about some workers picketing in front of a local dry cleaning establishment. A demonstration on the most travelled road in the community. The editor killed the stories on it because the dry cleaner advertised.

Acquaintances from the area would ask if I’d noticed the ruckus along the main drag. I couldn’t miss it, because it was on my way to and from work.

But, I could only tell them what I knew verbally – my stories didn’t make print.

In time, I found another career, and moved along. The adversiting manager left for a better commission, the news editor had resigned, and the general manager was fired.

I left between the time the editor resigned and the manager was fired.

I’d learned something about “the business of news.”

That lesson is reinforced by actions in the media today.

Take care,

jim