I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

Oops, Terror Alert - listening to ABC - trucks missing in mid-West - three people came into country today with false papers - they have their names but haven't apprehended.

Go Pack!

Libby .. I just knew you were a cheesehead!

I was busy today with my marketing.  Have a stack of letters and brochures to go out in the mail tomorrow.  Please keep your fingers crossed for me that the timing is just right for getting a new client.  This mailing I'm targeting neuropsychologists .. hope someone needs me!!

Thanks gals,

Bren

I don't know what you guys heard but I heard the same old tired rhetoric. Off to listen to the GrrenFlash videos I recorded.

Athena - I was ticked off when dh got home from out of town tonight.  I was watching Project Runway and he wanted to watch something else so I had to put my show on hold until he fell asleep - just finished watching it!

Cherryl, that's so cool!  I *love* "Wait, Wait . . ." but I often end up missing all or part of it because I'm out running errands on Saturday morning.  Will have to set up a reminder for this weekend!

L

There's an online version of WWDTM (wait, wait, don't tell me):

http://www.npr.org/templates/quiz/quiz.php

I am tired of listening to Obama be inspirational and make sense only to have the republicans work to torpedo everything he does just because of who he is. This is an extreme opinion and I did not come to it lightly or quickly. It's depressing. A great man is not being allowed to be great by people who prefer their political hide over their country. Only a small positive shout out to Cantor the other day for at least being willing to consider infrastructure investments.

So.......I enjoyed Project Runway. Jancie - what did you think? I am glad they eliminated that designer, as her clothes really were dowdy. Having said that, if she had made pants instead of a skirt and pulled the top up two inches or so, the look may have been quite chic.

I am having some qualms about the judging this season. They seem to go for the very orderly, pret-a-porter dress. Remember the pet store challenge? The dress that won was very similar in style to the one that won last night. They also seem to hate color. I was also shocked at how they praised the look last week that features the brown skirt, orange top, model with the blond frizzy shock of hair and pointed hat. She looked like the good witch in Wizard of Oz. Nothing avant-garde about that, IMO, and the accessorizing was awful. Also, I don't think Josh C's creation deserved the criticism it got either. Anyway, blah, blah, blah....Oh, I thought Bert's pants last week looked like something out of a circus. Could not believe that the judges were not more critical.

I love "Wait, Wait...." too. Also, This American Life and, of course, Car Talk.

Hope everyone is having a good morning. It's Friday, so buckle up....

Pip .. great questions!  I wish I had the answer.  My guess is most of the poor and middle class are so worn down by the current situation, that they have given up hope.  Thus, the big guys can continue to run all over them.  I know things are desperate in my area of the country.

I know I've about given up hope.  I don't know why Congress won't let the President get anything done.  It's incredibly sad to me.

How did it go the other day with all the realtors?

hugs,

Bren

Bren, no word from the earlier showings but we had another one this morning.  I think that the news that the interest rate was staying at 1% and the continual roller coaster ride on the stock market, people with big money are seriously looking at putting their money in land.  However, a lot of them are heading to the US to buy up the foreclosures there.

Pip, I have answers to your questions - not explanations or excuses, but answers, sad and simple. I think it lies in our culture. The idea of capitalism and trickle-down economics is so firmly embedded in our thinking that we are inherently loathe to think that uncontrolled free enterprise could be incompatible with everybody's well being. What benefits corporations is bound to benefit the little man, so the thinking goes, and this is because, once upon a time in the American economy, it did. In the fifties, when you were married to your job and your employer, in an unwritten social contract, the company took care of you.

How is congress allowed to get away with stonewalling? By confusing the people about who is doing the stonewalling. By mixing up facts and mistaking facts for opinion. This is because religious extremists have taken over thinking on our society. It is shocking but somewhat acceptable for an evangelist to blame a natural disaster on lesbians or liberals. They get pummeled, but enough people agree. It is also acceptable that if I say something like "government figures find the national unemployment to by 9.1 percent," someone can retort "that is your opinion." The democrats are partly to blame (and the more liberal, then more blameworthy in this aspect, IMO, because they never stood up to conservative fact twisting. They were too scared. For example, Kerry spent more time trying to convince voters how like conservatives he was, and never had the guts to counter Karl Rove's charge that he was "out of the mainstream." Kerry's cowardice is emblematic of the stances of many liberals. Meanwhile, Rove, an out-of-the mainstream extremist himself, was able to make a lie sing like the truth. And he learned something valuable for many conservatives: it doesn't matter if it's a lie. Just say it over and over and people will believe it.

The upshot: true, ideological conservatives like Pat Buchanan got pushed to the sidelines and meainstream uneducated voters adopted the faith-based approach to facts. There are many old-style conservatives out there who have been marginalized in this process and if they were in congress, they got voted out and exchanged for faith-based nut cases. There are very few moderates in the house. Old style conservatives in the senate are a rarity. Lugar and Snowe come to mind. Specter ended up ousted.

The media is also to blame. From the moment Bush took office and 9/11 happened, they took the Bush administration at its word and never questioned the lies. Clinton's political strategizing had already fed an appetite for 24-hour campaigning and punditry.

Obama, Reid, etc.... are all inheritors of these political trends. The Tea Party has become a mixture of true libertarians, plain old republicans and nutcases so it lacks defined policies. It is blinded by ideology. Senate rules make it very hard for anything but an overwhelming majority to rule. The House has a system in which the minority party has very few rights (compared with the senate). A president (any president) is dissected 24/7 by pollsters and lazy pundits who confused barely-scientific polls with real research, and who ignore flawed methodologies that may suggest complexity in favor of their own soundbite-ready recipes.

So it's a lot of things, really. I don't want to think that Obama is the right man at the wrong time. But maybe it's true: we're not ready for a president like Obama. Not because he's black but because he is great.  Empires usually decline from internal failings and the inability of the peeple and its institutions to rally around a common vision and goals and see good ideas for what they are. Perhaps we are there.

(Typos to be corrected later.)

Edited: The political part of this post has the following role in my physical/emotional health: it saddens me, which depresses my immune system.

Edited again for clarity.

Well, my emotional health is stressed by trying to figure out why?  Isn't yours Laura?  Maybe more people should ask questions instead of repeating party lines.

That's all.  I am off to work.  Didn't mean to start off the same old cut and paste discussions.