Seeing that this will, in all probability, be this little blog's last update before Christmas I wanted to wish my 3 (or so) regular readers a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwaanza, Winter Solstice or whatever other tradition (including none) that you choose to celebrate during this season. Have a good one, over-indulge, and remember that we'll all be making New Year's resolutions next week that we will have broken by Jan 15th.
As a public service I'd also like to remind everyone how NOT to act this holiday season. I can find no better way to illustrate that than the world of politics and media.
First, settle down. There's a time to be legitimately angry and a time to be angry for political reasons. Democratic Reps Trey Martinez-Fischer and Dawanna Dukes are doing the latter, and it's unbecoming of an elected representative during the Holiday season. I realize it's hard to not feign some type of anger when your entire policy position is promising your constituents that you'll engage in some sort of "fight" for them but, given the fact that you're not REALLY fighting at all and that, if a real fight came your way, you might just soil your britches maybe we can stop with the "tough-folks" Obama-style interviews for a few days eh?
Dear Rep. David Simpson (R): Just because they're not out to get you doesn't mean you have no reason to be paranoid. I would like to point out at this time that, for a candidate running for speaker (I'm looking at you as well Straus) wasting time on anonymous bloggers is petty and trite. I would like to remind both candidates for speaker that this is a LEADERSHIP position. So show some would ya?
To CPRIT I award the Lance Armstrong Memorial Grade A Screw-Up award. You had a simple goal, provide grants to organizations to aid the fight of cancer. I would point out that the cronyism and graft in this organization is the same reason that I dislike the Governor's Enterprise and Emerging Technology funds and believe that all three should be eliminated. In the interim: Boo.
On a National level: Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is incapable of cheer. For this reason alone she should me mocked endlessly and ignored on substantive policy issues. That she takes pot-shots at Republicans despite taking no policy risks herself is strike two. That she's nothing more than a glorified attack-dog for Obama is strike three. The Republicans have these types of operatives as well, Grover Norquist comes to mind, Sean Hannity and others. Anyone actually inside the Republican machine is currently too ineffective to be given much thought.
Dear Patty Murray: When the Nation is looking at fiscal pain maybe now is not the time to be making jokes at the taxpayers expense. I realize that, in today's zero-sum political world almost everything is fair game, and I'd be OK if it was either a fairly humorous or fairly clever joke. Sadly this was neither.
Once more into the "you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think." files: Both Robert Shrum and Paul Krugman are obviously sharing talking points in their writing. They're also continuing to mis-cast non-extreme policy positions as extreme because they've run out of arguments.
To all of our elected officials, let me say this. The Sandy Hook shootings were a terrible tragedy, something that we should make every effort to not see again. I don't think it's totally possible to eliminate violence of this sort because I think there is no stopping dedicated evil. However, what I do know is that knee-jerk legislation never works out well. It's the public's job to wail and gnash teeth and demand overreactions. Historically it's been your job to be the adults in the room and check the mob's simple tendencies. I question whether or not you retain that ability but, for America's sake, I hope so. More and more however it seems that you're inciting the mob rather than calming it. Prove me wrong.
On a local level: excessive blockquotes with poor attribution is NOT "blogging about it." It never has been and it never will be.
And finally.....
No, I won't click your referral links, and if you continue to author post after post doing nothing other than pimping them out to me I'll stop reading your blog as well.
Now that you know what NOT to do......Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas! (Which is my holiday of choice.)
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