The Lobbying Conundrum/Canard

   I’m pretty sure there is an election going on because the politicians are bad mouthing the lobbyists.   They’re an easy target, and therefore are front and center when the nitwits give their speeches. Tonight it was Barack, but they all do it, and like lemmings headed for a cliff we follow along never bothering to contemplate what a lobbyist is.  They aren’t the modern day equivalent of the flying monkeys in the Wizard of Oz.

    All a lobbyist is is someone paid to get some face time with our congressional representatives to ensure that our particular special interest isn’t ignored when it comes time to dole out the cash  our government so egregiously squanders.  Believe it or not each of you probably has a lobbyist working for you.  If you’re old, the AARP has your back.  If you have a union job the AFL/CIO is working every day to ensure that your voice is heard.  If you like chasing down Vicodin with nyquil the pharmaceutical companies have trained monkeys in suits trying to keep the good times rolling for you.

     Everyone is represented.  Every splinter of our society has someone taking care of them in one way or another on capital hill.  The truth is lobbyists are to politicians what candy is to children, and they no more want to see the system changed than do you or I when you think about it.  I’m almost certain my congressman can’t fit all his constituents into his busy schedule what with working on his golf game and all.  I’m glad someone has his ear.  Maybe what we should do is expect our elected representatives to listen to our lobbyists, and then do what is best for the country.  Our lobbyists aren’t the problem.  Our politicians are.  Without their tacit and sometimes overt agreement, the corruption and wholesale fleecing of the populace couldn’t occur.

Ron Paul: In a race of his own

  While the front runners carefully craft shifts in message to attempt to cannibalize votes off each other, and the tailchasers are watching for the exit door that will benefit them the most, Ron Paul blithely continues on his course of action.  He doesn’t make semantic comments foreshadowing a seachange in policy positions, but rather sticks to the deceptively simplistic messsage that placed him here.

    Ron Paul has it good.  He isn’t running against seven other people whose viewpoints are similar to his own.  He doesn’t have to form study groups to see which words make his position sound the best to the voter, and what Mitt Romney says on any given day has no effect on what Ron Paul will do.  He isn’t running against Mitt.  He isn’t running against Rudy, or John or the not running yet Fred.  He is running against voter apathy, public ignorance, and an ingrained, almost slavish tendency to accept the status quo, and only the status quo.

   For Ron Paul to succeed he doesn’t have to combat the others, but rather society in general.  Months into the quest for the White House people have still never heard of Ron Paul. Contrary to the popular misconception applied by his followers, this isn’t because the mainstream media ignores him.  It’s because the largest voting demographic right now is the”I don’t know and I don’t care” majority.  It’s early, and most people would rather wait and pick between less candidates.  It’s easier for their :I need my life to be easy” minds to comprehend.  He and his campaign has to get these people to listen, and shy of promising free lottery tickets, sex, and beer I don’t know how he can do that, other than to just continue being Ron Paul.

  Then you come to the message issue.  He has to convince undertaxed rich folk,  a downsized middle class, and an entitlement oriented impoverished multitude to want his vision of a constitutional government.  His ideas on the surface have merit, but people tend to shy away from you taking something from them that they are used to getting.  I can’t picture big business accepting anything like fair taxation.  Nor can I picture the impoverished masses giving up their state sanctioned freebies.  The middle class might be his best hope, but even they have to question where his economic theories might lead.

   The matter of his current camp followers is something he can control, and has apparently decided not to.  Everything he says is taken as being written on stone tablets, so he needs to convince them that his message is enough to carry the nomination.  So far the trend toward blog-sponsored heathenism is only an irritation, but when people really start paying attention he needs to convince his fringe elements to exercise the flipside to the right to free speech, and convince them to practice the right to shut up.

   So its all about Ron.  Can he convince America that his far reaching ideals will fix whats broken, or will they continue to seek security through stupidity?  It’s easy to convince yourself that everythings not so bad, when the option you have is an all or nothing gamble with your future on the line.

  

How Ron Paul Votes

  I found a pretty good page while I was looking for financial disclosure information.  It’s available at the same place as his voting history.  What I like about the page is it is a major news source, so likely accurate, and it gives you a day by day accounting of Ron Paul’s, or any other congressional members, votes on whatever votes were held in the House that day.  It also has a lot of historic voting data, and is a great place for you to go learn about Ron Paul.  Due to the increased interest I have to assume some of you don’t know much about him. 

    I was a little surprised to see that he has missed 20% of the votes this year.  I’m going to assume that’s a result of the campaign schedule.

   The more I talk about him in everyday life, the more I hear the words “I’ve never heard of him.”  This is particularly interesting in that most of the people I talk to like what he has to say once enlightened.  I’m not so much a fan as a crap stirrer.  I like to start balls rolling and see what happens when they run into things.

the popularity contest

   Woohoo, who’s got it going on?  Not congress.  They’re the stray dog in a hen house kind of popular.   Just basic favorability rating in the mid twenties?  Confidence at 14%?  Wow, thats worse than George Bush.  Do you suppose it’s because once again the electorate was hoodwinked by a bunch of scoundrels?  Say it isn’t so.  How many times in a row is that?  Ever since the contract with America.  Thats been excoriated by the opposition for years, but it was their fair haired boy, the most popular president in decades, Bill Clinton that made it happen.

   In, what, 150 plus days the only thing they’ve accomplished is raising the minimum wage?  Well hallelujah.  That has to resonate with the electorate.  Who does that benefit?  Illegal aliens…can’t vote….teens…..can’t vote.  Maybe somewhere in the country other people make the minimum wage, but here in Indy, if you’re an adult you’re syatying out at at least $7.00 an hour anyway.  Still not enough to liveo n, but right in line with that smoking hot new minimum wage law.

We any closer to out of Iraq? nope.  Any closer to cleaning up that outhouse? Not one bit.  We gave the keys to the coffers to the biggest scalawags available.  It’s a lot of fun to run against the unpopular, but not so much so trying to do their job I reckon.

   The senate is a piece of work.  How many hours have they spent trying to ram through an illegal immigration bill that makes nobody but the elite happy?  Who really wants this thing?  Immigrants don’t.  They got here the hard way.  Illegal immigrants don’t.  They’ll lose their jobs if they go home.  The middle class don’t.  They’re tired of fighting off people for jobs that used to pay decently, and funding the social programs for the same people competing for their jobs.  The only people that want this are corporations and the politicians they support.

   So with congrees less popular than dick cheney; (gawd that makes me chuckle) , who’s running for president? Congress for the most part.  Not just any of them either.  Some of the worst of them.  You got Dr. No, Ron Paul perpetually hiding behind the constitution to keep from looking like the ultra conservative that he has always been based on his voting record.  You have Hillary Clinton, the democratic front runner that is so crooked the new miracle corkscrew was designed based on her character.  This woman has committed more felonies than Charlie Manson, and her ethical breaches could fill the encyclopedia brittanica.

breathe, criminy breathe….Barack Obama has decided to be our religious leader from the left, and his position on the issues are so muddled that if he’s standing on anything its quicksand.  It’s an awful scary thought but the only candidate I feel is trustworthy is Mike Gravel.  Damn was he a dick at the debate or what?  It was fun to watch them all sit silently uncomfortable as he berated them for being nefarious on issue after issue.  Hell, he called hillary a liar to her face and she just sat there, hands folded with that smile that looks like she just sucked on a lemon.  That was damn good tv.  If you missed it go find the you tube clips….priceless.

   Joe Biden is one that I would kind of like to vote for.  He however has already made the gaffe that keeps on giving; insulting black people everywhere with his characterization of Barack Obama as the first intelligent clean (paraphrase) african american to run for president.

I keep coming back to Ron Paul.  He seems like a decent enough guy, he says all the right things about the 5 or 6 issues that the media finds important. (has anyone in the media said the words Social Security in the last two months).   What he stands for though is the impossible.  The militia’s dream candidate.  States right, and lets go down with the ship like the fathers of our country planned it 26,00 intellect years ago.

   I’d talk about more of these clowns; about Rudy and his doper staff, and about Fred  “toe in the water” thompson, but whats the point.  They tend to make me sick to my stomach, and I have a rabbit that wants to hump my leg.

Oh yeah, michael bloomberg.  Why not?  Smart enough to make enough to fund his own campaign.  Successful republican mayor of NYC though he is pretty much a centrist democrat?  This guy could work.

Wonder if he needs a slightly dilapidated, cynical, hate- em- all Hamas member for a running mate?

I’m not really in Hamas, but right now they’re the only team that’s winning.

No dog in the fight

   I think Brit Hume was right on point with whats wrong with our political system.  Its not the point he was making though.  He tried to ridicule Michael Bloomberg for saying the discussion shouldn’t be just left vs. right.  Bloomberg happens to be right about this, but the talking heads in the media, and our elected representatives consider that intellectual sedition.

    I’m not sure it was always the case, but we know entirely to much about each other.  There is a little card to get discounts at the grocery store, a card that works like money (ugh), library cards and movie cards and so on ad infinitum.  All the little cards have little numbers that identify us.  All the information gleaned from these little cards is used to target us.  Every keystroke hit on our computers registered and catalogued and stored on some larger computer somewhere.  This enables the left and the right to push the buttons they need to to get our support.  People worry about the Patriot Act?  We’ve been having our privacy invaded forever….the patriot act is nothing new.

   The bad news is the vocal left and the vocal right make up maybe 15% of the population between them.  Yet they set the agenda.  They write the laws.  They fund the idiots that make decisions for which way our nation goes.  Why?  Because the 85% in the middle who don’t really identify entirely with either group substantially has only those two choices.  On the rare occassion that someone else runs on a third party ticket he generally works only as a spoiler.  It’s also why some ultraconservative like Ron Paul can be hailed as the new messiah.

    What this country needs is about 10 political parties with no legislated obstructions keeping them from running.  It works elsewhere…almost every other allegedly democratic society has oodles of choices.  I like Britain’s method, and I would so love to see George Bush in the well of the house of representatives being feasted on like poor tony blair in the house of commons.  What a treat that would be.

    We’ll never have it though.  Americans are by and large, to lazy, to busy, or to self indulged to do what is best for the country.  To insist on decent leadership.  To wholesale vote out the obstructionists that currently inhabit the halls of power.  Many of them have been raping us for so long we no longer even ask them to clean up when they’re done.  Several can barely walk to the lectern.   They can hardly speak without drooling on themselves, yet they keep getting elected.  Either the electorate is really as uninformed as I believe they are, or its all a big scam and they choose senators in the back room of O’malleys. 

   We destroyed any chance of good government when we made voting a right rather than a privilege.  We place the last nails in the coffin every time we allow ourselves to be given just two choices….a nitwit and an idiot.  Kerry/Bush. Gore/bush…you get the picture

   If you think you are in the middle, do everybody a favor this time around.  Vote in your local elections for anyone that is not a democrat or a republican.  It won’t change things right away, but its a strong step in the right direction.