Let it rain. On Rick Perry.

The following is satire. I say that just because there are those out there who are dim-witted enough to beleive this type of stuff on the airwavges these days.

Fall has arrived in Texas. With it has come out rainy season. And we need it. We have re-entered the drought situation that has plagued the state since Rick Perry assumed the office of Governor.

It is true. You can look it up.

Now if he were black and or named Obama, or if we thought he was even slightly interested in the Muslim religion, we would of course say that the drought in Texas was because of his presence in Austin. It would be obvious that God was causing us to suffer because this bigoted fool was running the state.  We have heard it for four years. We know how it goes.

Thank goodness we are not like that in Texas.  We know Rick Perry has no control over things like rain or Libya or even the tide of jobless rates that seem to be driving the economy in circles. We know this, because we know the black man in the white House has had little to no control over those things.

Congress and its actions do. The state legislature and its taxation policies do on a local level, just as your school district, water district and junior college districts do.  But the governor – not so much. And the President, only slightly more than that.

And he doesn’t control the rain.

But we can say he does. We can say that because we’ve been in a drought in Texas ever since Rick Perry took office, he is the cause of our plight. And if we say it enough – if we say it loud enough and often enough, there will be those fools who believe it. And they will start marching and demanding Rick Perry’s head.  “He is causing us this misery. Impeach him!...Send him away for good.”

Hum, now that I think of it, it does have a nice ring to it, this strategy. Now, how do we get the Koch Brothers to back it?

It rains on the just and the unjust. And on golfers.

 What is it about humans that we can’t be satisfied with what we have? Or, have the patience to see how things work out?

Today a neighbor of mine was complaining about the rain. The rain?  We’re in a drought in Texas.  We’re about 6.5 inches below our rainfall totals. And he is out there in his yard complaining about a little rain messing up his golf date.

Now I know this article should have been about golf, but I’ll let that one slide.

Rain?

What could be wrong with a little weekend rain? We need it. We got it. Why the moaning? Maybe because he didn’t get his way. Maybe.

And I got to thinking about the up-coming election. Last time out, the President-elect, Mr. Obama hadn’t even taken office, when a friend of our family was already denouncing him as a Muslim communist who was going to wreck the world. Remember, this was before a single day in office. It was because Bob didn’t get his way.  His man didn’t win.  He was sore.

Now sure, Bob was just echoing Rush, his favorite talk show host, but still.  I mean give the guy a chance.  Hell, I gave the W a whole first term, before I came down on him.  That’s four years of, ‘okay show me your stuff’.  That’s four years of you really didn’t win the election, but we’ll see what you got. And we gave him his space. (Now to be sure, I doubted the whole WMD thing from the outset, but still, the President has a right to be a fool. And W took full advantage of that right.)

So what this means is, regardless who is elected in November, he is going to be my President. (Yours, too.) I will get behind him and support him. I may not like him or all of his policies, but I’ll give him a chance. I will give him his space in history. That’s democracy. That’s how it is supposed to work.

I am not going to stand out in my front yard and complain that my guy didn’t win. And I’m not going to be so shortsighted as to think that the rain that is falling today, which we need, will end golf as we know it.  It may just slow things down on a Saturday.

I hope you can do the same.  Especially if you are on the Far Right, and Obama wins a second term. It is not the end of the free world.  And Christian women are not going to have to sleep with Islamic terrorists. The UN is not going to invade Lubbock and arrest their nutty sheriff. And you’ll still be able to own all the assault rifles you can stuff under your bed.

Regardless of all the Right Wing talk about America coming apart at the seams if Obama wins, I can assure you, life will continue. And America will be strong. And the Cowboys will still need a new quarterback at the end of the year.  Some things don’t change.

Same is true if Romney wins. (True, I haven’t heard a lot of talk from those on the Left advocating attacks and the killing of people and the starting of  the second Civil War just because we’ve got a Mormon in the White House. But I’m giving equal time here.)

So if it rains on your parade, lighten up.  It’s just rain.  It ain’t the end of the world.

It’s not even the end of golf.

Science versus stupidiity

I have a rant this morning.

Here is my premise. Science is a huge part of human development. Our society has been built upon it. Our culture is what it is today because of it. Our standard of living is where it is thanks to people who sat back and asked “Why?” And then went and ran experiments to find that answers. And yes, along the way, they asked even more questions.  And as a species we grew because of it. We haven’t fought a lot of wars because of science.

But we have because of numbskull religious fanatics.

I have recently heard the most nonsensical conversations about science that has ever reached my ears, short of the Republican Presidential Primary Debates. Two guys were talking and one said to the other, “There is no evidence that this West Nile stuff is so dangerous that we need to be spending all of this money on mosquitoes. It is a waste.” And the other guy says, ”Yep. You are right.”

Now two things just happened in that innocent little conversations. (Three actually, but I am not counting the fact that the two guys, church-going pillars in our community, are idiots and showed themselves as such publicly. No, that is not part of the argument here.) The first thing is that speaker number one puts forth a wild opinion based on nothing but his uneducated opinion and his biases against any governmental body spending any money. (He must be a Tea Partier.) His claim seems to be based on logic and reason. Of course they are not. The second point is that his buddy, accepts what his friend as just said as TRUTH. It is as if he heard it from another, it must be true. Now he is indoctrinated and will spread the same empty jargon around as if it were scientific fact.

This is the foundation of Fox News and other right –wing organizations’ attack on science and scientific thinking. It is scary. It is backward. But, it is prevalent in a lot of people across our country, and it is growing. And it growing rapidly from the pulpits of our country’s churches.

“Science doesn’t know anything. It is wrong. It is not finding answers, only raising questions.” That is just some of the belief statements that come out of the mouths of these idiots. (They echo the words of Texas Czar, Rick Perry.) And then they turn to their representatives and says, “Let’s not fund anymore research. Let’s stop all this science stuff.” (I mean a lot of it is based on “evolution,” for God’s sake.)

Our family had a neighbor who used to say that global climate change was just an Al Gore trick to get re-elected. Really? What about the melting polar ice caps? What about Greenland going away in record acreages due to melting ice fields? Hello?  Then I would look at the guy and ask about the science of metallurgy, which was involved heavily with his career and he would say, “We know all we need to know in that field. Known since the 1800’s.  The rest of all that research is just for book stuff.”

Book stuff?

For me, I’ll take more scientists and fewer preachers and clergymen. I’ll take more labs and fewer churches. I’ll take more laws of physics than more printed Ten Commandments. I have had enough of religious folks evoking their stupidly limited knowledge of anything, as evidence that God did everything and that is all we need to know.

Science is about raising questions while looking for answers. Religion is about raising money for new church buildings. And by the way, West Nile is dangerous and mosquitos need spraying. It is science, Hilliard. I know you do not believe that, but trust me. It is. There’s tons of evidence that shows direct correlation to being bitten by mosquitos and the spread of things like West Nile, Malaria, etc.

But Hilliard, you wouldn’t know, because it is book stuff.

Bad call. Bad Business.

Over and over and over again, over the last two weekends I have sat and watched the replacement officials in the NFL ruin the brand. Ruin the game.

NFL, it is time to bring the real guys back. for the sake of your game. For the sake of our game and for TV ratings, most importantly. Because until you do, I'm not watching anymore. And I would encourage every NFL fan out there to do the same. Tune off. Turn off and leave the NFL dark your set until they bring the real refs back.

If this is about money (and it always is) then the fans have the last dollar. NO TV for the NFL until the real Zebras are out there.  Trust me, if you hit them in the rating nmbers, the NFL will fold.

BOYCOTT THE NFL

Weather forcast

This morning a biker (the pedal kind) broke down right in front of my house. He was standing there starring into my yard. I thought at first he was going to rush into the grass and tear down my Obama/Biden sticker. People just HATE Joe Biden…

Anyway, I went out to have a visit and to protect my property rights.

Come to find out, the guy is a doctor from Philadelphia. We visited and had a very nice chat. He asked about Dallas and I told him that when you consider how mild a summer we had here compared to the middle of the country and to the East Coast, it wasn’t a bad place to live. He asked about last year. I told him it isn’t a good place to live, either.

Funny how weather can affect our view of the world.

I remember being in the mountains late one summer when a freaky snowstorm hit us while fishing the beautiful western rivers. As a Texan who gets to see little snow, I thought it was ‘way cool’, as my daughters might say. The white crusting of snow everywhere, the cold temperatures, erasing the hot afternoons – it was heaven.

But my fishing guide, a man who lived in those environs, hated every minute of it. You see he knew it was a harbinger of things to come – but the first of wave after brutal wave of storms that would pass over his land, dumping countless inches of the white powder. Winter was starting early for him, and he wasn’t pleased.

Compare this to the scene in Spain a few years ago when my family coward on the beach, not wishing to stick even our toes into the icy-cold Mediterranean Sea, while a Russian family, not more than ten meters (I did that because we are in Spain in this part of the blog) from us played and frolicked in those very same waters. Perspective. The water to them, was anything but icy. They had seen temperatures well near Zero Fahrenheit for most of the wintertime, while the coldest we had been in Texas that year was a balmy 21f.

Now all this weather talk is merely a metaphor for America. It is there to remind us that we all have totally different perspectives on many things, the daily temperature is just one of them. The daily onslaught of politics is another.

But whatever your beliefs, whatever your political leanings, I remind you, that things will change. And depending on the temperature in your own soul, it may be comfortable or it may not. You are the one who must adjust. The world does not change for you.

Visit my new website at johncrawleybooks.com

I’d like to buy your opinion.

The United States Court of Appeals yesterday just took a bit of your liberty and freedom away. Not Obama. Not the Democrats or Republicans. But the Judges who were sworn in to uphold the Constitution and to protect us, the citizens, blew a big decision. the outcome could become sinisterly dark.

Here’s how it came down.

Congress passed a law that required campaign contributions become more transparent. That means we know more about who gives to certain funds that place all those “issue” ads. Then the Federal Election Commission, made a misstep in an administrative ruling that clouded the matter up. So the court jumped in and made it down right murky.

The court said that Congresses intent was NOT to make the contributors more transparent. Really?  And how the hell did those appellate judges know that? The law was all about making election donations more open and less secretive. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle said so. But they made a slight boo-boo. They gave the Federal Election Commission the job of overseeing how this was to be down. So the FEC passed a series of administrative edicts, one of which ran counter to the original law and a loophole was born. (Don’t you love how your government works?)

So the court, rather than remedying the situation, made it more confusing by sending the whole matter back to the trial court with a admonition that it was not to fix the problem but to settle the dispute. The loophole stands. Your freedoms are again pushed back by big business with big dollars to spend trying to control the hearts and minds of the citizens of this country; and the court has once again joined in the fray. The courts of the People by the People has once again become the problem of the People.

First it was Citizen’s United. Now this. Has anybody wearing a black robe actually read the constitution recently? We can’t be a democracy if we allow the electoral process to be bought and sold by the highest bidder. We will lose the very freedoms that made us great. We need a court to take a stand on the principal of the issue here, not hide behind the intent of the document. Intent can be used in the wrong way in the wrong hands, regardless, which party your support. It will turn around and bite you in the backside.

The principals behind our form of government and the constitution that establishes this government, is very clear. We are a government of the people, by the people and for the people. The word corporation never appears in the writ. And no, I do not believe corporations are people. They are made up of people, but their role in society is to make money and create jobs. They are creations of paper and ink not flesh and blood. They don’t get a vote. And they shouldn’t have a voice. Unfortunately right now they are buying votes and their voice is about all we can hear.

Let this same issue happen against a cause on the RIGHT, and ever talk-show host, every conservative newspaper columnist and every right –wing pundit in the land would be red in the face yelling that the commies are taking away our liberties. And you know what? Other than the commie part, they would be right

Wake up America, this drain on your freedoms, this corralling of liberty, this ability to hide the source of paid-for voices in our land is going to make us weaker and weaker as a nation.  Print this column and store it away and see if I am not right. I hope somebody takes a stand against this foolishness and the need to hold on to my words will not be needed.

Get big dollars out of the dark and let us see who is behind the barrage of messages. And then, somebody, anybody, stand up to the Daddy War Bucks and pass some real laws that curtail spending on our freedom of one person-one vote.

These are my words.

I stand by them.

My names is John Crawley.

How’s that for transparency?

Blinded by the bar code

I am having a bit of a row with one the national package deliver services. It seems that a client paid to have a package air expressed to me. I was to receive this time-sensitive material on Friday no later than 10 am.

It did not arrive.

It did not arrive on Friday morning or Friday afternoon or night. It did not arrive on Saturday or Sunday, either.  It finally showed up at my doorstep on Monday night between 7:15 and 7:30 pm.

That 's right some 81and a half hours late. Not what I would call on-time delivery. So, I called the company (this after they swearing to us it had been placed on my doorstep at 10:15 Friday morning) and I explained the situation to the very unfriendly operator who answered. She had to have had a bad night, I am sure, because no body in America can be that rude and not be a radio talk show host.

"Sir you package was delivered on Friday. At exactly 10:15."

"Nope.  I am holding in my hand right now. Just got here. It's Monday evening. Broncos and Falcons about to kick off."

"No sir. That must be a different package."

"Nope. Already checked. This is the one due me last Friday. At 10. Not 10:15. Even if you were right, you were a quarter of an hour late. As it is, you're only 81.5 hours late."

"Can't be. The bar code was scanned and the package was delivered to your front door last Friday at 10:15."

"Nope. It just got here. Went to walk the dog. No package. Came home. Package. That means your guy came by between 7:15 and 7:30, give or take a day or two."

"Sir, you are wrong.”

Time to escalate the violence. “Do you have a supervisor."

"One moment."

Same conversation so, we go up two levels. The third guy says, give him a minute. He's gone long enough for Payton Manning to throw three interceptions. The world must be coming to and end. And yeah, while we're on hold, NFL, get the real officials back. These clowns you got couldn't control a curling match.

Guy comes back and says, "Sir, if you look outside, that package has just been delivered to your house." He repeats the address like I might not know where I live.

"I know its here. I was the one to call you. It was suppose to be here on Friday. At ten am. It got here on Monday night between 7:15 and 7:30 pm. PM as in after the sun goes down. That’s over eighty hours past due."

"We're sorry. But sometimes out system gets backlogged.  Give me another second." he puts me on hold again and the Broncos fumble and truly start to implode.

He comes back on the line, all happy and smiley face and says, "Sir that package was delivered to your home on Friday morning at 10:15. Have a great day and thanks for calling."

If I had been a Islamic extremist or even just an East Texas Baptist, I would have blown their company up. As it is, I just won't use them ever again.

Visit my new website at www.johncrawleybooks.com

No New Ideas in the GOP?

The Dallas Morning News reports in its Sunday Edition that Texas Republican representatives Jeb Hensarling wants to become the next chairman of the powerful House Financial Service Committee. And in such a role, Hensarling wants to roll back the regulations placed on financial institutions under the Obama administration. (Passed, by the way, by the way by a bi-partisan congress and Senate.)

So we’ve got Romney and Ryan wanting to go back to Trickle Down, which has never worked, and now a Republican Representative wanting to deregulate the banking system– the very people who got us in this financial mess to begin with (with the help of Two Wars and no way to pay for them…) It seems the only ideas that the Republican Party can come up with are backward facing ideas. Ideas that are intellectually and fiscally bankrupt.

So, if you thought this election is not important, think again. 

The GOP wants to line the pockets of its rich friends and contributors and leave the rest of America to fend for itself. I don’t know about you, but I trust the small businesses along main Street a heck of a lot more than the Goldman Sucks on Wall Street. And for a fellow Texan, who claims to represent us, say he wants to tear down the safety net we’ve put in place to protect us from the greed monsters of the big board, is ridiculous. He does not represent the smart thinking middle class of Texas anymore than Romney (the one that is on this side of the most recent flip flop) represents America’s working class citizens.

The GOP is out of touch, and apparently out of ideas.

A Jew, a Christian and a Muslim walk into a blog...

A friend posted this the other day. I approve and pass it along.  A Jewish idiot makes a film that a Christian idiot posts on You Tube that upsets the Muslim idiots and now we have this mess.  It is time we get rid of religions. 

They foster idiots.

Correction:

Yesterday I wrote a blog about Michael Ennis’ new novel, The Malice of Fortune a Doubleday release.

I made a mistake.

Here is what I wrote on Tuesday: Ennis’ book is a mystery set in 16^th Century Italy with non other than Michelangelo and Machiavelli turning into sleuths to solve the caper. I’ll let you buy the book and figure the rest out. But there is more to Ennis’ story that should captivate us.

It should have said: Ennis’ book is a mystery set in 16^th Century Italy with non other than Da Vinci and Machiavelli turning into sleuths to solve the caper. I’ll let you buy the book and figure the rest out. But there is more to Ennis’ story that should captivate us.

My bad, but I wanted to make the correction so you know you can generally trust this blog.   

Like when I say Republicans’ policies are out to lunch – well you can take that to the bank.  It is fact, not just hyperbole opinion. And that Romney and Ryan don’t have a clue about what they are talking about when it comes to the balancing the budget with regards to reinstating Trickle Down economics, you can take that to the bank, too. Trickle Down has not worked for three Presidents. It will not work for Romney. That means it is going to cost you in the short run and in the long haul. Trickle Down is a bankrupt intellectual exercise.

So you see that it is good that I corrected the article on a new book coming out by Dallas author, Michael Ennis.  By giving you a correction, you know I am watching the details. And that is good to know, if only the Republicans had some details.

By the way, Ennis’ book is wonderful. Buy it. Read it. It has more facts in it than anything that came out of Tampa. Promise.

Check out my new website at www.johncrawleybooks.com

Book It, Danno.

Today we celebrate a fellow Dallasite (is that what we are called?) for a truly amazing breakthrough in the literary world. I am talking about Michael Ennis and his new novel The Malice of Fortune a Doubleday release.

Ennis has a book signing and reading this evening at the Barnes and Noble across Northwest Highway from North Park Shopping mall. He has already been featured in the Dallas Morning News and will soon have an interview on All Things Considered on NPR with Lynn Neary. This is huge for the hundreds of North Texas writers who sit behind a typewriter everyday grinding out their due diligence. One of us has made it BIG.

Ennis’ book is a mystery set in 16^th Century Italy with non other than Michelangelo and Machiavelli turning into sleuths to solve the caper. I’ll let you buy the book and figure the rest out. But there is more to Ennis’ story that should captivate us.

I found it interesting as a former self-published author, that Ennis and his agent turned to self publishing to get the big publishing houses interested in his work. He had quite the creative strategy. It seems that Ennis had about 50 hardbound copies printed and sent to booksellers around the U.S. He got responses from over 20 of them, which he used as proof to the New York publishing houses that they were missing the boat in not taking a hard look at The Malice of Fortune. He landed a deal in three days with this effort. Three days! (Notice I used an exclamation point. I never use an exclamation point. Never!!!)

Now this is not to say that every writer reading this blog go out and inundate the booksellers of America with your self-printed, bound masterpieces. But it does show that a bit of ingenuity in marketing is sometimes required these days to awaken the sleeping giants in Manhattan– to get them to open their eyes to new writers with new works, many of which are breathtakingly wonderful, such as Ennis and his Renaissance mystery.

I salute Michael Ennis in his success of breaking into the BIG time.  I salute him on producing what many believe will be a best-seller on all charts. I salute him for the creativity of researching and placing a story in such a rich historical period. I cross my fingers for him that Hollywood will discover his story, too. But what I truly applaud him for, is the sheer tenacity in marketing a great idea.

Hats off to you Mr. Ennis. You inspire all of us who toil with the verb and adverb, the gerund and the pronoun. You have done us well.

Check out my new web site at www.johncrawleybooks.com

The devil is in the details

This is short but sweet today. Both parties, both candidates are woefully short on details about how thier pans will work and what they will actually do to the debt reduction.

Come on Obama...come on Mitt... let's have real deatils for the people to examine and see what it is you are proposing.

Let us have details spelled out in open letters on or about October 1st, so the electorate can see your plan, evaluate it and decide it they agree with it or not. Do not cut corners. We want the real skinny on what you are planning to do for us and to us.

We are tired to the name-calling, finger-pointing and junior-high level of campaigning.  Give us facts. Both sides give us facts.

Check out my new website at www.johncrawleybooks.com

Pay the Piper

 If you are like me, you do not like paying income tax. I don’t like to pay sales tax, either. Or highway tax on gasoline or any of the other taxes we have to fork over on a daily and annual basis in our lives.

But we are going broke in the U.S. We have a debt that is eating up a huge chunk of our national budget, and sooner or later we are going to have to dance with the devil that brung us. 

We are going to have to pay it off.

And the best way in which to raise revenues in a country is to raise taxes.  I do not like it; I will scream and complain with the best of you, but it has to be done. Let me give you a simple example of how this works.

Let say you make $60,000 a year net. (That’s after taxes.) That means you bring home $12,000 a month or roughly $3,000 a week.  And you are spending all of it. Putting nothing aside for a rainy day.

Now lets say you have a credit card that has maxed out at $75,000.  Don’t know how you got into that kind of debt – don’t care. But you owe it.  And the interest rate on it is causing you to pay bills of $1,300 a month. But that is just the interest. You haven’t paid down the bill at all.  It is still $75,000 at the start of the next month. Now lets add your mortgage and your car note and your Macy’s credit card to all of that and you are paying about $7,500 a month just in interest. See the problem? You are swimming up stream.

Suddenly you have an emergency medical procedure and now you owe an additional $25,000. You are now going backwards.  That is what happened when we had our economic meltdown in 2008-2009. Suddenly any breathing room we had as a nation just went away.

We got no more money, honey.

Now in the real world you’d get a second job. Your wife and kids would get work. You would try and make as much money as you could to pay off the debts.

America has to do the same thing. We have to get more people back to work. And we have to raise revenues from those workers and pay off our huge national debt. We’re not going to do it all in one or two years either. It stands at $16 trillion right now. The President says his plan can lower it by $4 trillion in ten years. That means a decade from now we will only owe $12 trillion – and that’s if we don’t go into another war somewhere around the globe.

So here is what all this means. President Obama or President Romney – doesn’t matter which – he is going to have to raise taxes. On the rich. On the middle class. Even on the poor.  Corporations are going to have to pay more.  Loopholes are going to have to close and we are going to have to slash government programs we all enjoy.

I love NPR.  But it might be better to let is become totally public supported and not have any tax money going to it; that money should go to deficit reduction. National endowment for the arts. The Pentagon, the Medicare/Medicaid plans. Farm subsidies. Depletion allowances for the oil and gas industry and many more things we love, like and cherish are all going to have to have their belts tightened. And tightened a lot.

Sorry. That’s the way it is.

If your family owes all that much money and you are trying to pay it off, you can’t go to the movie every night. You have to eat at home and not dine out all the time. You might have to buy used cars instead of a new one.  It is called being smart with your money and doing what is right.

Paying off the debt is right.

But there is a right and fair way to do that.  And asking the upper 1 to 2% to carry more of the load than they are carrying, to request that corporations using the infrastructure of America all pay up a little more, there is nothing wrong with that.  And don’t be surprised if Congress and the President (whichever one is in the White House) asks you in the middle class to pony up some more, too.

I hate to start your weekend on such a downer, but let’s get real. We owe $16 Trillion dollars. We all ran up that number together. We’re all going to have to pay it down together, as well.

Did I mention I hated paying taxes.  But I know I’ve got to.

Visit my new website at www.johncrawleybooks.com

The proof is in the pudding, Mitt.

So, almost as soon as Bill Clinton got through speaking to the DNC the other night in North Carolina, a friend wrote me and said, “More of the same old Democratic lies.”  Forget that fact check bore out the former President’s claims.  Forget that he has been there in the oval office facing the pressures just like President Obama has. Forget that he pointed out the Republican math just doesn’t add up.

Forget all of that; just show me what the other side plans to do. Real plans not stump speeches. Give me the facts and I WILL LISTEN. I PROMISE.

So I asked my buddy, what’s Romney’s plan on tax cuts?  Who gets them how will they work? And what are the revenue consequences to the Federal Treasury with these massive cuts?

He didn’t know.

The loopholes he wants to close to tighten the federal budget to make up the difference in lost revenue from the tax cuts; what are they? 

He didn’t know.

Why?

Because the Republicans haven’t discussed them. Their answer is, “See us after the elections.”

The huge increase in military spending, where are the revenues going to come from, Mr. Romney? 

See me after the elections.

The roll back of Medicare and Medicaid insurances without losing any benefits; how are you going to do it?

See me after the elections.

How are you going to put 23 million Americans to work while downgrading infrastructure investments in roads, bridges, cities, transportation, schools and scientific research? What about education and retooling the American worker for the new jobs of the 21^st Century? What is your jobs plan? How will you put America back to work?

See me after the elections.

How are you going to get the middle class to carry more of the weight of the increasing debt load while the upper 2% get a huge break?

See me after the elections.

You say you want to dismantle Obamacare (a plan you instituted in Massachusetts, in case you had forgotten, Mitt.) You say you are going to repeal it. And replace it with what?  It has already saved American businesses and individuals billions in cost savings and direct cash back from insurance companies. Billions.  And what will you do to replace this groundbreaking, free enterprise system?

See me after the elections.

Well, here’s some bad news for you, Mr. Romney. We want answers now.

I am on your soon-to-be board of directors. I’m a stockholder in this corporation you call America. I want answers before I turn your loose in the boardroom at the White House. American deserves to know what you are really going to do and how you going to do it before we give you the most important job in the free world.

You see, I don’t trust you.  A lot of us don’t trust you. We think you are an empty suit.

Oh, you’re a good guy and all. We just don’t think you have a clue as to what you are going to do.  You want to return us to Trickle Down economics. Well get this, Governor – it hasn’t worked. It is a bankrupt idea. You know all about bankruptcies, don’t you, Mitt.  You’ve taken a ton of businesses down and cost America thousands of jobs in the name of putting profits in your pockets, during forced bankruptcies. Heck, Bain Partners made an art form out of this act.

But hear me when I say, you can’t do that as President. You have to represent ALL the people. You have to look out for the children and the elderly and the unemployed. It comes with the office.  You don’t just get to govern your buddies at the yacht club.

So, I’d like to have some answers before November 6^th.

I’d like to know how you are going to do things. The competition has laid out a detailed plan as to how they are going to steer us back on course. So what is yours?

I know, your friends on the far right in Congress will do everything in their power to disrupt the President and his policies of trying to get us to turn the ship of state around. They have even said they don’t care about putting Americans back to work as long as the can get Obama out of his current job. That’s real mature, now isn’t it, Mitt? But even with that interference, President Obama has a string of major success for America and its middle class.  I mean members of your party even voted against six job bills that would have put millions of Americans back to work and would have done it now.  Not after November 6^th.

So you see, there are a lot of us who question you and your party’s ideas about restoring America to its greatness. We’re waiting to hear some details. We want to know where all this extra income is going to be coming from and where it will go to buy down our huge national debt. We want to know what you are going to be spending all that hard-earned money in the military build-up on. The Pentagon has even said that they don’t need it. But you must think they do. Or is it more pork barrel chits for your buddies in Congress to spread around to their districts? Is that It, Mitt?  Is all this about gland handing the American people and giving us the old wink and nod while you go and grease the palms of your friends?

That is so old school, governor. So very old school. We need modern, new thinking. Not backward thinking.

We need some concrete facts, sir. Not any more of your Right-wing sound bite rhetoric. We had enough of that from W and Chaney and Rove. And even though your speeches have avoided mentioning them, theirs were the same policies that got us into this mess to begin with – the same ones you advocate today. (Is that why they were not invited to the convention?) As a good business man you should know that if a plan has failed three times, it is high time to move on to something new and different. Or do you want us to fail? Do you want to take America itself into bankruptcy?  What’s in it for you, Mitt?

I’m afraid you’ve flipped flopped so many times; we don’t know what to believe from you, Mitt. So, show us your plan.  Let us see if you have an idea with real substance backing it.

If not, then I am afraid your fifteen minutes of fame are over.

Check out my new website at www.johncrawleybooks.com

To spray or not to spray...that is our country.

I keep hearing mixed reports as to whether or not the aerial spraying in Dallas County was affective in eradicating the West Nile carrying mosquitos. Some reports say yes. Others aren’t so sure. I know around our swimming pool in the evening, they are gone. Like zero in attendance. Before the spraying we were being driven inside with the buzzing creatures attacks.

But one thing is for certain, a centralized body of government made a decision for the health of us all to try and ease the problem of deaths due to this dreaded disease.  That is communism according to some who have objected to the spraying. While I am not sure it ranks up there with the theories of Karl Marx, it was a bit off putting to some to have bureaucrats make decisions for us like that.

The good news is that they looked at it long and hard and made a well-informed decision based on science, medicine and a real population need. They also had a lot of open dialog and forums to hear from all sides – including doctors and scientists. But many of my “liberal” friends objected. Too much intrusion into our lives, they scolded.

I reminded them, this is how the Right sees Obamacare. It is part and parcel the same. Government taking over healthcare for society. And while those of us with half a brain know that is NOT what is happening, there are still those fundamentalists who argue that just because it has a mandate in it, it is socialism. And because the skies were filled with government planes spraying chemicals it was a plot to poison us all. (No, really, I heard that.)

Spraying in Dallas County was NOT an act of social upheaval and conspiratorial attacks on our freedoms. It was an act of county-wide health control practiced sparingly in our state. It is little different than crop dusting. Now I know the Green Party will stand up and shout for Organic America, but a recent article in the New York Times explained that there seems to be no real benefit between organically grown vegetables and those using the more modern methods. While I am not sure I’d side with that piece of science totally, I will say that the spraying did much more good than any harm it might have caused to your carrots and radishes in your organic garden.

It wasn’t DDT. It wasn’t a carcinogen. It was an organically developed pesticide that kills mosquitos – and more importantly kills the carriers of West Nile Disease: a disease that was killing hundreds of citizens in Dallas, Tarrant and Denton counties. And it does its work without affecting people, pets and most pollen carriers – namely bees, although to hear the bee industry and regular people talk, it was the end of the world as we know it. (Thanks to R.E.M. for the lyrics.)

I do hope our country can get back to harmonious discussion of issues and that things like spraying for mosquitos do not carry the life and death arguments as seen between neighbors here in Dallas. Let’s save those really big arguments for whom we should invade next. We’ve got a war winding down in Afghanistan. It’s time to send our troops somewhere new.

Suggestions?

Check out my new web site at www.johncrawleybooks.com

There are a few strings attached

I heard today that they have placed three more woods on the endangered species list, which means guitar makers will be without the use of Madagascar Rosewood and Honduras Mahogany soon. The third wood is an African wood not used in the making of guitars, mandolins, lutes or pianos.

Might not mean much to my non-guitar playing friends, but it says to me that alternative woods are going to have to come on line faster than ever. It also says we are cutting down a lot of trees.  To be sure, most of them are cut for furniture and housing, but still, without these precious woods for instruments; carbon fiber guitars are the wave of the future.

So the next time someone comes along talking about regulating the things we use– the natural resources we consumer, the next time you poo-poo them for being liberal and a jerk and an alarmist…remember, guitar players, your next guitar may be plastic, because we cut down too many trees.

 

Check out my new web site at www.johncrawleybooks.com

Not So Fast, Mr. Tea Partyer

 I received a response from a gentleman in Nebraska about my Labor Day Blog– the one yesterday about the ten moments that changed America’s ability to have reasonable discourse about our goals and future. Let me quote from his letter:

“America is not about Social Security or the wars we have fought and won or lost and it is not about the men who served it in the White House. It is about the people’s will to get the government off their backs and leave them alone. Your attack on the Tea Party is un-American and shows the leftist leaning of your political views. It is the Tea Party that is saving America from itself. The reason the Tea Party has not gotten behind Obama’s job bills is that they cost money. That’s tax payer (sic) money, and we don’t want that. … The only thing that can save America today from its Godless ways is returning to Jesus and his bible.”

I think James Tally’s letter proves my article’s point.

The Tea Party member is too concerned about the cost of helping another American than he is getting both a neighbor and a country back to work and on her feet. A nation working will pay off the debts and raise revenues faster than a nation on unemployment. But the Tea Party is too focused on Grover Norquist’s no new tax pledge, that they can’t see how ground up economic policies work.

Theirs is not a simple idea; it is a simple-minded notion.

A country going through the type of near-depression we encountered in 2008-2010 has to be given a spark to get the economic engine pumping again. (Even Ronnie Reagan knew that and acted upon it to get America out of Stagflation in the early 1980’s.) And I stand on my notion that the Right has helped sit on job creation, tax reform and economic stimulus, because they knew it would get the economy revved and that would get the Democratic incumbent reelected by a wide margin, if not an outright landslide.

Mr. Tally, I am neither un-American or a Leftist; however, I am a bit left of liberals on a lot of issues facing America today. (I don’t think the Affordable Healthcare Act went far enough and I want Guantanamo closed yesterday.) I am not a communist, a Baptist or a hands-off free market junkie. I am a free thinker. I realize that America needs to lower taxes. We need to cut spending. And I would imagine that if I said let’s begin that cut with bringing world-wide troops home and diminishing the Pentagon’s budget, you, Mr. Tally, and those like you, would put up the biggest howl.

No, you want your way or no way. Big military spending makes you feel safe and secure and protected. No new taxes and lower taxes makes you feel economically privileged. In both cases they, in the long run, make our wonderful country poorer.

This is a complex world, Mr. Tally. It has complex problems. And while you bring the name of Jesus up in the latter part of your letter as the only hope for America, I still believe that he would have us pass a job’s bill to help our neighbors out of the tough times of unemployment. But then again, he would have us feed them, clothe them and house them. And I am afraid that Jesus would never fit into the Tea Party’s agenda for this land. He would be called a socialist. His ideas and ideals are far too radical for you to stomach. So, I’d be careful evoking his name in your cause.

I borrowed this picture from the Internet and from the show The Newsroom. It says a lot about the Tea Party in it. It has to be stopped.

Punitive Politics

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