Escaping the Mudflats

Days of trolling mudflats have to end--while they hooked me with their Palin coverage, it was the Moose showing up in their backyard that made the site so appealing. Our Raccoon--Rocky--who has been the nightraider of our garbage, appeared yesterday. He's been living underneath our back deck. He must be the world's only known subterranean raccoon. These incidents and trolling Maine sites remind one stuck in the Beltway what life in "real America" might look like.

The Republicans are trying to drag out the health care process so as to kill it. Their ability to filibuster is gone with Franken so now is delay,delay,delay. They are also pretending to need to analyze Sotomayor more closely, even though her opinions have been in the Senate for some time. They feel the wind is at their back because the stimulus package hasn't taken effect yet and they are claiming it has failed and thus Obama is damaged. They now point to his more human approval ratings of about 56-59% as an indication of a failed presidency. Boy, that didn't take long. I guess he would have to descend to George W Bush levels of 20% before anyone would say he is sticking to his principles, no matter what the public opinion polls show.

I'm convinced now that engaging in politics may be a mental disease. Take for example, South Carolina's only known straight Senator De Mint. He launched into a discussion here that America was like Germany just before WWII. Is this before or after Hitler took over? Are we talking about rampant inflation, the decadence of the Weimar Republic, WWI reparations, missing sections of the country? Or are we about to invade Poland and exterminate the Jews? I guess it must be the Hitler period because that's a theme in the tea parties, especially in Florida where Obama is Hitler. I guess Glenn Beck is right, we're all going to be rounded up into the FEMA camps.

John Boehner says that no contracts for stimulus projects have been signed in his state of Ohio, where Obama is taking a hit. Unfortunately for the rest of America, they don't read the Cleveland Plains-Dealer, which only the other day outlined those projects, which have begun.

A Texan called me to ask why we had to have government anyway. He and his business friends think they could run things better. Am I missing something? Isn't the economic and financial collapse in large part because the private sector couldn't run anything--at all? But the conversation lasted two hours as we walked through why government is necessary so that you don't have to live in 24/7 survival mode and that you can do things like plan, send your child to school and maybe retire with something over the years. But as he told me, all his friends are talking this way.

Texas Governor Perry got a great idea--privatizing and out-sourcing highways. Now German, Spanish and Croatian firms own major Texas highways and collect tolls. My Texas business friend thinks this is very clever. I know the Croatian company and their work in Africa lasted only six months. I told him call me in a year when you've experienced the hikes in tolls.

Other callers are complaining about all the taxes Obama has increased. Outside of the local hike on smokes, I've gotten tax breaks and look forward to getting the tax credit for my son's college tuition. So far no one I know has experienced any federal tax hikes.

Just think for the $1 trillion we spent on the Iraq War, we could have a national health care system for ten years. Which reminds me--What did we get for the $11 trillion deficit the Bush-Cheney team racked up? At least with Obama's deficit, some American will get something.

Russia, India and China are squawking about a new global currency to replace the dollar. I would suggest those three adopt the Yuan and we'll see when the Chinese banking system collapses. China's public debt ratios make us look very conservative and the banks are way over-leveraged. At some point, they will have to deeply depreciate their currency.

Well, Obama really flopped in Moscow. He only signed an agreement for sharp reductions in nuclear weaponry. If this were the 1990s,that would be considered an historic agreement for which history should remember him. I thought it was funny to see Richard Pearle come out against the agreement. Pearle was one of the neocons and other conservatives who opposed Reagan's nuclear arms reduction agreements.

What is going through John McCain's mind? McCain came out for the Honduras coup at a time when Costa Rican President Oscar Arias was about to negotiate a resolution to the issue. With the entire OAS,EU and the Obama Administration against the coup, wouldn't you have the humility to at least see how this goes before jumping the gun. Conservatives even created a Honduras Coup Caucus. Remember when Democratic congress types flying to foreign capitals were considered traitors. What's up with this? Maybe McCain is simply protecting all the IRI grantees who were in on the coup?

And then we end with Pope Benedict and his encyclical "Charity in Truth", which means that he is left of Obama on economic issues. Does that mean that O'Reilly and Hannity should be denied communion because they are against Church social doctrine?