I am tired, I admit. Part of it is being ill- noone is at their best if they aren't a hundred percent physically, and as we say in Texas, I have been rode hard and put up wet a time or two. Part of it is that I am tired of these hacks that think they are politicians screwing up the political landscape with their diatribes. They would be dismissively amusing if they were not screwing around with our country. The truly scary ones wish you to believe that they are sincere- has anyone else seen the insane look that is in Nancy Pelosi's eyes? Whoa. Breed her with Howard Dean, and you would have the liberal version of Damien, spawn of Satan.
Ok, ok- the Right has their True Believers also, and they can be just as spooky. What happened to people who believed in serving the people of this country, not just the special interests,( and by special interests, I mean the NAACPs, the Planned Parenthoods, and the other allegedly do-gooder groups, not just the evil wicked corporations that actually give jobs to people).
I tell you where we went wrong- a person should have a job if he or she wants to vote. They SHOULD NOT be felons, or illegal immigrants. If someone is voting on what to do with tax money, they should have a stake in the decision. You wouldn't let someone into your poker game if they could not ante up, would you? The same rules should apply here. You pay to play, plain and simple.
Next, we really do need stringent ethics laws, and the people, not congress should vote on the rules. Why put the fox in charge of the henhouse. If someone is found guilty, they should be stripped of their pension, and any other perks they maay have accumulated.
And we really, really do need to remind these lawmakers that they work for us, and we need to set their pay scale, not have them vote themselves a raise everytime they feel the need. Would voting yourself a raise work in the real world? I think not.
One way or another, we need to impress upon these people that they are playing with our money, and what they do not NEED to govern, should be sent back to us in the form of a rebate.
IT IS NOT YOUR MONEY!
Perhaps there should be a new, required position that every lawmaker should have on their staff, that being one person whose duties are solely that of slapping said lawmaker on the back of the head every few minutes. Perhaps then they might pay attention to their duties, and not their pleasure.

Senselessness and sensibility

Let's talk about the Democrats for a minute. Another election season is upon us, and they want our votes, but they have a fundamental problem- they act insane. I am probably what you might describe as right of center, but I live in what used to be one of the Democratic stronghold of the south, Texas.
At least, up until Ann Richards. I am not saying that she was the female equivalent of Jimmy Carter, but she was not far off. Personally, I liked her as an energetic, true Texas character, one that we were better off knowing. However, as we might say down here, that doesn't feed the bulldog. She was like other democrats in that she thought she knew what was best for the people, but she, like other democrats, only talked to her core constituents, and not so much the rest of us. This is a problem that exists in both parties, in that if you only hear from the most vocal in the crowd, you will inevitably veer from what the true majority would want.
The state of Texas was, up until Ann Richards, a true democratic bastion- we had not had a republican in office since the 1880s- and would have stayed that way if the democratic party had not been hijacked by the ultra left wing of the party. The secularists, extreme environmentalists, and the people who believe that America is everything bad, were just too much to swallow. Why, down here, we beat those people within an inch of their life, because we do not think this is a message that should get out into the public- like a virus or a rabid dog, it needs to be put down. The message the democrats wish to send is not conducive to real life, and down here we kinda resent being told that others know what is best for us.
This is also true of the national scene, and this behavior and minutest on the part of the dems also breeds the same mindset on the other side- so extremism prevails, and the welfare of the people are lost in the hubbub of shouts by both sides. What a pity, as it seems that what we, as a people need right now, is coherent dialogue from both parties, and compromise is not a dirty word- indeed, the country was run by compromise for two hundred years, and sadly, it is probably more due to the ignorance of history in our schools that we have the intolerence of opinion that we now have.
Still, the Democratic party seems to really have a bug up its ass, perhaps that is still an over-reaction to Bill Clinton's trials, and the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. The Republicans were over the top, although I still cannot forgive Clinton for lying- it was just too trivial, and he, like any one of us in a court setting, had SWORN to tell the truth- it , like pulling an infected tooth, have been over with quickly. Instead, he had to have this dirty matter dragged slowly under our noses. That was a truly bad decision, and in light of that one, all the rest of his decisions came into question. Whether that was fair or not was not a factor in the reality of the situation.
So you could say that Clinton's decisions played a factor in this clusterfuck we now have that passes for politics. What a shame- we are attempting to teach the rest of the emerging world of the benefits of Democracy, and this is how we do it? Compromise is key, and while it might seem admirable to stand on ones principles, the art of politics IS the art of compromise.
You just have to begin by assuming that the other side wants a country WE CAN ALL BE PROUD OF, not just the fringe elements.