Archive for February, 2010

Lawrence J. Haas

Senator Evan Bayh’s surprise announcement that he won’t seek re-election has generated another bout of Washington’s current ailment – whining about a broken Senate, a paralyzed political system and huge unaddressed problems.

You think a load just fell on you?

“We’ve got a lot of good people in Congress, but they’re trapped in a dysfunctional system,” Bayh, the Indiana Democrat, said in explaining his decision and inciting the whine-fest of the last day. “We need some real reform here… the public’s business is just not getting done, and at a time of desperate need for our country.”

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Dan Calabrese

She’s young – only 27. She’s never run for public office before. She grew up in a different state. And she’s a Republican running in a district that is, by her own description, 90 percent Democratic.

Nothing is unwinnable.

But you can’t tell Pia Varma that anything is unwinnable, and regardless of the outcome of her run for Congress against seemingly safe Democratic incumbent Bob Brady, there is a larger purpose to Varma’s emergence onto the public scene.

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Bob Maistros

What is it with these Fox News freaks? Are they really starting to believe their own rhetoric?

I was run out of the Senate because I was gonna lose? Get real. With $13 million in the bank, a 20-point lead and, a far right-wing opponent whom I beat like a drum 12 years back and who has spent his time since fronting for an anti-American strongman dictator?

Take this job and shove it!

I don’t know what’s in their water cooler, but it sure as heck isn’t tea.

Then there are the Daily Kos’s and HuffPo’s, who think we centrist Democrats are as disposable as a used barf bag. Let’s see them hold that seat without me. They think Obama hasn’t gotten his agenda through because he hasn’t tried hard enough? And that Scott Brown was a result of people being mad at George Bush? I expect Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith to come swooping in at any moment with black suits, sunglasses and a Series Four De-atomizer.

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Mark Watson

Even though he is increasingly becoming disconnected from rational thought, Keith Olbermann provides a glimpse into the mindset of the totalitarian left.

Rant.

On January 18, the day before Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, Olbermann launched into one of his juvenile tirades. Olbermann called Brown “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”

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Jill Ciminillo

I recently went car shopping with a friend who was looking for a midsize sedan. She wanted heated leather seats, premium amenities and a price tag under $25K. She was thinking Mercury, Volvo (used) or Nissan.

I was thinking Hyundai.

She humored me when I dragged her to the Hyundai dealership, and she dutifully took the Sonata on a test drive. Then she politely told me no.

Didn’t it drive well? I asked. Yes, it did, she replied. Wasn’t it comfortable? Yes. Isn’t it attractive? Yes. Didn’t it have all the amenities you wanted for the price you wanted to pay? Well, Yes.

So, what’s the problem?

2010 Hyundai Tucson

Her reply: Well, I guess it’s an image thing. I just don’t see myself driving a Hyundai.

I came close to being angry because answers like hers frustrate the snot out of me. Hyundai has come a long way from the cheap imports that graced our streets 20 years ago. Yet people persist in blindly poo-pooing the brand without giving it more than a passing chance.

The 2010 Hyundai Tucson is a perfect example of why you should take another look.

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Dan Calabrese

Stacey Mathia is certainly not a professional politician, but many of her 37 years have been spent in some form of public service in her local community of Fife Lake, Michigan. She has served as president of the planning commission and of the sewer board, and last year was serving as a member of the village council when the Obama stimulus passed.

Determined.

The stimulus, and the resulting fiscal ripple effect it had on states and localities across the country, prompted Mathia to do the only thing she felt she could do in response. She resigned.

Why? Not because of anything that happened in Fife Lake, but rather because the entire system of how government at all levels is financed had become, in Mathia’s eyes, so contrary to the constitutional model of government, she felt she could no longer work within it.

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Bob Franken

“Cut costs at all costs.” If there is any holy gospel in the corporate world, that’s it. The god of profits is worshiped by the high priests, and highly paid by the way, who endlessly chant “Cut costs at all costs”, or words to that effect.

Shoddiness and deception.

Their salvation through destruction is camouflaged in expressions like “Efficiencies” and “Synergies” and “Workforce Reductions” and “Belt Tightening” and “Outsourcing” and “Consolidations” and a big one, “Mergers”, where companies get larger and smaller at the same time.

They exact a terrible human price for their greed every time they toss millions into the rubble with one layoff after another. In the process, their once-successful businesses are ground into failure as their product and reputation earned over decades are frittered away leaving empty shells.

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Andy Hefty

Bold prediction alert!

Radio talk-show host Neal Boortz has rightly pointed out that global warming (or whatever they want to call it these days) is pretty much dead.  And with that in mind, he ponders:

The free market just can't solve his shameful hunger, so government must act.

It’s over, folks. Cap and trade should at this point in history. The UN’s dreams of using the global warming ruse as and excuse for some grand global scheme of taxation is in tatters. So let’s watch the red berets and the Che Guevara (sic) t-shirts to see where they’re headed next. They’re going to be needing a new home.

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Jamie Weinstein

Can the Republicans take back the Senate in 2010?

In the words of a certain Alaskan politician, you betcha.

Two months ago you would have been certifiably insane for suggesting such an outlandish idea. But last month’s Massachusetts massacre has changed everything.

The tide is turning.

No one really saw what happened in the Bay state coming until it was basically upon us. And when I polled Indiana political experts before the election, all of them said that Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh was most definitely safe in 2010. So did all the national experts. As did all my friends who laughed at me for bringing up the idea of Bayh potentially being vulnerable.

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Dan Calabrese

Sarah Palin is President Obama’s opposite in more ways than one.

Supposedly one of the advantages of being Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential campaign was that Obama, as a completely empty suit with no real track record,  could become whatever his adoring supporters wanted him to be. Post-racial, post-partisan healer? Sure. Left-wing progressive savior? Why not? Super-intellectual brainiac? You got it.

Not your easel.

The delusions lasted until Obama was forced to actually govern, at which point supporters and opponents alike had to start dealing with the reality of who Obama is.

Palin has the opposite problem. Whereas Obama said, “Make me president,” and people immediately imagined him to be whatever they wanted him to be, Palin has said nothing of the sort, and yet supporters and opponents alike have already begun demanding that she act like a presidential candidate, and do so in the manner of their choosing.

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