Sunday, October 17, 2010

"With the World In 'A Fine Mess' Let's Lighten Up"------------------ With the local, state and national elections coming up on November 2---and heating up with an estimated eighty percent of all television ads of the attack variety, a respite now and then might be warranted. Here is a link to a Medford Mail Tribune editorial by veteran journalist Paul Fattig that appeared in the paper. I believe it's timing is quite appropriate. http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101017/NEWS/10170340/-1/NEWS0101

16 comments:

  1. yes let us all lighten up or we are done for :)

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  2. Some clips from "Sons of the Desert" UK Branch with a compilation of Laurel and Hardy at work creating unintentional mayhem.

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  3. I'm not a big fan of senseless attack adds and wing nut propaganda but hey...it seems to have worked out fine for the conservatives these last two years..death panels, our president is a this, that or another...Democrats are responsible for the present economic situation in the country and on and on. According to the polls this kind of bs works well for Republicans.

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  4. sorry Doug I didn't mean to sound so negative but it's so frustrating for me to set by and watch Republicans destroy the country especially when they use lies and deceit to gain positioning to advance their agenda of caring for the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

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  5. In the 70's another Democratic President (Jimmy Carter) took on many of the same issues we are struggling with today...the "green movement", reduction of dependence on foreign fuel and so on. Mr Carter was met with the same Conservative opposition that Mr Obama is facing today. Mr Carter was demonized, belittled and destroyed politically by these Republicans. For years anyone who mentioned a cleaner environment was labeled a "tree hugger" and the "electric car" was quickly pushed under the rug. Now almost 40 years later here we are facing these same issues again. I wonder if Conservatives will once again be successful in destroying a potentially great president and returning the country to where we were 40 years ago?

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  6. and they have coned so many people sad

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  7. This is too funny, Doug! Good advice, indeed!

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  8. This is a major problem Mike--people are much more willing to believe the worst accusations against a candidate , and less likely to step back and think how we got to these bad times in the first place. Why blame the deregulation of Wall Street when you can blame Obama for not making all this recession go away in record time?

    But, also, attack ads seem to predominate so much because human nature responds to words like "death panels" before these words get to the higher parts of some people's brains to sort it out as true or false. The fight-or-flight syndrome.

    Let's not forget the "Citizens United" case in The Supreme Court. Because the money to run against someone is wide open and no transparency is needed, all-bad-all-the-time is good for people. And, finally, at he risk of getting way too partisan on this blog, the Democrats post-1980 have been on a short leash with the voters than their GOP counterparts. Look at the 1994 results.

    I would hope everybody will remember we are still a long way from getting out of this "fine mess" and we cannot let bastards who have little to offer other than fear make us believe they can work some kind of magic. They can't, and many of the independents who support them will find this out by 2012.

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  9. Michael Moore said recently that the behavior of the American voter (Tea Party; etc.) proves two things -- (1) that the average American has a memory of about ten minutes, and (2) they have the innate ability to believe just about anything....

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  10. Moore is seemingly right on both counts I'm afraid. There's a large bloc out there who still want Reaganomics to work--believing we can cut taxes and the trickle down effect will balance the budget and create jobs. I'll grant this might have worked in some areas in the 80's but it did nothing for the economy when applied under Bush II.

    When W's Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was quoted by the Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as saying in a 2002 White House meeting saying , in essence, "We need another tax cut for the well-off. Besides, Reagan proved deficits don't matter," then is it any wonder when Bush listened where we'd end up?

    The idea that many Americans have that they will someday be rich enough to grow beyond those around them dies hard.

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  11. No apologies necessary. It's been quite a whiplash of popular opinion since last year, Mike. I don't know what people expected so quickly with so much gridlock at the federal level, but it didn't take long for people to run back to the old firewater of deregulation and tax cuts--if only the easy way worked best.

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  12. I think Obama has more strengths than Carter did, and his learning curve is a lot faster than Carter's will be, Mike, because Obama has that 70's era as an example.

    Don't forget Reagan was polling just as low as Obama in his first two years in office.

    What we need is for some of these Tea Party birds to reveal their true leadership abilities for awhile, them Obama is going to look a lot better to more people. At some point, those who criticize have to produce something themselves. This will be the downfall of most of the extreme right--outside of South Carolina, which is a hopeless political vortex in my book at least.

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  13. Thanks Mike. I think we all need a break from the partisan sniping.

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