The Midterm Election

Yesterday, a resounding defeat of Barack Obama's policies was implemented at the ballot box. Until yesterday, Democrats could pretend that there was nothing wrong with their policies, only the perception of those policies by the masses. No longer. Now, they must come to grips with the fact that the mandate they were given in 2006 and 2008 has been squandered in for the proverbial magic beans.

The exception is California, the state which I fear is so far out in its collective thought that it will slide into the Pacific due to its over-sized bureaucracy and debt. The newly elected governor is Democrat Jerry Brown, aka Governor Moonbeam, who was governor over 30 years ago. Barbara Boxer was reelected as well, whose liberal views seem to fit well with a California hell bent on its own destruction. Good luck left coasters! You'll need every bit of it.

Bedbugs and the Great Recession

Everywhere I look are stories that seem unrelated, but I fear are intertwined: the state of joblessness in America and bedbugs. Both seem to be in the running for scourge of the decade, and the parallels to the past seem inescapable. The Great Depession, well known for its stinging poverty and widespread hopelessness, was also the time of the last great wave of bedbugs. So now, as then, the nation is being fed on by parasites even as people struggle to find work. Shocking!

Experts tell us that the latest rise in bedbugs come from a ban of a substance known as DDT. Apparently DDT was totally effective in wiping out these pests, as well as making endangered bird eggs so brittle that they cracked before the chicks could survive. The EPA has banned the substance for years due to this fact.

Its an interesting result. That we are responsible enough to stop using a chemical that harms our environment is one thing. But, can we not come up with a strategy that is both environmentally responsible and effective? I think so, but these pests seem so intrusive, so insidious that only the most persistent of us can get rid of them.

Clearly, we have the means technically to get rid of the problem of bugs. Do we have the same ability to get the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs over the last few years back to work? I think so, but only if the elusive bipartisan force that every national candidate has claimed to control finally comes to the forefront. It will take both parties, Democrat and Republican to put aside their differences and hammer out something approaching sanity in our fiscal policy. Right now, it looks like not even an extension of the Bush tax cuts will come through before the election, and that is a sad commentary on our system.

Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '10

It seems that even the Democrats can see November coming: nothing but a headlong running rush into total election meltdown. Whatever they've tried in the past two years has led to rampant unemployment, stagnant wages among those still lucky enough to have a job and a general malaise that makes one yearn for the good karma of the Carter years.

Well, not really.

President Obama has passed the core of his agenda, but now he's lost control of his message. He can't seem to get things back to where they were before he was sworn in. And now he realizes its a hell of a lot easier to throw stones at the people in power than in is to be the MAN in power.

It is ludicrous in the extreme for him to blame Republicans for a sick economy that he has only made worse by flushing billions down the sewers in a Stimulus Package that anyone with any pretense of objectivity has condemned as a failure. "When it comes to just about everything we've done to strengthen the middle class and rebuild our economy, almost every Republican in Congress said no." Nothing could be a greater contradiction, a greater misstatement than that. As long as he continues along that trajectory, Democratic hopes for at least surviving November will lay in a smoking crater of Obama's making.

Something accomplished, anyway

Its a weird feeling to type something and it not make sense on screen. I guess that's to be expected since its been so long since I've posted something. That sort of unfamiliarity with writing is uncomfortable to me. I spent a long time writing in college, only to have some of that skill seem to wither away.

I had intended to do absolutely nothing today, but somehow I accomplished a few positive things. I'm okay with that. The motorcycle got a washdown (which it desperately needed after riding it through the rain a few times last week). I also finished mowing the remainder of my aunt's lawn. Did I mention I put up the FM broadcast antenna on the corner of my deck? AND I did some weed trimming around the house. Wow, all that productivity. It just sort of crept up on me like a bad case of indigestion.

Its back to work tomorrow. I can only hope I'm that productive without trying there too.

The Blue Note Hour

Tonight I find myself listening to the Blue Note Hour on XM 70. Normally I can listen to just about any form of jazz, but piano trio stuff is what I like best. Right now a low tempo jazzy groove is playing and for once I'm not obsessing over who it is.

My flaw in jazz listening is that I don't have the drive to seek out new artists and new titles. That is, when I hear something I like I just say to myself "wow, that's hot" and let it go. So what happens then is that a melody gets stuck in my head with no way to reference it to the outside world. I still have a chord progression that I've kept in my head for absolutely 10 years. I heard it when the local PBS FM station used to play jazz at night, and I've never heard it since.

The place looks ok.

Its amazing what a few minutes here and there can do when it comes to tidying up your place. I spent an hour and a half last Thursday gathering up papers and taking out junk and trash. Its stuff that's built up over the past few months to an intolerable level. I ran the vacuum cleaner around a bit and the place actually looks decent. I know that housecleaning is the most mundane subject possible, but hey, I've been looking for something to write about and this seems to be my only choice at the moment.

What's he building in there?

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