Motley Moose – Archive

The middle part of the last decade was pretty rough for me. In 2003, my mother was diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease). My father had passed away in 1999, so my mother lived alone. She was a very independent woman, but eventually she could no longer manage on her own. That’s when I became her caregiver.

Being a caregiver is an all-consuming task, as anyone who has ever been one can attest, especially when it is a debilitating disease, like ALS. One of the hardest things anyone has to experience in life is watching a loved one wither away. When the end finally comes, it can seem like a blessing. That’s a tough thought to deal with. Wanting someone’s suffering to end is basically wishing for him or her to die. There can be a lot of guilt mixed in with the grief. It’s no wonder many caregivers fall into depression after the death of their charge.

That’s when Alex came into the story. Al came to live with me shortly after my mother’s death. He was about 6-years at the time. I had been thinking about getting another dog for years without ever acting on the thought. Quite typically, for me, I had dithered until the decision was taken away from me. My son was forced to move and could not keep both of his dogs. The thought of Al, who was a somewhat emotionally fragile dog, being forced to live with strangers wasn’t a very pretty one. Suddenly, I wasn’t alone anymore.

Ah, what a quaint notion – justice for all. Wake up, people. We live in a plutocracy.

From the Vail Daily in Colorado:

Alleged hit-and-run driver may not face felony

A financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday.

Say, what?

Bicyclist hit from behind

Milo was bicycling eastbound on Highway 6 just east of Miller Ranch Road, when Erzinger allegedly hit him with the black 2010 Mercedes Benz sedan he was driving. Erzinger fled the scene and was arrested later, police say.

Erzinger allegedly veered onto the side of the road and hit Milo from behind. Milo was thrown to the pavement, while Erzinger struck a culvert and kept driving, according to court documents.

Erzinger drove all the way through Avon, the town’s roundabouts, under I-70 and stopped in the Pizza Hut parking lot where he called the Mercedes auto assistance service to report damage to his vehicle, and asked that his car be towed, records show. He did not ask for law enforcement assistance, according to court records.

Hmm…

Sounds serious.

So, who’s this Milo character?  

Meet the people who gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives

25% of Americans do not believe in evolution.

21% of Americans believe there are real sorcerors, conjurers, and warlocks.

25% do not believe in astrology.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in 10 Americans mistakenly believe the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act creates a panel that makes decisions about end-of-life care.

20% of Americans believe the sun revolves around the Earth. – Gallup 1999

33% don’t believe the 1st Amendment applies to all religions.

24% believe President Obama is a Muslim.

Voter participation in American mid-term elections is notoriously low. The 2010 election is no exception. Only 41.5% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Approximately 56% voted for the GOP. That means 23% of eligible American voters gave the GOP control of the House of Representatives. Look once more at that list above and ask yourself – Is this any way to run a country?

Thank you for all you have done for the people of this country during your legislative career. Thank you for being a strong and effective Speaker of the House for the past four years. Thank you for standing strong for policies that would help all Americans, not just a favored few. Thank you for all of the bills you ushered through the last two congresses, whether they eventually became law or not. Thank you for being the President’s strong right-hand during the fight for health care reform. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Sincerely yours,

Dem-leaning Independent voter

** UPDATE **

Nancy Pelosi has announced she will seek the Minority Leader position.

Read her letter after the jump

Ripple, wave, or tsunami, who knows? It will all play out over the next few hours.

The earliest poll closings are listed below:

• Indiana

• Eastern Kentucky

7:00 pm ET

• Florida (except Western panhandle which close at 8 pm.)

• Georgia

• Western Kentucky

• New Hampshire

• South Carolina

• Vermont

• Virginia

Keep an eye on Indiana’s 2nd and 9th district results. These are two close races. A loss in the 9th won’t be much of an indicator, but a loss in the 2nd where Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly is running for re-election could be a bad portent.

Which races are  you watching?

Full list of poll closings after the break:

In its heyday, Flint, Michigan had nearly 200,000 residents and was the governmental seat of one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Since those days in the early 1970’s, the population has dropped by 45% and poverty rates have skyrocketed. The future seems bleak. A 2008 Forbes article named Flint one of “America’s Fastest Dying Cities.”

Many people are working to halt Flint’s decline. The Downtown Development Authority has revitalized a moribund main street and the local land bank has repurposed many empty properties. The Genesee County Land Bank in Flint has been recognized by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government as a national model for getting vacant property and land back on the tax rolls.

“There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why… I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” – Robert Kennedy

It’s very obvious that many of you are upset over conditions in this country and the direction in which we seem to be going. This has led to a natural desire to throw the bums out of office. That attitude is understandable. What is not understandable is the support for the political party that not only promoted the policies that led us into this mess, but also promises to make things worse for most Americans.

Here are eight initiatives the GOP has in store for America.

1) Privatize SS

Privatizing Social Security has been a longtime goal for Republicans. Current GOP elected officials and candidates that have spoken in support of privatizing Social Security include Eric Cantor R-OH, Paul Ryan R-WI, Michelle Bachman R-MN, Sharron Angle, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and others. If their plan had been in effect in 2008 then American seniors would have lost 40% of their retirement savings and income. The savings of younger Americans might have never recovered and they would have been doomed to spend their retirement years in poverty.

2) Eliminate Medicare

In 2009, the Entire Republican Leadership Voted to Turn Medicare into a Voucher Program. In 2009, Republican Leader John Boehner, Republican Whip Eric Cantor, Republican Conference Chair Mike Pence, NRCC Chairman Pete Sessions and 133 other Republicans voted to turn Medicare into vouchers that decline in value, ending the program as its presently known. [Roll Call Vote #191, 4/2/09; Associated Press, 4/2/09]  

While watching television has never been high on my to-do list, I have found a couple of new shows I like. The main one is Detroit 1-8-7. It is a gritty cop show that follows the day-to-day activities of a top Detroit Homicide unit. To-date, four of the scheduled twelve episodes have aired. Critical reception has been mixed. I find it compelling enough to record each week.

The main complaint from the critics is that the show brings nothing new to the genre. While I would agree with that assessment somewhat, I don’t think it is entirely accurate. Few shows have managed to capture the reality of the streets of a city like Detroit. Memphis Beat certainly missed the mark. I’ve lived in the Memphis area and worked in Memphis and the show was a big disappointment. The less said about the realism of Miami Vice, the better. NYPD Blue had a similar gritty realism. However, it is difficult, and perhaps unfair, to compare a new show to arguably the best cop show of all time.

Warning: I’m going full Godwin’s Law right from the start.

During the middle of the 20th Century, the world watched as the German people were led into a disastrous multi-front war. Rational people have struggled to understand how the German public could have been led down the path to war and genocide.  More than sixty years later it is still hard to believe it all happened.

These quotes offer an explanation about how a seemingly rational, modern populace could have descended into such madness.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” – Joseph Goebbels

“It is not truth that matters, but victory” – Adolph Hitler

“The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.” – Adolph Hitler

“Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it” – Adolph Hitler

“Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.” – Adolph Hitler

When I look around at the political climate in this country leading up to the 2010 elections, I am struck by how successfully the GOP has managed to mislead the American populace. I have come to the sad conclusion that the real difference between the Republicans and Democrats can be explained by the quotes above.

The Democrats looked at the disaster of the 1930’s and 40’s and came to the conclusion that we must always be on guard against this happening in America. The GOP looked at the same disaster and saw a road map to electoral success. How else to explain the shouts of socialism, death panels, trickledown economics, or the Iraq war?

What GOP lie of 2010 bugs you the most?

The past twenty months, since January 20, 2008, have been a very traumatic experience for those who follow politics. The polarization of the American political process has never been greater. Raw hatred spews from Right and Left on a daily minute-by-minute basis. It looks like things are only going to get worse before they get better.

One of Barack Obama’s campaign slogans was, “Change we can believe in.” In retrospect, that may have been a very poor choice for a slogan. Any change that didn’t go far enough was only going to anger some on the Left. Those on the Left that are mad at the President have turned this anger into a feedback loop where any change is bad, because it can never go far enough to satisfy them.

It’s worse on the Right. There is one thing all conservatives have in common and that is a fear of change. They cling to the status quo or pine for a time that change has passed by. That is the essence of conservatism. Talk of change to a conservative is like a waving a red flag in front of a bull. Trumpeting your intention to bring change is guaranteed to bring them running to man the ramparts of status quo.