The Hippie Professor

When I first started writing this blog back in August, I posted something almost every day.  Obviously, that was unsustainable and I couldn’t hope to continue at that rate – but I had a lot of things I wanted to say, and I was encouraged that at least a few people were interested in reading my ideas and discussing the issues.

Then, after making a post on October 1^st, I suddenly went silent.

Some people even noticed, and asked why.

I never made an active decision to stop writing – life simply intervened.  The last few months have seen a lot of stressful events in my family.  It started with my son hospitalized with H1N1, followed by the sudden and tragic death of a close family friend, followed 3 weeks later by the death of our 92-year-old family matriarch, and capped off with my 87-year-old Alzheimer’s patient mother breaking her femur and landing in the hospital.  It is perhaps understandable that my political ranting took a back seat.

(OK – a new Xbox under the Christmas tree provided some distraction as well.  Sheesh – I could probably lose my hippie card for admitting that.)

But – in all honesty – there is a lot more to the story….

I simply became burned out from the constant political roller-coaster.  Every time it looked like we were about to have a breakthrough in health care legislation, there was Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson or some other lowlife stepping in to crush the momentum.  Every time I dared to hope I ended up instead being frustrated and crushed. The Massachusetts election followed two days later by a devastating Supreme Court ruling was a nasty one-two punch to the gut.

I am tempted to throw up my hands and quit.  Perhaps I just don’t have the fortitude to withstand heated political debate.  I am a passionate guy and I care deeply about the issues – and it hurts to lose….

….but that would mean that the bad guys had won.

I have to get back up and get back into the fight.  Things are looking decidedly bad for Democrats and progressives.  I can’t walk away now.

So – it is back in the saddle.  The windmills have been getting downright bold – time to put them in their place.

Extensive blog posts will soon follow.  In the meantime, here are a few of my current thoughts.

– Scott Brown did not kill health care reform.  Joe “I have no ties to the insurance industry” Lieberman did.  Ben “pork belly” Nelson did.  There are others. This thing could have been done months ago – but instead they decided to drag their feet for personal gain.  Instead of doing their job, they decided to put personal power politics ahead of the public good.   Scott Brown is only relevant because they made him relevant.  Joe… Ben… people are going to die needlessly because of the game you played.  I hope your conscience is haunting you.

– Speaking of health care reform….. if Democrats had any guts it would NOT be dead.  My very first blog post (you can see it here) urged Democrats to have some guts and ram a progressive health care reform bill through – re-election be damned.  They can still do that and they should still do that.  Look – we are going to take a beating in 2010 midterms.  There probably isn’t much we can do about that now.  Instead of playing nicey-nicey and trying to save a lost election, use the time you have to get the job done.  You aren’t going to win the election anyway – so you might as well try to do the right thing on your way out.

– Ironically, the Massachusetts election provides an opportunity to have a better, more progressive health care bill than might have been imagined before.  All it would take is to have the House pass the Senate bill, and then to have the Senate add some progressive reforms via reconciliation.  But – that would take some guts.

– More irony:  In the era of right-wing “purity tests” the so-called savior of the Republican Party – Scott Brown – is decidedly to the left of any other GOP Senator.

– Scylla or Charybdis? Looks like we got both.

– Prediction:  The Supreme Court’s decision on campaign financing will go down in history as being one of the worst of all time.  In the end it will prove devastating to our form of government.  Or maybe not – corporations will control how the history books are written so it won’t actually go down in history that way.  It will still be true, though.

– Conservatives are ecstatic about the Supreme Court’s decision on campaign financing.  I can understand why rich conservatives feel this way – the investing class will certainly do better.  Hell, I have a good job and I have investments so chances are that I personally will do better financially.  What I don’t understand is how rank-and-file conservatives – the ones who do not have much money – think this is good for them.  Sorry – but corporate America does not look after the little guy.  Giving more power to corporations will do little more than make the rich richer.

– The constitution gives me free speech – but does it give me the right to drown out the guy next to me by shouting louder and louder until he can’t be heard?  I don’t think so.

– My party is greatly underestimating the danger of Sarah Palin.   I cringe every time I hear someone say they hope Palin is the GOP nominee because she will be so easy to beat.  Don’t be so confident – Massachusetts was supposed to be safe too.  She is far too dangerous to be taking so lightly.

– A new poll shows that 63 percent of Republicans think Barak Obama is a Socialist.  Wow.  I would wager that fewer than 10 percent of those people could actually define what a Socialist is.

– Did you catch Tancredo’s remarks at the Teabagger convention today?  Not just in any old speech but in the opening speech – the speech intended to set the tone for the whole convention?  I quote:  “people who could not even spell the word ‘vote’, or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.” He goes on to blame this on “”the cult of multiculturalism, aided by leftists, liberals all over who don’t have the same idea about America as we do.”  Wow.  Can anyone honestly deny that this is a hateful, racist group?

Tags: campaign finance, democrat, Health Care Reform, left-wing, liberal, political, teabaggers, wordpress-political-blogs

This entry was posted on February 5, 2010 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Politics, wordpress-political-blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.