Its not quite eleven pm. I was putting the throw rug, now dry, back on the basement floor. While doing that and sweeping up the ceiling off the floor I watched the opening of SNL. It was a groady skit about a couple groady adults attempting to relive their groady teenage experiences. It was a reprise of some characters that haven’t been around for a while because the cast members have gone on to other things in life.
Having just watched a decade old film that I’d always heard was fun, The Truth about Cats and Dogs, the evenings expectations had been raised to high to sink to what promised to be a less than stellar SNL.
I’m not sleepy even though the day has seemed quite long. Two hours of mad mopping left me tired the rest of the day. I got a two-hour long reprieve when one grandson took a nap and the other went with his Grandmother to the latest Chipmunk movie. Chipwrecked is getting lousy Rotten Tomatoes scores but as Grandma said, she was taking a four-year-old to see it not a critic.
So, no soul searching yet. I’ll move on.
Those of you, about a thousand strong, know that according to my previous posts I did little writing in the book today because I’ve written quite a number of posts. Its quite simple. Either I post in my blog or I write my book. If I only post I have little to build a campaign for Congress on. If I write a book, well, if its a good book that’s quite a different thing. I think my book could be quite interesting and maybe, in this dysfunctional political Era, marginally important.
The Sullivan blog posted three video snippets of Ron Paul being interviewed on the Leno Show. He got a standing ovation upon stepping up to the couch. That says more to me than anything I’ve seen from most of the GOP Presidential hopefuls. They are all handcuffed by a party whose power brokers expect them to say asinine things. Unlike the rest Ron Paul is willing to be honest where he has substantive disagreements with GOP malarky. He has only one chief bit of silliness about him. He told Leno there was nothing wrong with our tax system back in 1913. That was before the Federal Reserve Act. Paul wants to relieve Andy Jackson and kill the National Bank.
Hell, My long dead Grandfather and his brother, Bruce, took part in a debate on whether we should have a national banking system in 1908 at their College. (They financed their way through Park College near Kansas City by working on local farms.)
They lost the debate but my Grandfather’s brother went on to write a seminal book on economics which kept getting the text book treatment for years afterward while completing his Doctorate in Economics at one of the Ivy’s. He became the statistician for the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank. He’d just laugh at Ron Paul’s trying to bring back William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech.
That said Paul could be channeling my rock ribbed Republican Grandfather when he talks foreign policy and the neocon’s bloodlust to teach nuisance nations the hard lessons of Cowboy Diplomacy. My Grandfather, as I like to point out every six months on the blog, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in the trenches of France in 1918. He came home thinking Woodrow Wilson was little better than an ass for getting us into a war that was none of our business. That used to be the line of the entire Republican Party and they did everything they could to discourage our getting involved in the Second World War. God Bless Ron Paul.
I said some tough things about one of the candidates I will challenge if I crank out a respectable book. I know nothing bad about Jeff Anderson. Still, I won’t take back anything I’ve said about him. He promises to be a nonentity should he be elected because congressmen are all nonentities outside of their own Congressional Districts.
Let me illustrate by taking a bite out of Rick Nolan. Rick by the way sent me a nice Christmas card today. No one does that anymore in the Facebook Age except businesses and politicians. We gave up the habit ten years ago as have all but the oldest of our family members. That’s rather sad admission for a guy who loves Mel Torme’s sentimental Christmas song to make.
I have done zilch oppo research so I could be wildly off in this analysis. I expect all my challengers to be non entities in the next Congress should they be elected. That’s because individuals, rarely stick out lest they be hammered down by all the other press release spewing Congressmen. The best thing I can think to say about Nolan is pretty speculative but it strikes me as being likely. Nolan knows Congress is a crappy place for an ambitious and impatient man to serve. He only stuck it out three terms and quit. Oh, he could have stayed for twenty more years and been a drudge in the Congress and a big shot back in Minnesota but twenty years of boot licking can turn a Congressman into a tyrant when he/she finally achieves serious seniority. There is no place more like Japan in America than Congress when it comes to waiting your turn.
After an inglorious couple years in the House of Representatives Lyndon Johnson got into the Senate as quick as he could. Lincoln had a miserable single year in Congress enduring the life of a nothing. The one thing of note that he did was play the Ron Paul card and oppose an engineered war with Mexico by President Polk. His party mostly supported the war so he was also like Paul in that regard.
I don’t know what Nolan did after retiring. It sounds like he came back to Minnesota to be a regular guy. That is noteworthy and admirable. He’ll be a fine member of the band should he be elected. He will, however, be little more than that. Just a vote. One of 435. And I thought I was powerless on a nine member school board!
We need more than a bunch of self-righteous Democrats replacing a bunch of self-righteous Republicans. We need better angels.
Long time readers of this blog who have not met me may find that observation hard to square with some of my posts. I’ve developed a really snide streak over the years. Until the last decade or so I’ve always suffered fools gladly. Maybe its because I’m getting older that I find sufferance harder to come by.
If there is a point to my incipient book I’d like to make its that we have allowed our two enduring political parties to become run by an army of hacks. I think the situation is far worse currently in the GOP. I’m not sure these hacks all started out that way. Many may have had high ideals in their youth but if so they’ve degenerated into what we call “The Beltway,” “main street media,” or Fox News.
Well, I’ve insulted enough people. Now I can go to bed.
