What If You Don't Have A Computer?

Tonight there is a "chocolate walk" in downtown Coeur d' Alene. Hub and I thought about going but there was no ad in this morning's paper telling times and places participating. I spent the next while going through the weeks papers until I found the one. One ad. In it we were told to go to a web site.

I got to thinking about how often we hear that. The local news always tells us if we want a more complete story go to their web site. So do all the network news shows and the cable shows. Even Jon Stewart will post an over long interview.

My computer space is not unlike the one pictured. I spend way too much time here. How many, however, don't have a computer or ready access to one? It must be frustrating for them if they want to dig deep into a story. Newspapers don't go into nearly the depth they did awhile back. Budget restraints. Smaller paper, fewer reporters. More and more news to investigate. Not a heartening equation.

Then there are those who don't have a computer nor do they read a newspaper. If they get news, it's the sound bites that pass for it. I'm assuming those without computers or papers do have television. It is the mass media of the moment. Computers soon will be.

Computers are a luxury becoming a necessity. In the meantime does the broadcast media have an obligation to get away from the soundbites and actually report the news? British Broadcasting does the best job of anyone at the moment but I'd guess it's not available everywhere.

I worry about our uninformed electorate. They still vote. As issues and policies become more complex and confusing how will they decide who to vote for with limited information or information skewed by political philosophies? Will it merely be the person they like best? The one they relate to? It will be interesting to see if the Republicans can unearth a candidate that will counter the cool, elitist image of the President. One who understands what the people are saying. Could it be a "personality" like Scott Brown or Sarah Palin? Should it?

Web sites will have analysis twenty four seven as elections draw near. Television tends to be reducdant and papers skimpy.

Will those with only televisiont be a class of voter unto themselves? How will they figure into the results? Or are they too insignificant to matter?

Just wondering.

The West's Revenge!

Imagine! Washington D.C. is up to it's keester in snow. Have you ever heard such weeping and wailing from the media? Washington D.C.. Government. The people who are trying to reshape our car culture into one of teeny weenie green machines that can't even be charged up for a whole day's worth of driving, much less pull through snow covered streets.

We Westerners chuckle at all this. Who's fault is it that they aren't prepared? New York City has a plan for it. You'd think D.C. would too since when it does snow the entire government shuts down. That's not bad mind you. They can't do any harm when they're closed down!

They won't learn from this experience because they tend not to learn from any experience, but they should note that their little vehicles aren't worth squat in the white stuff. The people in upstate New York know it. We bought our first SUV when we moved from Seattle to Rochester, New York several years ago. It was needed and well used. Lake effect snow does pile up!

Then there is all of us in the Midwest and West. We are no stranger to wind and snow and blizzard conditions pushing up drifts as high as the house. Fallen trees. Collapsed roofs. Community spirit when it comes to digging everyone out. Dig out parties sponsored by the local TV stations where anyone with a snow blower or a shovel is asked to pitch in. And, boy, they do!

Last year we had around 160 inches, the year before around 180. Getting around in that took some doing. It took big, heavy vehicles like our cherished rigs - pick ups and SUVs. Our beloved gas guzzlers. I wouldn't live west of the Mississippi, out in the country, without one.

So listen up you government types. Here's your shovel ready project. How many of you are actually going to do the labor? Or are you going to hire it out and count it as "job creation"?

As for getting around,a few politically incorrect types are brazen enough to drive SUVs. It's a good thing, too. One such person able to slip and slide around town in the ultimate of offensive vehicles, a Hummer, got his just reward. He pulled a police car out of a snowbank.

Those eastern elitists who like to claim there is no intelligent life west of the Mississippi have that wrong as well as everything else. The direction might need to be reversed!

Pork Fat Rules

Remember hearing that from Emeril as he would be cooking up some gastronomic delight that was bound to get your heart rate and cholesterol levels soaring?

Food. Good, tasty food. If you're not careful it can make you fat. Or worse, obese. Whose responsibility is it to prevent that from happening to you and your kids? The government? Or you?

I appreciate the fact that childhood obesity is becoming a problem. As first lady and a mother I suppose having it as a cause is a worthwhile undertaking for Michelle Obama. To use her kids as examples of the horrors of microwaved meals, or worse, seems a stretch when you look at them.

Even more of a stretch is Mrs. Obama's suggestion that childhood obesity is a threat to national security! “A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year," Mrs. Obama said. "This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.”

Do statements like that really have any impact other than sounding totally ridiculous? She goes on to say that we already know what the problem is and how to fix it. If that's true why does the government have to get involved?

Over the next decade she wants to spend $10 billion to overhaul the Childhood Nutrition Act! $10 billion! For what? One reason is funding food for 31 million school children. Thirty one million?

I've a few thoughts. How about getting Mr. Obama to loosen the bank regulations he has imposed on banks so they can loan money to small businesses. Then they can start hiring again. Then parents will have the money to buy groceries for their families. The better the salary the better the food. The fattening food is the most inexpensive and when you're unemployed that's what you end up eating.

Then too, there is something called parental responsibility. Letting kids eat nothing but fast food is not something the government needs to tell you is unhealthy. If parents can't figure that out without government programs maybe they shouldn't have kids in the first place!

As for obesity disqualifying people for military service, I wonder how many are actually turned away because of their weight. If we're short of troops I'd guess it's because a lot of young people would rather not get killed in a war. With two going on their odds aren't the greatest.

Then again, looking at the 10 billion figure, we'd probably get it from the Chinese. Maybe we should eat more like they do. You rarely see an obese Oriental and their cuisine is a healthy one.

To me this is indeed another form of pork. Rather than a Congressman getting it for a pet project in his state or district, it's the administration putting it into a pet project of Mrs. Obamas.

If parents weren't so stressed by their financial worries maybe they'd spend more time getting their kids away from their PlayStation's and television and back outdoors.

Government programs are iffy at best. Take the requirement for restaurants to put nutritional information on their menus for every item. If I want a Big Mac with it's 540 calories, 26 grams of fat and 75 milligrams of cholesterol, seeing the count on the menu isn't going to stop me. Nor many others I would think.

The cost to the restaurants to implement this program is huge. Unless the government chipped in to offset the cost of this mandate.

Right. Like I'll skip the fries.

Not Another Book!

I thought Jenny Sanford, soon to be former wife of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, might be different than other political wives caught up in their husbands indiscretions.

I applauded when she absented herself from his admission of sins press conference. I've always wondered why wives subject themselves to the humiliation they need not share.

Now, however, she has written a tell all book which has made her no better than the others. I've yet to read one that makes the woman look good. In most cases it makes them look weak and foolish rather than merely wronged. Why do they do it? I'm puzzled.

They must know they have to make the round of talk shows to promote the book. I saw Jenny being interviewed by Babara Walters, then she was on The View, later on Larry King. I think Jon Stewart comes tonight.

The woman I thought to be strong and a possible role model on how to deal with men such as her husband came across as a somewhat disheveled middle aged woman defending herself for staying with a man who was questionable from the start.

Had Hub told me he had trouble with the fidelity issue, as Mark told Jenny, it would have been full stop for me. Knowing the thought was in his mind would have meant his heart didn't belong to me, that he was still searching. Marriage would have been put on hold and probably would never have happened.

How do you forgive a man who wouldn't accompany you to the funeral of a family member or considered attending a Lamaze class with you a waste of time? The fact he had the Argentinian mistress should have come as no surprise. The fact he declared her, not you, his soul mate was just one more slap in the face.

She revealed more than I cared to hear in those interviews. She revealed not the strong, principled woman I had expected, instead one who has low self esteem that seems compelled to explain away her husband's boorish behavior after describing it in detail.

Why? Oh, why.

Republicans Beware

In learning that the President is summoning both sides of Congress to a televised discussion of his health care initiative, I suspect the Republicans are being set up.

One, the people have spoken. They don't want the reform that is now on the back burner. Yet the President will not start with a clean and more simple slate. Yesterday, when I wrote of the Palin appeal, this is an example of why she has it. She doesn't give the impression that she thinks she knows it all and that the rest of us are just too stupid to "get it". The President gives exactly that impression.

The Republicans do have some good suggestions as do some Democrats that their own party ignored. That's the worrisome part. Nancy Pelosi has her mind set and no amount of political theater is going to change it. Obama can prod and cajole to his heart's content but it's Pelosi who gloves the iron fist!

The Republicans need to lay out their ideas as clearly, concisely and thoroughly as possible. They also need to have the fortitude to point out the weaknesses in the current plan as they see them and doable alternatives - along with how they intend to pay for everything.

The Democrats are going to fight tort reform because they are in the pocket of the lawyers. They will fight pre-existing conditions and selling across state lines because of the insurance industry. There is a lot more that needs to happen, like addressing medicare reimbursements. When the Mayo Clinic says no more medicare patients we seniors all need to worry.

So. The only way for the Republicans to avoid being accused of having no ideas or being no more than obstructionists is to shift it to the Democrats on live television.

I'd like to think Pelosi and her pals would clean up their act on television but, frankly, I don't see that happening. It isn't that they haven't heard us. If their media enablers can make fun of Palin for having notes scribbled on her hand, you know nothing is missed. Not even the irony of Obama using teleprompters in front of a sixth grade class!

They just don't care.