It's Jobs,Stupid!

Jobs, jobs, jobs.  It's the Presidential mantra these days.  Pass my jobs bill or I'll run against a do nothing Congress.

This is obviously aimed at the Republicans.  So how do you explain that the Democrats are off on another vacation?  Even more, how do you explain that upon their return the jobs bill will be on the back burner so they can work on a bill to label China as a currency manipulator.  Wow, that should generate millions of jobs in the near future.  Maybe even in time for Christmas.  Right.

So who doesn't get it here?  It could be me, true.  The more I watch this circus the less I understand.  I guess there is no urgency to produce meaningful legislation that all the experts NOT holding office are encouraging.  Repeal some of the more onerous regulations and simplify the tax code.  Why is it that Congress does not want to address these? Probably for the same reason the country is starting into a new fiscal year, for the fourth year in a row, without a budget.  Thank you Senate.  Thank you Democrats.

This means another year of continuing resolutions every couple of months or so.  It will probably also mean more squabbles like the one going on now over disaster aid. Unfortunately the pattern and the outcome are predictable.  Do it our way or we'll close down the government!  Same song, I've lost count of the verse.

Jobs?  Don't hold your breath.  If anyone is wondering why Herman Cain and Ron Paul are resonating with the electorate, this is as good an example as you can get.  It sure isn't anyone from the tea party types who insist on holding us hostage to their ideas nor the President and his temporary measures that only encourages oncoing uncertainty.

You know, Christmas is just around the corner.  There will be a point in time when the government can no longer keep us afloat with extensions of unemployment while they're keeping companies from hiring because of uncertainty.  The shopping season may be dismal.  Food banks are already empty and we have yet to hit the Thanksgiving rush.  People who buy those extra turkey dinners may well be hard pressed to buy their own. It's a reason lay away plans are back.

But vacations are important to our lawmakers.  After all, it takes a lot of energy to sidestep responsibility to the people.

What Happens To The Kids?

Wife disappears, husband becomes person of interest and in-laws feud over custody while things get sorted out.  Or the other way around.  Such stories appear far too frequently.

Usually the one who has disappeared is found at some point in time ~ dead. So what happens to the children?

I don't mean who gets custody, whether it be the spouse or the in-laws.  What happens to them mentally?  In this case I'm reflecting on the Susan Powell case which began shortly before Christmas two years ago.  Her boys were two and four.

It seems husband Josh had an urge to go camping at 12:30 a.m. in December, took the boys with him and returned to find his wife missing.  This is so ludicrous I have trouble getting my head around it but the police have not yet been able to connect husband with wife's disappearance.

But what about the boys?  There must have been strife in the household.  This affects kids.  They often blame themselves when their parents split.  How must they feel when one disappears?  Gone.  Out of their lives.  How does a a 2 and 4 year old absorb this?

Life goes on.  Husband takes the boys and moves in with his father.  Two years later old Dad is arrested himself for having taken secret videos of women and girls, including the boys' mother, doing what they do in a bathroom.  Grandpa has been arrested!  The boys, now 4 and 6, are removed from the home until child welfare decides who should have custody.  Again, how do a now four and six year old process this?

I remember the strangest things from my childhood even now.  How accurate those recollections are I have no idea, but I can remember things from way before school age.  As these boys grow up, what will be embedded in their psyche?

I would suppose studies are made of such children.  To see how they process the events and what effect it has on them.  It seems to me it would be a terrible burden on a child's mind.  Will they roll with it?  Will they be bitter and rebellious?  Only time will tell what sort of citizens they will grow up to be.

It's sad.  They've had a horrendously traumatic start to their lives.  I hope there will be appropriate guidance available to them as they begin to mature and have a better grasp as to what has happened to them.  It's there.  If only in the subconscious or a state they have yet to fully grasp.

It brings to mind a comment made in a F. Scott Fitzgerald novel about the mental decline of a friend:

The change came a long way back-but at first it didn't show. The manner remains intact for some time after the morale cracks.

You just never know if or when someone will crack from something long in their past.  So what will happen to these kids?

The Summer Doldrums

What have I written this week?  Two posts? Man, I just can't get myself psyched up enough to address much of anything.  It's certainly not for a lack of material, that's for sure.  But you know what?  At the moment I'm just plain tired of politics.  And even more tired of complaining.

Is that a refreshing change of pace or what?  I don't do Twitter and very little on Facebook other than an occasional photo and playing the Zoo game.  That is a monumental waste of time but the animals are cute, so what the heck.

So what have I been doing?  Puttering about in the yard.  My acupuncture has gotten me to the point where I'm functioning pretty well.  It's a blessing for the yard, and in a back handed way for my blogging.  It keeps me away from my computer.

I've also been catching up on my spring house cleaning.  I'd like to get it done before the holidays but I'm not pushing it since there's still winterizing the yard and that will take some time.  We've begun pruning. That's a big step!

If I were a modern person I'd be writing all this on either Facebook or Twitter.  I'm anything but a modern person.  I consider it an accomplishment, besides who really cares?

It's hot today.  I'm going to my shop after I write this and work on my chess pieces.  That activity exercises my brain just as much as blogging and puts me in a far better frame of mind.

This too shall probably pass.  With cooler weather coming I'm sure my feisty side will return and I'll be back on my soap box.  There's so much to be said and changing daily. Autumn is officially here.  I'm sure the doldrums will follow summer into the netherworld of things past.  Politics will again spark my interest and I'll be spewing out opinion.  Such is the nature of a blogger.  It permeates one's soul.

We NEED Free Trade Agreements!

Another indicator of why I think the President Peter Principled out as a community organizer is his refusal to send three pending free trade agreements to Congress.  You know, those agreements that eliminate tariffs allowing for, ahem, free trade, between countries.

The three outstanding would be between the U.S. and South Korea, Panama and Columbia.

Whats at stake?  Cars for South Korea, heavy equipment for the other two.  Companies like Caterpillar desperately want it.

Think about what it would do for the economy.  Actually selling our goods.  Think of the jobs that could produce. Think about how much those countries can get their needs filled elsewhere if we continue to drag our feet.  These had been negotiated, just not finalized, before Obama took office.  Is this just one more area in which he has no interest so he ignores it?

Once again, the President has inserted himself into the legislative process and created more problems than he solved.  He wants to do something called 'trade adjustment assistance' first.  This is a payoff to the unions.

Harry Reid held a cloture vote opening the way. He knows Boehner would get it through the house. But here's the problem.  The Republicans don't trust the President to keep his word to move the agreements forward if they pass the 'adjustments' first.  The President not a man of his word?  Well, look what happened with the debt ceiling negotiations, among others.

The shame of it is the mistrust.  This isn't even a matter of ideology.  It's a matter of, well, mistrust. What a sorry state that is. It jeopardizes our ability to trade with healthy, growing economies who need our products. Why?

Once again the President dithers, unable or unwilling to make a decision, while the rest of us suffer for it. Why?

When I have a rant like this I'm often asked, if not Obama, then who?  Well, the one man no one seems to want to look at is Jon Huntsman.  Why is that, while I'm asking why?  Could it be time to look at the quiet achievers rather than the show boaters?  If not, why?

The Four Horesemen Of Our Apocalypse?

Remember back a couple of years when Honduran Manuel Zelaya tried to get re-elected by ignoring their constitution?  He was turned out by their supreme court and escorted out of the country by the military.  Oddly, though knowing how corrupt he was, our government insisted it had been a military coup and demanded his reinstatement.  To no avail I might add.  Right was on the Hondurans side.

Even stranger, we've never come off that stand and Zelaya is now back in Honduras and with the help of his brothers in corruption, no doubt, is jockeying for a return to power.  Like Qaddafi, he has his loyalists.

If for no other reason, having Hillary as Secretary of State may be good to the point that women tend to be better at multi-tasking than men.  With everything going on in the middle east and other worldly hot spots, this one may deserve a giant portion of our attention.  Because of its proximity and because it's happening again!

This time in Nicaragua .  Daniel Ortega, another longtime enemy of the United States, is going to run for another term as President in clear violation of their constitution.  One wonders where we'll stand on this one if the opposition should prevail!

Mr. Ortega, along with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, are big buddies with Iran's Ahmadinejad.  I can't help but wonder what they chit chat about when they get together for cocktails.  You can bet it isn't about how wonderful America is and wishing they could be just like us!

It's a frightening scenario.  With Cuba within shouting distance and the others not much further.  With Iran's nuclear ambitions that we clearly are unable to curtail, fueled by Venezuela's oil money and willing compatriots in the hood, we've much to be concerned about.

I'd like to think our State department and the administration have a handle on this even though we hear little about it.  But I don't.  I don't think our President has any interest in foreign policy nor the ability to oversee it.  It's a necessary nuisance, getting in the way of his troubled domestic agenda.

Maybe it's time for him to listen to those beginning to call for him to give up on a second term.  Those in his own party though what the far left want of him is even worse than what we're now enduring.

Someone I was talking politics with recently likened the country's current situation to the perfect storm.  Everything bad is converging in one spot at one time.  We know how that ends.

Between the world's economic crisis, the ever spreading wars,  a frustrated, underemployed, under housed populace and a government in Washington that can neither lead nor legislate, we've never been at a lower ebb.

I'm worried, really worried about our country and the world.  A nuclear holocaust isn't as far removed from reality as it once was.

We need new people in Washington.  We need people savvy about the ways of the world, not detached.  We need people worried about the world, as well as our country, over and above their personal ideology.

If we don't elect such people these four power hungry, corrupt men, right under our nose, may just make it moot.  They have nothing to lose, it's their way.  We have everything to lose because it has never been ours.