Saw a new ad for Meg Whitman, the would be politician who wants to be queen of California (and maybe the U.S.), today. She now has former employees and friends expounding her virtues.
I am not exaggerating, but I believe I see or hear about 5 ads for her every day. EVERY DAY! These have been going on for a couple of months now. That means that by the November elections, I will have seen or heard her ads at least 1,500 times. Yes, seeing the woman that is buying the governership of one of the largest economies in the world is going to be in my face at least one thousand five hundred times before she takes receipt of her purchase. Oh, joy. Oh, bliss. Oh, puke.
Apparently, she is a penny pincher and trims to the bone. Watch out all you voters, and non-voters, who need help to survive in this world. A little more of that threadbare rug that you live on is going to disappear.
A footnote: This avalanche of advertising is but a preview of what we will see once the corporate big boys start buying airtime for their bought and paid for politicians and pet causes. I mean, don't we already see enough ads for drilling and mining everything possible? It's a "let's find and use it all right now, before it runs out" attitude. Screw the kids and grandkids. They won't need it, just like they won't need clean air to breathe or clean water to drink. And, oh, that means the companies behind this carpet bombong will get all the profits from it, too.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Thursday, February 25, 2010
"The Summit"
Or, in layman's terms, an exercise in futility.
Having to work and needing to interact with co-workers meant I was able to only listen to some of the Summit in Washington DC today. It's probably a good thing. The Republicans spent a good portion of the time spinning fairy tales and whining that we should start over again. Ad nauseum
What gets me more than the broken record of general mendacity is that the Republicans keep saying that all Americans are afraid of healthcare reform and WE want to start over again. Excuse me, but you do not speak for me. Nor, dare I say, do you speak for a goodly majority of Americans. At least not the ones you've been able to frighten half to death with your lies. So, stop including me in your statements.
On a slightly different note,Chris Matthews said something interesting in his analysis of the Summit. He said the Democrats might, and I'm paraphrasing, get up the courage to do their jobs and finish passing a bill.
So many of the Democrats have been given several opportunities to find their spines. The President has delivered a couple of powerful speeches and a massive put down of the Republicans on their own turf. What have the Democrats done? Squat. They wouldn't know what to do with a spine if they found one, much less grew it!
Sorry, now I'm generalizing. Anthony Weiner, Alan Greyson, and a couple precious others do not belong to the spineless masses. God, I wish we had more like them!
Having to work and needing to interact with co-workers meant I was able to only listen to some of the Summit in Washington DC today. It's probably a good thing. The Republicans spent a good portion of the time spinning fairy tales and whining that we should start over again. Ad nauseum
What gets me more than the broken record of general mendacity is that the Republicans keep saying that all Americans are afraid of healthcare reform and WE want to start over again. Excuse me, but you do not speak for me. Nor, dare I say, do you speak for a goodly majority of Americans. At least not the ones you've been able to frighten half to death with your lies. So, stop including me in your statements.
On a slightly different note,Chris Matthews said something interesting in his analysis of the Summit. He said the Democrats might, and I'm paraphrasing, get up the courage to do their jobs and finish passing a bill.
So many of the Democrats have been given several opportunities to find their spines. The President has delivered a couple of powerful speeches and a massive put down of the Republicans on their own turf. What have the Democrats done? Squat. They wouldn't know what to do with a spine if they found one, much less grew it!
Sorry, now I'm generalizing. Anthony Weiner, Alan Greyson, and a couple precious others do not belong to the spineless masses. God, I wish we had more like them!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Revenge is Mine Saith the Republicans
I look at the general state of things in Washington DC and am reminded of someone I worked with many years ago.
Let’s call him Max. It isn’t his real name, but it’ll do. Max held grudges like no-one else I’ve known, at least personally. He lived by a very particular code. If he didn’t like you or felt that you had slighted him in any way, large or small or non-existent, he did everything possible short of violence to get you.
It didn’t matter who might get caught in the crosshairs. Other people, the job, client work, the company, they were all considered expendable so that Max could get his revenge.
You could be working with this guy for years and have a decent, even friendly, business relationship. Then, one day, you might point out an error in his work. It was probably something minor, but needed to be corrected before going to the client. Didn’t matter. The perceived criticism was all it took.
Max would spend every spare moment, and some moments that should have been devoted to client work, to destroy you in the office. We were a small office, not more than a hundred people, so it was a fairly obvious and disturbing process.
The campaign would start off subtly, a hint here, a remark there. Max would criticize your work, belittle you personally while your back was turned and make unflattering comments to co-workers as you passed in the hallway. If satisfying results did not come fast enough, Max would escalate his campaign until the target quit, begged forgiveness (without really knowing what they’d done wrong) or were reassigned.
It didn’t matter to him who or what he damaged along the way. If the client was lost, no problem. If other staff left the company because of the toxic environment, who cares? The only thing that counted was that Max felt he achieved his goal of destroying his “enemy”.
This was allowed to go on for years before the local CEO had enough and asked him to leave. By then, we’d lost clients and good staff. The damage had truly been done.
To my point…I look at the scorched Earth politics being conducted by the Republicans in Washington DC and wonder when it will end. Does it need for the country to grind to a four year long standstill before they are happy? We are already pretty much there because the Democrats still can’t find the spine and will to do their jobs on their own. So, another three years of deepening debt, more unemployment, higher healthcare costs, poorer education, losing ground in technology, worsening pollution, and so on?
The Republicans are insulted because they lost the elections in 2008. They are angry that the people of this country said enough. They feel like their policies were criticized and thought of as failures. They want revenge. They want revenge at all costs.
Will they finally be happy when the United States becomes a third world nation?
Let’s call him Max. It isn’t his real name, but it’ll do. Max held grudges like no-one else I’ve known, at least personally. He lived by a very particular code. If he didn’t like you or felt that you had slighted him in any way, large or small or non-existent, he did everything possible short of violence to get you.
It didn’t matter who might get caught in the crosshairs. Other people, the job, client work, the company, they were all considered expendable so that Max could get his revenge.
You could be working with this guy for years and have a decent, even friendly, business relationship. Then, one day, you might point out an error in his work. It was probably something minor, but needed to be corrected before going to the client. Didn’t matter. The perceived criticism was all it took.
Max would spend every spare moment, and some moments that should have been devoted to client work, to destroy you in the office. We were a small office, not more than a hundred people, so it was a fairly obvious and disturbing process.
The campaign would start off subtly, a hint here, a remark there. Max would criticize your work, belittle you personally while your back was turned and make unflattering comments to co-workers as you passed in the hallway. If satisfying results did not come fast enough, Max would escalate his campaign until the target quit, begged forgiveness (without really knowing what they’d done wrong) or were reassigned.
It didn’t matter to him who or what he damaged along the way. If the client was lost, no problem. If other staff left the company because of the toxic environment, who cares? The only thing that counted was that Max felt he achieved his goal of destroying his “enemy”.
This was allowed to go on for years before the local CEO had enough and asked him to leave. By then, we’d lost clients and good staff. The damage had truly been done.
To my point…I look at the scorched Earth politics being conducted by the Republicans in Washington DC and wonder when it will end. Does it need for the country to grind to a four year long standstill before they are happy? We are already pretty much there because the Democrats still can’t find the spine and will to do their jobs on their own. So, another three years of deepening debt, more unemployment, higher healthcare costs, poorer education, losing ground in technology, worsening pollution, and so on?
The Republicans are insulted because they lost the elections in 2008. They are angry that the people of this country said enough. They feel like their policies were criticized and thought of as failures. They want revenge. They want revenge at all costs.
Will they finally be happy when the United States becomes a third world nation?
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