Why Secede When Somalia is Available?

I have an idea for all the anti-government, anti-tax “Americans” wanting to secede from the United States.  Self-deport to Somalia!  If there were ever a paradise for the self-made man…the rugged individualist who does it all on his own…there it is.  No government to get in your way, no threat of health care reform, no taxes that I’m aware of (you can choose to opt out), and maybe best of all, guns everywhere.  You can even outfit your own little army and call yourself colonel.

I’m sure IBMs and General Motors and Microsofts will be popping up like weeds over there.  Business thrives when it is untethered from bothersome government control and moochers.  Unlike Americans, Somalis will be grateful for a job and willing to work for pennies to show their gratitude.  Worker benefits?  Hell, who would think to ask?  They’ll be grateful to be alive, right?

And you can raise your family the old-school way, the righteous way.  Evolution?  Out.  Climate change?  Not in Somalia.  Supply side economics.  That’s in, hassle free.  And you can make up all the lies you want about your founding fathers.

Mitt Romney — where is he, by the way? — had a great idea when he suggested self-deportation, he simple addressed it to the wrong people.  We can be a better and stronger nation once again looking at a brighter future.  We just need a mass exodus of GOPers.  Why not claim Somalia as your own? (Please do.  Tell us how it works out.)

Related articles

• US troops in Somalia will do God’s work, says Bush: From Guardian archive, 5 Dec 1992 (guardian.co.uk)
• Somalia’s journey from disaster to resilience a test case for development | Mark Tran (guardian.co.uk)

More Than Four Years

Tuesday’s election is about much more than the next four years.  Likewise the last four depended a lot on what preceded it, and even on what some people hoped would follow in the short term.

Take the 2010 class of Republicans in particular.  Worst than the worse.  Nothing got done on their watch because they want to drive out the somewhat progressive Barak Obama.  As the country struggled with a historic economic malaise, we squandered two years for short term gain rather than cooperate to confront the problems our country faced.  Better to underserve the country than help it if it will help you gain an advantage over your political opponents, right?

Selling political strategy in this country relies on voter impatience.  A rise or dip in a monthly unemployment number can sway polls, for example.  People who know better exploit this snapshot to make a political argument.  It is like taking a single frame from a film and then writing a review.  It is naive, misleading, and it is poor leadership.

So it concerns me that so many serious long-term issues get passed over in our current political discourse.  Until recently, there hasn’t much comment about climate change, for example.  In the recent post-Sandy days, however, this has changed some.  Unfortunately, a lot of this talk is metadiscursive; people — especially politicians with a few recent exceptions — are not talking proactively about the need for energy policy and research to address the problem, but they are talking about how no one is talking about the problem.  Odd, isn’t that?

We shouldn’t be surprised.  We think of our future on a four-year or even a two-year election cycle, not the future, especially not the future of our children and grandchildren (which is a politicians favorite and most abused political trope).  The truth is we look as close to today as is possible.  When it comes to climate change, we still live in the age of fossil fuels and too many people make far too much money for that to change in the free market.

So why do we believe the misleading rhetoric?  Climate change?  What climate change?  Climate be damned!  If the climate does indeed go to hell in a handbasket, don’t fear, the free market will come up with a solution.  You can count on it, right?

Well, look at what the free market has done in recent decades.  As we have pulled back regulation, reduced taxation, and cut government investment, the free market was supposed to thrive and serve all.  Tax revenues, we were told, will increase as the economy grows and GDP rises and this will fund our government services.

Instead, when tax revenues did indeed rise with a growing GDP, we cut taxes more and still further cut government.

There’s a reason why our infrastructure is falling a part and yet we’re still broke.  Even after coming through some very prosperous years, we chose not to fund government, we chose to “starve the beast.”  We don’t have more with less, we have less and less.

Free markets do work, but this idea that the free market inherently serves us all equally is malarkey.  Government exists to serve the people.  Government protects individual rights, markets protect the interests of commerce and share holders.  Private demand steers the free market, government supplies public goods (your roads, parks, clean water, etc.).   In the free market system winners and losers exist.  Government, on the other hand and at least in principle, serves and protects all.  Isn’t that the principle we once took with pride?  Certainly preceding generations did and invested in the future, a future given to us to gut and ransack alas.

At a very basic level — the level of rights — recent political choice and leadership tends to gut government.  The founding principles of the United States depended on basic freedoms, including religious freedom.  In states like Minnesota (Minnesota, what has happened to you?) we have put to a public vote a anti-marriage amendment to the state’s constitution that will codify discriminatory practice.  (I have written quite a lot about this in recent weeks here on a Little Tour.)

The constitution exists precisely to protect the rights of an individual against the whims of the majority.  It is a cornerstone of our country’s founding and key to the individual freedom we claim to respect and value.

Washington DC: United States Supreme Court (Photo credit: wallyg)

With that in mind, look beyond the next four years and look at the nation’s Supreme Court.  Suppose Mitt Romney becomes the next president.  Justice isn’t blind, not in this country.  Judges are vetted for their political beliefs and propensities.  It is a dangerously screwed up system.  We have four justices into their seventies and we can expect some retirement.  Even one retirement could change the ideological — i.e., non-objective — slant of the Court.

The justices that sit on the Supreme Court in four years will determine the future of this country well beyond 2016.  Questions of rights and civil liberties are being put to the ballot all over the United States as well as routinely challenged in the courts; Affirmative Action, abortion, gay rights, and even legislative action like the recent Affordable Care Act likely will face challenges in the courts.  To overlook the future of the United States Supreme Court in the 2012 election is a enormous mistake and a genuine threat to our constitutional government as we have known it.

Voting is serious business.  We need to think long term, and preferably long term into the future.  There is plenty that can be written here, but I think I should leave those who crutch along with the naive belief that men who lived hundreds and even thousands of years ago knew would be best for us today alone.

Instead rely on common sense.    If progressive politics is bad for the United States, why did the United States thrive under progressive leadership?  How well is that trickle down economic model working for most Americans?  And what strategies do we have to compete in a changing global economy where our competitive advantages of the past no longer exist?

By definition conservatives are not the thinkers of change.  To move forward we need to think forward.  And we need to think beyond the next election.

Related articles

• Tom Zeller Jr.: The Politics Of ‘Climate Silence’ (huffingtonpost.com)
• Joseph Stiglitz “Romney’s plan is based on magic” (salon.com)
• Romneyism (robertreich.org)
• Guest Post: The Dark Age Of Money (zerohedge.com)
• 2012 Election Will Impact Supreme Court (youtube.com)

If American is Really Going to Become Another Greece it’s Thanks to the GOP

Michele Bachmann might still be hiding under a rock somewhere, but her people are running an ad attacking candidate Jim Graves which they base on — surprise, surprise — bad economics and misunderstood numbers.

I think this one is fun! And funny…only because it is true, perhaps?

In her attack, Bachmann claims that each American owes $51,000 on our Federal debt.  Well, no, not really.  Or maybe I should say, not necessarily.  If we elect Republicans this, that number could very well go much higher, for example, but even then it isn’t the case that each American will get a bill for $51,000 — or higher if the GOP prevails in November.

First of all, the number Bachmann uses divides public debt by the number of people in the United States.  Say there 300,000,000 million people live in the United States, there are not 300,000,000 shares of debt equally divvied up.  I’m surprised, in fact, that the GOP doesn’t whine that the rich will pay more and the very poor will pay less.  But never mind…It won’t be paid back this way.

If Democrats wrest control from the regressive right we could  look forward to a growing economy which would make paying the debt easier.  Economic growth — and inflation — would change the debt in real terms.  Twenty years ago we grew out of debt.   Economic growth changes the value of assets and liabilities in real terms.  Think of it Bachmann’s number this way, somewhat in reverse:  If you had $51,000, would it be worth more today or in 1900?

Bachmann also perpetuates the false claim that this debt is the fault of Democrats.  Sorry.  We had a surplus before unfunded wars, tax cuts, subsidies, and Medicare prescription gifts erased the surplus. We don’t have a spending problem in this country as much as we have a funding problem.

Take the classic Republican way of running up our debt, cutting taxes while raising expenses.  George W. Bush’s mistake in Iraq, for example, wasn’t paid for, in fact it came with tax cuts!   Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?

But look at Mitt Romney — another Republican — he is running on a platform of increased defense spending while promising tax cuts. Do you see a pattern? So how do facts — economic growth and surplus under a Democratic leadership — square with GOP rhetoric?  They don’t.

Here in Minnesota, Erik Paulsen, another poorly-informed GOP “numbers guy”, is misleading poorly informed voters with the same disinformation…

And so is aging John Kline, another GOPer…

There’s a pattern here that is repeating across the United States, and often you hear these conservative politicians warn that the United States is on its way to becoming “another Greece” unless they are elected. Obviously facts don’t bother Republicans…Look at Greece, austerity has weekend the Greek economy.  It hasn’t helped it.  You cannot argue with this.

Fortunately, we’re not Greece.  We manage the US Dollar, still the world’s default currency.  This gives the United States a unique advantage and opportunity, one that we are squandering under misguided austerity arguments.  Data and expert analysis, both here and abroad, argue for the opposite of austerity policies.

So why keep pushing the austerity argument?  People like Bachmann, Paulsen, and Kline cannot be that stupid, can they? Well, maybe they can.  At the very least it is called cognitive dissonance.  Even most of the GOP political elite are not among those most favored by GOP policies…unless they’re afraid of gays and foreigners.

All of this stupidity is really simple.  Conservatives have a chance to roll back government, their real goal.  Financial security for the middle and working classes doesn’t interest them.  Why should it?  The interests of the future serve those who need not worry about backward fiscal policy.  That is simply the price that must be paid to destroy a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

How American is that?  Is sounds kind of Greek to me.

Related articles

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Is Mitt Romney’s Private Sector the Answer?

While debating Medicare during the first presidential debate, President Barak Obama pointed out that Medicare provides medical insurance at lower administrative costs than private insurance.  Mitt Romney, of course, disagreed.

Mitt said,  ”But my experience — my experience the private sector typically is able to provide a better product at a lower cost.”

For once I might agree with Mitt Romney.  Let’s take a look.

First off, he says the private sector “typically is able a better product at a lower cost” and I might say that’s true.  (NB He didn’t say “always.”)

Consider the famous Kitchen Debate between Richard Nixon and Premier Khrushchev.  The free market produced what Khrushchev derided as luxuries and not real needs.  I’ll go with the so-called “luxuries” over the blandness of simply meeting basic needs.  Count me in with Mitt on this one.

Lyndon Johnson Signs the Medicare Bill on July 30, 1965.

So, ok, Mitt has a point…sort of.  The problem is it cannot be universally applied to everything.  You have to be smart about this.  The private sector and free markets is inherently about winners and losers, the private sector inherently is unequal.

Not everyone can live Mitt’s life of luxury, for example.  What the private sector provides to Mitt at a lower cost, probably is out of reach for most Americans.  It is a relative thing, right?  It is a matter of opportunity and wealth and poverty present different opportunities.

To argue that private sector provides more opportunities at lower costs is fine if you’re talking about cars or clothes or trips overseas.  But what about health care?

In a world where the discrepancy between haves and have nots becomes worse, can we really expect the private sector to provide equitable health care services at lower costs?

I don’t mind the idea that some people can afford Cadillacs while others rely on used Fords, but think of that kind of difference in health care.  That troubles me.

We live in a capitalist society.  We have first hand experience with capitalism.  Our lives are shaped by capitalism.  We should be smart enough to understand how it works, we should understand the outcomes.  Why do we seem unable to apply these facts to political discourse?

Our health care system for the most part is a private system and it is failing.  Our health care system is not the envy of the world nor does it provide the best care.  Other leading countries of the world do a better job than we do.  In the United  States do we live with the burden of thinking we cannot do what others do so well?  Is that what American exceptionalism is all about?

Private health care will set up an unequal system of winners and losers.  Romney has suggested that immigrants self-deport.  His spin on health care essentially asks that people self-ration care.  Want to see the proof? Look at what we have today.  It is that simple.  The private sector is not the answer.

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What Romney Said

Mitt Romney in 2007 in Washington, DC at the Values Voters conference (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Let’s take one sentence — a key sentence — out of Romney’s video taped fundraising faux pas.  He says:

“There are 47 percent [of Americans] who are with [Obama], who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it.”

Ok, I’ll name it:  How about to some decency?  We should be entitled to that.  But that’s not going to happen.

People have already pointed out how obviously illogical and misplaced Romney’s assessment of people’s beliefs and values is in this statement.   Does Mitt know who is voting for him?

Consider this, Mitt, some of the people — by far too many of the people — you insulted will vote for you.  Or at least they would have.  These generalizations don’t show a very sophisticated assessment of your political support.

This cognitive dissonance is so common and familiar in politics today that it is not interesting.  I want to focus instead on the evil of believing you might be entitled to food, health care, and shelter.  Have we become so ridiculously petty that we that we scorn people for wanting to eat and survive?  Is it time to call out the Christian frauds and ask, What would Jesus do?

Where is your philosophical consistency?  Your moral integrity?  Good god, man, have a conscience!  I mean it is fair to pick on this, right?  Mitt and a lot of his supporters are pretty hardline Christians, are they not?

And if your religion is merely a mask behind which you stow your pettiness and bigotry — in other words if you don’t really give a rat’s ass about what Jesus would do, the old fashioned thinker that he was — why don’t you ask yourself what you should do?  Let your selfish, pragmatic side shine.  (Put Ayn Rand back on the bookshelf first.  Silly old bat.)

Example:  We spend billions of dollars on wars of revenge to vindicate the death of thousands of Americans, but we won’t support social systems and health care systems that cost a fraction of our war costs to protect living, breathing Americans struggling to get along?  Where is the morality in that?  Saving our own seems like a good thing. 

(Of course if you’re fortunate enough to live isolated from reality, then carry on.  A micro-minority should not prevail in a well-informed and active democracy anyway.  But perhaps there is the rub.  We are not as well informed and active as we should be.)

And does anyone really think America would go to hell in a handbasket if we did support people who need help?  I hardly see the danger of fostering a majority class of freeloaders.  Who really wants to be on welfare?  I’d argue it is a small minority, very small, if any.  Moreover, if we invest — say it again, invest — if we invest in the well-being of citizens we all benefit.  Sick people cost money.  Ignorant people cost money.  Crime costs money. 

All indications are that investing in the common good benefits society, supports a thriving economy, and makes everyone healthier and safer, rich and poor alike.  If we went back to the good old days when we paid for our common investments, things would look a lot better and we wouldn’t have a deficit. 

So what’s going on here?  Look at God-fearing conservative Mitt Romney, leading candidate of GOP politics today, and you get a clue or two.

Conservatives today demonstrate a level of short-sighted spitefulness that borders on the immoral.  At the very least it show poor planning.  We are better when we are strong and secure.  Strength and security is exactly what we’re losing.

Individual rights and responsibility are not incompatible with government and the common good.   

Government for the people should support the common strength and security of the people.  We are moving away from that purpose.  That’s the problem and that in a nutshell is the future supported by the likes of Mitt Romney.

Related articles

• Mitt Romney vs. the 47 Percent (reason.com)
• Romney Explains Obama Voters (politicalwire.com)
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• my job is is not to worry about those people (metafilter.com)

It is Time for Truth or Consequences

 

Everyone is talking about Mitt Romney‘s most recent gaffe, some people even attempt to defend him.  The politician himself slithers around the facts as if they don’t matter.  It is ridiculous.  Did he mean what he said, yes or no?  Listening to him, it is hard to tell.  He didn’t say what he meant, but he meant what he said.  Is that right?  Does that make sense?

We’re smarter than this and deserve better than this.  Character should matter, especially when choosing our political leaders, but then we get this.

If we are going to get this country back on track we need to be a little less comfortable with dishonesty.  We’re overdue for truthfulness, but it isn’t going to matter unless we notice and deliver some consequences.

Let’s go back to poster boy Mitt and pretend for a moment that he is being misunderstood about dismissing nearly half of all Americans whining scofflaws.  In a press conference yesterday Romney says he hopes the person who took the damning video will release all of it, presumably so we can judge what he says in context.   That appears to be his defense.

Do we believe Mitt’s stiff and scripted public appearances more than what he says when he is away from the public eye surrounded by friends and donors?

Well…people just don’t get it.  Ultimately the burden of responsible government in a democracy — in theory — rests with the voters.

So what does it say about us when we see guys like Mitt Romney rise to national prominence?  He is just a one guy, but he stands for a party that either understands nothing about context or willfully misrepresents it.  Is that us?

While I can’t say there was much memorable about the 2012 RNC convention — other than Clint’s silly speech — we haven’t already forgotten the bogus “We Built It” theme of that convention, have we?  That theme is based on a statement made by President Barak Obama which was taken out of context and misrepresented.  It is truth turned into a lie and we shouldn’t tolerate it.

Republicans are good at this sort of deception, however.  It is the Big Lie strategy.  If you’re going to tell a lie, tell a big one and tell it often.  Eventually at least part of it will be retained as the truth.

This theme runs through conservative politics today and it happens more often than not without negative consequences.  It will continue to happen until voters wise up and pay attention.  But when you have glaring examples of double-speak from the most prominent conservative candidate today going unchecked, well…where’s the hope?

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Unqualified Romney

Let’s presume Mitt Romney’s statements about national and public events are sincere, that he isn’t being deceptive and rhetorically bombastic.  Is this a guy you want for President?

Take his comments yesterday about the Federal Reserve pledge to launch a third phase of quantitative easing.  Romney argues that this proves that Obama’s strategies are not working.  If he is being honest, Romney’s statement is stunning for its simple-minded grasp of the situation.  Six-month old puppies understand facts and consequences better.  I’m not sure a man with the reasoning intellect of a puppy is the man you want in the White House.

Or near our foreign policy and military.  But let’s stick to Romney’s Federal Reserve faux pas.

First off, President Barak Obama is not telling everyone that the work on the economy is finished.  Obama hasn’t put his feet up on the desk and popped a bottle of Champagne (French of course) and he hasn’t hung a Mission Accomplished banner on the White House.  Just the opposite.  Obama — along with the Democrats — has consistently argued that more time, work, and smart policy is needed to assist the economic recovery.

Second, the Federal Reserve said essentially the same thing in its announcement yesterday.  The economy is improving, but not improving at a satisfactory rate.  The economy still lacks demand that would give the private sector reason to increase capacity.  The “job creators” are sitting on record cash reserves.  Keeping interest rates low is intended to spur spending to increase demand which would then incent the private sector to get off its cash.

All of this is a process, something Republicans seem to be inherently unable to understand.  Out of sight, out of mind with them.  Is that the sort of intellect you want leading a great nation?  Of course it isn’t.  And one has to wonder how sincere Mitt Romney really is…about anything.

Anyone who can so skillfully enrich himself with other people’s money must have some capacity for seeing beyond the moment.  He has to be smarter than a dog.  But Romney presumes that the American people are not.  Shame on Mitt Romney for this, but shame on the American people who buy these short-sighted and misleading assessments.  With smarter voters — people voting for their own bests interests (where is Ayn Rand when you need her?) — we would not have today’s Republican Party.  We certainly would not have a Ryan/Romney ticket.

We are indeed better off today than we were four years ago, much better.  And to criticize Obama for all the faults lingering today is nonsense.  Generally you can not take all the credit for the success, too, but the Republicans have made it a matter of policy to block Obama at every opportunity.  It is hard to see how Republicans have contributed anything but blame to the current political discourse.  Again, is that what you want for leadership?  Whiners are not leaders.

It should be easy to defeat Republicans.  They have no record to stand on, they have no solutions, and they show either a basic lack of intellect or an overwhelming display of deceit.  These are horrible qualities for leadership.  But Americans are not paying attention.  Sometimes things are black and white.

 

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I Am Tired of the RNC Convention, Too.

1952 Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois.  Was it better then?

Three posts dealing with last week’s Republican Convention in Tampa remain unfinished.  I just don’t have the heart to deal with them.  What needs to be said about the convention has been said over and over.  And, honestly, finding something positive in all those comments is tough.  Thank god for Condoleezza Rice.  Although that Clint Eastwood sure is a funny old guy.

I can’t even get mad anymore.

But I was thinking about politicians, conventions, and facts.  Years ago I was prepping for a high school debate — the topic was universal health care, by the way — and my coach thought I should find a stronger piece of evidence to support an argument.  I pointed out that I had found something recently published from a current congressman.

Yes, my coach explained, he did indeed recently make that argument, but he is using information that is years old and disproven.

I was disappointed and a little shocked.  (And how so naive!)  But the transgression here was a matter of timeliness.  In the current political debate, black is white and up is down and few people give a damn.  Men and women seeking national leadership roles flat out lie and mislead.  Has it always been this way?

I believe politics reflects the will of the people — this is a democracy, after all — and it seems that the people have willed ignorance and deception as our guiding principles.  Anyone paying attention to what is happening in Washington — including the people running for public office now — know the true score.  So why do we let liars like Paul Ryan rewrite history and smash the facts?  (Paul Ryan perhaps the biggest liar of them all last week…and that says something.)

The bottom line is simple.  If you want to know what is going on politically, you don’t ask a politician.  They’ll give the answer that suits them best and too often that is a lie.  There is no mystery why most Americans don’t understand the simple facts behind our economic malaise any better than they understand quantum physics.  They have chosen to be uninformed, misinformed, and misled.

Americans should demand better, but frighteningly it looks like we might be on the eve of accepting even worse.   All this despite the disgraceful efforts put forth at the RNC National Convention.  Shame on us.

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Romney Can Turn the Economy Around?

Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the eve of the Republican National Committee convention in Tampa, Florida, the message Republicans hope to send is clear.  Romney, they will claim, is the right guy to fix our nation’s economic woes.  But for all the reasons they make this argument are exactly and correctly the real reasons why he is, in fact, absolutely not the right person for the job.

Very simply, Romney is a businessman through and through.  He appears incapable of seeing the wold beyond the scope of business models.  This is bad news for a man who wants to be president of the United States for the very simple reason that a country is not a business.

At a very common sense level this should be obvious.  Businesses are about generating profits.  The goods and services they sell are not in essence the final goal of a business.  They merely are part of the profit-generating system.

Government has different goals.  Profit is not the goal.  Instead the goods and services it provides are the goal.   Moreover, governments operate in a closed system.  Compare this with a business which operates entirely differently.  A business, for example, can move or even shut down. In fact, Mitt Romney‘s career as a businessman is one that takes advantage of the open opportunities that a business enjoys.  He routinely moved or closed businesses for economic gain.  You cannot move a country.  And you cannot fire its citizens.

At an economic level, Romney, like most conservatives today, is terribly unprepared to manage the United States economy.  First of all business finance is not the same as macroeconomic policy.  There are questions of balance of trade, monetary policy, and deficits that conservatives seem inherently unable to grasp.  Government plays a very different role in our economy than a business does.  In fact you can look at what applying businesses best practices to government policy has done to our economy so far.

The era of austerity is failing our economy.  Deregulation and lower taxes has failed to stimulate economic growth.  And the profit motive has sent more and more of America’s wealth up the economic ladder, and not down to the benefit of most Americans as promised.  Why, one has to ask, would you ask for even more of these failing policies and not less?

Of course at the root of all of this is a basic difference in how conservatives and progressives see government.  Conservatives are not afraid to gut social safety nets, schools, environmental regulation all the rest that does not involve wars, guns, and prisons because they believe in a so-called merit system.  If you live a good life, you should be able to send your kid to school, pay your medical bills and so on.  Of course economists see this differently.  A good job for you comes at the cost of a job for someone else, for example.  Not everyone can have a million dollar income or a million dollar will have no value.

There is a whole argument about public goods that should be made, but we’re way beyond that now.  However it is indeed important to understand how investing in the common good serves us all, rich and poor alike.  A healthier,  better-educated population is a safer and more productive society.  Challenge these so-called individualists to move to Somalia and start up a business and achieve their American standard of living.

Even in today’s paper, my friend Tim Pawlenty was again mentioned as an attractive Republican politician because of his success from humble roots.  But it is hard to see how the policies guys like Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney promote would let the son of a delivery truck driver attain the sort of success and opportunity Tim has enjoyed.  Can a delivery truck driver own a nice home and support a family today?  Seems less and less likely.

…if you are really concerned about your children’s future.

Very simply these guys don’t get it and, as much as I hate to say it, it isn’t entirely their fault.  They don’t believe in government, don’t understand how it works, and are ignorant of economics.  Why should we expect them to propose sound and appropriate public policy?

The real fault lies with the voters who nominate and elect these politicians.  A poorly-informed and unsophisticated electorate is the real risk to democracy.  And it certainly looks like we are in the thick of it now.

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• Romney Self Destructs and Turns All Attention Back to His Tax Returns (politicususa.com)
• Romney ‘birther’ line the latest in campaign distractions (nation.co.ke)
• Radical right threatens to blow Mitt Romney off course as Republicans gather in Tampa | World news | The Observer (mbcalyn.com)

If I Had Hair This is What I Would Do…

After several hundred posts, I am slowly fine tuning the art of being a mostly-missed, poorly-understood small time blogger.   And I’ll share a tip with you, maybe one that is obvious.

Tip:  Don’t write about the big events of the day and expect big results.

When Mitt Romney rolled out dangerously misguided Paul Ryan as his running mate, I made the mistake of jumping into the fray.  The result?  A dozen or two readers.  The day before when I wrote about ghosts, ballerinas, and wood nymphs, I had several hundred readers.

Of course I have brilliant insight and comments to make about the decline of political leadership in the United States, but so do hundreds and thousands of other people who actually have followers.  They are going to take the lion’s share of the feast.

But if you want to know about screech owls or old people sitting on park benches, then I am your man.  So let’s see what happens if I just throw a random one out there.

If I had hair — and if I were a young woman — I would wear my hair as shown in Picture 1.  It is somewhat cheesy in a stylish sort of way, but interesting, kind of like me.  And if I were to wear my hair like that — and if I were a young woman — I would find a rooftop upon which to stand and gaze thoughtfully out over the trees and roof tops of the world.

So how is that?  Kind of a nice break from everything else that is going on in the world.  In fact I very nearly wrote about Helen Gurley Brown today only because I had yet another one of those strange congruences of experience and events.

Within the last week — I swear — I saw something about Cosmopolitan and, being convinced Helen Gurley Brown had already died, I asked myself when.  I could not remember.

So today…within minutes of looking for something other than Paul Ryan to write about … I see Helen Gurley Brown’s death announced, just as I am surfing Cosmopolitan for ideas.  Try to tell me that isn’t odd.

I do believe that we exist within connections of which we really cannot be aware.  It is something more than instinct and something more than foresight.  It is that sort of gut sense, the uncanny, maybe.

And I remain steadfastly convinced we connect with things that matter well before and after we might have an opportunity to experience them; experience and emotion somehow link up despite the chaos of it all.

At times this seems painfully simple and obvious.  But then I have to wonder why some of the best, most cherished connections defy the sense that made the connection in the first place.  When something comes undone, what is happening?  And why don’t I have hair?  There has to be something behind all of this…a hidden reason.  Having faith in that is like having religion.

Now please scroll down this blog and find something worth your time.  Tell your friends and family to do the same.  Then tell me about it.  I am eager to discover with you.

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• USAT/Gallup Poll: Paul Ryan gets low marks for VP (tribuneofthepeople.com)