Easter On The Sunday Talk Shows (Don’t Read This If You Are Allergic To Profanity).
Since I haven’t written a damn thing in years, please give my erstwhile friend a visit or two.
This post is a good place to start…..
“Trickle-up” is an accurate description of the present condition.
I want to mention “Reaganomics, trickle-down, and public safety, all in the same short post, so let’s talk about a “tipping point” in American history.
That point would be when Reagan ‘busted’ the Air Traffic Controller’s union. That single action began the long decline that American workers, of all varieties have been on ever since. It also marked a sharp increase in industrialists gaining more and more power over politics and government.
Reagan didn’t invent this stuff, it has always been a corporate tactic to bust unions and buy politicians, but Ronnie put such a spin on it, that it made people feel that it was okay and even damned patriotic.
Good, reliable data, charted and graphed, shows that time as the starting point of the decades long rise of corporate profits. At the same time that profits rose and the wealthy thrived, blue collar worker’s ‘real’ wages stagnated.
This entire scenario puts all in our society in an increasingly dangerous class-warfare that effects public safety. Our workers and therefor our society face a new phenomena: the “flat world”.
Thomas Friedman article here:
http://reginaphelps.com/pdfs/FlatWorld.pdf
In conclusion; The corporate buyout of American government has been complete for may years. Fox News conservatives would have you believe that regulation (protecting the public) is the big problem causing poor job growth, but that’s just not the case.
It is just this simple; we may pay $10 per hour, foreign companies may pay $10 a day. Our wages stay at the same level or decline while theirs slowly creep up. We are on our way to being the same waged employees as China and Mexico, or we will have no jobs at all.
Our middle class is disappearing into poverty while our corporate, financial and government masters get pushed up even farther into wealth and power.
Solutions? Hmmmm….
List a few common sense ideas to save our middle/lower economic classes, and I’ll bet I can find the Fox News footage demonizing those same ideas as unpatriotic, nanny-state government that is just seeking to hinder business from growing and employing here.
Middle/lower classes of white people are flocking to conservatism, drinking their kool-aid, and sealing their fate in serfdom for generations to come.
Stupid is, as stupid does.
The proliferation of talking heads and lobbyists leading the stupid into their own demise on the many new forms of media, almost guarantees the continuing gridlock in government, and class warfare from the top on the bottom.
Any progressive or populist solutions to the nation’s problems are always crushed by ‘Captain Obvious”, that is, by the overwhelming amount of money being spent on propaganda (talk radio, Fox News, PAC’s, etc.) that plays to the average person’s most base emotions while ensuring nothing sensible and logical is ever presented to them.
Filed under Crime, History, Human Rights, Opinion, Politics
From Steve Brodner
Take the link at top to go to Steve’s excellent blog! Maybe you can read the text there, which came out too small here.
I believe in Social Security, workers’ rights, and helping the middle class. Republicans pander to the far right daily with ludicrous statements and attacks on President Obama. These statements motivate Tea Party voters like nothing else. It’s not enough to criticize them – we need to fight back!
They’ll have outside help – Karl Rove and the Koch Brothers will make sure of that. If we don’t all stand together now, they will gain an edge – and we saw in 2010 what happens when they do.
They’ve got their Big Oil benefactors. We’ve got half a million grassroots donors. Keep fighting on the ground, on the air and online.
Perry, Bachmann and Cantor don’t speak for me!
Filed under Human Rights, Politics
THANKS TO madtante for inspiring this post!
Being a “Baby Boomer”, of course I didn’t grow up using computers. Shewt, when I was in school, overhead projectors were new technology. Libraries were the only way to get any information, and people 30 miles away were truly a long distance away! Computers were something you only saw on Star Trek.
When “home computers” came around (anybody remember the Commodore?), I had absolutely no interest in anything computer. Computers would do nothing for me except cut in on my valuable drinking time. One friend bought a computer, thinking he would be a genius. Of course we soon found a game or two for the damn thing, and turned computer gaming into an all night drinking competition.
So….what changed? First, they started bringing computers into the workplace. I was in manufacturing, and ended up doing some X-Y-Z, three axis machine programming. The first computer I ran at work was a Radio Shack TRS-80.
I think everybody that ran one called it The Trash 80. It had truly “floppy” disks, and you had to use a bunch of them, as they only held small amounts of data. The data I generated went onto paper tapes with holes punched into it, and then read by the machine. This crap took FOREVER. When I got my first PC at work, I was amazed, ah tells yah, uh-mazed! The damn thing would run at 66 megz….WOW! AND…we could hook an RS232 cable right to the machine, no more paper tapes, whoopee! I still had to learn and use DOS, but it was SOOO MUCH FASTER.
Anyway, I ramble. Back to blogs. I think it was 2004 when I went to work at a D.O.D. contractor who makes bombs. By this time I had bought into computers as really useful tools. You see, I had been doing drafting with a pencil before. What a hassle. Pencils did not have an “Undo button”, you had to actually erase the stuff and start again. So, I really kept up with AutoCad, and got this job as a sinecure (their title was Junior Engineer). When I hired on I was excited, thinking I was going to be somebody. Little did I know that most D.O.D. work was one huge scam, and the project I was put on was just there to soak up some of the excessive defense spending that Americans seem to insist on. So, after I raced through the “busy work” that they gave me, and they couldn’t find anything of real value for me to do, I resorted to surfing the net. THAT’S WHERE I FOUND THESE THINGS CALLED BLOGS.
Blogs were so cool. I could comment and actually get feedback from others all over the world! There were still not many around, and people still called them “Message Boards”, but it was interactive entertainment. The DOD contractor was still pretending they were doing things, so they would even let me work overtime surfing the net. I finally landed on a political blog ran by the Wichita Eagle, where I commented prolifically. Little did I know, but I was actually getting a “following”! Hell, even the editors and cartoonist would occasionally email me with an “atta-boy” and encourage me. I know why. I was controversial, outspoken, and didn’t take crap from anyone. That’s where I really cut my teeth in the blog world. I learned about Trolls, conservative ill-tempered creatures. Some of them even used multiple personalities online.
It was all great fun, but after awhile it got boring too. Feeding the Trolls only has entertainment value for a short time. The few people on that blog (WE Blog) who had good sense were growing tired of the trolling and the hate speech there. So, now having a following, I took matters into my own hands, emailed the few commentators I had addys for, and started my own boycott. IT WORKED! I mean, the word spread, everybody started emailing me, and the very next day, the blog was empty of everybody except trolls and conservatives dimwits with ill-tempers and nobody to rant against. That’s when I started KANSAS MEDIOCRITY. It was not on wordpress, and was not as easy to use, but I did learn. All the liberals, progressives and populists were like, overnight, making me their very own Olbermann type character.
After doing the 1st K.M. blog for awhile I was lured away to write for another blog, based out of Wichita. It went great for awhile, until I started posting stuff that wasn’t political, and I got admonished by the admitted control freak that had invited me in the first place. (He was one of my fans/followers at the Eagle’s blog). That guy has since passed away, and the blog he started has disintegrated into a daily chit-chat between a handful of people. They don’t even respond when I go there. (sigh)….
In conclusion, man can I ramble, THAT’s how I got here. After I quit the DOD contractor and did engineering elsewhere, I decided that wordpress was for me. At first, I followed my old strategy of political controversy. After picking up a few trolls, getting tired of their hate speech and “flaming” other commentators, I changed my entire style. Now you get the MEDIOCRITY that some folks actually read. YES, I still do a political post or two, especially if it’s about local city or county politics. I did decide that any national political issues will now be posted about from a “populist” point of view. When it’s the little guy versus “The System”, you never get trolls. Nobody from Wall Street, Rupert Murdoch or the Koch Brothers bothers me here.
Thanks for reading. Hope you all keep blogging. Keep it weird, keep it real, just keep it coming. I no longer drink/party, so this is my social life. These posts put a link on Facebook, but no, I don’t socialize there. THANK YOU for reading commenting, and tolerating me when I show up to comment on your own blogs!
Blogs Reflect Our Lives
In this section I will share a few of my views on blog commenting.
The piece below is one of the very earliest from this blog.
My hope is that people will add their thoughts on commenting and help grow this list!
You never know who is reading- Not that I’m grandiose enough to believe that the Obama staff is taking cues from me, but It’s obvious to those who keep track of ‘hits’ that many people are visiting and never comment. (as of this posting, I’ve had 50,000 views and 900 comments)
Make friends and contacts- I’ve made friends by commenting that I certainly would have never met otherwise. Also, blogging is networking activity, if you want it to be. Some people who blog about business have used links to ‘sell’ themselves. When you comment on other’s blogs, and they get to know you, people will click your link to see what you post.
Hone your skills- I’m not a writer, obviously. So commenting and getting feedback is essential to my improving whatever skills I do have. If I find myself lacking ideas for new posts, I’ll visit another blog and comment. Many times my comment(s) will inspire a post. If the place I commented inspired me to be there and comment, it’s good for me to see what they do.
I find the other commentators that I like usually keep it short, concise and to the point. If you are really into writing books, I’ll look for your stuff at the library.
Get a fresh perspective- If I always read, post and comment at the same place, with the same people all the time, I eventually start to write just like the others there. If I only echo those around me, I’ve unconsciously became scroll-over material! Being unpredictable, without being shocking or offensive, is a great way to be remembered and make an impact.
It‘s the right thing to do- When I attempted my first blog, I found myself disappointed at the lack of participation. Why? I centered my thoughts around my blog, and my blog only. I never took the time to go and comment on other’s sites. Give yourself away, if you do, you’ll get more back! But…remember what you give will come back to you. Treat others as you wish to be treated. If you do these things, I strongly believe you will get more comments yourself!
~sekanblogger~