I Do Still Blog
I know it’s been a second or two since I’ve had much to say here.
The previous post, my first in a few days … I’m not sure I have the words to convey the humour and sadness I felt after watching a story about a woman’s weave stopping a bullet. I laughed reflexively, but once I considered what I’d seen and heard, I became depressed.
A hair weave stopping a bullet … that was still hanging in the weave when the police arrived? And we didn’t even get to hear why her ex-boyfriend was shooting at her. Seriously?
As for blogging, I’m still at it. I probably have more to say now than I have in a while, but what I haven’t had is much of an opportunity recently to express myself. Between work, reading, a fairly nasty head cold and a mental health day or two, 24 hours seems more like seven or eight.
I probably won’t get around to expressing all of my thoughts in this entry because I’m kind of behind the curve, but here’s some of what’s on my mind.
I hope I’m wrong, but I have nagging doubts about how much the stimulus package that President Obama signed into law this week is going to work, which is less a criticism of Obama than it is of his predecessor and Alan Greenspan.
Tax cuts and woefully lax federal oversight of financial institutions had a corrosive if delayed impact on the nation’s economy, and now America is in an ever deepening hole that may require yet another stimulus package to get us out of–maybe.
I wrote on another blog that I wish states like Mississippi didn’t get a dime of stimulus money. I meant that. The governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, a Republican, has joined a gaggle of state chief executives in casting aspersions on Obama’s attempt to rescue the economy from complete collapse.
Barbour has threatened to put his constituents’ money where his mouth is and not accept any stimulus dollars. I like that in him, although it turns out that the stimulus bill contains a provision, the “Clyborn clause,” that allows state legislatures to override governors who refuse the money. It may be that Barbour is bluffing, but yes, I wish the decision came down to the Mississippi State Legislature calling the Governor’s bluff.
Um, I know that there are people in Mississippi and other red states who voted for Obama, but the states are considered red because the majority of voters who live in them voted Republican (56 per cent for John McCain to 43 per cent for Obama in Mississippi’s case).
If the majority of voters in states such as Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas had their druthers, McCain would be president now, right? Well, to hear him tell it, on Facebook no less, Obama’s stimulus package isn’t the right way to go about repairing a badly damaged economy.
I believe we need to evaluate every bit of spending in this stimulus proposal with one important criteria - does it really stimulate the economy and help create jobs - if the answer is no, it does not belong in a so-called stimulus package. Furthermore, the stimulus must include significant direct relief to American workers in the form of payroll tax cuts and programs to help homeowners keep their homes. Finally, we need an end game to this stimulus so that when our economy recovers, these spending programs do not remain permanent and saddle our children with a skyrocketing national debt.
Republicans including McCain believe that tax cuts are stimulative, but most tax cuts don’t generate enough money to pay for themselves, particularly when the government is spending tens of billions of dollars each month for, oh, I don’t know, a war it should never have commenced.
Any working person who can’t see that the Republicans have been wrong on the economy since Reagan was in office deserves to be poor. While I’m at it, I can’t understand for the life of me why most Republicans are Republicans. This applies especially to people like the ones in Mississippi who don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of but are dyed-in-the wool righties. Maybe if it’s the case that all you’ve ever known is poverty, you’re literally got nothing to lose, huh? But at what point does one tire of being poor and think, ‘Okay, I’ll give the other side a shot’?
Not during my lifetime have Republicans given a shit about anyone, black, white or other, who isn’t monied. I’ve been all throughout Mississippi and from the looks of things, most people there aren’t. Why, then, did a healthy majority of Mississippi voters choose McCain? If you think it’s all about race, think again. Mississippi hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, and even then they voted for Jimmy Carter because he was a Southerner.
These people and people like them stubbornly choose ideology at the expense of their own best interest, so, yes, they should suffer by walking the walk. In Barbour, they have the leadership they deserve. What’s so hard to understand about that?
UPDATE: Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal turns down about $100 million.