cur-mud-geon:
anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Junk mail is driving me nuts. How about you? Is there a real solution that we can use or are we doomed to continue to wear out our delete keys? I’ll be happy to pass along your recommendations.
Perpetual campaigning is robbing us Americans of our rightful expectations of government. This is vividly clear when we look at the federal government. It seems to be getting more rampant on the state level, as well. Every move at the national level is one of posturing, rather than governing, for the majority of our elected officials. And, too many moves on the part of our elected state representatives smack of the same.
General Petraeus, the commander of our forces in Iraq, delivers his assessment on conditions there in a week and one-half. However, both sides appear to not have the courtesy to let us decide what to think of his report. Instead, they have been positioning for weeks to tell us what he’ll say and what it’ll mean. No matter your persuasion, you can make up your own mind; I doubt that many of us need such assistance.
The Presidential candidates for both parties will likely be chosen by very early in 2008, and maybe even before the coming New Year’s Day. On the heels of the “perpetual” campaigning mentioned above, we have this rush to decision being thrust upon us by a handful of states. Would we be further ahead to have a single national primary to be followed in 120 days by the national election, as I’ve begun to hear discussed?
Governor Doyle’s hand has appeared as expected in the budget debate. Unfortunately, he is resorting to fear-mongering by citing this and that calamity about to befall all us Badgers because there is no compromise as yet, on a terrible budget I would add. According to him, our schools won’t be able to run, our state Medicaid system will fail the folks who depend upon it and the Republican’s failure to acquiesce will cause your property taxes to rise precipitously. His budget, even without the addition of Healthy Wisconsin which he does not support, has us paying 23% more than before. With Healthy Wisconsin, it only doubles! What a choice we have. The opposition must not cave in, but instead must continue to work to advance its more rational version of our next biennium.
Our Warhawks football team ran into the seventh-ranked team in the state last evening and came away with a much better understanding of its own weaknesses. Coach will build on this experience and our players will improve having gotten such a solid lesson so early.
Our new motorcycle patrol is having the desired effect. I have been amazed at how invisible that cycle and officer can be, and also marvel at my good fortune to have been at or under the speed limit each time…so far. If you’ve not given thought to the effectiveness of this unit, do so before you pay good money for a transgression.
