And the poll says......

Have you ever been part of a Gallup Poll or maybe a Quinnipiac University Poll?  (Is that a real school?  Do they play football?  What conference are they in?)  According to the above poll of pollsters (haha!) they're in the believable category.  Political party polls and news media polls, not so much.

I'm always hearing about how the American people are in favor of or against blah blah blah, but if you look at how Americans say they feel about contemporary issues, and then look at how Congress is representing us with their votes, you'll see a definite disconnect. 

We say we want immigration reform, and our politicians nod and agree, and then passively do nothing, or worse, the exact opposite.

We say we don't want trade tariffs, and our politicians nod and agree, and then just sit on their thumbs.

We have opinions on various gun control measures, ditto.

We tell them how we feel about taxes, and health care, and they tippy toe around them and do nothing.

Here's a typical day for a Washington politician:  They meet for breakfast with a lobbyist who says his client wants X, then meets with a trade group from "back home" who says they do not want X.  He poses for pictures with his constituents, passes out ceremonial Congressional paper weights, thanks them for their opinion, promises to keep in touch, then goes out and votes for X, which is slyly buried in a bill promising to end puppy mills, 'cause, you know, everyone wants to end puppy mills, right?

Then two months later he's the speaker at an event back home, and they treat him as if he was royalty!  People are scared to speak up and hold his feet to the fire, or throw him in the fire, because....I have no idea why.

What's the point of public opinion polls if our public servants (wow....there's an oxymoron!) pay us no attention?

S

Hillary's worst nightmare

Saturday Night Live's Hillary Clinton: "You have a choice in this election.  You can vote for a Republican, or you can vote for Donald Trump."

Hillary Clinton is enjoying an embarrassment of riches.  She has her limited hard-core base of traditional Democrats, the support of maverick Democrat (?) Bernie Sanders and most of his millennials....and the support of much of corporate America.

Wikileaks has given us the transcript of what Hillary told a group of Goldman Sachs VIPs in a speech they paid her a cool QUARTER MILLION $$$ to hear.  That is....big shock....that she is a two-faced politician.*

During her primary campaign against Bernie Sanders she wanted us to believe she was a progressive's progressive.  Even after she took him out she enthusiastically embraced Bernie's "break up the big banks, no (TPP) trade deal, free college for everyone, etc" agenda.  She even agreed to make it a part of the official Democratic Party platform.  But what about what she told Goldman Sachs, and by inference the business community?

She told them that she had a face for public consumption, and a face for behind the magic curtain, and it was the latter that they should pay attention to.  Yes, she would push for "banking regulation", but the banks would have a say in writing it.  Which really meant "don't you guys lose any sleep."

At the time she said that Republicans were firmly in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives.  If she could some day become President she could deliver on her promise to her progressive friends to champion their traditional Democratic values, all while knowing a Republican controlled Congress would never go along with any meaningful change in the status quo.  Win/win....votes from traditional Democrats, money from traditional Republican business interests.  SWEET!

As it now turns out several years later she appears to be coasting to a presidential victory, and the odds are pretty good that she might, just might, get a Democratic Senate, too.  

But what if the Democrats could pull off a modern miracle and win the House of Representatives also?  Her Democratic faithful/Bernie Sanders coalition would then expect her to live up to her promises to them....she would have the votes in Congress to do pretty much whatever she wanted....while the business community would still be expecting her to stand aside for them, too, and they don't take kindly to being stiffed for a couple of hundred million $$$.  YIKES!

Hillary's "happy dance" could well turn into a "tap dance".  Hey, stranger things have happened.

S

* I know, I know.  I used "two faced" and "politician" in the same sentence.  It goes without saying, huh?  :)

Just blowing smoke, they are.

For as long as I can remember people have been coming into our country without going through the proper channels.  Historically we think of these "illegals", or "undocumented workers" if you prefer, as being Mexican, although many come from Latin America, too.  Today we're hearing more about Muslim immigrants, but by the numbers, it's still overwhelmingly an Hispanic issue.  Point is, they are here among us now.

There's a lot of hot air being spewed by our political candidates this election year telling us we need to "get all the Mexicans out and take back our country!" It makes for a good 30-second sound bite, which coincidentally is about the limit of the average voters attention span.  The more simple minded say all 11,000,000 (?) illegals should be rounded up and deported, just like that.  Easy peasy.

Just think about that for a second.  Who would be doing the "rounding"?  Do we have enough law enforcement to pull some off crime detail and charge them with stopping all brown-skinned people on the street and demanding proof of citizenship?  Correct answer:  No.  And if we did, how long would it take for someone to challenge said roundup in court?  Correct answer:  Maybe 15 seconds.

But lets assume we did have the manpower to round up all brown-skinned people and the courts looked the other way.  How many could we round up per day?  10,000?  Do we have enough spare holding areas to put up 10,000 detainees a day, every day for years?  Correct answer:  No.  

But assuming we did, do they get their day in court?  We just can't assume brown skin = illegal....many are no doubt native born or naturalized US citizens.  After we determine which brown-skinned people are US citizens and which aren't, do we have enough lawyers to represent the undocumented, or enough judges and courts, to hear 10,000 cases a day?  Correct answer:  No.

But assuming we did, do we have enough guards, or food preparers, or doctors, etc, to look after 10,000 more people a day who are in our custody?  And if we did, can we afford them?  Can we afford 30,000 meals a day?  Correct answer:  No.   

But if we could afford it, and if our legal system could process 10,000 cases per day and order them returned to Mexico (or Guatemala or wherever they were from), do we have enough buses to actually transport them all?  At 55 seats per bus, that would require 82 buses a day, every day.  And you can't get from Chicago, or Oregon, or New York to our southern border or beyond by bus in one day....it might take 6 or 8 times that many buses.  (Hmmm....wonder what the gas mileage of a Greyhound Bus is?)

And if, after 3 years of intense round-up we could deport all 11,000,000 undocumented workers, and assuming no new illegals crossed the border in the meantime, who would pick our crops, or pave our roads, or roof our houses, or bus our tables, or mow our lawns?  Are we all of a sudden going to get industrious and do all those things for ourselves?  Correct answer: Not a snowball's chance in hell!  (And if we tried, we'd realize fast we need them as much as they need us.)

I rest my case.  There is NO WAY we're going to deport 11,000,000 people!  So the next time you hear a political candidate say he "wants 'em all out", just know they're blowing smoke up your ass skirt, and then ask yourself, what ELSE are they blowing your way?

Yes, we need a workable plan to bring our undocumented workers here now into our system and make them honest taxpayers, and to control who crosses our borders into our country, but this hair-brained scheme isn't it.

And besides, the overwhelming majority are just like us, decent people simply trying to make a living. Think, my friends. 

S

Heads they win, tails we lose....

I saw this on Facebook yesterday and after reading it, didn't know how to take it.  Was it supposed to be humor, or an expose? (You've gotta add that little accent over the "e", 'cause I don't know how.)  Regardless, it's spot-on on how our political system, in America at least, works.  It's a short read:

Integrity Disqualifies Sanders for White House

By Andy Borowitz

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Credit Photograph by J. Scott Applewhite/AP

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s potential bid for the 2016 Presidency was declared over, on Monday, before it even began, because of a key feature of the American political system that makes a person with integrity ineligible for the White House.
According to some experts, the electoral system has developed a number of safeguards over the past few decades to prevent someone with independence and backbone from occupying the Presidency.

“Bernie Sanders’s failure to become a member of either major political party excludes him from the network of cronyism and backroom deals required under our system to be elected,” said Davis Logsdon, a political scientist at the University of Minnesota. “Though that failure alone would disqualify Sanders, the fact that he is not beholden to a major corporate interest or investment bank would also make him ineligible.”


Because of his ineligibility, Logsdon said, the Vermont Senator would be unable to fund-raise the one billion dollars required under the current system to run for President. “The best source of a billion dollars is billionaires, and Sanders has alienated them,” he said. “Clearly he didn’t think this through.”

Logsdon said that Sanders might persist in his quest for the White House despite his ineligibility but that such an effort would be doomed to fail. “Our political system has been refined over the years specifically to keep people like Bernie Sanders out of the White House,” he said. “The system works.”

This is exactly why we will never, CAN never have an honest politician, much less a legislative majority of honest politicians.  To even have the slightest chance of being elected to high office, you would have had to spend years proving to the power bosses that you are a team player....that you will work tirelessly to help elect, and contribute money to, and to RAISE money for, the scoundrels who are on the top of the podium, regardless of their lack of morals and integrity. 

Those two measures of character are not part of our political system.  Politicians care about one thing, and it isn't the "public good".  No, it's about getting themselves re-elected and possessing the power election brings, period.  They would throw ANY of us under the bus to get re-elected.

When I hear someone say, "Oh, yes, they're a bunch of scoundrels all right...well, except for MY Senator/Reperesentative.  He's a good guy", I wonder how, or even if, their brain works?  Can anyone really be that naive?

I know of politicians who might have made their early reputation by being honest people, perhaps military heroes, etc, but somewhere along the way they were seduced by The Dark Side to put all that aside and play ball with the Devil.  Even the most sedate politicians, the ones you never hear much from, are guilty.  Instead of speaking up for "the people", they just "go along to get along".  They are accessories to the crime.  They might not pull the trigger, but they sure as hell drive the getaway car!

And THAT, my friends, is why I have no respect for ANY politician, of either party.

S

LATE EDIT:  Except for Mr. Sanders, perhaps.  Regardless of his politics, he has shown a disdain for the political Status Quo.  Good for him!  Which is why he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being elected President.  Honestly, I don't know how he made it to congress in the first place.

And it's Dung Slung Shit by a....nose (sorry)

 

Did you hear about the young people in NY (?) who recently bought a used couch at a Salvation Army thrift store?  It wasn't long before they realized how uncomfortably lumpy it was, so they opened some of the cushions and found over $40,000 in small bills, along with a deposit slip identifying the previous owner.  (Since when do couch cushions give deposit slips?)

They tracked down the lady, a 90-year oldster, and returned her money to her. 

Meanwhile mid-term election campaigning is in full swing and the best I can tell that DemoPublican candidate of Chinese heritage, Dung Slung Shit, is comfortably in the lead.  

Why can't we put some of those kids in office....someone who still knows how to do the right thing?  All we have are crooks vying to give the special interests more tax breaks, and rake off a hefty cut for themselves, too.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Speaking of....did you see the clip on TV of Senate Majority Leader Harry "Doogie" Reid (D-NV) lambasting the billionaire Koch Bros for setting up their payola kitty....er....political action fund....with $400,000,000 to be spread around Congress. 

Doogie was just seething, he was so incensed.

But then when asked about one of his Nevada constituents, Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has a pretty hefty slush fund himself, Doogie said he was a virtual saint.  "He doesn't care about the money.  He just wants to help people."  (Yeah, so long as they're wearing a Member of Congress lapel pin.)

*sigh*  Such is politics.  I only hope I'm still around to see the revolution.  :)

S

Here comes the Politician Apocalypse. Run for your lives!

Ted Cruz making another delivery.

Oh goody....It's an election year again.  I believe the politicians have found their way in front of every single TV camera in the state.  Every other commercial here in Texas shows one politician or another trying to "out Cruz" Ted Cruz.  

"Oh yeah?  You want to deport all them dang 'illegals'?  Well, I wanna whack 'em on the kneecaps and let 'em crawl back."

"You wuss.  I wanna cut off all their limbs, then let 'em flop back home." *snort, snort*

"Taxes are too high.  Them kids don't need 12 grades of schoolin'."

"I fought for a balanced budget when I was a Legislature-er."  (Note: A balanced budget is required by our state constitution.)

"Vote for me for Ag Commissioner and I'll fight Obama Care!*

"Vote for me for Juvenile Court #6 Judge and I'll fight Obama Care!"

"Vote for me for Sophomore Class Historian and I'll fight Obama Care!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

If there is a more despicable life form than politicians I'd hate to see it.

....said one politician to another.

Some facts:  We need "illegals".  More specifically we need the WORK performed by illegals.  Without them restaurants couldn't function, potholes wouldn't get filled, and houses wouldn't get built. It's a long list of things they do.  We need to somehow fairly bring them into the system.  

It isn't that taxes are too high.  It's just that the money is spent in the wrong places.  We rightfully feel short changed.  Where we spend taxpayer dollars is laughable.  (Well, not really.  It's sad.  Criminal, actually.)

Obama Care, or blanket health care....call it what you want....isn't going away.  Too many people now have insurance who before were excluded due to "pre-existing conditions", or now have coverage again after their exorbitant bills for serious illnesses maxed out their old policies.  And now politicians are going to take that away from them?  And still expect to get their votes?  Not gonna happen.  

The old system wasn't just folded up neatly and placed in the closet like an old set of towels, ready to be brought out again later if needed.  It has already been hauled off in the garbage truck and is now 20' deep in the landfill.  Bye-bye.

Like it or not, we need to find a way to make health care work. If you don't like Obama Care, fine.  Then show me something better.  I mean a detailed plan.  Show me.  Fix it.  Just saying "NO" doesn't fix anything.

All our established politicians want is to stay on the privileged ladder.  All the up-and-coming politicians want is to get on the privileged ladder.  Us peons are just here to give them something to stand on.

You don't have to agree with me out loud.  Just think about it.

S

This makes NO sense!

My 12 month contract with my electric provider is almost up, so a few days ago I began shopping around for the best deal for the next 12 month term.  Bottom line is this:  It looks like my rate will be going UP $.03 per kWh.

Huh?  S'plain it to me Lucy.

Here's a map showing the BOOMING areas of natural gas production in the US.  See that big blob of red at the bottom/center of the map?  That's Texas, where I live.  We're sitting on so much oil and natural gas (not counting the gas that's spewing forth from our politicians in Austin) I'm afraid to strike a match....I'm scared the whole damn place might explode!

And what is the main fuel used by our power companies in Texas to produce electricity?  Natural gas!  Not to mention super-cheap nuclear and wind power, Texas being the nation's leading producer of electricity from the latter.

Did I mention that gas is selling at near record LOW prices?  So low producers are cutting back on new drilling because the market is in freefall?  Yet my electricity rate is going UP?  Really?

Oh, and as a corollary, did I mention that our gasoline prices are =/+ the national average?  FYI, the producing oilwell map looks similar to the natural gas production map....it's right here in my back yard.  

You know what I think?  I think we're getting...

S