Follow The Owl.

Gadding and Grandstanding

So this is what democracy comes to these days. This week, Senator John McCain piped in on an apparently good-natured exchange between Senators Leiberman and Franken. For all intents and purposes, it appeared Leiberman knew he'd be denied extra time when he asked for it on the floor of the senate.



Within 24 hours, Jon Stewart had found video of a young McCain sticking it to Senator Byrd in the same way. This in spite of McCain's insistence that it's "never happened before". Now, you wonder why so many young people don't take you seriously, Senator McCain. The gentlemen from Connecticut and Wisconsin seem to be more grown up than the crop coming out of Arizona.

Does anyone in the senate really get traction with this kind of blatant grandstanding? That's when I remember the tea party crowd and realize that they do, of course. Simply stated, there will always be an ignorant fringe in any group. But why the heck would you play to it? The broad message of the tea party groups is that they aren't their brother's keeper or his ATM. They don't want progress. They want to live in that wild-west mentality where it's every man for himself and the rule of law is the gun. Why on God's green Earth would you enlist their help or approval? The polls even show them as fringe elements of the Republican Party.

The answer I come away with, Senator, isn't pretty. You must be in agreement with them, and all these years of middle ground, maverick thinking and speaking were a sham. It's a shame really. The last, best hope for bipartisanship sinks into the ocean with all that damned tea.

I'm doing it! I'm doing it!

Image by aerostockians1scaf.sofact via Flickr

Thank God! I found a free computer program to  help me storyboard my novels, and it's helping. Nothing takes up more time than looking for where I really am or what someone said or did that I can't remember from writing a week ago.

Writer's Cafe. You should google it. It works on most computer systems, and, though it isn't exactly low speed in the geek department, it's manageable. I'm off to work. No, the other job. The one where they pay me.