We lose.

If it wasn’t clear just how nausea inducing the campaign season has been, I would direct you to the now oft-seen video of Rand Paul supporters shoveling, jostling and stepping on the head of a woman who disagreed with them.

It’s funny that with the advent of the news networks, various news channels on cable, online magazine, all those avenues for information, the voter attention span has shrunk. The authors of many a misspelled placard at Tea Party events would have you believe that the world went into the dumper only when President Obama took office. This is, of course, crap as we have been failing for some time before that. “Taking my country back” has been getting heard with regularity this year. Nobody seems to answer with to what, the 1940s?

Now, the partiers concern me. Locally, the republican and democratic party bosses pick their guys prior to the primaries and then kvetch about low voter turnout. Who wants to turn out when the result is foretold. If I am a Buffalo area republican, I’m upset that the GOP doesn’t try, neither in the city or the state for that matter. If I’m a Buffalo area democrat, I’m upset that the party doesn’t try harder.

Being upset with the process is a fine thing, engaging in informed discourse is a great thing too, except that isn’t happening. The short attention span induced by funneled soundbites has produced a curious lot. I really don’t give a rat’s ass if you are an outsider or an insider, just that if you are going to do something once you are elected and if so, what?

I wonder how many tea party boosters know how many Amendments are in danger. I used to believe that Vice President Cheney was inspiring fear for saying things like “you need to vote for us to ensure safety,” but he is positively huggable compared to the double standards being put out by this crop. Check this out. Yeah, it’s Olbermann, but everything is accurately sourced:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39875964/ns/msnbc_tv-countdown_with_keith_olbermann/#slice-2

I’m fond of minority opinions, owning quite a few myself. But I guess I’m saying to be careful what you wish for. A colleague of mine espoused the need to shake things up when selecting a candidate. I need a little more, some gravitas, some assurance of some progress. My central problem with the Tea Party folks, especially the GOP splinter portion is that they are resentful that they aren’t in power and that has the GOP in Congress especially swinging to the hard right. Ultimately, I believe stuff gets done when everybody is even stubbornly collaborating. The voices of the better angels can shout the extremes of the devils as it were.

But when candidates are more concerned with the proclivities of the opposition instead of the considerable problems that lie ahead, I got an issue (okay, I have volumes). If I’m Andrew Cuomo and annointed by my party, I roll out the plan to make New York better. If I’m Carl Paladino, I shine the biggest flash light I can find on Cuomo’s record as HUD secretary.

But that is asking too much apparently. I’ll stop here as I have to return to my mailbox to throw out the waste glossy paper coming from various candidates in the district.

I keep getting the postings on Facebook to pledge to vote (which is right up there with dedicating my status in terms of pointless activism) and I will. Always have and always will, just once again I know that the result will be something along the lines of “we lose.”

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Midweek Mental Gumbo

These could have been separate entries, but I figured just empty the pockets and we can resume what we doing…

So, I drag my weary self to my Monday night Bikram yoga class. Yeah, if you know me at all, that is an interesting mental picture all in itself. Near empty room and I hide toward the back with the thought being I can see and hopefully not distract the more graceful with my elephant on a high-wire schtick. Young dude comes in and set his stuff right in front of me, despite the near empty room. So, for the next ninety minutes, I got a guy who thinks the three inches of boxers then the shorts is a good look. Really? Yank the damn things up fool! Nobody has ever pulled off that look.
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Getting a kick out of those who are behind the “Anger is not policy” argument against the candidacy of Carl Paladino. While he won’t get a chance to try most of what he espousing, at least he appears to be for something. “Status Cuomo” (come on, you wish you thought of it) is trotting out the email “Scandal” that disappeared almost as fast as it appeared last summer. I’m sorry, democratic operatives are doing the trotting, but it won’t matter.
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I don’t condone that stuff, but to pretend he is the only guy in the capital to have something question in either his in or out basket is folly too.
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Think the Bills could sell Michael Vick to the fan base now?
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Fun hearing the Hawaii 5-0 theme on TV the other night. Given the time the original was on, I was half tempted to call my folks and ask if I could stay up to Danno “book-em.” Like any pilot, full of exposition and former “Lost” actors who are suddenly available, but it shows some promise.
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Back to the Bills for a second, maybe they should follow the Sabres model and switch uniforms back again. It worked for the Sabres as people spent a day or two talking about shirts and not about players.
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Speaking of the Sabres, I think one of their poobahs was a little off in lamenting that a few newspaper columns drove Bass Pro away. I don’t they were really considering it for the same reasons Ikea didn’t want to build here. We’re not a destination point. Instead of being the nerd pestering the hot chick at the dance, the Canal side guys should (I know I’ve said it previously) look at the Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Baltimore waterfronts and see that one huge retailer isn’t going to change the dynamic. Give people water access, reasons to be there (like a beach, like a navy pier type thingy, a proportional version of Chelsea Piers and the money will come.
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Remember when you stopped to parallel park, people would stop? Now, I see it all the time as everybody just loops around without regard for the car that is parking or the truck that might be coming the other way.

Sigh, and so it goes

Election Daze

It’s been a little pet peeve of mine how primaries prior to elections have been bastardized by both parties. Party chairs come out and pick their guys and then wonder why turnout was off. Despite that muddleheaded thinking, I was entertained at Carl Paladino’s win on Primary Night. I don’t think Rick Lazio could inspire a good night’s sleep in a narcoleptic and that might have help Paladino’s totals. Personally, the idea of somebody who isn’t beholden to anybody is going to make for an entertaining campaign. Love him or hate him, Paladino certainly will not be dull.

One of the funniest bits to come out of Election Night was the Daily Show’s “How the Democrats will F*ck this up?” Arguing that the Tea Party Movement will split republican voters and damage those chances, yet the Democrats will find a way to mess that up. This is a concept that does have some precedent. Already, the Cuomo camp is running out the “email scandal,” the “wedlock scandal” and others that quickly faded from media interest when they were first reviewed. He’s no choir boy to be sure, and I think he’d admit that too. Albany has more than a few criminals and despots who practically have seat belts on their legislative chairs. There are way too many people working there and not enough people working in the rest of the state. As my good friend Pete Herr writes on his site, http://www.buffalostuff.net, New York is broken and has been for a long time.

When such communities pillars like D’Mato, Koch and McCall are writing an open letter worried about Paladino being wrong for the state and the “rich tradition” of legislators in New York, it does dramatically illustrate just how much of a problem we have. Those three don’t see what they’ve inflicted, just that somebody with deep enough pockets to make “Status Cuomo” a serious challenge is out there and he doesn’t care what the establishment thinks.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not really enamored with either candidate. I think some of Cuomo’s policies as HUD Secretary set the table for the many of the mortgage troubles in recent times and I don’t cleaning up Albany is going to be quite as easy as Mr. Paladino thinks.

That said, a debate between the two should make for some truly “must-see” tv

“Wrestle the world from Fools…”

The armchair pundit in me is instantly entertained at the notion of Carl Paladino running for Governor. I don’t know if his background truly preps him for that post, but you can’t say much about the other folks who’ve held or wanted the job recently either. I have a lot of respect for Mr. Paladino and his sense of getting things done. I’m not sure what kind of governor he can be given the twisted culture there, but I do know the campaign just got a lot more entertaining.

Speaking of which, the State Republican party chairman already through his support to the throughly bland Rick Lazio. This is a pet peeve of mine as your party is going to have a primary to determine your candidate for November. Shouldn’t a party chairman put a sock in it until after the primary? Doing so before, I think, unfairly moves money, influences opion, keeps some voters from leaving home and ultimately can bastardize the process. That may be part of the plan on their end.

Saw a commercial break during the noon news where an grocers funded anti-soda tax aired, right after an Albany funded pro-tax, “Pro-Health” ad aired. Usually you don’t see the same subject matter back to back in tv advertising. Me? I was more taken back that this was even an issue.

But, here we are, the state’s most prominent citizens reside in the section of New York that we call Florida because of moves like further taxation, instead of responsible spending and budgeting. The Lt. Governor wants to borrow against the debt. Gov. Mario Cuomo applied that to the Attica Prison in 1990. The Buffalo News had an interesting article on how “Well” that worked out for us.

Follow this link to watch the funds go up in smoke: http://www.wgrz.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=75249&catid=37

I mean schools should be palaces and good teachers should make six figures. That is key, instead we have part time salaries for “leaders” and tax-free pensions calculated on what you made for the past three years. I can’t begrudge recipients of stuff like that as I would take it offered. And when the money is out, the first place to quickly slash is the education monies. This while our reps tweet from the Tavern on the Green or facebook post from “economic development” sojurns in Jamaica. All that does is to say we have a problem and hey, we’re about to make it worse.

This thing is broken and has been for sometime. Hopefully, Carl can dare/cajole/shame into some repairs getting done.

If we get the leadership we deserve, we must have stunk a lot.