What are you going to do to change things you don't like? ~ Bryce
I've volunteered at:
A soup kitchen and delivered food, blankets and clothing to people on the street
An animal shelter
A home for the elderly
A film archive
An art museum
I have:
Worked for political parties
Worked for particular candidates
Worked against nuclear proliferation
Worked for groups promoting recycling
I'm not listing this 'cause I'm bragging, but because there are so many people I've met who do ten times more in their communities every day. The world is what you choose to make it.
What are you going to do to change things you don't like? ~ Bryce
I've volunteered at:
A soup kitchen and delivered food, blankets and clothing to people on the street
An animal shelter
A home for the elderly
A film archive
An art museum
I have:
Worked for political parties
Worked for particular candidates
Worked against nuclear proliferation
Worked for groups promoting recycling
I'm not listing this 'cause I'm bragging, but because there are so many people I've met who do ten times more in their communities every day. The world is what you choose to make it.
You should brag! That's incredible. You have helped an astonishing array of people and helped to preserve our culture. Who could challenge that? You, as well as most in this thread I imagine, are the definition of community. If even a hundredth of our population did as much we'd end hunger and poverty.
I should have clarified what I meant, though. I'm very sorry if it came across as a challenge to anyone, I wasn't trying to assault anyone's merits as a good person. What I was trying to ask was "If you don't like a law, such as FISA, or the Patriot Act, or the Estate Tax, and despite all of your letters to your representative and protests nothing happens, what will you do to change it?" We all do our best to preserve our communities, to strengthen them, all of you probably do more than I and for that I'm ashamed and a hypocrite, but, and here's where my disgust with elected representation ties in, what do we do when the majority is saying "No!" and the elected go through with it anyway? Not elect them to another term? If not them, who? What happens if the new who does something just as bad?
I honestly don't feel like I want bravos at all, Ken and Bryce.
It's just that I really think the world is in an awful mess. Nothing I've done has had much discernible impact in the world and probably never will, except perhaps to me or in ways I'll never see.
I tend to look at things quite darkly too, and am hardly a pollyanna who thinks all will be well in the end. It's just that doing nothing would just be worse and make my taking up space on the planet even more unjustifiable than I sometimes feel it is now.
Btw, I like film noir too, ChiO.
Probably in part because it romanticizes the dark reality we all live in, sometimes finding patterns in the randomness in life, and sometimes simply acknowledging them. The focus on powerless, small people who sometimes have to do something, anything, to try to light the darkness a bit, even if they do it clumsily, has always been one of the most appealing aspects of film noir, which I believe came out of recognition of darkness in this life, and a sense of outrage over it.
Life is tragic ultimately, but doesn't have to be a grim slalom ride to oblivion. Some of us would like to enjoy the view on the way through and even have a few laughs.
Well, now that I've let my guard down too much, I'll stop boring you nice people and toddle off now and let you guys sort it all out. Let me know when you've solved all these problems, won't you?
Isn't anyone going to talk about Miss Sarah and her performance last night? I'll start it off:
-I thought she acquitted herself pretty well in terms of presentation, BUT
-I thought she looked exceedingly tense.
-She didn't say very much of substance, even given how insubstantial such debates can be.
-I thought she overdid the "Gosh darnit" shtick way too much, and risked sounding like a parody of a parody of herself. A little too rural, wide-eyed, "just plain folks" for my taste. I was born when the folksy "former haberdasher" Harry Truman was in the White House, and Governor, you're no Harry Truman. Harry Truman read a book once in a while.
As for Joe Biden:
-He was dignified and in command of his presentation, but maybe too low key, although not so moribund that I changed the channel.
-He spoke to the issues presented by Ifill in a much more substantive way than Palin did. I thought he missed a few opportunities to score points, but maybe he was a bit overwhelmed by how fast she was talking. From a debating standpoint, I was disappointed that he let her "waving the white flag of defeat" remark go unrebutted.
-He was respectful toward her, not condescending, as many had feared he would be.
On the whole, I think it was fairly riveting for a vice-presidential debate.
I have a suggestion for the Presidential Debate Council: before the start of each series of debates, Presidential and Vice-Presidential, they should run for the candidates the episode of the The West Wing showing the live debate between Alan Alda and Jimmy Smits, as an example of how an articulate, well-matched and substantive debate should be conducted.
Also, you literally took the words out of my mouth about Palin and Biden. One thing I can say about Biden, he is a very attractive man. I kind of wish he had been a little condescending because she needs a small kick in the butt - stop treating her like a lady, she is a candidate just like Hillary was, and nobody felt bad about giving her a kick now and then.
Palin definitely did do better than I expected her to do, but I am so sick and tired of hearing the words Maverick and hero in relation to McCain (and last night she really over-did it). I wish he would get over himself, and she would stop sounding like a teenager with a crush. Besides that, I don't believe she answered many of the questions put to her. She must have been heavily pumped with finance info due to the way she kept returning or referring to finances. Someone should tell her that the ending of words is 'ing' not 'in' :!:
They no longer need them but oh, the joys of being a counter at the polling place, or walking door to door putting candidates pamphlets into mailboxes, especially with 4 little kids keeping them 'organized' in a little red wagon.
Anne
Anne
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I need to watch the Biden/-Palin debate. So far, I've only read accounts.
Bryce wrote,
Synnove, it's perfectly relevant, just as your rant is! I know and admire quite a bit about Sweden and the Scandinavian countries in general - and I don't give a hoot what our news has to say, either! - and I wasn't trying to do anything other than point out that even the best of countries, with the best of systems and the best of intentions, can do some really rather terrible things. I in no way, shape, form or fashion think that the law will stand up to the people, let alone the European Union, but it is very telling of the pressure that outside influences have been placing on your government lately. Only in Sweden could the "pirate party" have even garnered votes, let alone such a high percentage (all right, it was half a percent, but the point is it got them) of them. But it's all for naught, in a way, until many in your current government are voted out (do believe the "royal" family are as big a distraction away from the "real" government as I and many others do?). The same for our government, yes? And that's the point. No matter how many people vote, no matter how "educated" people are, a government is still comprised of men, functioning nearly autonomously (via committee, how fun), and men are corrupt, greedy liars when it suits them. In positions of power, it suits them quite often.
Our dissolution with the appeasement process is simply that we recognize what a failure our own government is. Many on both sides recognize that only circumstantially - that is, until their own party has a chance to win - but I think that deep down everyone knows our system, as is, is severely broken. It has been beaten and battered for so long by people pandering to special interests and by one group of people trying to impose their will on the other that there is no remnants left of the country founded two hundred thirty two years ago. Hell, the sham that is the stock market is all but proof that an elite few control this entire country - as it is anything but a free market.
I just have to say, what you said triggered a rant from me, but that was mainly because I was reminded of a lot of other occasions when people started saying things like that in an accusing way with no provocation. I've spent too much time at IMDb. Like I said, it didn't really have as much to do with what you said, as with the unresolved issues I have. Sorry.
I was confused by the point you were making, because you first said the national votes are just an "appeasement", and then cited an example of something that a national vote could surely stop. As it is, the storm of criticism is still going on, the prime minister is losing the people's confidence because of it, and he needs to win it back somehow. I think something will change about the law. If it's passed though, it will only lend legitimacy to something that has been going on for over ten years already - and not just here. We live in a society like that now, and one can only hope we have a law system that can prevent the worst atrocities from being committed.
Do you mean that even in spite of a national vote, the government will still do as they please? If so, both Sweden and Britain would surely have the Euro now, since our governments certainly supported it.
Re. the stock market, it is a free market. Laissez-faire - this is just what it leads to. If they still want a free market after this, they shouldn't be so happy to accept the bailout. That's just hypocrisy.
The Pirate party amuses me. There's something about it that cheers me up. As for the royal family, they have even less powers than the British queen. Elisabeth II gets to discuss things with the prime minister, hold a speech outlining the policies of the government every year, and grant formal permission for things. Everything is still carried out in her name. The Swedish royal family was completely disassociated from politics in the 70's, even their formal powers. I think they just exist to give moral support nowadays. If anyone of them said anything about politics, there would be a public outcry. I feel sad for them sometimes.
Btw, everyone, I'm 19 and a half, and I still feel hopeful about the future, and not entirely cynical about the government.
I consider myself a cynical optomist. Cynical because I believe there is an element of 'big brother' but as I don't do anything wrong I don't really worry about it but the threat is there. I think who would be interested at looking too closely at my life
An optomist because I want to have a pleasant life and I do think it is possible. I'm definetly from the half full rather than glass half empty.
Anne, I feel I should clarify a little more what I said about no lunch hours. The job I used to do, for the same firm I work for now, put so much work on it's managers, many of us used to eat at our desks trying in vain to catch up with the emails and phone calls etc. On top of this we took our laptops home every night and downloaded the information we were expected to know for the next day. Things constantly changed and if you couldn't keep up, you would be put on a performance plan and then dismissed if you couldn't perform. I took a two year break to have Joe and went back on my terms. I downgraded to the lowest level and am now just a bank teller and a lot happier for it. These days I do get a lunch hour but I didn't know what to do with it at first. I hadn't had one in years and even at home wth the kids I'd barely sit down to eat something before I'd haveto get up to see to one of them!
I guess I can see how easily it happens to lots of us, not having our proper breaks, even though we know it's the best for us and it is our right to have one but boy, the threat of not performing well enough and having to face the boss and explain yourself makes you sit there and carry on.
These days I often work late but I get the time back, I only do days as the kids are my priority. After having Libby I worked two days and becuase I was still a manager thendid a full days work over the preceeding days on the laptop.
How these big businesses thrive on all this unpaid time we give them.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
We all need our breaks with nobody looking over our shoulder. We need time to power down during the work day, and it is a shame your bosses never understood that. But happily you realized you had reached a plateau where you no longer wanted to fight against that upstream current, left and came back. Somewhere way back in this thread, I said you have to know what you are capable of. That is my argument with Sarah Palin. In the days when I was a secretary (the old way of saying Administrative Assistant), I was the one everybody came to for extra work that had deadlines. I was that "give it to a busy person to be sure it gets done", yet when I was offered a managing job, I turned it down. I was confident I could do the work, but not about how to get it done. I had no managerial training, no people training, or the things that go with it. What if I had to fire one of my friends who was once my co-worker? I knew I couldn't do that. Palins's eyes were bigger than she could handle. Although Alaska is a big state, the amount of people per mile is nothing compared to the amount of people in the city of Chicago alone, let alone the state of Illinois.
I also had 4 kids who got sick, had school shows, sport events, etc. that were a whole lot more important to me than my job. Palin has more kids than I did and on top of it, one has Downs. Her butt should be home taking care of that child since she chose to keep it, rather than leaving it to nannies or whatever. I fully understand the urge to succeed, eventually, I took the job offered a couple of years later, but by then I had taken a few courses and knew more, but Palin is the GOVERNOR of her state :!: What more could she want
This is what is meant by 'biting off more than you can chew'.
Anne
Anne
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All this talk of middle class, lower class, upper class, white & blue collar, and economic bailout, makes me wanna laugh/roar/bite through the rim of my Guinness schooner!
How do Wall Street investors deserve a government-financed bail out?!
Every day, Main Street investors, and owners, and managers, risk everything, and when they crash & burn, they LOSE everything!
OK, everybody, pop your umbrellas, here comes the RANT:
Submitted, humbly, for your consideration: for the past seven years I've operated my own company; for the bulk of this past year I've gotten by with 15 - 19 employees, all of whom work for me as certified traffic controllers (i.e., professionally trained flaggers); they each work 30 - 44 hours per week, at 1.25 - 2.50 per hour over minimum, depending on their merit & tenure; their daily work procedures protect the safety of utility linemen in their on-road work zones, each of whom are union members, working an average of 42 hours per week, for an average of 23.75 per hour; my total private-sector insurance burden (workman's comp, jobsite liability, traveling public indemnity) totals right around $48,500 per year - together with my other operating costs, like gas reimbursement, equipment replacement, payroll taxes and biennial flagger certification, that brings my profit margin down to right around zero; every 3 months, my workers vote not to accept any company health insurance plan, and no big surprise: 90% of them qualify, per income level, for state and/or federal health insurance coverage, and in Vermont, domestic companies with fewer than 50 employess must have 75% participation in order to initiate any company health insurance plan.
The upshot: whenever the Mrs. or I require medication, or an outpatint procedure, or dental work, it gets financed through my raggedy, overworked old checkbook, because at our combined income level of just under $58,000 per year, we do not qualify for any form of discount or assisted health insurance program, and yet at that same income level, and at our ages, we can't budget even the most meager private policy, without putting our mortgage and household bills at severe risk.
Two months ago (following my daughter's funeral, also an uninsured event), my wife needed a root canal; we shopped around for the least expensive dentist in the county, and got her work done (late!); then, for the next 3 weeks, we cancelled our cable TV service, ate a lot of peanut butter toast & cheerios, and went so late on my monthly GMAC payment that I took to carrying a "Club"-style steering-wheel lock in my Chevy pick-up. That was the same period of time during which three of my workers took a week or more off from work to go on personal vacations ( two of 'em heading cross-country for NASCAR venues).
The old joke goes that owning your own business is great; you get to pick the 70 hours every week you want to work!
And that's cool, and it's true, and really does go with the territory . . but I can't help but wonder: if everything around the survival of my little company started to smolder, and explode, and fly apart, and slide toward the proverbial bottom . . who'd bail me out?
Obviously not my hometown bank - they're too busy apologizing for new fees & rate hikes every month . . my customers? Naw, they can't stop beefing about my rates going up 45 cents an hour over the past five years, and yet swear they are in no way accountable for my steeply spiraling phone & electric bills . . the Small Business Administration? On no, so sorry, they reply, we couldn't believe in you enough for even a 10-grand start-up loan back in 2001, and now that you're invoicing a half-million per annum, and hiring 30 or so people a year, you just don't qualify!
But Hey!, they're quick to remind us, if you & the Mrs. can just hang on another 10 years or so, our pals over at Social Security can help defray those medication costs for ya!
Ummm, if they are still in business, that is . .
Klondike, my parents had their own business, 7 days a week from 4 in the morning to 6.30 at night with a couple of hours sleep in the morning. They had to lay off much needed staff because they couldn't afford them. I watched them work themselves into the ground whilst helping where I could. When my brother went to university because they were self mployed my brother didn't get a grant whereas children of plainly rucher parents did! The attitude that being self employed is a luxury is for those people that haven't been self employed.
The job I describe above was for a large bank in this country and I was a business and corporate advisor with hundreds of customers on my portfolio. I packaged together loans and often went out to see customers in their own premises. As much as I've talked about the hours of unpaid overtime I've done, I did get weekends off, a luxury many of them didn't have.
Regarding the big debate. My rather right wing Saturday paper thinks the Palin was hands down the winner. The left wing BBC news had Biden down as the winner. From the tiny excerpts I've seen Palin has more personality, Biden doesn't shine but that doesn't mean she's more qualified.
Anne, I don't think the fact she is a mother of a young downs baby should preclude her from running for vice president, plenty of women have to do it in todays world, although it wasn't my preference for raising my children. Here some fathers take over the main parental role if the mother is the breadwinner. I'm a little confused as to why she is in the situation of having such a young child at 44 when she is obviously an ambitious woman. A I assuming too much to think it was an unplanned pregnancy? I can't criticise a woman for keeping a downs child.
Moira, I hope to take a leaf out of your book, when the kids don't need me as much, I'll give some of my energies to people who need it.
Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself - Charlie Chaplin
You said: "Here some fathers take over the main parental role if the mother is the breadwinner. I'm a little confused as to why she is in the situation of having such a young child at 44 when she is obviously an ambitious woman. A I assuming too much to think it was an unplanned pregnancy? I can't criticise a woman for keeping a downs child." You're right about the father, but her husband is working at his own job.
Neither of us knows or will ever know why she had a baby at 44, from your post, I get the impression it's not necessary that we know the answer anyway. The whole idea of medical technical advances of today is to know that there is a problem and if she decided to keep the baby, more credit to her, I couldn't give up my baby either, but she was already the Governor of Alaska, why throw her hat in the ring for V.P.? The whole point of my post was to say, with 4 kids to care for alone, and no help, I STILL turned down the offer of a better paying job because I knew I couldn't give it the full attention it needed. Later when I took it, I worked 80 hours a week most of the time. I couldn't do that with a 6 year old at home, but I could later when she was 12 and I was remarried.
I think Palin is kind of a 'head in the clouds' gal. Everyone who is protecting her, or feeling sorry for her is not thinking very straight. She said it herself the very first day - "What does a Vice President do?" Now she tries to say it was a joke, but NOSIREE, she was serious, she didn't know. No deer in the headlight - ha - when Biden was throwing out names and figures, she had no idea who or what he was talking about - the moderator knew more than she did. She was well coached, but all those things she learned in a week were getting all mixed up in her head, and with each question, she had to look deeper and deeper for an answer, which is why she didn't answer. When you were a little kid and just knew you were going to get killed for doing something wrong, didn't it take you forever to think up a good, reasonable sounding lie that Mom would accept? and being the only kid in the house at the time, 'I don't know', would not have cut it.
I just feel the girl is in over her head, but I'll get back to ya on that
Anne
Anne
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I kind of wish he had been a little condescending because she needs a small kick in the butt - stop treating her like a lady, she is a candidate just like Hillary was, and nobody felt bad about giving her a kick now and then. 
