crumudgeon......yeah...I guess I am

I really don't do too well with local, hometown-type festivals ....You know what I'm talking about....as you (used to) see as you drove south on I-39, a billboard advertising the City of Endeavor's Broiler Vegetable Festival; the tiny berg of Ino's UFO Festival; Loyal's Cornfest; and we can't forget that Clark County likes to humiliate some poor young lady by crowning her PORK QUEEN. (It's even more amazing that young women actually COMPETE to be crowned Pork Queen)

Even though the t themes may appear diverse...(Dairyfest, Hodag festival, Bay Days etc) they all have one common element:

BEER TENTS

No matter what the event, the locals ALWAYS have a beer license issued and most often, rope off a main street or a portion of the public park and the organizers and politicians stand in the middle of the street and get drunk.

Oh yeah....and don't forget that the local councils get conned into funding it either with actual cash or public works and police assistance or both and call it....are you ready for it?

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

sigh......

You know....A Prairie Home Companion is fun to listen to but it's not so funny when you're actually living it.....

yeah...I'm a crumudgeon......

By the way....a week or so ago I lamented the death of my fellow High School alumini, Doug Marlette, the Pulitzer prize winning political cartoonist who was killed in an automobile accident in Mississippi.....I mentioned it on the "other" blog but neglected to mention it here.

Orientation?

Is this poster from Orientation Classes for new Local Officials?

Sometimes it sure as hell feels like it...........

Favorite rant

http://www.transitmiami.com/2007/07/economy-fueled-by-sprawl.html

Take a look at that article if you get a chance....

I read a post in the logal newspaper's blog the other day that bemoaned the fact that we are continuing to place keep demand for gasoline up even with the high prices. We can't seem to break the "addiction to oil".

Know why?

Because we have designed our whole economic infrastructure around oil...and cars...we still design our cities and our housing tracts around SPRAWL and make them and the basic services they require dependent upon GASOLINE, CARS AND OIL...

It's time we "re-engineered" our cities, from both a physical and economic standpoint.

We will never be sustainable unless we do....

(rant /off)

Oh no...not a Xpost!!!

'fraid so......

I'm pretty busy so I'll let my obligation to post on the other site take precedence...but I still think it's pretty good sooooooooo...

lookout...here comes the xpost.....

http://woodcodems.blogspot.com/

"...and on today's menu..."

We have:

Smoking Ban ordinances (count 'em...two of them) Wit two side orders of Public Health Officials and Tavern League...yummm, yummmmm....

New Power plant approval...sauted' in a delicious helping of wetland construction.

Senate Hearings Tomorrow Morning.

Off-springs Graduation luncheon to plan....

Entertain old family friend who will be in Madison tomorrow....

In-laws to deal with...although my somewhat sadistic sense of humor almost savors "messing" with a couple of Fox-news-loving-Bush-worshiping-Limbaugh-listening Republicans...(insert evil grin here)

hotel/car rental reservations to make....

oh, yeah...we're out of bread and milk too...and red wine....

red wine? we're out of red wine? Oh S$$t!

I have been urging all of you to read Last Chance Democracy Cafe for some time now.

Well I'm doing it again.....

The owner/bartender/writer of the Cafe', Stephen C. Day, (scroll down for the bio)has been treating us to a serial episode of the Cafe (a serial within a serial....hmmm...whodathunk?) that starts off slowly but I guarantee you that you will soon find yourself hopelessly hooked on the series and anxiously awaiting tomorrow's final, concluding episode.

I'm reminded of a line that always brings a tear to my eye from The Impossible Dream, from the Play, The Man of La Mancha:

"....to be willing to ride into hell
for a heavenly cause...."

Yeah....

Now I remember....

That's why I'm in politics....

Mostly addicted

I know I swore off blogging for a while but I've been keeping up with my "responsibilities" over at that ""other blog

Other than that I haven't been laying off of the politics locally. And let me tell ya....it's been a busy summer so far......

Law enforcement
liquor law violations
budgetary considerations
public service commission hearings
smoking ban (in public parks first)....a public buildings including taverns later...
zoning issues (about as exciting as watching grass grow)

otherwise....not much happening....

got a link to Mel's liveblog....she has come so far so fast, I'm just really proud of her...I inviter her to join us here shortly....

Spent the 4th of July in Ashland....pretty nice time really...the fireworks over the bay were spectacular and watching them from the veranda of the Hotel Chequamegon with a cold beer in my hand was an incredible experience......and Ashland's traditional "fire-run" is almost as exciting as the fireworks themselves.....I forgot how much I miss the place...and the people...there's a genuineness of the people who live up there that I appreciate and miss a lot. It's a "in your face" kind of society. You know your friends and you know your foes equally well. If somehow has a problem with you the come up to you, spit in your eye and tell you so...no mamby-pamby passive-aggressive crap for them...but if they're your friend, they'll risk everything for you....

I ran across some old friends, neighbors and an old enemy......I looked in the enemy's eyes and cherished every moment of our rivalry.....and so did he....23 years ago and going strong. There's something truly special about that......


[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v77/mayor80/WB_0493.jpg[/IMG]

Disgust and burnout

I think I'm going to take a sabatical from party politics for a while.....try to untangle this trainwreck that IS what Democratic Party politics has somehow become...

We have been victorious and we're squandering the victory in cheap, insider-only, mediocre efforts...

I'm pissed.

ready to man the barricades.

Need to "go to the mountaintop" as Martin Luther King Jr said. I need to "see the promised land" and refocus my energies on how to get there...

The "sausage-making" of politics is just as ugly as everyone describes and I need to leave it behind for a while and peer into the beauty of "the promised land".

That won't stop me from posting.

or bitching

or ranting

or pontificating....

You're not getting off that easy

What's going on here?

I spoke to a good friend last week who asked me, half seriously I think, "Did somebody put stupid pills in the water supply?"

Good question.

I'm beginning to think it's possible. Ironically, that same question was asked in two other places at approximately the same time by people who did not know each other and had not communicated with each other in any way. It also, again ironically, came up in a national blog post a few days later.

What triggered each of these pondering was a different incident but they all shared a common thread: People in authority or in leadership positions were being quoted saying the most absurd, stupid, insipid, shallow remarks you could possible imagine.

Let me get personal for a minute.....when I was growing up in a small, sleepy little town in the South, the worst thing you could be called by your peers was "ignorant". The word "ignorant" was carefully chosen and distinguished from "stupid" because it was assumed that if one was "stupid" it was hereditary or perhaps the result of a mental defect and southern politeness wouldn't tolerate demeaning somebody for that purpose....

"Ignorant", however, was different. If somebody was called "ignorant" it implied that you were uneducated, perhaps willfully uneducated, due to laziness or just plain stubbornness.

Needless to say, those among my peers who were most admired were the scholars and thinkers; the achievers; the eloquent; the mannered. The least admired were the "ignorant".

One avoided being labeled ignorant at all costs and the only way to do it was to study diligently and keep abreast of what we called then "current affairs". (There was even a required course for Seniors called "current affairs".. that included...ready for this? How to read a newspaper article. ...which was a short course in critical thinking....imagine that...)

What I am lamenting today is that ignorance is no longer something for which one needs to feel ashamed. In fact, even our President is proudly ignorant and it seems that the rest of the country is following his example. Our leadership...on national, state and shamefully on the local level proudly wallows in ignorance supporting prejudices and hidden agenda with obviously false, misleading, and sometimes downright dishonest rhetoric that plays to the most basic of human emotions and we let them get away with it. Hell.....we even frequently re-elect them. Even if the rhetoric isn't dishonest or deliberately misleading, the logic by which they reach conclusions is laughable.

This rant fits almost too neatly under the category of "dumbing down of America" but I think it goes beyond that. It speaks to yet another question of what America and Americans actually value; which character traits they covet and which traits they shun.

I prefer to shun ignorance.