Has it been 5 years?

I need to find myself another hobby because I used to just watch a little TV or read a good book whenever I had a sleepless night. Last night when I found myself wide awake at 2:00 A.M., I switched on the iPad to see what was going on at the local forum. A poster who calls himself, rollingstone, cut and pasted the definition of progressive and liberalism. I wasn't that sleepy, the word “hijacked" and “socialism" stood out, so I went to the free Wikipedia and found his definition in the discussion area. It was a difficult two step process, but I copied the two correct references from Wikipedia and pasted them as comments to my blog. Then like our Persian cat after a full meal, I drifted back to sleep.

I can't really remember the exact date, when I first became interested in our one line forum, but I remember we only had about five bloggers back then. I remember enjoying the Grey-Beard loon and Pilot's blog, Toni Anne was the other blogger I remember. I do remember the first discussions, on was a topic on abortion and maryann was supplying references as fast as her opponents could make a comment. On another thread, Kenneth Schustrereit was holding court about the water issue, and the posters agreed with his point of view. I decided to make my first comment about Halliburton's favorable treatment where Suzy and a poster with many aliases. Roy Mark was already going at it. Just as soon as I mentioned that Halliburton was engaging in war profiteering, Roy Mark, use the rest of the afternoon trying to shoot down my argument. We became bitter online enemies and remained that way until his final banishment. We used to have a confidence booster added to our blog. It was a counter for all time hits but when a new system came in, that feature went away. I believe, I was up to 13,000 hits but Pilot had about 25,000 or more. I don't remember all the details all the details of those two numbers stuck with me.

Joe Patrick Bean was the editor back then. Mr. Bean ran a tight ship by not allowing complete cut and pastes for comments. A small cut and paste was allowed but posters had to credit the reference. Most of the comments were vetted for accuracy and deleted if it didn't meet the test. If that rule was in place today, a lot of comments would never see the light of day. I don't know what holly 1 would do. He continues to hide behind the actual truth when he says "JIM CROW, Slavery, if I remember my history correctly these were supported by southern DEMOCRATS not republicans so before you spout off about how evil conservative republicans are research the history of the democratic party and see how it compares to the "we're for the poor. We want social justice" front it hides behind today."..... Oh yes, the state laws known as "Jim Crow Laws" were enacted and enforced by the southern Christian conservative democrats from 1876-1965, but they later became republicans when the civil rights legislation was passed. That just goes to prove that party labels are interchangeable.

I used to write five blogs a week, consuming about 7 to 8 hours of research and answering my critics. On a scale of 1 to 10, I usually have about 9 in the negative and maybe 1 in the positive. Considering the environment of Victoria, I should be lucky I have that 1. About six months ago, I asked myself “is it really worth it?" I enjoyed writing the blogs for the on line forum, even with the daily confrontations, but it started to become an endless recycle of old arguments. After one of those days, I let out all my frustration in an old BlogSpot blog I started and abandoned a year ago, because I thought no one would notice. The next day, I joined Twitter and a poster reminded me that I was leaving an online trial. Pretty soon the hometown paper found me and became a follower on my Twitter account. Since then, I am proud to say that I have six followers on my blog. I will continue submitting a weekly blog on the Vic Ad, but I'm going to devote more time to this personal blog where we might extend our discussions and just be ourselves.

Culture war?

I knew when Republican Party started co-opting their base with the Tea Party, there was going be hell to pay. It was the equivalent of letting the convicts run the prison or better yet; the insane running the asylum. It's going to be an interesting two years but never, even in my wildest dreams,I ever imagine that the Republican Party would allow itself to be known as the “extreme right- wing." I thought the established republicans would rein the tea party radicals. It's the other way around, senators Orrin Hatch, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and Scott Brown will probably have a primary challenge because they don't meet up to Tea Party standards.

The GOP house members are taking a step backwards by introducing legislation to ban the EPA from regulating greenhouse emissions. That's just the first step; they also want to strip the agency from future crackdown on emissions from factory's, utilities, and other stationary forces. Damn the science full speed ahead. This is in spite of the proof that climate change is causing this severe cold spell. Try telling the global warming deniers, that warmer air collects moisture like a sponge; that’s until it hits the patch of cool air, creating a whole lot of snow. During their coffee break the house Gop was trying to redefine the definition of “forcible rape." The republicans were trying to find a way around the current H.R. 3, "the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" because the Hyde Act allows for exceptions in the case of rape, incest or a threat to the life of the woman. They will go the extra mile to get their way.

The senate republicans attached an amendment to the Federal Aviation funding bill to repeal the Health Care Law. That effort was defeated along party lines but "Republicans say it will turn out to be a victory in 2012 because it puts Democrats on the record for supporting the bill." The GOP hopes that will discredit Democrats running for re-election. Our local republicans tried to deny that republicans do not like Health Care legislation in any form or fashion. Washington republican lawmakers are telling their constituents that they will retain the pre existing conditions and repeal the rest. If the Supreme Court rules that the "individual mandate" is unconstitutional then the only options will be Medicare for all or the public option. The insurance companies would go bankrupt if the “pre- existing conditions" clause remained because people could drop out of their expensive insurance plans until a need comes up that would require them to buy insurance. They know they couldn't be denied for pre existing conditions. MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell said: Jonathan, the Democrats made a mistake of not writing into the law that the bill is what they call "severable," meaning if courts find bits of it unconstitutional, they can simply sever those bits from the rest of t he bill. Jonathan Turley, professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, agreed with Lawrence saying "it was a colossal mistake not to have a severability clause in this legislation. It’s a standard clause in bills. It is not clear why it was kept out. Some people say it was a blunder. Other suggests and I know you know, there’s some suspicion that it might be a sort of game of chicken, that they wanted to make clear, if you take out the individual mandate, you are risking the entire bill to sort of give these judges a bit of sticker shock. I think the republicans have a good legal claim that the “individual mandate" is unconstitutional but I would like to see the arguments before the Supreme Court. If the republicans were serious about Health Care legislation, they could reword the “individual mandate" to something like incentives but there are only interested in political victories.

Our community is not immune to the culture war we're seeing in Washington. I've been trying to make some sense of it but it only lead to the same old “I’m right you're wrong arguments." It was amusing watching itisi trying to challenge KyleC.. I'm surprised that itisi doesn't know he is overmatched. He can't beat KyleC with slogans, talking points or silly comments, so he challenged his citizenship. That's awful close to what the old Victore used to do. It may be the same person but I would take KyleC over itisi, any day on any subject. Hictoria,said " unfortunately itisi is right.That does it for me..lol  I don't know why posters like jbj,itisi, Observer, and holly1 don't use the world almanac to support their claims instead of making up stuff. Holly1 goes into great detail talking about welfare but he just pulls numbers out of the air to support his claim. I know where rollingstone and Observer get their material. It comes straight from the far right blogs they read. Then there's the chameleon poster named jbj, he can change stripes on a minute's notice, in giving his Pollyannaish views…..Where are you Kenneth? At least Kenneth didn’t bother me and vice versa.

It's 32 degrees @ 2:30 PM feels like 21 degrees ..snow in the forcast