Don't they have rules about that? About being drunk on the Senate floor?
Just as soon as this political neophyte--Brian Kelly for Congress--announced his political intentions, he got hammered by the local bloggers and their readers. Without diving too deeply into all of that, let's just say he's too much of a traditionalist for the folks who think being "progressive" means having to turn the country upside down.
Anyway, I immediately took notice of his resume, but not for the same reasons as my electronic colleagues.
This is from his campaign site...
Brian Kelly, a former IBM Senior Systems Engineer and currently Assistant Professor of Business and Information Technology (BIT) at Marywood University in Scranton, author, consultant, and IBM computer industry expert, announces his candidacy for Congress in Pennsylvania's Eleventh Congressional District.
Now follow this, from an IBM Oswego newsletter published in 1962...
Gene J. Cour...senior design engineer, guided missile project.
So, I had to ask. I just had to. I sent Mr. Kelly an email asking if he knew, or if he had worked with my father. And he did respond that he had not worked with him, but promised to email his "IBM friends."
Small world, ain't it?
I forget which company it was, but one of these companies looking to turn the Marcellus Shale beneath us into Swiss cheese has designs on drilling a property on Zosh Road, Lake Township. The property owners have leased the land for the purposes of natural gas extraction, but last I read, the township had yet to issue the permit.
In case you're wondering, Zosh Road is a dirt road that runs off of Meeker Road. To intersect with Meeker, you need to hook up with 118 at Dallas and drive until you arrive at the 5 or 6-way intersection that delivers you to the sprawling Lake Lehman school campus off to the left. At that goofy intersection, Meeker is on your right.
There are not many homes on Zosh Road to speak of. There is a farm with a large pond that could be used for fracking water. Every inch of the surrounding forest is clearly posted as private property, so we need to be mindful of that if and when we go scouting for pictures of the devastation that hydrofracking typically delivers to the landscape. Although, I suspect those signs are posted for those looking to shoot Bambi's descendants.
As of today, there's no drilling going on. No overweight trucks. No explosions. No polluted well waters. No half-drained ponds. No waste water pools. There's nothing going on yet.
Yet.
I'm curious. (No! Not about that!) If you were a recently disbarred attorney as well as a local political blogger, would you have the gargantuan reproductive sacks required to continue on with the blogging routine? The way I figure it, if you're a disbarred attorney, isn't your credibility kind of vaporized?
Whatever.
Don't matter none to me. But it'll be interesting to watch.
This one caught my eye, the perfect segue...
A death in the blogosphereIf you were to blog using a pseudonym, and if you were to go tits up for whatever reason, how would your readers know?
Then again, if you were to blog using a pseudonym, and if you were to be disbarred, arrested or imprisoned, how would your readers know?
I think Blogger should have this fail safe, an electronic will if you will. Here's how it would work.
You write your "will," in effect, your last ever post in the event of your untimely demise arriving, well, rather untimely. After your grossly overpriced funeral, and after all of your relatives are done with fighting over all of your imported worldly possessions despite what your paper will says, your spouse could notify Blogger of your undoing, which would trigger the posting of your electronic "will," your posthumous post.
Here's my rough draft:
If you're reading this, know that I have passed over into that mysterious place that no one not stuffed full of synergist-charged opiates wants to visit anytime soon. I am gone, therefore the world is far less imperfect.
P.S.--Facebook is gay.
What else?
Oh, yeah. The local news. You know, rampant corruption and the like. Dirtballs, liars, scums and thieves, i.e., your local government.
One of Gort's many readers posted an anonymous comment about how, in their opinion, Luzerne County Controller Walter Griffith is "grandstanding." Here's my take on that.
For the purposes of this exercise, for the sake of the argument, let us assume that for Walter Griffith, a day without grandstanding is like a day without sunshine. Let us go there.
So what???
Is it not beyond obvious that practically every office, every department and every branch of our county governement has played host to some sort of scam, embezzlement or outright theft? The reason your taxes keep going up is to pay for all of the crime that passes as government in these parts.
And since our elected "leaders" have shown a prospensity for, a clear liking of getting things done by way of the golf course, the local sports bar, the smoke-filled back room and out of the sight of the public despite what the Sunshine Laws command them to do, I hope Walter calls for a press conference every single time he discovers that a box of paper clips has gone missing. I hope to see Walter's ugly mug in the local newspapers day-in and day-out.
Because every time that ugly mug of his accompanies a news story, we learn more and more about the depth of the corruption that has been hidden just under the surface for generations. I hope he's in the newspapers so completely much, that the readers of our two local newspapers might at some point mistake him for a regular columnist.
I hope he keeps on "grandstanding" to the point that Preparation H becomes the fastest-selling over-the-counter remedy in this county for years on end. I hope that product flies off of the shelves. I hope that stuff becomes as hard to find as are honest politicians in Luzerne County.
Grandstanding? When compared to the secretive ways that have bankrupted this county, I'll take the self-aggrandizement bit every time.
Go, Walter. Go!
Forget what Joe Snedeker, Rusty Fender or Josh Hodell have to say about it, here's your proof that we're in for an early Spring.
Ready?
I encountered termite workers within an inch of the surface of the soil this past Tuesday, March 2nd. Never throughout the entirety of my career have I run across workers at that shallow a depth that early in the season. Never. And since insects are like animals, in that they can detect an impending seasonal change long before we can, I think a change is afoot.
And I have concluded two things as a result of that not-so-chance encounter.
1. We're in for an early Spring.
And,
2. Subterrean termites are currently searching for your home, your church, your school or your place of business.
Good luck with that last certifiable conclusion of mine. As in, pray that you never need to meet me. Or at least, pray that you never need to tap into my vast expertise.
Later
7 comments:
My contention with Kelly isn't that he's a traditionalist. Tradition can be just fine, when it's productive for society.
My problem is that his positions are regressive and archaic, slightly different than tradition.
While I'm skeptical of conservatism and teabaggerism, it's not simply because it's conservatism or teabaggerism, it's because I have genuine disagreements with the philosophy. Hence my highlighting Kelly's positions and why they are horrendous.
Trust me, I was not singling you out.
It's just that, to hear truth-seeking "progressives" tell the tale, baseball, apple pie and Chevrolets are at the root of what's wrong with this country.
If a typical Sunday blog post of mine included the oft-dreaded Church, a Little League game, mom's piping-hot,homemade apple pie served with vanilla ice cream and a mention of how I dropped the tranny on my '76 Scotsdale out back of the double-wide, you'd be thinking to yourself, "What a freaking loser!"
Admit it. America as we knew it once upon a time sucked by today's "progressive" standards.
For folks of your less-than-advanced age, all of those things are, in a word, repulsive.
Look, I will not vote for Kelly. But fatally flawed as he may be, I understand where he's coming from.
He wants what I want, to be able to turn back the clock. Sadly, the clock trudges on forward while our increasingly progressive society delivers unthinkable horror after unthinkable horror.
All of which makes me want to retreat to the old days, the abandoned grain silo, where Susan Pond, Margaret Devlin, Diane Driscoll and I would frolic all about without any fear of being kidnapped, strangled and dumped in a drainage ditch somehwere.
Dude, there's something to be said for apple pie and the like. In my mind, Tofu, Bhudda, wheat germ and a whatever-feels-good mentality, plus boat loads of anti-Invirals just ain't cutting it.
When I was a boy, we went to bed with the doors unlocked. And the windows had no locks to speak of.
What can a "progressive" such as yourself say to make me beleive that we've made any progress as a society?
I think you might be seeing in him something he's not. He's not looking for the "good old days" as much as a White Christian Conservative Utopia.
I just spoke to a super-liberal cousin of mine (this is strange to me, because on one side of my family, they are all GOP-WASP types) who was accused of being a Communist back in the day. He wasn't, but his response was that Communists play catch in the backyard with their kids just like anybody.
That comes to mind here. I've never heard of a progressive that think the way you seem to think they do. I mean, I actually yearn for the days you're talking about. The days when a woman could stay home with the kids while the husband went out and worked a union job with great benefits and a great pension. The only thing, as a progressive, that I could admit that I don't like would be the church. But the church is so silly and bankrupt at this point that, even though I deride it here and there, it does enough of a job on itself that I don't really have to.
Believe it or not, I don't think we are a progressive society at all. If we were, nobody would worry about health care, people would have living wages, nobody would have to get into unimaginable debt to get a college degree, and everybody would have a secure and guaranteed equitable retirement. That's not a lot to ask. In fact, FDR proposed this in his Second Bill of Rights. It doesn't get more old school than that. That's what makes me progressive and liberal and proud.
It sounds like you're afraid of something you've lost more in perception than reality. My grandmother still makes homemade pasta and apples pies and calls me over. My Italian cousins still make homemade brandy or wine. Kids still play in my neighborhood and in the schoolyard behind my house. I'm not afraid of my neighbors, regardless of how white or brown they are.
Has our society made progression? Not at all. That sickens me. We don't have the things that I outlined earlier, health care, living wages, etc. I think that we would blame that on different things though, and that might be where we part as a progressive and traditionalist, respectively. I blame corporations and a government bought and paid for by business. Traditionalists tend to blame a system of values that is somehow less stringent than the one they once had.
I could be wrong though. I'm anxious to hear your thoughts.
A "White Christian Conservative Utopia"...what?
GOP-WASP?
What?
Dude, that's just meaningless gunk that sounds just about right when you're off preaching to the easily-led choir on the internet.
And I really hate to break it to you, but very, very many of us out here in the vast wastelands make a really good buck, have health care and a decent retirement package in place without any fat-assed union boss telling us to slow down, to be far, far less productive than we otherwise could be and to bleed our employers to death.
And what's up with your all-too-frequent use of the word "afraid" being pointed in my direction?
Is that some signal word you younger, smarter white folks use to denote that someone else, some silly, older, racist, white, right-leaning guy is far, far less than enlightened than you? Get over it.
Afraid? Me?
Man, that's a freaking first!
The only thing I'm afraid of is disco making a big, big comeback.
I think you'd be a really great writer if you would just put the politically-assigned stereotypes aside, forget what you know your targeted audience wants to hear from you and just let it fly.
And as for Brian Kelly, do not make the glaring mistake of lumping us together simply because I tried not to be nearly as mean-spirited as you were when first he announced his suicidal political intentions. The only thing we have in common is the IBM thing.
Societal progression?
I remember the TV networks breaking into the regularly scheduled programming (Lost in Space) to tell us that Charles Manson & Co. had run amok with knives and whatnot. When I was a boy, a mass murder was big, big breaking news.
These days, mass murders are a dime a dozen. Boring. Been there, done that. Yawn. Post it on Youtube and watch the hits mount.
FDR?
What, is he a hero of yours? Ask not what you can do for your country, ask your country what it can give to you? That FDR? The freebie guy? The 'beginning of the end' guy? Yikes!
Did you ever read "The Naked Communist?" No? That's what I thought.
Look, you asked for my scattered thoughts and you got 'em in full technicolor.
You're a bright, young guy, but you need to dispense with this utter foolishness that only side of the argument has any merit at all.
Other than that, I got nothing.
Firstly, I don't really believe Kelly wants a White Christian Utopia. It's called hyperbole. WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, tend to be Republican. My use of that acronym isn't some liberal, young person plot to lead ignorant Interneters down the evil path of Communism. It's amazingly hard to argue with conservatives, as you are obfuscators and love misdirection. I applaud you for it.
Last I checked, the issue was "good old days" and traiditonalism, which you turned into an attack on my being liberal and progressive.
The problem with news coverage is that it's a business into making money. Let's be real, serial killers don't get in the news, but whenever a little white girl goes missing, it's everywhere.
I used the word "afraid" what, once? And last I checked, it was a conservative buzz-word. Remember the fear we needed to feel of Iraq? Besides, yet again, you failed to address the issue at hand, which is perception of a loss of tradition vs. its reality. That's cool though.
Your evidence so far is the news media and your fear (you said it earlier, not me) that people can't go outside and play without the prospect of imminent death. Sorry, that doesn't argue that traditionalism is dead and progressivism is bad. Traditionalism as you define it is still alive in my mind, and we haven't progressed as a society and I'd like to, hence why I am a progressive. That's the argument at hand. If you want to talk about that, I'll certainly be checking back.
You need to reread your second to last sentence then find a mirror.
As for my own reading, sure, I haven't read the Naked Communist. But I've read the Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill's works, Das Kapital, Bertrand Russell and on and on and on. I'm open to perspective, if you're accusing me of being uniformed, then inform me next time.
Wow! I won't jump in here. All I wanted to say is, entertaining post as usual and: Isn't Harry Reid the quintessential out of touch politico hack! He is Luzerne County Commissar, I mean Commissioner, material.
I say, if they squirm in they should term out...
PS I guess you could call me a termlimitite. (sorry about that)
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