Monday Again

One would think that once I retired I'd never dread Monday again. Shows what I know. Funny, though, most of my life I had days off during the week. Today I hate Mondays because that's when I start hearing the news.

I don't watch TV except for old movies and NASCAR. (How about Mark Martin, winning at Phoenix?) I hear the news on the radio, listening to Rush, Mark Levin, etc. I'd listen to Hannity but he hardly ever talks about anything except that he's gonna be talking about something later. So when he's on I listen to the country stations.

As an aside, country sure has changed. I'm more likely to slip a Tennessee Ernie CD in, or one of the compilation CDs.

Anyhow, the news isn't great these days. Obama thinks the Presidency is about him. How can someone go to college, Law School, serve in a State Senate and the United States Senate and run for the Presidency and win, without figuring out that the Presidency isn't about a man but the country? Seriously, how can this happen? I keep reading little things about Obama being a narcissist but that doesn't explain things for me, after all, politics is full of narcissists, of both Parties. I can't think of a single US Senator who is not at least somewhat narcissistic, certainly not my two. Politics is that sort of business. And that's the problem.

Somehow we must find a way to change politics as business. I doubt that term limits alone will do it. If a politician is term limited out (s)he just runs for another office so they go from one to another, always at the public trough. Joe Biden got his law degree in 1969 and was elected to the city council in 1970. Thirty-nine years later he still has made his living in the private sector.

Lest one thinks I'm only attacking Dems, my own Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson is little better. After college she went to work for a Houston television station. The same one that led the Jihad against the chicken ranch. (if you are underage, don't ask.) That didn't last, the next thing she was in the State Legislature, then to the Senate, pledging only two full terms. Somehow that pledge is now inoperative.

John Cornyn? From law school to Judge to Texas Attorney General to the US Senate. Don't get me wrong, I like John. But I'd be a lot happier if every one of those people had run a 7-11 or something. Maybe a farm or welding shop. I always said Billy Carter would have made a better President than Jimmeh. Billy knew how to run a gas station.

Politics is littered with career politicians. I have no workable answer to that. I know that something is seriously wrong with a system that allows people making about $170,000 a year to retire as millionaires. Meanwhile having to have two homes.

Much of the problem is the power of government. When government was small there was little reason to make politics a career. Folks went to the Statehouse or to Washington for a term or three, then came home. Or, like Davey Crockett, when defeated for reelection, famously said "Y'all can go to Hell! I'm Going to Texas." And did.

Instead we see the Tom Daschle debacle where he cheats on more in taxes than most folks earn in years. But it's all right, just a mistake. Of course if an ordinary citizen made a mistake involving that much money the courts would make an exception to the "cruel and unusual punishment" thing. After the flogging was finished the miscreant would be hauled to a federal prison, a large hole dug in the exercise yard and be buried up to the neck with a kick me sign.

So, what can we do? Beats me.