Skip to main content

Reaching Across the Aisles and other faux pas

this was written by me five weeks ago and never published to the blog - it seems even more fitting after the Tuscon shootings.

I am a bit of a political/news junkie - though the fixes can be few and far between these days since I'm weary of the depth of discord. So, for several months now I have remained silent - I've written not one word of political observation or belief since many weeks before the election.

However, I feel the need to break that silence with the recent political 'debate'. I use that term - 'debate'- loosely since there does not seem to be a whole lot of debate in the truest sense of the word. There is no intelligent banter - instead it seems there is a whole lot of yelling, positioning and close-mindedness. While it's not a new phenomenon - it does seem to be escalating since the Presidential campaigns of 2008.

The silence-breaker for me is the complete and total discord on both sides of the aisle for the recent 'compromise' reached by the President and the Republican party over the extension of the tax credits and extension of unemployment benefits. The far left criticises the President for agreeing to the extension of the tax credits and the results of the mid-term elections. The far right criticizes the President for the extension of unemployment benefits and the state of economy overall.

Comments

Post a Comment

It's not a popularity contest, but ...

Francis of Assisi would run away from home if he lived here!

The title might be a bit extreme - Francis might just go to his room and shut the door and put a pillow over his head to silence the 'noise'. I have done that on occasion. And not because I have toddlers, or a kid that plays the drums or even really loud kids - it's because I live in a house where there is one lawyer, one law school student, and two more potential lawyers. And me - the one singing "Let there be peace on earth . . ." The other four Piggins family members enjoy debating. Sometimes, I think for the sake of the debate. John, Michael, Matthew and Delaney seem to really like these 'discussions'. For instance, we were watching a television show recently - I cannot even recall which one, but it seemed fairly bland - when one of the barrister Piggins made a comment that inspired disagreement from another barrister Piggins. That inspired another from another. And then one more from another until the four of them were debating on some point that wa...
Post a Comment
Read more

You don't know me . . .

I stopped blogging for awhile. I know some might think that I was being lazy, or overly-involved in some community or school venture or in the middle of some really good books or projects. While all of those are true, that's not the main reason. I stopped because it felt strange to be somewhere and have someone refer to something I wrote. It was like they knew a secret about me (though secrets are not usually published on the Web) that I hadn't shared with them. Though in reality I had shared because I wrote it on the blog.  Truth be told, I don't know who reads this - I have a smattering of followers but a lot more readers. Blogger lets me see how many page views for each posting and I can even tell the referral site. The most I have had for any post was 152 and I've had readers from as far away as New Zealand (thank you Gretchen) and Alaska. Most readers are referred through Facebook. I know that if I were more diligent, I could market the crap out of the blog ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Struggling to not feel like a failure

Okay all of you 'struggling to stand' or 'not wanting to have to use a wheelchair' or others that look upon using a wheelchair as a symbol of failure, you're about to get punched. Punched in the figurative sense. I am about to go on my soap box and my Irish is up which means that I'm fairly peeved (though I've been mulling this over for awhile so I'm not as angry as I once was, which means there will be fewer expletives and a kinder tone). If you've read this blog or know me at all, you know that I did not go easily into using a wheelchair as my primary mode of transport. I too, may have had a little bit of your attitude about the wheelchair being sign of failure or of having given up. My sister, Kerri, helped put it in a different light. She said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "It's actually an energy saver since walking is stressful and you're worried about falling - using a wheelchair will take away a lot of that stress. You will hav...
Post a Comment
Read more