Who is Raining on Your Memorial Day Parade?

The Memorial Day weekend traditionally has been the first getaway weekend of the summer.  A chance to kick back, take a road trip or hop or plane and to visit relatives.  Not this year.

It 2008, when the price of gasoline began to approach $4 a gallon, the Smiths complained that they had to take out a second mortgage on the old homestead just to fill up the family car.  In 2011, as gasoline prices topped $4 a gallon, the Smiths are upside down on their mortgage(s).  Dad is working two part-time jobs and still doesn’t make what he did at the full-time job he lost when his company was downsized.  There is no more wiggle room.  The Smiths, like millions of other Americans, will be staying home this Memorial Day weekend. Continue reading “Who is Raining on Your Memorial Day Parade?”

Bobble Heads vs. Wing Nuts

The bobble heads who rule the two major political parties refer to outsiders as “wing nuts,” which is short for “right-wing nuts.”  No bobble head ever views a left-winger as a “nut.”  If so, he or she keeps quiet about it.   To do otherwise might make one appear  “extreme” and the left-wing bobble heads, which dominate the news media, would say or write mean things about them.

Bobble heads are those little plastic dolls that are images of major the political figures. They show up every election year on the dashboards and office desks of the party faithful.  Unfortunately, party leaders, behave in much the same way as these miniature  characters.   With the slightest breeze or movement, the heads of these dolls bob up and down on a spring.  They are incapable of nodding right to left as if saying “no.”   In fact, the party establishment seems incapable of saying “no” to anything proposed by the party’s top elected official, no matter how unreasonable or harmful an idea may be.     Continue reading “Bobble Heads vs. Wing Nuts”