populism 7

Republican majorities in both Michigan houses, and the gov, and Wisconsin likewise I think. Whatever has become of that comfortable blue pocket around Lake Michigan? And why has Illinois, previously fickle, become so true blue? Probably has something to do with the relative statuses of Chicago and Detroit, but I don’t know how to explain Wisconsin.

I don’t have much of an income either, social security, pension, income from dividends on stocks, I generally don’t pay anything into income tax, and sometimes I get something back. I don’t know about your accountant’s advice that you don’t have to file anymore. I’m pretty sure you have to file regardless of how much you have made previously, the IRS likes to keep in touch.

That Paulite and Palinites division of the tea party is probably just the writer’s way of being cute. I think entries on controversial subjects are frequently rewritten by the different sides of the controversy. There are wiki volunteers of some sort who decide what gets changed and what doesn’t, but I don’t know exactly how it works. For a source which we both rely on, I think we should know more about it. But that’s a bit of work, and not as much fun as being morning and nighttime blowhards.

But anyway that Paulite/Palinite division is pretty descriptive. Though I wonder how many of them are pure libertarians, most of those who claim to be libertarians are mostly just guys who don’t want to pay taxes, but don’t want to call themselves cheapskates. Anybody who would want to call themselves a Palinite, I think we would have to assume truly was.

The thing is that since the tea party can never achieve power on it’s own, due to the fact that whenever it elects one of its own that guy becomes a Washington establishment guy in their eyes, the two sides can hang together forever because they will never have to make decisions about what to do with power.

Well not all hippies became doctors and lawyers, many of them remain bums, and a lot of the guys who became doctors and lawyers were never hippies. Still a lot of hippies did become doctors and lawyers. Thinking back on the hippies it’s hard to figure out how they became a big deal, they were just kids after all, and they never had any real power.

I think I’ve said this before, but I think it has something to do with those uptight fifties. We had just won WW II, and our economy was booming, and we were scared shitless of commies, and it just seemed like such a crazy thing to be rebellious, that when somebody did it got a lot of attention, and I suppose that attention made more people aware of it and likely to join, why join the army when you can dodge the draft and smoke dope and hang out with free loving hippie chicks?

Oh I suppose in my day I was a populist. I believed in simple solutions, even ones I didn’t believe in I went along with because they were the ideas of my side. When I could have wielded a little bit of power, I refused to register to vote to keep my hippie credentials clean.

And racial equality was something we were all for, but when LBJ, of the evil government was actually doing something about it, we weren’t paying attention at all.

I’m not a populist at all anymore. I have my sympathies with the downtrodden, but because they are downtrodden they just don’t know very much.

And their ideas aren’t likely to be enlightened as you noted in how back in the day they wouldn’t allow blacks in the movement, because they didn’t want to share any of their gains from The Man, and also because they were flat out bigots.