Recently in news Category

i'm in one of those moods right now
where i'm tired of everything on the news

tired of oil afghanistan and tea parties
enough that flipping the dial to hear
trade deadline talk on the sports station seems like
a good idea

yeah that bad

maybe it's a feeling of malaise in keeping with the rest of the country

last night there was a discussion of extending unemployment
benefits
or rather
why aren't we
that caught me though

never mind the disgust that using a service
that could keep people fed and in homes
as a political football
deserves

there's no clearer evidence that republicans are rooting for the nation
to falter until
or so that
they get what they want in november

more interesting though was the idea of reviving something else
republicans hate
from the new deal era

national service jobs like the ccc or wpa
we're faced with not just people out of work
and the prospect of paying them to be out of work to keep
the economy
crawling

but while we're doing that
these people are doing nothing
their resumes shriveling
skills atrophying

the reason i am a liberal moonbat
above all else
is that i've played too much of sid meier's civilization
which is to say that i believe that there are things that
societies
and humanity
have left to accomplish
and/or
must accomplish
which can only be done
when vast quantities of resources are entrained to such a goal

and sure there was a conservative nitwit on there who made a game
attempt
at arguing that these efforts didn't actually create jobs in the '30's

yeah i didn't get it either

but why don't we take these out of work people and use them to get
something done
something we always wanted to get done but didn't have the time

let's get unemployed people who can use excel to computerize our medical records
let's get idle homebuilders to insulate buildings we already have
or send them to haiti to build new ones by the hundreds with money that's also waiting
put the sum of the laid-off parts of the big three automakers to work on fast trains
laid-off financial industry workers can be employed giving the federal budget the
scrutiny we all want
see even conservatives can get behind this

it's idealistic as hell obviously
and politically dangerous not merely to evoke the great depression
and acknowledge we're in something nearly as bad
but to openly embrace the über-liberal solution to it

but what resonated with me is the waste
the waste of productive years of productive peoples' lives
of the free time that we all speak of such ambitious plans for
but never have

these people have it
smart people with abilities varied and useful are waiting
to be pointed in a direction

let's fucking go already