It's blogrolling, but

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall has been on top of the whole Social Security story, to the extent that I wonder if he'll be able to go to any other story once the fight in done.

Still, it's just fascinating to see him dissect the techniques being used by Bush to treat Social Security the same way he treated Iraq...manufacturing a crisis, claiming that he isn't planning anything (just like how Bush kept saying he had no war plans on his desk for Iraq in January of 2003), and now is lying about the problem.

The lie that I think should upset us the most is that Bush says that there is no Social Secrity trust fund...and that all that backs it up in a bunch of IOUs. He forgets that those IOUs are TREASURY BONDS, which are considered the safest investment of all time. Does that means that he's planning on wiping out the debt they finance by just saying that they are IOUs and don't need to be honored?

It's going to be one hell of a fight. Old people vs investment houses, Republicans vs everyone else...and the solvency of the US is being called into question by the President.

So, I'm going to keep reading Mr. Marshall so that I know just what the hell is going on.

The decency war

The Super Bowl is this week, and with Paul McCartney as the Half Time act, I am praying that there is no wardrobe malfuction, simply because I like Mr. MCatrney and don't want to see how he looks shirtless and old.

Mark Evanier pointed out
The New York Times > Arts > this article by Frank Rich who lays all of the blame on certain religious and political groups for all of the decency complaints...

But I think they are missing the point.

There is another legal action brought by Fox, Time/Warner and the other major media owners asking the Supreme Court to dissolve the FCC, or at least get rid of its ability to regulate them. They claim in their brief that the fines being imposed by the FCC are detrimental to their business, and have no precedent in the Constitution (leaning on the First Amendment for most of their legal precedent). Since the FCC's OTHER big thing they were trying to do over the past four years is get rid of all controls on media ownership, it looks like more consolidation and less control to me.

And with the fines being imposed more often, and in bigger amounts, they might have a case.

So, while it may work against the Republican Party's religious base, it works for their corporate base...and we all know which side has more money, now don't we?

No links for you

I am happily moving along with my most current novel, clocking in at about 1000 words a day. It seems like a lot, but I have learned that once I start writing fiction, I tend to go for a while, and....

Yeah, I always end in mid-sentance.

It makes it easy to just pick up the next day (or week, or whatever my schedule allows) and plunge right back in where I was. Other people I know who write say it takes them a while to get back into the groove, but I can pick up pretty quickly, which is a good skill to have when you are writing more than one novel at a time.

The problem is that since I AM into the writing on top of working, single dad-ing and the like...

I'm not paying much attention to the news. I still sit down every Sunday and make fun of it, but it's in short, contained bursts, and tend to get it all out of the way at once, then just ignore it all week.

All of which leads me to my point. There seems to be a different divide in the country that "Blue and Red" It's more people who follow the news closesly and people who just have it pop into their lives from time to time. It shows in cable ratings (big next events, huge viewership, not so much, a pretty standard, stable viewership), and it shows in the people I know. Some are news junkies who can go into painful detail about what was on talk radio or NPR or whatever, and some barely know who the Governor is. And while we are told it's our duty to know before we vote...in our manic work world, who has time? We push ourselves to do more at work and with more scheduling at home...and our news coverage is no longer giving us actual facts, they give us two opinions and let us sort it out.

So, No Links Today.

But my novel is doing well, thanks for asking.