Thursday, January 26, 2006

The Obvious


Stuff I thought of when I should have been thinking about other stuff:

-- Looks to me like the GOP's stranglehold in Washington BC is weakening. The AP is predicting that the GOP's first two bills of 2006 - bills important to conservatives -- face an uphill fight.
The Senate opens its 2006 legislative session next week with two measures stalled at the starting gate: renewing the anti-terror USA Patriot Act and establishing a fund to compensate asbestos disease sufferers and stop their lawsuits against American businesses.
The Patriot Act is set to expire Feb. 3. Lacking the votes to renew many of the anti-terrorism law's provisions permanently and others for four years, Republican leaders are looking at a simple extension into March.

The other measure is a bill to compensate asbestos disease sufferers and halt suits the Bush administration says have cost businesses $80 billion. The measure is in such bad shape that one senator predicted it will only pass with help from a higher power.
Shame. Especially about the terrorist act. After all, isn't sacrificing our constitutional protection what freedom's all about?

-- Not too sure what to make of Hamas winning the Palestinian elections, but overall, it can't be good for the peace process.

-- Doesn't look like most teams are really capable of winning the Big Ten basketball title; but a lot of teams seem to be trying to lose it. Parity sucks.

-- On the Illinois gubernatorial race: The more the GOP contenders/pretenders slap each other around, the stronger Blago appears. Conversely, the more Blago opens his mouth, the stronger Eisendrath appears. And as long as the conservative wing of the Illinois GOP keeps insisting on another candidate cut from the Alan Keyes cloth, the party will remain too fractionalized and marginalized to be effective. Is Topinka really too 'liberal' to be a Republican? Or just too liberal to be a GOP wingnut?

-- Seems to me a number of local and state bloggers have given up blogging as their New Year's resolution. Some are sadly missed. I'm still here. Sorry.

And so it goes.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've noticed the blogging drop-off big time. Last summer was kicking ass, and now, nada. What gives?

Ol' Guy said...

I think the rather rapid decline of the Illinipundit blog has a lot of locals turned off. It's mostly a bunch of name calling now, which is turning a lot of people off on the whole blog business. Present company included.

Anonymous said...

Nah..it's the "newness" that had worn off. Local political blogging was a new fad that took the area by storm..We've now seen it has leveled off.

Ol' Guy said...

Yeah, I have to agree that tne newness has worn off and thus the general attraction.

And at the same time, there are less compelling issues right now (who isn't tired of the MTD wars?) and more non-compelling snarkiness going on at the same time.

Quite a few years ago I mentioned to a colleague I thought the Internet may be just the latest CB radio. That statment may have been beyond dumb, but perhaps blogging may fit in there somewhere. At some point the blatant bias and lack of credibility, accountability and particularly the lack of accuracy and honesty has to catch up with the blogosphere.