Meanwhile the GOP campaign to repeal the HC bill will begin losing steam. This one-issue platform is simply not sustainable for the many months to November. Even Tea Partiers will begin to realize there is no apparent negative impact in their lives resulting from the bill.

President Obama’s next fight is Financial Reform. It will be much more difficult to campaign in favor of banks. Everyone hates banks. Difficult to defend them. Granting that the GOP and Right-Wing spokes-people will highlight arguments against Financial Reform, there is no way to engage the emotions in this issue to the same extent as HCR opposition. No death panels and murdered grandmas to strike fear and horror into the hearts of voters. Banking and finance are dry, boring topics, causing many eyes to glaze over.

That said, the GOP will use the fail-safe argument that regulations are creeping socialism. Though the number of Tea Party activists will dwindle, the stragglers will be loud and get lots of attention. By the summer recess, President Obama’s approval numbers will have been inching upward, and talk of repealing the health care reform bill will have mostly abated.

Look at the quandary the GOP is facing. They know that if they don’t get the Tea Party vote they have no hope of taking many, if any seats in Nov. However, catering to the Tea Party is also to continue endorsing violent and unruly behavior. And they have to walk such a fine line. People on edge are easy to rub the wrong way. Anything less than a 100% score on their litmus test incurs their wrath, as evidenced by the attacks on Stupak after he changed his vote in favor of HCR.

Additionally, if they continue to focus on the Repeal and Replace platform, the President’s other issues will be proportionately ignored. They have no choice but to keep step with the White House agenda to retain any modicum of credibility. Congress will have to debate new bills, and these will very quickly take over and dominate the news cycle.

The Republicans will not be able to keep their constituents focused on HCR while the rest of the country moves on to other pressing concerns. They act as though this is their ace-in-the-hole for November, but even they know it isn’t. They are doing what many losers do, they keep fighting to the end, then cry foul when they lose. Fine. They put up a good fight, even if it was dirty. But the game is over. A new strategy for the next round is unlikely, even though it doesn’t actually work. Good luck. We’ll see come November. I am unconvinced it is going to be a big of an upset as you want us all to think.

Publish@smallwoodfire.com

Randolf Smallwood
Authorized Submissions Agent
InnerCircle Publishing

publish@smallwoodfire.com

Indigo is a gentle, heartbreaking lament. Delicate, thoughtful lyrics expressed with Adam’s unique, sincere vocals may cause an altogether new heartbreak in the listener- “Why haven’t I heard this, and where is Adam’s paycheck?”

By any measure, Indigo is a stirring work by an inspired artist. In hours of darkness this song has helped transform despair and loneliness into something beautiful. You can’t ask for more than that from any song. It simply doesn’t get any better.

FEATURED SONG:
Indigo Written and Performed by Adam Chasse

publish@smallwoodfire.com

Ironically, he asked me if I could send him the MP3’s because he no longer had them and hadn’t heard them for years! Now he has given me permission to share the music with my friends, or whoever else might find it.

Anton presents a complete experience with one guitar and one voice. His voice is expressive, well controlled and delightfully quirky, while the songs are melodic and sassy over snappy, expertly played rhythm guitar. Anton wants anyone to download and enjoy his wonderful songs.

Thank you Anton for the great music, and for sharing it with us.

FEATURED SONG:
Right to be Bad, Written and performed by Anton Shmerkin.

More of his music here.

Sincerely yours,
Randolf Smallwood, Submissions Agent
InnerCircle Publishing.
publish@smallwoodfire.com

If these choices are left to the employees, I am sure all of us can find aspects of our jobs that we may find morally objectionable. If you work at the convenience store you have to sell cigarettes. You may consider it a hedonistic desecration of the Sacred Body, but that is just tough. If you don’t want to sell cigarettes you have to work at a store without a tobacco license.

My aunt used to work for Boeing, but changed jobs because she didn’t want to help build weapons of war. She didn’t ask her supervisor to please make sure that nothing she worked on was part of a military contract. If a nurse doesn’t want to assist in abortions, they can find a job for a doctor or clinic that doesn’t conduct abortions. Simple.

The whole world doesn’t revolve around any one person or their beliefs, even if some wish it did.

Kids in class still pass notes. It’s not all texting. It isn’t as bad as you think.

An argument that our young people are being made stupid and heartless by computers falls apart with the Obama election campaign. With kids trying to change the world through YouTube. With Current TV. With the Iranian election protest and the worldwide broadcast of its suppression.

Think of the bravery of pointing the cell phone or iPod at the police while they are beating people to death, knowing that you might be next, and the very act of pointing that camera might be the reason. Think of the bravery of sending the images to the world over a network that you know is being monitored by an oppressive and murderous regime. And the truth is, Social Networking has allowed our youth to establish friendships all over the world, in every nation, so that the horrific images from Iran had a way to reach the rest of the world, in large part, through those very connections.

I’m talking about heroes here. And lots of them. Our youth today care more about what is going on in the world more than any generation since WWII, in large numbers. And they know more about it, too. Not all of them, naturally. That is never true. But enough of them to make a difference, a real difference. We probably wouldn’t have even known what was happening in Iran without them. If our planet is NOT going to spiral into the abyss in the near future, it will be thanks to the iPod generation.

If the plug is ever pulled on the Internet and the mutual electronic dependencies that have grown out of it, the time will have come to pull out the old Ham radio and dust off those CBs: the original global social networking platform.

2005 the Webby Awards granted Al Gore a lifetime achievement award for 30 years of contributions to the development of the Internet.

This link should help clear up the unfortunate rumor and mis-quote. The article was written by two veteran pioneers of the Internet.

“Al Gore and the Internet” By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt