- This is embarrasing

When you live in New Jersey you get used to taking a certain amount of kidding. Most of it is adolescent Joe Piscopo stuff "Are you from Jersey? What Exit?!" and the like. Between that sort of thing and being across the river from America's largest city, a place widely known for it's monumental arrogance and it's unfailing belief that civilization ends at the Hudson river, you tend to toughen up pretty quickly. The point is, it takes a lot to make someone from New Jersey hide their beet red face in shame, and cower in the corner. We're made from tougher stuff than that. But to me, this is embarrassing.

This clip is of our recently revived from the dead Senator Frank Lautenberg explaining the tragically misnamed "Employee free choice act." The employee free choice act is a bill designed by the labor unions to deny secret ballots to employees when voting to unionize. Under this bill all union voting would be public and subject to review, by name, by the union looking to take over the business. The natural effect of this bill will be to allow the labor unions to see who voted yes, and who voted no, and then to "assist those employees" in making the right decision. If this conjures an image of Paulie Walnuts with a Louisville slugger in his hand, then you probably have the right idea.

It's hard to see past the all the pandering, and sanctimony, but what this disco era geezer is trying to do, is enact a bill which will give all organized crime thugs a guaranteed living, and open the door to subjecting tens of thousands of people to union strong arm tactics. But to listen to him you'd think he's voting for free baby formula for orphanages. After a decades long career where he had only a passing acquaintance with the truth, he distorts facts with such ease and comfort that even I am embarrassed, and I didn't vote for him. It's clear that it would be just as easy for him to argue that what we need to boost the economy is a nice big dose of tax increases or that the key to ensuring the defense of our country is to slash all that military spending to the bone. Cynical as I am, I'm still amazed how comfortable he seems with being on the wrong side of history.



To be perfectly honest, I'm not entirely sure I get this whole blogging thing. I don't have a catchy and compelling online persona, or pictures of myself with a "cunning hat". I don't have any real desire at all for personal notoriety. On the contrary, if someone I didn't know were to recognize me on the street I'd probably be mortified, and would spend the next few weeks walking a different route to work every day or some other paranoid nonsense.

I don't have any interest in talking about myself all that much because to be honest, I'm just don't think I'm all that interesting. But I do have this idea which I think is important, and I'm going to put it in bold type so it isn't easily missed. It's the idea that the various governments of the United States and the people that run them, have become the enemy of the people of the United States. To me it's abundantly clear that because of a combination of corruption and arrogance, our government officials no longer serve the interests of the people they represent. And because that's true, I think we should all be doing our level best to get rid of them, all of them.

To be honest, I think I'd be more embarrassed if I didn't at least try.