Usual Year-End Stupidity

Scanners

I’ll be winding down come the New Year but I thought I’d regale you with some thoughts today.
 
First up, I see that Tester is touting his recent ‘success.’
 
I say ‘success’ because to me it’s a real fuck-up.
 
“I'm pleased to announce the TSA will be installing modern security equipment at Helena & Great Falls airports,” our senior senator said on Twitter.
 
He’s talking about new body scanners, something many people find intrusive.
 
All I can say is, wow, so unnecessarily increasing people’s wait time at the airport is a good thing?
 
I guess we’ll be catching a lot of terrorists as they move through the central part of the state, however.
 

---

 
Moving on, I see that Bullock is worried about where Obamacare funding will come from now that Congress seems like they’ll repeal the program.
 
Here’s an idea…nowhere.
 
Just don’t fund it.
 
On social media earlier I offered two ways it might be funded:
 

• Here in Montana with the taxes we take in from legal marijuana.

 

• Nationally by decreasing our military budget, which is bigger than the next 7 countries combined and costs us $2 billion a day.

 
Besides those two ideas, I haven’t seen a single legislator from either party offer an idea on what Montana might do.
 
Yeah, there’s 150 of them but not a single one has an idea on where to get money for this.
 
So I come back to my first point – just don’t fund it.
 
Yeah, sick and dying people might get screwed and they might die in the street…but so what?
 
That’s happening right now.
 
What’s sad is that Congress teamed-up with our for-profit medical industry to saddle what’s left of the American middle class with the bill to help all the poor and dying people that can’t help themselves.
 
Again, I get back to the legal pot and decreased military spending, but no one besides me here in my apartment seems to be going that route.
 
So I’m sure we’ll continue to see the talking heads in our political universe muddle about and worry.
 
Oh well. Doesn’t effect me none.
 
That’s one of the big reasons I’m not at all interested in writing about the 2017 Montana Legislature – doesn’t affect me none.
 
Sure, they might pass some laws, might even change a bit of the tax code.
 
I don’t pay property taxes and the income taxes I pay are amazingly low.
 
Yep, I do pay rent, and maybe that’ll go up by $120 a year, hell, maybe even $240.
 
I can handle an extra $10 or $20 a month – I’ll just give a little less to charity, maybe eat out less too.
 
No biggie.
 
Something else that’s no biggie is the continued ‘leadership’ of the Montana Democratic Party.
 
Ochenski lambasted them this week, using the same kind of language and tone that I’ve been using even before they lost.
 
It’s now been 7 weeks since Democrats lost big nationally and in Montana.
 
Despite that, the same tired ‘leaders’ of the Party continue to sit on their fat and lazy asses collecting their pay.
 
What do they do for that pay?
 
Why, that’s easy – they put forth bad ideas, follow through on them, and your family pays the price.
 
They, meanwhile, continue to collect their pay while parking their fat and lazy asses in the same fine ol’ upholstered chairs they've been in for a year or more.
 
Ochenski labels these 'leaders' as “still unbelievably smug and apparently incapable of taking responsibility for the disastrous course they steered.”
 
He goes on to compare these 'leaders' with a sports team, where if they’d lost as bad as Dems just did, “the manager, coaches and any number of players would already be fired and out the door.”
 
But this is the Democratic Party we’re talking about here, so what makes sense in the real world doesn’t apply.
 

 
Moving on again, the only Dem interested in Zinke’s seat seems to Amada Curtis.
 
I’m not sure how I feel about this.
 

• On the one hand I’ll likely vote for her, as I think she and I see eye to eye on many of the issues.

 

• On the other hand, I know a lot of Republicans and independents in the state won’t vote for her.

 
What’s more, a lot of that ‘guns and religion’ talk that she did in her videos is already getting looked at again.
 
Sure, it might be taken out of context and she might be ‘GOP on many of those issues,’ but that doesn’t mean the tar and feathers won’t come out.
 
Unfortunately, our ‘leaders’ in the Montana Democratic Party don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground so we’ll see the same mistakes over again, despite what Curtis claims she’s learned.
 

• Many are torn between going more to the left in Montana, while others want to go more to the right, or just claim the center.

 

• Many think we need more people talking and acting like Brian Schweitzer, as if that’s the only way a Democrat in Montana can win anymore.

 

• Many others aren’t sure what to do, and will happily vote for whomever the Party tells them to do, like they’ve been doing their whole lives, and regardless of whether it’s made a difference in their lives or not.

 
But hey, Obama’s still in office, Zinke is too, and Trump ain’t president yet.
 
Like the 2017 Legislature, I don’t think much of it is going to have an effect on my life.
 
But that’s politics – a game for the high and mighty to play, perhaps even a few with some property too.
 
They’ll bitch and moan and then decide on things. You’ll be expected to live with it.
 
Even if you bitch and moan – and even if you get 10,000 of your friends to do the same – nothing will change.
 
Politicians have a small window where they need to be accountable, and that’s around election time.
 
Then for 2 or 4 or God forbid, 6 years, we’re stuck with ‘em.
 
It’s that ‘stuck with ‘em’ time right now.
 
Enjoy it.
 
(And never forget your action or inaction is how it got that way and why it stays that way. It’s how you want it).