Friday Funday: A Lucky Day

For those of you who are a bit superstitious, today may have a bit of extra meaning, as it’s Friday the Thirteenth. Or as the cousin of one of our staff members calls it, her birthday.

For us, we’re thinking of it as a bit of a lucky day. Temps are a bit cooler than they have been lately, in all three of our locations, even with the massive drought conditions affecting the U.S. right now. We’re all home safe, and gainfully employed. And there’s plenty of work to be had.

In fact, there’s still a massive pile of very serious topics waiting to tackle. For example, the most recent revelations about Mitt Romney’s past aren’t small potatoes. He was either lying to the SEC when he said he wasn’t employed at Bain Capitol after December of 1999 - which is a felony -  or he’s been lying about not being involved in the companies connected to Bain Capitol that outsourced thousands of American jobs. As Wall Street expert Henry Blodget says, you can’t be Chairman, CEO, and President of a company, and not be responsible for what it does.

Many of you also seem more interested than ever in the details of the Affordable Care Act. What’s it mean for you? What about the folks who don’t have insurance? How’s this whole thing work, where Republican governors are turning away millions in Federal funds that are supposed to help the poor and uninsured?

We assure you - we’re not setting you adrift to fend for yourselves on these issues. Make sure that you sign up for the Daily Felltoon e-mail edition, and you’ll get all the links to the stories we work from every day, when tackling tough issues like the ACA and Mr. Romney’s past with Bain Capital.

The simple fact is, there is SO much more to life than just politics.

For example, our friends at the UNL Dairy Store in Lincoln are having another day of P.O. Pears “Burger Madness” today - which we always love.

We also love the fact that the Dairy Store has begun to bring more of the flavor of the old P.O. Pears to their events with live music. Today, it’s not just any band that will play some great sounds while you’re eating some great food.

This one's a group called “The Upstairs Blues Band” made up of high school aged kids, who’ve been tutored by some of Lincoln’s finest musicians, including some of the great folks associated with the legendary Zoo Bar.

Teaching the next generation to master and appreciate any worthwhile talent - from music and cartooning, to writing and design skills, to mechanical skills or sportsmanship - is something that makes us smile almost every time we hear about it being done well. Apparently, a friend of ours in Lincoln, with a great ear for blues says these kids have a sound that even people who don’t think they like blues will enjoy.

Which means these kids apparently have learned not only to love to play music. They’ve also apparently learned how to take their musical education and make it work for them outside the classroom.

For us, even with all the serious issues to cover, that ability to learn and grow is music to not just our ears, but also our hearts.

Of course, the prospect of great food to go with that music doesn’t hurt either.

Whatever you’ve got planned for this weekend, remember to take some time for good food, good music, good friends - and remembering those things which are truly important.

Think of it as our prescription for a lucky day, every day.

Magic Beans & Fairy Tales

In the midst of your normally busy life, we hope you had a chance to see Mitt Romney address the NAACP on Wednesday in Houston.

Not surprisingly, there was was some disrespectful booing of Mr. Romney at the event, when he claimed he would repeal the Affordable Care Act if elected. Overall, Romney’s speech to the national convention of the NAACP was judged a surprising success in some corners, even if it was more bland and detail-free than usual - and that’s pretty impressive, even for Mitt Romney. That said, any success he may have reaped from his speech was likely spoiled by Romney's vague insult late Wednesday night about the NAACP crowd, when Romney said, "If they want more stuff from the government tell them to go vote for the other guy."

The fact is, Romney has been attempting to sell Americans vague promises and fuzzy details for almost his entire campaign, without giving us any real details. We looked in our daily notes for the last six months and could only find three instances where we or any other reliable media source hadn’t asked for some further specifics from Mr. Romney on… well, anything.

Romney may as well be selling magic beans, for all the specifics he’s been willing to give to the public so far - which, we still firmly believe, is a feature of his campaign, not a bug.

Even Republican Party mainstays are letting it be known that they’re now getting worried about the lack of details coming from the former Massachusetts governor. On topics ranging from Mitt's history with Bain Capitol, to his personal tax filings, Mr. Romney has continued to sidestep, evade, obfuscate, and generally try to not offend anyone with his positions.

That's a problem, when you consider the folks who might legitimately vote for him range from moderate, sane Republicans to extremist, GOP nutjobs. Point blank, you can’t keep both of these groups happy at all times, let alone the other fifty-to-sixty percent of the country.

Sadly, Mr. Romney’s über-vanilla non-committal positions fit perfectly with the odd insanity of the Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives.

The House on Wednesday, for the thirty-third time, voted to attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act - and for the thirty-third time, their efforts were both unsuccessful and completely symbolic.

In fact, since January of 2011, the Republicans in Congress have wasted 89 hours of taxpayers' time, attempting to remove the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. At a cost of $2 million dollars a day, every day that the House of Representatives has wasted on this is an amazingly wrong-headed action for a group of people who claim so strongly that they are fiscally responsible.

One might even think the Republicans in the House were crying wolf, politically, on an effort they have no real chance of winning - especially after the decision of the Supreme Court two weeks ago today.

All this blatant denial appears to have made the political right breathless and powerless to respond to the death of one their favorite traditional talking points, that Americans are paying too much in taxes.

In fact, as the report released this week from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office details, the average Federal tax rate paid by Americans is at the lowest rate in thirty years.

When you add up all the facts, with the House Republican craziness, and Mitt Romney’s constant attempt to sell political magic beans to the least informed citizens, our American political landscape is starting to look like some kind of twisted fairy tale.

In truth, this is just what you get when one party is relatively direct about their attempts to move forward, while the other party is in severe disarray and denial about their attempts to take America backward.

We recommend hanging on to your magic carpet for the remainder of the political season. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.

Uncivil War, Nebraska Style

For a while now, we’ve been watching the state Republican and Democratic conventions around the country as they’ve been choosing their candidates for local, state, and national positions.

For the most part, the Democratic conventions have gone smoothly, even in places like West Virginia, where Republicans attempted to sabotage the Democratic presidential nominating process. As expected, President Barack Obama picked up the official party nomination in every state, won the national nomination (back at the beginning of April) and is now on the ballot in every state, across the country.

For the Republican Party, however, the process has been less than a smooth path this year, even if the leading nominee for the GOP's overall nomination has quite obviously been Mitt Romney, for quite some. The latest reason for rough spots? Officially, Rep. Ron Paul has yet to withdraw from the Republican race for President.

According to the official rules of the Republican National Committee - the RNC - a presidential candidate must get a plurality (a majority) of votes at five state conventions in order to have that candidate’s name be officially entered as a contender at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, later this year.

The last chance for Ron Paul to get the delegates he needs happens to be in Nebraska, this upcoming weekend - which seems to be confusing more than a few people.

In case you haven’t been keeping up with the arcane rules of state-level party politics, at the state level in the GOP this year, just because the Republican voters of the state voted for a candidate doesn’t necessarily mean their wishes will be accurately represented at the national convention.

At many state party conventions, whoever shows up to the convention picks from the people at that event the delegates who will go to Tampa this year. And in many, many cases - including Iowa, Nevada, Maine, and others, the supporters of Ron Paul have flooded state conventions. At some state meetings, this has led to literal floor fights, and in one case, an early adjournment of the state convention.

For Republicans, this has shown the outside world the internal divisions in the former "Big Tent" of the GOP that we’ve been telling you have existed for years now.

The problem for Republicans is this. The GOP is really made up of several different factions these days, from the “Religious Right” to the war-loving Neo-Cons, from the Tea Party/Libertarians to the Wall Street bullies. Even the old-fashioned moderate Republicans have a say in what the Party does (though frankly, not nearly as much of a say as anyone sane thinks they should).

In short, Mr. Paul’s state level supporters - nominally, Libertarian Republicans - have used the official rules of the GOP game to attempt to rig the system against the wishes of the majority of Republican voters, and against the Republican Party as a whole.

Which means this weekend in Nebraska could be anything but dull for the GOP.

We know that technically, Nebraska state GOP chairman Mark Fahleson and the Tea Party/Ron Paul state leader, Laura Ebke have agreed to some kind of a truce. We also know that part of the supposed truce was to scale back the unusual security the Nebraska GOP had called for this weekend.

We also know that similar truces in other states haven’t exactly had the force of law.

All we can recommend to our Republican friends this weekend, who are planning to attend the state convention in Nebraska, is be careful and remember - Nebraska Republicans didn’t elect Ron Paul in the primary.

As one of our teachers from days gone by used to say before handing out an ugly test, “Good luck - and have fun!”