Time To Put Your Shoulder Into It

The wait for spring to truly arrive has seemed especially long this year in many corners of the nation, so to many Americans, the crushingly slow move towards seasonably warm Spring weather feels like the whole nation is taking on a Sisyphean task, pushing a massive boulder uphill.

For those of us focused on moving our nation forward politically, this painfully slow feeling is one we've been used to for at least a dozen years now. That frustration is often quite obvious in the way President Obama continues to push for progress against the obstructionists in the GOP.

For some time now, though - especially since the successful 2012 election - we've been hearing more complaining and grousing coming from the liberal left towards President Obama and towards certain Democratic politicians. We're more than willing to admit - we've got our own issues with President Obama's Adminstration, and with certain other Democratic politicians, chief among them the ineffectual Harry Reid.

That said, we've got news for progressive-minded Americans, and indeed any sensible American, regardless of their political leanings who wants to sit on their backsides and blame all our nation's problems on either President Obama or Republicans in Congress: Get off your behind, step up, and get to pushing. It's time to put your shoulder into it - "it" being the things we need to do to move America into the future.

A perfect example of this is in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka "Obamacare."

As Ed Kilgore of Washington Monthly notes, this week marks the third anniversary of the final House vote that gave us the ACA. The ignorant idiots of the far right, like right-winger Ben Domenech, continue to trash the ACA, insisting that someday they'll repeal and replace Obamacare.

Anyone with half a brain has to laugh at that attitude, as Republicans in Congress have been promising "repeal and replace" for nearly three years now, and have NEVER presented so much as a whisper of a hint of a notion of a realistic replacement plan for the ACA. In a similar way, Republicans have been promising to strike down Roe vs. Wade for forty years, and while they have pushed through some draconian attacks on the rights of American women, they still haven't been successful completely curtailing the rights of women and individuals after forty years of failed attempts. That doesn't mean defeating the habitual right-wing liars will be easy, as Julie Burkhart and the Trust Women Foundation are finding out in Kansas right now.

The fact is, securing further progress in America is going to be hard.

Whether it's on the issue of gun safety, where most Americans - 91% - agree, or it's on the issue of immigration reform, on the availability of honest, ethical, and diverse media, or fighting for sensible, effective, progressive economic policies that work, there are no more battles against the small-minded that will be easy to win any more.

Extremist conservatives understand: their very existence is threatened by things like hard work, performed by good people of all sides working towards common goals on issues like the budget, immigration, gun safety, health care, the environment, and more. Listening to one another, and remembering that most Americans really do want the best for other Americans - even many of those they disagree with - isn't easy. Passing what appears to be sane sensible political solutions over the billions of dollars at the disposal of corporate politics is even more difficult.

The only way to lose, however, is to give up, to stop pushing to make things better for all, to stop pushing forward.

When President Obama campaigned, he never said, "Elect me, and I'll do it all for you." He said, "Yes WE Can."

If WE want anything done, WE - all of us - must put our proverbial shoulders into it, together.

Slipping On Reality

What do Minnesota, Wisconsin, Utah, and Arkansas all have in common? If you said "None of those teams are in the 2013 NCAA Men's Final Four," you wouldn't be wrong this year, though you also wouldn't be correct - at least within the boundaries of our topic for today.

If your answer was, "All four states have experienced massive oil spills within the last year - and three within the last two weeks," you'd be correct, unfortunately.

The latest disaster this weekend saw thousands of barrels of oil spewing from a ruptured Exxon Mobil pipeline into a residential neighborhood in central Arkansas. Twenty-two homes had to be evacuated, in a spill that literally saw oil running down residential streets and between houses.

Of course, since it was a holiday weekend, smack in the middle of Congress' latest two-week vacation, it was nearly impossible to find a politician of any kind with something serious to say about the latest oil disaster. That doesn't surprise us, since politicians of all kinds have been slipping and dancing around the issues of oil and environmental safety for far too many years now.

For all the work the Obama Administration has done on environmental issues - like requiring much better fuel standards for cars and trucks, or clamping down on emissions - the fact of the matter is, none of that will matter if President Obama and other politicians don't stop the Keystone pipeline route through Nebraska.

No matter what the decision is on the Keystone pipeline, the most important liquid flowing through Nebraska over the next hundred years wont be oil - something a task force in the Nebraska Legislature made very clear last week.

As reporter JoAnne Young noted, Nebraska state Sen. Tom Carlson, in a meeting of the Legislature's Natural Resources Committee last week, talked about what could happen if America ever runs out of affordable gas, coal, or oil. "We will survive," he said.

However, if Nebraskans ever lose access to our amazing surplus of clean, drinkable, useable water? "We will die," said Carlson.

For all the bluster already flooding the media from the oil companies about how many trucks they sent to Arkansas to suck up the tar sands oil from the neighborhood, or how well the cleanup is going from the oil spill in Minnesota, the facts remain the same. No matter how much cleanup is done in either location, the raw tar sands oil has now damaged both areas where the spills have occurred, in ways that neither area will fully recover from for many years to come.

No matter how many short-term temporary jobs the Keystone pipeline will generate, all it takes is one spill, once, in any area over the Ogallala Aquifer, and ALL the jobs in a county or a region could be lost, because the water may no longer be suitable for irrigating crops or slaking the thirst of Nebraska residents.

Just one spill could do exactly what state Sen. Carlson fears, and kill off a large area of Nebraska, Kansas, or anywhere else along the path of the pipeline, as water is turned from a lifeline into worthless poison.

If you don't think the price is too high for that kind of oil - oil Americans will never see, as it will be shipped to foreign ports and sold abroad - ask yourself these questions:

If you lived in the neighborhood of an oil spill, how safe would you feel drinking the water from your well? How safe would you feel letting your kids play outside? What price would you pay to never have to see crude oil flooding the streets of your neighborhood?

These are kinds of questions our politicians from both parties are slipping on right now.
From our perspective, the right answers don't really seem that slick. Then again, we're not financed by oil company lobbyists.

Friday Funday: Of Blessings And Uncles

As our slightly ill staff pulled ourselves and our materials together to write today's commentary, we realized how fast this past week went - and, indeed, how fast the first three months of this year have gone. Just last weekend, we met with friends in Washington, DC, had more than one get-together with happy children running around. We even caught an Easter egg hunt, though not the annual White House event. Still - plastic eggs found, candy consumed.

This weekend is officially Easter and also marks the end of Passover - and yes, Opening Day for Major League Baseball too. For many of you, that means Easter family dinners and Passover Seders, and holiday get-togethers that might include that "special" uncle who's always banging the crazy drum about the latest ridiculous right-wing talking point.

So today, instead of focusing on anything bad, we thought we'd focus exclusively on things that are positive.

If you're in New York City, that means you can still get a Big Gulp, if you want. It also means, as of Thursday, if you work in New York City, you will soon be able to take a paid sick day if you need to.

Also? The S&P stock index ended the month at a record high - and the economy for the rest of us is still looking up too.

In the Middle East, peace hasn't flooded the region - but Israel and Turkey appear to have let bygones be bygones, as the two nations have reinstated diplomatic relations.

On environmental issues, even if Congress is on a perpetual vacation, the Obama Administration continues to move forward, as the EPA is officially instating new rules requiring cleaner gasoline.

On civil rights issues, the bigots were exposed this week for who they really are, which, while ugly, is always better than not knowing at all. While we won't know the Supreme Court's decisions on either same sex marriage case until June, there are good indications in both cases that the less tolerant positions will disappear like the plastic Easter eggs we all inevitably lose at one time or another.

For Husker fans, Coach Connie Yori's women will face off against Duke this weekend in the Sweet Sixteen, something any true Husker fan will be proud to see. Of course, for college basketball and pro baseball fans, this weekend will mean many long hours glued to their TVs, grinning happily (at least until their teams lose).

We don't want to seem all Pollyannaish. We're well aware of our bumbling politicians, multiple wars and conflicts around the world - and, as we already mentioned, that inevitable uncle, cousin, neighbor, or friend who will almost certainly insist on banging the drum of some subject sure to anger almost everyone else at our get-togethers this weekend.

That kind of negative stuff is in the news everyday though, and isn't hard for anyone to find.

The moments that fill our spirits, that remind us there is still good and hope in the world? Those often seem to be the ones everyone forgets most.

We're glad we could take a moment and remind you of some of those positive items today.

Please remember them when that "special" family member drops by this weekend.