[Homestead] Republicans appear to be yesterday

Gene GeRue genegerue at ruralize.com
Sun Sep 14 15:13:10 EDT 2008


> I pondered it a little, and I had heard of the Nobel Prize winning  
> books, but relied on (drumroll) Wiki to look at the dates of when he  
> he wrote it vs.. when he was prime minister.  It appears, according  
> to this page,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Second_World_War_(Churchill)
> that he did not actually write the book while he was prime minister,  
> but he did save memos and dictate his thoughts.  Basically, he  
> journaled and scrapbooked, both things are ok in my opinion to do  
> while one is PM.  After his term was up, THEN he concentrated and  
> wrote the bulk of the series in memoir style.  The last volume was  
> published in 1953, but previous volumes apparently came out in  
> 1948.  Recall that he was PM from 40-45 and after 51-55.  Also, he  
> apparently had help writing the books, Sir Norman Brook and others.   
> Churchill set out to write those books as a historian; it was not a  
> self serving venture.  If you look at all of Winstons work on this  
> page:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_as_writer   you will  
> see that the only material during his PM years are 'books' that are  
> collections of his speeches, like 1944's Onward to Victory.

I believe all of the above is true.
>
>> I don't measure Obama by comparison to mere ordinaries. He is in a
>> higher league. You may be one of those who think that if he is  
>> writing
>> books he is neglecting the duties of his office. I think that he is
>> keeping his brain in tune and he is capable of much more.
>
> Yes, in fact, I *am* one of those people.  If my tax dollar is  
> paying for him to do a job, he better as F?%^ be doing that job, not  
> writing and publishing books about his own life that will make  
> millions of dollars.   He should work for me, and as his employer, I  
> demand that he is loyal to my needs,...my son if not myself, and not  
> serving his own needs.  That is what he is paid to do as a public  
> servant.  He can serve his own needs after he is out of the White  
> House(or Senate as far as I am concerned, but he is not my Senator  
> so I don't know if anyone else has complained)

When you were working a job, did you feel that your employer deserved  
your energies and efforts twenty-four hours per day, seven days per  
week?
>
>> Obama missed voting 40% of the time. Maybe he was writing at the  
>> time, or sleeping that day because he had been up half the night  
>> writing.
> McCain missed voting 52% of the time.  Maybe as an old guy he was  
> sleeping.
> Clinton missed voting only 30% of the time!  Amazing that she came  
> in ahead of the above slackers.  30% isn't anything to brag about,  
> but it certainly is better than either one of the guys.
> I was amazed.  You can even kind of make assumptions what is  
> important to the candidates by how many votes they missed vs. how  
> many votes they attended and expressed an opinion.

I wish you good luck with your efforts to get our elected officials to  
give us greater effort.

>> Truth be told, some of a writer's best thoughts come while staring  
>> out
>> a window or at a ceiling. Non-writers just don't get that.
>
> You know Gene, maybe I am making a bigger deal out of this than  
> most.  It does seem that book writing while acting as a public  
> servant is a common thing to do.  It just doesn't set well with me,  
> though.
> I have to thank you for continuing this conversation, because I  
> think I learned a lot today.

Such things fall into my box labeled: yeah, it is wrong or iffy but if  
I spend my time worrying about it I diminish the quality of my life. I  
have far more important and interesting things to do.




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