[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.
More information about the Homestead
mailing list