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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: akkabhomestead AT yahoo.com, homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Republicans appear to be yesterday
  • Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 14:13:10 -0500

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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