Thursday, January 7, 2010

The more things change, the more they...

TODAY'S CRITICAL PIECEWORK:


After a holiday respite, Jack Morrison made it back into the Beacon Journal with a report he will continue to be retained as Munroe Falls law director by his political buddy, Mayor Frank Larson. When we last left Morrison, the Republican lawyer had been dismissed from the University of Akron Board of Trustees and as a member of the Summit County Board of Elections after a couple of ethics convictions. So he's batting one for three and can't complain about that, particularly after his base pay plus legal fees for his Munroe Falls work in 2008 paid $94,422. Nice work if you can get it. And he did. (Full disclosure: Sour grapes on my part since I rejected my father's advice either to become a lawyer or sell cars for his agency. In desperation, I finally landed a post-Air Force job with a small newspaper in Indiana for...um....less than $3,700 a year.)

By the close of 2009, the Republicans on Capitol Hill, their conservative Democratic friends and their noisy camp followers on the air waves had convinced me that they have evolved into the modern version of the commedia dell'arte. The likeness is all-too persuasive. The commedia was the theatrical outfit born in 16th century Italy to entertain with rather loose lips. The cast arrived on stage with the plot line well understood but went about their amusing business by improvising all of their lines. You get a sense of that from guys like Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican running for governor, with his brain-jerk comments that Obama's response to the near plane disaster was simply to "impress the Blame America First" crowd. In humorous fashion (although they didn't think so) the Hoekstra litany was repeated with improvised variations by others in a "Blame Obama First" crowd.

Who is editing Rush Limbaugh's stuff these days? Obviously euphoric after his brief stay in Queens Medical Center, Rushbo effused: "The treatment I received there was the best that the world has to offer!" Well, yes. As one who has been critical of every comma in the health care reform bill, Limbaugh may have been befuddled by his meds and didn't realize that Hawaii's health-care system is widely known as the nearest thing to socialized medicine in the 50 states. For more than three decades, employers there have been required to provide health-care benefits to part-time employes. And that state's nurses are unionized in the Hawaii Nurses Association. The best? Rush? The best?

Finally, should Glenn Beck really be ranting about alcoholics in the Democratic Party? Obviously he's never covered either party's presidential conventions. Glenn, my boy, I can assure you that excessive imbibing is non-partisan.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Il Rushbo seems to be forgetting or ignoring one tiny item: "...the best that the world has to offer" has been unable to determine what was wrong with him...medically, of course. We all have well-founded theories about what's wrong with him in other respects.

Anonymous said...

So Larson kept the one, the only, inept attorney (In my opinion or IMO) that Alex Arshinkoff has to offer Munroe Falls residents? I know Munroe Falls is not too Alex friendly and if another Republican runs against Larson on issues like that he may get put to pasture. One other thing: Pay ninety four grand for a part time position? Let's see, about twenty thou at the BOE about the same I guess at the U of A, that's forty plus before Alex's girl lost the AG seat he was into state collections skimming that for all it's got plus he was doing things with that firm that my guess is losing clients like water through a screen door. But I may be wrong on that one.
So anywho, once again the taxpayers are getting reamed.
To me Rush is a festering BLOWHARD who needs to untie the other half of his brain and use it for once. He might learn something.
And yes I am and have been for a long time a Republican.

Anonymous said...

Was waiting to see if Mayor Frank would throw his old pal under the bus and was laying bets that he wouldn't. Nice to see that Repubs are still so predictable.

Anonymous said...

And that is the reason why our party is not only losing locally but nationally as well.
My guess is the Republican party all the way around is going to try to exploit this anti Democrat sentiment for all its got and guess what Alex and company? It won't work, we see through it, crystal clear through it.