Tony Soprano is a Senator now? GOP: Sure, extortion will work.

         Just when you think you've seen it all a Republican House Member or Senator steps up to the Mic and presents a whole new vista of visionary violation of political sanity. If all else fails turn to Tony Soprano for guidance. It seems some feel extortion is a viable option.
Once again the GOP threatens to take their ball and go home if they don't get their way. Lets hold the American people Hostage over Affordable Care Act. After all stripping Americans of the Act's positive results is a very good Idea. Denying coverage due to age or preexisting conditions is a good expression of American compassion and ideals. Making having a uterus a preexisting condition justifying higher insurance rates.is also a winner.
The current wonderful extremist GOP/Tea Party idea circulating in DC is hey let's defund the ACA or we'll shut down the Government. This is being led by the shining intellectual lights of the right.
Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY). The very idea they will vote no on important Senate bills is in itself not surprising. It's been a staple of GOP policy since the inauguration of President Obama.What makes this different is the defunding of the ACA or shutting down the Federal Government is seen by most GOP politicians as a lose/lose scenario. If RedState thinks it's a good idea you should not walk, but run away from this idea at full speed.
Hill staffers are admitting this is only a political ploy to put Democrats on the defensive in 2014. They actually believe they can win the Senate and hold the House by blaming a shutdown on Dems for not abandoning ACA and submitting to GOP extortion.
Knowing it is a lost cause these guys feel if they can create an optic showing them as staunch idealists it can help the potential Presidential bids of Paul and Rubio. Somehow they have come to the belief that shutting down the Government over something that has no chance of becoming law or policy is an excellent move. Stopping Social Security checks, Pension Payments, Military pay and expenditures while troops are in harms way is the best way to show they are Patriots.
You have the rabid right saying do it. They feel any voice of caution is the advice of the people who gave them Mitt Romney and a not conservative enough Senate Minority. These extremist voices who unfortunately believe had the GOP fielded an reactionary right candidate they would have taken the White House in '08 and '12 for sure. Is it delusional to believe this? After the right wing ideology was rejected twice in the election of President Obama.
Americans are not idiots, Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck not withstanding. It is one thing to pick a major ideological fight with far reaching consequences if there is a remote possibility of winning. It is quite another to do so in a lost cause to simply score political points posturing for future perceived possible partisan positioning.
These ideologues need to step back and accept, in the Senate at least, that as long as there is a Democratic Majority in the Senate and Barack Obama is President the ACA is going to be the law of the land. The House where they continue to have votes over and over in a hopeless quest to repeal ACA, is an entirely different world.
For wonks and pundits this exercise in political theater will be entertaining. Our political thought and process has become the "Toddlers And Tiaras" of the developed world. Dante's "Inferno" as policy. Reality TV as the norm.
Will the GOP step back from the brink? Is a US default and destruction of our debt rating really a viable plan? After the intransigence of the GOP in 2011 it appears to be yes. Lemmings in expensive suits following deluded leaders off the cliff into an abyss of absurdist futility. Ask Newt Gingrich how it worked for him in the Nineties.
God help us all.

Me and Jimmy Buffett: The Pasgalaula Run.

          If you think Jimmy Buffet is just "Margaritaville" you are sorely mistaken. You don't have a career spanning forty years by being a one trick pony.


When I first heard "Come Monday" in 1974, I RAN to the record store and snapped up the album"Living and Dying In 3/4 Time".What I discovered was a world unknown to me. A life shaped by salt.sand and surf. A Southern sensibility. Relaxed. Quirky, Pirates, scoundrels and rogues. Bars, boats and smugglers. New Orleans. I was done. Hooked and bedazzled.


I ran a bar here in Columbus that had EVERY Buffett single on the Jukebox. You see, even from the start Jimmy could write a song that would make you laugh your ass off. Then turn right around and pen a ballad that rips your heart out. Faulkner under sail. With Tennessee Williams and Twain tossed in to spice the gumbo.


Buffett weaves tales of America as seen by a travelling musician. Picking up a hitchhiking former Debutante in "West Nashville Grand Ballroom Gown". A former expat from Hemingway and Fitzgerald's Lost Generation. Cowboys and Cowgirls in "Livingston Saturday Night. The characters inhabiting Key West and the Caribbean.  Boats,bars and time at sea.


Buffet shaped my affection for the South. The Music. That dark jewel on the delta, New Orleans, I saw a place for an eccentric scoundrel like myself. More every day I find the siren song of the deep South harder to resist. I'm ready to succumb.


He influenced the way I saw writing lyrics and the written word. A dear friend once described him as Twain in pastels and boat shoes. As usual she was right.


I've seen him three times. I have maybe two hundred Buffett tracks on my iPod. OK, a bit of a Parrothead..
Buffett is always a top ten summer touring act. Playing BIG spaces. He seems to represent an escape from the cold, repressed, hidebound Northern life. He gives laughter and tears. A party to unwind and shed despair. A celebration of life and love.


Jimmy says he has the best Summer job in the world. The man wrote a major part of the soundtrack to my life. Listen to a "Pirate looks At Forty, 'Biloxi'" or "Boat Drinks". Smile. Feel the salt breeze in your hair, sand between your toes. Watch the sun set off towards New Orleans. Drink a Hurricane and enjoy life.