Looking Backward: The Twelve Firsts Of 2006

I’ve seen this meme here and there this month. I can’t recall where now. The idea is to re-print the first sentence of the first post from each month in 2006. With the New Year approaching, this seems like a good time to do so…and I’m curious.

(If the “first post” fell on a “Quote of the Day” or similar, I skipped it to one of my own posts.)

• January 3, 2006: History Repeating Itself?
  

  So, four years ago, the hospital I was at went through lay-offs and an administration change.

• February 2, 2006: I Am Alive & Going To England
  

  I appologize for seemingly abandoning this blog.

• March 1, 2006: Forgotten New Orleans
  

  Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch has put together a document analyzing how much progress the city of New Orleans with the promised State and Federal help has made since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005.

• April 1, 2006: Lowest Poll Rating Ever?
  

  Is it me or does it seem like every week or so this year there’s been a headline that announced Bush having his “lowest poll rating ever” and they’ve all been between 34 and 37%?

• May 1, 2006: What I’ve Learned Since My Puppy Came Home
  

  I admit I’ve been too busy with the new puppy to post.

• June 1, 2006: Stomach Acid & Pink Eye
  

  When it rains, it pours.

• July 4, 2006: Why I’m Almost Embarrassed To Be An American…
  

  Here are a few things I’ve overheard while in England:

• August 1, 2006: The Next Step In Man-Made Miracles
  

  When you think about the possibilities…when you consider what lives might be helped…when you consider that in hundreds of labs around the world unused, unwanted embryos are never going to become anything more than lifeless chemical waste…when asked, if you did your part, however little for stem-cell research, what will you say?

• September 1, 2006: Discombobulated Thoughts - 09/01/06
  

  Pugly loves that credit theft commercial where the woman voice-over sings “Unbreak My Heart” really badly.

• October 2, 2006: Monday’s A Bitch: Random Joy
  

  It’s that time of week again…

• November 2, 2006: Thursday Thirteen Discombobulated Worries This Week (#11)
  

  My brain is way too scattered and full of anxiety to focus on one particular nifty topic this week.

• December 1, 2006: My Brain May Explode
  

  I wonder why my brain doesn’t explode from the sheer insanity of contradictory messages I get from my parents sometimes — mainly from my mother.

Hmmmm…

I’m tempted to go through and write the first sentence of the last post.  Or the last sentence of the third post.  Or the twenty third sentence of every month.  The possibilities are endless.

Of course, this is only worth the time if it actually intrigues anyone to go back and read something old.  Seems far too random.  I think my posts from memory lane in the right margin at the top would be better for that, but I don’t think that’s all that successful either. Hmmmm…

If you do find yourself wandering back through my memory, please leave a comment there, or here, to let me know if this sort of this is an effective use of my time.

Tags: memory lane, past, 2006, meme, comments, Blogging & Other Blogs

Exercise Your Mind - 11/08/06

Election 2006

• You have your marching orders…. — Nicole Belle @ Crooks and Liars reminds us of the Republican’s “Contract with America” when they took control of Congress in 1994.
  

  This year’s election offers the chance, after four decades of one-party control, to bring to the House a new majority that will transform the way Congress works. That historic change would be the end of government that is too big, too intrusive, and too easy with the public’s money. It can be the beginning of a Congress that respects the values and shares the faith of the American family.

  Like Lincoln, our first Republican president, we intend to act “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” To restore accountability to Congress. To end its cycle of scandal and disgrace. To make us all proud again of the way free people govern themselves.
  

  Let’s hope that the Democrats learn from the Republicans’ mistakes.

• A Remedy for Negative Political Ads — Paul Silver @ Donklephant has a remedy for all of those negative, deceitful ads since there’s not likely to be any law regulating truth in political advertising anytime soon.
  

  Perhaps the solution lies in changing the geometry of the question. Instead of trying to regulate the content of ads, we use public funds (or funds from the Parties) to run a frequent public service message that corrects the inaccuracies of any recent ads - perhaps produced by the Factcheck.org folks. Since a candidate would not want to have the airwaves filled with objective criticism they would be inclined to stay as reasonable and civil as possible.

• A Remedy for Election Tampering– Paul Silver @ Donklephant also thinks there should be a reward for information leading to a conviction in crimes related to election tampering.

More

Tags: 2006 election, Republicans, Contract with America, Contress, ethics, scandal, Democrats, negative political ads, election tampering, politics, factcheck.org, DHS, TSA, passports, Hasan Elahi, FBI, mental illness, anxiety, depression

Had Enough Indeed

According to Editor & Publisher, a recent Gallup poll shows that more Americans consider themselves Democrats than Republicans. 33% of Americans now call themselves Democrats while only 32% call themselves Republicans. While this might seem too tight to matter, the 34% of the population that now make up Independents are the telltale sign of which way the nation will go in upcoming elections, it seems.

Independents, it appears, are leaning 49% Democrat and only 42% Republican this year, whereas last year, they were dead even at 46% each.

Not a good sign for the GOP in the 2006 elections.

The latest poll was taken from January to March 2006, with a national sample of about 1,000 adults. [“Gallup: In Shift, More Americans Now Call Themselves Democrats” (Editor & Publisher)]

Hat tip to Ron Beasley @ Middle Earth.

Tags: 2006 election, Republicans, Democrats, poll

Running In Place

The last couple of weeks, I’ve been revamping my website, tweaking things here and there, and most recently I’ve been going through and adding technorati tags, which interestingly enough has given me an interesting look back through the way back machine.

It’s kind of a weird deja vu, kind of a “haven’t I seen this tree before”?

What I’ve come to realize is that a year ago we, meaning bloggers, Democrats, Republicans, this country, etc., were all doing pretty much all of this same bullshit but in last year’s fashions and with last year’s technology.

Basically the White House and Bush were doing whatever the heck they wanted and refusing to explain anything or even offer an excuse. They were pretty much thumbing their nose at Congress and the judicial system too. Go ahead and check the news records for back then, I can wait if you want.
The Republicans were still cow-towing to whatever Bush and his cronies wanted, marching instep and voting the party line whether or not it was good for the Average Joe or not. They were still claiming that anyone who didn’t agree with them was unpatriotic and helping the terrorists.

The Democrats were still pointing figures and, yet, still managing to sit on their hands and doing nothing. They were all talk and no real action even back then.

And liberal bloggers were bipolarly flipping back and forth between extreme excitement every time something “new” would come to “light” that should damage the administration and extreme disappointment when no one did anything with the new information. (Hey, I was right there with you!)

And conservative bloggers were preening and attacking and trolling and acting like thugs and bullies for the most part.

What I realized is that nothing has changed and a year from now nothing will have changed even after the 2006 elections.

Unless.

Unless someone does something other than whine and complain and point figures and circulate all this negativity. Actually, it needs to be a whole lot of someones…and they need to be doing more than blogging too.

You can’t expect a change if you keep doing what you’ve always done. That’s just crazy.

Tags: 2006 election, politics, blogs