Have you looked at the news today for any reaction to the resignation of the Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagle? There is not much there and that was by design.

No press releases, no statements on Facebook or twitter from anyone in Iowa’s current Congressional delegation or newly-elected delegation.

Does that strike anyone else as odd? I would have thought the defense secretary resigning after less than two years on the job, probably under pressure from the president, possibly over disagreement with the administration’s approach to Iraq and Syria, would be big news. Just look around Hagle’s home state of Iowa and there is virtually nothing in the news. Representative Dave Loebsack sits on the House Armed Services Committee. Senator-elect Joni Ernst has claimed to have a strong interest in our country’s Middle East policy, since her “boots were on that ground” now controlled by ISIS. Senator Chuck Grassley served with Hagel for years and will have a vote on confirming his successor at the Pentagon. Newly-elected Republicans Rod Blum (IA-01) and David Young (IA-03) both criticized the Obama administration’s policy in Iraq during this year’s campaign.

This is why presidents bury big news during holiday weeks, when elected representatives and their staffers are out of the office.

William Shakespeare wrote:  “Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.”

I am an early person. I have said repeatedly that I would rather arrive an hour early than five minutes late. However, it is really not an advantage, most of the time, to show up for an appointment early. If they take you in to another room, it usually is just a place to get you out of the waiting area and now you sit. Sometimes it is for a very lengthy time. I get irritated!

I get aggravated with late of any sort. However, It get really ticked when an appointment time flies by and I sit and sit and sit. It doesn’t matter if the time set was 2:15pm and you wait until almost 3 before you see the person. Doctors and dentists are the worst. I know the line you hear is they are busy and things back up. Maybe, just maybe, they scheduled too many appoints too close together?

The point is, I feel bad when I keep people waiting. I feel like we’re all busy and our time is important so being consistently late is a sign that you don’t respect someone’s time.  I respect you enough to make the appointment and show up on time, at least try to respect that I have other things to do beside sit around reading your old magazines all day.

On a personal level it’s just rude and signals to the person that you leave waiting that you don’t care enough to respect their time. Because while I’ve now had to wait for you it means that I have to push back other things I have to do.

This topic really gets my juices flowing!

In short, it’s one thing to win an election in a non-presidential year, when minorities and young people stay home and older, whiter voters make up a disproportionate share of the electorate. It’s another thing to win when a Democratic presidential candidate is luring the party’s base back to the polls — especially when that candidate is Hillary Clinton, the most popular Democrat in America as of right now. 

-DELETED-

In a democracy, there’s no such thing as an election without consequences. We are not satisfied with today’s Democratic Party; we wish it was more populist and more progressive. But it is absurd to argue that little will change if Republicans take the Senate. A lot will change—and it will be for the worse. A Republican Senate, working with a Republican House, will be a wrecking crew.

GOP control of the House and Senate could be catastrophic for the environment, for workers, for women and for minorities.

Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has already promised the Koch brothers that “we’re not going to be debating all these gosh-darn proposals…like raising the minimum wage…extending unemployment…the student loan package.” And it won’t just be progressive proposals that are stymied. Consider the judges who will never make it to the bench, including the highest, if Chuck Grassley, not Pat Leahy, is in charge of the Judiciary Committee. Consider the destabilizing political circus Republicans will create if Darrell Issa’s hyperpartisan investigations into fake scandals spread from the House to the Senate.

GOP control of key Senate committees will reorder the debate. What happens, for example, if Senator Pat Toomey, former president of the right-wing Club for Growth, takes over Sherrod Brown’s subcommittee overseeing financial institutions and consumer protection? What happens to nuclear negotiations with Iran if McConnell, Lindsey Graham and John McCain are deciding when to bring up a sanctions bill?

But a GOP takeover is not a threat just because of what Republicans will do. Progressives should also worry about the many areas of potential agreement between Obama and a GOP-controlled Senate. It is Harry Reid, for example, not Republicans, who is denying the president fast-track authority on corporate trade deals. Without Reid in the way, pacts like the Trans-Pacific Partnership—which labor leaders describe as “NAFTA on steroids”—are likely to become the law of the land. Likewise, Obama and Republicans could agree to pursue lower corporate tax rates—as opposed to infrastructure investments and job creation—as their primary economic-development initiative. And let’s not forget that Obama has repeatedly floated Social Security cuts as a bargaining chip in negotiations with GOP leaders.

Perhaps the most worrying consequence of a GOP-controlled Senate will be the extension of the damaging austerity agenda. Think, for example, about the next debt-ceiling fight. Republicans have repeatedly used the debt ceiling to hold the economy hostage, but they have relented each time because they knew that they would be blamed for the consequences—not the president. But if Republicans take control of the Senate, that calculus will change. What happens when they send Obama a bill to prevent default on our debt at the eleventh hour, attached to a bill that ravages Social Security? The Republicans will be able to force the president to choose between impossible options.

They will also be able to advance the Keystone XL pipeline, ban abortions after twenty weeks, decimate an already-weak Dodd-Frank Act and shred the torn social safety net.

Remember to Vote.

Good Morning Central Illinois!

Today is the 265th day of the year and also the Autumnal Equinox will occur today.

Sun rises at 6:48 A.M. and sets at 6:56 P.M. There will 12 hours  and 7 minutes of sunlight possible.

Today’s forecast looks really good:

• Expect sunny skies with a high of 69 degrees with winds light and variable. Tonight we have mostly clear skies with a low of 47 and light winds.

What is the Autumnal Equinox?

• Fall begins on the 22nd at 10:29 P.M. The autumnal equinox is defined as the point at which the Sun appears to cross the celestial equator from north to south. The celestial equator is the circle in the celestial sphere halfway between the celestial poles. It can be thought of as the plane of Earth’s equator projected out onto the sphere. Another definition of fall is nights of below-freezing temperatures combined with days of temperatures below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. The word equinox means “equal night”; night and day are about the same length of time. The spring equinox is in late March. In addition to the (approximately) equal hours of daylight and darkness, the equinoxes are times when the Sun’s apparent motion undergoes the most rapid change. Around the time of the equinoxes, variations in the position on the horizon where the Sun rises and sets can be noticed from one day to the next by alert observers

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, our next Full Moon will be October 8^th.

Tuesday’s Weather:  Sunny skies. High 74F. Winds light and variable. Highs in the mid 70s and lows in the low 50s.

          Samuel Gompers and the Tea Party

Remember Samuel Gompers from History Class? He was the founder of the AFL-CIO. He hated immigrants and was appalled at the flood of them into the United States. Gompers was convinced they were undermining the union member wages. He went on to write a pamphlet titled, Meat vs. Rice: American Manhood Against Coolieism: Which Shall Survive?” Samuel Gompers was quoted to say, “Caucasians are not going to let their standard of living be destroyed by Negroes, Chinamen, Japs or any others,”

What do the Tea Party and Samuel Gompers have in common? They both rose to prominence during economic inequality in our country and both squarely place the blame on immigrants.

In Gompers day there is evidence that shows mass immigration led to lower wages and spread the gap between the wealthy and middle class. But it wasn’t the immigrants fault as companies are to blame for exploiting them as a cheap labor force and the laws of the United States allowed them to do that. In fact, scapegoating immigrants makes inequality worse, because it creates an opportunity for corporations and politicians to drive a wedge between native-born workers and those from foreign lands, to the disadvantage of both.

It appears to be justified that immigrants deserve lower wages because they have fewer skills, education and lack a deep understanding of the English language. It is not surprising that immigration is a focus of the Tea Party’s populist resentment. Non-college-educated whites may always be skeptical of mass immigration — and of politicians who support it. Their opposition to immigration isn’t just about race. It’s about money, too.

If the Tea Party really wants to reduce the impact of immigration on American wages, they should lobby for laws that make life easier for immigrants, not laws that aim to drive them out of the country.

The opinions in this blog belong to Tom Knuppel

Is the American Medical Association a Terrorists Organization?

In June, the well-respected Journal of the American Medical Association published an article that proposed “Banning the Handshake From the Health Care Setting.”

The AMA had this to say:

The handshake represents a deeply established social custom. In recent years, however, there has been increasing recognition of the importance of hands as vectors for infection, leading to formal recommendations and policies regarding hand hygiene in hospitals and other health care facilities. Such programs have been limited by variable compliance and efficacy.In an attempt to avoid contracting or spreading infection, many individuals have made their own efforts to avoid shaking hands in various settings but, in doing so, may face social, political, and even financial risks.

“Fist bumping” — the gesture made popular by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama during the 2012 election campaign — transmits significantly fewer bacteria than a handshake or a high-five.

A West Virginia University study published in the The Journal of Hospital Infection found that significantly more bacteria are transmitted when people shake hands, as opposed to when they simply bump fists. This is due to the increased surface area exposure and length of skin-on-skin contact associated with the handshake.

“We surmise that the fist bump is an effective alternative to the handshake in the hospital setting,” wrote lead researcher Tom McClellan in the journal. “[Fist bumping] may lead to decreased transmission of bacteria and improved health and safety of patients and healthcare workers alike.”

Whoa, stop right there. The AMA is calling for fist bumping and it was made popular by President Obama? We might need to check into this. Let’s examine the history of fist bumping as written in Time magazine.

The origins of the bump are murky, though most communication experts agree on a basic — if fuzzy — evolutionary timeline: the handshake (which itself dates back to ancient times) begat the “gimme-five” palm slap that later evolved into the now universal “high-five” and, finally, the fist bump.

Some claim the act of knuckle-bumping began in the 1970s with NBA players like Baltimore Bullets guard Fred Carter. Others claim the fist bump’s national debut occurred off the court, citing the Wonder Twins, minor characters in the 1970s Hanna-Barbera superhero cartoon The Superfriends, who famously touched knuckles and cried “Wonder Twin powers, activate!’ before morphing into animals or ice sculptures. One might also credit germaphobics for the fist bump’s popularity. Deal or No Deal host Howie Mandel reportedly adopted the gesture as a friendly way to avoid his contestants’ germs.

But the President and his wife did a fist bump in front of America. On June 6, 2008, a Fox News personality asked if that was a terrorist jab.

During the June 6 edition of Fox News’ America’s Pulse, host E.D. Hill teased an upcoming discussion by saying, “A fist bump? A pound? A terrorist fist jab? The gesture everyone seems to interpret differently.” In the ensuing discussion with Janine Driver — whom Hill introduced as “a body language expert” — Hill referred to the “Michelle and Barack Obama fist bump or fist pound,” adding that “people call it all sorts of things.” Hill went on to ask Driver: “Let’s start with the Barack and Michelle Obama, because that’s what most people are writing about — the fist thump. Is that sort of a signal that young people get?”

The AMA wants you to fist bump. They say it is to control germs but can we trust them? Is there an underlying agenda here?

🙂

(no, there isn’t)

This blog was written in jest and the opinions in this blog belong to Tom Knuppel

Doesn’t matter if you are conservative or liberal, black or white, gay or straight, Christian or atheists this should be your mantra for the upcoming election. This includes Members of the House of Representatives, too.