There's a new poll question today (it'll be there until Feb. 25) about the deficit. Please cast your vote. As for the last poll, "chocolate" was the big winner in our survey of ice cream flavors.
Today's posting is a short one, but I hope an interesting one. It would be lengthier if more of you would contribute your short stories, thoughts on the economy or politics, poetry or anything creative. Send them to me at riart1@aol.com.
Dear Mitt
Here’s
a word of advice for you. And this comes
from a registered Democrat. I know what kind of Republican you really are. You showed that when you were governor of
Massachusetts, when you fostered mandatory health care in that state and way back
when you were for women’s rights and the public school system. Those were fine
things to be for, and in no way subtracted from your Republicanism, the core of
which is less reliance on the Federal government and more reliance on
individual initiative within a framework of responsive State government. Republicanism includes a belief that the free
enterprise system can be made to work for everybody in the country’s benefit
and I know that’s what you believe.
To
be elected to the Presidency, however, you need the votes of independent
voters. Frankly, they will not vote for you if they believe that you have put
the anti-Obama Care, anti-gay rights, pro-life, anti-entitlement and
anti-public school agenda of the right wing of the Republican Party ahead of the
traditional Republican values mentioned above which such great Republicans such
as Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan have championed over the years. If you adopt the positions of the right wing
social conservatives in order to get the nomination, it will be a worthless one
because you will automatically lose the votes of the independent voters as well
as many Republicans who will feel that their party has deserted them. Hearing you starting to cater to the G.O.P.’s
right has already reduced the number of your supporters showing up to vote in
the primaries. And your parroting the false
right wing mantra that the Democrats are weak on national security, for which
even conservative columnist George Will has lightly rapped your knuckles,
doesn’t help either.
Any
of the other present contenders for the Republican nomination is a loser before
they even get out of the starting gate. Your Party knows this. No right wing social conservative Obama-attacker
can win the independent votes the Party must get, and that includes you if you
choose to be one of them. That will
force the convention to nominate an electable candidate like you were back when
the campaign started, but it won’t be you, for you are no longer that kind of candidate,
nor will it be anyone else who is running in the primaries, either.
You
can still win the nomination, though, and still have a fair shot at winning the
general election, but in order to do so, you must immediately set yourself
apart from those to the right of you. Speak your traditional Republican mind
and fear not that your Party’s right will desert you. They have nowhere else to turn and on Election
Day, you will more than make up for their possible loss with the votes of some independents
and some disenchanted Democrats. But
mean what you are saying. People
recognize when you do not, and that includes Democrats as well as Republicans.
As
a Democrat who will probably vote for Barack Obama, I hope that you will heed
this advice so that at least, the nation’s two-party system will be preserved. A Democratic Party running against a
Republican Party committed to an unelectable socially conservative candidate’s
platform would have no reason to veer further toward the center, and that would
not be good for the country’s historic two party system. A balance must be maintained. And if for some reason, you actually manage to
defeat President Obama, you would be a far, far more acceptable President than
any of those to your right who put agenda before country. But first, you must
follow Shakespeare’s advice: “To thine own self be true.”
Jack Lippman
The Disappearing
Supermarket
When
I was growing up, my family bought its groceries from a neighborhood grocery
store around the corner from where we lived.
Rosen’s grocery store was a mom and pop operation and sold everything
except meats, fish and produce. Those we
bought from Rothstein’s butcher shop next store and Macklis’ produce and fish
market half a block up the street. Such
mom and pop stores don’t exist any longer.
They have been replaced by supermarkets.
But
supermarkets are on their way out too.
Many grocery chains have been acquired and merged into other chains and
some chains have closed many stores or disappeared entirely. Their place is being taken by large
supermarket operations existing within larger “big box” retail establishments
such as Target and Wal-mart as well as the “wholesale” discount clubs such as
Costco and BJ’s which sell grocery products packed in larger quantities as
lower prices. Specialty food stores
still exist, but only to meet special needs such as healthier foods (Whole
Foods), gourmet foods (Dean & DeLuca in New York) or Hispanic, Asian or
Kosher foods. Of course, in areas too
small to support Target or Wal-Mart outlets, small supermarkets, some
individual stores or high priced convenience stores still manage to
survive. As soon, however, as these
locales grow populous enough to attract a Wal-Mart, these operations’ days are
numbered.
Another
type store that is replacing the supermarket is the low cost “plain pipe rack”
type store selling a limited amount of its own branded foods. Such stores
(Aldi’s) charge for bags and don’t take credit cards to keep costs down. Trader Joe stores (owned by the same interests
as Aldi’s) are a mixture of the gourmet, health food and plain pipe rack
approaches and are replacing supermarkets in areas where such marketing has an
appeal, usually in larger cities and upscale suburbs. With these trends increasing, supermarkets over
the next few decades will be going the way of the mom and pop groceries. Time marches on!
And
speaking of Time, have you noticed
the thinness of that magazine lately? It
too, is going the way of the mom and pop store and supermarkets, along with its
competitor, Newsweek. But that is a story
for another day.
JL
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Our family of web sites includes: www.computerdrek.com - www.politicaldrek.com - www.sportsdrek.com - www.healthdrek.com.
Check all of them out, find out what “drek” really means and feel free to submit your thoughts and articles for publication on these sites, which, while still “under construction,” already contain some interesting content.
Jack
Lippman
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