I would love arguing with my late grandfather. He taught me the “greatness” of the Republican Party.
Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of the United States. Hero of the Republican Party
“This is the party of Lincoln, son. The party that did great things. Ronald Reagan is the greatest president of all time. You should always consider yourself a Republican.”
I always considered myself a moderate though I have voted in more Republican primaries than Democratic in my voting career.
I’ve tried understanding the right and left. I’ve tolerated excuses from both sides , my gLibs and my Tea Partiers.
But today crossed a line.
A line that makes me look at why I said in an earlier editorial why the Republican party will make themselves obsolete because of their fear created by the Tea Party.
Today 39 Republicans said no to a treaty negotiated by George W. Bush. A treaty encouraged by such great Republicans as John McCain and Bob Dole.
Today fear won as Republicans fought against the UN Disability Treaty. A treaty that was created based on our Americans with Disabilities Act.
Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), John Barrasso (Wyo.), Scott Brown (Mass.), Susan Collins (Maine), Dick Lugar (Ind.), John McCain (Ariz.), Olympia Snowe (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted with Democrats in favor of the treaty.
But 39 said no as Bob Dole looked on, stuck in his wheelchair as his former friends used excuses and lies to vote down something that extended disabled rights around the world.
No, said former presidential candidate Rick Santorium who tweeted after it had been not ratified :
“We did it, #CRPD was defeated today. @Patriot_voices will cont to have an impact on important issues. Pls join us.”
No sir, I won’t.
Bella Santorium should be ashamed of you. She would want the same rights that she has here in America around the world. But she won’t.
But Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), arguing that it could allow the U.N. to impose its will on issues such as abortion and home-schooling of children with disabilities.
Bob Dole
Show me in the treaty where it says that Senator.You can’t.
You just took a man who served with honor, a veteran and embarassed him.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), in May endorsed the treaty — saying, in a news release, that it advanced “fundamental values by standing up for the rights of those with disabilities, including our nation’s veterans and service members.”
But by Tuesday he had changed his mind. “Genuine concerns raised by the language of this treaty … have made it clear that foreign officials should not be put in a position to interfere with U.S. policymaking,” his statement said.
Bob Dole may have been a buffoon, during his turn at the Presidential lottery known as our political process, but he was a man of honor.
He will pass soon and I want every one of the 39 who embarassed him today to get up after he passes and talk about how he supported disabled peoples rights and how they had a chance to make a vote that made a difference to him. But they said no.
Enjoy this victory tonight Senators, drink your beverages of choice and enjoy a moment. Members of the party of Lincoln should walk by his monument and remember this one moment.
With the recent devestation of SuperStorm Sandy, I was thinking about an old friend.
I was a young PD and he was the grizzled vet who was VP at Arista and various other record companies before he started AIM Strategies which was one of the first companies to promote triple-A rock stations in 1993 and one of the only record contacts I had when I started working for Rock 101.1 back in 1999. Aim’s ongoing support of classic rock acts was bolstered by the Web site www.classicsdujour.com and the fire of two people, Paul and Elena.
Paul Yeskel was not only a mentor but someone who told me to stand my ground when I needed to but yet tried his damnest to make sure that I had a good point for everything I did. “Don’t tell me you’re not adding it Sean, tell me WHY you aren’t adding it.”
Elena was his go to girl, the woman who kept sending me Tesla single because I kept asking for them and yet sent another one when the first one was thrown off a 2 story building and hit by a tractor trailer, another that found its way to a shredder and sent me a fourth even as I described how I was bending it in two because I thought the song sucked so bad.
But that was Elena and Paul. Elena would ask nicely and then Paul would come on asking me to give him the reason. He was the bad cop in the good cop / bad cop situation and yet I loved his honesty, fight and his ethics.
One day he was trying to get a Rolling Stones CD played on every Classic Rock station in America and yet I said no. I told him that it was no better than Achy Breaky Heart and I wouldn’t play it.
But then again Paul never took no without making me smile… days before the official add date was I received the following note.
There is a lot of talk of shows coming and going bypassing the Hub city.
There are many reasons that it happens. We are known as a walk up city. “What do you wanna do? I dunno, lets go to that show?”
Promoters can’t count on walk ups and thus if ticket sales are sucking they will pull the show. That’s on us. If we want to see a show we should make sure that we buy the tickets. We have incredible arts community here, but we used to be known (in late 90’s_) around as Little Austin , not because of our own version of Leslie , but because you could ALWAYS go see great music somewhere in the hub. But we didn’t support the arts, we didn’t support the bands and what happened? They moved to Austin, Oklahoma City, Nashville, ANYWHERE but here. That’s on us. Talent was here for us to see and we ignored it.
The other problem is with promoters. The avoid secondary and tertiary markets until they have bled the majors dry. They come to Lubbock when they they want to make more money between lets say Albuquerque and Austin. They make stops in Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo all on the way to Austin. We could be off the promoters eye for a year or two and then they come in and bring 6 shows in a year. Entertainment dollars in this economy are finite and they will bleed a market dry and when they aren’t getting the numbers that they want they will cry “OH WHY DID I COME TO THIS GOD-FORSAKEN TOWN?” But it is their OWN fault.
Don’t blame the promoters when you want to walk up and the show isn’t there because of lack of interest.
Don’t blame the public when you want to bring 4 country shows in 9 month period and wonder why the first two shows did well and the last 2 didn’t.
If someone wanted to make money they would bring in not the HUGE shows, but smaller shows, the 1000-3ooo people shows into Lubbock. They won’t because the work they do for a 1000 person show they can do for a 15,000 person show and either make a ton of money or lose a ton of money.
Also, to the citizens of Lubbock, isn’t it time for us to renovate the Civic Center? Isn’t time to renovate the Fairgrounds? I would GLADLY pay taxes for those renovations instead of paying taxes for settlements of lawsuits and paying salaries to people who don’t work for the city anymore.
But of course, what do I know? I just may be wrong!Meet you in the comments.
