Olberman Follies

Bill O'Reilly could tee everyone off, one by one in turn. He definitely does me at times. But tonight, Keith Olberman made an ass of himself by wasting time over O'Reilly having said with a grin that when he looks out a FOX window the NBC building is on his "left." Of course, that's true. Keith ranted that Bill was geographically challanged. He threw up a map, turned it a couple of directions and proclaimed in two ways that clearly Bill had it backwards. What a sad piece that was! Olberman seemed grinless and dead serious as he ignored that "left" and "right" depend upon which way one faces. Not a hint of a grin in the man. Had he grinned and shortened the bit up by half or better, it might have worked. Instead I saw a seemingly deadly serious drawn-out piece of thorough juvenility, which probably actually fooled any truly "geographically" challenged liberals watching, into believing Olberman really was on to an O'Reilly fault. Does this illustrate "dumbing down?" No wonder his ratings have been tiny. Maybe his ratings will recover sometime soon. I sneer here.

The recent Tea Parties illustrate that many people have not forgotten the United States was designed to limit government, and these people by and large believe the country can operate best with such limits enforced as intended. American leaders and others have forever often thought otherwise. The bulk of the world thought our founders constitution was a permissive liberal folly doomed to certain and quick failure due to granting too much power to the unwashed masses. While our founders gave us something successful which we the poeple perhaps didn't fully believe in nor fully understand at the start, today then it seems left to the people to rise to ensure that freedom doubting leaders cease having their way with us. Interestingly indeed, Tea Party participants rightfully cheer when Republicans are included with Democrats as examples of leaders who obviously have acted to limit "people power" through government spending and taxation. I feel confident that such non-partisan sentiment has a broader appeal than is yet realized by pundits and politicians in general.

Republican and Democrat politicians may not realize the significance of the possibility that they face public knowledge of their failures to uphold the constitutional limits set on government. If not today, tomorrow this reality may loom large as the bottom line for people simply fails to improve through increasing government control of our society.

Today, Arlen Specter became a Democrat saying Republicans are too far to the right for him now (whatever that means to him). Of course, Democrats are surely too far to the left for Arlen, who likes his version of the middle ground quite well. Arlen's future votes won't likely change much due to his new label. What he and his fellow traditional modern politicians miss is the reality that they all have become the enemies of those of us who I feel rightly believe in the rather highly constitutional phrase "power to the people." This is a phrase which easily comes to mind when reading the words of our founders, their detractors, 1960's history, or even Ronald Reagan (who interestingly, captured the votes of so many Independents and Democrats with thoughts much like my own). Yes, voters just turned left. That the public is fickle derives from the very real pull opposing philosophies each may muster. Never-the-less, should each party continue to clearly move away from constitutional limits on government, this fickleness will remain, and may well require a new soon-to-be major party to satisfy the pull to the philosophy of individual freedom on which our country was founded.

As many a commentator now tells us this is the time of Democrats and Obama, and that Republicans need to move to the center - if not left of center - to even remain viable; the real story may well be that on the current path neither of these two parties can much longer steadily capture the fancy of a growing cadre of Americans who will more and more feel the painful loss of very worthy constitutional principles; principles which reserved far more power for the people than they still enjoy.