Inauguration Eve

Scanning the Sunday Forum section in the Press Democrat gave me a sense of the schizophrenia that is a part of today's culture (tomorrow's, too, I'm thinking). Headlines like: "Obama inspires unlike optimism (content is obvious)" Slouching toward 'Armageddon (content: CA budget crisis)", and "She saw her pale reflection in the window (a pretty funny piece by Keillor on what we are reading - which thank goodness I read after the Armageddon editorial so I could laugh a little).

In the editorial by Pete Golis, he outlines a pretty good plan with six starting points to solve the crisis - read them if you want, I'm sure they are somewhere on line. The part that got me, though, was here's a guy with common sense, an interest in what's happening, and some solutions. I doubt that it took him - let's see, how long? - months to write the piece, maybe the legislature could take ten minutes and read it, then another ten to do ONE of them!

But I forgot, it's a day off. I guess there's not much chance of our representatives doing much but preening, basking, and slouching. A quote I will put in from Golis states: "The sorry condition of the state government emerges from a decade of drift and dysfunction. The state Legislature - once admired - now serves no identifiable function, save to pander to special interest groups, engage in partisan feuds and remind us why we are so cynical about government." On that he is right, and no amount of Obama related optimism will wash that away in the near future, especially of the future continues to be what it is - systemic dysfunction.