Been very busy with work and settling into a new life when I'm not at work, so here's a picture of the Golden Gate to tide you over for now. Eventually, I hope to get in a rhythm where I can work on the photos and post more often (have to get back on broadband soon), but most of my energy is being directed other places - so very little writing, if any, will be posted here.
One for the road though - a must read op-ed in the New York Times on the auto industry and Mitt Romney. Just do it.
When the companies begged the federal government to save them from financial catastrophe, President George W. Bush and later President Obama ignored strong Republican objections, saving a signature American industry and the whole country from an even deeper crash.
Four years later, there are 1.45 million people who are working as a direct result of the $80 billion bailout, according to the nonpartisan Center for Automotive Research, both at the carmakers and associated businesses downstream in the economy. Michigan’s unemployment level is at its lowest level in three years. G.M. is again the world’s biggest automaker, and both companies are reporting substantial profits.
And yet Mitt Romney, along with the other Republican presidential candidates, has spent the days before the Michigan primary denouncing the bailout that has rescued his native state.
It gets better from there.
You would think that I would have been excited to see Michigan receive so much national attention, and on a certain level, I am, but on another level, this has been like chewing on tinfoil for someone who lived and breathed every second of that very scary and dangerous time.
To hear Romney and Santorum talk about how they would have sent Michigan into the deepest economic depression it has ever known (because I believe a total collapse of the industry would have been worse for the state than the Great Depression) is like having presidential candidates come around to repeatedly spit in your face. I am completely and thoroughly disgusted with it, and I hope the citizens of Michigan remember this November just who it was that stood up for the industry and our well-being.
It wasn't Rick Snyder. It wasn't Mitt Romney. It certainly wasn't Rick Santorum.
His name is President Barack Obama. Along with the votes of Democratic members of Congress and the work of Michigan politicians such as Governor Granholm, added with the major sacrifices made by workers at all three domestic automakers and their suppliers, Michigan is once again climbing the ladder of economic recovery. The Republicans would have seen to its demise, and no amount of facts, reason or compassion for their fellow Americans seems to sway their opinion. That's not leadership; it's the actions of a three-year old throwing a stubborn temper tantrum because they didn't get their way, and it shouldn't be enabled or rewarded in any shape or form.
All I can say is - remember. And vote accordingly.
That's all for now.