$३०० Tennis Shoes?

Today's blog is sort of a news items miscellany.

We begin with the latest technological advancement from Nike. Somehow the company has seen fit to justify a new pair of tennies with a price tag exceeding $300. I can buy a kayak for that, no shoes required.

At $300, those shoes ought to be able to run the 100 in 8.9 seconds no matter who is wearing them.

Then there is Mitt Romney pointing out that President Obama pinpointed $90 billion of the stimulus package toward research and development of green energy. Romney bluntly states that this is a waste of money, that green energy isn't working, and that the price tag is outrageous. Of course, $90 billion is less than ten percent of the overall stimulus, and green energy is an area upon which we are going to have to rely at some point in the not too distant future, when the fossil fuels run out or get so audaciously expensive as to be useless. And, of course, we spent twice that per year during the Bush administration on the two wars we were fighting. Iranian oil? I don't see much. Afghani oil? Non-existent.

Everything is relative.

Romney also speaks highly of creating jobs in America, forgetting conveniently how many jobs he himself has outsourced. If he were really honest he would tell us why he outsourced, and call for remedies to the issues that prompted him to find a better bottom line overseas.

The Republicans still go on and on about Obamacare as if it were the greatest scam and deadliest sin ever perpetrated on the American public. To me, after compromises and adjustments, Obamacare is far from the plan it should be. But then, I look at the eighteen or so countries with better health care for their citizens than the United States and dream of universal health care. I guess that marks me as a socialist. But FDR called for just that in his second Bill of Rights back in 1945, three score and seven years ago.

This means liberals are looking backward, trying to bring equality to all citizens, from a playbook set down long ago; while conservatives are looking someplace altogether different from a playbook based on obstruction and partisan politics that was established only recently.

It's a topsy-turvy world.

The fact is, the political discussions that we hear on the TV these days are utterly disturbing. Real issues slip by the wayside while opposing candidates keep telling us what their opponents did, not what they themselves will do. It's politics as usual, which is to say politicians running on vague promises and empty words.

I keep saying it: these guys (and gals) ought to try walking a mile in my shoes. I paid sixty bucks for them five years ago and thought the price was outrageous then.