I am the government and I am here to help

For me, this is the flat season, the one where the days increasingly are darker, the farm has more mud, the animals are more dissatisfied, and I... well I just get through it. It's not the pretty part of fall where the leaves are colorful and change is in the air. Change is here and it's dark, wet and cold.

There are pluses to it like more fires in the fireplace and I light more candles than at any other time of the year. I am watching more old movies. I kind of like the sparseness on the deck which isn't really big enough for two chaise lounges in the summer, but how would you have only one? The leaves are mostly blown off the driveway, small gravel garden, and deck but a few will come down all winter. The small table and chairs are under cover so again more feeling of space and light.

The little birds are all over the place with a full bird feeder to help them through their own dark time. That brought in the young golden eagle which was neat to see, but I am not fond of them near the house because of having a small house cat who doesn't know she's small and who might be tempting to an eagle under certain circumstances.

When I follow politics, which is still most of the time, I don't really know what is best to do. I find it hard to pick out things to write about here that aren't negative. Mostly it's the downers that we notice and think-- we should fix that. The good things we are glad for but they don't require action; so it's onto the next upsetting one. Naturally the news is big on the upsetting ones as they make the best stories.

I thought Bill Maher had a good point last night on the Rachel Maddow show, guest hosted by Arianna Huffington (and I agreed with Old Lady that not just anybody is good at that job. Arianna has been good as a guest debating issues and at putting together Huffington Post and that's been pretty much it).

Maher said he's been following what Obama does but not trying to second guess it because during the campaigns, he did that a lot and usually it turned out Obama was right in his instincts. He said we aren't used to having a smart president and we should sit back and give this a try. See how it works out before we go saying this or that was wrong or good.

The other thing we aren't used to, none of us, is something else-- a man in leadership who can let things roll off his back, who doesn't get his personal ego in the way of doing what he feels is best for the country and even himself. Bill Clinton was plenty smart, but we can still tell that he holds grudges like nobody's business.

So we had Bush who may not have held grudges but was lazy intellectually-- maybe. To be honest, I don't know about Bush. It depends on what his goals were. Is it possible that destroying the clout of the middle class, damaging our economy so the government had no money for new programs, fighting wars we didn't need to take more of our rights through new laws and enabling private contractors to take money with no accountability (now possibly certain financial institutions as once again a lot is gone with no apparent accountability),letting New Orleans fail in rebuilding so a few rich could profit from it, raping our environment for dollars in corporate pockets, ignoring global climate change, and the list goes on, maybe all of that was part of a plan behind a benign mask of he just doesn't know what he's doing...

One thing Americans should have learned by now is that it takes government and business working together to bring prosperity. We are not a simple wild West world where anything goes. There has to be management, direction, but you can't turn corporations into the bad guys as they are important for prosperity.

Don't hire people to run government who don't believe in it. When Ronald Reagan said the most scary words anybody hears is I am the government and I am here to help, well he should have set about making it not true by making government effective. That wasn't what he did or what he taught a whole generation of Republicans to do.

It's time for government (Democrats and Republicans) to rethink that old Reagan saying, and make it untrue. Especially if we are asked to bail out the auto industry which might be needed but will fail if government doesn't work with the corporation to renew how it does things including labor contracts. Government doesn't have to be the bad guy anymore than corporations do; but right now, too often, it has been. We the people can demand better. We have to demand better.

I woke up thinking about what Farm Boss had been telling me about one of the groups that is encouraging creative, new energy development in our country and across the world. It has been funded by The King of Saudi Arabia: Global Research Partnership of KAUST. New ideas for a new time and encouraging to me for what our country can do once we recognize government's potential role in promoting new ideas and ways.