Children of Ron.

I was listening to some smart guy pontificating the other day about the freshmen republican firebrands. He said that they were the philosophical children of Ronald Reagan, who was president around the time they came of age.  I must confess to hating Ronnie as governor and president, I hated the Patco thing. He deregulated the Savings and Loans, an action that ultimately caused my bank to go under and help deep six my real estate business.

If the sixties and seventies saw the flourishing and subsequent tail end of the love generation and revolution and all that stuff, the most significant epoch culturally in the last 50 years for sure, the time of Reagan was the blowback period where the pendulum helped straighten out mom and dad's youthful exuberance and fuzzy period of excess.

Hate to sound like an old fart, but these kids are a bit cold and clinical for my taste. Maybe we could use the draft again to temper some of their crueler natures. Maybe the next wave will loosen up a little bit.

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If the old revolution was fueled by sex, drugs and rock and roll, the new changes are more rooted in technology. Facebook, Twitter and Al Jazeera are now the mechanisms for opening people's minds, much the same way that the free market and commerce managed to co-opt and topple the socialist regimes in Russia and China. And call me a romantic, I will take the old hippie ways over a new ipad any day. Even with the hangover.

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The new Republican wave in tea party bean counters trying to muscle the labor unions seems really un- american to me. In my day, you made a contract or promise to someone you stuck to it. People take shitty public jobs because of the benefits. It keeps our teachers and their fellow public servants motivated. This guy in Michigan who is sending a guy around to terminate contracts and install martial economic law, it is plain wrong.

If you don't like the deal labor is getting, negotiate a better deal next time, don't break your promise. And next will be entitlements. We have become a society of liars and double crossers.