Picks

Jacksonville over St.Louis
Kc over Washington
Cincy over Hou
Min over Baltimore
Green Bay over Detroit
Pit over Cleveland
Carolina over Tampa Bay
NO over NYG
Arizona over Seattle
Philly over Oakland
NYJ over Buffalo
NE over Tenn
CHI over Atl
Denver over SD

Week 5 picks be up in here...

Baltimore over Cincy
Buffalo over Cleavland
Carolina over Washington
Pitt over Detroit
Kansas City over Dallas (just can't help it)
NYG over the Raiders
Philly over Tampa
Minn over St. Louis
San Fran over Atlanta
Arizona over Houston (Houston only ever disappoints me though so they will probably win.
The Pats over the Donkeys
Jacksonville over Seattle
Indy over Tenn
Jets over the Fins

Week 2 picks...

Went 10-6 last week so I am looking to make up some ground this week so....go teams.

Jags vs Texans- Texans
Steelers vs Bengals- Steelers
Dolphins vs Chargers- Chargers
Broncos vs Raiders- Broncos
Browns vs Ravens- Ravens
Saints vs Bills- Saints
Titans vs Jets- Jets
Falcons vs Patriots- Patriots
Packers vs Rams- Packers
Giants vs Buccs- Giants
Redskins vs Lions- Lions
Bears vs Seahawks- Bears
Chiefs vs Eagles- Chiefs
49ers vs Vikings- Vikings
Colts vs Cardinals- Colts
Panthers vs Cowboys- Cowboys

Picks for Week 2

Tenn over Houston
New Orleans over Philly
Jacksonville over Arizona
Kansas City over Oakland
Green Bay over Cincy
Minnesota over Detroit
Washington over St. Louis
New England over New York Jets
Atlanta over Carolina
Buffalo over Tampa Bay
San Fransisco over Seattle
Baltimore over San Diego
Pitt over Chicago
Denver over Cleavland
New York Giants over Dallas
Indy over Miami

Political Accountability does not equal "Gotcha Politics"

Lynn Jenkins has had a pretty rough month.

Stating that the the GOP needs a new "great white hope" to help them take back Washington. Telling Kansas she has a solution the Health Care circus but it was a secret. Among other mistakes as well she recently laughed at a single mother as she presented questions to Jenkins at a town hall meeting. The bloggers and twitter followers have consistently and pretty fairly teed off on Jenkins about these incidents. Jenkins on the other hand is a little bit frustrated and released a quote about this most recent incident stating:

"Instead of playing gotcha politics on blogs and zipping off press releases to MSNBC, and using the young woman's situation as a fundraising appeal for her political party, Congresswoman Jenkins's office is looking into current resources available to the mother in existing programs."

Oh, Lynn, these are not "gotcha politics."

Gotcha politics would be if these bloggers were following you around and just waiting for you to say something stupid, instead these people are going to public events and you are still firing out ingenious comments.

Holding someone accountable for what they say in a public forum is not playing "gotcha politics." Its called having a memory and taking people at their word which is all we have with politicians. Taking a politican's words and using them against them has a long storied tradition but it is not unfair. The only thing we have from our elected officials is their word, we can not dictate what they do. Holding our representatives to their word is not a bad thing.

While we are holding Jenkins to her word let's look at the rest of her statement; "using the young woman's situation as a fund raising appeal for her political party." One she is not a democrat she is an independent. Two does the GOP really want to bring up using regular people as a pulpit for ideas as being bad. This is the party that brought you Joe the Plumber. You are right Lynn the Democrats have exploited this woman through interviews and quotes. What the left wing, liberal media should have done was give her a job, just like Joe.

Having a memory and holding a politician accountable it not playing "gotcha politcs." Kansas deserves a rep that can recognize the difference between the two. Kansas deserves better then Lynn Jenkins.

Accountability

Political accountability and transparency have recently come under fire in our political world. President Obama campaigned in part on government needing to be more transparent. As this system begins to come in people need to realize that accountability has hit Washington and it has done so in the form of the Health Care Reform extravaganza.

In our world of journalism, blogs, and the more broad internet in general (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) accountability is here in the form of "gotcha politics." While some scoff at the idea that politicians need to be on the look out 24/7 for journalists or something they say may be taken out of context or posted a thousand times by bloggers and Twitters. Most recently we have seen this in town hall meetings on Health Care Reform. As illustrated for us Kansas citizens the town hall meetings are the accountability that this country needs. Recent Lynn Jenkins has been dragged over the coals in Kansas for her comments; ranging from the "great white hope" comment to laughing at the a single mother's question/situation at a town hall meeting. Thanks to bloggers and the media Jenkins' shenanigans are not slipping by. While many would say that it is people nit-picking or taking out of context you can see for your self both incidents as there is video of both. The context can be seen and both are pretty bad on her part.

Political accountability has hit Kansas and thanks to town hall meetings the entire country is picking apart their politicians. This is great because as people talk about holding their reps accountable they are in fact doing so. The meetings hold these politician's to their words and while Republican's talk about taking back government at their meetings both parties are in fact doing so. Thanks to these meetings reps. and senators know that their seat may easily ride on their vote which is what America needs on both sides of the aisle.

With political accountability at an all time high transparency in programs will surely follow. Not just government programs but businesses as well. In this article we see that it is not just the government that needs to be held to their word. Any company or organization that has a vest public interest needs to be able to be analyzed but the public that they represent because that is the public that they could in fact subsequently harm. The time is now to hold your reps, your senators, your banks, your teachers, etc. to their word and to hold them accountable to their actions. These are the people that are building the world around us and as we have seen with the banking industry when one collapses it puts pressure on the whole.

Why I am a moderate...

Outside of specific issues there is one reason that I am a moderate. Because moderation in politics is what amounts to real change. And I do not mean the twang of a rod as it snaps to the left after being held to the right for 8 years. That is not real change. I am not against Obama by any means but the change we need is not necessarily change that is just change that goes against all that the Republicans have done in the past 8 years. Granted there are definitely policies and actions that need to be changed. Things like universal health care are things that divide the country but we do not see the middle ground. Is universal health care likely in America, probably not, in the next 4 years, no way. Can most of us agree that health care needs heavy reform quickly so that they right people are taken care the right way, I would imagine many would agree yes. Is any of this going to get resolved through the left and right yelling. No. Both sides need to slide towards the middle, it does not have to be drastic but a shift that will help to get things through. This is not one of those read between the lines for Republicans to stop delaying Democrat policies, and this is not to tell the Democrats to push as hard as they can with their control. This is a statement hoping that both sides can turn off partisan politics and a call to people not to change their views but to look at those views and see if having an extreme outlook is really the most practical.

That is all for now thank you for reading.