Too Opinionated!

Mom and I have been doing this blog for a month and a half now, and I've found the two biggest problems are trying to get other people to share their opinions -- yea, you -- and focusing on just one thing to write about each time. There's so much out there that it's hard to choose THE topic for the day. Of course, it doesn't help that we have opinions to spare!

Take today, for instance. I could write about:

• The conflicts of interest of some of President Obama's trusted advisers -- not the ones who need Senate confirmation, but the ones who have his ear in the White House. Two of them shaping his policy on embryonic stem cell research stand to profit from a lifting of the funding ban.
• State efforts to limit embryonic stem cell research.
• Protests in Spain against efforts to ease that country's abortion restrictions.
• A North Carolina judge who says he knows better than a mother what's best for her homeschooled kids -- whom he's never met. Even though they are testing above their grade level and are involved in community sports and academic programs, he thinks the kids need to go to public school so what their mother has taught them can be challenged.
• China's demand that the rest of the world pay for its manufacturing pollution because, hey, we use the stuff. Meanwhile, China is spending all the money it's making through its cheap, polluting manufacturing business to buy influence worldwide and to secure oil and other resources in Australia, Brazil, France, Russia, Venezuela, etc. It made an $11 billion loan to Russia, for instance, to secure long-term oil rights there and a $4 billion loan to Venezuela for the same thing.
• Liberal media efforts to appoint the spokesperson for the conservatives. By saddling us, in the public eye, with anyone who comes across as hateful, vindictive and intolerant, they can paint all of us with the same brush and ensure that we will not have the strength of numbers to defeat them in future elections.
• Suppression of freedom of the press -- not from the right, but from the left. Politico ran a piece recently in which it revealed that a small group of liberals headed by an old Clintonite has organized to dictate the daily media agenda and to target -- through intimidation, threats, etc. -- those who are critical of their pet projects. While the White House doesn't participate in the daily conference call this group has, it apparently is involved with setting the agenda.
• The administration's payback to labor unions by pushing for all kinds of concessions. These range from government contract preferences for union shops to efforts to do away with the necessity of secret ballots for a union vote. Their plan is to allow a simple majority of workers to sign a card and, voila!, the workplace is unionized. Of course, there would be no intimidiation or dirty tricks to get workers to sign those cards!
• The fuzzy math being used to calculate all the "new" jobs the stimulus bill is creating. My brother-in-law, for instance, may get one of those new jobs in Virginia. But in chalking up the "new" jobs added to the economy, the White House will ignore the fact that he lost his old job because Sen. Harry Reid killed the Yucca Mountain project in Nevada.

Yep, with Obama in the White House, Pelosi holding court in the other House and Reid setting up shop in the Senate, Mom and I will always have plenty to write about. But we'll try not to bore you with too many opinions. Meanwhile, we'd love to hear some of your opinions.