Accentuate the positive

Preparing for a holiday break while wondering why fans wear red if players wear gray, and why adopt a mantra of “never yield” when you already have “woo pig, sooie,” especially when you yield routinely, and wondering as well which is greater, the coach’s salary or the deficit in the fundraising office …

Alas, this is a day of thankfulness for the positive, not the usual obsession on the ironic and the negative. And the fact is that, a general pall notwithstanding, there are several persons and developments in the current political arena for which to express gratitude.

John Brummett is blogging daily online.

So I will use today’s space to abound in a veritable cornucopia of positivity and thankfulness.

I am thankful to live in a country in which the currently prevailing political party would choose to endure the opposition’s too-easy rhetorical abuse to try to provide that people may not be denied health insurance because they are ill, and that all Americans ought to possess insurance against the costs of humane medical care.

I am thankful for the dedication to the above in a hostile state by the good people of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families.

I am thankful that the American Civil Liberties Union would go to court for the state’s women because mostly male state legislators have presumed to regulate their most private body parts.

I am thankful to live in a country that seems three years away from electing a woman president.

I am thankful to live in a country that hardworking people seek to enter, not to flee, even if many of the job-providers have fled for tax and wage advantage.

I am thankful to live in a country in which the economy could basically fail in 2008, yet rise to live again in 2013, and where even a modest investor in the stock market could earn a 15 percent return in a year.

I am thankful to live in a country that could blow up the world but usually seeks peace instead.

I am thankful for Gov. Mike Beebe’s pragmatic instincts, sense of responsibility and tactical skills by which he has kept state government operating smoothly and efficiently amid a right-wing Republican insurgency all around him.

I am thankful for competence and a compromising spirit in the actual Republican legislative leadership of that otherwise destructive insurgency, mainly in the persons of Sen. Michael Lamoureux of Russellville, House Speaker Davy Carter of Cabot, state Sen. David Sanders of Little Rock, state Sen. Jonathan Dismang of Beebe, state Rep. John Burris of Harrison and state Rep. Duncan Baird of Lowell.

I am thankful that three of the above shoot pool and stay up late sometimes and occasionally enjoy soaking up the historic aura of their state Capitol.

I am thankful that Attorney General Dustin McDaniel declined to cower from humiliating scandal, but bore down on his job, got tough with Exxon and heroically coordinated a settlement ofthe Pulaski County school case.

I am thankful for John Walker, more for his combativeness on behalf of underprivileged children for several decades than for his reasonable cooperation in the end.

I am thankful that U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin, after a couple of false starts, allied with McDaniel in activist challenge of Exxon in the interests of innocent Arkansas homeowners.

I am thankful that U.S. Sen. John Boozman, normally meek, had all he could take and said so to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who was fomenting a frenzied and absurd Tea Party notion that any Republican who wanted to keep the government open was in fact an advocate of Obamacare.

I am thankful that all members of the Arkansas congressional delegation except the extreme one, Tom Cotton, had the good sense to vote for a farm and food stamp bill with favorable terms for the farmers and poor folks of the state.

I am thankful that our next governor will be competent and broadly experienced in government, whether named Ross or Hutchinson. I am thankful that the former returned from cushy private employment to serve his party and seek to serve his state. I am thankful that the latter, while arithmetically challenged, proposes to cut taxes first for working people and not rich people.

I am thankful that men like James Lee Witt and Pat Hays, possessed of full and successful government careers, could choose to venture from retirement to endure the abuses of the electoral process to seek to serve in the U.S. Congress.

I am thankful for this newspaper, for its vitality and news coverage, and for the way we go at it on these two opinion pages.

I am thankful for the local bloggers and online news operations, from the Blue Hog’s devotion to expertly researched revelations of Republican hypocrisy to the hard-toiling scoop-gathering of Talk Business and Politics.

I am thankful for the civic-minded intensity of the anonymous caller who cares enough about issues to phone me to share irrational anger and multisyllabic profanities and vulgarities three to four times a week.

I am thankful for his readership, and for yours.

Enjoy your holiday, and yield sometimes.

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John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

Editorial, Pages 25 on 11/28/2013

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