I once worked on setting up for an Irish Stew dinner. This required the gathering and then placement of about sixty wooden tables which weigh 60 pounds each (that's almost two tons of tables loaded, and what do you get? ...) And each table had 6 chairs (and each chair had six cats. No wait, that was my trip to St. Ives.) That's 360 chairs at 14 pounds each, or 5,040 pounds (another 2.5 tons) and then tablecloths on all the tables and the rest of the building cleaned, and probably picked up the dance floor too, which is another half ton.

BUT, it just so happens that I forgot to ride up the elevator and bring down 3 boxes of Irish decorations (something that would take about three minutes). Sometimes, in the scramble to get everything else done, things get forgotten.

You know what happened?

On next week's paperwork, it was printed, the complaint "you forgot the Irish decorations, stay on the ball" or words to that effect.

I was thinking, you have got to be fucking kidding me. After all that I did, moving 8,600 pounds of tables and chairs, and you would pick at one tiny little thing that I forgot (actually WE, since there are four on staff) and PUT THAT IN WRITING????

The point is, no matter how hard you work, no matter how much good you do, somebody can always find fault, especially if they look for it. But is it fair or truthful to just focus on it, as if all the other good things are not there?

George W. Bush vetoed expansion of SCHIP, vetoed (or maybe just threatened) the Matthew Shepard Act, and the Lilly Ledbetter fair pay act. Obama signed them (but hey, who really cares?). Bush's idea of a stimulus is tax cuts, mostly for the rich. Obama gave tax rebates to the poor and also built some roads and kept some teachers employed (but hey, who cares?). Bush appointed Roberts and Alito to SCOTUS. Obama appointed Sotomayor (first Latino) and Kagan (but hey, who really cares?).

The good things get ignored as we search for things to complain about.

I might complain too, that my own complaints don't seem to get much traction here http://journals.democraticunderground.com/...