Republicans--why do we even try with them?

I know, a lot of us don't. But there are those, and some who even hold high public office, who still think (I would call it delusionally so) that they can be reasoned with. Why is that? When have they shown the least inclination to bargain or argue faithfully, let alone for the good of the country? If we take a look at what they profess to believe--based on their actions over the last decade and 1/2--we can easily see that they are pursuing a singular goal, and compromising or bargaining have nothing to do with achieving that goal.
They want to destroy the New Deal and the Progressive era that preceded it, and return us to the apparently halcyon days of 1885. (I will leave it to others to argue that they actually are hardcore racists and want a return any earlier than that.) It should be obvious to all that this is the goal; what do they call for more than anything else? Lower taxes and less regulation. The income tax was established on a permanent basis in 1913, so we know they want to go back before that. Popular calls for governmental regulation of businesses stemmed mainly from the public health threats posed by pre-Pure Food and Drug Act immoral business behavior, so we know we have to date it before 1906. The Panic of 1893 created a public clamor for stronger regulation of the economy, so it has to be before that. (I put it at 1885, because one other main component of Republican ideology is the desire to completely eliminate unions, and the first union (the AFL) was formed in 1886. They've almost succeeded in that task already, so I felt it unnecessary to include it above.)
While this may just be a cute semantic exercise, I think it is instructive to see how truly radical the modern Republican Party has become. These are not conservatives trying to undo a few Administrations' worth of "missteps"--although since Republicans have controlled the White House for all but 14 of the last 42 years, I'm not sure how anyone would think that--these are revolutionaries seeking to change the foundations of the way we've lived in this country for 126 years! There is no amount of bargaining plausible that would enable one to reach that kind of goal, so it is no surprise that Republicans are totally uninterested in doing any.
No surprise, that is, except apparently for the Democrats we now have in "power." "Led" by President Obama, Democrats in Congress have repeatedly attempted to craft legislation that would garner Republican votes, only to be stymied time and time again, even for the weakest of weak sauces. Only when a bill furthers the Republican goal (like the bailout of GM and the banks, which used money directly from we the people)--or better yet, one that is in appearance anti-Republican, but in reality still works to funnel money to the business sector (like the health insurance reform act, which has done nothing to protect against rate hikes, but will mandate universal participation)--will they reluctantly allow passage. That Obama (especially) and other Dems would then praise their own efforts at "getting something done", or passing a "grand bargain", is simply too galling to stomach for long. Yet still it continues.
It seems clear to me, at least, that Obama is not stupid, nor does he appear naive (he would have to be both to have not learned how the Republicans operate this far into his tenure), so we have to conclude that either a) he has no ideology at all, and is only interested in the inside baseball of political wrangling and process regardless of outcome; or b) he has an ideology directly opposed to the Democratic Party platform, but knew he couldn't get elected/re-elected as a Republican or independent and wanted the job badly. I can't imagine that he truly feels like he is accomplishing anything but enabling the Republicans to achieve their goals at this point, unless a) is true and his only goal is to sign legislation he helped pilot through a contentious Congress. Why else would he continue to engage any Republicans in discussions of policy or legislative matters, given their stated desires to both destroy him and eliminate any vestige of governmental help for the less-than-overwhelmingly rich?
It is inconceivable to me that anyone not brain dead would deny the Republican intransigence and seek to work around it, but instead Obama and the other leading Dems (with the probable exception of the now-powerless House Minority Leader Pelosi) repeatedly include Republicans in their feeble attempts to govern. (The new "Super-Congress" is merely the latest, albeit the most ridiculous and almost certainly unConstitutional, effort to get Republicans to disregard their well-established motives.) It really is baffling, but only if one tries to square the circle of believing that Obama and his seeming lapdogs are actually trying to follow the Democratic Party platform. Once one drops that pretense and acknowledges that Obama has no desire to do so, for whatever reasons he has, one begins to understand how well and truly finished we are. So, let's ring in the New Year of 1885, now and forevermore!

The Presidency done right

I've been highly critical of President Obama. I don't think he's really a liberal, let alone a *gasp* "Socialist" (I wish!), but I do think his heart and mind are in the right place. As evidence, please take a couple of breaks from your daily grind to watch him in action the way the President of the US is supposed to work.
His visit to the House Republicans late last week has already become the stuff of legend. Not because he blasted them all to smithereens with pointed rhetoric or angry vengeance--which would have been justly deserved and a balm to all sane people everywhere--but rather because he showed his abilities off to the greatest advantage. He placed himself in the lion's den, to be sure, and he more than held his own against some truly ignorant questions and wrongheaded attacks. The best thing about this, though, was that it was televised so everybody could see (and thanks to the internet, will always be freely able to see) the exchange. This interview wasn't about Obama talking to a bunch of neanderthal thugs, but instead about our President talking to us, the American people at large. That he was simultaneously able to fairly well embarrass some unthinking Republican Party hacks in Congress was the bonus that could very well pay off politically as well. This is how modern politics should work; this is how a President is supposed to communicate
A much less heralded (so far) interaction took place yesterday on YouTube, where President Obama showed even more adroitness in handling himself. Anyone could have foreseen what questions--or at least what kinds of questions--a Republican drone would ask him, but taking questions from the masses themselves? Talk about potential pitfalls! Granted, there were some editorial choices made by the YouTube host, but one truly gets the impression that there was nothing scripted about the exchanges.
A number of years ago I was thinking about how Democrats could circumvent the right wing's ownership of American mass media, and stuff like this was exactly what I thought they should be doing (to toot my own horn, of course!). Bypass the media in any way possible, and for someone like the President, it's as easy as this. For people as rich as any Senator, it would be just as simple as well; buying up airtime on the teevee worked for Ross Perot--I watched his infomercials in 1992, and so did millions of other people, because the concept of actually taking one's case to the public directly is so refreshing these days it has great appeal. It works, and I applaud the President for doing it. The fact that he's smart enough to be able to take on all comers in this fashion is enormously satisfying, especially after having endured 8 years of Smirky manipulating the public at every "managed" opportunity. The only question I have is: why didn't you start this last year, Mr. President?

Right wing madness taken to its sickest extreme--domestic division

It is an ugly truth that the right wing contains some of the worst human beings on the planet. Aside from all the evidence that conservatives don't care about the welfare of others, there are little jolts of sickness from them that make it to the public eye. For example, the Warren Pennsylvania Times-Observer published a personal ad today that carries an incendiary message all too common to those demented jackasses:

For those of you unaware, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, and Kennedy are the 4 Presidents of the US who have been assassinated. Nicely done, you perverted, twisted loser. May your wish be granted upon your head instead.

What today means

I can't imagine what it is to be oppressed, or discriminated against, or reviled because of what I look like. Not really, even though I was ostracized as a child for having short hair (in the 1970s, this was a sure sign of being a dork and therefore someone no one wanted to associated with) and glasses (which was a sign of being non-athletic/wimpy, even though in my case that was untrue), and being puny (I was a year younger than everyone in my class, and matured physically later). I can't know what it is like, for the simple reason that I outgrew, eventually, all of those mischaracterizations and stigmas, and through hard work overcame (for the most part, at any rate) the psychological damage my schoolmates inflicted on me. For African-Americans and other people of color and ethnicity, however, there is no "outgrowing" one's looks, and in many parts of the country and for many people, skin color, or hair type, or speech patterns/languages, or some other obvious attribute still outweigh any individual personality or character traits in determining how a person is treated or thought of.
And this has been going on for centuries.
It is over half a millennium since Christopher Columbus "discovered" the Western Hemisphere, and not much less than a quarter of a millennium since this country was created, but only today will we as a country overcome part of this barrier and see the inauguration of a man of color to the Presidency.
Did William Lloyd Garrison foresee this event when he published the first issue of the Liberator in 1831? Could Abraham Lincoln know this might happen in 1862 and 1863 when he wrote and enforced the Emancipation Proclamation? When Justice John Marshall Harlan decided in 1896 to become the only dissenting voice in the Plessy v. Ferguson "separate but equal" case, was he imagining a day like today? In 1947, did Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson think what could happen someday when they broke the color line in Major League Baseball? When the Plessy abomination was overturned by a unanimous Warren Court in Brown v. Board of Education, did those nine men envision what might transpire almost 55 years later? Did LBJ knowingly destroy the Democratic Party in 1964 and 1965 by ramming the Civil and Voting Rights Acts down the white majoritarian country's throats because he thought this would eventually come to pass?
I doubt it.
All of these men (and countless other men and women of all colors), though, knew what was right when they did these things, and acted upon that knowledge, paving the road to today's events. "History" can be made in a lot of different ways, and unfortunately, many of those are demonstrably wrong, and maybe even evil. Not today, though--not today. Let's all take at least one moment today, and pause to absorb the history that we are witnessing. For those of us who voted for Barack Obama, we can all take just a smidgeon of a place next to those great men of the past knowing that we, too, helped make today's history. For those of you who did not, even you get to share in the event, because today is all about overcoming prejudice, and bigotry, and exclusivity. Today is about uniting as a country and looking not still forward, but around, to that place and time where "all God's children" can join together, while also acknowledging that we have not finished the journey quite yet.
Because I know Martin Luther King saw this day coming . . .

The Wall Street Journal--still written by jerkwads

A friend of mine decided to rile me up some more this AM by sending me a link to one of the latest WSJ opinion pieces. In it, author Bret Stephens purports to pre-examine the first year of the Obama Presidency, claiming that now that there's a "real" liberal in the White House, liberal policies will now be implemented and they will finally be judged in the marketplace of ideas. What the article really contains, though, is a wealth of meaningless drivel. Apparently, the left has been living in a world of "what-ifs?" for more than 60 years, and Stephens spends fully 1/2 of his column describing these--and of course, no space whatsoever proving his assertion. (Shocker!) Some of his statements border on the absurd: according to Stephens, "liberal pundits now bemoan the passing of those great conservative ideas men" (who they might be Stephens does not tell us), "In Mr. Obama, liberals have a president who seems to have stepped out of the last episodes of the West Wing," "He has the Congress in his left pocket, the news media in his right pocket," and in referring to Obama's first year, "[a]fter that, it will become increasingly difficult to attribute whatever mistakes he makes to the legacy of his predecessor."
Let's take these in order. I don't know about who Bret Stephens hangs out with, but I have never heard anyone on the left cry out for the return of "conservative ideas men." I assume Stephens is referring to the notion that some of us on the left possess, wherein we wish the Republicans weren't completely insane. As it stands now, the Republican Party is entirely bereft of worth as an ideological opponent, so some Democrats think it likely that the Democratic Party might be left standing on its own in the halls of power with no external checks on its behavior. Personally, I think that fear is hogwash; we have enough trouble remonstrating our own recalcitrants (see Lieberman, Joe) to run roughshod over the remnants of the morons outside the party. The fact is, Stephens shows no effort to either define his terms or give any credit for his assertions, so who knows what he's talking about, really.
Only neophytes, fools, and right wingers (hmm, I guess I don't need that last descriptor, do I?) think Obama is an actual lefty--anyone with any brains saw that of the final three standing in the primaries, Edwards was the real leftist, and on most issues, Clinton's were more "liberal" than Obama's. We're all hoping that Obama belies his reputation, positions, and rhetoric to give us some truly liberal leadership, but I think a lot of us are holding our breath waiting. He is hardly the Jed Bartlet or Matt Santos we've been looking for.
Anyone who thinks Obama has either Congress or "the media" in his pockets is trying to fool you, if not himself. On one, herding cats called, they want to sue Congress for trademark infringement. On the other, "the media" is still owned and run by the same right wing felons and louts that savaged Clinton, Gore, Dean, Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, etc., and gave Smirky, Dick, and the entire gang of thugs passes on their multitudinous crimes every single time over the last 8 years. Raise your hands if you think that's going to change. Fools!
Let's see, Obama is only allowed a single year to fix the collapse of our entire system of economy and governance that has been in the works for at least 8, and in reality, 28 years before he can no longer blame his predecessors? Sounds fair. If you're a complete jackass, that is. It's going to take many years, if not decades, to undo the unbelievable amount of damage the Republicans (and the Republican-lite of Bill Clinton) have done to our country, and that's assuming the adults get to stay in power the whole time. It took Clinton 8 years to get to where he had budget surpluses, and he didn't even address the systemic rot began in the government by deregulation and in the press by consolidation and co-optation in the previous 12. And now there's been 8 more years, and far more drastic ones, of it. If Stephens really thinks this ship of state can be turned around in a single span of 1 year, he's a toolbag without any hammers. (It's far more likely that he's simply a disingenuous tool.)
The Wall Street Journal Op-ed page: it's not just for amoral moneymen anymore!

Newsweek shows its colors--crazy!

An article in Newsweek's 11/24/08 issue, as seen online here, actually gives credence to those who think Barack Obama is . . .wait for it . . .wait for it . . .the Antichrist! Yes, The Antichrist. As in, the one who will usher in the end times. While the author herself doesn't seemingly subscribe to this insane notion (although see below for the money quote), she gives prominent ink to those who do. As a librarian, I am asked to evaluate sources to provide my patrons reliable facts and news. It is stuff like this that makes me no longer able to suggest to anyone, let alone kids who have yet to gain the ability to think critically, that even our most hallowed "objective" weeklies are useful sources of any information whatsoever. I have to ask: If the editors at Newsweek allowed this kind of absolutely evil inanity to find its way into print, what else are they doing over there?
And it's not as if the author doesn't show her true colors, although one does have to look all the way toward the end of the article to find out what she really thinks, and even there we have to be able to parse words a tad. After giving the religious nutbags their say and presenting their "evidence" (ZOMG! One of the winning lottery numbers in Illinois--Obama's home state!!!!--was 666!!!!!!!!!!!!!) about how they believe that Obama is the ultimate evil, Lisa Miller seemingly allows for the possibility that this response really is measured:
The people who believe Obama is the Antichrist are perhaps jumping to conclusions, but they're not nuts: "They are expressing a concern and a fear that is widely shared," [Mat Staver, dean of Liberty University's law school] says. (Emphasis added.)
If Miller were truly interested in practicing journalism, though, doncha think she might have produced a countervailing quote from someone, um, not from Jerry Falwell's school? (She doesn't, needless to add.) Perhaps she might have . . .

Obama's "Team of Rivals"

There's a lot of pundit talk about whether President-elect Obama (sounds pretty good, eh?) will include any Republicans in his Cabinet. Personally, I think he'd be stupid to do so--why would you want to include anyone who still wants to affiliate him/herself with a massively discredited political entity that stands for nothing if not partisanship before country? Most who take the line that Obama will do so anyway make much of his apparent liking for Doris Kearns Goodwin's book Team of Rivals, which covers Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet.
Lincoln stunned insiders when he chose his most hardened political foes (if not outright enemies) for prominent positions in his Administration. But here's the thing: all of them were from his own party--they were still all Republicans (when they were the good guys)! He did not give any offices to Stephen Douglas, or John Bell, or Horatio Seymour, or anybody who wasn't a Republican already. The modern equivalent would be for Obama to give Cabinet positions to Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Chris Dodd, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Tom Vilsack, not Chuck Hagel or Paul O'Neill (although in O'Neill's case, he seems to have gone off that reservation), or even Colin Powell, despite his endorsement.
It is certainly possible Powell might be tabbed, given his supposedly centrist/moderate attitudes, but remember, this is the guy who lied his a$$ off to the UN for Smirky's war. That alone should disqualify him from holding any federal office ever again. Ever. He might be a good candidate to be a witness for the prosecution in the war crimes trials, but that's as far as I'm willing to go. Powell's a disgrace to his uniform. Chuck Hagel's only--and I mean only--stance that has him even under consideration for anything but scorn from a Democratic President is that he became a vocal opponent of Smirky's war, but only after he had decided to retire, and after a long career of enabling Republican crimes. Thanks, but no thanks, Chuck.
I hope Obama's claims of wanting unity mean that he wants to convince Republican voters of his overall concern for their well-being, which I believe is quite sincere. I hope his claims of wanting bipartisanship means that he wants to convince Republicans that if they stand in the way of Democratic platform-derived legislation, they are thwarting the will of the country unpatriotically, and for their own good they should support those bills if they want to remain employed. We already know what Republican policies have done; there is no reason we should ask for their input in crafting anything.
The Republicans have earned their downfall; let them bask in its fetid glow . . .

Tomorrow

There have been 3 elections in my adult life that have been super important--1980, 2000, and now. 1980 ushered in the era of Republican Party rejection of our country's struggle to improve our general economic well-being while paying heed to the environment, instead focusing on robbing the nation of both our natural resources (remember James Watt?) and selling off our assets. Lowering taxes on the rich led to us going from the world's largest creditor to the world's largest debtor in a matter of months while increasing the disparity between rich and poor for the first time since the Great Depression. 2000 resulted in finishing us off as a viable world power economically; we no longer "control our own destiny", to borrow a sports phrase. Not only has our debt risen to such heights that it threatens our very ability to pay it off properly, but the open greed and rapacity of the conservative movement has also diminished our standing in the company of nations. We are not envied or admired any more, we are despised throughout the entire world. The litany of lies and deceptions the Smirky Administration has perpetrated on us has reverberated around the world, making the United States of America the first superpower in history to be so reviled. (Other empires were feared or resented, but mostly they were grudgingly respected for a century or more until they could be overthrown by the locals wanting self-government. We didn't even last 60 years before becoming so hated as to encourage an attack on our own soil that was cheered on by many.)
The difference between the election tomorrow and those two was that this time, we know how high the stakes truly are. Ronald Reagan was seen as a joke by most people, even after he became the Republican nominee, except for the people of California, who had had to endure his term as governor--they knew what was coming. And Bush was even more of a joke; his only success in his entire life was in being elected governor of a state where the governor has no real power. The true horror of both those presidencies came in retrospect. What Reagan's presidency initiated, and Bush's finished, has been the almost complete dismantling of our system of governance.
Taxes, which are the primary method by which our government pays for what it does, have become so disdained that politicians fear to even say the word out loud, even when it is obvious that our fiscal standing is precipitously poised to collapse.
Trust in government at any level has eroded to the point that the Bush Administration, which by any measure is the most corrupt and venal in the history of the country, can do anything it wants without most people even noticing. Approve the torture of US citizens? Oh, gee, Clinton was worse. (Somehow.) Make up "facts" to convince Congress and the public to assent to make war on a country that did not attack us? Who cares. Launch a countrywide assault on the mechanics of elections themselves in order to cheat the actual will of the people? Wait, is that Paris Hilton over there?
The vaunted power of the press to curb any excesses of the three branches of our government has been either neutered or co-opted, first by the Reagan-era elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, which allowed for the creation of TV and radio stations which have no desire to even fake objectivity, and secondly by the similar neutering of any oversight bodies, which allowed for an egregious consolidation of media outlets. We no longer have much of a press, let alone a free press, in the US; less than a handful of companies own the vast majority of newspapers, and ownership of our broadcast media is even more concentrated. And all of these media are owned primarily by conservatives singularly uninterested in anything but the bottom line.
We may have already lost the battle to save our country, but one thing is for sure: if John McCain is elected, it is entirely possible we will have lost the last chance to do anything about it. This election, we know what is at stake. Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is at the helm, China and the other countries that own the paper--literally--on our country won't simply call in their loans, devastating us financially? Why wouldn't they, given McCain's unstable character and hawkish tendencies? They could do so simply as a means of protecting themselves from military attack! Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is elected, the crimes of the Bush Administration won't be erased even more completely than they have been already? Does anyone truly believe that if McCain is elected, the machinery of governance will not come grinding to a halt as a Congress that has just enough obstruction-minded conservatives left in it becomes unable to pass any worthwhile bill whatsoever that has a chance of being signed into law? (Since 2006, we've already seen how that will look.)
More loftily, though, this election is about the mindset of our country. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more stark. Barack Obama, to all but the most cynical or deluded, really does operate from a worldview driven by hope and pragmatism, while John McCain, to all, sees only scary things in the world that need to be suppressed. Do we want to continue on the same path that gave us Iran-Contra, Fox News Channel, Florida 2000, 9/11, the "War on Terror", the Terri Schiavo mess, waterboarding and Abu Ghraib, the mortgage bubble/collapse and our current economic meltdown, and Sarah Palin? (I know, I know, Bill Clinton had oral sex. The Horror!) Or do we instead want to try and fix some of the things that Republicans have done to us? I don't know if it's at all possible for Barack Obama to "change" much in the time he may have, but I damn sure know that McCain isn't going to do anything I want done.
Hope v. Fear: that is the storyline here. I hope that Obama can help, and I am deathly afraid of John McCain.

Generations

There's a new "generation" term floating out there attempting to capture a particular cohort's mindset: Generation Jones. Interestingly, it is not a term for a set of people younger than those groups already "defined" ("Baby Boomers", "Generation Xers" "Millenials", etc.), but rather one that encompasses the latter part of the Baby Boomers' era--my age group. Generation Jones is that group of people born between the years of 1954 and 1965 (to which both Barack Obama and Sarah Palin belong, by the way) who have heretofore been fairly lost in the more traditional generational descriptions.
I never felt in tune with the descriptions of the Baby Boomers I have read: I was too young to have participated in any of the seminal events Boomers are normally linked with. I was 1 year and 3 months old when JFK was shot, 4-5 years old during the Summer of Love, 7 years old when the Beatles broke up, and still only 11 when Nixon resigned. How on earth was I supposed to identify with people who not only lived through these events, but actively observed or participated in some of them? In just a single sense, my take on Baby Boomers is that they protested and voted against (or, much more rarely, for) Nixon; I can barely remember him, especially since my parents were not all that political. I left for college in 1979, by which time many Boomers were already thirtysomething home owners and parents of their own school-aged children--what did I have in common with them?
I felt much more akin psychologically and socially to the Generation following me-the Gen Xers. I, too, felt misanthropic and cynical in my 20s (I still do!), as I tried somehow to carve out some sort of career in a job market flooded with Boomers who were more educated and more experienced than I was, and I was drawn to more aggressive and angry musical styles reflecting that angst. On the other hand, I was old enough to have seen (and more importantly, understand what I was seeing) Devo, Patti Smith, and Elvis Costello on their original Saturday Night Live broadcasts; I saw the Minutemen and Hüsker Dü live in "over 21" clubs myself (legally). I was old enough to know that Ronald Reagan portended disaster (as we have seen in the '00s, as his policies finally came to fruition via his political progeny), not "Morning in America", as the stereotypical Gen Xer theoretically believes. So I didn't fit in wholly with them, either.
So now I have my own moniker, and apparently this is our bellwether election, as some pundits believe we will be the deciding demographic factor between Obama and McCain. Of course, the pundits shown in that YouTube video are almost all right wing dupes trying their hardest to convince anyone they can that this won't be a total landslide in Obama's favor, which most objective observers are beginning to recognize. Once again, it therefore seems, my generation's salience will be obscured by others acting in concert. Or maybe instead, everyone else has finally figured out that Generation Jones actually contains all the smart people (Sarah Palin notwithstanding) and are following our lead! Yay!

Obama hitting the right notes

A week or so ago, a cousin of mine forwarded me the latest Obama smear email. After pointing out the flaws and lies in the original, I asked the whole email group: is this the kind of dialogue we want during this election? Do we really want to spend our precious time and energy discussing Obama's hand placement during a rendition of the national anthem, when our country is teetering on the brink of failure?
Well, this latest round of silliness (google "lipstick on a pig" to see what I'm talking about) provoked Obama's reaction in Virginia, and it's a good one. Please watch it here.
Best line: "I don't care what they say about me, but I love this country too much to let them take over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift Boat politics."
Abso-freaking-lutely!

Olympics, kind of

I like the Olympics. I like seeing people striving to better themselves, and I love watching unknowns or underdogs do well and occasionally even surprise with a victory. I loved the opening ceremonies--I thought it was the best I've ever seen, to be honest (although the Barcelona arrow shot to light the flame surpassed this one). I like the concept of having some arena, somewhere, where at least on the field, the geopolitical world takes a backseat to something else. Something close (or closer, at any rate) to pure.
Naturally, Smirky (with Doll's Eyes) has come along to ruin some of the Olympics games for me. Every event he attends, the director is compelled (ordered?) to show him grinning idiotically and waving to somebody, clearly oblivious to the pain and deaths he has caused so many people. It offends me to see him so happy, so carefree, and so relaxed. The announcers must acknowledge his presence in reverential tones, athletes are summoned for a jocular affixing of nicknames or an attaboy, and we have even been subjected to an in-studio interview with Bob Costas. Even at the Olympics, NBC seems to be in the tank for its Republican masters, regardless of approval ratings (Smirky has been sub-30% for months, marking an unprecedented tenure of dissatisfaction from the country).
To top it all off, if watching live, we are forced to watch the abomination of John McCain's misleading and completely negative ads slurring Barack Obama. I wonder how much of a deal Ol' Wrinkly got from NBC, because his $6 million ad buy is stretching a heck of lot further than Obama's $5 mill, even though Obama bought earlier. For those who are unfamiliar with the process of ad buying, usually the early money gets more bang for the buck, as the growing scarcity of available time causes the rates per minute to rise even though the choice time slots are often taken. From what I've seen, though, McCain's ads have been running at least twice as often as Obama's so far, and I saw only McCain ads during the opening ceremonies, which are the most universally watched part of the Games. (Granted, I missed about 45 minutes, so maybe all of Obama's ads ran from 9:45-10:30. Uh huh.)
Luckily, most of the time the other NBC channels are running events concurrently, so I can switch back and forth to avoid Smirky and Ol' Wrinkly as much as possible. But TBO is not a fan of boxing (which has taken up a lot of MSNBC's airtime in the evenings) or my relentless channel surfing during unpleasantness, so I risk alienating the mother of my child as well.
Grrr.

*sigh* Why didn't he run again?

Al Gore has given another rousing speech on the need to change our energy policy. In it, he explicitly made reference to JFK's famous entreaty for the US to land a man on the moon (and bring him back safely) in 10 years, by asking for us to make the same kind of political commitment toward renewable and non-polluting energy. Even though Obama has endorsed it, he didn't make it, which is yet another reason I'm lukewarm for Obama and would have been ecstatic for Gore. Please do yourself a favor and read the whole speech.

Clinton crosses a(nother) line

You all know what I think of John McCain and his disingenuous gas tax proposal. Well, now Hillary Clinton has decided to be both shortsighted and hypocritical, slamming Obama's opposition to McCain's proposal. Clinton is attempting to characterize Obama as unfeeling and unsympathetic to the American public, without noting her own opposition to the exact same legislation only 8 years ago.
I have refrained from caring about the Democratic Primary since my man Edwards dropped out, hoping against hope that neither candidate would stoop as low as any Republican would, thereby assuring our eventual victory in November. Clearly my hope has been misguided; both candidates have sought to disappoint me time after time. Obama seeks accommodation with the Republicans who want to destroy America, while Clinton wants "merely" to tarnish the front running Obama's image in an increasingly vain attempt to capture the nomination herself, apparently regardless of the cost to her integrity, our party, our country, and the world. By the time either of these people reach the general election, they will have ostracized so many factions of the populace that it will be hard to unite them in time to prevent the coronation of another Republican nightmare. Our greatest hope remains McCain's incompetence and truly mind-boggling episodes of mental deterioration--or is it merely convenient forgetfulness, as if that's better?--let alone his ceaseless pandering to the 30%ers still enamored of Smirky and the gang.
And that's sad.

Now what?

With John Edwards out, I see absolutely no candidate worth voting for in the Democratic Primary next Tuesday. I will, of course, vote for the Democratic Party nominee in November, but the choice of Obama v. Clinton leaves me cold in either direction. Demagoguery on the one hand, and machine politics on the other. Flimsy policies against actual support of conservative ideals. Neither care too much about the economy--both were dragged into co-opting Edwards's message in order to keep him marginalized--which I see as The Issue over the next 2-3 decades (which, realistically speaking, might be the rest of my life). Neither has made much of health care--heck, Obama still doesn't support universal health care!--without Edwards's prompting, either. On virtually every plank of the probable Democratic platform this summer, Edwards (or Al Gore) led and the two remaining candidates followed.
Boo.

Why I'm for Edwards

Anyone reading the blogs on the liberal/Democratic side of things is awash in posts and "diaries" about why their candidate is the only one to save us and about why everyone else's candidate is a total loser who will destroy the country if s/he wins the primaries. (To be more accurate, they usually portray the voters as total losers or fools; the nominee gets the blame for ruining our future lives.) I'd like to avoid that hyperventilated rhetoric, for one simple reason: every single one of the Democratic Party candidates--even (or especially, in some cases) the ones who've dropped out--would make a saner, safer, and more palatable President than any of the Republicans who are running. That hasn't been the case for a long time, if ever, imho. So let's not tear each other apart over who gets the chance to keep our country from destroying itself.
That being said, I do have a strong affinity for John Edwards, and since Al Gore stubbornly refused to answer my pleas, I'm going to vote for him in our primary. I think Edwards is the only liberal left in the field, and he's the only one with concrete plans in place that speak to the issues I care about most--the role of government, tax policy, national trade and our growing division of wealth, and the costs of health care. He's definitely the only one interested in fighting the corporate powers that have taken over the nation (and its politicians, which makes this a vital stance to take), he's the only candidate talking specifically about the tanking economy, and he's the only one that seems to care about the base of the Democratic Party. He has apologized--I think quite sincerely--for his foolish and highly misguided vote to authorize Smirky's wars, he has experience in speaking truth to power based on his legal background suing corporations on behalf of injured customers or citizens, and he has demonstrated the most consistently positive national appeal in head-head polling against the Republican candidates. (In fact, he's the only one of the top 3 Dems that can be shown to potentially defeat all of the Repubs in any state you might choose to pick--even those in which he polls behind the Repub he still outdistances the other Dems.)
He's got two major problems, though, which will most likely cost him the nomination. 1) Because he is the scariest (from a Republican point of view) Democrat running, the right-wing media has chosen the most effective method of killing his chances--they are completely ignoring him. How many stories did you see that omitted any mention of the fact that Edwards came in second in Iowa? How many stories in the traditional media have you seen detailing his campaign or his appeal? I bet nowhere near as many as you saw telling us about Clinton's tears, or Obama's roller coaster ride from Iowa to New Hampshire, or even Richardson's "will he/won't he" retirement from the race.
2) He's a white man. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I imagine a lot of Democrats/liberals are genuinely excited (and for good reason) to vote for a credible African-American or woman in a Presidential race. The problem with that is that these are not the most liberal of A-As or women. Obama is actually boasting that he will work with Republicans--completely ignoring the demonstrably vituperative and caustic policies of that entire Party that have wrenched our country so far off the rails of democracy. Clinton's "centrism" is well-known; she is following in her husband's footsteps of trying to position herself squarely in the middle of the political spectrum--without realizing that by doing so, she allows the nutjobs on the right to continually shift without resistance even further rightward on most issues. She still proudly refers to herself as a "Goldwater Girl", after all; it's an extremely sad commentary on what has happened to our political landscape that a Goldwaterite can now be appropriately considered a Democrat!
To repeat: I will fairly happily vote for any of these three in November, because all of them recognize that we have taken almost too many steps down a perilous path and we are in danger of permanently "breaking" our country--at least in comparison to what any of the Republicans are saying. I just happen to think that of these three, only John Edwards "gets" the severity of our crisis and is angered by it. Just like me.