Daily Democrat

Is Paranoia becoming a National Disease?

2009-05-16T07:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry to have been absent from the blog for so long.

My parents are both terminally ill and I have had my hands full caring for them, even with the help of a paid caregiver. For a time I tried to keep up with the blog, but the hours needed for reading daily papers, checking other blogs and news sites, and just getting my thoughts straight in my head so they would make sense to others were things I had little time or patience for.

Things are not getting better with my parents, but I have decided to update the blog from time to time when I can, which translates to - when something I happen to read or see on the news really outrages me and prompts me to carve out some time to chime in.

This morning I read that the credit card bill working its way through Congress - a bill to protect consumers from predatory credit card practices and outrageous interest rates - has had an amendment attached that has nothing to do with credit cards and everything to do with the paranoid Republican Party.

Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who also happens to be a medical doctor, proposed the amendment that would allow people to carry loaded guns in national parks.

This is simply incredible. What on earth is Coburn thinking? Obviously, he's not. We certainly don't need gun nuts carrying their guns into family parks where stray bullets could cause death or injury. We don't need Yosemite turned into the Wild West.

What is the matter with these people? Are they so indebted to the gun lobby that they feel they must create more customers for them? Or are they so paranoid that they believe they must carry weapons even in beautiful places like Yellowstone or The Grand Canyon?

Tom Coburn should know better. He is a medical doctor. He knows what bullets do to the human body. No medical doctor who has a brain and a conscience should ever advocate for the gun lobby.

If people are so paranoid that they believe they must arm themselves in some of the most beautiful places in our country, where people go to hike, fish, swim, picnic, and just take in nature's beauty, then they should stay home. They are the ones we should be afraid of anyway, as they are the ones who would probably have an impulsive trigger finger and end up killing some innocent child.

With Dick Cheney running around accusing Obama of making the country less safe, and people like Coburn insisting we allow shoot-outs in our National Parks, we see that what drives the Republican Party, along with an isatiable quest for unlimited power, is pure paranoia.

And 27 Democrats votes for the amendment. They should be ashamed.

Why being a liberal is a good thing

2009-02-28T12:39:00.000-08:00

From Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish - a reader comment and the best rationale for the liberal point of view, and indirect critique of the conservative point of view, I have read in a long time:

This country is wonderful.... if you work hard you have a good chance of being successful. But many people work very, very hard and are not successful - and not because they are stupid, or lazy. The difference between Obama and his predecessors is that he realizes that the people who work hard and don't make a lot of money, or work hard and don't have health insurance, or who worked hard all their lives and now - in their golden years- have little to show for it also deserve some minimum level of dignity.

And yes, someone has to pay for it, and I'm happy for it to be me and people like me, because there for but for the grace of God. It's not punishing the successful, it's realizing that hard work is only part of the equation and we as a society need to recognize our obligations to those people who have held up their part of the bargain but didn't end up on the winning side (and children get an automatic pass).

Me-tooism

2009-02-27T06:49:00.000-08:00

Thirty years ago Ronald Reagan came along and was seen by a majority of the American people as an authentic and original politician (even though he was an actor). He won two presidential elections and is still revered by many on the right and a few in the center as being a decent and admirable president. To the right, he is the patron saint of conservatism, the icon every Republican bows down to, every right wing politician tries to imitate.

One thing that can be said of Reagan is that he was an original. That, more than anything is what captured the imagination of the American public.

Ever since then, however, much less original and less talented Republicans politicians have relied on tricks to stay in power. These tricks have included carefully crafted, focus group tested words and talking points, clever advertising, their own television network, and dominance of the talk radio market with propaganda.

For years, Democrats have been flustered with the success of politicians they consider wrong headed in terms of policies that are bad for the majority of Americans. And so Dems have tried to hire better advertising firms. They tried to jump ahead with technology. They started their own think tanks and tried to put together their own buzz words and talking points and they even ventured unsuccessfully into talk radio. None of this really worked. Even Bill Clinton wouldn't have been elected had it not been for the entrance of Ross Perot into the race and the recession that George H. W. Bush ignored. Bill Clinton may have been a good president, but he didn't interrupt the Republican machine.

Then along came Barack Obama, the most unique and original politician since Ronald Reagan, to capture the imagination and the trust of the American people. Sure he had good advertising companies making good commercials. And he had good speechwriters and good policy proposals. But more than anything else Barack Obama was a unique and new person on the political stage when the American people were ready for change. As for the Republicans - their old reliance on the ghost of Ronald Reagan to carry them to success one more time didn't work. The voters are younger now and many don't even remember Ronald Reagan, whose ghost has finally been exorcised.

So now the Republicans are humorously engaging in "me-tooism." Or at least some of them are. A group of them is engaging in wing-nuttery this weekend at the CPAC conference in Washington D.C., talking about revolution. But the mainstream of the Republican Party has, for the past year or so, engaged in "me-tooism," trying to imitate the appearance of the leaders of the Democratic Party.

Seeing the popularity of Hillary Clinton in the presidential primary, even though she lost, they decided to imitate the Dems by nominating a woman to be their vice presidential candidate. Somehow they thought this would woo over all the women in the Democratic Party, angry that their candidate lost. What it did instead, because Democratic women are smarter than that, was make them angry and determined to vote Democratic. Democratic women looked at Sarah Palin, and to paraphrase Lloyd Bentson, said "Governor, you're no Hillary Clinton."

Then Republicans elected Michael Steele to be their national chairman. Steele, a rare African American Republican, immediately said he was going to woo all those hip hop voters and prove to them how cool the GOP could be. Republicans not only think a woman is a woman is a woman, they also think a black man is a black man is a black man. Apparently they must believe the only reason people voted for Barack Obama is because of the color of his skin. That would be akin to saying the only reason people voted for Reagan was because he was an actor. It would be denying the talent of the politician and the message he represents.

Finally, me-tooism was evident in the response to the president's address to Congress by Bobby Jindal. The set imitated the White House press conference venue, and the choice of a dark-skinned speaker was their way of saying "See, we have a blackish guy too."

The Republicans are where the Democrats were for the past thirty years: in the wilderness, unable to compete. But the Dems were in the wilderness because they couldn't overcome the stagecraft, the talking points, the propaganda, the advertising slogans - the outward trickery - of the Republicans.

The Republicans, on the other hand, are in the wilderness because they have no ideas, because Ronald Reagan no longer captivates younger voters, and because they think all they have to do is imitate the outward appearances of the Democrats.

The difference, of course, is that the Democrats are sincere in their embrace of minorities and women for public office, and in their search for real ideas. Republican ideas, which once seemed fresh, have all failed.

All they can do now is play "me-too."

Creeps

2009-02-14T06:20:00.001-08:00

There is a true story I like to tell that is a perfect metaphor for Republican behavior.

When I was a teenager we lived next door to a couple, their twelve year old son, and a grandmother. I often spent the afternoon in my bedroom doing homework, where my window looked out on the side yard of our neighbors.

One afternoon as I was struggling with some algebra equations, I heard a commotion next door. The grandmother was struggling with the side gate that had some off its hinges and was falling on her. She cried for help to her grandson whose bedroom also looked out on the yard, and he came to the window and yelled "You broke it, you fix it."

Ultimately, a neighbor helped, but I will never forget that little 12 year old creep of a grandson.

This is the story I thought of as I watched the Republican nonsense this week in refusing to support the president's stimulus bill. No Republican House members voted for it, and only three Senators crossed over to support it. Even with three Republicans supporting it in the Senate, however, the Dems were one short of the sixty they needed. Even though they should have 59 senators, meaning they would only need one Republican vote, when the vote was taken there were three senators absent. Al Franken is not yet seated as Norm Coleman continues to challenge an election he has lost, only to cripple the Democratic Party and the president's agenda. Ted Kennedy is in Florida, fighting brain cancer (he came back for the first vote but had to return for treatment), and Sherrod Brown was at his mother's funeral.

Ultimately, Sherrod Brown returned after the funeral, just to vote, then got on a plane and returned to be with his family, which is what people want to do when they are grieving.

Not one Republican senator offered to vote "yes" so Senator Brown could stay with his family and mourn. Not one offered to vote in Ted Kennedy's stead. Not one showed any compassion, when they knew they would lose anyway. Their actions were the equivalent of "you broke it, you fix it" except to be accurate they would have to say "we broke it, but you fix it."

Party before helping the American people.

Party before bipartisanship.

Party before humanity.

Every one of the Republican Senators who could have lent a hand and didn't, who forced Senator Brown to leave his family when he was in mourning, is in my opinion just as much a creep as that twelve year old former neighbor of mine.

May they all get what they deserve!

The Republican Party: a party without a heart

2009-02-07T05:35:00.000-08:00

Nobody says it better than Bob Herbert:

It’s been clear for years that the G.O.P. is a party without a heart. But its pointless obstructionism, its overall lack of any serious response to what is a clear national economic emergency, seems to indicate it’s also a party without a brain.

Republicans in Washington have behaved like a milling crowd standing in the way of firefighters trying to respond to a devastating blaze. The best that can be said for the party is that a few senators seem to have been able part the crowd enough to let the rescuers begin to inch forward.

Republican hypocrites

2009-02-06T06:58:00.001-08:00

Why aren't those hypocritical republican lawmakers and party members screaming their heads off about this insane woman who just gave birth to octuplets?

First of all she's a single woman who had six children previously. Single pregnant woman are usually condemned by republicans.

Secondly, she had in vitro fertilization with all of her pregnancies. In vitro is very expensive. How did she pay for it? Is this part of why our health insurance premiums are so high?

Third, she claims she was implanted with six embryos each time she got pregnant. Either she is lying about that regarding this pregnancy or some embryos divided and she had some twins. Even so, leaving aside this pregnancy, she has had five other pregnancies (she previously had one set of twins) and that means thirty embryos were implanted in her. Obviously, twenty-four of them did not implant, so in her quest to be a mother, twenty-four embryos were lost, aborted, wasted, or "killed" in the words of anti-abortion fanatics. Why is this not considered wrong?

Why are republicans not opposed to in vitro fertilization, in which embryos are created but have no chance at life, but completely opposed to using other embryos, which also have no change at life, to find cures for devastating disease like diabetes, Parkinson's Disease, and other terrible illnesses?

Give him a chance for god's sake

2009-02-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

This morning on Morning Joke they were doing it again - bashing Obama for not being able to get a (Republican approved) stimulus plan passed. Obama has been in office for just two weeks and already they are saying the honeymoon is over (except there really never was one from these folks) and that the Republican are re-moralized and the stimulus package from the House is nothing but pork.

Geez - these are the same people that attacked Obama every day of his campaign and now all of a sudden they are disappointed that he is not a miracle worker?

Here's how I see it:

1. The press - especially right wing nut jobs like Joke Scarborough - have been after Obama for two years. These are the same geniuses that spent weeks trashing Obama because of Jeremiah Wright, predicting it would lead to his political demise. Time after time they underestimated him. Time after time they didn't get how he operated. Time after time they predicted disaster only to have Obama prove them wrong. He will do it again this time because he moves forward towards his goal regardless of how the press reacts. When will they finally figure that out?

2. As the saying goes, legislation is like making sausage. You may like the end product, but you don't want to watch it being made. The legislative process is messy. The House usually provides a broad and often unwieldly partisan product but the Senate refines it and makes it more bipartisan. I expect the same to happen this time. The Senate hasn't even begun debating the bill and already the right wing press is pronouncing Obama's "honeymoon" over.

3. The right wing press really does not see that Obama is different. He is like a problem solver who thinks out loud and the press is like the listener who judges each thought as an independent thing. Obama, unlike Bush, learns from mistakes as well as successes and he makes adjutments. Bush thought compromise and adjustments were a sign of weakness and the press seemed to agree. But Obama truly does represent change. He is willing to admit mistakes, willing to learn and change as needed. The thing he keeps in mind always is that the American people need help and he is determined to bring it to them.

4. There will be a stimulus bill and it may or may not be successful in helping the American people. That's part of the problem. No one knows for sure what will help. But at least we have in the White House someone who is not so rigidly ideological that it has to be his way or the highway. I have no doubt that Obama will work this entire four years to improve things. If it doesn't happen with a first attempt, he will work to find another. That's the big difference he has with Bush. Bush made mistakes, refused to admit them, allowed them to be compounded by more mistakes, and then did nothing as he simply waited out the clock. Conservatives hate change. They will hold onto what they believe whether it works or not because they hold onto their beliefs regardless of the evidence that refutes those beliefs. Progressives like Obama, on the other hand, are not afraid to try new things, because they know if something doesn't work they can always try something else.

I'm hoping Obama's stimulus package makes things better, but I'm willing to give him several chances. I think we all should.

Oh happy day!

2009-01-20T16:25:00.000-08:00

One glorious day! One day of triumph and hope and new beginnings.

Does it make up for eight years of hell? Was the suffering, death, trashing of the Constitution worth it?

No and no.

But it is a new beginning. Obama has much to do, not just with his plans to move the country forward, but with the much needed repair work of the damage that has been done by his predecessor.

If anyone can do it, he can, with our help.

Yes, he can.

Yes, we can.

Conservatives swoon over Obama, Brooks admits conservatives were wrong, and I get to say "I told you so"

2009-01-16T07:35:00.001-08:00

It is a time of hope and history, and the disgraced and vanquished Republicans want to be part of it.

And so two nights ago when Barack broke bread with some conservative commentators at the home of George Will, they swooned and are now claiming bragging rights, even saying "he likes us best" because they had dinner with him while the next day liberal commentators met in his office and were only offered water.

Their bragging only shows them for the losers they are. And poor ones at that.

But Barack is bigger than that. Unlike Bush, who only wanted to be president of warmongers and neoconservatives and preachy moralists, Barack wants to be the president of the entire country. And he is willing to meet with them and share ideas.

To be fair, a few conservatives are humbled with the recent economic meltdown, some realizing that conservative ideology has failed. In David Brooks column today, for instance, he talks about the failure of the Republican belief that people behave rationally when it comes to business and financial decisions and that in fact human behavior is far more complicated and involves a certain amount of "mental chaos."

This mental chaos explains how people can respond so quickly and intuitively to so many different circumstances. But it also entails a decision-making process that is more complicated and messy than previously thought.

So David Brooks has finally admitted what Democrats have always known - that life is messy, people are imperfect, and sometimes radical freedom leads to disaster.

I wrote about this six years ago in an essay titled "Why I am not a Republican." The article is long, but if I were to write it today, I would add one other reason to the three I outlined. I am not a Republican because they only learn the hard way. Democrats are more progressive. They look ahead and try to prevent problems, while Republicans are faith and ideology based and refuse to consider that they might be wrong or they might not be addressing real problems. Only when disaster strikes are they forced to admit they were wrong, and often it is far too late.

I said of Republicans:

Republicans have a very black and white view of the nature of man. On the one hand, when promoting their economic policies, they appear to be stubborn believers in man's innate goodness. Their promotion of radical free markets, unregulated business, less governmental aid to the poor, lower taxes and privatizing social security, among other policies, is evidence of that. They insist that capitalism, left to itself, will be beneficial to all. Trickle down economics and radical individualism are republican mantras that assume that everyone has an equal shot at the "American Dream," that the wealthy will take care of the poor that didn't get trickled down on, and unregulated business can be trusted to do what's right. Republicans simply expect people to be good.

Of Democrats, I said:

Democrats, in my opinion, are more realistic about the nature of man. While democrats profess the belief that people CAN be good, and while they continue to
hope for the best, they accept that humans are ultimately flawed creatures, frequently selfish, weak and easily tempted to do wrong, especially when they get together in corporate board meetings. Because democrats do not expect people to be perfect, they understand the need for some governmental regulation. Sometimes, they think, man must be protected from himself - or more accurately, people must sometimes be protected from each other.

Thus, democrats believe in the importance of governmental oversight, especially of businesses that all citizens are dependent upon - like energy companies and the media. They also believe in the importance of protecting labor against unscrupulous management practices and so traditionally it has been the democratic party that has championed labor unions. Democrats are not so naive as to believe governments or unions always do the right thing, but they believe that these organizations are strengthened with the power of many voices and can hammer out reasonable and balanced policies as long as negotiations aren't done in secret.

Community vs. Individualism

2009-01-15T08:02:00.001-08:00

When in the company of conservative Republicans I often hear the refrain that Barack Obama is going to raise their taxes. Raising taxes, of course, is anathema to Republicans, and Republican legislators and political pundits have successfully convinced Americans that even if Obama allows the Bush tax cuts to expire, as they are intended to do, that is a tax hike by Democrats.

What differentiates this liberal Democrat from those conservative Republicans is the idea that there is more to life than "what's in it for me." When I hear conservative Republicans, especially wealthy or very, very comfortable ones, whine about taxes I want to ask them just how much money they need, because the reality is a small tax hike would not hurt them at all when it comes to their needs. Sure, they might not be able to go on three vacations a year, or buy that second or third house, or that fifth car or that new wardrobe, but is that the measure of good public policy or a healthy society - how much the wealthy get to keep to spend on items they don't really need?

I honestly have never been able to understand this mentality that the wealthy have a right to get even wealthier and if the poor don't pull themselves up to be successful, too bad! They have only themselves to blame. This makes no sense to me. The poor don't have themselves to blame. They are kept down by ponzi schemes and tax codes and historical prejudice and legislation that favors the wealthy. They have few opportunities for either education or jobs that might get them out of the endless cycle of failure and poor health and poverty that comes from the deck being stacked against them by decades of public policy that deprives them of basic needs and then blames them for their poverty.

We have developed in this country an ethic of individualism, which preaches the ideology that anyone can make it, anyone can overcome misfortune, anyone can go from rags to riches and the reality is that this ideology is a myth. Here in the United States, regardless of evidence to the contrary, we think people are responsible only for and to themselves and to no one else and we feel very little obligation to reach out to others.

I have felt this profoundly as I have tried desperately to care for two ailing parents, one with a terminal disease, and one with a progressive neurological disease. As an only child, with no relatives nearby, I have felt more alone than I have ever felt in my life. No one offers to help. No government services are available. Even the medical profession makes life difficult with the many hurdles that we must all jump through just to get help.

We simply don't live in a society where we believe we are our brother's or our sister's keeper. We live in a society where the rule is to "look out for number one" and "what's in it for me?"

Conservative Republicans have the same mindset in foreign policy. "America right or wrong." "We're number one." "You're with us or against us." The Republican view is that America can do what it wants around the world because America can do no wrong. It doesn't matter what other countries want or need, it is only America's needs and wants that count.

Liberal Democrats would like to see a shift to a more communitarian outlook - one that says we're all in this together and unless the poorest among us have a chance, we will all be the worse for it. We would like to see the poor, the jobless, the uninsured be given a chance to feed their families and get medical care and live in decent housing. And if that means the wealthy or the relatively more well-off have to pay a few more bucks in taxes, so what? Are the wealthy really that selfish? And we would like to see more community service and more reaching out to those who need assistance, either in taking care of their ill relatives or in caring for their children while they go to work.

And no, having a communitarian outlook, one that says we thrive and prosper as individuals only when we assure that all of us are cared for, does not mean we are communists. I wish conservative Republicans could get over that - it's ignorant, narrow minded, and uninformed, not to mention unkind. But then, I have never seen conservative Republicans as possessing an abundance of kindness or open-mindedness.

Barack the Outlier

2009-01-14T07:20:00.000-08:00

For the past month I've been sick - first a terrible upper respiratory infection complicated by bronchitis, then last week a stomach virus which knocked me out for a couple of days. Those things cripple your ability to write or even care about much that is going on.

But, knock on wood, I think I'm finally better and yesterday I wrote an article on my website OUTRAGED CITIZEN about the history that will be made tomorrow. Check it out.

During much of the past month, not being able to do many of the things I normally do (including helping my ailing parents) I had the opportunity to catch up on some reading. I finished Barack Obama's first book: Dreams from my Father. I started Malcolm Gladwell's latest book: Outliers. I highly recommend them both.

The interesting thing about these two books is that they complement each other. Gladwell's thesis in the book is that successful people are not individuals who have enormously high IQs or who pull themselves up by their bootsraps by sheer determination. Instead, he shows how time after time there are forces at work that give the successful person unusual access or opportunities that others, with just as much determination or just as much intelligence, simply do not have. For instance, Bill Gates was the son of a successful Seattle attorney and a wealthy mother who sent him to a prestigious prep school, Lakeside, where the mothers raised enough money to purchase a computer that connected to a mainframe computer in downtown Seattle. Here's how Gladwell summarizes the opportunities Gates had:

Opportunity number one was that Gates got sent to Lakeside. How many high schools in the world had access to a time-sharing terminal in 1968? Opportunity number two was that the mothers of Lakeside had enough money to pay for the school's computer fees. Number three was that, when that money ran out, one of the parents happened to work at C-Cubed, which happened to need someone to check its code on the weekends, and which also happened not to care if weekends turned into weeknights. Number four was that Gates just happened to live within walking distance of the University of Washington. Number six was that the university happened to have free computer time between three and six in the morning. Number seven was that TRW happened to call Bud Pembroke. Number eight was that the best programmers Pembroke knew for that particular problem happened to be two high school kids. And number nine was that Lakeside was willing to let those kids spend their spring term miles away, writing code.

Gladwell also says that highly successful people have spent enormous amounts of time practicing their craft or skill, be it computer programming, musical performance, or athletics. The amount of time it takes for someone to become top of his field, a real expert at something, Gladwell estimates to be 10,000 hours or ten years. By the time Gates had dropped out of Harvard, he had accumulated that many hours.

In reading about Gladwell's thesis I see how well it applies to Barack Obama. With Obama, the 10,000 hours of practice would be in dealing with other people and learning to navigate in a world of diversity, a world in which he constantly had to adjust and shift to get along. And what better skill is their for politics than the ability to relate to people and get them to relate to you?

In Gladwell style, let me try to summarize the opportunities Obama had.

Opportunity number one was that Obama was born to brilliant parents of two different races. Opportunity number two, Obama was raised mostly in the diverse state of Hawaii. Opportunity number three, Obama's mother married an Indonesian man and took him to live there for four years where he went to school with both Christians and Muslims. Opportunity number four, schooling was limited in Indonesia so Obama's mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents where his grandfather's contacts allowed the middle class family to send their grandson to a prestigious prep school. Opportunity number five, Obama was accepted at Occidental College in Southern California where he met students of all races but learned to embrace his African-American heritage and became active in the anti-apartheid movement. Opportunity number six, Obama was accepted at Columbia University in New York and learned to navigate the tough neighborhood where he lived. Opportunity number seven, Obama applied to be a community organizer in Chicago and worked there for three years, failing at several projects in this on-the-job-training before he began to achieve small successes. Opportunity number eight, Obama was accepted to Harvard Law School. Opportunity number nine, prior to law school Obama traveled to Kenya, the land of his father, and met hundreds of relatives who had all heard of him, and learned what a real community was. And opportunity number ten, Obama became editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review where he formed relationships with both conservative and liberal students and scholars and made many connections that would serve him well in his future political career.

By the time he was in his late twenties, Obama had learned the skills of listening, debate, compromise, negotiation, and consensus building. He had developed the "no drama Obama" style through years of dealing with people who were different from him, and people he had to introduce himself to. Very few people of his intellect and ability have the experience with people that Obama had and these experiences make him uniquely qualified to be our first African American president.

Lunatic Watch

2009-01-07T07:02:00.000-08:00

New feature on the blog: lunatic watch, where I note stories and articles highlighting the worst of the worst of the soon to be former Bush administration as well as legislators and other elected officials who do insane and destructive things.

First entry: a blog on Daily Kos simply reporting the administration in their own words, with appropriate (and sometimes disturbing) pictures.

Innocent faces

2009-01-05T07:00:00.000-08:00

These are the innocent faces of my three grandchildren as they enjoyed viewing the Rose Parade floats.

Over 100 children just as innocent as these were killed by Israel over the past few days.

New Year, same old violence

2009-01-05T06:40:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

We started out the New Year learning that Israel was bombing the Palestinian territory of Gaza, where unemployment is fifty percent, blockades have made food and supplies in short supply for months, and people live in crowded homes often without sewers and other necessities of life. After the bombing, Israel began a ground invasion. They claim they are hunting for the leaders and weapons of Hamas, to make Israelis safe.

So why have they killed over 100 children?

This is war. This is always war. No matter how a country may justify it, no matter how intellectuals around the world may say it is appropriate, no matter how the warring parties try to avoid civilian casualties, there are always children who pay the ultimate price, children who never have the chance to grow up.

In the small territory of Gaza, there is a record of how many children have been killed. How many children have we killed in the much larger countries of Iraq and Afghanistan? It could be in the tens of thousands but we will never know. We don't keep track.

Christmas break

2008-12-24T09:55:00.000-08:00

Seattle, Washington, outside my son's house.

For the past ten days, I've been under the weather and neither motivated to blog nor to read other blogs. So I've decided to stop feeling guilty about it and just take an official break until after the New Year.

So Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and I'll be back to join with all of you after the first in the countdown to the Inauguration.

Christmas: the myth vs. reality

2008-12-20T14:35:00.000-08:00

We have invented a wonderful myth about Christmas, which can be summed up in the words of a Christmas song: "It's the most wonderful time of the year."

Humbug.

Every year I believe that nonsense and every year I'm disappointed, exhausted, and ready for the whole thing to be over.

First of all, I hate shopping. I enjoy getting things for my family, and the giving of gifts, but every year I go overboard, usually because I've gotten one too many things for one of my family members, and then I have to even it up by buying another item for each of the rest of them. What was once a nice sentiment - giving gifts in imitation of the three wise men - is now another chore to be performed at the busiest time of the year - when you have no time.

And I positively despise being in stores before Christmas. The music is dreadful ("Have a holly, jolly Christmas," "Oh by gosh by golly, it's time for mistletoe and holly," "Jingle bell rock," to name just a few that grate on my nerves. ) And they are all sung by artists who are deceased. Believe me, listening to dead guys sing Christmas songs does not cheer me up one bit.

How about decorating? You can't have Christmas without decorating the whole damn house - at least that's what they tell you on HGTV, where decorators come into homes with $2000 budgets to prepare the home of some rich guy for his "annual Christmas party." Wow! Somebody rich enough to have an annual Christmas party. My husband's company cancelled their annual Christmas party - hopefully the entire company won't fold in this disastrous economy.

So back to decorating. In our house, decorating involves hunching over in the closet beneath the stairs to get at all the lighted houses, tree decor, candles, flours, garlands, santas and snowmen I have collected over the years and then finding places for everything. When your back finally recovers from bending over and lifting heavy boxes, it's time to put everything back. So this year I cut the decor in half. I put out half the snowmen, half the santas, a couple of garlands, no lighted houses, and no tree.

Then there's the uncertainty over what to do on Christmas and what family members will be here. Will my sons come down from Seattle? Will there be a mad dash to the airport an hour away the night before Christmas to pick someone up? Will we have time to visit with my family and my husband's family on Christmas day without it becoming insane? Will my grandchildren be healthy so they can come for dinner?

Speaking of health, every Christmas it seems, I get sick. I've missed a few traditional Christmas eves at my mother's house because I couldn't get out of bed. Last year I missed a family wedding three days before Christmas because I had an intestinal virus. This year I have a miserable cold which doesn't seem to want to leave. And my husband is just as sick as I am.

And finally, of course, is the Christmas feast. So many dishes, so much preparation, so much time on my feet cooking, cleaning, setting the table, washing dishes. I was so exhausted last year after preparing dinner, my son's wonderful girlfriend told me she would like to cook dinner this year. So I'm letting her. I don't care if she cooks grilled cheese sandwiches (she's not - she's a great cook) I'm going to let the younger generation take over.

In spite of the songs that promise this will be the most wonderful time of the year, I find that many people dread the coming of Christmas and are glad to see it go. This year, for the first time ever, even though I always grumble about the work involved, I wish we could just cancel Christmas.

This year Christmas marks the end of a terrible year for me, my family and the country. The economy has decimated my husband's 401K, his company is drastically downsizing because they are connected to the building industry, and money is tight. My parents are both terribly ill, my mother has leukemia and my father has a progressive degenerative neurological disease. I have spent most of this year accompanying them to doctors, labs, and hospitals. And the country has had to endure one more year of an idiot in the White House, with all the disaster he brings with him.

So this year, Christmas is not the most wonderful time of the year. It's just a huge source of work to top off the most dreadful year of my life. And my guess is that all the people who have lost their jobs, their homes, their health insurance, and their health have suffered a dreadful year as well.

It goes without saying, I guess, that I am not looking forward to Christmas. I am, however, looking forward to January 20th. I know everything won't change that day, but at least January 20th doesn't involve cooking, going to the airport or decorating, and we can all watch history being made as we gleefully wave bye bye to Bush.

Now that really will be the most wonderful time of the year.

Applause for Bush

2008-12-19T15:05:00.000-08:00

I never thought I would say this, indeed I never thought I would be able to say it because I never thought it would happen, but George W. Bush has done a good thing.

By helping out the auto industry, Bush has shown a willingness to put practicality above ideology, and maybe finally show some of that "compassionate conservatism" he talked about in the 2000 campaign.

What's wrong with the Bush administration, and the thirty year old conservative movement in this country, is that they rely almost exclusively on ideology and thus make a lot of stupid decisions. Ideology is fine for academia, and for think tanks, but it can be deadly in government where it breeds stubbornness, insularity, and stupidity. When one holds the fate of hundreds of millions of citizens in one's hands, and a signature or a veto may determine whether people have jobs, houses, incomes, and health care, ideology isn't appropriate. What is needed is common sense and practicality.

That's why Barack Obama is such a promising politician and president elect. He is a practical man, a problem solver, a unifier, a listener, a leader who gathers facts and opinions from all corners before deciding on the most sensible action.

As for Bush, eight years into his presidency, his reputation in tatters, he finally has done the right thing, the practical thing, the good thing, and for the first time ever, I applaud him.

Caroline vs. Arnold: Double standard?

2008-12-19T05:26:00.000-08:00

Sitting out here in California I have to admit I know nothing about New York politics. So I find the current dust up over Caroline Kennedy's interest in being appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat for the next two years extremely fascinating. So, apparently, do many op-ed writers, most of whom are criticizing the possibility of such an appointment.

Caroline has never been elected to state or national office before, they say. She hasn't paid her dues. It's a sneaky way to enter into politics. What does she actually know about the Senate and the issues? Is being a Kennedy alone a qualification for the Senate? Aren't there other candidates who have paid their dues and are more deserving of the appointment?

Well, just to put this into perspective, knowing very little about Caroline's qualifications myself, I have one name for you: ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER.

The current governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, a relative of Caroline's by marriage, had also never been elected to national or state office before he helped recall the then governor of California, Gray Davis, and run for his seat. Arnold had in no way "paid his dues" either. Ousting a sitting governor and running for his seat is also a sneaky way to enter politics and at the time we knew nothing about Arnold's political views other than that he was a conservative Republican. We also knew he was married to a "Kennedy." And there were plenty of other candidates who held better political qualifications for the job of governor. But Arnold had starpower. He was a movie star, a celebrity, and a member by marriage of the best known political family in America.

Frankly, I don't see the difference between Arnold and Caroline in terms of experience and qualifications. Except, of course for two things. Arnold was well known as a movie star and an obvious showman and extrovert. Caroline is not as well known for her accomplishments, because she is more of an introvert who has worked quietly behind the scenes for decades on issues such as education.

Well, there are a few other differences. Caroline has been raising her children for the past twenty-five years even as she worked as a volunteer on many issues of importance to the state of New York while Arnold worked as an actor in Hollywood. Caroline is low key while Arnold's personality is larger than life. Arnold is a man and Caroline is a woman. And finally, Arnold is a Republican and Caroline is a Democrat.

Make of all of that what you will...

Snow Beast

2008-12-15T07:45:00.000-08:00

If you want to start your day with a smile, check out this video of my son's little Westie, "Marlowe," playing in snow for the first time at his home in Seattle.

The regrettable death of newspapers

2008-12-13T06:18:00.000-08:00

This week, in addition to the never-ending stories about the governor of Illinois, and the Republican assassination of the American car industry, there was the news that America's newspapers are in trouble. Some are filing bankruptcy, many are laying off reporters, some are going under, and at least one - The New York Times - has taken out a huge mortgage on its headquarters in order to keep going. Some on cable are speculating that the internet has killed newspapers. Others are saying that the economy means fewer advertising dollars and that is killing the papers.

I stopped subscribing to papers years ago, not so much because I don't think they are valuable, but because I never had time to read them and because they got black ink residue all over everything when I did. I also got tired of all the supplemental ads that usually went into the trash immediately. I saved the papers themselves for a week, thinking I would get around to reading them, but I usually didn't. Now I read a few newspapers online - the big ones like the Washington Post, New York Times and L.A. Times. Occasionally I read an editorial from the WSJ, especially Peggy Noonan (for her excellent writing even when I disagree with her) and Thomas Frank (for his brilliant thinking, with which I usually agree), but mostly I stay away from its Republican propaganda.

Actually, I have a different theory for why people don't read newspapers anymore. I think cable news killed newspapers. It's so much easier, isn't it, to just click on the television and watch some blowhard on FOX or CNN or MSNBC tell you what to think? No, I don't think they report unbiased news. I think they tell you what and how to think.

FOX tells you to hate Democrats, to suspect Obama of being a Muslim, a terrorist, a radical, or a corrupt associalte of the now disgraced Illinois governor. MSNBC tells you Republicans are crooks or idiots in the evening, when Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow headline, and just the opposite in the morning when Morning Jo(k)e Scarborough bloviates. CNN is more subtle. They pretend not to take sides, but many of their well-coifed female anchors like to make subtle but snide comments about Obama. Actually, what all of these cable networks are trying to do is stir up controversy and trouble, and raise the blood pressure and the attention level of their viewers so they get good ratings. They have to fill 24 hours with something that will grab your attention, so they say controversial things and often incite anger, fear or hatred against someone or something.

Cable has made it unnecessary for anyone to think, to read, to investigate, to see both sides and to make up their own minds based on the evidence. If you watch Keith, you don't have to question his facts. If you watch Hannity, and trust him, you simply believe what he tells you. And these television personalities tell you things in sound bites, quick emotionally laden opinions, and funny presentations. You don't have to strain your brain to pay attention because they are so entertaining you naturally want to stay focused.

Not so with newspapers. With newspapers, you first have to have a fairly good reading ability. You have to comprehend words with more than two syllables. I contend that most Americans don't have that ability anymore. Next, you have to have the attention span and the willingness to spend some time wading through complex investigative articles to determine the facts of some political story. You have to have a tolerance for long, dry, complex writing that doesn't necessarily entertain you, but that may require you to read the same paragraph over and over again when your mind wanders, as it inevitably will when you are accustomed to watching "news" on television. Finally, you have to send in a monthly check and tip that damn paperboy at Christmas, as well as haul all that paper out to the recylcing bin each week. In an era of convenience and instant everything, who has time for all that?

Television has done a lot of damage to our ability to think and concentrate, to our intelligence, and to our physical well being as we spend so much time sitting instead of moving. And now the 24 hour cable news shows have just about killed newspapers, in addition to disseminating false and biased information. They have not just made us stupid. They have divided us and made us hateful people who judge each other on the basis of propaganda that get good ratings and high salaries for the propagandists.

Frankly, I would much rather see the cable shows die than the newspapers - even if it means I have to endure a little black newsprint rubbing off on my hands and furniture.

Republican crimes

2008-12-12T06:40:00.000-08:00

If I hadn't already lost all respect for Republicans, I would have lost the final ounce last night.

Senate Republicans, led by the good ole boys from the South, killed the $14 billion dollar bridge loan to the big three automakers, two of which may now go out of business and spill millions of workers into the pool of the unemployed.

At a time when our economy is already in recession, with large numbers of decades old businesses closing their doors, millions of Americans being thrown out of their jobs and homes, and the rest of us holding our breaths that somehow we can weather the growing economic storm without being thrown out of ours, the Republicans decided now was the time to get stingy with the only big manufacturing industry left in America.

They weren't stingy two months ago when their buddies on Wall Street nearly destroyed our economy with their deregulated creative banking instruments, their risky sub prime mortgages packaged into securities, and their credit derivative swaps to insure those bad investments. They gave those idiots $700 billion without blinking. This was supposed to free up credit so that banks would begin loaning again, businesses could remain open and homeowners could restructure their mortgages so they wouldn't lose their homes. Only this hasn't happened. Businesses are closing left and right and millions of homeowners hear the knock of the marshall at their door, serving them eviction notices. Soon, the soup lines may start.

One has to scratch one's head and ask why. Why give $700 billion to Wall Street and nothing to Detroit? Why demand workers wages be reduced in Detroit, but nothing of the kind regarding wages on Wall Street? It makes no sense, unless you live within the failed and destructive ideology of Republicanism.

Republicans say they are guarding the taxpayers' money and demanding accountability from the automakers who managed their businesses badly. What? No one managed businesses more horribly than the Wall Street bankers who made bad loans, created bad securities and then insured them against loss so that they could win either way. Except when the insurance money was demanded once the bankruptcies started, there was no money. So Congress had to fork over $700 billion for starters. Is that really worse than building gas guzzling SUVs instead of hybrid cars? Is it more of a crime?

And lest we forget, it was always the Republicans who voted against higher fuel efficiency standards for the automakers. Republicans, like the president and vice president, have always been in bed with oil companies, and wanted to see those gas guzzling vehicles because it was good for the oil business. Wasn't it the Republican Congress along with Bush that came up with the huge tax deduction for businesses that buy Hummers and other gas guzzling monstrosities? Now the Republicans want to blame Detroit for not building the kind of fuel-efficient cars that can compete with Toyota and Honda. What a crock! What hypocrisy!

No, the Republicans see several opportunities here and they are determined to take advantage of them. The workers be damned! The country be damned!

First, they want to break the union. The UAW has always been an enemy of Republicans, partly because they largely support Democrats, but also because they have contributed to the growth of the Middle Class, which the Republicans are determined to destroy. Republicans have never liked unions, which - by demanding decent pay for their hard work - threaten to eat into the enormous profits of stockholders, whom the Republicans think are much more valuable in a capitalist economy than workers. The current financial trouble of the carmakers is the perfect opportunity to do what they live for - destroy a union and keep the wealthy class wealthy. In Republican land, capital is king, investors deserve to be billionaires, and workers are slave labor that deserves the lowest of wages for their pay. Is it any surprise that the leaders of this attempt to lower the wages of autoworkers are Southern Senators: Corker, De Mint, McConnell, Shelby, among others?

Second, these Southern Senators also are protecting the foreign car plants in their states. Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda and Hyundai have all built plants in Southern states where anti-union laws allow them to pay lower wages to their workers, and giant federal tax breaks allow them to succeed. In other words, our tax money helps foreign car companies employ Southern workers at low wages, which helps to bust the unions of domestic car companies. Sounds real patriotic to me! Help the foreign companies and destroy the domestic ones. Keep wages low for American workers and enrich stockholders and investors in those companies. Punish the American companies that dared allow themselves to be unionized.

Of course, getting jobs and money for your state is always the name of the game for elected officials. But I always thought our elected representatives were also interested in keeping a healthy economy for the entire nation. Apparently, some of them are not.

Once again, we see what the Republican Party stands for: a wealthy class and a poor class and no middle class; low wages for workers and high profits for owners; socialism for Wall Street and the "creative destruction" of the market for Main Street; government intervention in people's sex lives, but not in their economic survival (unless they're millionaires).

There'd better be a special place in hell for these people.

Blagojevich

2008-12-10T07:23:00.000-08:00

Something stinks about this Blagojevich story. Sorry, but I just don't buy that things are as simple as the federal prosecutor claims they are.

Already the wing-nuts are accusing Obama or his chief aide David Axelrod of lying about whether or not Obama talked with/met with Blagojevich. They see this as an opportunity to taint the upcoming inauguration of the new president. Prior to this arrest, they tried other ways to tarnish his reputation, just as they did Bill Clinton even before Clinton was sworn in. They have used Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and Tony Rezko to try to diminish his popularity and good reputation. And now that Blagojevich has been accused of trying to sell Obama's senate seat, they are trying to imply that somehow Obama was in on it, or that he is now lying about it. This, even though Blagojevich is allegedly heard on tape calling Obama a crude name because all he would give Blago for appointing Obama's preferred candidate was "appreciation."

Obama is being attacked because maybe he spoke to the governor about the senate seat. Well, I'm sure Hillary Clinton has talked to David Patterson about her senate seat. Or she will in time. And more to the point, a lot of senators talked to Ted Stevens in the days, weeks and months before his corruption conviction. Does that taint them? Talking is not a crime.

So I am simply asking this: why did Patrick Fitzgerald come out with this now, in such a spectacular way, and why read excerpts of the taped conversations? Most high profile people are not woken up by the FBI and handcuffed at their estate. Their lawyers are notified and they turn themselves in. This was intended to get as much media attention as possible. Why?

Why read the tape transcripts at a press conference? Isn't this something you usually present to a jury and not the public so that you don't taint the jury pool?

There is some motive behind this that I don't quite understand. Perhaps the prosecutor is hoping he can put pressure on Blago who will make a deal with him and spare everyone the spectacle of a trial. That's the only good option I can think of. The other options are that Fitzgerald is playing with the Republican play book and trying to taint Obama by having such a high profile arrest of someone tangentially connected to Obama, or just the opposite. Perhaps Fitzgerald was playing with the Dems and doing a favor for Obama by trying to get Blago out of the business of appointing Obama's successor. Any appointment by a governor who was under investigation and soon to be arrested would be tainted in itself, the appointee probably likely to lose the next election. So maybe Obama wanted this to happen to get Blago to resign and let his successor choose Obama's replacement.

Time will tell, but in the meantime, the media and the wing nuts are out in force, milking the story dry. Already I'm sick of it.

A question for the military

2008-12-09T06:39:00.000-08:00

Yesterday a jet from Miramar Naval Air Station crashed into a San Deigo neighborhood, setting several homes on fire and killing a family that included a grandmother, a mother and two small children. The pilot ejected safely. According to the morning news, the pilot reported losing an engine over the Pacific Ocean, which ultimately resulted in the horrible crash.

I can't even begin to express my outrage over this. It will be called an "accident" and will be quickly forgotten, except of course by the family of these four who were killed. Some will say it is the price we pay for our military maintaining their readiness to defend us. I say that's b.s.

I have lived in Northern San Deigo County/Southern Riverside County for nearly thirty years and during much of that time I have endured the annoying sound of low flying helicopters from Camp Pendleton. I don't exactly know how this happened, but my previous home in Fallbrook and my current home in another city are both directly in the flight path of these helicopters. On many, many occasions it has occurred to me that one of these choppers could crash into my neighborhood or even my home.

The people in certain San Diego neighborhoods must endure something even more frightening - the daily practice take-offs and landings of the screaming jets at Miramar. Every time I drive on the 805, the 15 or the 163, all of which surround the air station, I wonder if one of those low flying jets will crash onto the freeway and take out dozens of innocent motorists. Now the worst has happened and a family is dead.

I have so many questions about this horrible crash. Why did the pilot not stay with his plane and try to maneuver it to crash into a field or the ocean? Since he lost the engine over the ocean, why did he not eject and let the plane go down there? In saving his own life, did he not even think about the other lives that might be lost? If he was too young and inexperienced to know how to react in such an emergency, why was he not practicing out in the desert where he couldn't kill anyone?

I know very little about aviation, and certainly nothing about what it takes to fly a fighter jet, but if if I give the pilot the benefit of the doubt and accept that he did the best he could, I still am furious that this kind of thing could happen.

I have wondered for a long time why the military needs to do so many practice flights which cost millions of taxpayer dollars. Yes, pilots must learn to fly jets and helicopters, but must they do so many, and is a residential area the best place to do that?

I think it's time to relocate some of these air stations into unpopulated areas. San Diego is no longer an appropriate place for a naval jet training facility.

What good does it do to keep our military in a state of readiness if it kills civilians in the process?

Obama the socialist

2008-12-04T05:43:00.000-08:00

I had a discussion yesterday with a local shop owner. We were talking about elderly parents and people she and I knew who were very ill and she said she believed that when there was no hope and you were suffering terribly, that you should have the right to take your own life in a dignified way. She didn't believe the state should stop you. She also expressed that she didn't believe abortion should be a political issue and the state should never force a woman to have a baby. She then went on to say she wasn't a religious person, but she knew many religious people and she respected their views on such things, and believed everyone should be free to follow their own beliefs as long as they don't try to impose them on others.

I wasn't sure what to make of her political views as in the past I was sure she said she was a Republican, and this didn't sound too Republican to me. Soon we were talking about politics and I mentioned that I had been enthusiastically for Obama. She scrunched up her face and said "Well, I'm a conservative and I could never vote for Obama because I know he's a socialist. Don't get me wrong, I didn't like McCain - he was the worst candidate - but Obama is a socialist so I couldn't vote for him. However, I do wish him well and hope he proves me wrong."

I asked her how she "knew" he was a socialist. She mentioned some interview on public radio from ten years ago when, according to her, he said he had read Karl Marx and been influenced by him. I asked if she could point me to the interview so I could hear it myself and she backed off - didn't know how to refer me to it. But she was certain of her view of him. I then replied that I doubted if Bush had read Karl Marx, but he had certainly become a socialist lately with the nationalization of the banks. It was then that she said everyone in Congress was to blame and brought up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are the Republican talking points, so I decided it was time to go.

I thought about this all the way home.

Did this interview really take place or was it some Republican piece of propaganda from someone like Rush Limbaugh or Hugh Hewitt or Sean Hannity?

If the interview did take place, were Obama's words fairly represented? And why did we not hear more about this during the campaign? The Republicans control talk radio and FOX News. Couldn't they have broadcast this more effectively? Or was it one of those internet rumors?

If someone reads Karl Marx and is "influenced" by them does that make him a socialist? What does it mean to be influenced by someone? I, for instance, have been influenced by many writers but I don't agree with all of them. Sometimes they influence me to think of things a different way, or to question something I once believed in, or even to reject what they are writing.

My guess is that Obama has read a lot of great and influential writers and, in fact, if you are going to go into politics, people like Karl Marx would have to be on your reading list along with conservative writers, liberal writers, the founding fathers, and great philosophers through the ages. Politics is really the application of ideas to governing and reading Marx along with many others should not be an indictment of your governing philosophy.

And finally, I wondered what it is about the word "socialist" that so frightens Republicans. We have elements of socialism in our government, some of those elements like Social Security and Medicare being among the most popular programs in government. The reality is that we have a combined economic system, capitalism combined with some socialism, with socialism currently rescuing capitalism, which today would fail without the government's assistance.

When I came home I tried to find evidence of Obama's speech online and all I could find were websites where Obama was accused of knowing "socialists" or of having teachers who were "socialists."

I think a lot of people confuse the writer Marx with the political leaders Lenin and Stalin of the Soviet Union, where there was a perversion of Marx's ideas. But, if this woman is correct about Obama reading Marx, I am unlike him in that I do not know enough about Marx's actual ideas to argue effectively about them. So I've decided to read Marx, not because I want to be a socialist or a communist, but because I think to be informed citizens we ought to know what such a powerful and influential writer has said.

I suspect some of his ideas are similar to those of Jesus Christ, who I always thought spoke as something of a communist (communal living, sharing of goods, etc.) but I could be wrong. The point is I don't really know, and I suspect those who accuse Obama of being a socialist don't know either. I'm sure Limbaugh, Hewitt and Hannity haven't read Marx, as I don't consider them intellectuals by any means. I do consider Obama an intellectual, so it doesn't surprise me that he has read Marx and probably thousands more books that his critics haven't read.

I'll keep you posted on what I discover in my reading.

Was it worth it?

2008-12-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

I wonder - what did those Wal Mart shoppers buy on Friday after they trampled a worker to death?

Was it a flat screen television, some Christmas wrapping, perhaps a few toys for the kids?

How much did they save by acting like fanatics, devoid of intelligence, mindlessly moving with the herd to secure their prizes?

And how much did Wal Mart make from the things they sold to the mindless herd who killed a 34 year old man?

Were either the purchases or the profits really worth his death?

Will we ever be civilized?

Quote for our times

2008-11-24T07:54:00.000-08:00

These first lines from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities keep running through my head"

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

Obama and the press

2008-11-21T06:15:00.000-08:00

It's going to be fun over the next four years watching the press get it all wrong about Obama's presidency.

So far, they've gotten just about everything wrong regarding his campaign and the transition.

Two years ago, they said Hillary was "inevitable." Then, in spite of Obama's victory in Iowa, they were sure Obama couldn't defeat the Clinton machine.

Then, they were sure America would never elect a black president. Up until the actual election they were convinced there would be a "Bradley effect" in which white voters tell pollsters they will vote for Obama but, in the privacy of the voting booth, vote for the white guy.

Then they fell in love with Sarah Palin and were certain this would doom Obama.

They didn't think he could raise the money to win. They were sure of an October surprise. They knew Jeremiah Wright or William Ayers would doom him. They thought renting out a stadium in Denver for his acceptance speech was foolish - and those Roman columns they considered arrogant.

They were convinced young people would not turn out to vote. And white rural voters - those people Chris Matthews called "regular Americans" - would never vote for Obama.

Recently, they have been second-guessing his transition decisions. Hillary as Secretary of State was problematic, they speculated. Bill would never turn over his financial records. Hillary is too powerful in her own right. She will overshadow him.

Every time the press is sure Obama is dealing with lemons, he makes lemonade. Every time they predict disaster, he quietly proves they are imbeciles.

I don't know if it is because he is the first African American to gain the presidency, or if it is because the press is simply stupid, but they don't seem to get this guy. Maybe it's because covering Bush has been so predictable, so easy. Think of the worst decision a president can make and then predict Bush will make it. Bingo! Works every time.

Well Barack Hussein Obama is not George Walker Bush. It will be enormously gratifying to watch Obama outwit the press for the next four years. It will be even more gratifying to see his presidency be successful in spite of the problems he will inherit when he moves into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Can he do it? You know the answer. We've been saying it for two years: Yes, he can - no matter what the press thinks.

You don't have to pass an IQ test to vote

2008-11-20T15:46:00.001-08:00

In the Coleman - Franken recount, there are apparently hundreds of votes where it is not 100% clear what the intent of the voter is, mostly because the voters appear to be too stupid to make it clear. Is it really that hard to fill in a circle next to the name of your candidate? If you messed up, would it really be that difficult to ask for a new ballot and have the election officials destroy the one you messed up? And why would anyone go to all the trouble to vote and then write "lizard people" on the ballot?

Maybe we need to give an IQ test to voters before they are allowed to vote.

Bush's final crime spree

2008-11-18T05:50:00.000-08:00

I've hesitated to write about the mortgage/credit/stock market/ meltdown because I am not an economist and don't really understand all that has brought this about. But then, even economists, and experts within the government, claim not to fully understand what is happening in the economy. Even more frightening, they seem not to know how to fix it.

But, writing as a layperson with some education, here's what I think I do understand:

A couple of decades ago, manufacturing started leaving this country, jobs moved overseas to take advantage of cheap labor.

The only growing industry in this country was in banking: lending and borrowing and bundling loans into stocks to sell in the domestic and international markets.

People who couldn't afford homes were encouraged to take out mortgages with low interest that would reset within five years, leaving them with a house payment they could no longer afford. When the loans reset, they began walking away from these homes.

In addition, the value of homes increased astronomically and people took out home equity loans so they could buy huge SUVs (gas was cheap) and flat screen televisions and pay for their kids' college tuition. When the bottom fell out of the housing market, and their homes lost value leaving them upside down on their loans, they too walked away from their homes.

Unemployment started to go up, as the real estate and mortgage industries suffered. People stopped buying and started saving, if they still had a job, and the retail industry started to suffer. Large companies, including electronic stores and restaurant chains, began going out of business. More layoffs.

With people defaulting on their mortgages, banks started to fail and more people were laid off.

The stock market declined at a rapid rate and Congress panicked. They passed a 700 billion dollar stimulus package almost overnight, giving the treasury secretary of the worst administration in our nation's history the sole authority to distribute the money.

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has already spent 300 billion of the 700 billion dollar bailout package and things are getting worse. And no one knows what he spent it on. Some of the banks that got money are still sending executives on overseas vacations and giving huge bonuses to top executives.

A few months ago the cost of gasoline made driving any distance unaffordable for many people. Large SUVs became dinosaurs. Foreign made cars with better gas mileage were much more attractive to those who could still afford to buy a car. The big three American auto makers finally experienced the consequences of not moving to alternative fuel cars or at least more fuel efficient cars. They hover on the verge of bankruptcy as they beg Congress to give them some of the 700 billion as a loan to help them survive. As many as 3 million jobs may be at stake in the auto and related industries. The Republicans say "no," let the free market kill these companies if they can't compete with Toyota. The Republicans really would love to see the big three go down as it would kill one of the nation's biggest unions. The Democrats want to help, but they may not be able to until Barack Obama takes office. By then it may be too late.

The stock market continues to go down and no one can say when it will reach bottom.

Everyone is nervous. No one's job is safe. No one is spending money. The rest of the world looks to the United States to start fixing the mess they began, but nothing Paulson does helps. And he keeps changing his mind on what he wants to do with the money. No one knows what the hell is going on or how to fix it.

Obama is not yet president and has no real power to do anything, and the current president who has power is in hiding. The man who took us to war on the basis of a lie, who couldn't figure out how to get people off rooftops or out of the Superdome after Hurrican Katrina, certainly can't figure out how to fix this mess, that is largely the making of his own party, a party that presided over deregulation for decades. So what does he do? He hides in the White House after allowing his cronies to go on their final crime spree, looting our 401Ks and destroying our economy.

Bush is acting anything but presidential. There is no grand speech, no reassurance, no supervision of the bailout, no help for struggling homeowners, no attempt to coordinate things with the incoming Obama administration.

Once again, we are left to drown, this time in a sea of debt, as we watch the tidal wave of total financial collapse bear down on us.

This horrible man, this man who was installed in the White House by the Supreme Court when he actually lost the popular vote and stole the Florida vote, should spend the rest of his life doing public penance for what he has done to this country and its people. And those on the court who installed him should also do penance.

These people are criminals of the highest order and they should receive no mercy.

The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla

2008-11-17T05:16:00.000-08:00

Dick Cavett's brilliant summary of the phenomenon of Sarah Palin and her mangled English in today's NYT.

One small gem from that editorial:

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

Vile ideology

2008-11-15T08:57:00.000-08:00

The Conservative Republican ideology is weighing in on the near collapse of the big three automakers and their need for a federal loan and/or bailout of some sort. Conservatives are saying "Let them fail." David Brooks calls it the "creative destruction" of capitalism and free markets. In other words, the market, greed, and mysterious forces decide what companies survive and what don't, and if we want the market to work its magic we need to get out of the way and let the chips fall where they may. From the ashes of the auto makers will arise some great phoenix that will save our society, they contend.

So what if up to three million people lose their jobs? It's not people that matter; it's the ideology, stupid! So what if we lose the biggest manufacturing sector in a nation that makes very few things anymore, something new will come along. Everything is so black and white to these people that they cannot even envision a creative solution where the government helps restructure the auto companies to implement green technology and make new alternative fuel cars. (Oh right, that would be the dreaded socialism.)

No, the auto companies must be allowed to fail so some new magical capitalist wonder will take their place. Oh yeah? And what exactly would that be? We've already replaced most of the manufacturing companies in this nation with financial instruments and they've already failed and demanded a bailout from Washington, which they've gotten. (Yes, the dreaded socialism.)

But this is the essence of the free market ideology so loved by conservatives. It's every business for themselves - well not every business. It's actually every business they don't like for themselves (like those businesses that are heavily unionized), while the ones they like get welfare from the government.

They apply the same priniciples to people. They hate welfare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Chrildren's Health Insurance Program, and any other government program that provides a safety net for those who aren't born into the best families or who fall on hard times. In their view, people who require welfare are simply lazy and should get a job. People who rely on Social Security were foolish in their youth and should have saved money. People who require Medicare or Medicaid should be able to purchase their own insurance and children who rely on health insurance from the government are simply the victims of their lazy parents who should work harder to buy insurance for them. And the wealthy get tax breaks.

These people are cold blooded, hard hearted idiots who do not understand the first thing about being out of work, losing one's savings, having a life threatening illness that forces one into bankruptcy, or having to wonder every day if the three jobs one has are enough to pay the bills.

Currently, we are in fire season in California and fire fighters are fighting valiantly to save homes and prevent the spread of the fires to more communities. The arrival of the fire season is as reliable as the changing of the seasons here in California. Sometimes there are arsonists who set the fires, sometimes it is a downed power line or an accidental spark from something. The dry brush is like tinder and the Santa Ana winds whip the flames out of control. And often it is the homes in heavily forested areas that burn, places where homes should probably not be built. Other times, the fires strike what should be safe areas.

But if we are to apply the vile conservative mindset, we would say that we should just let the homes burn. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for firefighting in areas where people should not build homes? And, in reality, all of Southern California is a hazardous area that is prone to fires, so perhaps no one should live here. People who live here are not responsible. The fire should be allowed to wreak its creative destruction across the land, and people will simply have to find somewhere else to live.

Actually, this is very much what played out in New Orleans, only with water rather than fire. What was the Bush administration's part in allowing this creative destruction? First, it did not maintain the wetlands around the city, nor build strong enough levees, both of which might have stopped the total destruction. It gambled with the city, perhaps not caring about it because poor black people lived there, and then when the worst happened, it did nothing for days, allowing people to remain stranded on rooftops and in a sports stadium without food or water or working bathroom facilities. The mentality was "We told you to evacuate and you didn't, so tough!" Of course, many of those who didn't evacuate had no transportation and no place to go, some were so elderly and frail they couldn't evacuate without help from family or the authorities, and they never got that help.

I will never understand why the party that says it is "Christian," the party that wants prayer in schools, and the Ten Commandments in every public courtroom, the party that is so self-righteous and preachy, does not understand this simple command of Jesus:

"Love your neighbor as you love yourself."

I also do not understand why the party that claims to be the party of Lincoln does not remember that Lincoln said this government was "of, by and for the people" - not just some of the people, but all of the people. They make a mockery of the "of" and the "by, by disenfranchising as many of those people as they can every four years, and they simply cannot grasp the "for." "For the people" - the government is "for the people," not just for the wealthy, or the corporations that curry favor with the governement, or the corporations that are not unionized, or the people who worship at a certain church, or the people who have money, or the people who love war, or the people who wear flag pins, or the people with white skin, or the people who belong to country clubs and live in gated communities. "For the people" means for all the people.

And I will also never understand how this party that constantly demands we pay attention to the words of the Founding Fathers, keeps forgetting these:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalieanable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Or these:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Question of the day

2008-11-15T08:03:00.000-08:00

What's wrong with this picture?

or

Did we really have a feminist revolution thirty-five years ago?

Red state hate

2008-11-13T05:52:00.000-08:00

Republican governors are meeting in Florida this week trying to figure out why their party has become so irrelevant and how they can restore its viability.

If they want to understand just how low their party has gone, perhaps they should start with this incident in Idaho:

Controversial words spoken by kids on a school bus have some Madison County parents concerned.

Matthew Whoolery and his wife aren't blaming the school district for what happened on the bus but they do think all parents need to be careful about what they say and teach their children.

Whoolery and his wife couldn't believe it when their second and third graders got off the bus last week and told them what other students were saying."They just hadn't heard anything like this before," said Whoolery. "They were chanting on the bus, 'Assassinate Obama. Assassinate Obama.'

Dignity and Courage

2008-11-12T19:43:00.000-08:00

Yesterday at the Veteran's Memorial, Soldier Field, Chicago, the President-elect with double amputee and Iraq War veteran Tammy Duckworth.

What's wrong with this picture? Let me count the ways

2008-11-12T07:03:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin to Greta Van Susteren:

I’m like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I’m like, don’t let me miss the open door. And if there is an open door in (2012) or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I’ll plow through that door."

First of all, any presidential candidate who sounds like a valley girl ("I'm like") should be immediately disqualified.

Second, any presidential candidate who openly talks about God speaking to them, or opening a door for them is delusional and should be immediately disqualified. Didn't Bush say God told him to smite the Iraqis?

And third, any presidential candidate who, in deciding whether or not to run, doesn't consider the good of the nation first, rather than third after the good of her family and the good of her state, should be immediately disqualified.

And finally, any presidential candidate who says "2012 or four years later," obviously doesn't know how to add single digits and should be immediately disqualified.

On the other hand, the more she talks, the more absurd a Sarah Palin candidacy becomes so her media blitz may be a good thing. Maybe God has opened the door to oblivion for her.

Madeline Clare

2008-11-11T19:34:00.001-08:00

My mischievous littlest granddaughter Maddie turned 3 on November 8th.

Creeping socialism? Is it all bad?

2008-11-11T08:55:00.001-08:00

The government has taken over ownership of many of the nation's banks, because they couldn't manage themselves and allowed their greed to threaten the very stability of the nation's economy.

The government partially manages health care, for the poor and elderly. The rest of us fend for ourselves with privately owned health insurance companies that have a bad track record of providing affordable access to health care. Would expanding the Medicare and Medicaid system to cover everyone be all that bad?

And now the auto industry is failing because instead of looking to the future and creating alternative fuel and smaller more fuel efficient cars, the auto industry went for the quick buck with behemoth SUVs and trucks. Maybe the government ought to nationalize the auto industry, and call the shots regarding the types of vehicles produced, thus potentially solving three problems at once: creating more fuel efficient vehicles to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, creating alternative fuel vehicles to help slow down global warming, and providing secure jobs to help in this troubled economy.

I don't like the idea of socialism in theory, but when capitalism fails because its practitioners succumb to greed and instant gratification, what other choice is there?

Sarah Pallin's self-inflicted wounds

2008-11-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

Sarah Palin is speaking up about the old rumor that Trig Palin is not her son, but her daughter's son, and that she pretended to be pregnant to cover up her daughter's preganancy. She is reflecting the anger that people like Joe Scarborough and a few other Republicans displayed when this rumor first began.

I should mention that two of the bloggers I mentioned in my last post, Andrew Sullivan and Markos Moulitsas, have some connection to this rumor. On Markos Moulitsas' site, The Daily Kos, a diarist (anyone can register and be a diarist; these are not official "bloggers" of the site) started the rumor and soon the diary was taken down as being unaccpetable for the site. And every time someone else brought it up in a diary, commenters were all over it, insisting the rumor-mongering stop.

However, the rumor was already out there, as so many rumors were about Obama, none of which seemed to concern the McCain/Palin campaign.

Andrew Sullivan also noted the oddities about Palin's pregnancy and only asked that she release her medical records to put the rumor to rest, which she has not done, though she keeps saying she will.

The rumor was an unfortunate one, though Palin's behavior in keeping her pregancy secret for seven months, hiding her daughter at home during the pregnancy, rushing home early from a governor's conference to have the baby in Wasilla, revealing that her daughter was now pregnant and then promptly hiding her again, and refusing to release her own medical records, did not help squash it. Those medical records could have put an end to the rumor instantly and protected both her and her daughter from further speculation and scrutiny. But she never released them.

Sarah Palin made herself an easy target because she was dishonest on so many fronts, from that "bridge to nowhere" to her $150,000 wardrobe, all of which Andrew Sullivan has meticulously chronicled. But Palin will take no responsibility for her part in this nonsense.

On the other hand, this rumor was neither started nor encouraged by the Obama campaign. Obama and his surrogates never accused Sarah Palin of lying about this or anything else. In fact, Obama went out of his way not to criticize Palin in either speeches or ads, while she was merciless towards him, calling him a Marxist, a socialist, and a pal of terrorists. She said he was "naive" and not ready to be president, a laughable example of the pot calling the kettle....

Sarah Palin did everything she could to slash and burn her way through Obama's good name, and wanted to use Jeremiah Wright to twist the knife even more, but John McCain drew the line on the Wright issue.

Obama, it must be remembered, put up with a lot more slanderous rumors about himself than Palin did about herself. And he did absolutely nothing to encourage them by acting odd and trying to hide things the way she did. He was accused of being a non-citizen and a Muslim, of being a radical, of hiding his Muslim roots, of being schooled in a Madrasa, of being a friend of Louis Farrakhan, of approving of Jeremiah Wright's "anti-American" sermons, and of being a Marxist. And you didn't hear him running around slamming right wing bloggers and internet sites, even when they put out that ridiculous rumor about a non-existent tape in which his wife supposedly ranted against "Whitey." He let his character speak for itself and he won people over with his honesty and example.

So for Palin to cry "foul" over some rumor started on the internet, but discouraged by most Obama supporters, is quite hypocritical. Frankly, I have no sympathy at all for someone who can dish it out through the campaign, but now after losing can't take it, especially when she could have easily disproven the rumor.

Obama had no way to refute labels and accusations that had no basis in fact and could not be disproven with a simple medical file. How does one prove that one is not a Marxist or a Muslim? If a lifetime of patriotism and twenty years of Christian worship cannot disprove such rumors to the wing-nuts, then the wing-nuts have their own agenda and it has nothing to do with the truth.

On the other hand, Palin could have easily put the rumor to rest about Trig's birth. All she had to do was release her medical records, and she refused.

Someone, please tell this miserable woman to shut up

2008-11-11T05:54:00.001-08:00

Sarah Palin is making the rounds, and getting attention from people like Matt Lauer and Joke Scarborough, who are apparently much more interested in talking her up than in paying attention to the transition of power from Republicans to Democrats, Democrats who defeated the diva from Alaska.

She's gotten a taste of power and fame and expensive clothing here in the lower 48, and she's not going to give them up without a fight. So instead of going quietly, as all other losing candidates do during a transition from the election to the inauguration, she's hamming it up for the camera and saying god will show her the way to the presidency.

And repeating a line often shouted by the idiot morning loudmouth Joe Scarborough, according to an interview on FOX News...

The governor also lashed out at bloggers "sitting in their parents' basement, wearing their pajamas" for some of the questions that were raised about her record and credibility.

I think it's time we set the record straight about liberal bloggers. I don't know who these people are who blog from their parents' basement (maybe they're right wingers) but Joke Scarborough has been saying this for a year, and it has now apparently become a republican talking point.

I'm a blogger and I blog from my office, in my own suburban home, and my parents are ill and in their eighties. When I'm not blogging, I'm taking care of them at their house, and in any spare time I have, trying to keep my household going. Heck, I live in California and we don't even have basements.

The main bloggers I read (and the ones read by most liberals) are Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, Arianna Huffington, and Markos Moulitsos. I don't know if any of them blog while wearing pajamas. I sometimes do, but I don't think that disqualifies me from making intelligent comments. It just makes me more comfortable. But I know none of these bloggers write from the basement of their parents' homes. Andrew (who is actually a conservative) blogs for a major magazine and lives in his own residence with his spouse in D.C. Josh is married with two children. Arianna lives in a mansion in L.A and is a single mother raising two children. And Markos has two children and, like Arianna, has built an empire on line. Oh, and he has served in the military.

So the radical loonies like Morning Joke and Sarah "god is calling me" Palin may blame bloggers for their troubles, but they look foolish for doing so. The bloggers (liberal and conservative) who supported Obama, and found Palin terribly lacking as a candidate, are smack in the middle or even upper classes, highly educated and terrific writers. I guess that makes them "elitists."

Geez, I wish the wing-nuts would make up their minds. Are their worst enemies successful elitists, or losers who blog from their parents' basement?

These wing nuts need to look in the mirror for the cause of the conservative downfall. It is their ignorant, holier than thou, uneducated, black and white, trash talk culture and their failed ideology that are dying, and it is stupid statements condemning bloggers, as well as those attacking the president-elect as a "Marxist" who "pals around with terrorists" that have caused them to be rejected. And no amount of soft ball interviews in Sarah Palin's kitchen as she cooks moose stew will help her cause or that of conservatives.

These bitter people need to stop attacking and blaming and smearing and come up with a few good ideas and good candidates of their own. Because right now, if Sarah Palin is the best they've got, they're in for a long time in the wilderness.

She really needs to just shut up.

ELECTION REFLECTION X: FINAL THOUGHTS

2008-11-10T06:58:00.000-08:00

In nine previous installments, I've summarized my assessment of why McCain lost and why Obama won the presidential election of 2008.

But I have a concluding reflection on what this election means. (Read more in depth reflections on Outraged Citizen.)

We have, at least for this election, dealt a death blow to the cult of the ignorant leader.

The American people may have elected Bush because they thought he was "just like" them, a guy you could share a beer with, a "Joe the Plumber" kind of guy (even though he was born into a wealthy patrician family and went to the best schools), a guy who couldn't speak intelligently, who couldn't pronounce nuclear, a guy who didn't appear too smart. But that has changed.

The people didn't fall for the attack on Obama as an "elitist" this time because the people actually wanted an elitist - if that means someone with brains. Brains, it turns out, are more important than being comfortable with someone at a bar, when the nation is in trouble. Not only is this rejection of the cult of the ignorant leader evident because of Bush's low approval ratings, but also because the Republican candidate John McCain was defeated, at least in part because of his choice of a no-nothing, "just folks" running mate.

Although the election of the nation's first African American president has caused some enthusiastic reporters to conclude that "anyone can be president," this is simply not true. First of all Barack Obama is not anyone. He is an exceptionally talented, intelligent, calm, hopeful, and wise leader, someone you might call an "old soul."

It was never true that anyone could be president. It was never true that any white child could grow up to become president and it is not true today that any black child can grow up to become president.

People become president either because of their talents or because of their connections. Bush had no talent, but huge connections. He had no business being president, but his connections got him there. Obama, on the other hand, had few connections, but talent that was obvious from his first speech to the nation four years ago. It is Obama's gifts of temperament and intelligence and organization and ability to inspire that make him singularly qualified.

The election of an African American does not mean that any African American boy or girl can become president any more than the election of Hillary Clinton would have meant any girl could become president. Hillary's rise did not pave the way for a Sarah Palin victory, because Palin does not have the abilities we have decided we want in our president. The American people got to know her and found her lacking. After George W. Bush, we are paying more attention to qualifications, whether we are looking at a white man, an African American man, or a woman of any race.

The American people have decided what counts in electing a president is not race or religion or associations or names or gender. What matters is finding the best person for the job.

Hopefully, the cult of the ignorant leader is truly over. Because ignorant leaders makes messes that take a long time to clean up, and damage the country for generations.

I love this picture

2008-11-10T06:22:00.000-08:00

Barack and Michele Obama on election night, watching the returns. What a handsome, dignified couple. It will be such a joy having them represent our country for the next four - and hopefully eight - years.

Food for thought

2008-11-10T06:05:00.000-08:00

When will religious zealots realize that Christianity is about fixing oneself and helping others, NOT fixing others and helping oneself?

Anonymous comment on blog

ELECTION REFLECTION IX: A CHANGED ELECTORATE

2008-11-08T09:42:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush accomplished one good thing: he fired up his opposition, and opposition to his party. People like me, liberals who have been paying attention, have been squarely opposed to this president and his policies for eight years, and as he made terrible decision after terrible decision, our opposition grew. We didn't understand why the rest of the country didn't get it, why the religious right, and economic conservatives, and fearmongers like Karl Rove, still had such a hold on the country.

But in the last four years, the electorate grew weary and increasingly angry. There was no longer any doubt. George W. Bush was a miserable failure and he had caused damage in every sector of the country. And the economic meltdown in October was simply the last straw. So the electorate was ready for change - at least a majority of the electorate.

Barack Obama, the candidate, not only promised change; he even looked like change. But the electorate had also changed. The youth, especially, supported Obama enthusiastically. Raised in a multicultural world, having friends of all ethnicities and sexual orientations, young people saw Obama as one of them, a tolerant man who understood the world the way they did. The middle class, as well, was won over by Obama, who promised a revitalization of the economy and a return of the American dream they once believed in. College educated Americans voted overwhelmingly for Obama. The same voters who once thought the Republican Party of low taxes benefitted them more, woke up and smelled the coffee and supported Obama. Even the majority of voters in my own very Republican county in California voted for Obama.

In addition, there are now more Democrats than Republicans throughout the country. For the past four years Democratic registrations have gone up and Republican registrations down. The 2006 election, which put the Congress in Democratic hands for the first time in 12 years, was the first test of that. More people now call themselves Democrat than Republican, and that provided Obama with a bigger base of voters. But Obama also won over Independents.

Bush and Cheney together have destroyed the modern Republican Party which is now in free fall. But at the same time, Howard Dean used his 50 state strategy to sweep millions more voters into the new revitalized Democratic Party.

With those odds, and the exceptional candidacy and campaign of Barack Obama, it would have taken a miracle for the Republicans to win this year.

ELECTION REFLECTION VIII: THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN

2008-11-08T09:31:00.000-08:00

We have never seen a campaign like the one Barack Obama headed this year.

From raising most of his money over the internet from millions of constributors, to advertising on video games, the Obama campaign outorganized, outstrategized, and outspent any previous presidential campaign.

At Obama rallies, people signed in with their telephone numbers and email addresses. With these contact points, the Obama campaign contacted supporters daily, requesting volunteer hours and contributions. Young and old alike volunteered to phone bank and canvass for Obama, many for the very first time. If there was a potential Obama voter out there, he or she heard from someone in the campaign.

They used a bit of psychology as well. After each unfair McCain or Palin attack, they asked for money to fight it. They never acted coverly confident, and until the end said it was an uphill battle, asking for more money, and urging every voter to reject complacency and get out there and vote.

There were no leaks and very few gaffes. While the opposition used their typical smear campaign, the Obama campaign stayed cool and on message. And the message was consistent: hope and change.

In the end, that message was irresistable.

Ending divisiveness and division in the age of Obama

2008-11-08T06:22:00.000-08:00

For decades now, I have been appalled that the party claiming to be the party of moral values, the party in which evangelical Christians have found a home, a home from which they could attack and demonize others, has fooled so many people. George W. Bush, Tom DeLay, and the radical right wing have slandered and excluded Muslims, liberals, Democrats atheists, homosexuals, African Americans, and Latinos, all human beings, all included in Jefferson's assertion that "all men are created equal." Steven D. says it well:

Our country has been living a nightmare, not so much because we lost our communities, but because one political faction decided to tear them down and rip them apart, fragmenting them into smaller and smaller pieces. One faction which chose to raise the values of greed and individualism and "the one true religion" above all others. To actively exclude people from our national community and our national discourse, and not only to exclude them but to shun them, demonize them, scapegoat them make them seem less than human. It was toxic, it was divisive, it was corrosive and it was demeaning to our nation and our people. Unfortunately, for far too long it has been a winning political strategy.

No more! The election of Barack Obama has given us the opportunity to repair and reunite our multi-ethnic, multi-racial, multi-faith communities, including everyone in the benefits of citizenship or residency in the United States of America.

ELECTION REFLECTION VII: CANDIDATE OBAMA

2008-11-08T05:18:00.000-08:00

All elections are ultimately more about the person than the ideology of a party, no matter what the parties say.

Obama was a brilliant candidate.

Sure he was young (like JFK and Clinton), and sure he was inexperienced on the national stage (but more experienced than Palin), but the intelligence he possesses and the temperament he displays more than made up for that.

The voters who took the time to really get to know Obama's life story and learn just what qualities he possessed knew he would make a great president. In spite of Republican attempts to paint him as a radical, he was basically a decent, moral patriot. Married to a brilliant woman, father of two beautiful girls, having lived an exemplary life, full of accomplishments, Obama was able to fend off the criticism mostly by rising above it and by never attacking in kind.

Throughout the campaign, Obama handled vicious attacks regarding his limited association with William Ayers, and his spiritual connection to Rev. Wright. The first he mostly ignored, the second he neutralized with a brilliant speech on race. And while he fought vigorously with his opponent on the issues, he never once personally attacked him. In fact, in every speech where McCain was mentioned, Obama talked with great respect about the sacrifices McCain had made for the country. His respectfulness in talking about his opponent, his friendly demeanor in the debates (when McCain's obvious contempt for Obama showed in his refusal to look at him, his eye rolls, and his language) only confirmed the decency and even temperament of the man.

Obama's decency went beyond his treatment of his opponent, however. Obama possesses a kindness and empathy that he got from his mother. Obama often references his mother, and how the thing that would make her most angry was when he would treat someone badly. She was forever insisting he put himself in someone else's shoes. This empathy, so obviously missing in the Bush administration, is something the American people, who are basically a giving and kind people, were pleased to see in a presidential candidate.

Obama's temperament and decency were two thirds of the equation. His competence and intelligence were the third. After eight years of a bungled presidency with an incompetent and shallow president, American was hungry for someone with intellectual depth. Obama, first in his Harvard Law class, with a reputation for curiosity and listening, shows intellectual gifts we have not seen in a long time. And his thoughtfulness when confronting a problem is a refreshing contrast to Bush's governing by gut instinct, which has been such a disaster.

After eight years of Bush, America wanted a smart and competent leader, a decent and caring leader, and a steady leader.

They got all of those in Obama.

Justice in three Senate races

2008-11-07T09:03:00.000-08:00

I find it interesting that two of the three Senate races yet to be determined have tremendous emotional valence for Democrats, and the third is emblematic of so much that is wrong with the Republican Party and Alaska.

We're down to three undetermined Senate races: Georgia, Minnesota, and Alaska. All are close. In Georgia, the failure of either candidate to reach 50% means a run-off. In Minnesota, just over 200 votes separate Norm Coleman from Al Franken, which triggers an automatic recount. And in Alaska, voting irregularities and oddities have led to convicted felon Ted Stevens being in the lead. I don't know what will happen in Alaska, whether the final tally will leave Stevens in office, but if he does win people are speculating that Sarah Palin might run for his seat, and being that Alaska keeps electing Republican morons and criminals, that's entirely possible.

But the two emotional races are those in Georgia and Minnesota. Six years ago, the horrid Saxby Chambliss defeated triple amputee war hero Max Cleland by running ads against him viciously and falsely tying him to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Democrats have despised the sleazy Chambliss ever since and would love to kick him out of the Senate and replace him with a Democrat. Georgia is a red state, though, and this may not happen. But it sure would feel good.

In Minnesota, Norm Coleman took Paul Wellstone's Senate seat after Wellstone, with his wife and daughter, tragically died in a plane crash just before the 2002 election. The Republicans then attacked Dems for having a "political" memorial service, and Coleman rode that falsehood all the way to victory. I'd love to see his disgusting ass out of the Senate as well.

If there is justice in this world, perhaps the outcome of these elections will give Democrats more cause to celebrate. But then if there were justice in the world, we wouldn't have had to endure eight years of George W. Bush, with at least one and possibly two stolen elections.

Obama appoints Michelle as First Lady

2008-11-07T08:37:00.000-08:00

Very funny commentary on Barack's appointments and the ridiculousness of the criticism coming from the sore losers. The snark about the Morning Joke crew is the best. Sample:

Just in from the Obama Transition Team: It has been confirmed that Michelle
Obama will be named the First Lady in Barack Obama's Administration.

Conservatives asked to comment on the pick were almost all angry arguing that after Obama's choice of Rahm Emmanuel, long time friend and close advisor, as Chief of Staff this decision to keep Michelle Obama on as First Lady is proof positive that Obama is going back on his promise of a unity government.

Joe Scarborough and Mika Brezinzski on Morning Joe were in complete distress.

Joe said sourly, "You know, she will be the most liberal First Lady in the White House in eight years."

Mika responded by lamenting, "I think he should have picked Sarah Palin for this position. She's a mother, she is a stylish dresser, and she is a conservative. If Obama was really committed to bringing this country together he would have picked Palin to be the First Lady."

My daughter's birthday cake

2008-11-07T07:21:00.001-08:00

My daughter's husband and children presenting her with an Obama cake on her November 6th birthday.

ELECTION REFLECTION VI: THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

2008-11-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

I have noted four elements of the Republican loss this year: flawed candidates, the flawed campaign, George W. Bush, and the garbled message(s). There is one final element which perhaps is the overarching reason that McCain lost, the reason that subsumes all the other reasons: the Republican Party is in disarray, its ideology bankrupt.

We see the signs of a party self-destructing even now. The McCain advisors and staff are attacking Palin and her staff. She is being accused of gross stupidity as well as being off message and spending too much money on her family. One staffer, not recognizing apparently how badly this reflects on McCain for choosing her, called her a "Wasilla Hillbilly."

Whoa! They talk about circular firing squads in the Democratic Party, but I don't think one Democrat ever called any other Democrat something that insulting. No one wants to take the fall for this loss, and who can blame them? The Republican candidates and campaign this year were disasters. But that is only because the Republican Party, after eight years of Bush, is discredited and ideologically bankrupt.

Every idea the party has had over the past twenty-eight years was trotted out this election season, and none of them gained traction with the majority of the American people. McCain used the National Security argument, the tax and spend argument, the trickle down argument, the soft on terror argument, the drilling for oil argument, the anti-liberal argument, the anti-socialist argument, the anti-abortion argument, the not Christian enough argument, the not one of us argument, and none of them worked - except with Joe the Plumber and his Joe six-pack cohorts.

For decades the Republican Party has been a conservative party, defining itself as a party of low taxes, deregulation, small government, individualism, small business, strong military, and "Christian" values. And while these descriptions sound good, they never really materialized, at least not in any way that was beneficial to the American people.

Low taxes under Bush became low taxes for the wealthy and large corporations, even those that sent jobs overseas, and higher fees for everyone else.

Deregulation under Bush led both to the collapse of greedy banks and increased pollution of the environment.

Small government became the biggest government ever, but also the most inefficient and unsuccessful. Small government became spying on citizens, creating watch lists of Americans, torturing and imprisoning people without benefit of trial, deficit spending beyond anything we have seen, and indebtedness to the Chinese to pay for ill conceived wars and an economy that crashed.

Individualism meant you were on your own as you stood on your rooftop in New Orleans as the waters rose, and you were without health care when Insurance companies wouldn't cover you, and on food stamps because your unemployment insurance ran out.

Small business meant nothing, as many small businesses closed their doors because their customers disappeared in this terrible economy and more and more shoppers tried to survive by shopping at Wal-Mart with goods imported from China where near slave labor produced them cheaply.

The military, once strong and ready, became tired and depleted, with soldiers serving three and four tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, as Bush's ill conceived wars continued on.

And "Christian" values became reduced to oppposition to gay marriage, abortion and science, and support for wars, capital punishment, flag pins, the teaching of creationism in schools, and greed (christened the "gospel of prosperity").

Republican ideology has either failed or been proven to be a sham.

It was rejected outright this year, its only symbol the person of Sarah Palin. Even John McCain couldn't bring himself to wholeheartedly support some of its tenets.

No wonder the party is in disarray. What it once stood for has been discredited. Its very soul has been tainted. And the American people have gotten wise to the reality that a party that wants to shrink and then drown the government, as Grover Norquist said, is not the party that should be trusted with that government.

In the end, a bankrupt party cannot win elections. It never really had a chance in this one, which is why John McCain, a non traditional republican, won the primary, and why the message was so muddled. When you no longer have a solid core, you come across as confused, and in the end desperate.

And Americans don't usually elect desperate candidates to the presidency.

ELECTION REFLECTION V: THE MESSAGE DEFICIT

2008-11-06T19:08:00.000-08:00

McCain, Palin and the campaign had no clear message. Instead they hopped from one sound bite, one theme to another. But there was neither consistency nor message discipline.

McCain started out his campaign thinking the War in Iraq would be a big issue and his call for a "surge," which was partly responsible for stemming the terrible violence there, would be seen as an example of brilliant leadership. His military background, including five years spent as a POW, seemed perfect credentials for a war time presidency. The "crisis" in Georgia only amplified his credentials, or so he thought. Unfortunately, Iraq became a side issue and McCain became flustered.

McCain also thought his theme might be experience, especially since he was running against a first term senator. But he apparently wasn't paying attention when Hillary used the experience argument and failed. Perhaps he thought he had better experience, or being male he was more believable as a commander in chief. Whatever the reason, he continued with the experience argument for far too long when Obama's change argument was what the people wanted.

So he began various attempts to define himself as a change agent and Obama as too risky, too untested, too radical. First he talked about allowing offshore oil drilling and for a week or so led chants of "drill, baby, drill." When that had limited appeal, he started attacking Obama as a celebrity, with ads featuring Paris Hilton. When that didn't work he chose a female vice presidential running mate, thinking he could win over disgruntled Hillary voters. Just about the time that the people were catching on to the ignorance of his running mate, the economic crisis unfolded and he suspended his campaign and said he wouldn't debate. When that didn't turn out too well, he played the fear card, and began attacking Obama over his limited association with Bill Ayers - calling him a pal of terrorists. When that didn't work he and Palin went back to the "maverick" theme. When that didn't work he found Joe the Plumber and began talking about Obama raising taxes and being a "socialist."

While Obama maintained his theme of change, and presented idea after idea that would be representative of change, McCain lurched from one attack or gimmick to another, with no clear message and no overarching theme. And by the end of the campaign, he and Palin seemed not to even be on the same page. How could they be? No one knew from day to day what hymn they were supposed to be singing. Perhaps they didn't even have the same hymnals.

Some have said that McCain failed to articulate a clear message because he really isn't ideological. He's more of lone wolf, a Senator who votes for practical rather than ideological reasons, and perhaps that is true. He was in a real dilemma, then, as the presidential candidate of a party that has been purely ideological for years, appealing to the most extreme right wing elements of the country, all the while knowing he had to appeal to independents as well.

It was, perhaps, an impossible task. With a base and a president that are extremely ideological, and the majority of the country rejecting that president, it was going to be difficult to win a large enough group of voters to defeat the change candidate. So he tried a little traditional ideology, a little smear and fear, a pander to women with a female candidate, and a little "maverick." But there were no new ideas and no clear message about how to fix the country, and that was a huge problem.

Instead, McCain came off as erratic and unfocused, at times desperate and at times a little unhinged. While many still liked the old McCain, the McCain of 2000, the 2008 version of McCain could not provide the leadership so desperately needed in this time of economic crisis.

What Obama's victory means

2008-11-06T19:02:00.000-08:00

Courtesy of Daily Kos - picture at a Virginia victory rally on Tuesday.

How do you solve a problem like Lieberman?

2008-11-06T15:51:00.000-08:00

Like many other Democrats, I think it's time for Lieberman to go.

He has been a completely disloyal Democrat, refusing to play by the rules, refusing to support the results of a primary election that he lost, and now refusing to support the Democratic nominee for president.

The man is all about himself and his own ambition, no matter how much he says he was supporting McCain for the good of the country. If he really cared about the good of the country, he wouldn't have supported a 72 year old man that couldn't even keep his facts straight, and he certainly would have withdrawn his support once McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice president.

When Lieberman lost the primary election in Connecticut to Ned Lamont, he refused to accept it and ran as an Independent, winning with Republican votes. That was not loyalty to party or party protocol. That had nothing to do with the good of the country. It had everything to do with Lieberman's cushy seat in Congress.

When McCain became the Republican nominee, he didn't even wait to see who the Democrat would be. He jumped on the McCain team "for the good of the country." Though Hillary and Obama had both campaigned for him in his unsuccessful primary, he refused to support one of them. I suppose he thought he had a much better chance of being appointed to a high position in a McCain presidency than in an Obama presidency, and certainly he will be defeated if he runs for the Senate again in Connecticut, so maybe he was choosing "the good of Lieberman," but it had nothing to do with the country.

Lieberman had an even stronger obligation to the Democratic Party because he was once its vice presidential nominee, but he completely rejected that responsibility.

He can't be trusted. He shouldn't be in the Democratic caucus, and even if it means the Dems won't have a 60 vote majority, he should be kicked out. He's a traitor to the party and traitors cannot be tolerated. If the Republican want him, they can have him. He won't be re-elected to the Senate, and we can elect a real Democrat the next time.

ELECTION REFLECTION IV: THE McCAIN CAMPAIGN

2008-11-06T15:19:00.000-08:00

In 2000 and 2004 you might say the Republicans had flawed candidates. George W. Bush was a neophyte, a poor speaker, and an intellectual lightweight, while his vice presidential nominee was slightly more congenial than Satan. But the Rove campaign was effective in at least three things: negative campaigning, vote counting, and getting out the vote.

Rove, a disciple of Lee Attwater, the grand master of the smear campaign, was even better at it than his mentor. He was able to marginalize two distinguished politicians, one a sitting vice president and one a war hero, by attacking their strengths. By keeping his own candidate above the fray, allowing him to appear congenial and folksy, and by relying on allies to do the dirty work, Rove managed to get his guy into the White House.

He also knew how to count electoral votes and concentrated on his base, a combination of ideologically fiscal conservatives and evangelical Christians. The first time, Bush won in a squeaker while losing the popular vote, and the second time, with a war being waged and the memory of 9/11 still fresh, he won with a slightly larger margin. But it was never a blowout. Rove never intended it to be. He didn't want his president to be beholden to too many groups. So he relied heavily on evangelical preachers who would whip up anger over things like abortion, gay marriage, and the ghosts of Vietnam to motivate certain groups to come out and vote. And it worked.

But negative campaigning seems to have lost its effectiveness. It's almost as if the people realized they were played for fools in the past two elections, voting for an incompetent man because they really disapproved of homosexual marriage and abortion and because they were fooled into believing lies about Bush's opponent.

This time they seemed to be saying "We don't care about Bill Ayers, or labels like "socialist," and "defeatist," and "tax and spend," and "liberal." We don't care that Obama's middle name is "Hussein," and we don't believe he is a "muslim" or care that he sat in Rev. Wright's church. We're not falling for that again."

And they didn't.

This time they wanted a serious candidate, with serious ideas and a serious temperament.

That's why McCain choosing the ignorant Sarah Palin didn't work, and why the various other gimmicks like Joe the Plumber and "drill, baby, drill" and the persona of a maverick didn't work.

When times are tough, and the man in charge has failed to make things better, and in fact has created the tough times, you don't go to one of his closest associates for the solutions. And you certainly don't go to him if he proves himself to be erratic and unserious in his approach to campaigning and governing.

The American people wanted a problem solver in chief. McCain tried to sell himself by tearing down Obama and testing out advertising slogans. That simply wasn't going to work this time.

ELECTION REFLECTION III: BUSH

2008-11-06T15:07:00.000-08:00

Bush fatigue was a huge factor in this election. But the nation was more than just tired of Bush - they were embarassed by him and angry at him for his many failures and the disasters he brought to the country by his incompetence and his disregard for the well being of the citizens.

From the War in Iraq, begun with a lie, to Katrina and his callous indifference to the lives of the citizens of New Orleans, to the financial meltdown that was largely due to conservative deregulation of the financial industry, Bush proved what a disaster one unqualified and incurious person can be in the White House.

No one, even his staunches supporters, believed McCain to be of high intellect - smarter than Bush perhaps, but still not someone with the kind of brilliant mind that the people, in their own common wisdom, knew was required to solve the many Bush problems that he will inherit.

Eight years is a long time to give to a president who did not earn the popular vote the first time around, and had to be appointed by the Supreme Court. Four more years is a long time to give the benefit of the doubt to someone whose first term was less than stellar.

Being of the same party, and voting with the president 90% of the time, did not help McCain win over the people. (In fact, it was only when he camapaigned with his choice for V.P., Sarah Palin, an extremist, albeit attractive know-nothing who appealed to the wing-nut religious base, that McCain even got big crowds.) Although McCain ran against Bush in 2000, and was the preferred choice of many because of his more independent status, once Bush smeared and defeated him in the primary, McCain became a loyalist and supported the president, banking on Bush being a successful president who would support him in 2008. Only by 2008 Bush was a miserable failure and only hurt McCain.

In the end, you might say Bush defeated McCain twice.

ELECTION REFLECTION II: FLAWED REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES

2008-11-06T06:03:00.000-08:00

I want to look at the election first from what went wrong on the losing side, though ultimately I think the election was WON by Obama and not LOST by McCain (though Republicans are now trying to peddle the "McCain lost it" idea so as to discount the power of Obama.)

The first thing that went wrong for the Republicans in this election was that they chose the wrong candidates.

McCain had a powerful personal story, and a reputation as someone who would buck his own party and thus appeal to Independents, but he was also 72 years old, and it showed. His forgetfulness, his obvious contempt for Obama, and his confused reaction to the economic crisis all showed a man not in his prime, a man too much a prisoner of his own emotions, a man with possible early dementia. No one ever spoke of that latter possibility, but voters could see the imperfections in the man, the fatigue, the mere reflection of the man he once was, and the lack of intellectual sharpness. In this time of multiple crises in America, they didn't trust him to be in charge.

When McCain chose a completely unqualified woman to be his vice presidential running mate, it only magnified the problems with his candidacy. Sure, she energized the "culture wars" base, and more than a few men who saw her as a sex symbol, but Independents and serious Republicans, even those ideologically in tune with McCain, were repulsed by the choice. First, it proved McCain was impulsive and lacked good judgment. Second, it showed McCain far more interested in a gimmick to help him win by a hair (which is all he would ever win by) than in the welfare of the country. That he would risk putting the nation in the hands of a totally unqualified person was too much even for some Republicans to swallow. By the time of the election, 60% of the electorate deemed her unqualified and many of them who once admired McCain turned away from him because of it.

The contrast of the intellectually superior, steady and optimistic, and highly disciplined Obama with the intellectually shallow, emotionally erratic, and often confused (with respect to message) McCain was obvious to most voters and ultimately it hurt McCain even with members of his own Party.

The first thing you have to have in a presidential candidate is someone who is qualified and relevant NOW, not someone who has a good story from forty years ago or someone who might be ready ten years from now. Obama is in his prime now, writing a story for today, addressing the issues of the moment, while McCain's compelling story is from forty years ago, his prime issue - the need to be victorious in war - still tied to the failure in Vietnam.

So those three things - poor judgment, a candidate past his prime and out of step with the times, and intellectual and emotional inferioriority - all made McCain too much of a risk for the voters, especially when he wanted to follow an intellectually incurious and unqualified president of his own Party into the White House.

ELECTION REFLECTION I

2008-11-05T11:06:00.000-08:00

Over the next few days I will write my reflections on this historic election, the reasons for the Obama victory as well as the McCain loss, the meaning of such a huge Democratic win, and some speculation about the future of the two parties.

It is difficult to summarize the many reasons Obama won this election. There are so many factors, political, historical, economic, and personal that led to the victory.

Sometimes, however, I think it boils down to destiny.

When I look back at his life and the preparation that led him to this moment, to his travels overseas as a child, to his extraordinary temperament, to his enormous energy and drive, to his first class mind, to his early and total opposition to the Iraq War, and to his introduction to the nation a mere four years ago with a speech at the Democratic convention, I see something that almost seems pre-ordained. Obama was the right man at the right time, like Washington, Lincoln, and other great leaders, who seem to emerge right when they are needed.

There is a unique quality to Obama seen in only a handful of great leaders, a quality that draws people to him, that makes them want to follow, that energizes them to sacrifice days and weeks of their life to work for his election. Call it charisma, or commitment, or simply an acute sense of one's vocation in the world, Obama has that certain something that elevates him above all other politicians.

It is that "something," combined with an excellent campaign strategy and the failure of contemporary conservative ideology, that enabled him to defeat both the Clintons and a vicious Republican smear machine, and emerge as the next President of the United States.

There are much more mundane things to talk about with respect to how and why Obama won and how and why McCain lost, but today is a day for celebration and reflection and rest.

Yes we can! Yes we did!

Our new leaders - a new day

2008-11-05T05:38:00.000-08:00

The enormity of tomorrow

2008-11-03T07:38:00.001-08:00

From William Rivers Pitt, looking back and then looking to tomorrow. As always, beautifully moving.

We have seen tax cuts which looted our Treasury and further enriched the wealthy, we have seen presidential vetoes of legislation designed to heal the sick and feed the children, and we have seen executive orders designed to shatter the Constitution and erase our rights. We have seen annihilation by fire and water visited upon our cities and ourselves. We have seen wars and rumors of wars. We have seen fear visited upon the populace by design. We have seen terrorists, and all too often, they have been us.
We have known death, and disgrace, and failure, and greed, and theft, and shame, and utter lawlessness. We have lost hope, and been afraid, and fallen to exhaustion and despair. We have seen torture and murder stamped with the seal of highest approval, and we have become what we despise.
But tomorrow is a different matter...
...There are many eyes upon us today as we prepare to step into tomorrow. The eyes of those lost in fire and smoke of a bright September morning watch us, the eyes of those lost in needless battle watch us, the eyes of those subsumed by an invading sea watch us, the eyes of those lost to disease and poverty and greed watch us, the eyes of all those lost who should not be so are upon us, they remember what we did yesterday, and they will see us tomorrow.

What is there to be afraid of?

2008-11-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

California's ballot is always full of crazy propositions, an attempt at direct democracy in our representative state government.

This year is no different, and by far the most contested and controversial proposition is the one numbered "8," a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

This weekend, demonstrators were out with signs on street corners, pusing the sandwich board advertisers for "going out of business" sales off their normal turf.

Right at the freeway off ramp was a group of several dozen "yes on 8" supporters, one shouting propaganda with a bull horn. On another corner, sans bullhorn, was a group of young people with "no on 8" signs. One homemade sign read "How come I didn't get to vote on your marriage?"

This proposition hasn't had the emotional impact on me that it has had on many others. The Mormons and the Catholics are shaking in fear that "marriage" will be "destroyed" if gay men and women are allowed to marry. They are sure their children will be forced to read books about homosexual marriage in school, and some even think that their children will be "recruited into the gay lifestyle" if 8 passes, as if there is some kind of gay army ready to take over the country. They say marriage was "instituted by God," as the union of a man and a woman and they think allowing gay marriage would ruin the institution somehow, though they don't say how.

On the other side are those who see this as a civil rights issue and something whose time has come. My children are in this group. Having had gay friends, and having grown up thinking being gay or straight is simply one aspect of who one is, they see no problem with gay marriage and in fact can become quite livid when they see "yes on 8" crowds. They see it as prejudice, hate, and discrimination. They see marriage as a civil institution, and so something which can be changed according to the needs or wishes of society.

My view is simply this: I don't see how allowing gay citizens to marry in civil ceremonies, and still allowing churches to decide whether or not they will allow gay congregants to have their marriages blessed in a church, can possibly hurt marriage.

First of all, the percentage of gay citizens is very small, ranging from 4 to 10 percent of the population. Second, marriage is well on its way to being destroyed by heterosexuals with divorce rates at 50%. If people are concerned about saving marriage, they should start with those who are allowed to marry now - heterosexuals. They are the ones who are destroying marriage.

Yes, allowing gay men and lesbians to marry will change marriage, at least civil marriage, but there is no reason to believe it will destroy marriage itself. (How does one measure that anyway?) Gay marriage has been legal for many years in Massachusetts and I see no evidence that marriage has been destroyed there. In fact, with the ability to marry, many gay relationships may become more stable, and there will be fewer gay men and lesbians who hide their true orientation and marry someone of the opposite gender in order to try to fit in, only to have their marriages end in disaster.

I find this proposition to be one more example of conservative fear and fearmongering, and though the idea of gay marriage is something many people will struggle to get used to, this is the way society progresses. Change is never easy, but there is usually far less to fear than conservatives think there is.

Conservatives have not convinced me that any harm will come to me, my children, or marriage, if gay men and lesbians are allowed to marry. On the other hand, inserting discrimination into the state constitution seems like a very un-American idea to me.

So I will be voting "no" on Proposition 8.

The real division in America...

2008-10-31T06:01:00.000-07:00

...is not Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal.

The real division in this country is between those who think and value education, scholarship, reason and wisdom in our leaders, and those who think any old Joe the plumber or snarky Sarah can pontificate about foreign policy or lead the country.

Thinking Republicans and conservatives, for instance, even if they support McCain, have determined that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president. The latest is former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger. While he still supports the Republican ticket, he says he prays Palin would not have to take over the presdidency. Colin Powell, who does not support McCain, also thinks she is a disaster. Other Republicans have come out for Obama, or expressed concern about Palin's knowledge and wisdom, and I imagine many more who say nothing will silently vote for Obama in the privacy of the voting booth.

Newspaper endorsements are going more than two to one for Obama, even in some right leaning papers. Educated people, by far, are supporting Obama. People in cities are supporting Obama. The demographic that appears to be the strongest for McCain is the rural, uneducated and "low information" voter. Of course, some are voting for McCain simply out of party loyalty, while others still maintain Republicans are better on cultural - religious issues.

But in this election year, after eight years of a low information president, a president who has clearly made a mess of everything, it seems the high information voters, the educated Americans, those who think as well as pray, want the most intelligent presidential candidate and the most qualified vice presidential candidate to run the country.

It's no longer good enough to let a good old boy ascend to the presidency. It's no longer okay to say you want a president you can have a beer with - at least to those who value expertise and intelligence.

The history books will say, should Obama win, that Sarah Palin was the final nail in McCain's presidential coffin. In a year when the high information voters (including all those young college students) outnumbered low information voters, Sarah Palin was an insult.

Her crazed supporters may love her because she is folksy and like them, but the rest of us find her presence on the ticket a slap in the face to Americans who have watched a dimwit run the country into the ground over the past eight years. With all the talented people that still remain in the Republican Party, it is astonishing that McCain would choose Sarah Palin and her dysfunctional family to appeal to the rural, uninformed and often racist voter.

John McCain insulted thinking Americans when he chose her, and with that one decision disqualified himself from being the chief decision maker in the country.

McCain is a slimeball

2008-10-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

McCain is a slimeball.

McCain is a sleaze-bucket.

McCain has no honor.

Obama has never run any ad even remotely like these.

May McCain get everything he justly deserves for this disgusting attack on an honorable and decent man. And that goes double for Sarah Dolittle.

And may the Republican Party slink off and die a quick death. This is not the America I grew up loving - this is an America where one political opponent lies, cheats and slanders his opponent, not because he cares one whit about the country, but because his quest for power and glory cannot be thwarted.

Christian in name only

2008-10-29T08:31:00.000-07:00

It amazes me how many self-described evangelical Christians are rabidly supportive of John McCain and Sarah Palin. How many commandments must McCain and Palin break before these Christian phonies finally reject them?

Let's see. How about the commandment about not bearing false witness, or not lying about someone else? McCain and Palin are outright lying about Obama. Obama is not a socialist. He has no desire for the government to control the means of production. He isn't for state sponsored universal health care, for example. He's for continuing the system of employer sponsored health insurance, with help offered to those who must buy their own policies. That isn't socialism.
Neither is giving tax breaks to the middle class or returning to a more progressive income tax, all policies which have been used for decades in our capitalist system.

So the accusation that Obama is a socialist is a lie, as is the accusation that Obama "pals around with terrorists." First of all Obama doesn't even pal around with one terrorist. He sat on a board with William Ayers, a radical from the sixties who turned himself in and was not convicted of anything. Ayers is now a college professor and a well known advocate for better education policy. If he was once considered a "terrorist," he is not now. (Most real Christians believe in redemption and forgiveness anyway, so why is this an issue?) And Obama has nothing to do with him today and hasn't for years. As for the plural "terrorists," this is even more of a lie. No one has been able to name any former radical other than Ayers or any current terrorist that Obama associates with. So Palin is lying.

How about the commandment to not steal? The republicans are trying desperately to steal the election, by knocking people off voting rolls illegally, by sending out notices that democrats must vote on November 5th, and by using voting machines that have no paper trail and are in some cases recording the votes wrongly.

The republicans in this election (and in the past two) lie, cheat and steal. They slander and whip up hatred in their rallies. Obama, by way of contrast, praises McCain's service, never attacks him for who he is, and tells his listeners not to boo, but just to vote. Obama's behavior is far more Christian than that of Sarah Palin.

I am sick of these "Christians." I am sick of their hatred for gay Americans and black Americans and Mexican Americans, all of whom are children of God. This is a violation of one of the two commandments Jesus gave: love your neighbor as you love yourself.

I am also sick of the gullibility of these Christians-in-name-only who still believe that the republican party will actually do anything to stop abortion. They have had thirty years to do something and they have done nothing. And they never will, because they know there will always be gullible self-righteous "Christians" whom they can deceive into believing that democrats have a "pro-abortion" agenda, which they most definitely do not.

Obama is not pro-abortion, in fact he intends to implement policies to reduce the number of abortions. Abortions generally are reduced in democratic administrations when poverty is reduced, but are increased in republican administrations when poverty levels rise. (70% of all abortions occur in the poor segments of society.) But republicans have decided their one political strategy is to elect "pro-life" candidates who promise to appoint supreme court justices who will overturn Roe V. Wade. There are three flaws with this argument:

1. Republican presidents probably won't nominate justices who will overturn Roe V. Wade because it will mean the end of Republican dominance of the presidency. Once you lose that issue, what else do you have? War and depression?

2. Even if Roe V. Wade is overturned, it won't limit abortions as many states will make abortion legal, and women in states where it is illegal will simply travel to another state, or find an illegal way to have an abortion.

3. Women always have and always will have abortions, legal or not. The legal strategy may change federal law, but it will not likely reduce abortions. Only persuasion and policies to help prevent unwanted pregnancies and reduce poverty levels will do that, and Republicans are failures at all of those things.

Democrats reduce the number of abortions by addressing underlying reasons for abortion: lack of education about contraception, lack of access to contraception, poverty, violent sexual crimes against women. Republicans do just the opposite. They ignore or make worse every possible strategy that could help desperate and vulnerable women, but are all too willing to condemn them when they seek an abortion because someone rapes them, or molests them, or when they are too poor to raise another child but have no access to birth control to prevent pregnancy.

Republicans say abortion is murder. Perhaps so, perhaps not. But Roe V. Wade does not mandate abortion, it simply permits it within the law. On the other hand, war is state sponsored murder. Soldiers are mandated to kill both combatants and civilians. And war waged for false reasons is especially heinous, as is this Iraq War. Yet Republicans, including many "Christians," seem almost universally in favor of both war and capital punishment, two types of state sponsored killing. I find this the ultimate in hypocrisy.

Most democrats I know are morally opposed to abortion and would not have one themselves. But they simply do not think that in the first trimester the government should intervene in a decision a woman makes with her doctor. They also think a woman has a right to protect her life when pregnancy threatens it, and that rape and incest are special circumstances that a woman must be allowed to consider in deciding whether or not to continue a pregnancy. No one I know likes abortion. But democrats believe making abortion illegal is a violation of medical privacy, would be difficult to enforce, and would not likely make much of a dent in the number of abortions anyway. On the other hand, they believe the numbers of abortions can be reduced with the strategies listed above.

I'm tired of being preached to by Christians-in-name-only who slander others, lie about political opponents, try to steal elections, and cheer state sponsored killing. I'm tired of them using the Bible as a weapon. And I'm really tired of being attacked by "pro-life" people because I don't think abortion is the business of the state.

I'll take my chances with the version of Christianity I learned growing up. Love your enemies, be good to those that persecute you, don't lie, don't cheat, don't steal, take care of the poor, and judge not lest you be judged.

And I'm voting for the man who best embodies those principles: Barack Obama.

A woman president

2008-10-28T09:53:00.000-07:00

Two women have been on the national stage this presidential election.

Hillary Clinton, clearly among the most qualified candidates ever for the presidency - male or female - had the misfortune of competing in the primary against a brilliant candidate with a superior organization. Had it not been for Barack, she would have easily won the nomination and probably defeated John McCain. While she was a formidable opponent and one whose tactics I condemned repeatedly, once she was defeated she showed real class in throwing her support to Obama and in campaigning enthusiastically for the Democratic ticket.

The other candidate pales in comparison. Sarah Palin is clearly the least qualified candidate to ever run for the vice presidency. A radical right wing no-nothing, she has become a joke and an embarassment, not just to the McCain campaign, but to all the women of America who hoped for someone bright and experienced to represent them. No matter how much the Republicans claim she has experience, being governor of Alaska is like handling a state in the 1800's. It just doesn't qualify you to understand and be prepared to handle the enormously complex economic and foreign crises of the twenty-first century. And as the campaign realizes it is losing, possibly in a landslide, Palin is not remaining loyal to McCain. She is going her own way, speaking her own mind, rejecting the advice of her handlers and the presidential candidate, and causing dissension in the ranks. She cares only for her own repuation and her quest for power, even as she throws John McCain overboard.

Unless Palin consolidates power within the Party (and she is more likely to cause it to fracture) I doubt we will see a female Republican candidate at the top of the ticket for a long time. On the other hand, we may see Hillary or some other qualified Democrat in 2016. Hillary has conducted herself well and proven a woman can be a terrific candidate. Palin has conducted herself poorly and proven that a woman can also be merely an ornament, a well-dressed, well-coifed Barbie doll, with little intelligence but a lot of bitchiness.

Sarah Palin is not the kind of woman I want to be the first female president. Palin is the anti-feminist, someone who rejects feminism even as she has only gotten to where she is because of the feminist movement.

I want the first woman president to be a feminist, someone who understands how to be a strong woman without being a bitchy woman, someone who has intelligence and wisdom, grace and poise - not someone who simply has good looks.

And I want the first woman president to be a Democrat. If Hillary wants to run in 2016, that would be fine with me.

Sarah Palin must not just be defeated on November 4th - she must be permanently marginalized

2008-10-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens, writing in Slate, discusses Sarah Palin's anti-science and radical religious views, which remind me of the views of some other people I know.

He closes with this:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

I particularly like his reference to "theocratic bullies." These are people who knock on your door and try to sell you their god, or accost you on your way out of K-Mart with their propaganda. These are people who are so convinced of their own righteousness and the inerrancy of their literal interpretation of the Bible (which is the only thing they have ever studied), that they use scripture as a weapon in political arguments and want the entire nation to adhere to their fantasies of witchcraft and demons and end of days theology.

It isn't enough to defeat Sarah Palin at the polls in one week. She must be stopped from ever entering the national public arena again. She, and those like her who want to make America a theocracy, must be marginalized permanently.

People first!

2008-10-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

John McCain's campaign slogan is "Country First."

I'm not exactly sure what that means, and suppose it is deliberately vague so you can read what you want into it. But it strikes me as typical Republican uber-patriotism - similar to "America right or wrong" and "You're either with us or against us."

It signifies all those things Republicans demand of leaders: wearing a flag pin, being for a Constitutional amendment to ban flag burning, insisting on victory in Iraq and anywhere else America fights, supporting the troops, never criticizing your country, never opposing war, etc.

None of these things - except supporting the troops who are being abused so terribly by this administration - are important to me. None of them help any of my fellow citizens solve their problems. In fact, some of them actually create problems for my fellow citizens. Demanding "victory" in Iraq, for instance, which is something McCain does, is simply an excuse to keep troops on endless rotations in that god-forsaken country, because no one has any idea what victory actually means. And I guess it is something different from "Mission Accomplished."

But then I'm a Democrat - a defeatist, a blame American first person, according to Republicans.

Actually, as a Democrat, rather than putting "Country First," I put people first.

This government we cherish does not exist to protect a configuration on a map or an ideal in the minds of Americans. It exists to protect the people of that land and to help solve their common problems. It exists to provide both safety and prosperity for all the people, or as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it so well: to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." To do those things, one must put people first.

So, while McCain's supporters wave signs saying "COUNTRY FIRST," Obama's supporters might legitimately carry signs saying "PEOPLE FIRST."

Because that's what the Democratic Party stands for: putting people first.

A less insular nation

2008-10-27T06:03:00.000-07:00

Nate Silver's latest map is below. If this projection holds, it shows something very interesting.

We have long recognized that the two coasts are far more liberal and democratic than the South and the prarie states. But it now seems that, with the exception of the old Confederacy and the states heavily populated by Mormons, the rest of America may be becoming less conservative.

Western states that border Mexico are blue (were John McCain not running it is likely that Arizona would also be blue) and Northern states that border Canada are blue or pink (only leaning Republican). So all the states, again with the exception of the old Confederacy, that are on the border of oceans or other countries are moving in a more progressive and less conservative direction.

This has everything to do with being exposed to other cultures and new ideas and being less insular. In a global community, this is essential. It's hopeful to see it happening.

One thinks of Lincoln, on the verge of greatness

2008-10-26T16:50:00.000-07:00

Obama in Colorado today.

The crowd exceded 100,000.

The nation is hungry for the hope he offers.

I am overwhelmed by this moment in history.

Republicans are killing my mother

2008-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

My mother, who has leukemia and depends on visits to the hospital infusion center for blood transfusions, was told yesterday that the center is closing as of next Friday. The hospital recently expanded, adding a huge emergency room and maternity center, but they claim they can no longer afford to keep the infusion center open.

My mother has Medicare and a great supplemental insurance policy and her transfusions are paid for, but too many people without health insurance are coming to the emergency room, where they can't be turned away, and too many people are suffering from this terrible economy and cannot pay their hospital bills. And so, the hospital has decided to no longer pay for infusion nurses and is shutting down the center that not only provides blood tranfusions, but also chemotherapy to hundreds of patients.

To my knowledge, there is no other infusion center in this area.

So my mother, who cannot travel long distances and who must be close to my father who is disabled, will die sooner than she might have with proper care at an infusion center.

Thank you, Republicans. You are responsible for this.

You have been adamantly against health coverage for all, causing hospitals to lose money when they treat the uninsured. The moron in the White House said people without health insurance still have health care - all they have to do is go to the emergency room. What the moron didn't say is that these people often don't pay their emergency room bills, causing financial hardship to the hospitals who must pay for staff salaries and medical supplies regardless, which then causes them to cut back on other services or even close.

You have also been idiotic advocates of a failed economic policy which, rather than causing wealth to "trickle down," has caused a wasteland of poverty and job loss and bank failures and stock market collapse. This, too, affects a hospital's ability to remain financially solvent.

So, in addition to increasing poverty, enriching the top 1% of the population, depriving Americans of health insurance, waging immoral wars, and ruining the economy with an ideology that even Alan Greenspan now says was flawed (if you had listened to us you would have seen it coming, but you are such arrogant, ignorant lemmings that you refused to listen), you are also killing people.

Congratulations!

You have not even begun to see my rage.

Grief and hope

2008-10-24T16:07:00.000-07:00

I just looked at the last time I posted (five days ago) and realize some of you may be wondering where I've been.

My father in law died last week and this Wednesday was the funeral. He would have loved the send-off. His six children and almost all of his grandchildren and many great grandchildren were there. A fire truck accompanied the funeral procession of this well loved retired Battalion Chief. The party afterwards was lovely, with many stories about him told with love and happy memories. My grandson Sean didn't attend the funeral, but came to the gathering afterwards and asked why everyone has a "party" when someone dies. "Did you expect that everyone would be crying and sad?" I asked. He said "yes." It was an opportunity to tell him that when someone dies, we cry, but we also get together to celebrate his life. He then went on to eat everything in sight and chase after some of his cousins.

The funeral was only the midpoint of a dreadful week. On Monday, my mother awoke with a terrible pain in her side that got progressively worse. I took her to her blood test and then on to her primary care doctor who did a number of tests and was wonderful to her. She even put her in a wheelchair and walked her out to the car herself when everyone else had gone out to lunch and there was no nurse to help us out. We went home with pain pills and antibiotics and then her oncologist called with her lab results and said he wanted us to come in the next day. My husband and I spent the night to watch over her and help her and my disabled dad, and got little sleep.

On Tuesday, we visited the oncologist in the morning, who told us my mom's chemo was no longer working and her leukemia cells were increasing. Her pain, he thought, could be her spleen, although by the time he saw us the pain was going away. It could have been a slight tear in the spleen, a bleed brought on by her low platelet count. She needed a platelet transfusion that day as well. In the evening, my two sons from Seattle came in and my San Diego son picked them up at the airport and brought them here, then we all talked for a while and got to bed late. I had arranged for a caregiver to spend the night and the next day with my parents so I could go to the funeral.

I left the funeral early to be with my parents, and wait for my husband and sons to finish visiting and join me there later. My Seattle sons had not seen their grandmother since January and they had a nice, though short, visit.

On Thursday, I took my mom to her blood test and then my husband and I took our sons to the airport, came home and collapsed. I awoke at 1:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.

On Friday, a hospice nurse came to see my mom, dad and I to talk about what they could provide. And then my mom went to the hospital for a transfusion and I came home for a much needed nap.

There is much more to say about what happened at the party after the funeral, in terms of political arguments that were started with my husband and one son because family members (conservative republican McCain supporters) saw our Obama bumper stickers and felt the need to challenge us. I wasn't there when it happened, but word got back to me. I will have much more to say about that tomorrow, after a night's sleep.

Don't give up on me or my blog. I'm going through a lot, but the one bright spot is that when I was up in the wee hours this morning, the news channels were showing clips from last night's Saturday Night Live special. Oh...and Barack Obama has a huge lead in the polls.

I can endure a lot if I know our country is finally going to be in the hands of a wise and gifted leader.

I am beginning to hope and while my husband and I are losing our parents, members of the "Greatest Generation" I see good things for the next generation, things I can't wait to write about.

2008 is light years away from 2004

2008-10-20T06:14:00.000-07:00

In the 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, the Republican Party had an effective strategy for victory involving several factors:

1. Ground game
2. Framing
3. Cultural Divisiveness
4. Money advantage
5. Disenfranchisement of minority voters
6. Smears

In 2000, this strategy actually lost them the popular vote, which they interpreted as deficits in numbers 1 and 3. Rove decided too many evangelicals stayed home because they weren't as excited about Bush as he wanted them to be, because of a ground game that was good, but not good enough, and because Bush wasn't culturally pure enough. But they managed to steal the election, primarily because of the disenfranchisement of minority voters in Florida and other deceptive practices.

That deficit was fixed in 2004. By then, Bush's speechwriters had written enough evangelical code into his speeches and Bush was promising a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Also, anti-gay marriage amendments were on several state ballots. By then, Bush had proven to be the handmaiden of the radical religious right and so the ground game included a push by many conservative churches and pastors.

By 2004 the smear machine had improved as well. So in 2004, Bush grabbed the popular vote as well as the electoral vote.

All the other elements of Bush's two "victories," including a money advantage, favorable framing of the issues, and disenfranchisment of minority voters (improper scrubbing of voter rolls, and inadequate number of voting machines in minority, Democratic leaning precincts) factored into the 2004 victories.

This time, everything has changed. The Democrats took notice of Bush's strategy and were determined not to let it win out again over what they saw as their superior message.

In 2008 Obama has a distinct money advantage, having decided to opt out of public financing. McCain is criticizing him for it, saying it will lead to corruption, but what McCain fails to see is that the majority of donations to Obama are small, and that therefore the number of donors to his campaign is huge. It's hard to imagine corruption resulting from millions of average citizens donating to a campaign. This gives him an advantage not only in dollars, but also in supporters.

This leads to the second advantage: Obama's superior ground game, with a record number of paid staff and volunteers. Obama is inspiring people everywhere to get out the vote, and so volunteers of all ages and all walks of life (including my daughter who drove from California to Las Vegas, leaving her three children in the care of her husband for a weekend, to "turn Nevada blue") knocked on doors and picked up phones to spread the word.

Obama also has a team of 5000 volunteer lawyers who will be monitoring the polls on election day, and who are even now filing lawsuits to prevent the dirty tricks the Republicans are so famous for. Recently, they helped the Democratic Secretary of State of Ohio in her appeal to the Supreme Court to allow 200,000 new voter registrations. Reports are already coming in from North Carolina and Virginia of voting machine "malfunctions" wherein votes for Obama are recorded as votes for McCain (sort of a techno-butterfly ballot), but the lawyers are on it.

The cultural divisiveness and the smears from the right are in full swing as we all know, but the people seem less vulnerable to them this time. Sure, there is a wing-nut contingent that falls for the demonization of Democrats every time, but fewer seem vulnerable this time. Maybe thinking people in the country are tired of division. Maybe the huge problems facing us are just too important for us to fall for Republican pettiness again. Or maybe Barack is simply too inspirational for the smears to stick. In any case, they haven't yet turned things in McCain's favor.

Finally, framing. George Lakoff has been saying for over four years that the Republicans frame issues and campaigns and the media ends up adopting their frame and dooming Democrats. Even this is different this year. Obama's "change" frame has worked, as has his claim to have the better temperament.

This time, not only do the Democrats have the better message and the better policy prescriptions, but they finally have the better campaign. And that is why Obama will win, in spite of the pockets of racism that still exist, that are actively being exploited by the McCain campaign.

Maybe the divide and conquer strategy Republicans have used since Nixon is finally dying. Maybe the American people are sick of the Republicans playing them for fools and idiots. Maybe they're tired of the hate and fearmongering. Maybe a majority of the American people yearn for a real "uniter" and a nation that gets to work to solve its problems.

Maybe the years of Republicans divisiveness and smear are over. Maybe America has finally grown up.

Will we be a great nation again?

2008-10-19T15:26:00.000-07:00

I almost don't know what to say.

The swift boating of John Kerry in 2004 was nothing compared to the slime and slander being directed at Barack Obama. He is being linked to "terrorists," called a "socialist," and has already been called a Muslim and an Arab, neither of which ought to be a slanders, but in this very paranoid and prejudiced nation, apparently are.

John McCain and Sarah Palin are throwing everything they can at Obama in an effort to win. They are also disenfranchising as many voters as they can, even as they try to pin a bogus claim of voter fraud on Obama's supporters. What they are doing to a good and patriotic American, who happens to be black - which is apparently the real problem they have with him, is sickening and disgusting.

I have no qualms about skewering sacred cows. I have criticized my government for the past eight years, and expressed my disgust at Catholic clergy. I even dared to speak up against Saint Ronny Reagan. So I'm willing to skewer one more: the former POW, supposed war hero, John McCain. In my opinion, this man is not a patriot. Perhaps he was at one time, though I must say bombing civilians for one's country is problematic. Perhaps at one time John McCain had courage as well. But John McCain does not have courage now. How much courage does it take to run a disgusting campaign? How much courage does it take to be so scared of losing that you would give up any principles you might have once had? How much courage does it take to be a racist, to falsely accuse your opponent of treason, to do everything you can to play on people's fears and prejudices and divide the people of the nation against each other?

It takes no courage. In fact, John McCain is so afraid of losing that he will do anything in the effort to win - including destroying any semblance of decency and any hope of unity. He is willing to tear us apart, brother against brother, not because of any noble intent, but just to satisfy his own ego. This makes him neither patriot nor hero.

As for Sarah Palin, she is being hailed as a courageous woman who gave birth to a child with Down syndrome when she could have had an abortion. This is, of course, absurd. Sarah Palin could not have had an abortion as she considers it evil. Sarah Palin simply followed her conscience. Are we all to be hailed as courageous just because we don't violate our own ethical and moral codes? Am I courageous because I don't rob the local 7-11 or murder my neighbor?

And now, Sarah Palin, unaware of just what an unqualifed and intellectually dull woman she is, is also desperate not to lose. Since she's more than willing to lie - perhaps honesty isn't part of her moral code. She is accusing Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists" and all sorts of other nefarious activities. And like her fellow fake maverick, she doesn't care what she does to the country in the process.

Barack Obama has a lot of enemies. All good people do, because they threaten the status quo, because they draw people to themselves, because they offer change, which scares the hell out of some people. Barack Obama also has enemies because of his skin color, which is just more sad commentary on the white supremacy that infects too much of this country.

Obama is still ahead, and hopefully will win. But John McCain will use ugly tactic after ugly tactic to stop him. I suppose he could overcome the message of hope and change and unity that Barack offers, with fear and status quo and division. If he does, and he gains the presidency by a combination of trickery, deceit and outright theft, a lot of people will never forgive him.

I, for one, will never forgive the citizens of my country for being so easily decieved, so ignorant, so racist, so fearful, and so willing to embrace their shadow side.

We finally have a chance to turn the page, to start again, to renew this country, as Colin Powell reminded us today. If we let John McCain's ugly tactics and lack of patriotism win, we deserve every terrible thing we get from a McCain presidency.

On the other hand, if we reject McCain and Palin and their slimy disgusting strategy, if we get in touch with our better selves, if we once and for all reject radical wingnut conservatism and the hideous politics of personal destruction that have controlled our country for decades, we might have a chance for a decent future. We might once again be a great nation.

Insane McCain

2008-10-18T11:17:00.000-07:00

John McCain is insane. He talks out of both sides of his mouth, and both sides lie. He is either a mulitple personality or a complete cynic. His political future must be absolutely destoyed!

Here's the latest:

McCain has decided that if he can't get you to hate Barack Obama for raising your taxes (because he won't raise your taxes) he'll try to get you to hate him for NOT raising your taxes, for in fact giving you a tax cut.

For weeks, the McCain campaign has been telling the people that it is wrong to raise taxes in an economic downturn and that Obama is going to raise everyone's taxes, even those who make as little as $42,000 a year. He hammered on that for a while, but Obama hit back, making it clear no one who makes less than $250,000 will have their taxes raised.

Then he recruited Joe the imaginary Plumber to complain that the imaginary business he wanted to buy would earn him more than $250,000 imaginary dollars a year and he would have to pay taxes. McCain said that meant Obama would destroy Joe's imaginary "American dream."
But Obama refuted that handily in the debate and afterwards, (Even Joe said Obama would reduce his taxes) so today McCain is saying Obama is indeed cutting taxes and that means he is a socialist. (I thought it was okay to be a socialist now. Didn't that great radical conservative Republican, our current idiot president George W. Bush, just make us all socialists by nationalizing the banks?)

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Saturday accused Democratic rival Barack Obama of favoring a socialistic economic approach by supporting tax cuts and tax credits McCain says would merely shuffle wealth rather than creating it.
"At least in Europe, the Socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives," McCain said in a radio address. "They use real numbers and honest language. And we should demand equal candor from Sen. Obama. Raising taxes on some in order to give checks to others is not a tax cut; it's just another government giveaway."

Quote of the week

2008-10-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Sean Miller, my 7 year old grandson, said this while watching Wednesday's debate:
You know, I think McCain isn't necessarily BAD, but he wants to win, and he's a sore loser.

Racist Riverside

2008-10-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I spoke of overhearing a racist conversation at a diner in my neighborhood. I live in Riverside County, California, sometimes known as the "Inland Empire."

An Inland Republican women's group sent out this racist mailer. I guess the racists I overheard in the diner have a lot of company.

A time of sadness

2008-10-17T11:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a rough day so I was in no mood to write. I already have a heavy heart as I am watching my mother suffer with the disease of leukemia and my father's abilities deteriorate as he copes with a devastating neurological disease.

Yesterday, we had another blow. My father in law died and the family, of course, gathered at the home of my mother in law. He was a good and decent man, a man who served in the army during World War II, working on military aircraft. He met my mother in law then, and they had been married for sixty-four years. He was a fireman for most of his working life, and mostly because of that, two of his sons became firemen. He and my mother in law raised six children together, all of whom are upstanding citizens and good human beings. My husband is the eldest, and was inspired to became a civil engineer partly because that was something his father would have liked to be. He and his father shared an intertest in science, math and engineering.

The next few days will mostly be focused on family and so I won't be doing much writing, but something happened this morning that made me incredibly sad, especially when I put it into the focus of life's many tragedies.

After getting home late last night, my husband and I dragged ourselves to a local coffee shop this morning to have breakfast. We'd hoped to just relax and plan out the next few days, including getting airline tickets for our sons to fly down for the funeral. We sat in a booth next to a man and three women (all in their seventies, it seemed) who were having a loud conversation about the election and the current financial crisis. The man was holding his own little seminar, spewing his Rush Limbaugh-esque talking points to the women who seemed to be deferring to him. Everything was about "the blacks." The financial crisis was the fault of "the blacks" because, according to him, the Democrats and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had given all those sub-prime loans to "the blacks." "The blacks" in Chicago had been conspiring for years to put up one of their own for the presidency and they had been grooming Obama to run. "The blacks" were going to take over. It had all been a plot.

My husband and I stared at them, unable to believe there were actually people in our neighborhood who could be this vocally and publicly racist. When the waitress came by, we asked to move. She asked if there was anything wrong with the table, and I told her I simply couldn't enjoy my breakfast sitting next to racists. I don't know if they heard me, but I didn't whisper it.

Soon they left, and a lovely African American family with two small children walked past them as they filed out. I thought it only fitting, and I was happy that the family didn't have to hear their bile. I did notice as they left that one of the three women was wearing a gigantic cross. How lovely, I thought sarcastically. How "Christian."

My father in law was a Republican, having changed his party affiliation after my mother in law, who has a strong libertarian streak, convinced him he shouldn't be a Democrat. We have had many heated debates in the family over politics, but one thing I know for sure. The good and decent man who left this world on Thursday would never have had such a conversation as I overheard today, in public or in private. He may not have voted for Obama, but he was not a racist, and his vote would have been ideological.

When you stop for just a minute and think, you realize that we all suffer the same pain of loving and saying good-bye to those people we love. Whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, it doesn't matter. We all suffer terrible grief at one point or another. Barack Obama never really knew his father, and lost his mother to cancer when he was in his thirties. Just because he is a different color does not make him or his feelings any different than those people sitting at that table in the diner.

How dare they talk the way they talked! How dare they think the way they think! How dare they have such disregard for the people in the diner who heard them, people like us who are feeling grief and sorrow. Their utter disregard for anyone who heard their bile was simply a sacrilege.

I will give anyone $100 who can prove to me that Barack Obama or anyone on his staff, for that matter, ever said anything so vile and despicable about "the whites" as these four said today about Barack Obama and African Americans. I'm not worried I'll lose any money. No one in Barack's campaign would stoop this low.

White citizens, like those four, disgrace themselves and a certain segment of the population. Yet Barack, who is as much white as he is black, knows there are many white people who are not racists. Let's hope they are soon relics of the past.

Both of my parents are Republicans. Both have sent in their absentee ballots and both told me they voted for Obama. (My father hasn't voted for president for sixteen years - he didn't like Clinton and he didn't like Bush, but Obama won him over.) My father, however, fears Obama won't win because of people of his generation. "You may have to wait until we are all dead," he told me a while back, "before someone like Obama can be elected."

I hope both he and my mother live to see that he is wrong. I hope the four people I overheard today are already outnumbered by people who are more intelligent than they are. Once Obama is elected and is a fine president, I hope they remember their words and are profoundly ashamed.

??????????? - Picture of the day

2008-10-16T07:47:00.001-07:00

McCain's poor health is a real issue

2008-10-15T12:24:00.000-07:00

An evaluation of the health of the two presidential candidates by a medical doctor.

Electing McCain would almost ensure a President Palin.

Giving information to "low information voters"

2008-10-15T10:05:00.000-07:00

Via Andrew Sullivan, a video of responses by Palin supporters at a rally in Ohio.

Thought I'd try my hand at responses to their statements. Their statements are in bold. My responses in italics.

"I'm afraid if he wins, the black [sic] will take over. He's not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?"

Were you concerned for the past two hundred fifty years when the whites were in charge and denied blacks equal rights? Obama has a white mother and white grandparents, why would he do anything to make them second class citizens by letting the blacks "take over?" Obama has been a Christian for twenty years, converting as a young man after having been raised by a mother who professed no religion. This is not a Christian nation, it is a secular nation, with no religious test for national office and no official religion. The majority of citizens here are Christians, it is true, but the first amendment guarantees that there will be no establishment of religion and that all may practice their faith here, regardless of what that faith is.

"When you got a Negro running for president, you need a first stringer. He's definitely a second stringer."

Are you kidding me? First of all, many of our presidents (all white by the way) were anything but first stringers. George W. Bush, for instance, failed at every business he ever got involved in, and did poorly in school. Bush couldn't even make the team. As for a "Negro" having to be a first stringer, how ridiculous is that, especially when you consider Obama having graduated first in his law class at Harvard and being elected president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, where he worked amicably with both conservatives and liberals. Have you paid any attention to his campaign? It is nothing short of genius. Obama is definitely "first string," so you apparently haven't been paying attention.

"He seems like a sheep - or a wolf in sheep's clothing to be honest with you. And I believe Palin - she's filled with the Holy Spirit, and I believe she's gonna bring honesty and integrity to the White House."

Palin wouldn't know honesty if it hit her in the face. She lies about Obama and about herself. She hid her daughter's pregnancy, called Obama a "pal" of terrorists (which he is not - he has had a few inconsequential contacts with a former radical who lives in Chicago where the man associates with hundreds of political figures, both Democrat and Republican), she continues to lie about troopergate, saying she was cleared of legal and ethical violations when the first sentence of the report says she clearly violated the ethical requirements of her office. How does one judge whether or not one is "filled with the holy spirit?" And in our country, it is more important to be filled with knowledge, wisdom and experience (none of which she has) than to be "filled with the holy spirit," however you judge that. As for Obama being a wolf in sheep's clothing (which you no doubt got from one of McCain's sleazy ads), all I can say - since this is so ridiculous - is that Sarah Palin knows a little about wolves - she shoots them from helicopters.

"He's related to a known terrorist, for one."

He's not related to any terrorists. His bio is available on the internet and in his books and he has no relatives who are terrorists. His grandfather fought in Patton's army in World War II, his grandmother worked in a factory to support the war. His mother was an archeologist. His birth father was from Kenya and Obama only knew him briefly. His stepfather was an Indonesian. None of them were terrorists. This is a stupid statement, especially considering how easy it is these days - what with Homeland Security, domestic wiretapping and all - to identify terrorists. If Obama had any connection to terrorism, he would not be running for president, he would be in jail.

"He is friends with a terrorist of this country!"

He is also not "friends" with terrorists. He knows a man - Bill Ayers - who was a radical in the sixties (though Ayers killed no one- terrorism is defined by the targeting and murdering of innocent civilians) and sat on one or two charitable and educational boards with him in Chicago (as did many prominent people - one of the boards was funded by a prominent republican who chose Bill Ayers for this position) but he has no social contact with him, and the man has nothing to do with his campaign nor his senatorial staff. Until Sarah Palin came along, men like Bill Ayers, who are reformed radicals from the sixties, were not called "terrorists." They were called "radicals." Palin is calling him a terrorist now to fool you into thinking of Osama bin Laden and that is disgusting and dishonest. Some Christian!

"He must support terrorists! You know, uh, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck. And that to me is Obama."

He must support terrorists? Who says? What evidence do you have? What makes you think he "must support terrorists? Because he's black? Because he has an African name? Because Sean Hannity said so? I can assure you, Obama is not a duck, nor does he support terrorists, regardless of what you think he "must" do.

"Just the whole, Muslim thing, and everything, and everybody's still kinda - a lot of people have forgotten about 9/11, but... I dunno, it's just kinda... a little unnerving."

Just the Muslim thing? Obama is not a Muslim. He is named after his father who was from Kenya. His name is African. He is not and never has been a Muslim. He is a Christian. Nevertheless, this Muslim accusation dishonors the millions of peaceful and law abiding Muslims who live in and contribute to this great nation. And I can assure you, no one has forgotten about 9/11. That's what Sarah Palin is counting on.

"Obama and his wife, I'm concerned that they could be anti-white. That he might hide that."

"I'm concerned that he could be anti-white." This is what is called projection - accusing someone else of something that characterizes you. You are most probably anti-black and so you assume black people must be anti-white. You need to examine your own heart and get rid of your faulty thinking. Have you ever spent ten minutes listening to Obama? Obviously not, because if you had, you would see how ridiculous your concern is. Or do you just listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?

Recently taken down from Sacramento County official Republican website

2008-10-15T09:01:00.000-07:00

No, they're not inciting violence, are they?

538 projection for 10/15

2008-10-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

Nate Silver's latest map: 361 electoral votes for Obama. Only West Virginia white (toss-up) - and many of the light blue states have turned dark blue.

The way to ensure this outcome, of course, is not to get complacent and, above all, VOTE.

Crazymakers and crybabies

2008-10-15T06:27:00.000-07:00

The Republicans are crazymakers. They incite hatred and then when the other side tells them to stop because what they are doing is dangerous, they act the victim and demand an apology. It's like the man who abuses his wife and then blames her for calling the police and once the police leave, crying that she doesn't understand him right before he beats her again because she called the police. He is incapable of seeing how the whole problem began with his violence.

The Republicans send out Sarah Palin to whip up hatred against Barack Obama for what she calls "palling around with terrorists" who "bombed the pentagon" and for any number of things that are patently false, and then when her supporters start yelling "terrorist" and "kill him," she acts like it's no big deal. As the crowds get more and more vocal in their violent language, she continues on and incites even more anger.

Then she goes on Rush Limbaugh and says "Rush, I've got nothing to lose in this and I think America's got everything to gain by understanding the differences, the contrasts here between Obama and McCain." There you have it. All she's doing is presenting "contrasts." And she has nothing to lose, that's her only moral compass apparently.

In the meantime, McCain and his surrogates, including that idiot Joe Scarborough on MSNBC, who have no understanding of either history or nuance, are attacking Obama for not condemning civil rights icon John Lewis who said this in response to the hateful rallies of McCain and Palin:

As one who was a victim of violence and hate during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, I am deeply disturbed by the negative tone of the McCain-Palin campaign....Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.

Lewis recalled the speeches of George Wallace and noted how they incited violence. He said:

During another period, in the not too distant past, there was a governor of the state of Alabama named George Wallace who also became a presidential candidate. George Wallace never threw a bomb. He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights. Because of this atmosphere of hate, four little girls were killed on Sunday morning when a church was bombed in Birmingham, Alabama....As public figures with the power to influence and persuade, Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are playing with fire, and if they are not careful, that fire will consume us all. They are playing a very dangerous game that disregards the value of the political process and cheapens our entire democracy.

This, according to Republican supporters of McCain, is beyond the pale, equivalent to whipping up hatred in crowds. Joe Scarborough says Lewis is comparing McCain to the bombers of the church in Birmingham, which is not what Lewis did. This is where reading and comprehension skills are important. Lewis said McCain and Palin were playing with fire, like Wallace played with fire - and that fire led to terrible events. Lewis made it clear that Wallace "never threw a bomb or fired a gun." Actually the mention of Wallace is interesting in that Wallace is an example of violent words blowing back on the one who utters them. Wallace was the victim of an attempted assassination which left him paralyzed.

Not being African American, not having been jailed because one is fighting for civil rights, not having been bloodied and beaten as was John Lewis, people like John McCain, Sarah Palin, and Joe Scarborough cannot begin to imagine the fear that this kind of hate talk engenders in people like John Lewis. They have absolutely no racial sensitivity, which doesn't surprise me because they have almost no contact with African Americans.

What we are seeing play out here is enormous ignorance combined with lack of true moral character on the part of the Republican candidates. John McCain has done nothing for civil rights, voted against the Martin Luther King holiday, and has obvious contempt for his African American opponent. As an Alaskan, who mostly stays within Alaskan boundaries, Sarah Palin may never have had any contact with African Americans, who don't generally live in Alaska. Their sensitivity is obviously lacking. But they are good at insisting that Lewis' statement makes them the victims of the Obama campaign, even though Lewis made his statement on his own, in response to his own observations, and not in connection with any Obama rally, while the objectionable words connected to McCain and Palin are words shouted out at their rallies in response to their own incendiary words.

John Lewis has earned the right, with his actions and his blood, to remind us that words matter, and that incendiary words can lead to violent consequences. And yet McCain and Palin are acting like crybabies whose guilt makes them change the subject from their own unacceptable accusations and demand an apology from both Lewis and Obama, who had nothing to do with Lewis' statement. This is insane.

At the same time, Palin tells Limbaugh she has "nothing to lose" with her hate talk. And there you have the whole character issue: she only cares about herself. She is only concerned with whether she has something to lose. She doesn't care if America loses, which was Lewis' whole point. This kind of hate speech hurts America and has the potential to hurt Americans in deadly ways. Lewis is trying to warn the campaign to stop the potential harm that can come to the country they say they love.

Lewis is performing the role of an elder statesman. Palin is performing the role of an ignorant rabble rouser, an unsophisticated and immature teenager who doesn't care who or what she hurts just as long as she comes out ahead. And McCain is like a parent who is egging her on. As role models for Americans, these two are disasters. And whether Palin can understand this or not, America has a lot to lose if she continues to incite hatred.

Why Obama is winning

2008-10-15T05:57:00.001-07:00

One name: Sarah Palin

There will be volumes written about this election, and mulitple theories about why McCain lost and/or why Obama won.

Obama, as a black man, had to overcome some hurdles that a white candidate would not. And he seems to have cleared them.

But that isn't why McCain is losing. There are a number of reasons McCain looks bad right now including his erratic message on the economy, his negativity, the obviousness of his age and the fact that he is a Republican.

But all of those do not add up to the one thing that caused the public to turn against McCain. That one thing was the choice of Sarah Palin to be his vice presidential candidate.

Republicans point to how she "fired up the base," which only indicates to me that the Republican base is missing a few IQ points, but she has not helped with independents and moderate Republicans, as we can see in the recent polls. Independents and moderate Republicans want more than a pretty face and a nice set of legs and a hairdo that changes as often as that of a Hollywood starlet.

Serious voters wanted McCain to choose a serious candidate to be the vice presidential nominee and he didn't. He chose an air-head who can read a teleprompter and deliver a vicious soundbite. He did not choose someone who is qualified to be president.

In a more prosperous and less dangerous time, an airhead vice president might have worked. But these are not those times.

Furthermore, we just spent eight years with an airhead president. George W. Bush has been the most anti-intellectual, uncurious, unwise president in our history. His lack of knowledge, and adherence to failed conservative ideology, has brought disaster after disaster to our nation and the people are not willing to go there again.

George W. Bush is not smart enough to be president, yet he has been president for eight years because of some clever marketing and a few unsavory campaign tactics. We are now suffering the terrible consequences of having been hoodwinked. Once the public got to know a little (very little) about Sarah Palin, it didn't take long for them to see that, like Bush, she doesn't have the intelligence to be president. And the right wing pundits' attempt to compare her favorably to Obama, whose intelligence is in the superior range, or to say she understands complex issues better than McCain or Obama, is ludicrous. I don't know how they say it with a straight face.

The American people don't want another failed war, more dead soldiers, more terrorist attacks, more Katrinas, and an ongoing economic recession, or even depression. They want someone smart enough to handle the multiple problems that land on the president's desk. They want someone with a brain.

Sarah Palin is a candidate of very little brain. The public sees this and doesn't want to go there again. And that the 72 year old McCain would choose her and continue to say how talented she is gives us an indication that he is a man of very little brain as well. The American people have seen throught the bullshit and won't choose another mental lightweight in a time when great wisdom is needed.

And that's why McCain will lose.

This is the most amazing and innovative campaign ever!

2008-10-14T19:47:00.000-07:00

“I can confirm that the Obama campaign has paid for in-game advertising in Burnout,” Holly Rockwood, director of corporate communications at Electronic Arts, the game’s publisher, told me via email, noting that EA regularly allows ad placements in their online games. “Like most television, radio and print outlets, we accept advertising from credible political candidates,” she continued. “Like political spots on the television networks, these ads do not reflect the political policies of EA or the opinions of its development teams.”

Democracy requires us to be "Of this World"

2008-10-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

From my latest article on Outraged Citizen:

It is a huge problem in a democracy to say you care only about a possible next life and nothing about this life. That makes you traitors to democracy, that precious gift of self-determination and self-governing. In effect, if you don't care about solving the problems of this world, other than abortion and gay marriage, you are living as the peasants of the Middle Ages lived, uneducated and ignorant, guided only by religion, and caring little about the well being of your fellow citizens who depend on you to make wise choices about many things in elections.

In addition, you set yourself up to be used by those who say they agree with your moral position on issues like abortion, but do little or nothing to accomplish the goals you wish to accomplish. Instead, they use these issues as wedges to divide you from your fellow citizens and to convince you to vote for them so they can implement their greedy trickle down economic ideology and fill their coffers and those of their friends with the money they steal from the Middle Class.

Our democracy was never meant to be an institution that was controlled by clergy or the Bible. It was created to allow citizens to govern themselves, through representatives who would enact policies to ensure safety and prosperity for all. To participate responsibly in a democracy, one must be "Of This World," at least to some extent. One must care about what happens to one's country and fellow citizens in this world, not just what happens in the next.

Why we are liberals

2008-10-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

From Steven D. on Booman Tribune:

We are at a turning point once again, when the invisible hand of the market runs up against its inherent limitations, as demonstrated by history. For the past 30 years we have been running an experiment in which the promoters of unfettered capitalism have had their way more often than not. Like the the era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which led to the Great Depression, ideological faith in the power of the markets to generate the greatest good for the greatest number has been proven wrong.

What unfettered capitalism releases is unfettered greed, rampant speculation and one economic bubble after another until that last, largest bubble breaks and the entire edifice of lassiz-faire economic theory and policies premised on the belief that the least government intervention is best for all concerned is exposed as nothing more than a dangerous fantasy.

Economics is not a hard science governed by known, irrefutable mathematical laws, no matter how much Milton Friedman and his acolytes like Alan Greenspan wish it were so. And the end result of our experiment in Friedmanomics and de-regulation of the markets can now be seen by anyone willing to look at the cold hard facts. It - simply - doesn't - work. Not only that, it creates conditions which lead to economic political, societal, and, at its core, moral calamities. Once again we have a great disparity in wealth between the richest people and the largest corporations and everyone else. We have bank failures, yes, and the looming threat of millions of businesses going bankrupt worldwide, but even more importantly we have created untold misery for the vast majority of the people of the world.

In developing countries these economic theories and the policies implemented by conservative politicians, particularly in the United States, have led to economic predation by multinational corporations, rule by tyrants and gangsters, wars, famines and death. In America these policies have led to the worst health care system for any developed country in the world, one which heartlessly allows millions of its people to go without adequate healthcare. They have also led to an increase in poverty and homelessness, higher infant mortality rates and lowered life expectancies.

Yet, perhaps the greatest failure of the "revolution" begun with Reaganomics has been the increase in amorality in our society, an emphasis on materialism and consumerism, and its concomitant reduction of compassion and respect for others which has been engendered in our populace. Disaster capitalism is the phrase coined by Naomi Klein for what the policies of our government's enabling of greed and avarice have accomplished, but I tell you today that capitalism which is unchecked by governmental regulation and intervention, invariably results in a disaster. Corporations, by the very nature of the laws which create them, are established and operated for one purpose: profit at all costs. When there are laws which restrict the manner in which corporations and wealthy individuals may lawfully pursue that goal without costs being imposed, democratic societies can thrive because not all the wealth and economic power is concentrated in the hands of a few.

And when democracies thrive, people thrive. Because governments are not bound to rule for the benefit of the most powerful or those who have the most economic clout. Democracies should have other goals merely than the accumulation of wealth in the hands of a few. They should be focused on the general welfare of all of their citizens. Sadly for us, we have been governed by politicians over the last three decades who ruled for the benefit of those at the top of the economic pyramid, and falsely assured us that such counter-intuitive ideas as promoting the greed of the wealthiest and most powerful among us would lead to rewards for all.

They lied and we should have known they were lying. Indeed, anyone with an ounce of common sense knew that the ridiculous "trickle down" economy we created was a lie. If history has shown us anything, it is that concentrations of wealth and power do not lead to less poverty, but more. They do not bolster the middle class, they tear it down. They do not lead to greater happiness, but greater misery for all but those who pull the strings of government. They do not lead to more liberty, more equality and more freedom, but less of each of these for most people. They lead inevitably to societies where the wealthy are free to do as they please, and the rest are slaves in all but name.

A great change is coming. It was long overdue. Sadly many will suffer because the wisdom of the past was ignored. Greed, my friends, is not good. And it is especially bad indeed when it is not countered by the moral values of community and compassion and fairness. You know, the real values of our Judeo-Christian heritage that conservatives love to pontificate about but so rarely put into practice. For the good is served not when the individual can get away with anything, not when individualism is considered the only value worth promoting, but when we respect and value everyone and work together for the benefit of all people.

And that is why I am a liberal. Hopefully, the day is at hand when more people will welcome a return to the values that I and so many of us here espouse. We've had enough of "conservative values" to last a generation

The change boat has pulled away from the old man on the dock

2008-10-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

I find John McCain's "change is coming" mantra increasingly amusing. He used it again today in a "new" speech aimed at pumping verbal viagra into his flaccid campaign.

However, what McCain and the Winka from Wasilla fail to realize is that change has already come, and that is why they are losing.

More than a decade ago, the world started to change, favoring a global approach to problems, peaceful world solutions rather than war, government sponsored universal health care and education for all. And over the past eight years, this country has also been changing. Now more than fifty percent of the country reject the Bush approach to problems: war, an American superiority complex, and a free market approach to both health care and education. America has become more progressive and has rejected the Republican free market and religious fundamentalism that has so infected our government.

Barack Obama represents the change people have already made in their minds and hearts, so McCain's slogan sort of misses the boat. The change boat has already pulled away from the dock and the old man has only started yelling: "change is coming."

It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

The stock market tanks, some people have fun

2008-10-13T07:59:00.000-07:00

My youngest son, who is an editor at a business newspaper, and his girlfriend take a break from the insanity of the past couple weeks on the island of Curacao.

McCain concedes election

2008-10-13T07:56:00.000-07:00

In his new and retooled stump speech, McCain says of the Obama campaign:

"We've got them just where we want them."

Obama is anywhere from six to eleven points ahead in the polls.

Words matter, as does the truth

2008-10-13T05:35:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, Sarah Palin has been throwing around the word "terrorist" a lot, and connecting it to Barack Obama. She is using the very slim relationship between Obama and William Ayers as the justification for her charges. So let's examine who Bill Ayers is, whether he is connected to Barack Obama in any significant way, and whether the use of the word "terrorist" is appropriate.

William Ayers is a co-founder of the Weather Underground, a radical sixties group opposed to the Vietnam War and other U.S. policies. The sixties, as those of us old enough to remember know, was a crazy time. It was a violent time, a time of assassinations and war. Three beloved liberal leaders were killed and another liberal leader turned an advisory role in a faraway Southeast Asia country into a devastating war. The draft was enacted and young men were sent off to a war they either did not understand or understood all to well and condemned. 58,000 men died in that terrible and unnecessary war and young people throughout the country were enraged. A few took it too far and decided to use violence. William Ayers was one of those, his method of outrage a series of bombings of statues and buildings. In his actions, no one was ever killed, except a few Weather Underground members, and all bombings were preceded by written warnings to evacuate buildings. Once the war ended, the group stopped its actions and Ayers went underground himself. After turning himself in, and seeing charges against him dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct, he went on to distinguish himself as a professor and upstanding member of the community. Though he says he believes "we" (meaning all citizens) didn't do enough in the sixties to stop U.S. foreign policy, he does regret the violence he participated in. He has condemned all acts of terrorism, by small organizations and governments alike.

What Ayers did in the sixties cannot be excused. Neither can it be called terrorism, which targets innocent civilians in order to achieve some goal. Ayers was not a "terrorist." He and his group did heinous things - bombing always carries risk and is wrong even if all it does is hurt property - but they cannot be compared in any way to the Islamic terrorists who deliberately target civilians. In fact, Ayers has never been characterized as a terrorist until Sarah Palin came along to rescue John McCain's flaccid campaign. Those who acted as Ayers did in the sixties have always been called "radicals," but saying Obama "palled around" with radicals simply wouldn't have been good enough for Palin. She had to call him a terrorist because when you say "terrorist" people think of 9/11.

The word terrorist was deliberately chosen by McCain and Palin because it fit in with the other rumors supporters have been pushing - that Obama is a secret Muslim, that he is un-American, that he is somehow dangerous. What could be more dangerous than bombings? What could be more dangerous than being close to terrorists? Had McCain and Palin said Obama was a friend of a radical from the sixties, it would have fallen flat, because most voters today are too young to understand the sixties and what radical groups were objecting to. So all they had to do was change Ayers from a radical to a terrorist and they updated everyone's understanding and confirmed the fears of low information and misinformation voters - that Obama was dangerous.

Words matter - the Republicans have been using them cleverly and deviously for decades. "States rights" has been code for allowable segregation and racism. "Pro-abortion" has been used to define those people who don't want to criminalize something, no matter how they disapprove of it on a personal and moral level. "Blame American first crowd" has been used to describe people who are willing to criticize their country when it is wrong. "Free market" has been used to approve of greed.

So are William Ayers and Barack Obama palling around with each other? William Ayers and Barack Obama met in Chicago when they served on some charitable and education boards together, along with other prominent Chicago citizens. Ayers hosted one coffee for Obama when he ran for the state senate. Other than that, there is no connection. They are not good friends and Obama does not (as Palin accused him) "pal around" with Ayers.

So, to put it in simple terms - William Ayers was a sixties radical who destroyed property but never killed or injured anyone. Before this election, he has not been characterized as a "terrorist." Currently he is a respectable citizen and educator in Chicago. Barack Obama served on a few charity and education boards with him (though neither chose each other to particpate on the boards) and hosted one fundraiser early in Obama's career. The two have not had any relationship since 2002. And Obama has condemned Ayers' actions in the sixties.

Sarah Palin peddles nonsense about Obama, but it is nonsense that fires up her radical base, who shout radical (terrorist?) slogans themselves when she speaks. She is either too stupid to know that what she is saying is patently false, or she is deliberately misleading to destroy an opponent. Either way, she has insulted the intelligence of the American people, and done something no true Christian should do - she has lied and slandered a fellow human being, fellow American, and fellow Christian. And she seems to have no shame.

Quote worth remembering

2008-10-12T14:16:00.000-07:00

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win. -

Mahatma Gandhi

Another kind of segregation

2008-10-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

Here's what the Research 2000 poll finds:

In the Northeast, Obama leads McCain 65% to 28%.
In the Midwest, Obama leads McCain 55% to 38%
In the West, Obama leads McCain 53% to 39%

But in the South, McCain leads Obama 53% to 41%

What is it with the South? Racism? Lack of education? Poverty? Toxic chemicals in the water? Inbreeding?

The South has always been known for slavery, racism and segregation. However, it now seems the South believes in another kind of segregation - the kind that separates the South from every other region of the country.

The stupidity of Catholic bishops

2008-10-12T06:01:00.000-07:00

The Catholic Church and electoral politics are not a good mix. Having been raised a Catholic, I am well aware of how much the Church is inserting itself into this presidential election in ways I consider wrong-headed, irresponsible and just plain stupid. They aren't alone in this of course. Many evangelical churches are acting badly too.

It seems to be all-abortion-all-the-time for some of these jokers, and I call them that because whatever their theological expertise on which they base their instructions to their congregations, they are too stupid to see how the Republican Party plays them year after year after year on this issue and never changes a single thing in terms of abortion. And I suspect they never will, because if they managed to overturn Roe V. Wade (which they will never do) or actually enact any laws that made a difference, they would lose every election afterwards. They would lose for two reasons: 1. A majority of the American people see the Repubican ideology as wrong on nearly every other issue and would cease believing there was a reason to vote Republican once abortion lost its value as a wedge issue, and 2) the pro-choice forces would launch a fierce campaign to protect abortion rights in states and would most likely win most of them.

The current extremist Bishop of Scranton, Pa., Joseph Martino, has sent out a letter instructing all voters in his diocese that

Abortion is the issue this year and every year in every campaign...Catholics may not turn away from the moral challenge that abortion poses for those who seek to obey God’s command. They are wrong when they assert that abortion does not concern them, or that it is only one of a multitude of issues of equal importance. No, the taking of innocent life is so heinous, so horribly evil, and so absolutely opposite to the law of the Almighty God that abortion must take precedence over every other issue. I repeat. It is the single most important issue confronting not only Catholics, but the entire electorate.

Now the Bishop lives in a nation that grants him free speech, so he has every right to say whatever he wants to say, but the man is completely wrong about the connection between voting and abortion.

I agree with him that abortion is a significant moral issue - for each individual. I find it interesting, however, that many bishops in this country find abortion to be the only moral issue for which an individual is not allowed to follow his or her conscience. On every other issue of significance - divorce, war, the death penalty, even suicide, the Church offers some leeway in the individual conscience of the person- or at least compassion for the person facing these moral challenges. And the church does not become so unhinged regarding how one should vote on issues related to these other issues, all of which have been issues in elections at one time or another. I also don't recall the Church ever insisting voters had to vote against racism or discrimination or hate crimes - at least not with the same ferocity they use against abortion - or even against war, where millions of "innocents," born and unborn, are obliterated by American bombs.

The fact is that the president has little to do with abortion politics, in reality. Yes, there is the Supreme Court, but here a vote for McCain or a vote for Obama would not be that different. Yes, Obama will likely not appoint conservative judges, but neither would McCain. He knows a Senate with a Democratic majority (and a likely 60 member majority) would never confirm such judges, so he will have to pick moderates who likely will uphold the current law of the land regarding abortion. That being the case, it seems much more sensible to elect the better candidate on other issues, like the economy and the war, two issues that might determine whether or not this country survives. And on these issues, a majority of the people favor Obama.

Another point about which Bishops like Bishop Martino appear completely ignorant is the long history of abortion and what happens in places where abortion is illegal. Simply put, it doesn't stop. Women always have and always will seek abortion. As long as men rape women and molest their daughters, as long as priests molest young girls in their parishes, as long as husbands demand sexual submissiveness from their wives, as long as poverty makes it impossible to feed another child, as long as women's lives are in danger from complicated pregnancies, as long as women in some countries are executed for infidelity or for having been raped, as long as ignorant parents and teachers and clergy and presidents named Bush think you can prevent teen pregnancy with abstinence only education, as long as the Church condemns birth control, women and girls will seek abortions. If they can't secure them legally, they will get them illegally, and many will die in the process.

Interestingly, during the Democratic Clinton administration, the number of abortions went down in comparison to the Republican Reagan and Bush I administrations. There's a simple reason for this: the policies of Democrats are actually more conducive to such reductions. Democrats are better at providing birth control and sex education, and Democrats reduce poverty directly with anti-poverty measures, and indirectly by improving the economy. So while Democrats do not want to outlaw abortion (this doesn't make them "pro-abortion," it makes them anti-criminalization, and there is a big difference), they manage to save more unborn lives than their anti-abortion counterparts in the Republican Party. But Bishop Martino doesn't want people to vote on the basis of reality, he wants them to vote on the basis of theology, which is just one more type of ideology - something that dominates Republican politics, and has pretty much failed over the past 28 years.

Furthermore, the Catholic Church has a terrible track record in areas of treatment of women and sexual morality and therefore, in my opinion, has lost its moral authority to preach on these issues, including the issue of abortion.

I have heard many sermons on abortion, but never one on rape or incest or molestation or sexual responsibility and respect in marriage. When the Catholic Church starts tackling these issues which lead to unwanted pregnancy, then maybe their preaching on abortion will have more legitimacy. Furthermore, the Catholic Church has harbored and enabled pedophiles for decades within their clergy and up through the heirarchy. This also disqualifies them as moral authorities.

As for their treatment of women for 2000 years, it has been despicable. Their approach to abortion is just one more example. Do bishops ever consider the woman's perspective, what it is like to be raped or treated as sexual objects? What it is like to be molested by your stepfather? Can they even imagine what it's like for hundreds of thousands of poor women, married to louts who come home at night with their meager pay demanding the one recreational drug they can afford - sex - and then yelling at the wife if she becomes pregnant?

Of course they can't imagine this. They have no wives, they have no intimate relationships with women. Some have intimate relationships with men, due to the high rate of homosexuality in the priesthood, but they cannot possibly understand a woman's perspective. The fact is that in the Catholic Church, women have only been given two options: nun or baby machine. The Church, as we know, even condemns birth control. For 2000 years women have been second class persons in the Church, much less important than men, much less deserving of understanding and respect. I can grant you this: if men were the ones who gave birth, if men were treated as sexual objects by women, and if men still had all the power in the Church, the entire issue would be handled differently.

There's a lot the Church could do to help reduce abortions without overturning Roe V. Wade - implementing programs for poor pregnant women, compassionate sermons in support of desperate women, programs to educate about respectful sex in marriage, sex education for teens, and changing their ridiculous birth control policy. What won't work is this one strategy to try to influence elections so that Roe V. Wade might be overturned. Because it is not going to happen. No matter who is elected in three weeks, Roe will not be overturned. And in the slight chance that it will, the matter will only return to each state where in a majority, abortion will remain legal.

More and more I see the Catholic Church as out of touch with reality and meddling in politics when they know nothing about women, sex, biology, psychology, history, how our government works, or how the Republican party uses them to win election after election while never actually doing anything.

If they continue with this nonsense of threatening damnation to Catholics who do not vote for the Republican, I sincerely hope they lose their tax exempt status, because they have chosen not to be a church that cares for the people and uses its authority to change hearts. Instead they have become a church that has adopted a legal and political strategy to impose their theology on a democratic nation that frankly sees it differently. Furthermore, in this ridiculous and doomed-to-fail legal quest, they are throwing to the winds the fate of the nation - and are telling their members it doesn't matter how old, how ignorant, how shameless, how wrong-headed, how cruel, how racist, how warmongering, how empty-headed, how callous and crude, how neglectful of the poor, how incompetent a presidential or vice presidential candidate is, if he or she talks the anti-abortion talk, he or she is the only one good Catholics can vote for and not go to hell.

In demanding their flock vote for the "pro-life" candidate, the Bishops who adopt this dictatorial strategy are acting like poker players who know nothing about poker. In an effort to win the entire pot, they are willing to lose all their money on a single hand when they could play more conservatively and at least come out ahead. In an effort to overturn a Supreme Court decision, they are backing an inferior candidate who likely will not reduce abortions at all, though he may kill a lot of innocents in the many wars he wants to wage, and totally condemning the "pro-choice" candidate who will likely be much more successful in other ways in reducing the number of abortions.

One has to wonder whether all they care about is screaming their heads off and making a scene rather than really doing something. Do they only want to win a legal battle, which may not really change anything, or are they actully interested in saving unborn lives?

It seems to me they have made enough of a mess in their own backyard, with their ongoing pedophilia scandal (anyone who thinks this is over is dreaming - as long as celibacy remains the rule there will be sexual bad behavior in the priesthood) and should reform themselves before they insert themselves into the political world.

How did Jesus put it? The beam in your own eye?

UPDATE: An interesting and much more realistic take on the abortion issue from theologian Fr. Richard McBrien of Notre Dame. Worth reading.

Hope in Philly

2008-10-11T15:33:00.001-07:00

Dangerous and undignified

2008-10-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

When my children were teenagers, they suffered the usual disappointments - breakups of relationships, not making the team, not getting into the college they wanted. From time to time, I would remind them that whatever else happened, they needed to maintain their dignity.

John McCain, Cindy McCain, and Sarah Palin have all lost their dignity over the past few weeks. As their numbers went south, they started acting like jilted lovers, or jealous would-be cheerleaders. Palin started it with her attacks on Obama's "associations" and McCain followed up by echoing her charges.

Then Cindy McCain jumped on the bitter bandwagon by attacking Obama for voting against funding the troops, and using her position as the mother of a soldier to back up her outrage. Of course, McCain himself had voted against funding in a different vote, so her charge was absurd.

If they weren't so dangerous, so willing to whip up violence in their brain-dead, cult-like followers, they would be pitiful.

Fears

2008-10-11T05:54:00.000-07:00

The past two days I have been living in a twisted reality.

I called the paramedics two days ago to take my mother to the hospital. She has leukemia, and was feeling very poorly. After spending nearly a day with her in emergency while they waited for a hospital bed to open, I want home to spend the night with my dad, who cannot be left alone because of a crippling neurological disease.

We had a rough night, with me getting only three hours of sleep. That left me grumpy the next day, and living with uncertainty regarding my parents' welfare.

I had only a brief time to see the news on Thursday, but I knew it was bad. The stock market continues its slide towards Depression, and Insane McCain and his sidekick Sarah were again rabble rousing, their mindless followers shouting horrible hate-filled and violent phrases at Obama, phrases that included "kill him."

I have had a sick feeling for two days, a churning in my gut that won't go away. My parents are in bad shape, and my country isn't much better. I wonder if my husband and I will lose our retirement, our home, our future. I fear for my children. I wonder if violence will break out because latent and well-hidden racism has been fueled by a white presidential candidate against an African American candidate.

I am increasingly trusting, however, that a majority of the country does not harbor racism. I believe they will overrule the angry racist mob and elect Barack Obama the next president.
He is the candidate of hope and so I haven't given up yet. But what if he doesn't win? Or what if he does? I trust in Obama's superior intelligence and incredible competence, but I wonder if anyone can fix a dying country.

This is a situation I have never been in before with my family troubles pairing up with economic troubles and political insanity. Not getting sleep only magnifies the fears. And so, yesterday, for the first time in my life I decided we needed to buy a gun. I hate guns, but when I see fear and hate combined with people being thrown out of their homes, I wonder how soon those with possessions will have to defend themselves against desperate people.

Could it come to that? I don't know. Normally, I am a rational person, but I am afraid. For the first time in my adult life, I am afraid that craziness could break out - not in an inner city, but in my own neighborhood. Maybe it's a function of no sleep, or maybe just a reflection of my fears for my parents.

I have never in my life felt that my country had gone completely insane. Never before had I seen such an incompetent lame duck president looking clueless as he deputizes the Treasury Secretary to try to rescue the country's economy even as it slides further into the abyss each day. Never before had I seen a presidential candidate deliberately instill hate and a thirst for violence in his followers, the way Hitler instilled hate in the Germans. Never before had I considered that we could combine the economic depression of the thirties with the potential for sixties' assassinations.

It has become obvious that the Republican Party of Nixon-McCarthy-Reagan-Attwater-Rove-Bush-and McCain is in its death throes, but before it breathes its last, it is apparently determined to destroy as much of the country as it can.

I only hope the rest of us can survive its demise.

At least my mother is feeling better, after transfusions and medication, and is back home with my dad.

The demise of the republic?

2008-10-10T11:13:00.000-07:00

The saddest thing in the world is when monumentally ignorant people simply cannot accept their own guilt and responsibility in doing something wrong, committing an immoral act, or just plain being stupid.

My guess would be that the bulk of people getting stirred up by McCain and Palin into violent fits of rage are the very same people who voted twice for George W. Bush and can't bring themselves to admit what a disaster he has been. Such an admission would mean they were profoundly wrong and bear some responsibility for the murderous rampage Bush has been on for eight years - in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in New Orleans. And they also can't seem to connect the dots on how conservative ideology is what has led to this economic depression - instead they are going after Democrats in Congress who have been in power less than two years and couldn't accomplish anything in the Senate because the asshole republicans filibuster everthing. And since most of these people call themselves Christian I have decided I no longer consider myself a Christian because the word has become a label signifiying ignorance, prejudice, racism, hate, and a complete lack of concern for anyone other than themselves.

George W. Bush has destroyed everything he has touched. The country's economy is on the verge of collapse with groups of people expressing hatred that a presidential candidate is hoping will destroy his opponent. There are two ways to assassinate a candidate - with a gun or with words. For now, the attempted murder is with words, but how long before it includes bullets?

I loathe and despise John McCain and Sarah Palin - anyone who does not condemn these hatefilled, ignorant and totally depraved human beings is reponsible for anything violent that happens, including the demise of the republic, which for the first time in my 61 years I see as a real possibility.

Who is the real John McCain?

2008-10-09T07:30:00.000-07:00

John McCain is playing a dangerous game, inciting crowds to express their racially motivated hatred of Barack Obama just because McCain is such a narcissist he can't stand it that this young brilliant black candidate is beating him. McCain has been planting seeds of doubt about Obama based on his acquaintance with William Ayers, a sixties radical, andJeremiah Wright, his former pastor. He asks the crowd: "Who is the real Barack Obama," to which they shout replies like "traitor."

Maybe it's time we asked this question: "Who is the real John McCain?" BooMan has one answer:

John McCain fancies himself a hero because he was a terrible pilot that ruined four incredibly expensive airplanes and got himself captured. That's not courage in my book. That's reckless incompetence. I know he suffered terribly for his incompetence, and I'm sorry about that. But the old codger hasn't learned a damn thing from his experiences and he's afraid to be a man and level his accusations to Obama's face. He knows Obama is the better man. And John McCain is afraid. All bullies are ultimately, deep-down, afraid. McCain is no different. He's spent his whole life mistreating people and we're supposed to respect the fact that he was mistreated? I don't respect John McCain. I don't think anyone who knows him well really respects him either. What is there to respect? Show me one thing about John McCain that I can respect? That he
graduated third from the bottom at the Naval Academy? That he used a fellow cadet to take the fall so he wouldn't be kicked out for having too many demerits? That he crashed three planes? That he flew too low and got shot down in a fourth? That he broke under torture and denounced his country? That he followed orders and refused early release? That he dumped his disabled wife for a beauty queen? That he used his beauty queen's money to buy a congressional seat and immediately went about soiling the institution with his corruption? That he voted against Martin Luther King Day? That he voted to impeach a president for getting a blow job? That he was one of the first members of the Senate to advocate invading Iraq? That he couldn't denounce the Confederate Flag? That he is running a dishonorable campaign, now?

Advice for future Democratic presidential candidates: ten rules

2008-10-09T06:23:00.000-07:00

If the Republicans are going to continue their despicable and disgusting presidential campaign tactics that began with Richard Nixon and seem to get worse each year, and Democrats are not going to call them on it and expose their slimy, sickening actions, then I guess future Democratic candidates are going to have to prepare much earlier for their own campaigns - like while they are still in utero. In fact, mothers and fathers are going to have to make some decisions for their unborn baby's future presidential bids.

1. First, mothers and fathers must be careful what name they give their child - and not just first names, but middle names also. Since there is no way to know what potential foreign enemy might arise forty or more years after their child's birth, making an unusual name a risky choice, new parents would be wise to choose only the names of past presidents. John would be my choice. We've had a few presidents named John.

2. Parents need to be careful not to take their child to live overseas, unless it is on a military base, and to take special care not to enroll their child in a school that includes Muslim students. In fact, the best choice would be to stay in some Midwestern state and send the child to a Christian school. Of course, the Christian school would have to be one where there was no corruption or sexual hanky panky from the headmaster.

3. As a teenager, the potential presidential candidate cannot experiment with drugs, whether or not the teen inhales.

4. In college, good grades are actually a liability for future presidents. Gentlemanly C's are the best bet, but B's are probably safe. Worst, of course, would be showing up your rivals by being one of those elitist A students.

5. After college, it would be best to go straight to graduate school or a job on Wall Street or in some big corporation. Community organizing is dangerous because of the word "community" which is too close to the word "communist" which is always bad. Good Americans don't volunteer or work for low pay. Good Americans, and good potential presidents, are good capitalists with a requisite amount of greed.

6. Another acceptable choice for a first job would be the military, preferably with combat duty. This can be tricky for Democrats, however. Combat duty if you are a Democrat must be documented as perfect, so any future Democratic presidential candidate must bring a camera crew with him at all times to show his heroism and perfectly clean record as a soldier. (Future Republican candidates get off easier. So if you want to be president and after joining the military you crash planes or go AWOL, you should change your party affiliation and become a Republican.)

7. Throughout one's life, one must watch one's associates and fundraisers. Even if all you are doing is running for city council, or the state legislature, you must vet all your fundraisers, even those who only hold a coffee at their house for you. You must develop a questionnaire for each associate to fill out, and have a private investigator on your staff so you can know if anyone who gets near you has a skeleton in their closet. If your investigator misses something, you can still save your future campaign by immediately denouncing the associate as the worst person in the world and cut off all ties to them, return any money they raised and get a number of people to sign affadavits that you knew nothing about the offender's offenses.

8. You must be a Christian. You can be a Christian because your parents raised you as one, or you can be a convert. It's best not to be a Catholic, and definitely not a Mormon, and even a traditional Protestant isn't really good enough. You must be an evangelical and talk the correct Jesus talk. As a Democrat, you must also walk the Jesus walk. (This is not so important if you are a Republican. Republicans put much more weight on the talk than on the walk, unless they are talking about abortion or homosexuality.) If you are a convert, you cannot have anything in your background that would indicate you knew anything about Islam. In fact, it is really best if neither of your parents had any connection to Islam. So the parent of a potential presidential candidate, if from a Muslim family, must renounce Islam as a satanic religion and convert to Christianity before their child is even born. And whatever you do, thoroughly vet your pastor, and if he ever gives a fiery sermon, get up and leave and immediately denounce him. Then become a Southern Baptist - that's the safest choice.

9. You must be elected to some other office before you run for the presidency. Being a governor is best, especially if you can be from a state where the Governor doesn't do much or where the population is low. Southern states are best, and yes, in its heart Alaska is a southern state.
Be careful to do nothing controversial in your first elective office, nor take money from lobbyists (only Republican are forgiven for doing this). Make make sure you are in the hospital with pneumonia during votes on abortion or homosexuality. Never say anything unscripted - always give generic speeches that emphasize god, mom, apple pie, and bipartisanship. Always vote to expand funding the troops, and propose some wildly popular piece of legislation, even if you know it won't pass, because you can always say you tried.

10. Thoroughly vet your spouse before you marry him or her, and keep him or her safely at home and silent during the years prior to your run for the presidency. Have a few perfectly behaved children (the same rules don't apply to Republicans) and make sure your spouse and children are indoctrinated prior to your presidential run so they don't utter one word that could be seen as "unpatriotic" by the other side, which will have spies at all campaign events.

Oh, and one more thing. Raise twice as much money as your opponent so you can deflect all the garbage that will come your way, even if you follow all these suggestions.

McCain's despicable behavior

2008-10-08T15:17:00.000-07:00

John McCain was shot down while conducting a bombing raid over North Vietnam in October 1967.

He was taken prisoner, tortured, and held for five years. Surely, he suffered enormously and probably returned with PTSD, from which he seems to still be suffering.

One of the things that stands out about McCain in this campaign is his obsession with his POW history. He mentions it often, seems to believe it affords him some superior status, as well as excuses for everything anyone calls him on, and sometimes says unusual things, like today when he addressed his audience as "my fellow prisoners."

No one can deny the trauma McCain went through, even though few of us ever had the same experience. On the other hand, many of us had traumatic experiences that McCain cannot identify with, and so he seems at times to be callous and unthinking in his behavior.

McCain, as I wrote above, was in a prison camp for five years starting in October, 1967. The following year, the nation suffered through two assassinations: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. For many of us, these assassinations were horrifying and traumatic. For African Americans, especially, the assassination of MLK was like the death of the most important and beloved person in their family. It not only shocked us, it set progressive politics and the cause of civil rights on their heels for a long time. In a sense, as a nation, we suffered a kind of collective PTSD. This experience is something McCain cannot possibly identify with.

And so we see McCain callously and without apparent understanding of how he is playing with fire, sending out Sarah Palin to not so subtly incite anger against Barack Obama because of his name and his limited acquaintance with a domestic terrorist from the sixties (though Obama was only eight when the man was engaging in criminality.) These continual references, along with some ads stating that Obama is dangerous, are inciting some of McCain's followers to shout angry violent threats against Obama and perhaps to even harbor violent fantasies.

One wonders if McCain who, because he was not here at the time, and cannot possibly relate to the horror the nation endured with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, realizes what a dangerous game he is playing. One wonders if he has any understanding of the fear African Americans and others have for Obama's safety.

McCain has a real sense of entitlement. He believes that as a former POW he deserves the presidency while Obama, who never served in uniform, doesn't. One has to wonder if there is some racism in his attitude as well. He deserves the presidency because he is white, while Obama is undeserving because he is black. (Next time you doubt this, see how many African American staffers and advisors you see around McCain.) His contempt for Obama shows in every encounter they have and it is so visceral that you really have to consider the racist angle. When you pair that with the dog whistle messages sent out by Palin, who has no African Americans around her either - in Alaska or now in the campaign) and in the campaign advertising, it becomes a real possiblity.

But while McCain thinks we should all honor his traumatic experience, he is completely oblivious to the trauma the nation suffered when MLK was assassinated. If he had any sensitivity at all to his fellow citizens with darker skin, he would not be doing this. But on top of his sense of entitlement and his obliviousness to the country's trauma when he was in Vietnam, McCain seems to possess a narcissism that probably pre-dated his capture. This makes him incapable of empathy.

None of this excuses his behavior, however, and we should not tolerate it. After McCain is defeated this November, his state should send him into retirement. People this despicable and psychologically impaired should not be rewarded with a salary paid by the taxpayers he so obviously despises.