The Process May Still Work
Democracy has been under vigorous attack from the highest levels of the Administration for seven years, for whatever reason. Even if they felt they were doing the right thing, the rest of us know that you can’t save the country by turning it into Communist Poland. Lech fixed that mess, and I hope we can fix this one. The way that the political process appears to be working right now gives me hope.
The Republicans have made the best choice they could have. Romney’s best quality is his hair. Although he is a personable whack-job, Huckabee is still a whack-job. McCain has a few issues, no pun intended, but I honestly feel like he has thought about all of the problems that we face and is campaigning on what he truly feels are the best answers for the country. That is all you can ask of a candidate, and puts him an infinite number of steps above the actions of Bush and Cheney. As I said to someone today, if Obama and Hillary get run over by a truck, I could at least vote for McCain.
On the Democratic side, I will probably vote for whoever gets the nomination at this point. Hillary would be a marked improvement over what we have now, but I think that she is working her own insider agenda, and I can’t see where it has much to do with us. As I have said before, where George wants to be King, Hillary want to be Queen. So I would prefer Obama, the only candidate with any chance to move things back to where our citizens are important again, and our freedoms have a chance to survive and even flourish. Obama is my man.
And there is more good news. The Democratic campaign has been a fairly clean one. I have yet to see an attack ad on the Democratic side. Both candidates have been talking about the issues that confront us, in the main. If Hillary could just get Bill to shut up, this campaign would be almost genteel. That makes me happy. We need to talk about the issues. We need leaders that believe in us and themselves, and don’t make all of their decision based on polls. The democratic process, with a small ‘d’, seems to be resurfacing after an absence of many years. That makes me very happy.
Post-Super-Tuesday Wednesday
So, how do I feel about things now that Super Tuesday is over? Naturally, I’ve thought about it and have an opinion or two. First, the Republicans. McCain is likely, now to be the winner. He is almost certainly the best they have. Romney is to be commended for having the best hair, of course. The odd man out that won’t go away is still Huckabee, a fellow who has an invisible man in the sky as a campaign manager. He apparently has captured the conservative whacko vote. I know, I shouldn’t beat around the bush so much. Sorry.
On the Democratic side, nothing changed, really. I’d have been happier if Obama had won big-time. but that was not to be, especially in places like New York and California. Hillary is just where she was, a tiny bit ahead of her only competition. I can hope that Barack Obama can get most of the remaining delegates, but that is just a hope. I believe that they are going to go into the convention very close to tied, with no candidate selected.
If that happens, I believe that back-room deals, dirty politics, and money (especially money) will get Hillary the nomination. Look at where her money comes from and you can tell she’s on sale. That’s sad, but it is the current state of American politics. The movers and shakers (the corporate rich) will move and shake, and Obama will be left out in the cold. I don’t believe that he is for sale, at least not yet.
Maybe, as one of the CNN wags said last night, Barack Obama is a movement and movements are hard to stop. I don’t know that that is true. The folks in charge have done a very good job of stopping the anti-war movement, the women’s movement, the Black rights movement, the Gay rights movement, and any other movement that has any chance of loosening their iron control on the reins and whip that control this country.
I will still campaign for and stand behind Barack Obama. I can’t guarantee that my whole heart will be in it, though. Party politics as usual, combines with corporate greed, both well spun, may be enough to do him in.
On Super Tuesday
It is difficult to exist on Super Tuesday in America and not feel at least a small rustle of excitement somewhere in your mind. There are big decisions being made by real people today, across nearly half of our nation. To the degree that the United States can still be said to be a democracy, this is democracy in action.
There are state conventions, caucuses, and polls in 22 states, I think. Millions and millions of Americans will be involved in the process. Not nearly enough of us, for I think everyone should pay attention to the issues and vote every time, but this race is interesting enough that the turnout should be high, and high is certainly better than low. We need to take this democracy thing seriously, or people like little Bush will grab the rest of it away from us.
For me, the Republicans don’t offer much: a rich preppie, an over-the-hill politico, and a fundamentalist whack-job. The Democratic side, though abbreviated to two real candidates, is exciting for me. I would take Hillary. She would do a much better job than has been done the previous eight years, even if she napped as much as Reagan. If she wins, I will not be crestfallen.
But should Obama take home enough votes to stay in the hunt, my political spirit will be revived, and my hopes for the country will be revived with them. We need some charisma, supported by substance, and that is how I see Barack Obama on this Super Tuesday: The Last Best American Hope.
Perhaps a Ray of Hope – Part Three
As I said in my last two columns, I am supporting Obama because he is the only candidate that really represents change, regardless of how the rest have climbed onto that bandwagon. Every other serious candidate in the race, on both sides, is a Washington insider with no reason to change the Executive Branch that King George has built.
Barack Obama is not yet part of the “inside the Beltway” crowd. He still lives out here with the rest of us, and is therefore the only one with any chance to see what the real citizens of America want and need. At the very least, he says the right words in the right way and seems to believe them. The rest of the candidates in this Presidential election are all very apparently working their own agendas and could not care less about what the average American needs.
Obama is an inspiring speaker, and one of the things America needs now is inspiration. George Bush has filled America with fear and polarization. Only a true leader can set that right and there is a chance that Obama is that kind of a leader. He speaks his mind, to the extent that is possible in today’s political climate. He doesn’t seem to be hiding anything; he peaks very openly for a national candidate.
It is early days yet. We’ll know more after Super Tuesday. At the worst, I will have to settle for Hillary Clinton, still much better than the little Bush. At the best, we may get Barack Obama.
Perhaps a Ray of Hope – Part Two
I started talking yesterday about why I like Barack Obama. A lot of it has to do with the feeling that he wants to take us someplace better, while all of the other candidates want to give us more of the same. They are all insiders, part of the “inside the Beltway” crew, and they all have vested interests in ignoring the American people and working for themselves and the lobby groups that make them rich. Barack Obama was not privileged as a youth, and has not become markedly more so since then. It is possible for him to be an outsider and to still lead.
Earlier, I had reconciled myself to settle for Hillary. But the more I look at Hillary, the more I see a control-freak lusting after the power that Bush has invested in the Presidency. I firmly believe that she would not only retain all of it for her own benefit, but would make it worse. Where George has been trying hard to make himself King, Hillary would be very pleased to be Queen.
Perhaps a Ray of Hope
As I said yesterday, I have had a hard time finding a candidate that I could really get behind. Perhaps it is the incredibly uninspiring years that we have just been through, characterized more than anything else by fear-mongering and a lack of consideration of the rights of human beings, that has made it difficult to select. But after a slow start, one candidate has begun to stand out: Barack Obama. Whether it is genuine or not, his demeanor and his words both say, “I am different, together we can fix the country, there is still a chance for America.” We need that.
I have probably noted, herein, my disdain for George Bush more than is strictly necessary, but I am forced to judge him as the worst American President of all time. Among modern Presidents, I give Nixon and Reagan a ties for second worst. I watched Reagan dismantle the safety net that held broken Americans together and place them on the street without even a blink. They are still there.
I hold him personally responsible for the homeless problems we face today. These people are not poor, they are mentally incompetent and Reagan took away the only homes that were available to them. In my mind, at least, Ronald Reagan was a mean-spirited doddering fool playing a role. It’s good that he had a few intelligent minds around him; he needed them more than most. Nixon was almost as much of a megalomaniac as Bush is.
The belief that a President needs to be an accomplished administrator became outdated in the nineteenth century. Administration is something that you hire people to do. Presidents need all of their time to lead, to set a course, to build consensus, to figure out what to do. Barack Obama is proving himself to be equal to that task.
More tomorrow.
Electile Dysfunction – An American Problem
I am here to tell you that ulcers, a potassium deficiency, and multiple sclerosis do not mix. Sorry to have been gone so long. That’s enough about that! I had a chance to do a lot of political listening, reading, and thinking over the last few weeks. From that standpoint, it has been a worthwhile hiatus. It has been fun watching the candidates and their “issues” slowly sort themselves out.
As readers of this column are aware, I am not a fan of the current administration. Nor am I a fan of politicians in general. In my not-so-humble opinion, most of them have been bought and sold by big business interests, and what they do bears little relationship to what we, the citizens of the country, need to have done. They live, at least in their minds, in that little chunk of real estate known as “inside the Beltway.” They are stuck there and cannot get their heads out of that constricted viewpoint to see the rest of the country.
The Bushes, big and little, have put me way off Republicans. Hillary and John Edwards are nothing more or less than privileged, wealthy members of the political gentry. Where I want freedom and hope put back into our country, they have vested interests in business as usual, which doesn’t even take notice of me, or of you. All the insiders want is to continue being insiders, to pile up more money and power, and to forget that average American ever existed.
The little Bush has made the Presidency a very attractive place by making it very near a Kingship. I want that put back to where it should be, turnig America back into a Democracy. I want the fear-mongering to go away. I want us to stand up and stop being afraid of the shadows that the little Bush has built in front of us. Is there a candidate somewhere that could do that?
More tomorrow.
No Posts For A While…?
I had a friend once in Europe who wished to speak American English the way Americans speak it, full of slang and idiom. Once, when I asked her how she was, she said that the weather was on top of her. I had to think about that for a moment, then stifle a laugh so that I didn’t embarrass her. She meant, of course, that she was under the weather.
At this instant, the weather is on top of me, as well.
When it rises, I’ll return to write some more.
The State of The World
The world seems always to have been full of petty dictators. If you will think back to your high school history, it was pretty much a parade of monarchist, fascist, socialist, communist, and other-ist dictators. They were everywhere, from ancient Greece to, well, modern Greece and beyond. Generally, those leaders with even a single altruistic quality were quickly gunned down in favor of someone much more self absorbed.
With very few exceptions (the United States was one until very recently) the world has been run by the greedy, the wealthy, the power-hungry, the corrupt, the heartless, the cruel, and the sadistic. Names such as Torquemada, Stalin, Trujillo, Hitler, Batista, Nero, Idi Amin, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon, Duvalier, Mussolini, Attila the Hun, King Herrod, Saddam Hussein, Chairman Mao, and George W. Bush roll trippingly from the tongue.
Without these people, history would have been a boring succession of scientific achievement and artistic glory set in flower-filled fields under puffy pink clouds. None of that for the human race, though! Not us! All that humans really need is a asshole in a uniform or clerical robes to follow into battle and half of us will be happy to be hewing pieces out of the other half with large iron swords while the gutters and oceans run red and all of the children and the elderly slowly starve to death in their caves.
History has made me the optimist that I am today.
How to Keep the Handicapped Away From Your Store
I made the mistake of venturing out today. So much for the Christmas spirit. All I wanted was a plate of noodles at Zen Zero, the wonderful Asian restaurant downtown. Drunken noodles, to be exact, medium hot with chicken, spicy brown sauce clinging to the wide Asian noodles, red peppers and onions mixed in, poetry on a plate for eight bucks. Of course, that was not to be. You may or may not be happy to know that my curmudgeonly nature is now back in full force.
Downtown was swamped, virtually gridlocked, a sea of cars from horizon to horizon. It quickly became apparent that half of Lawrence lives for today, when cheap wrapping paper and the really ugly Christmas tree ornaments go on sale for half price. They were hip deep on the sidewalks and every parking place within two counties was full and had a second SUV waiting behind it for another shopper to leave.
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