WTF, Barack?
I have been Barack Obama’s biggest fan and supporter. I worked for his election. I voted for him. I convinced other people to vote for him. I listened to his vision in his oratory, and found in him the promise of delivery from eight years of unethical, and even criminal, behavior by the Bush administration. Barack said clearly to us, that the war was wrong, that Guantanamo was wrong, that the intelligence community was bad, that our health care system was awful, that we were giving too much to major corporations and not enough to the average citizen, that we needed to repair the environment, that immigration must be fixed, and so on, and so on.
Brother Barack has now been in office for over 200 days, 2/3 of a year, about 15% of his first term. He has an incredibly wide margin of fellow Democrats in the House. He has an amazing 60 votes in the Senate. The people voted heavily to give him the largest mandate in years, based upon his intelligence, his promises, and his oratory skills. What do we have to show for our votes so far?
Barack has left our troops in Iraq and still has not defined an exit strategy. He has said that rather than bring troops home, he is going to commit more troops and money to a theater of war where he said we didn’t belong and from which he promised to extricate us. Along the way, he has continued to waste lives and money exactly as Bush and Cheney did, with no end in sight.
Guantanamo is still open and is still full of prisoners who are still being treated like animals.
He continues to export intelligence detainees to countries where they will be tortured. He has not rescinded, in any meaningful way, any of the more odious citizen rights abuses of the Bush administration, and has in fact spent much time defending those practices in court.
He has allowed health care to be tied up in committee and let health care policy be dictated by the health care, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries. He has spent the last two weeks preparing us for a watered down health care bill, likely to be little better than nothing.
He has presided over two wars that funnel most of their cost to the defense establishment, made up of private companies. He has spent billions more bailing out huge companies that have proven themselves ignorant of the most basic laws of business; banks, insurance companies, auto manufacturers, and every other type of corporate loser that would ask for money. Most of that money has gone into the pockets of the unethical and greedy people that ran those companies into the ground. Meanwhile, the rest of us have gotten nothing but deeper in public debt. Bush did his best to bankrupt the United States. Obama seems determined to finish the job.
Gasoline prices have risen steadily so far during the tenure of the Obama administration, once again making the rich richer, and obeying the dictates of an industry lobby. When given an opportunity to let the big three makers of the cars that spawned the oil glut, he instead gave them billions of dollars rather than investing those dollars in the renewable energy sources he championed during his campaign.
He has just announced that he can’t be bothered to deal with those pesky immigration problems for at least another year, thus continuing a system under which millions of people on both sides of the equation continue to suffer.
In short, Barack Obama promised us much. He promised that he would undo the ills of the previous eight years and make all of our lives better along the way.
Bullshit.
So far he has talked a big game and done nothing. No, that is not true. He has for all intents and purposes continued the policies of the previous administration, only more so. We may as well have elected Jeb to office to continue the George’s efforts. Look around yourself. Try to find something big, meaningful, and positive with which to credit our “new” president.
It was my intent to elect the most honorable man (or woman) in the race. It was my intent to bring this country back on course, to take control of the United States away from the corporations, rich white men, and lobbyists who now own it. Instead, we have gotten most of a year of more of the same. More of the same is what I was working against when I helped elect Barack Obama to the office of President. I voted for the change he promised. What change? Where is it? There has been no change. If anything, the problems have accelerated. Change, my ass.
And speaking of asses, Mr. Obama needs to get off his and do something. It’s wonderful to think about fixing things. It’s grand to talk about fixing things. But all of that is no good if all you do is think and talk. You actually need to do something, to take action. If you campaign on the promise of change, and are then unwilling to change anything, and if you have any ethics, you need to admit that you have a problem with fulfilling promises and move over in favor of someone, anyone, who will not simply preside over business as usual. We need somebody with some nuts to fix this mess we call a country.
WTF, Barack. Either do something or get the hell out of the way. Now would be good.
Voting Critically
It is getting harder every day to discuss politics, simply because the electorate is too polarized. I believe that to be on purpose, a ruse to keep people from talking about the things that matter. Politicians want this situation to be commonplace, in order that we stay disgusted with the process and don’t look at it too closely, or begin to think that we can repair the current abysmal state of government. The mainstream media is certainly complicit. They talk about what the politicians want to talk about, which has nothing to do with meaningful issues. It’s all fluff.
We are kept focused on non-issues; the age, color, or sex of candidates, not what they believe about critical issues. We don’t even talk about critical issues. We talk about the difference between pro-life and pro-choice, two meaningless word-sets if I ever heard any, and not about the deeper societal issues around sex and birth. All issues are polarized, all have buzz-words, while most mean nothing. They are words and phrases meant to confuse, sound bites meant to divide us into ever smaller groups.
As long as we let it be about Republican vs. Democrat, conservative vs. liberal, man vs. woman, and so on down a long list, the politicians and the monied elite that have bought and paid for them them will have their way with us. Thay will have the control; we will be subservient. We will not talk about the important things that could make our lives better, could alleviate the suffering of citizens, and stop the bleeding of our institutions. We vote instead on buzzwords, wardrobe, and haircuts, not substantive matters. This ludicrous process is killing our citizenry and our country.
You can help to alleviate this critical problem. Pick an issue that means something to you. Figure out why it means something to you, exactly how you feel about it, and why. Then find out how the candidates feel about it. Read their position papers, the long versions. Dig into it. See if what they say changes your mind. Look at their records and see if it matches their words. Finally, decide which candidate is closest to your position, and is likely to stick to it.
Then select another issue. Repeat. Do until done.
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 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.
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. 
Hack and Johnson - Sunshine and Stocks
There is a scandal brewing right here in Lawrence, Kansas. The Mayor of Lawrence (Sue Hack), and the head of the County Commission (Bob Johnson) have been found to own stock in Deciphera Pharmaceuticals, during a period where they were determining what tax and fee concessions to give that company to locate in Lawrence. This comes on the heels of their having been found to have met, at last twice, behind closed doors with Deciphera during this same period, in direct contravention of the Kansas Sunshine law. I’m not sure why we have to give away the store to every company that’s thinking of moving to Lawrence, anyway.
We may be getting an idea of why they think it is necessary. Both Sue Hack (the Mayor of Lawrence) and Bob Johnson, head of the Couty Commission, wound up, somehow, with $5,000 each in Deciphera stock at the time the tax and fee deals were being cut. I don’t know that either Hack, and ex-school teacher, or Johnson, are doubling as day traders, but the direct purchase of that much stock doesn’t sound like something either one of them would do on a daily basis.
