I was going to do a piece today about Richard Nixon, the notoriously legendary 18 minute audio tape gap, and the miserable state of healthcare in the USA, but the last couple days have put such a sour taste in my mouth that I need to rinse and spit this one last bit here before I can clean up and get on with issues other than the DNC primary circus that blew through our area earlier this week. I promise. Just a few small items and then this Greek tragedy can playing itself out, and I’ll be content to have had my (more…)
Entries tagged as ‘Campaign’
A Word to the Right About McCain
February 7, 2008 · 3 Comments
Photo by Wigwam Jones
I just read the latest from Ann Coulter about the 2008 election. Seems that she’s softening up a little on Hillary Clinton. Well, as it relates to the candidacy of John McCain anyway. I guess that McCain has become the new evil empire in the eyes of the vocal rightwing of the GOP. Almost to the point where I’m taking a good look at him to see what there might be abut him that I’ll like. After all, if he drags nails down Ann’s psychological blackboard, then what’s not to like about him?
Just a thought here about John McCain, going out to my frantic friends on the far right as they hunker down behind the delusional sandbags of a tax-free, Jesus-led Christian America in panicked opposition to what looks like an inevitable centrist ticket.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason that he’s made it this far is that the American public is sick and tired of divisive politics, and that the 1994 Gingrich Revolution, and the hard-right vs hard-left stalemate it brought with it, is dead and gone?
I know it’s gotta be tough to hear, but after the Terry Shiavo embarrassment, and the Mark Foley embarrassment, and the Tom Delay embarrassment, and the Macaca embarrassment, and the Larry Craig embarrassment, and the Jean Schmidt embarrassment and the Ted Haggard embarrassment, and all the other smaller embarrassments involving members of the ultra-conservative wing of the GOP, it seems pretty clear that the rank and file of the mainstream GOP has had enough of the people they used to refer to as the “crazies” until Newt rallied them to hijack the party in 1994. I mean, winning elections with rigid voting blocks is great and all, but having to govern is something completely different, and those Evangelical snake oil salesmen and backwoods bug exterminators just never got that end of the whole “getting elected” thing together.
I think the grown-ups in the car have finally had enough of looking the other way on behalf of lockstep unity, and have quietly decided to take their place at the wheel. Sure, it’s been a thrill ride since the kids grabbed the controls, but there are just so many trashed mailboxes the party faithful will tolerate as they careen through the countryside on the brink of disaster. Responsible motoring is what’s needed now, even if the biggest backseat crybabies still wanna go “Weeeeee” to the peril of the rest of us belted in with them.
John McCain, and his blend of centrist notions seem to be a lot more in-line with what the rest of the nation sees as the best way to actually accomplish something in this country. The Ann Coulters of the world, on the other hand, are behaving more like political suicide bombers, intent on staining the streets with their own blood rather than give an inch on behalf of workable solutions, and it’s about time that the rest of the GOP finally came around to seeing people like her and Limbaugh as being the relentless troublemakers that they actually are.
You see, the left has its troublemakers too. Al Sharpton, Michael Moore, and Cynthia McKenna are just a few. but folks don’t follow their lead so much as encourage them to battle it out with your troublemakers, since they’ll do it anyway and why bother stopping them if it gives both sides of the crazy a little distraction. When it comes to actual governance, no one would have those folks actually directing choices in leadership, and would never allow them to force their support away from a political candidate that appeals to them. They can suggest, but they know better than to demand something like that.
I’m a centrist, and even if it seems like I’m way far to the left on most things, it’s actually more indicative of how far to the right the public imagines the center to actually be. It hasn’t gotten as crazy as the pundits would have us believe, and the real people of this nation have had enough of the childish demonizing, and the cartoon righteousness of the last 16 years. It’s finally coming to an end, and hopefully there is still time to undo to damage of this long protracted, and pointless, culture war.
You fundamentalists will never be able to have the “Christian America” that you envision, and I’ll never have the America where everyone really does have the same shot at economic success as everyone else, regardless of how their brains are wired or what their last names are. We’ll both have to accept this, grow beyond it, and do our best to be positive members of this unique society – with its own personality that neither of us would have crafted if given the mandate.
Let Ann Coulter be her own version of the Gong Show and let Rush sit there and carry on as the bloviated buffoon that’s earned him his fortune. Just don’t let either of them actually affect the way you address the challenge of making a responsible decision as a member of a widely diverse society.
They make a living off pitting you against people like me. It fattens their bank accounts when you get entrench and uncompromising. It also feeds their egos. In fact, while it does nothing to serve your needs, it gives them everything they need to thrive as the professional antagonists that they’ve chosen to be. Rightwing dissent is big business in this nation, and it has been for years, although it’s been tough recently as those great bumperstickers have inspired actual policy that’s failed spectacularly. The rightwing cheerleaders want those heady days of raging against the machine back again. They know that if they can succeed in fracturing the GOP this fall, they will have many years of happiness as the leading voices of dissent in a new centrist political landscape, while you have only resentment and frustration to look forward to as a face in their crowd of the angry disenfranchised.
That’s right. Losing, for them, is winning. It’s impossible to be a celebrated dissident in a society where folks agree with you. As the back-bench bomb tosser, you get to rage against the status quo instead of having to take responsibility for the policies you’ve enacted. For folks like Ann and Rush, railing against is what it’s all about. For them, this conservative collapse – losing it all and having to start over again – is a dream come true. And folks like you are falling right into line to make it happen for them by refusing to give an inch to the folks who actually make up the majority of your beloved Grand Old Party.
John McCain works to bring things to the center, where that majority lives. In their world of give and take, no one wins everything but no one loses everything either. And in a society as aggressively diverse as this, that’s all you can ever hope for. One thing you can be sure of is that if John does get to be president, he’ll sure as hell take the job seriously, and in the end, that’s saying a lot more than you can say about most anyone else in your party that is in the position to land the job.
Categories: Politics
Tagged: Campaign, election, John McCain, McCain, Politics, president, United States
The New Silent Majority
February 6, 2008 · Leave a Comment
cc: Hine/Library of Congress
As I wandered around the carnival grounds this morning and picked through bits of trash left over from last night, I could hear the news boys on the next block over, shouting out the headlines to the morning commute as it sat bleary-eyed on the conveyer – inching its way toward a long Wednesday morning.
“GOP Uniting Around McCain! Dems in Deep Division!”
I found myself chuckling a bit, as I reached down and picked up yet another clue that had a headline of its own. It didn’t look so good for the guys who’d ponied up the dough for this little shindig, and the more I saw scattered around the midway, the less it looked like there’d be much to celebrate for the corporate barons of Capital City. Even the news of their franchise finally coming together to find common ground was bad if it meant that the only common ground they could find stank of scorched earth for these few with power and privilege. Life had been pretty damn good for the bosses downtown, but if trash here had a tale to tell, it was one that didn’t offer a happy ending for any of them. Not this time around.
As I kicked a box out of the way, my foot met with surprising resistance.
“Ow! Hey! What the…”
Out rolled an Armani suit, sporting a bedraggled host who looked like he would’ve been considered fresh-faced if not for the whole “passed out in a box” issue impacting his first impression.
“Long night?” I asked, as he staggered to his feet.
He blinked at the morning sun, his red eyes telling me things that his stale breath did its best to dance around.
“Great party,” he lied, gathering himself together as best he could. “We had a…uh…an historic evening…um…”
“Hold on there, son,” I winced. “It’s okay. I was here all night. I saw everything. Save the spin for Wolf Blitzer.”
He ran his hands over the 5,000 dollar wrap and tried wishing the stains out to no avail, as I stood there picturing the past 24 hours of this rising star. An evil smile crept across my face.
“My instincts say it’s McCain/Huckabee. The fundies won’t support McCain without their boy on the team. McCain’s gonna have to give ‘em that much or he’s a goner in November.”
The kid whipped around. His expression told me that he was new in town. No one with any time in this dump betrayed that kind of irritation. That was something you learned early on, or you didn’t last long.
“John McCain is a true American patriot!” he sputtered. It was a talking point that stuck in his throat, and we both knew it as soon as he coughed it up.
“Yeah, that he is,” I replied, as I uncrinkled a wad of paper I’d picked up before Junior Wall Street’s rise and shine.
“It says here that he hates you guys.”
“That’s Liberal spin,” he spat. He’d been coached, but then, hadn’t they all.
“Huckabee too,” I chuckled. “He hates you guys even more than McCain does. That almost seems impossible, but there it is in black and white.”
“Those are DNC talking points,” he barked, fishing through his pockets for who knows what.
“Need a comb?” I asked quietly as I scanned the data sheet that someone had had enough of the night before. The numbers were definitive. The entire event had been a rejection of the business as usual, and a call for a new relationship between Big Business and the folks that keep it in business. Even the Democrats had been given notice that the corporates were no longer welcome at the head of the table, even if it meant a temporary downturn.
It takes breaking some eggs to make an omelet, and it looked like the kitchen was open for a new way of looking at breakfast. A donut and coffee on the run, as the bosses cracked the whip, wasn’t going to cut it anymore, and these guys were going to have to deal with it. The rank and file had found their mojo, and it was going to be a new day in America. For better or worse.
“I think I lost my wallet last night,” he muttered as he continued to search his suit.
“Ask Rudy,” I grinned. “I heard that he lost 50 large at the table. None of it his own. Maybe he knows what happened to it?”
He flashed that rage again. On him it kinda had an endearing quality. They’d beat that outa him before sending him out on his own again. That kind of honesty would get the lad slaughtered in some parts of this town, and the suit told me that someone had invested in him. Even if his behavior kept to itself about it.
“So,” I continued, enjoying myself as he continued to do the “Where’s my Cheese?” routine with his wallet, “Any word from Romney this morning? I heard it didn’t go so well for your boy last night.”
He suddenly switched gears and went for the Blackberry he kept close to his heart, frantically clicking through menus until he got one that connected him to home base.
“It’s Farrington,” he squeaked into the pod before hacking his throat clear.
“Yes.”
“I’m still on-site.”
“Yes…Still working…”
“I see…And the governor?”
A dark look came over his apple-cheeked countenance. I could tell it was bad news.
“I’ll be in as soon as I stop by the condo and freshen up.”
“Yes sir…I will sir…”
“Trouble in paradise?” I mused aloud.
“You can go straight to hell!” he hissed, spinning on his Brunos and heading toward the taxi traffic due north. The kid’s surly exit told me all I needed to know. That I was right about what the rest of the trash had been saying all morning.
Yep, either way it shakes out in November, McCain/Huckabee or whatever ticket the Democrats cob together, the only losers in this election are going to be guys like him and the corporate overlords who sign his expense reports. The new aristocracy, with their castles of chrome steel and smoked glass, have just seen the first signs of a new silent majority and the revolution that it’s going to bring to this land of the free and the home of the brave.
Maybe it’s different in Dubai, or wherever it is that these bone-white Lords and Ladies of the new corporate nobility dream of when they dream their dreams of heaven on earth. Maybe the folks there like knowing their place in society, and maybe they gain a sense of security and perspective through having their bosses enjoy the serenity of absolute despotism.
In this country, the regular folks like to pretend that even they have a shot at being the top dog, even if deep down inside, they know that they probably don’t want it enough to allow it to become the pain in their ass it’d have to be in order to actually achieve it. Even so, no one gets away with pointing out the futility of dreaming like that to these folks. Nobody. And if they try it? Well, I could see the evidence of what that strategy brings in the end.
It’s a weird balance between hope, ambition, and just plain lethargy in this place, but when all is said and done, it is what it is, and you’d best try and work within the parameters of it if you want to be allowed to stick around. Mr. Armani suit boy and his pals broke that one cardinal rule some time ago, and the spin doctors can’t do a damn thing to save the patient this time around.
It’s a new silent majority now, and yesterday it made its first major announcement. From what I could gather, sifting through the trash left behind, the gist of it seemed to be “What’s in it for me this time around?”
I had to laugh. That’s just the kind of thing a majority would say.
Categories: Politics
Tagged: Campaign, election, Politics, president, United States
The Obama Vision Thing
February 5, 2008 · 7 Comments
The Barack Obama phenomenon intrigues me. Not that he’s really young, or that he’s a black man who’s actually got a shot at the Oval Office, or that he’s the storied “outsider” charging in to save us all from the same old boogeymen that we always stumble back home to after a bender with some other storied outsider that led us through a white-knuckle ride that only a true outsider can provide a nation as large and complicated as this one.
No, it’s not any of that. It’s the manner in which the crustiest and most venial of hard-boiled politicos have had moments of swooning like 12 yr old girls over this guy. Right in front of me (oh yeah, and the rest of the nation) on live political talk TV. You’d think they’d try a little harder to maintain some professional decorum when confronted with whatever the hell it is that this skinny guy brings to the podium.
I live in SW Ohio – 2004’s version of Florida and the dangling vote debacle – and the only part of Ohio that keeps it a swing state, and not a staple of the National Democratic Committee. Obama is bound to show up around here eventually, and I may decide to go see the whole thing for myself. It’s hard to predict what the reaction to him in this part of the state will be. The folks here are pretty naive in one sense and pretty resistant to being emotionally affected in another sense. I’ll be interested to see how they react to the Obama magic.
After all, these folks actually re-elected Mean Jean Schmidt back into her Rep seat after she showed up on SNL skits as the Raging Repub – blasting a career Marine as a coward for opposing the Iraq disaster. I mean, you could almost see Tom Delay and his pals giggling off screen as she marched up there and read the speech they gave her, but still, you’d think she would’ve skimmed it a moment before launching a viral moment like that on herself. And yet, even after that “lapse-in-judgment” these bedrock denizens of “God, gays and guns” sent her back again, and with their blessings.
So, you wonder how a fresh-face, African-American Liberal with a set of ears that look like they were yanked off the sides of a sippy cup will fare in front of these hardcore grape Kool-aid drinkers.
Now, I like Barak Obama. Don’t get me wrong here.
Well, actually, it’s more that I like the idea of Barack Obama. Then again, I like the idea of Batman too, but – to be quite honest – the idea of a real-life billionaire who dresses up in tights and a cape, running around in the night and “fighting crime”, kind of creeps me out a little in a classic clown sort of manner, so maybe the idea of a complete political neophyte as savior of the greatest empire in human existence has its elements of unreality attached to it as well.
The thing that really concerns me is that he’s only known for being a good speaker, and for literally nothing else. Some street organizing in Chicago, a good Senate campaign against Alan Keyes (not too controversial a character) and a speech against the Iraq invasion back when it was politically unpopular at the national level to make such a speech. That’s all you got here.
To be even more blunt, the anti-Iraq invasion speech he gave was given when he wasn’t at the national level at the time, and it wasn’t the same kind of immediate suicide move for him as it would have been for a national political figure – like, let’s say, Hillary Clinton, for instance. I don’t know. I like the idea of a guy like this shaking things up, but I also need to be able to trust that he’ll know how best to shake things up, and not just shaking things up for the mere sake of shaking things up. We have a lot of very serious issues to address, and no time to waste on false starts and blunders.
GW Bush destroyed way too much that needs to be resurrected again, and the next guy needs to know what it’s going to take to resurrect those things, and who to work with to make that happen. Obama is a very young guy with no deep personal relationships with the kind of people he’ll have to put the strong hand on to make them do what he’ll need them to do. I don’t know if anyone is capable of the kind of learning curve he’ll face as the next president this nation needs.
The hell is that every other candidate is a complete loser for other, and even more fatal, reasons. So, what do we do?
Maybe one aspect of Barack’s campaign is a clue, and maybe this is what people are lighting up on? At least I can hope that this is what’s putting that glassy look in the eyes of Belt Way trolls like Chris Matthews and Tim Russert when they gush about the man.
It actually was MSNBC’s Chris Matthews who I first heard take note that Barack talks in terms of “we”, and not in terms of “me”, and maybe this is where the difference lies. John Kennedy talked in terms of “we, as the nation” and called that nation to service in a way that few did even in those more naive and optimistic times. It’s been a long time since a leader has tried to get us to solve our own problems by coming together and caring more about each other that about ourselves. Maybe this is what’s needed now.
This is the greatest empire that has ever existed, but it’s also a powerfully dynamic and impactful vehicle. It’s kind of like a big bus that we’re all sitting in, and we hire drivers every 4 years or so to keep us moving forward and on schedule. Right now, it’s fishtailed off the road and is sitting with two wheels in a ditch. No one man or woman can lift it out of this ditch that the driver we’ve had for the last 7 years drove it into. We need a new driver – that much is clear – but first we need to get the damn thing out of the ditch.
Now, we can bitch about the crazy driving of our present driver, and I see room for some disciplinary action in response to a lot of what went on behind the wheel, but no matter what we do to the old driver, or what the next driver claims he or she can do, this bus will continue to sit with those two wheels off the road until we all get out of our seats, get off the bus, get a plan together to free those wheels, and put our backs into whatever it’ll take to get all four wheels back on the road again. Until that happens, it won’t matter who we hire to drive. We’ll just sit in this ditch forever regardless of what the talking points are.
If this whole Obama thing is a call to service for a new generation of brilliant talent and belligerent optimism, then I hope I get a chance to feel it when he comes around this corner of Ohio. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a calm sense of this nation’s future, and back then, it was only because all I could think about was girls and putting bands together. I was happily ignorant and just assumed that the folks in charge actually knew what they were doing.
Here’s to hoping that Barack Obama actually knows what it is that he’s doing. Well, beyond the getting elected bit where he works to convince us that he knows what it is that he’s doing. He seems to have that part of it all down pretty solid. It’s the actual governing for the good of the whole nation bit that I’d like to see someone get a firm handle on for a change. Now that would be refreshing.
Categories: Politics
Tagged: Barack Obama, Campaign, election, Obama, Politics, president, United States
Old News is Good News
March 12, 2008 · 2 Comments
So, I had a few emails come in yesterday that were pretty insistent that I weigh in on that Eliot Spitzer story. That’s the one about the NY state governor who got caught in a call girl sting operation. Another “surprise” investigation of a Democrat governor (shades of Alabama) by a GOP controlled Department of Justice that has been in the headlines in the last couple years for politicizing the legal system.
To me, it’s a clear case of an idiot with his own money, blowing some of it on a hooker while on a business trip. Nothing spectacular, except for the fact that he’s the guy who ran through Wall Street like the Black Death, and then turned that holocaust into (more…)
Categories: Commentary · News · Opinion · Politics
Tagged: Barack Obama, Campaign, candidate, democrat, DNC, election, Eliot Spitzer, Geraldine Ferraro, Governor, Hillary Clinton, NY, Politics, president