How I'm Leaning Come November
I'm hoping for the first female either VP or Prez standing proudly beside the first AA VP or Prez. Either one, either spot. Let's just break the mold and grab some respect from the world again.
March 07, 2008
February 12, 2008
The Press: Many Brains, One Thought
People say, "Why don't they cover this [story, angle, evidence, finding, outrage]?" Meaning how could a story so stupendously important escape notice by the national political press? As if it's an entity, a single thing with one brain. In fact, it is countless brains ... with one thought: "What is today's special?" I.e., What is the emerging story for the next 24 hours, 48 hours, or week? Will we be seen as irrelevant if we don't cover it? Chef's special this week, according to Newsweek's cover: Will the Republican fringe eat its middle? I like the Republican middle. Eisenhowerians. I meet them all the time: socially progressive financial conservatives.
February 10, 2008
Dear Democratic Presidential Candidate: About the Military, What You Have To Say
In Mitt Romney's last few seconds of fame, with every camera on him, he revealed the main point of thrust for the Republican case against a Democratic presidential candidate: that a Democratic White House will turn tail, and leave the U.S. vulnerable to "the terrorists." He came within a pinch of calling Clinton and Obama traitors and cowards. McCain, on the other hand, is a bona fide, pepper-spitting military hero. Voters: do the math.
The Democrats can perform message judo on this attack, however. What they have to do is embrace the U.S. military, for all the good that it does. Stop being the party that turns its nose up: "Because war is bad!"
Our military -- not everyone's -- is pretty remarkable. The U.S. military is probably the world's largest research and development operation, for one thing. The Internet started there, thank you. As did GPS. Adult education for the masses was also a U.S. military invention, when it needed to teach 20 million civilians how to win World War Two.
Democrats: you do not have to love slaughter and mayhem to love the military's impact on the U.S. economy. It funds major industrial sectors. It gave us an aircraft industry. It helps sustain an automotive industry. It consumes huge amounts of materials and supplies, and most of that isn't gunpowder. It turns vast numbers of U.S. adolescents into employable, capable adults. And in the bad years, like now, it makes miraculous medical progress trying to save shot-up lives.
It was politicians who put us into Iraq. The wrong kind of politicians. Unhumble. Shockingly unworldly. Believing that they could bully any problem into submission because they had unfathomable force at their beck and call.
Hate war. Love the military. It's an economic engine.
Politics of Camp Fires
On snowy days, I burn brush. And that's what a revolution is -- a lot of little twigs desperate to become a fire.
February 08, 2008
Men Suck (And I Are One)
Boop the Hoop is right. The reason Hillary might not win against McCain, say 2 recent polls, is that MEN won't vote for her. But WOMEN will vote for Barack. So, as of today, polls warn and strategists will insist, Barack can beat McCain, but Hillary can't. Electability rears its ugly.
So the ? becomes: Who will rise more in the independents' estimation? McCain is alone in his race now. The Rombot pulled out (wish G.W.'s dad had, on that special night with Barbara). Maybe John McCain will become old news to independents. Maybe his crusty parts will poke out from behind the wary smile. I like McCain's record well enough. His experience in Vietnam made a man of titanium character who suffers fools and betrayers poorly. Those parts I like. I don't like his pledge to turn the Supreme Court into the Extreme Court. He's vowed: "No activist judges!" Read: Only those who believe in burning witches need apply.
October 01, 2006
My Politics: Federal Government (sigh)
Remember the good old days? Bush 2 is inaugurated. (Okay, in his mind the word means "crowned." He's not a dictionary kind of guy.) Promises Washington the "corporate presidency." Despite the dot-com collapse-a-thon, there's still vestigial respect on the street for the "corporate approach." Enron's in the future. Maybe corporations DO have some secret mojo. Yay, Bush, Mr. President CEO. Then comes the meteor. 9/11. My goodness. Everything changes. They need to deliver, be clever, have a plan. Not a freeze-dried plan, either. Something cool they've just dreamed up based on the ways things really are. My heartmate and I stand on our gravel driveway, in farm country at night. For a week no blinking lights transit the sky. No UFOs dare show their jukebox lights and mysterious ways. Life has changed. We thought. But it turns out, no one read the small print. This is the OLD corporate model in the White House. The BIG BRAIN model. The BIG BRAIN at the top. "I'll have all the ideas, thank you." Only this time replaced by a front man, a bunch of big egos, and an ideologically-tainted agenda some would say divorced from the facts and chillingly inflexible. At least when Thelma and Louise drive off the cliff, they don't pretend they're taking the shortest route to the next town over. Bless you, Bob Woodward. You've chronicled this freak show. I once thought it was rhetorical extravagance to say that any idiot could be president. No more.
