Are You Ready To Take Your Place

In the Modern Museum of Disgrace?

Albion River Bridge

What a week, politically. I can't say that much of it feels genuine anymore. Or that the populous even wants genuine anymore. That's the sticking point with me. The easily-distracted masses drone on about meaningless shit, while everything around them is crumbling and collapsing. If you saw Bill Maher last night, you know that he went off about this sad phenomenon.

When I read that people decided to vote for Senator Clinton because Tina Fey highlighted the "poor me" act on Saturday Night Live, or because the "3 A.M. phone call" commercial convinced them of her capability, I cringe. Or, they voted for her because Limbaugh instructed them to, since Senator Obama is (probably) a Muslim. More cringing, with gnashing-of-teeth and some caterwauling too.

Obama's adviser called Clinton a monster. Wow, no fooling? Maybe because she's been behaving like one. I mean, there's bitch and then there's vindictive bitch. And maybe there really are millions of us that are fed up with vile, boorish behavior by politicians like her. Or maybe there are even more who want a loud-mouthed bully as president. Someone to have a beer and be a loudmouth with. Maybe we are all monsters.

Who Are You?

Hillary Clinton expected to win. This troubles me. Ego is necessary in that world. I get it. What I cannot get past is how it's somehow acceptable to her supporters that she voted for the war, and the surges that have followed. Were you opposed to the war? I was from the first time I heard the early chatter that preceded it. Can she honestly admit she made a mistake? I don't think she has any intention of getting us all-the-way-out of Iraq. She aligns herself with the war's architects. Plus, she is owned. Much like Nancy Pelosi. Shame on them both. I hoped for much more.


I first heard about Barack Obama on Al Franken's blog, which preceded his Air America Radio stint. (Early in 2003) That's when I learned of Obama's run for the Senate. He sounded enlightened and articulate. I thought his keynote speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention was a high point that election year, and there were few. Why are people put-off by his ability to speak in an intelligible manner? Is this what happens when a retarded imbecile is the president for 8 years? People have lowered the bar, and now don't want someone too intelligent, or worse yet...an intellectual! Dumbed-down comes to mind. Oh, and just a reminder-I did cast my vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primary. The true anti-war candidate. Since I voted absentee a few weeks before February 5th, he was already gone by the time my vote was tallied. Squeezed out by a political system that refuses to evolve. I admit it-I am scared shitless at the prospect of another republican regime. The current bastards ground me down. The thought of McCain calling the shots (so to speak) is mortifying. Ralph Nader doesn't upset me, either. People ought to calm down and listen to what he's saying, instead of being whipped into a frenzy at his announcement of today. He's right, you know. The two-party system is broken, just like so many archaic systems here in freedom land. As he said, if the democratic nominee doesn't win in a LANDSLIDE victory this year, then the democratic party needs to seriously regroup and rethink itself.


I was raised by Kennedy-loving democrats. Supporting Obama in the general election is not a stretch. But wait, there's more. The idea of a mixed-race president sounds great to me! It's long past time. (By a couple hundred years.) Since so much of this planet we share is inhabited by people that do not look like us, I think it would be a positive statement about our ability to adapt. Include. Change. The fact that his supporter's numbers continue to confound the media and everyone else tells me that there are a lot if us who want something different in ways that directly affect the future of the world. Hillary is an intelligent, respected, powerful woman. A woman that supported the war. Many Americans did. Their blind belief in an alleged quick fix has destroyed more than they know. Yet. But they will, in the decades ahead. As will their descendants. And mine. It doesn't seem to get mentioned enough, but I am one that admits to a certain degree of resentment for anyone who foolishly believed the war in Iraq was the answer. I did not and will not ever view an illegal war as the answer. That's who I am. Who are you?

Because?

Overcome. Some Day.

Seeing Kucinich call it quits made me incredibly sad. The "issue" for me was and is the illegal war in Iraq, and all that has followed it. I haven't "moved on" to the economy, because the illegal Iraq war is the reason for the looming recession. Kucinich opposed the war from the beginning, and believed we should bring the troops home as soon as possible. That's why I supported him.

Still, I admit that watching a person of any color become our next president would be fantastic. I am so weary of the white man's view of things. As for H.R.C., Hillary is a woman who has done well in the white man's world. My personal feeling is that in doing this, she sacrificed some of her feminist soul. She became like them. A handy reminder: In 1992, I was a precinct leader in my then-district in Santa Cruz County. I worked tirelessly to get Bill Clinton elected, with three children in tow. Those were some of the happiest, proudest months in my life. I won't ever regret them, or supporting Bill. I was nuts about Hillary Clinton too. The thing is, 1992 seems hideously long ago. Just think about all that's occurred. And I don't mean blow jobs, or haircuts, or dead lawyers. I mean being complicit with the dark side to play in the white man's political arena. She could've been so much better than all of that. She's always been a supporter of the Iraq war.We need something new. While Barack Obama is deficient in areas of importance to me, I'm appreciating his obvious victory in South Carolina, just the same.

** This just In
*** And this

What She Said

Molly Ivins wrote this about a year before her demise. I agree with her. And that is really a damned shame, because it would be fantastic to support a woman for president in 2008. Especially because I thought the world of her, way-back-when.

So far, the only candidate I find viable is Barack Obama. Which means he will not be the democrat's nominee, right? Anyway, heeeeeeere's Molly...



I will not support Hillary Clinton for president
Molly Ivins
January 20, 2006
freepress.org

AUSTIN, Texas --- I'd like to make it clear to the people who run the Democratic Party that I will not support Hillary Clinton for president.

Enough. Enough triangulation, calculation and equivocation. Enough clever straddling, enough not offending anyone This is not a Dick Morris election. Sen. Clinton is apparently incapable of taking a clear stand on the war in Iraq, and that alone is enough to disqualify her. Her failure to speak out on Terri Schiavo, not to mention that gross pandering on flag-burning, are just contemptible little dodges.

The recent death of Gene McCarthy reminded me of a lesson I spent a long, long time unlearning, so now I have to re-learn it. It's about political courage and heroes, and when a country is desperate for leadership. There are times when regular politics will not do, and this is one of those times. There are times a country is so tired of bull that only the truth can provide relief.

If no one in conventional-wisdom politics has the courage to speak up and say what needs to be said, then you go out and find some obscure junior senator from Minnesota with the guts to do it. In 1968, Gene McCarthy was the little boy who said out loud, "Look, the emperor isn't wearing any clothes." Bobby Kennedy -- rough, tough Bobby Kennedy -- didn't do it. Just this quiet man trained by Benedictines who liked to quote poetry.

What kind of courage does it take, for mercy's sake? The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush's tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do "whatever it takes" to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

I listen to people like Rahm Emanuel superciliously explaining elementary politics to us clueless naifs outside the Beltway ("First, you have to win elections"). Can't you even read the damn polls?

Here's a prize example by someone named Barry Casselman, who writes, "There is an invisible civil war in the Democratic Party, and it is between those who are attempting to satisfy the defeatist and pacifist left base of the party and those who are attempting to prepare the party for successful elections in 2006 and 2008."

This supposedly pits Howard Dean, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, emboldened by "a string of bad news from the Middle East ... into calling for premature retreat from Iraq," versus those pragmatic folk like Steny Hoyer, Rahm Emanuel, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Joe Lieberman.

Oh come on, people -- get a grip on the concept of leadership. Look at this war -- from the lies that led us into it, to the lies they continue to dump on us daily.

You sit there in Washington so frightened of the big, bad Republican machine you have no idea what people are thinking. I'm telling you right now, Tom DeLay is going to lose in his district. If Democrats in Washington haven't got enough sense to OWN the issue of political reform, I give up on them entirely.

Do it all, go long, go for public campaign financing for Congress. I'm serious as a stroke about this -- that is the only reform that will work, and you know it, as well as everyone else who's ever studied this. Do all the goo-goo stuff everybody has made fun of all these years: embrace redistricting reform, electoral reform, House rules changes, the whole package. Put up, or shut up. Own this issue, or let Jack Abramoff politics continue to run your town.

Bush, Cheney and Co. will continue to play the patriotic bully card just as long as you let them. I've said it before: War brings out the patriotic bullies. In World War I, they went around kicking dachshunds on the grounds that dachshunds were "German dogs." They did not, however, go around kicking German shepherds. The MINUTE someone impugns your patriotism for opposing this war, turn on them like a snarling dog and explain what loving your country really means. That, or you could just piss on them elegantly, as Rep. John Murtha did. Or eviscerate them with wit (look up Mark Twain on the war in the Philippines). Or point out the latest in the endless "string of bad news."

Do not sit there cowering and pretending the only way to win is as Republican-lite. If the Washington-based party can't get up and fight, we'll find someone who can.