Tag Archives: Political thoughts

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Welcome to 2009

From the news the past few weeks, 2009 looks a lot like 2008. That will suck if it continues.
• Polls = “lies, damned lies and statistics.” One added benefit to Barack Obama’s election would be the cessation of the endless polling the news networks did during the campaign cycle. Wow, was I wrong about that. The polls have shifted from which candidate people support for the 2008 campaign to which GOP candidate is most favored (it’s Sarah Palin right now) to beat Obama and/or how much confidence the public – including the same Republicans who are already lining up to support Palin – has in Obama. WTF? Can’t the guy take office before the snarkiness starts? Apparently not.
• Petty, partisan politics are over. Uh, not in the US. Just as Minnesota says Al Franken won, Norm Coleman and his pals in the Senate vow to fight on. Granted, with an election so close, it’s hard to blame them. It’s how they got the White House in 2000. The other split seems to be in how the GOP machine will respond to President Obama. So far they have released obnoxious and racist videos. When called on the blatant racism of “Barak the magic negro” their response was “it was a joke.” Yeah, so were your response to Katrina, our participation in the ICC or adherence to the Geneva Conventions the economy and your general ability to govern. See, none of us are laughing at those either.
• No, really – everything I do it totally legal. One might think that if one governor is in the newspaper every day over a ‘pay for play’ scandal that if you maybe did the same thing, you might not want to subject yourself to anything that requires Senate confirmation. Poor, silly Bill Richardson. Of course, the adage that ‘those in glass houses should not throw stones’ never did mean much to politicians. Nice.
• Just because I am about to be impeached does mean I lose my rights to govern. Speaking of Governor Blogojevich, he hasn’t actually been indicted on anything. I understand that the ‘appearance of impropriety is worse than the impropriety itself.’ I do but legally he has the right to appoint anyone, who meets the requirements to be a Senator, to the Senate. He could make things easier on Harry Reid, but why should he? He should because anyone he appoints will be tainted and that may make it harder to them to keep the seat in 2010 when they have to run again. A veto proof Senate would be, well, I can’t say how strongly I feel about it because then I would have to list this post as ‘offensive’ but it would be awesome.
• Winter is cold and there is still plenty of war to go around. After 10 days in Florida and too many hours of CNN/the Weather Channel, I can tell you that in the winter most of the US is cold and people still try to kill each other all over the world. Israel is pounding Gaza (and I do blame Hamas for this), conflicts continue in the DR Congo & Darfur and pirates are taking ships off the horn of Africa. Good times.

I know I sound glib here and promise that is not my goal. It’s hard for me not to not be cynical about the state of the world. The US made great progress by electing Barack Obama but we have a long way to go in terms of the rest of the planet, our role in it and what we do within our borders. Democracy does not equal stability and peace. The US is not the only country on earth and political corruption runs rampant. We get the government that we settle for.

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Some period of time in review

Some period of time in review:

• Dick Cheney meets our expectations. Apparently he admitted to supporting waterboarding. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-cheney16-2008dec16,0,5456856.story  Looks like he may not be the warm and fuzzy VPOTUS we have all grown to know and love. And just as he leaves office, maybe the indictments won’t come through until after he and Dubya have left town. Can a POTUS pardon people in advance?

• Obama fatigue – catch it! Sorry. I love the fact that Barak Obama will be our president soon. He is a great person and will be a fantastic leader. It was an amazing night here in DC – election night was like Mardi Gras, the Superbowl, all tennis grand slams, every sporting event championship and New Year’s Eve rolled into one. For weeks people walked around being nice to each other, like the local government had removed the chlorine from our water and replaced it with Prozac or Xanax. It has been great but the scale has tipped. No, thank you, I do not need a toilet seat cover with a picture of the new first family on it. There are more stalls here with Obama memorabilia than Washington Post stands (maybe the newspapers should think about that as they all file for chapter 11.)• The holiday season is upon us but so is the apocalypse. No, I am not talking about the economy, the auto industry or the Illinois governor. I went to my second movie of 2008 – yes I need to get out more often – and heard some crazy music playing. It was the Chipmunks. It was a cover of an old Journey song. It was every bit as bad as you can imagine.

• Speaking of hell, if I am not there now I think I am headed there. Or at least that’s what every random religious door-to-door congregation in the city thinks because they come to my house five times a week. I am starting to think there is a big “Satan lives here” sign on my door. I thought I scared the Mormons away when I gave them a copy of “Under the Banner of Heaven” but they keep coming back. And if the two overly friendly women with the Watchtower come calling again I am just going to answer the door naked and see if that keeps them away.• Christian Bale may be about to jump the shark, he make take the phrase with him. One of the previews I saw was of a new Terminator movie. Bale’s big line in the preview was “You tried to kill my mother, you tried to kill me, I am not gonna let you.” Then let them kill me. Death sounds better than this. Didn’t the writers’ strike end last year?

• Keanu Reeves found his ideal role: disaffected alien. Don’t get me wrong, I love Keanu. I loved him as Neo (even despite that line “You can’t die, I love you too damn much.”) and who didn’t love him in “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure”? He uttered my favorite line in any movie EVER. In “River’s Edge” he says, “You just come around here to eat our food and fuck our mother. You motherfucker. You food eater.” If you cannot appreciate that line, well, I can’t help that.

• And because it’s there: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/swear-words

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Thank you, Howard

As we all expected, Howard Dean is leaving the DNC in January when his term expires. He is probably one of the only people in politics to stick to a self-imposed term limit. The last person I know of who did that was George Washington. I think he always planned to do this and would have even had Barack Obama asked him to stay, which everyone also knew was never going to happen.

The irony of something rarely gets missed, by me anyway. Here it almost hits you in the face. Howard Dean began the ‘fifty state strategy’ and got a lot of crap for it. This plan helped win the election for Obama. I have heard there is some bad blood between the two men but have not found anything to prove that. It is customary for a president to pick the chair of the party but I don’t feel Dean has been given the credit he deserves. The Nation ran this back in February: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080317/berman.

I don’t know how President-elect Obama feels about Dean. I am not sure it matters and it would be natural to want someone from his inner circle there. The problem is that Dean rebuilt a party that was in trouble all over the country. His departure, while expected and blah, blah, blah makes me wonder what direction the DNC will take now. Given the recent success of Dean’s plan (in both 2006 and 08) I hope they continue it.

PS. Note to sensible readers, I know everyone just loves the Huffington Post. I don’t. This is because they do not believe in fact checkers. That is important because when they ‘break’ a story it is hard to tell if it is real and they have put stories up that were later found to be false. If you read it on a regular basis, just keep that in mind. You’ll get better breaking news from Drudge.

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If it is Sunday, it is TV time

My Sunday morning ritual, and I may have posted this before is simple — I watch the Chris Matthews show (Religiously, if I miss an episode not only does my day get off to a bad start but my week seems to suck, too. And as I have said before, I need my Chris Matthews fix so when he was ill last winter/fall/whenever it was or when they give him a vacation, he does deserve them, his shows are different and I cannot watch and suffer a minor depression until he returns.), then Meet the Press then Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer.  I do a lot of channel surfing throughout the morning and afternoon and inevitably I get all worked up and frequently yell at the TV.  This morning was no exception.

 

C-Span showed the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings with Atty General Alberto Gonzales and I got to see some of that and recorded what I missed — I do leave the house from time to time and did so this afternoon.  What I saw was appalling.  Whether he was lying to the committee about what he knew, which is against the law, or if he really did not remember everything he claims to have forgotten, neither make this situation better.  In fact, the more he spoke the clearer it became that the line between where the White House ends and the DoJ begins seems to have disappeared completely during this administration.  While all Executive Branch agencies are going to change somewhat with each administration, they need to maintain some separate identity to be able to carry out their work.  No where is this more true than at the Justice Department.  That partisan politics may have altered which cases were pursued and how is appalling.  Some may call me naïve and insist this is just 'politics as usual.' That should not change our outrage at this lack of respect for our system of government.

 

Vive la France!

 

Across the ocean, in the country everyone loves to hate, except me — I LOVE  FRANCE, history may be made there.  Believe it or not, OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE ELECTIONS and more THEY ARE NOT ALWAYS DUE TO US INTERVENTION, though I have read our campaign style has crept into their campaigns, we'll have to wait and see how that works out for them.  Better, I hope. For those who have not been watching, French candidates Nicolas Sarkozy (conservative) and Segolene Royal (liberal) got the top votes on 22 April and will face each other in a runoff election on 6 May (LA Times):

 

            "On a warm sunny day, voters in shorts, sunglasses and other casual attire stood in long lines caused by a turnout of about 86%, the highest since 1981. Some first-time voters needed help with the process.

            The high turnout reflected intense interest in a particularly suspenseful and significant election…

            Nationwide voter registration rose by more than 4 million since 2002. The Socialist Party carried out a vigorous get-out-the vote drive to avoid being blindsided again by an upstart candidate as in 2002."

Personally, as a liberal and a woman I am pulling for Ms. Royal — she would be the first female president of and that would be fantastic on many levels.  It is also amazing to see such a high voter turn out, one not marred with the polling problems we have at each election.  Lines, it seems to me they are always worse in poorer areas, were so long at polling places that many people went home because they could not afford to stay and wait.  Election day should be a holiday but back to France, where we might see we have a lot more in common with them than we think. This description of the French electorate looks eerily familiar:

           

"The country suffers from the fastest-growing public debt in , high unemployment, entrenched protectionism, a bloated public sector and concerns about both immigration and the failure to integrate ethnic Arab and African populations…

            Voters “clearly marked their wish to go to the end of the debate between two ideas of the nation, two projects for society, two value systems, two concepts of politics,” Mr. Sarkozy said.

            More than an hour later, Ms. Royal appeared before a rally in the Poitou-Charentes region, where she is regional president, promising to change , but softly.

            Many French people, she said, “do not want a ruled by the law of the strongest or the most brutal, sewn-up by financial interests, where all powers are concentrated in the same few hands.” She added, “I am a free woman, as you are a free people.”"(The New York Times)

 

One thing that struck me was the desire to change the way the government is viewed and how similar the issues are. More on 6 May!

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