Now What?!

Look, until global warming gets worse, I can’t see myself moving to New Hampshire just to get to get in on some primary action when it might actually matter. So here I sit, thumbs twiddling, until Super Tuesday. Woo-hoo. I’m wearing my Bright Blue Dot button to cheer myself up until then. But I still feel cheated when it comes to taking part in the political process. Don’t get me wrong! There’s a lot to like about both of the Democratic front-runners. But Biden, Dodd, Edwards and Richardson (in alphabetical, not necessarily preferential, order) brought nuance and depth to the winnowing process. Even Gravel and Kucinich had their points. For a few halcyon weeks, it felt like there were some bona fide issues being discussed and actual differences being exposed. At this point, I feel like I’m about to vote on awarding a merit badge, not on sending someone to the White House. Who deserves to break tradition first? Or, who’s got more clout … the ex-president or a TV talk show host?! Please. I guess my only consolation at this point: even the Kennedys are whip-sawed over this one.

I’d like to leave a big blue dot tip with that red state reality check

They didn’t listen to us last time either. They actually thought John Kerry had a chance to win. But those of us surrounded by “other voices” knew he was just too much of a New England pointy head. Not that we didn’t like him. We just knew that NONE of our neighbors did.

So now we giddy Dems are about to offer up another party darling to the country, one that my neighbors are again telling me they just can’t vote for. And I’m not just talking about HRC. I’m sorry to say that the same can be said for Obama too. If there’s one hard lesson the last couple of elections have taught me, it’s that as my neighbors go, so goes the country. And they ain’t going for her—or for him. Much as I love what my fellow blogger Indigo says in her last post, I think she’s an anomaly.

If we can’t give the red-state fence sitters and moderates a choice they can digest, it will be a true tragedy. Because a lot of them seem ready to cross over to the bright side this time. And this country does not have another four years to throw away.

I hope I’m wrong. And based on Blue Dot voting results every month (which I assume comes mostly from red-staters), wrong I may very well be.

What if Hillary wins?

For years, watching Hillary has been like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. As a conservative, I’ve never cared for her personally or politically. She comes off as a power-hungry, well….you know. After becoming a presidential candidate, she made a swing to the right, but I’m not buying it. My instincts tell me she’s probably not going to win in ‘08, but we’ll see. The 2000 election showed us that anything can happen.

So what if she DOES win? I’m sure it will seem like the end of the world to Republicans. The machine that spent 8 years digging and throwing dirt at Bill will be pulled out of the closet and dusted off. Stories of the she-devil will fly across the internet. God will probably punish America for our evil votes with a giant tidal wave on Manhattan.

I really never thought I’d say this, but Hillary in the White House would be okay by me. The reason for my change in attitude is: George W. Bush. Bush has set the bar so low as president that even Hillary Clinton, while not desirable, is acceptable to me. The Republicans who are running now may not be Bush, but the party itself has drifted far away from real conservatism. I know this isn’t a ringing endorsement of Hillary, but it’s a big change for me. Bush and his pigs-at-the-trough congress have sent enough of our money over to Iraq and bungled their way through the past 7 years. I’d rather shell out our money to our citizens in a bunch of social programs, than to be shipping huge blocks of cash over to Iraq to disappear into corrupt Iraqi officials pockets. I’m not in any way for income redistribution, but at least our money would be circulating in THIS country. And the Bush administration has been so power-hungry and controlling that Hillary’s not looking so bad anymore. Thanks Bush. See what you’ve done…

Rewriting History

Bush’s Brain is at it again. Karl Rove is trying to rewrite history. He is pushing the message that the Bush Administration did not want to move as quickly toward war with Iraq, if at all, it was Congress’ fault. Congress passed the bills to give President Bush great latitude in the war on terror too fast. The administration was forced into war.

Can you believe this!? Regardless of how stupid the American polity has been over the years, surely the blinders have come off by now. Karl Rove has never met a lie that he didn’t like and why not. He has made his reputation on telling lies and repeating them so often that they take on a life of their own. Where there’s smoke there’s fire, right? So, lets buy what he is selling.

Look what he sold us in the past. What makes anyone think he would be selling anything but a lie now? We have got to stop buying what this pusher man is selling. It’s time to go cold turkey. Preferably a frozen turkey to the side of Roves’ head.

V-8 until ‘08!!

So, today is HUGE in the Bluest household. I’m ankling my corporate gig to go free-lance. It’s not that I’m tired of working full-time for ‘the man’ … even though my schedule is nuttier than Aunt Mavis’s pistachio brittle … or that my alleged ’superiors’ are still using Clearasil. And it doesn’t even have anything to do with that slim blade I discovered lodged between my shoulder blades the other day in the shower. Nope. Although it pains me to acknowledge that I could ever have anything in common with Trent Lott … his comment “it’s time to do something else” just rings true. But (of course there’s a “but” and it’s a big one!) there’s that pesky matter of health insurance. For now, there’s COBRA … but that’s going to set my family of four back more than a thousand bucks a month. Ouch! Could we get something cheaper? Not likely … my husband and I both have “pre-existing conditions” that would make it hard for us to qualify at a reasonable rate. And we’re not even into skydiving! Naturally, I’m voting for someone in ‘08 who has a plan to improve the system. I don’t think the government has to pick up my tab. But I’d sure like to see better, and more affordable options than are currently on the table. For now, I’m keeping my fingers crossed and I’m drinking a helluva lot of V-8. Cheers!

Fact, fiction and family.

Like many of you this Thanksgiving, I sat down to the bird and baked goods surrounded by my extended Republican family. (Lord love ‘em…) And like so many similar gatherings of the last few years, matters of national import were treated like a dozing great granddaddy: they were gingerly tippy-toed around so as not to disturb the reverie. But after the dishes were cleared, we were left with the lone out-of-town relative who was staying with us. The one who is an evangelical. Who watches only Fox. Who still believes there are WMD in Iraq. And who still doesn’t believe in global warming. (I could not believe there were really any of these people still out there. And yet here was a big one, staying right under our Bright Blue Dot roof.) I am happy to report that he welcomed discussion—actually initiated it. And no one died. We were actually able to talk like reasonable people about things that matter to us both very much. However, I respectfully submit that I think he’s totally insane. Just as he probably thinks me. So many things he said were so revealing, and so depressing, about so many of our fellow countrymen. But there’s one observation made among many that really haunts me:

Here is a man who is such an unquestioning Catholic that he believes a statue of Jesus spoke to a nun (which He may have) and told her to build a multimillion dollar shrine in the piny woods of Alabama (which she surely did). And yet he doesn’t believe in global warming because “there isn’t enough proof.” In other words, he thinks it’s more likely that God would speak through a statue about creating a building, than that He would speak through world-renowned scientists about saving His own special creation. Our Earth.

Would someone pass the Wild Turkey. Please.

I declare, it’s time for conservatives to abandon the Republicans.

Ever since Bush has been in office, I’ve become a conservative without a party. I had been edging away from the Republican party in the late 90s when the party of “family values” took gleeful and perverse delight in stained dresses and cigars. After Bush “aw shucks-ed” his way into office, the party of gravitas morphed into the party of reckless abandon and I became a third party voter. Better to “waste my vote” than to support a party of power brokers hiding behind a carefully crafted facade of faux conservatism. For me, voting has become about the message, not about electing a satisfactory candidate, because apparently that’s not gonna happen. By voting Libertarian, I’m casting a vote against Republicans. I may not be voting for a candidate who will win, but I am participating and I am making my conservative leanings known to those who watch the elections. If other dissatisfied Republicans in the US would vote Libertarian maybe Republican leaders would take note. If Republicans started losing elections because 10 percent of the base abandoned the party, then it might cause a swing back toward real conservatism (I exclude religious zealotry from my definition of conservatism). It would be worth it not to have a $9 trillion deficit and a dollar that is becoming like 3rd world currency, not to mention a badly mismanaged war. I’d rather be a part of the fringe element than vote Republican now. Until Republicans can prove that they’ve become conservative again, I will not be casting a vote in a major election for them.

Trashing of America’s ideals and values worst thing about this administration

Really. Such arrogance. How embarrassing.  Our people, our fellow Americans, have used or condoned torture on prisoners. Our government purposefully decided not to bring prisoners to this country so we don’t have to grant them basic human rights as written in our own Constitution? Don’t we know that intelligence experts say that such tactics don’t gain us reliable information? Don’t we know that justice will not be served by using such tactics?

Sure, we hear that these prisoners are not prisoners of war, but rather, terrorists.

Isn’t it embarrassing that this administration’s black-or-white, with-me-or-against-me, no-negotiation attitude has alienated most of our friends around the world? Such attitudes fall in lock step behind the ultra-partisanship in Washington.

Isn’t it strange that we decided to attack a dictator in Iraq rather than attack dictators in Burma or North Korea?

We’ve asked our soldiers to fight and die in Iraq for what cause? 9/11? What’s the connection?

Haven’t our country’s decisions and actions created and encouraged even more Islamic terrorists?

I can’t wait for a Democrat to be elected president, one who will lead us out of this morass of immoral, unethical, unpatriotic practices.

I declare, I’m embarrassed to be a member of the baby-boomer generation

In the past baby boomers held great ideals.  And as such, we marched and fought to enact changes in civil rights and protections for the environment.  We helped bring down a corrupt and Constitution-prostituting administration.  Today we help elect a corrupt and Constitution prostituting administration, twice.  What went wrong?

Baby boomers don’t like to sacrifice.  Early on it was easy to fight against the establishment when we could rely on our parents to feed, cloth, and pamper us.  Our sacrifices came at a minimum.   As a result, as we became the establishment our avoidance of shared sacrifice has become entrenched.

In the late 70’s President Carter said that we are facing the “moral equivalency of war” in our need to end our dependency on foreign oil.  Drive 55, set your thermostat a few degrees higher in the summer and a few degrees lower in the winter, conserve natural resources and seek new energy technologies.  He was reviled and made fun of.  It was easier to accept Reagan’s rosy platitudes and slogans.  “It’s the dawning of a new America”, “Don’t worry, be happy”.  There is no need to sacrifice, we can have it all because we are Americans and we deserve it.    Don’t worry about exploding deficits.  Don’t worry that we support corrupt dictators all over the world, don’t worry that clear cutting is happening in National Forests and water and air qualities are deteriorating.  Look how comfortable you are.

Now we have the embodiment of our baby boomer generation as President.  When 9/11 occurred Bush’s requested us to “go shopping”.    If we quit shopping then the terrorist win.   Here, take this tax break and buy a Hummer and why not reduce all taxes especially the ones on those who really don’t like to sacrifice, the super wealthy.  Let’s attack Iraq.  They have lots of targets to hit and they have oil and we want it, we deserve it.  Run away deficits are not a problem it’s just an accounting thing. Again, no sacrifices have to be made to fight terrorism except those to our basic rights and that pesky Constitution.

While not all baby boomers fall into the above categories, the great trend of our generation has been to avoid the heavy lifting.  As a result, we have come full circle.  We now have an administration that is corrupt, war mongering, and Constitution-prostituting and we put it in power.  Where is our outrage and idealism? Where would we be now if we had accepted President Carter’s call to sacrifice?  When do we accept the fact that a shared sacrifice is needed?  Oh, we have, we have sacrificed our children’s futures and replaced our idealism with fear.   Fear is a whole new topic.

Fight the fight

I declare that Dwight Eisenhower was right in January of 1961, and getting righter every day about the dangers of the Military-Industrial Complex. Don’t know about it? Go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y06NSBBRtY
Better yet, rent Eugene Jarecki’s 2005 film “Why We Fight.”

I happened to be watching the latter the other night, and my 11-year-old walked in and sat down to watch with me. When it was over, he soberly asked if HE’D have to go and fight in Iraq some day. After I peeled myself off the ceiling, I did my best to reassure him “no (expletive deleted) way, Honey!” He’s moved on to worry about his math homework and a certain girl in his class. But his question haunts me. Why should an 11-year-old have to worry about something like that? And why can’t I assure him that we WON’T still be in Iraq in another 7 years, not to mention Iran or somewhere else the warmongers cook up a conflict? And more than anything, why can’t rational Americans do more to stop a system that’s taken on a life of its own?

Democrats are at their best when simply trying to solve a problem

I declare that we Democrats accomplish more for the whole nation — even for our Republican friends — when we don’t try to be as uber-partisan as the Republican leadership of Congress has been the past 20 or so years. We accomplish more when we reach across the aisle to seek reasonable compromises, as evidenced by the clean water and clean air acts and amendments passed during the Nixon administration. We accomplish more when we face a problem and try to come up with legislation to solve it — without being self-righteous about it. Think of the political insights of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. We accomplish more when we to do the right thing for the nation, as evidenced by passage of the civil rights laws. We accomplish more when our political leaders talk face-to-face more and talk less for the cameras or radio talk shows.

I declare, I can’t believe there are STILL W stickers out there

Honestly, the whole phenomenon is a mystery to me. I remember first noticing the “W the President” stickers after his 2000 “win.” It was interesting because, before, it was uncommon to see so many candidate stickers around AFTER an election. I remember thinking they were mushrooming everywhere in a kind of nanny-nanny-boo-boo, dancing-in-the-end-zone-for-hours sort of way. Or at least they were in my red state. I was used to that kind of chest beating around here for football teams. Never for a political candidate. And it seemed even then to be signaling some kind of creepy downturn in our national character.

The sticker’s real message? “He’s the ultimate.” How else to explain the countless knockoffs such as “G the Creator” and “J the Christ.” (I kid you not. They’re out there.) Any way, my question is, why all the pride in this guy—still? Among countless other egregious blunders, he’s horribly mismanaging a war and in the process of driving the economy to the brink. Aren’t the abilities to manage a war and right the economy the two biggest selling points in the Republican brochure? So why is more than one quarter of the electorate (that’s one in four) still behind this guy? Much less, bragging about it?

Someone enlighten me, please…