November 2010 archive

Alex, I will take INEPTITUDE over RUTHLESSNESS for $1000.

Back home, my REDSTATE friends have convinced me to vote.

I was going to sit this one out – first time to miss a voting cycle since Clinton was elected. This is the first year in over a decade that I have not canvassed or volunteered for a campaign.

I am pissed about Guantanamo, Insurance Reform, TARP, the lack of accountability and refusal of this administration to restore the rule of law – both in financial and military paradigms.

I am also pissed that the top tier of the Democratic Party is so dismissive of us – the BASE. There can be no pragmatic solution to working with the lunatics on the right.

I am pissed about it – REALLY PISSED!

Which brings me to the reason I am voting.

My REDSTATE friends are GLOATING. Not only are they gloating, they think their lunatic ideas are going to be implemented – even enforced. Their ideas are disjointed, lack cohesiveness, lack clarity, and lack compassion.

Although, I thought maybe sitting this one out will show the Dem Party the importance of the base, someone vulnerable will be affected by WINGNUTS if they gain power…. and that’s a big reason I joined progressives – to give a voice to those most vulnerable. That means more to me than spite.

So I thank the REDSTATE  WINGNUTS, for reminding me how important this is.

The end. 🙂

It was a fight broke out over apples and oranges which led to the law of One for One. The old saying went “Don’t mix apples and oranges,” as though they were two different things. But really isn’t fruit; apples, oranges, bananas and pears, just fruit?

Anyway Bill and Tom came to blows because Bill looked down on oranges and thought Johnny Appleseed was a “Saint and Prophet.” And all Tom had to defend oranges was Anita Bryant. Bill wanted five oranges for three apples. So Tom socked him one and broke three fingers. This is the time when before this time everyone did their fighting vicariously through Hollywood or video games. When you sock someone in the real world, it hurts.

Anyway this brought up the notion of value. In the New World of Shit Town, we struggle with the very quintessence of civilization. Why is gold more valuable than strawberries?

Real News’ CEO Paul Jay’s commentary on the top six ways Obama and the Democratic Party allowed a resurgence of the Republicans:

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 This will be a relatively short essay.  No photos.  No links.  

 Someone brighter than me recently hit upon a simple but insightful truism regarding American “major party” politicians:  Republicans fear their base, Democrats hate theirs.

 Spot on.

 At least for the last generation, Republican politicians live in more or less constant terror that their base will rise up against them if they don’t take the hardest-Right, most frothingly partisan position available (or which they can create).  Or, if they’re already inclined towards John Bircherism, they cruise along in the smug assurance that they can be found with the proverbial “live boy or dead woman” and it won’t matter one whit to their forgiving base (as long as they, the politician, admit that he’s a sinner and rails against whatever the Democratic cause de jure is).

 Democratic politicians, on the other hand, treat their base like the crazy uncle who lives in the guest room and whose Social Security checks help pay the household bills.  They need them around in order to keep those checks coming in, but they live a life of dread and resentment:  dread that nutty Uncle Lonny will pick the lock on his bedroom door and shamble into the living room at the next dinner party and strike up conversations with the decent people in attendance, and resentment that they have to keep this burdensome and onerous relative around as the bills, alas, keep coming in and must be paid.

 Of course one of the ironies of this dynamic, of these relationships, is that these days the Republican base are much more likely to be radicalized, to resort to violence, to behave like political jihadists (which should embarrass or repel most people within shrieking distance), which your basic Democratic base member merely wants to be able to go to the doctor without risking bankruptcy, corrupt Wall Streeters to be held no less criminally culpable as petty pot dealer from whom he, the Wall Streeter, buys his grass, and wants gay people to not get beaten or bullied to death.  All in all, rather modest demands, as demands go.  Also, Democratic base members are more likely to spell check their placards before putting them on public display.

 Nevertheless, these principles hold true.  Thus the average Republican politician during the average election season has little trouble “firing up” his or her base because during the course of their life in public office, or, if they’re a newcomer, during the course of their campaign, they’ve said, “How high?” whenever their base has screamed, “Jump!”  The Democrat, on the other hand, has to “rally” their base and “fire them up” because during the course of their time in office they’ve kept that same base at arm’s length (at best) and when their Democratic base has yelled, “Jump!” their officer holder has said, “Sit down and shut up!.  And don’t forget to support me (read:  send money) come next election.  And don’t forget to vote!”

 So there you have it.

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