Letters to the Editor
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The Jading of the Democrat Party?
History always provides many paths to defeat and ... to victory. I am not sure that the parallels and comparisons between Obama, McGovern, Hart and Jimmy Carter work as well as the author describes. This is an important and fascinating contest, made less interesting by the media's tendency to get mired in petty minutiae and smear campaigns, rather than important issues that affect the country and the world.
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just. wow.
I'm just home from taking my father to the VA for some lab work. While we waited, I asked him who he'd be inclined to vote for this November.
Born in small-town PA, a former coal miner & Navy SeaBee, lifelong Republican, now an elderly network TV news junkie...AND the man from whose mouth I first heard every single racial epithet and stereotype, told me he's solidly behind Barrack Obama, and will actually cast a vote for the first time since Reagan was president.
To say this was unexpected is perhaps the understatement of my lifetime.
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Who Is Running The Show?
Dear Readers,
I do not hold the candidates of either party responsible for whatever implosion will happen within either party in 2008. If anything all the candidates show stamina under an unrelenting barrage of media questions and continued assault. One begins to suspect they may be on steroids or should be just to survive. The media itself, which certainly enjoys the freedom of press, should be held up to more scrutiny. After the last democratic debate with Charlie and George of the Jungle at the helm, I wanted to ask is this the Nurenberg trials? The media doesn't just report the news, as they so claim,( "we're just the messenger") it sports it; It haunts and divides the democrats; it plays a little softer with the Republicans. God only knows why the army of reporters, newscasters, anchors "away" have not scrutinized the current administration to the degree they have the canidiates in this upcoming election, i.e. Cheny, who I've come to refer to as Dr. No.
The media takes the news in their clean, scrubbed hands and molds it. They clean their mouths out with soap and deliver it, blathering on and on with such self-satisfaction and smug commentary, you want to throw darts at their faces, especially Lou Dobbs. From their desks and sets on high, they think they just deliver the news. They don't let us process any information, commentary, or speeches for ourselves without their sometimes insipid analysis. In graduate school there was a term we learned for a reaction people have to too much news coverage (in my day it was footage from the Vietnam War.) This term for public reponse, or no-response was Narcotized Dysfunction. We'll all need therapy by the time the conventions roll around. And then we have to go through the Fal and the falloutl with more of the same. I'm predicting that right before the election there will be an attack from somewhere, the empire of the United States will be threatend, and will all flock to McCain anyway.
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Future of the US
I find naieve the prevalent belief that the choice of the president in November will alter the course of history for the US.
When a nation makes as many bad choices as we have made since 2000, in wars and at home, forces are set in motion that are not reversible, abroad and here.
Examples are: the emergence of terrorism as a continuing threat in the world, a threat that cannot be countered by military forces but only by astute, international, political action - decisions to be made not only in our White House or Pentagon ; the economic decline of the US brought about by irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies and by the emergence of other nations as competitors for resources; the deterioration of the US homeland in infrastructure and in the education of its children and its citizens, the latter in no small part from the concentration of news media in the hands of a few conglomerates that seek favor with the government; finally, the corruption of the political system by a system of campaign finance that places large financial interests at the helms of the two major parties.
These are not reversible, and it does not matter who is chosen to be president, Clinton, McCain or Obama. The best of them may slow our decline a bit, and the worst accelerate it - but the die has already been cast by eight years of a presidency that tried to build an empire and, instead, destroyed a military superpower.
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I think Juan de Fuca is more inspiring than any of them and his story about discovering the Anian Strat (North-West Passage) is far more wonderful than all the "tall tales" being hawked to voters
While you're all beating each other into insensibility about politicians, oul' Juan's Plate is making disagreeable noises off your west coast. Inspiration, perspiration, triangulation won't make much difference if the ghost of the Greek explorer decides to wreak revenge on you all for questioning his veracity about his adventures.
As for Jimmy Carter, all I can remember about him is that he thought it important to inform the world that he had lusted after other women in his HEART. I suppose it was around that time that Madam Fauntleroy's business went kaput as piety became popular and peanuts got a bad name.
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Sorry, that should read
Anian Strait.
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Maybe the Democratic Party Should Split
It would be suicide in the fall election if Obama or Clinton bolted and ran as a third party candidate, but maybe this is a necessary step. Plenty of European nations have third parties and do just fine. I suspect after a few election cycles the new third party would siphon off a few voters from the GOP and a few from the Democratic party and they would be roughly equal.
Why the hell not? I for one an tired of the infighting and would rather see three candidates competing in the general election than hear the word "superdelegate" ever used again.
The Constitution does not say there have to be only two parties. Washington didn't think there should be any political parties. With three parties instead of two, "triparitisanship" would be a requirement and politicians would have no choice but to work together.
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The Hillary Deathwatch
http://www.slate.com/id/2189480/
9.9% chance of winning
Clinton still knows how to slap on a smile, though. Her cameo on The Colbert Report last night went over well, as she pretended to help Stephen fix the video system. ("Try toggling the input.") The senator was outshined, however, by a scene-stealing John Edwards, whose six-minute delivery of "the EdWORDs" almost made you wish he was still in the race.