Get out the Vote

Getting out the Vote

I heard a timely story on NPR this afternoon about the effectiveness of canvassing, the last-minute get-out-the-vote effort, and I agree.  Our precinct boss narrowed down our list of voters, which are quite a few on each block, to not only democrats only but dems who may vote or are likely to vote.  There’s no need to remind the regular voters; they’re reliable.  But the irregulars, the people who don’t always vote, studies have shown and Rep. Jim McDermott confirms that good old-fashioned, face-to-face conversations and gentle reminders to vote and vote early make a difference.  Having a list that is so micro-targeted and finely tailored to voters makes it easy to knock on neighbors’ doors and ask the personal question, “Have you voted yet?”  It’s a gratifying experience to meet so many people who have voted and/or who appreciate the reminder to vote and the information and sample ballots we share with them.  Gone are the days when you knock on a door and somebody yells at you. 

I don’t tend to look for signs, but I don’t ignore them either.  Today while walking I came upon a really beautiful maple tree with brilliant-colored leaves and I stopped to take in its beauty and colors, appreciating the tree and my good fortune to be out on my errand, and a solitary leaf floated down and landed right on my clipboard, and I had to laugh out loud at that.  That was a lovely gift and a nice sign.

http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=163823777&m=163823770

Jill Stein for President

Really….?

What is the deal with Jill Stein?  I’ll wager that two years ago you hadn’t heard of her.  She’s a physician who has been unsuccessful in her effort to win an election in her home state of Massachusetts, but she promises the moon and she’s everybody’s darling.  Good for her that she cares about the environment (so do I, by the way), but it’s easy to promise the moon when you don’t have to deliver on those promises.  Easy to tell people what they want to hear and maybe even believe it, and she’s done that well. 

Here’s what I know about her:  Not a lot except she's skilled at self-promotion.  She comes from privilege and has had a very nice life.  Good for her.  But if she can’t win an election by those who know her best, what’s the draw?  What does she know about governing or politicking?   I’m sure she’s intelligent and caring, but qualified to be president? 

I think her candidacy is more about you, the voter, than her qualifications or vision.  She's everybody's safe, noncontroversial choice. You don't even have to explain why you support her. Just say “Jill Stein for President,” or “I support the Green Party” and everybody nods approvingly in a self-satisfied way.  She’s your excuse to escape not voting because you’re angry that Obama hasn’t delivered everything you expected.  You can throw your vote away but still say you voted without compromising your principles.  And if Romney were to win, it’s on you and your principles, and god help us.

Noam Chomsky endorses her, and while I respect him as much as I respect anybody alive today, I’m taking issue with him on this one, respectfully.

I will add that if Dr. Stein stays involved in politics after not winning instead of pouting and dropping out ala Ralph Nader, I'll have more respect for her.  And, folks, you don't prepare a third-party candidate six months before an election.  That should start this year on November 7.

ETA:  In the clip below, she could not be any more annoying.  She's a bit whiny and self-serving and quite the attention-grabber.  She would have been a distraction in the debates.  Roseanne Barr would have been a more substantial participant.  This woman isn't it.  I see through her.

                                                  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9NPvFL-u5c

"The Choice" on Frontline

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice-2012/ 

I hope everybody watches this ^^ Frontline, if only for the first 30 mins or so on the candidates' early years.  Very interesting and contrasting.  2009 was a tough year, not only for the president (and it was ugly) but for me on personal and financial levels, one of the most difficult in my life, and I’m glad it’s long gone.  Frontline reminds me how crazy and ugly politics was back then which added to my anxiety.  EVERYbody was angry at Obama -- his supporters, who thought they had had fallen in love with him and were realizing who he really was, were disappointed.  They felt jilted.  And his critics and detractors grew harsher and uglier still.  Meanwhile, despite my early negative opinion of him, the more I watched him and got to know him, the more I respected him and saw in him traits that resonated with me; obviously, not that I consider myself nearly as smart or ambitious as he, but I recognize him his tendency toward solitude, his inability to glad hand and backslap, his prickliness, his drive to be authentic.  He is who he is and who he presents himself as and that’s rare in both politics and life.  In hindsight, we were lucky he was so naïve to believe in his ideas and to run for office and to try to make healthcare his legacy, probably lucky he had no idea of the opposition he would face.

Before this Frontline, I was 80% on board with Obama.  After watching it, I'm at about 90%. 

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is a human wind sock.  A self-entitled shape-shifter who honestly cannot tell you what he believes. He will probably admit, if only to himself, that he sees himself as a knight in shining armor riding in to save the day.  I call that a narcissistic messianic complex, but he'd call it the Great White Hope. 

My letter to the president

June 11, 2012

President Barack Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

Washington, D.C.   20500

Dear Mr. President,

As one of your biggest fans, I’m hoping you take my best advice.  I am probably your biggest fan in Seattle, and let me tell you, as a member of Occupy Seattle, being a fan of yours is tough business, even in this town.  Aside from that,

I heard your radio address last weekend courtesy of Randi Rhodes’s show (she is your biggest fan on the radio), and your address was ambitious and righteous, and I loved it, but as too often happens, it was delivered too mildly.  I’m writing to suggest, in the most urgent terms possible, that you get angry, and share it.  You need to take the fight to the righties and insist on what you know is right.  We’re with you.  This congress is about as do-nothing as they come, and reporters have forgotten how to do their jobs: being the essential fourth branch of our government, and they’re corrupted by the same systems that corrupt so much of our society.

If you don’t insist on your positions and your proposals, you will not be respected.  You will be seen as milquetoast.  To my mind, many of your deliveries are FAR TOO MILD, too professorial and calm, even as brilliant and ambitious as they are.  That won’t go over well with this crowd, and by “this crowd,” I mean fickle Americans who might well vote for Mitt (R)money, who epitomizes the worst of what America is.

There is lots to get angry about.  Here are a couple of things that come to my mind:

I’m __  years old [J] and I don’t have health coverage; 

According to UNICEF, the US ranks last or near last in every important measure;

I don’t have a pension;

I believe my mother died of her cancer because she had only Medicare, and they didn’t operate;

My 26-year-old son, who is quite brilliant and talented, cannot afford school, not even community college;

I have no safety net of any kind;

My son, who has asthma, has no health coverage;

I’m a self-employed court reporter and independent contractor and have no benefits;

The USSC has lost its legitimacy, an institution I grew up respecting and trusting;

Shell Oil gets tax breaks while thousands and thousands of teachers are being laid off;

The misery index is rising, and I’m looking for a way to get out of here if you’re not re-elected;

And the treasonous republicans hate you.

All that is plenty enough to get angry about, so don’t hesitate.  TR got angry and so did LBJ.  Find your inner FDR and come out swinging.  You could energize and inspire the whole of the country.  Find your inner Obama, fix your message, stick to it, and take it to them.

Otherwise, I fear we have no chance.  But I believe you have the opportunity to become a great president, as difficult as it may be :)  Sincerely,

If feels like he might have gotten the message...

Meeting Chris Hedges

Friday, June 29, 2012:

I went on a mission tonight (June 29) to Town Hall to listen to and try to meet Chris Hedges so that I could give him a couple of chapters of a manuscript written by a new and dear friend of mine, a man who thinks much like Hedges, one whose writing is brilliant, who writes about the imperative and urgency of reshaping our consciousness, collectively and individually; changing that we’re doing; looking honestly at how we’re harming ourselves and our planet; and moving to fix it NOW, evolving our consciousnesses NOW.  We don’t have any more time to waste. 

( some of John’s work: http://www.earthkeepforum.com/transformation.php )

So I was thrilled to be able to pass on two of his chapters to Hedges.  I hope he has time to read them. Even if nothing comes of that connection, Hedges will know that somebody else get it and is thinking much like himself, and when you’re Chris Hedges, that’s not always easy to say.  My friend will be pleased.  If Chris reads his work, I believe he’ll like it.  My attending Hedges’s book reading was coincidental and propitiously timed. And astutely, John assumed I was attending, and he was right.

Mark Taylor-Canfield, Hedges, Joshua Farris

So tonight after the talk and reading, and after running into Josh Farris as he walked up to the microphone to ask Hedges an interesting question about the dysfunction in most or all of the centers of power and how that may relate to the likelihood that a coup d’etat might result, the real fun began.  (Hedges’s reading and some of the question-and-answer session will be attached shortly.  It was, happily for us, a lengthy session.  His reading was fascinating and moving, and Q&A patient and insightful, and his letter read from a jail cell when he was arrested with OWS was poignant and philosophical, so overall, he shared quite a bit of time with a few hundred of us in the town hall.



Joshlyn and Josh with Hedges



He was generous with his time during the reading and afterwards, signing as many books as he was asked to and chatting patiently, listening carefully, pontificating and challenging.  He graciously took many pictures with many people and accepted a letter, my package, and a jar of homemade jelly, and stayed and chatted until the last person left.   Then he tiredly gathered up his things and walked outside, without a handler or assistant, and it was then that Josh said, “Hey, man,” as he likes to do, “Why don’t you come have a beer with us?”  And he did.  It’s hard not to get excited when Chris Hedges wants to hang out with you and walking down the street that lovely evening and talking his ear off and peppering him with questions was memorable.

So Josh and Joshlyn happened to be there that night, two of my all-time favorite activitsts in the world and colleagues, along with my journalist friend Mark Taylor-Canfield.  As politely pushy as I am – I call it enthusiasm -- not only did we get to chat with Chris during his book signing, and not only did he take pictures with us, when it was all over we happened to run into him out front, and he was happy to accept Josh’s invitation to come have pizza and beer with us. 

So we took him to my all-time favorite place downtown, Hotel Monaco, and had some of the best pizza ever, his generous treat, along with a beer.  It was quite an evening.  I wanted to take more pictures, but I didn’t want to impose, and we were just happy to talk with him, and we wanted him to feel like a regular person, which he is, of course, but one of the more brilliant variety.

So we all got to bend his ear, and we showed him some good old-fashioned Seattle hospitality.  I bent his ear a little bit about the imperative of reelecting the president, and he pretended like it didn’t matter.  smile.   My argument was partly that the fate of the USSC hangs in the balance and that has enormous consequences, and I reiterated that again when he mentioned his recent case before the Court, successfully argued.    

His reading at Town Hall he moved me to tears a couple of times when he talked about the revolutions in East Germany (1989), Former Yugoslavia (’92-’95), and Latin America, and then about our own Occupy. 

He told us stories, shared his views, and shared some of his life, and we talked to him about the activism we’re doing.  He has four children ages (as I recall) 22, 17, 4, and 1. 

Some of what he shared with us and in his discussion that stands out to me is that reality is never an impediment to what you want.  We (Americans) are often juvenile in our thinking, preferring magical thinking to do hard work.  When we are unprepared mentally and emotionally, our response to challenge is often vengeance.  Hedges, as you may know, has witnessed and studied many revolutions over the years, and he referenced “Anatomy of a Revolution,” by Crane Brinton.

Hedges warned that reckless abandonment of our children’s future by forces that don’t think beyond quarterly profits will doom us.  Our prioritizing business rights over people’s rights are the same forces that gave rise to nazi dominance.  Corporate control of the government is fascism. 

I was gratified to hear that he mistrusts and worries about the Christian right whom he believes hates the world as it is.  Their righteousness and anger and the influence they wield are dangerous to our democracy.  To that, I said Amen!

We exchanged cards and emails, undoubtedly thousands of which he receives each year.  He was kind and generous to us all, impressed with Josh’s Iraq War service and subsequent protest of that war after he returned home.  We talked a bit about my work and told me he’d had a five-hour deposition a couple of weeks ago.

I sat next to him at the restaurant, and it was a thrill.  We all wanted to hear his stories and his opinions about our opinions.  It was lively and fascinating (sorry to use that word again, but it was).  He wrote down a couple of documentaries that I recommended (“The Last Mountain” and “The Wild & Wonderful Whytes of West Virginia”), and we eagerly wrote down books he recommended.  Well, Joshlyn did; which I must remember to get from her.

I had the opportunity to tell Chris Hedges that one of the most impactful books I’ve ever read was “The Jungle,” which I read when I was 21, which he was, of course, well familiar with.

He signed my “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle,” which has got to be the BEST title of a book, ever.  Hedges has four new friends in Seattle. 

Free the elephants to a santuary, please.

Last Saturday fifteen to twenty-five of us at any given time protested the inhumane and cruel housing of elephants at the Woodland Park Zoo, and the reception we got from patrons, especially from parents, was most often annoyance and resentment for interrupting their day, interfering their oblivion, if you will.  I understand that they just want a nice day out with their children, but is our personal comfort and entertainment more important than the health, safety, and happiness of elephants, to name just one animal, animals usually stolen from the wild? 

If there's one thing we know about elephants it's that they love to roam.  They roam for miles and miles, sometimes up to 30 miles a day.  We also know they love their families and have tight bonds with each other.  We know also they're intelligent and sensitive, sometimes exhibiting a higher consciousness so advanced we wonder how they know what they know.  We know they're loving, gentle creatures who love to play in the water, and each one helps parent the babies in the herd.  In the wild they live to be much older than those raised in zoos, according to several studies. 

I’m willing to discomfit a few patrons, even parents and children, if it raises awareness, and I think we did that.  One father replied to my question that the clowns were annoying.  Another man, with his 3-year-old in his arms replied, “That clown is a total jackass!!  Thanks for ruining my day!!”  I was fairly incredulous at his loud anger because he had his son in his arms, and he knew the issue and the reason we were there.  But all he could see was the inconvenience to him and his son, an interruption to their day.  I responded “Thanks for not caring about inhumane treatment of the elephants,” and I probably shouldn’t have, but you know what?  I don’t really feel bad about it.  We Americans tend to be very self-absorbed.   We have that luxury and privilege; boy, do we have privilege, but we should not be so privileged or comfortable if based in ignorance and if we’re contributing to harm.

Many of the patrons took a flyer I offered when I said, “Can I give you some information about the elephants?” with a smile and a thank-you.  But when I added, “We’re trying to get the elephants to a sanctuary because they’re not treated well here,” many if not most patrons changed their mind and some visibly recoiled.  Some reached for the pamphlet and then withdrew their hand, shaking their head.  I pretty quickly stopped adding that bit of information.  It doesn’t take me long to catch on.

For me the day turned into an interesting study of human nature.  Many zoo-goers became angry, some hostile, some disinterested or pretending to be, but some were grateful to get the information.  A zoo employer and I engaged in a heated debate, his opinion being that what we are doing and will do again is misguided and disruptive.  He insisted the eles are treated well and that WPZ is in fact one of the best zoos in the country, so we didn’t know what we were doing, and we should get our facts straight.  I was fairly sure we knew the facts but his insistence did make me wonder.  In the course of our five-minute discussion, he did admit that the WPZ elephants have about an acre to walk (which they can do in 60 seconds), and when I said they suffer from foot and joint disease and exhibit signs of extreme stress and illness, his response was that -- I kid you not – Well, in Thailand and other countries they are chained and beaten, so they have it much better here.

That was a bridge too far for me.  “Are you serious??!  That’s your standard??  That’s how you’re going to support your argument?!?”  And he got a little red in the face and I got a little red in the face, and I moved away to hand more pamphlets to people coming in, his credibility lost, in my opinion.

I understand how difficult the emotion of guilt is, how powerful it can be.  I try very hard to do nothing I feel guilty about because the feeling is poisonous.  I imagine a zookeeper can’t feel good about a job that results in mistreatment of animals, not if he’s a good person.  I understand the guilt of a parent who merely brought their child(ren) to the zoo to share the animals, to see the world anew through their eyes.  I understand the joy of seeing the world anew, through the eyes of a child.  That parent, I learned, is likely to become disagreeable if you interrupt that occasion.  When one is looking forward to such a day, it’s disappointing to be brought up short; to be made aware that in fact doing the thing you’re looking forward to contributes to harm.  Add to that that, as Americans, we tend to feel entitled, and we do not like and in fact resent being denied, but I believe that kind of self-absorption has contributed to the sickness in our society.

And I’m getting off topic, but it was an interesting study, that afternoon out in front of the zoo.

The conditions of elephants and other large animals that traditionally roam for miles and miles are miserable and unhealthy in zoos.  Many zoos artificially inseminate animals, certainly elephants, some of whom are unhealthy or ill and/or beyond child-bearing years. 

The reason the zoos continue to house the animals is depraved:  It is to draw in patrons to make money, in our case, since WPZ is owned by the City of Seattle, money is made for the City.  The City should relinquish the elephants to one of several sanctuaries which have offered, free of all costs, to take the elephants to a sanctuary with miles and miles to roam and rivers and lakes to play in with other elephants.  Of course, the eles bring in the most crowds and the most money, especially when a baby is born because that is so rare an event.

Which should tell you something.

Beautiful, sensitive, intelligent creatures do not deserve to be kept in the equivalent of a closet for more than half the year because it’s much too cold here for them.  Because of the cold temperatures, eles are kept in concrete cages behind bars for more than half of the year.  The swaying back and forth and bobbing that they do in that situation isn’t “dancing.”  It’s the elephants stressed and unhappy.  There is no longer any justification for keeping them here.  We now know better. 

We should each send an e-mail to the City of Seattle [I’ll get the proper email address in the next few days] to urge them to send the elephants to a sanctuary that offers thousands of acres for them to roam not the single acre they have at Woodland Park.



"Free the elephants, please, zoo."

If we want to educate our children about animals, better to share with them a movie, a beautifully filmed up-close look at happy animals in the wild as they are meant to be and read books about them and enjoy photographs.  There is spectacular footage of animals being happy and free in the wild, not mopey, depressed, diseased, and caged behind bars -- animals doing what they are meant to do where they are meant to do it. 

 

First the elephants, then the rest of God's creatures…  Please join us for our next outing.

Notes on "The Republican Brain" by Chris Mooney

                                                   (Meeting Chris Mooney)

Here’s some shocking news.  Conservatives and Liberals have different personalities. 

Hierarchy is important to Conservatives; egalitarian principles to Liberals.  It comes down to individual versus community.

An April 13, 2012 study shows there are many nonpolitical differences between Liberals and Conservatives.

But what influences people?  The author began the book believing differences lie in allegiance to God and/or money, but research suggests otherwise.

We are in a 35-year period of more and more Conservative mistrust and suspicion.  Fear - the psychology of ideology

Even when shown to be incorrect, Conservatives double down on wrong information after receiving facts - the “smart idiot” effect.  An example is that with more and more evidence that humans are affecting the planet’s climate, fewer and fewer conservatives believe it.  Even education doesn’t significantly affect this phenomenon.   In fact, with higher education, Conservatives tend to accept science less.  The reverse is true for Liberals.  Many Conservatives still believe Obama is a Muslim.  Environmental factors are inadequate to explain.

Our views and opinions feel naturally right to us and are rooted in our personality, psychology, and physical traits.  In other words, they’re largely inherited.

Experiments reveal that Liberals are messy and like abstract art.  Conservatives are neat and tidy and prefer realism and portraits.  Conservatives tend to dislike rival teams and their fans, and tend to be germophobic, and elect law-and-order candidates. 

Alcohol will make anybody more conservative.

Actor Colin Firth commissioned a study because, in his words, “I wanted to find out what was wrong with people who disagreed with me.”  That study revealed that Conservatives have more grey matter in the right amygdala, the fear center/emergency response/fight-or-flight part of the brain.  Liberals, on the other hand, have a more developed anterior cortex (anterior cingulate), the part of the brain that detects errors.

The amygdala (Conservative):

The anterior cingulate (Liberal):

Liberals tend to be highly abstract, complex, and open to new experiences; comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

Conservatives are dependable and less neurotic; preferring stability, structure, hierarchy, and certainty.

Conservatives tend to place greater value on earnings; Liberals on education.

A lack of openness enables Conservatives to deny reality, and the Fox News campaign of misinformation enables this. 

Conservatives have less intellectual flexibility.  Liberals are exploratory and sensation-seeking.  Not surprisingly, the scientific community tends to be liberal.  J.J. Rousseau and Galileo were Liberals.

School doesn't make you liberal; Liberals just tend to go to school and stay.  Schools and universities are like playgrounds to people who like new ideas; therefore, not surprisingly, Liberals have more advanced degrees.

Rick Santorum branded college as a place you don’t want to stay.  (Bush is a moderate in comparison.)

64% of self-described Republicans believe Obama was born in the US; 55% believe Saddam Hussein masterminded the 9/11 attacks; 18% believe humans are affecting global warming.

Conservatives and Liberals have different ideas of morality and respond differently to different situations, and those responses can be predicted.

Priorities:  Conservatives hate government intrusion (except when it comes to sex).  Community is important to Liberals.

Liberals are suspicious of large concentrations of power and tend to believe scientists, which is why many Liberals’ suspicion of childhood vaccines causes much anxiety and stress.

In a study that tracked eye movement, Liberals’ eyes go towards happy, pleasant images and Conservatives’ eyes go toward scary and disgusting images.  Because it confirms our views of the world...? 

When asked “what kind of child do you want: an obedient one or a creative one?” you can probably guess who chooses which.

Emotions defeat critical thinking.  If you want to change a Conservative's thinking, don’t appeal to their logic or reason; appeal to their emotions.

--------

Some of the author's conclusions are obviously controversial, but they make a lot of sense to me!

The end of an era. And this is not your father’s Republican party.

I’ve long considered Indiana senator Richard Lugar, who served six terms, to be reasonable, moderate, cooperative, decent, and willing to “govern.”  When Obama won that state in 2008, I was shocked and more shocked about that win than South Carolina or Virginia.  They said the president “reshaped the electoral map” back then.  But what’s the matter with Kansas Indiana today?

With Dick Lugar’s defeat, in a recent primary no less, politics becomes significantly more cynical and unrewarding to independents and mavericks, and this is a trend we should be aware of and ready to push back on.  We should address it and the rationale behind it forthrightly and maturely.  Senator Lugar was defeated because he cooperated with the president, even though the president was trying to stave off a depression, among other pressing issues, and still is.   It’s a disturbing trend lately that representatives are punished for governing responsibly rather than selfishly or serving their corporate masters.

This coming election is the most crucial election in my lifetime, and there have been many presidents who have held that office in my lifetime.  If a Republican wins, it will be worse than when Reagan held the office, despite the fact that Reagan made education more costly and less accessible (and we see the effects of that today), and even despite the fact that Reagan, in the words of Hillary, “made it okay not to care about each other.”  Too many Republicans have become more pernicious, more dastardly, and more craven than ever before and they are more willing to be so publicly, making no bones about it.

Sen. Lugar’s defeat signals danger, that compromising, cooperating, and respecting your opponent will not be tolerated.  His defeat is a clear signal to other moderate conservatives that if you govern moderately, you will be punished.  That’s not good for our democracy.  Our democracy depends on open, honest debate, but the corrosive, corrupting effect of money has changed that.  Money and a largely uninformed electorate spells trouble, and we should be willing to fight against the polarizing trends. 

Dick Lugar is an intelligent, decent, soft-spoken foreign policy expert who served his state and his country honorably.  If he hadn’t served honorably or if he had been tarnished by scandal or was out of step with moderate voters in his state, one might better understand his ouster, but the fact is, until recently he was well-loved and well-respected by his constituents and colleagues.  Unfortunately, low-information voters are easily influenced by clever, costly advertisements and attacks whether true or not, and the money spent on Lugar’s opponent’s campaign (an opponent who is, as they say, a real piece of work) was money well spent, again, unfortunately.

If people want to criticize Obama for walking a conservative line, it may be because he has a more clear-eyed view of American voters than you or I.  If the president plans to get anything substantively and long-lasting done, he must be re-elected, and to be re-elected in this country, he has to walk a fine line, because in this country, if you try to govern like a moderate or, god forbid, an independent statesman, you will be punished.  (We’ll see how badly he’s punished (or rewarded) for his support of marriage equality for all people.)

So they cast aside Dick Lugar as part of a hyper-partisan cleansing of the party, but a cleansing of what?  Corruption?  On the contrary. 

It’s a clear message to others:  If you’re going to govern moderately, beware.

To make matters worse, Richard Mourdock, the man who beat Richard Lugar for the Indiana senate seat, for sixteen years served as vice president of a coal subsidiary of Standard Oil Company, and eventually became vice president of Business Development for that company, so who’s he in the pocket of?  Mourdock's campaign criticized Lugar's willingness to work with Democratic lawmakers, and Mourdock himself rejected bipartisanship, arguing that "the most powerful people in both parties are so opposed to one another that one side simply has to win out over the other.”

Mourdock was endorsed by several conservative interest groups, including The Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Citizens United, and the Tea Party Express.  If you’re not familiar with the Club for Growth or FreedomWorks, they’re the modern-day John Birch Society.  If you’re not familiar with the John Birch Society, you should become so.  Mourdock has also adopted Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan, which calls for a 9% income tax, 9% federal sales tax, and a 9% business tax.

On Tuesday night, Texas Rangers outfielder Josh Hamilton tied a Major League record when he hit four home runs in one game against the Baltimore Orioles IN Baltimore.  Although the Rangers won that game decisively, 10-3, Baltimore fans gave Hamilton a loud standing ovation as he rounded the bases in the eighth inning and did so again at the bottom on the eighth.  Like true fans, true patriots celebrate victories that benefit and elevate all of us.  To do otherwise is bad sportsmanship and bad governance.  It also tarnishes the game of politics and endangers our democracy.  We're better than that.  Aren't we...?

  

The saga of John Edwards, my first choice

Who here hasn’t fallen in love with someone they shouldn’t have, or had an abortion, or taken something that wasn’t theirs, or hurt somebody deliberately, or let someone down callously, or fallen short in some other significant way?  If getting involved with somebody outside your marriage and making a baby results in all of your lifelong friends and colleagues turning their backs on you, then it’s true what they say:  With friends like that, who needs enemies?  I’m pretty sure that when John Edwards was living the good life, his friends and associates couldn't be nicer, and promised their loyalty, and local NC merchants couldn’t do enough for him, but at a time when he needs his friends' and colleagues' support the most is when they run for the hills, and worse than that, they disparage, insult, and judge him publicly.  That’s very sad to me, a sadder commentary on America than it is on him.  We too often tear down the successful instead of being happy for their successes, even if hard-earned.  I’m saddened and disappointed by how pilloried and disparaged he is because he had an affair.  Narcissist or not, everybody does things they’re not proud of or are ashamed of -- or should be if they’re decent people.

Am I the only person in the country who’s not afraid to publicly state that I still have a high regard for John Edwards's achievements and the work he did?  Sure seems like it!  I certainly don’t despise him like so many others seem to.  In fact, I don’t even regret my campaign contributions to him, not because I refuse to admit I was wrong about him, but because I know politicians and candidates are as fallible and as flawed as the rest of us; they represent us.  I know that putting faith in any person is risky business because we are so flawed and fickle.  Given the kind of work he did, he had proven his commitment to our society enough to satisfy me.  He screwed up, no doubt about it, but in a way, I understand how he could or why he did.

There’s a part of this story that looms large and that I can’t ignore when I judge his actions.  His wife seemed to me, even back then, and apparently it’s confirmed by others, to be an angry and sometimes mean woman.   There was an energy about her that made me wonder why they were married.  I know that she’s dead, and apparently it’s verboten to speak ill of the dead (btw, I didn’t sign on to that agreement), but her premature and unfortunate death doesn’t change the fact that she was cruel to and dismissive of the people around her.  I agreed with her politics, as far as I understood them, but she was somebody I had a hard time envisioning her husband being happy with.  Maybe he stuck around for the children.  Losing a child is a grief I can only imagine and I pray I never experience, but it changes your view of life and family.  As much as I admired him, I never warmed up to her.  Her smile seemed brittle and unconvincing to me.    

An opinion for which I have been pilloried and banned from a certain ultra left web site (because Elizabeth is my example) is that husbands and wives have an obligation to keep themselves fit and healthy and should work to remain healthy and attractive to their mate, because if you don’t, the competition will be fierce.  We do have the choice not to do that, of course, but if one chooses to put on weight and stop caring about their appearance, one’s spouse may look elsewhere.  Is that really so shocking and outrageous to people?  Mrs. Edwards put on weight and seemed to stop caring about her looks, her hair, and her fashion before she got ill.  I'm not a psychologist, but I believe that decision can be interpreted as hostility toward your mate.  Did that decision not affect her marriage?  Is it wrong to expect it would?  Maybe that’s why he strayed…?  Is it really fair to let yourself go and expect your spouse to either ignore it or give up passion and sex for the rest of their days?  I certainly wouldn't be happy with it, and I would not expect or ask my mate to accept it -- all things being equal.

If Elizabeth did decide not to keep herself fit, she should have at least treated her husband well and been a loving wife.  This, it appears, she did not do, by many accounts.  By many accounts she was mean to him both privately and in public, and to others as well, which is a fact his attorneys could but have not raised in the trial, probably out of respect to Elizabeth and out of consideration for their children’s feelings.  Her cruelty is evidenced by her last decision days before she died to leave her husband out of her will, as a final punishment to him, regardless of how it might affect her children and regardless of the fact that all she had, he provided for her.  It bespeaks a vindictiveness and entitlement that I sensed years ago.   Yes, she was a mean one, and as someone said to me once and with which I agree: if you’re going to be homely AND mean, you’re going to have a very difficult life.  I don't mean that to sound harsh, although I know it does.  I believe it to be true.  Some will say I'm shallow, but I think I'm being realistic.  This is a debate I’ve had with others for years, and few people will agree out loud... 

As I follow these last couple of weeks, I admire his daughter for sticking by her father when few others will, and I’m glad that her mother’s anger hasn’t appeared to diminish Cate’s loyalty for her father.  Daughters tend to love their fathers no matter what, but I hope his love for his children is genuine and is realized by them.  I hope he'll find love again and if it's with Rielle Hunter, I hope she's not as nutty as she appears.  I hope that one day he’ll be able to hold his head high and not be judged so harshly by others all too willing to cast the first stone.
ETA: 5/31/12.  To all you people on DailyKos who insulted and harrangued me and then censored and banned me for my support of Edwards and daring to speak a controversial opinion:  !Ha and ha!!  There's no justification for your intolerance and cowardly group-think, and Edwards's freedom is made all the more sweet to me knowing that you know that I know you were wrong and I was right.  However ostracized I am, I'm right, and you merely suck.   Have fun with each other.   One shouldn't gloat, but you all were pretty awful to me AND, may I say again, wrong.

A primer on the president

To view Barack Obama as feckless, power-hungry, uninformed, eager for war, uncaring, and ill-suited for the office of the president is stunning to me when I run across it.  I take solace that many thinkers I admire and trust do judge Obama's presidency as I do.  Not all of them do, of course, but I feel I'm in good company. 

George Bush may well go down in history as one of our worst presidents, setting us back decades in countless ways, while Obama may go down as one of our best.  Only history will tell, but that’s my prediction and definitely my hope.  Because we're at a tipping point.  My support of Obama is not based on an expectation of perfection because he can't be all things to all people and not even to one: me.  Neither is he a dictator to attain and achieve all he wants.  It’s no secret that the Congresses he has had to work with have been unwilling to work with him, and even worse, all too willing to sacrifice all of us in their effort to hamper his presidency, and they will not be judged kindly by history; maybe more like the most treasonous and obstructionistic for its abject lack of willingness to pass any meaningful legislation at a time when Americans have suffered in a manner and to an extent rivaled only by the Great Depression.  Even in light of the suffering, dastardly republicans and spineless democrats refused to work with the president, no matter how it hurts us, now and in the future.  The president is not a dictator, as much as George Bush liked to joke about that and if Congress won't deal, nothing gets done, domestically anyway.

The comparison of Obama to Dubya reminds me of just how ridiculous American voters sometimes are – the ones who vote, which is a little less than half of us.  Of those who do vote, a scary percentage of them believe Obama is Muslim and not American.  Many who do accept his citizenship announce that they cannot support him for one reason or another, always understandable righteous grievances, but so, too, did President Bush have righteous reasons for waging war – God told him to.  Voters would probably not have been happy with George Washington since he owned slaves; would have opposed Franklin Roosevelt because he was too rich and privileged; would have taken exception to John Kennedy because he was Catholic and there was that business about his father’s dealings; Abraham Lincoln was too inexperienced and besides, he proved himself to be bloodthirsty, sending soldiers off to die…  You get my point...?  :) Nobody is perfect, not even us voters.  I'd like us to take a broader view of government and our role in it, at election time and the three years before and after it.

"Obama is a war criminal just like Bush was."  You've heard that too?  When other countries issue arrest warrants for Obama's war crimes as they have done in the case of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and a few others in that administration, then you can allege that Obama is a war criminal.  Until that time, let's focus on the real criminals, who, although criminals, are smart enough to not travel, to stay away from those countries.

To criticize supporters of this president as uninformed, unsophisticated, and just not as aware as we should be or not smart, or have been paying attention for years on end as political junkes do :D is the kind of arrogance usually reserved for the right-wingers and evangelicals.  Why, that’s why they must be told what to think, who to love; to give up control over our own bodies.  Occupiers are loathe to support Obama, fearing co-optation from the Democrats.  I understand that, I really do, but in reality and in fairness, we should stand up for Obama if we ask him to stand up for us -- which he should do.  We must push him in the direction we want him to go rather than sit on the sidelines, saying and doing nothing except hoping for the best, and then criticize and complain when it doesn’t work out the way we’d like.

I get impatient and saddened by the “He’s just like Bush.”  “He’s no better than Bush.”   It concerns me that people are so simplistic, still, even after eight looong years of Bush & Co. and the damage they’ve done; to think that Obama is half as bad as him worries me about the unformedness of Americans, and that kind of childlike thinking reminds me how naïve American voters are -- the minority of us who bother to vote.  (There has never been an election I haven't voted in even when I was discouraged, which I am not now.)

If you haven’t been paying attention to Obama’s accomplishments (beyond the historical nature of his presidency, which also now apparently is taken for granted), read the link below.  If you need even more of a reason to support the president besides the evangelical war on women, the corporate war on environment, workers, students, and minorities, if these are enough of an impetus for you, please, read on.  Please take a moment to learn what you might not have known.  Please allow that it may surprise and inform you.

http://obamaachievements.org/list