Sarah Palin...R U Nuts???!!!

I've been reading a bit about Sarah Palin today and I'm watching a "Hardball" segment on her as we speak...so to speak.

Welcome the newest candidate for President of the United States...in 2012.

OMG!!!

...not HER god...or, whatever it is that tickles her innards.

I'm talking about MY god, who thinks she's out of her fucking mind.

She knows nothing about foreign policy. She knows nothing about domestic policy beyond the oil fields and military bases of Alaska. She was on a Presidential ballot before Hillary Clinton. To be honest, Hillary wasn't about to get my support in the last election. But Hillary would have gotten my vote every time over Bimbo Spice...did anyone bother to check Caribou Barbie for blonde roots?

The fear I have of any potential candidacy of hers...or anyone like her...is that she will be the tool for the Religious Wrong. If any movement in American politics has had the potential to divide this country like the agenda of the Religious Wrong, I haven't come across that movement yet.

Kids, we are NOT a so-called "Christian Nation". Personally, I take offense to the prospect of the Prince of Peace being used as a patriotic or political tool for ideological gain. If I may be so presumptuous, I believe that Jesus himself would take offense. Kind of like how the Jimbo character from "South Park" calls upon the help of God only to have Jesus sitting in the next seat telling Jimbo to "leave me alone".

This woman might not have cost John McCain election to the most powerful job in the world. But if I'm Sarah Palin's Jaysus,, I would politely tell her to "fuck off".

Studs Terkel and Captain Tony: R.I.P

Two great Americans died this weekend.

Studs Terkel was an American writer, historian and multi-purpose media personality. He was 96 years old. He is perhaps best known for his role playing writer Hugh Fullerton in the movie "Eight Men Out" and his interview in Ken Burns "Baseball". He also wrote the books "Hard Times" and "Working", which were oral histories of the Great Depression and working life in America, respectively.

Captain Tony Tarracino was best known as the proprietor of the legendary Captain Tony's Saloon in Key West. He passed at the age of 92 after a lengthy illness. Captain Tony was a fixture in Key West and once served as its mayor.

Both men were well known as raconteurs and master story tellers and two men that I, for one, would have loved to have drank a beer with.

That is especially true of Terkel, who was as interwoven into the fabric and lore of the city of Chicago as Mrs. O'Leary and her cow. A fair degree of his work dealt with Chicago and his love of the city of "Big Shoulders". But his was the voice of America and the voice of 20th Century American history. He gave voice to the struggle of the Great Depression, American working lives, war and recovery and the people who lived the 20th Century. He wrote of what he heard. He was the great American observer, and told her tale.

That spirit was also in evidence in life of Captain Tony, who escaped the gambling underworld of New Jersey in 1948 to arrive in Key West on board a milk truck. He would later buy a Key West bar and rename it Captain Tony's Saloon. In the 31 years he owned his bar, it would emerge as a Key West institution that, to this day, is as vital as ever and a must see destination at America's southernmost outpost on her mainland. He would sell his legacy to inherit the keys to his Key West when he became its mayor. His friend, Jimmy Buffett, would be the chair of his mayoral campaign and he immortalized Captain Tony in his song "Last Mango In Paris". Captain Tony embodied the warmth of Key West. His colorful life has now disappeared beyond the waters of the Gulf of Mexico, but his legacy remains.

A toast to two great American lives well and colorfully lived...to Studs Terkel and Capt. Tony and R.I.P.

Chicago Tribune Endorses Barack Obama

A friend of mine sent me a very refreshing link in my weekend morning e-mail.

I like refreshment on the weekends. I work during the week, as most people do, and I like to recharge on weekends in the most optimistic fashion possible.

That's why the link I received to the Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Barack Obama for President fits the refreshing column very nicely. It is not necessarily refreshing that the Tribune has never before endorsed a Democrat for President. However, in this case, I would say that it is about time the editorial board at the Tribune got with the program.

In the Tribune endorsement, there is a proclamation that the Republican Party has "lost its way" and they point to the historical link of the party being the "party of limited government". Very well. It was that promise that attracted me to the party in my otherwise wayward youth.

But the Tribune pointed out that the budget surplus that President George W. Bush inherited from President Clinton has reversed and doubled during his watch into a deficit of nearly half a trillion dollars. Chump change that is not.

John McCain has declared that he will balance the budget even declaring that he will be cutting taxes that will put the squeeze to the budget to the tune of $400 billion.

Gee, John, more power to ya if you can do it. Dubya couldn't do it. But I bet you could. Think of this...ending the war cuts the deficit by almost a third. And if you only cut taxes on families that earn less than a quarter mil, that probably helps, too. Gee, it would suck to be rich under those terms.

The Tribune also had issues about John's choice of running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin.

Let's look at it this way: Ms. Palin is the governor of Alaska, a state with a population just a little over 600, 000 and which is flush in oil money and military bases. I live in Cleveland, Ohio (pop. <450,000), and if you add the population of it's county, Cuyahoga, you have a place that has better than double the population of the entire state of Alaska.

That would mean that the mayor of Cleveland or any of the commissioners for Cuyahoga County would be just as qualified to be a presidential running mate as Ms. Palin if you look at it in terms of population numbers.

And that doesn't factor in to the equation that Ms. Palin doesn't have to deal with some of the all too real issues that the mayor of a large city has to deal with on a daily basis. Crime and drugs are things that are probably just as foreign a concept to Ms. Palin as dealing with China. But they are a very real thing in every large American city, not just inside the Beltway.

The Tribune accuses McCain of "put(ting) his campaign before his country". That, by the way, is the understatement of the year.

To sum up the endorsed Obama candidacy, the words I'd would put here pale in comparison to what the editorial board at the Tribune wrote:

"He has risen with his honor, grace and civility intact. He has the intelligence to understand the grave economic and national security risks that face us, to listen to good advice and make careful decisions."

No paragraph could put as succinctly the description of Presidential character as what the Tribune wrote in their endorsement of Barack Obama.

They didn't sugar coat their favor for the former Illinois state senator. They are concerned with his ability to balance the budget as well. But the Chicago Tribune is understandably concerned and troubled with the overall direction of the Republican Party and the overall judgment of its current standard bearer, John McCain.

I applaud the Chicago Tribune for their foresight in their Presidential endorsement, so I have included the link to the op-ed page here so that you can read it for yourself.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/

Talking A Friend Off The Ledge To Vote For Obama

Last night, a friend of mine called me. He was in Berlin, Germany.

It was very early on a Saturday morning there. He had been up all night enjoying the Berlin nightlife. He said that he was conflicted. He was thinking of the upcoming Presidential election. He said he might vote for John McCain, even though he was troubled by the notion of doing so. Let's just dub him undecided.

I had to talk him off the ledge. A vote for John McCain, for most Americans, is a willing admission that they don't care about the outcome of the jump so long as their concept of the American Dream stays in tact.

Now, I wasn't always a Democrat. In fact, I voted very much like the Very Conservative Right wanted me to vote...for God-fearing American Republicans who attended church, had Norman Rockwell image families and didn't go about being vulgar or intemperate.

Fortunately, I got better...because I started paying attention.

The highlight, as I see it, for the resurgent Republican movement since the aftermath of World War II was the 1994 mid-term Congressional elections. The Republicans swept into the majority in Congress based on the tenets of a document known as the "Contract With America". The Contract, in short, was a blueprint of ten bills that were to be brought to a vote in the House and Senate with the promise of "reforming government". Many of the bills were enacted or were passed after negotiating compromises with President Bill Clinton.

Part of the underlying problem with "The Contract" is that it purported to change government as America knew it. Yet, 14 years after "The Contract" promised such change, America still has a government that is loaded with waste, inefficiency and bureaucracy. In those 14 years, the Republicans have been in majority control of Congress for 12 and the Presidency for 8. For 6 of those years, the Republicans controlled both concurrently. It was in those years that the Republicans could have really led the country and imposed their will for the benefit of the American people instead of to the benefit of government largesse.

It was in the years between January 20, 2001 and January 20, 2007 that the Republicans did...nothing...

...to reduce the size of government.

...to reduce the National Debt, which has spiraled out of control and has left America subject to the mercy of a foreign entity in the Chinese.

...but relax economic policy to the point of allowing banks and lenders to permit the approval of thousands of irresponsible loans that have single-handedly propelled a massive scale default on home mortgages and have left millions of Americans in irreparable debt.

...but allow policies to be enforced easing the exodus of millions of manufacturing jobs out of the country and giving tax breaks to the same corporations allowing said exodus.

...but launch an offensive attack against a sovereign government, while cutting taxes on the richest of Americans causing an already perilous economic situation to worsen as they have allowed tens of billions of dollars every month to be spent to prosecute a war that promises to bankrupt the remainder of this century and the great-grandchildren of those who will be born today.

All of this was caused by George W. Bush and the so-called leadership of the Republican Party...people like John McCain.

Barack Obama, no doubt, has an unenviable job ahead of him assuming, as the polls suggest, he is elected. The chances of him, or Mr. McCain, turning the tide on the mess of the federal government in a first term are not good.

George W. Bush has done more to promote national disunity and division that any other president in American history. He has allowed America to become the butt of the international joke. John McCain voted in support of President Bush's policies over 90% of the time. That is a problem.

To my friend, who was raised in the reliable, Republican, western suburbs of Cleveland beyond the Rocky River this is the truth as I know it. It ain't pretty. I don't have to like it. But it is history. The Republicans, led by John McCain would like to extend that truth into the future, with probably disastrous results.

Random Thoughts From The Edge...Of The Buckeye State, 1.4.2008

My ol' lady, a.k.a. the sweet person who set up this blog for me, says that I need to have something on the front page. She's right, but it has taken me a little while to figure out what I wanted to do. Since it is on the front page, I wanted to do something that wouldn't exactly fit into any of my notebooks.

Giving this feature the title of "Random Thoughts From The Edge..." seems to me to be a great place to start. It gives insight into my state of mind, which, as you will learn, is typically on the edge of something, or anything. The "...Of The Buckeye State" part, is self-explanatory when you factor in geography. I draft this missive a little less than a mile from the shores of Lake Erie.

Fair enough? Good. Let's proceed with edition #1.

Election 2008 has begun. Barack Obama for the Democrats and Mike Huckabee for the Republicans have emerged from the Iowa Caucuses as favorites for nomination. They’re good guys, but can either help America rebound from the disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush?

America has endured, to present, seven years of the current "resident", eight years of Bill Clinton before him and four years of the current occupant's father prior to Mr. Clinton. Mr. Clinton's spouse now seeks to be the replacement to the current occupant.

Let's do the math. Assuming Madam Clinton becomes the newest "resident" and attains re-election in 2012, the United States will have spent the previous 28 years prior to Inauguration Day on January 20, 2017 with two families occupying the White House.

The reality is that after 28 years of the Bush/Clinton dynasty that the America that existed in 1989 will bear little resemblance to the remains of America that will likely exist in 2017.

Assuming eight years of a Madam Clinton reign, America is likelier to be more unfriendly, isolated, polarized and suspicious that at any point in her history. Of all the candidates in 2008, Madam Clinton is the runaway favorite to maintain the status quo for the foreseeable future.

Can America afford to be this cavalier with its choice for the next president than to simply settle on the familiar and send Madam Clinton to the White House?

If Iowa is a bellwether; there may be hope. According to the coverage from MSNBC, there is a feeling that there may be yet another generational change in the offing and that if present trends hold firm in the election, that the Baby Boom Generation may be no better than two Presidencies deep.

The priorities of the post-baby boom are insular, yet appear to be focused on bringing America back to a sense of reality. The next generation doesn’t seek to dominate the world and engulf its subjects with ideology.

The post-baby boom is fearful that basic things like health care are going to end up posing a choice between good health and a regular meal on the table or basic transportation to employment that has not been shunted to a third-world country.

We'll see the election play out. For what it's worth, I'll be looking forward to the dismantling of the status quo of the Bush/Clinton cabal. American can ill afford much more of what is happening now.