Where Have I Been

I've been absent from this blog for over a month, not out of laziness (well, a little...), but mostly because of consternation that my entries don't seem to be publishing. At least according to the platform I use off Mozilla, which refuses to display my most recent essay on my blog site despite all my efforts. Well, after discovering that when I access through AOL's new engine I seem to be correctly updated, I can proceed anew. By this point, though, I'm afraid I may have lost what remains of my skimpy audience, though probably old faithful Terry is checking in from time to time. Hi, Ter! How's Texas? Did you vote for Kinky Friedman? Did you bet on the Cardinals?

I should proceed with my take on the pleasant election results from earlier this month. I don't know if my blog changed any minds. I actually did not vote, but not intentionally--the stupid voting district failed to mail me my absentee ballot. It did not matter much in Blue State California, though I am not sure to this moment whom I would have chosen for governor--the gaudy Republican "moderate" Schwarzeneggar or the bland Ferengi Democrat Phil Angelides. I like that Arnold had become pragmatic and accommodating to the reality of a Democratic legislature, but I was skeptical of how he would proceed in a lame-duck term. I disliked that the state's Democrats had fumbled the ball again selecting such an unappealing choice, even if Angelides has been an effective public servant. In the end I believe that the local Dems served up Angelides on a sacrificial platter, with the Governator a shoo-in, and are pinning their hopes on more a more charismatic Democratic field in 2010 which will include Mayors Newsom of San Francisco, Villaragosa of Los Angeles and Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi.

Nationally the results were certainly edifying, but in reality the event was much more a Repudiation than an Affirmation. Finally enough Republican malfeasance and ineptitude stuck in the craws of voters, and potential Republican voters who decided to sit this one out, unless they were crazed about stem-cell research or the gay-marriage decision of the New Jersey Supreme Court. None of those issues were enough to counter the revulsion over the mess in Iraq or the sexual follies of Republican lawmakers and Evangelical hypocrites. The Reps were utterly hapless by Election Day. All the Republican bloggers had left was the hope that the botched joke by John Kerry over soldiers and Iraq and Bush could somehow be amplified into a war cry of "Democrats Hate America!" But this didn't fly either, unlike earlier calumnies such as the Swift Boat lies.

But now we are in the interregnum/hangover perod following a major realignment of Congress, and the initial actions of the Reps, Dems and the press are harbingers of what is yet to come as the political arena morphs into a two-year Presidential contest. Bush's first action, in a grudging if disbelieving acknowledgment that he is not universally admired, was to fire Rumsfeld and make tacky patronizing jokes about Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi, in return, made a few conciliatory remarks about a President she had earlier lacerated, then went on a bit of a tailspin herself, first espousing honesty as Congressional Priority #1, then picking John Murtha as her choice as Majority Leader, despite some ethical irregularities in his background. She was repudiated by the Democrats whom she is supposed to lead, so that does not bode well for a focused and unified Democratic delegation. Nor does that fact that so many new Dems are really Republicans in blue dress, like Heath Shuler and Bob Casey. And the Press, delighted that they have some new focus to distract from the downbeat Iraqi news, are happy to drub the upstart Democrats for any clumsiness whatsoever.

Had the Press been so diligent in investigating the false premises of the Iraqi invasion, but no. At least some of them are speaking out now, in Emperor's New Clothes fashion, about the debacle in Mesopatamia. Yes, Virginia, this is a Civil War. At least NBC News and the Los Angeles Times have the moxie, if that's what's needed, to call it what we all know it to be. The semantic battle over the number of daily dead in Baghdad that would change the phrase from "internecine combat" to Civil War is this month's obscene absurdity. Hey--now it's no longer only thirty to fifty civilians killed per day, it's in the hundreds. Our poor bedraggled soldiers don't even know which side to fight on in any given minute. They just valiantly try to do their unclear duty, and get shot at for their patriotism. They are essentially treated as the shit in the shit sandwich.

Maybe it's time to go radical on the idea, and pull everyone out. It looked bad when we did that in Saigon, but thirty years later the Vietnamese are, if not a perfect country (one party, no free press, etc.), at least quasi-capitalist and open to American interests. Our idiotic president is currently on a tour of the mid-East that is so screwed up that he initially canceled his meeting with Iraq's "democratically elected" leader whose election was to be the cornerstone of his foreign policy. Yet he persists in saying that we will not leave Iraq until the war is won. Hey, Shmuckhead, the war was won in six weeks. It's the peace you fucking lost. Now our troops are cannon fodder. As the house said repeatedly in "Amityville Horror","Get out! Get out!"

Oh, and if Bush has not already returned entirely to his imbecilic form, so has his party. How else can you account for the reemergence of Trent Lott as Minority Whip, after his lofty acclamation of Strom Thurmond's segregationist record. What does this bode next--Michael Richards as Secretary of the Interior?