Post Election Blues

Thanks to everyone who supported President Obama and his party in yesterday’s election. You spoke out, you wrote, you contributed your time, energy and money and finally you voted.

Now that it’s over and we have a moment of calm after the raging battle it’s time to reflect on the road ahead. In the brief silence that accompanies this temporary cessation of hostilities if you listen closely you will hear the murmurs beginning.

Karl Rove was on Fox this morning explaining why he’s still a genius. Fox will continue to fill their air time with outrageous and untrue commentary billed as fair and balanced news and the Republican party will continue to vilify minorities, women  and attempt to place the main burden of taxation on the backs of working people.

Already this morning Mitch McConnell and John Boehner attempted to diminish the Democratic victory with less than conciliatory statements that portend the likelihood that obstructionism will continue as their primary tactic and many of the far right republican players like Eric Cantor are still on the field preparing for more of their special brand of malicious mischief.

We’ve won a battle but the struggle continues. We have wars and conflicts to end, a tax system to reconstruct, an economy to rebuild, a national security and military industrial complex to rein in, a constitution and rule of law to reaffirm, and a new energy policy and infrastructure to build.

Circus Maximus Politicus And That Urpy Feeling, A Rant

Eight faces that I’m thoroughly sick of.

Ten faces that make me vomit, projectile style.

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote,

He’s a-runnin’ for office on the ballot note.

He’s out there preachin’ in front of the steeple,

Tellin’ me he loves all kinds-a people.

He’s eatin’ bagels

He’s eatin’ pizza

He’s eatin’ chitlins

He’s eatin’ bullshit!

Bob Dylan “I Shall Be Free”

I knew this would happen when they started campaigning for the 2008 election five minutes after the 2006 mid terms. I felt it coming, like the feeling I get when I eat a giant sausage sandwich with peppers and onions at midnight, I know that indigestion is in my immediate future.

I’m sick of politics, thoroughly, fed up, to the gills…. Urp!

I know, I know, being sick of politics is like being tired of living, OK so what what what do you do about it? Shut up? Quit bitching? Take up residence in the nearest hermitage? Find a cuckoo’s nest and commit to it?

Bill Moyers, Cleaning Up Washington

Born on this day in 1934

America’s corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own, they’re privatizing democracy. All the benefits, the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.
Bill Moyers

I happened to be reading Moyer’s Blog early this morning looking for his interview with Public Citizen’s Joan Claybrook which I missed when it aired on PBS last Friday on “Bill Moyers Journal.”

The subject of the segment was lobbying and lobbyists and their pervasive influence on our political system.

I have a large measure of respect for both Moyers and Claybrook and an enormous loathing for lobbyists and their destructive influence on MY country and I was disappointed to have missed the program.

Fortunately for me I learned from Karl Rove that Al Gore invented the internet a few years back, and that invention led to the discovery of You Tube where I found a clip of the segment and I feel very good about the modern world this morning.

If you are at all interested, as you should be, in the machinations and corruptions of our polical system by the Bob Neys, the Jack Abramoffs, the Billy Tauzins and other disreputable and criminal scum who infest our government and engage in buying and selling it these days I recommend that you watch the video.

Coincidentally, it seems like an appropriate time to once again ponder the the corruption in our government and to seriously consider, again, again… doing something to put an end to the revolving doors and corrupt and unethical congressional behavior, after yesterday’s indictment of another sitting congressman (Louisiana’s own William Jefferson .. hmmm… Billy Tauzin was from Louisiana too) on bribery and racketeering charges.

Pinochet y Bush, Class Warfare in Chile y Ohio

With the possible exception of Barry Goldwater for whom I have have always had a somewhat grudging admiration and a few others, perhaps John McCain before he developed a taste for the flavor of George Bush’s ass and decided that performing oral sex on Jerry Falwell, indeed the entire religious right was a natural rite of passage on the road to earning the Presidency, Republicanism has always been abhorrent to me.

My animus toward the GOP probably began during my early residence in the womb of a Mother who was a Democrat, a long time member of the UAW and the daughter of hard scrabble Sicilian Democrats from Connecticut as well as exposure to Willie Higgins my paternal grandfather who was a printer, a pressman and a lifelong Democrat. (except for the part about FDR sending his son to fight a war in Europe. Willie loved Harry Truman, but hated FDR, there may be a lesson about war or public relations or whose ox is being gored in there somewhere.)

Anyway, I came by my liberal passions early and honestly and before the end of elementary school had begun to feel a strong disdain for Hamilton and all he represented and a deep affinity for Jefferson and what I saw as the enlightened, egalitarian ideals of a more liberal political philosophy.

With this background it should be quite understandable that the October election was celebrated around my house as “the night of the living Democrats” and great sighs of relief were breathed over the weighing of the Republican anchor on the Ship of State which contains our mutual American asses.

However, it seems that my smug satisfaction with the coming Democratic majority was somewhat immoderate and premature because those Republican bastards are lame ducking the hell out of the country before the Democrats take office.

Is WaPo “Sleeping Over” On K Street? Hotlist

In a “News” story in The Washington Post this morning “An Estate Tax Twist Reverses Party Roles On Minimum Wage” Staff Writer Jeffrey Birnbaum leads with one of the most disingenuous paragraphs I have read in a major newspaper in awhile:

For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change. This week in the Senate, however, the AFL-CIO is pushing to kill the wage increase while practically the entire business lobby is demanding that it pass.

Perhaps the word disingenuous isn’t strong enough, in fact my departed Quaker Grandmother would have said, “why that Jeffrey is full of beans.” My equally departed Grandfather would have agreed with her, but not being cut from quite the same Quaker mold as Grandma, he would have differed with her somewhat on the nature of Mr. Birnbaum’s stuffing.