2009 - A Major Disappointment for Progressives

This year of 2009 has been a personally dismal year for yours truly. Money for me continues in short supply and for the first time this Christmas I got absolutely no money from anybody. There have been more “proactive” house cleaning sessions, and at least three times now the TV has screwed up because the ground wire was messed up on KTTV or FOX. Of course in June through the first half of July I was off the internet entirely from June 16^th through July 13^th. More items have been either lost or stolen in the laundry than since I have lived here. My Dad’s possessions have been generally treated as those of an undesirable roommate you didn’t like and were trying to get rid of all traves of. My Mom sold her house at the stratigicly worse time possible last July. I have suffered the loss of a lot of personal items that were stored there. But as I’ve said before,. 2009 has been a nightmare year for progressive, with a President we all believed was one of our own, and voted for him on that basis. And not only that voted for him because of his Promises to us, over and above a candidate, Hillary, who said with her experience she would be able to get more done in congress. We should have listened to her. If a lot of us had that vote to do over, a lot of us would have voted differently. But you had people like Randy Rhodes saying “the race is over” from late February on, when the race was Anything but over. I am getting a little sick of being accused by people like Hal Sparks of “saying I’m not going to vote any more or I’ll vote for the Republicans. I’d like to know WHO is saying this?? Nobody. He’s just making it up! In fact what it means is that progressives have to fight harder and use at the same time more drastic tactics and more innovative or unusual tactics. There is no reason why we have to ask ourselves how many people in congress we’ll lose next year. Rather we should be thinking of gaining new members in congress next year. That we should shoot for. If you plan to lose, your dreams will be realized. This idea of setting ridiculously small goals is becoming a regular sickness in the media. Why do we let either either Sarah Palin or Joe Lieberman define who we are? Why can’t we see ourselves in the image of John Kennedy. You know “Yes we can” should be more than a slogan to win campaigns. If that’s all Obama was shooting for was “getting in” then Rush Limbaugh was right. Berock Obama is a small man. Well now substitute jock Hal Sparks has joined this circular firing squad that liberals seem intent on participating in. If your football team is screwing up and the coach knows which players are screwing up and does not remedy the situation, somewhere down the line you fire the coach. What if one of those players said something like “Why should I try to win the game. My goal was just to make the team. I never knew I’d have to work after that”. Or what if another player said “Hell coach, this is such a crappy team, you’re lucky to have me to begin with. I’ve got options you know”. Two women callers in a row expressed dismay that Obama appeared to be shutting out the left and not caring what they even think, and instead directing all his personal effort twords conferences with people on the right. Hal Sparks accused one or both of them of being shills for the right wing because they were stating the obvious. Not only is Obama screwing up, but he doesn’t seem to care. He’s not even trying to advance the agenda of the left. Some have said that an executive order ending “Don’t ask don’t tell” would “offend” the Republicans in congress. Others such as on the “Frangela” show, are bothered by the anti abortion provisions in both health bills while others are concerned about women’s health issues such as paying for mammograms.

Well, we all want to assume our President knows best. I hope he’s employing the CIA productively in recruiting counter terrorists to infiltrate Al Qaeda and learning all of their inside information. Obviously this would all have to be kept top secret, to be made known, if ever, only upon success and the toppeling of Al Qaeda. One would hope that day would be soon, so that we don’t have to leave in a state of building real or manufactured fear. God’s speed to our President.

Moslems aren’t the only people with death fancicies. C S Lewis in “The Screwtape letters” romanticized death in the story of a guy who was killed, suddenly of coursee, in World War II and subsequently made it to heaven, which he describes as “refreshing, like a shower in the morning”. Nobody ever asks themselves that question “But what if I don’t die”. This Islamic terrorist known as the underwear terrorist with PDTM explosive in them- enough for a fairly substantial detonation, like the shoe bomber - - failed to die and hence succeed in his mission because the powder failed to explode, but only catch on fire. So the skin was burned off his legs. Not to be indelicate but I wonder if this man has anything between his legs any more or is That part of his life- - over? What I would really like is for someone who has really BEEN to the Other Side and wants to come back and talk about it without violating some “prime directive” or whatever. That would be the block buster Oprah Winfewy interview of all time. The possibilities of what happens after death are endless, and heading the list is the strong possibility that you just might cease to exist. If you plan your death and fail to weigh this possibility you’re working with bad input. People employ the adage “To conquer death you only have to die”, or as Bill Cosby might say “That’s about the Stupidest thing I’ve heard anybody say”. Religious fundamentalism is stupid. People who reach our age and don’t realize that truth are psychologically retarded in their development.

You know you have the Wickipedia for collected knowledge on the internet. Why couldn’t we have a sort of wickipedia-legleslation forum on the internet where everyone proposes legislation contributing little bits and pieces of it, and some editor picks out the best stuff to post. After everyone reads it we can all vote on it – bypassing congress entirely as long as they aren’t going to act. President Obama has shown zero leadership in business and finance reform. People are proposing legislation to bring back Glass-Steagall, that reform package passed by Franklin Roosevelt that kept banks from speculating with our money in risky investments. Why isn’t President Obama leading this fight? Where is the President on this issue? He’s too busy listening to Larry Summers and Timothy Geitner. With Obama what we have is a man who fundamentally lied to us in the campaign, saying that he is a man of change, when he is very much the man of the status quo. You’d never know by the things Obama says about the economy that he’s basically one with the people responsible for it being this way. These state initiatives are disasters because most of them are penned by one lobbyist or the other. If we got the “people”, bright, informed people who use the internet- - involved in the legislative process we would see whether the adage is true, “There is wisdom in numbers”.

President Obama took a break from his Hawaiian vacation today to comment on the bombing attack, that was alledgedly a retaliation for US air strikes in Yemen. Al Qaeda has officially taken credit for the attempted attack. Of course that guy on Sixty Minutes says “They are still planning a bigger attack”. The President promised today that new security steps would be taken. That’s just what every paranoid is hoping to hear. The suspect was on a terror watch list, but not the “No Fly” list. Joe Lieberman wants more liberal use of the whole body image scanners. There was a female substitute on the Ron Reagan program, so that station is four for four as far as having substitutes for their day line-up. Like I say, they must be paid well. She wanted to discuss the topic of racial profiling. She’s all for it saying that the population in general will suffer all these oppressive security precautions but that only those of Arab descent or Moslems need undergo the full rigors of whatever measures we impose. Of course this is just what the government WANTS us to think. They want us as obsessed with terrorism and as angry at Islamists as possible. One lady called and said she was troubled by the whole tone of today’s conversation and she was against racial profiling. Oh, and she said she was African American. She was cut off without explanation except when the host is losing the argument, they just “do what comes natural”. I turned the program off after this because it had ceased to be intellectually respectable.