Individual vs. Institution
Two must-reads in regards to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks...
Article #1:
An Assange profile in
The New Yorker from about six months ago. The computer hacker would have still been a marvelous gift to the world if the only thing he was ever responsible for in his life was changing the war euphemism "collateral damage" to the more appropriate "collateral
murder." But fortunately, his greater legacy will be that he made our most powerful global institutions more accountable to the people. Perhaps some lessons being taught today will eventually become universally understood. For example, as the author of this article correctly points out, U.S. military officials would have had a much smaller public relations problem to deal with in regards to the Apache helicopter atrocity in Iraq in 2007 if, instead of the video of the civilian attack ultimately being presented to the world by an anarchist as an online documentary entitled, yes, "Collateral Murder," they had originally complied with any one of the multiple Freedom of Information Act requests by news outlets that called for the release of the video.
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And Article #2: Glenn Greenwald's
Tuesday piece at Salon, which, among its several brilliant insights, addresses the shameful commitment by some major American news outlets throughout this episode to
protect the government in stark contradiction to their stated journalistic missions to actually
police it.
Key passage:
Most political journalists rely on their relationships with government officials and come to like them and both identify and empathize with them. By contrast, WikiLeaks is truly adversarial to those powerful factions in exactly the way that these media figures are not: hence, the widespread media hatred and contempt for what WikiLeaks does. Just look at how important it was for (New York Times editor) Bill Keller to emphasize that the Government is criticizing WikiLeaks but not The New York Times; having the Government pleased with his behavior is his metric for assessing how good his "journalism" is. If the Government is patting him on the head, then it's proof that he acted "responsibly." That servile-to-power mentality is what gets exposed by the contrast Wikileaks provides.-
And finally, maybe instead of prosecuting Julian Assange as a "foreign terrorist," as Representative Pete King suggests, the voters of New York's 3rd congressional district should call upon Assange to take King's seat in the U.S. House. Assange, after all, is doing King's job for him as it's actually the Constitutional mandate of Congress to act as watchdog over the Executive Branch of government, and the Departments of State and Defense.
From both of these articles, we get to the one of the true evils in the American political class-- traditional media outlets as willing accomplices.
Cyber Monday
Julian Assange knows how to brighten the beginning of a work week. The latest WikiLeaks release of confidential U.S. government documents had me walking on air this morning just in anticipation of the many specifics to come. That's the inherent fun of a man of principle exposing a powerful, but corrupt and hypocritical institution. As the day progressed, first the confirmation arrived, as expected, that the dire warnings from U.S. officials about the supposedly "dangerous" secrets being exposed were just bluster. None of the documents carried a full top-secret classification by the United States government. The nuclear codes remain secure tonight, written on the inside collar of the Obama family dog. Our military men and women are actually safer tonight, of course, because that's what shedding a light on the actions of government actually accomplishes. It makes it harder for the exposed governments to start wars, and hopefully, in our case, to continue them.
One world leader, the Italian foreign minister, called the document release "the September 11th of world diplomacy," and of course, there was no insult to the 9/11 dead there. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went one better perhaps. He disgracefully said that the leak "put at risk... the cause of human rights," as if greater government transparency is ever capable of that. Sarah Palin called the release "treasonous," though it remains to be seen how it could be when Julian Assange is not an American. (Oh Sarah, you're so silly.) Secretary of State Clinton called it "an attack on the international community"-- and believe you me, the U.S. State Department knows a little something about attacks on the international community.
By late this afternoon, at least
one even moderate commentator was calling on the baffoonish-looking Clinton to now resign. It turns out that our government hasn't been content to just dig through the trash of
organic gardening peaceniks in Iowa City, it's got its diplomats writing down credit card and frequent flyer numbers at the United Nations.
Besides the discovery that our foreign diplomats are all doubling as spies, my favorite leaks include: That Egypt, Qatar, Jordan, Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and the Saudis
all want the U.S. to launch an attack against Iran, or in King Abdullah's words "cut off the head of the snake," and just as importantly, none of them wanted anybody to know they want this. (We already knew Israel wanted this, though. No surprises there.) Also, there's the confirmation that the U.S. has been launching missiles at the citizens of yet another country, Yemen-- although Americans probably don't give a shit about this type of thing anymore,
just throw it on the pile-- while the Yemen government has been providing cover by claiming responsibility.
The latest spin tonight from news sources reliably supportive of the establishment government is that the leaks are not that altogether damaging, that they lack in relevance or new information. Of the 250,000-some total documents, this is unarguably true of most, but overall, it's far from true. If it were, we wouldn't be getting pronouncements from the White House and the State Department like the ones above. Imperialists and apartheidists like
Alan Dershowitz wouldn't be banging their war drums in response if they didn't see the potential impact. It's no time to fall asleep. The world, as a whole, gets a more fully-drawn picture of U.S. policy. Barack Obama promised more openness in his administration, but the only time we get it is when it's being provided by somebody else. Many world watchers would have expected the Bush State Department to be wiretapping phones at the U.N., but guess what, Obama's is too. It's Hillary Clinton authorizing the latest rounds of recordings. The fundamental distrust of foreigners and the foundation of American isolationism survives despite the vigorous promises from the White House to the contrary.
Just as important in all of this is what's to come next. Intelligence officials wouldn't be trying to fabricate a rape charge against Assange in Sweden if they didn't see him as a threat to uncover more secrets. The hacker
tells Forbes Magazine that his next target for exposure will be the corporatists of Wall Street. Oh mama, that's going to be a dollop of gooey, whistleblowing sweetness when that comes out.
America's got itself a kitchen littered with rats, and it always takes some major doing to clean up such an infestation, but the first step of any proposed solution to such a problem is always to turn on the overhead light. Flip.
The Human Voice
November 26th marks the 3rd annual National Day of Listening. The event is the brainchild of
StoryCorps, an organization dedicated to the recording and preservation of oral histories.
Earlier this week, Huffington Post provided a link to
a piece by Studs Terkel in conjunction. Terkel, who died in 2008, is one of our great oral historians, and a Pulitzer Prize winner for "The Good War" in 1985 .
What I'm thankful for this year
A four-day weekend this week
30 new hours of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson" on DVD
Julian Assange
A steady paycheck
Khandi Alexander
Glenn Greenwald
The St. Louis Clydesdales, my defending champion and first-place fantasy football team
As always, Tina Fey
Almost a decade of Moeller TV Festivals
Iowa State Senate Leader Michael Gronstal, champion of gay civil rights
Kenny Powers
Matt Taibbi
Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans
Frosted Shredded Wheat. I never tire of it.
Steve Martin
Stan Musial at 90
Albert Pujols at 30
The Wobblies
Bill Maher
T-shirts that can tell the world what I don't want to have to say
Steak 'n Shake
Social Security
Don Rickles
Alison Brie
Bernie Sanders
The entire gang down at Holmes GMC Truck-Honda
Whitey Herzog, Hall of Famer
Letterman before bed
Dave Zirin
Alison Brie on her other show
Roger Ebert
Those that serve in our nation's armed forces. And those that are fighting for the right to serve.
Kwong Tung restaurant in Des Moines. Since 1964.
Natalie Maines
Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement
Mark Twain writing from the grave
Family & friends. I'm sure you understand that space prohibits me from naming each of you.
And my readers. Troy, Lisa, and Ed.
Happy Thanksgiving.
"Don't Run"
The Nation is a politically-liberal weekly magazine that dates back to 1865 and calls itself "the flagship of the left." Breaking with almost a century-and-a-half tradition of establishment dissent, it published an open letter in February of 2004 to Ralph Nader entitled "Don't Run" whose title alone should provide a pretty full explanation of what it was about. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that letter is nowhere to be found online these days, not during a time of such great progressive disappointment and regret-- that is, the co-opting of so many reactionary Bush/Cheney foreign and domestic policies by a Democratic administration.
In '04, editors at the magazine were taking third-party progressive candidate Ralph Nader to task for his participation in the 2000 Presidential Campaign. They laid the George Bush electoral victory not at the feet of the U.S. Supreme Court, at corrupt election officials in Florida, at the lame-duck Democratic President that had made everybody in America feel like they needed a shower, or even at the actual Democratic candidate himself for his frustrating inability to articulate a vision for the country. No, they laid the Bush triumph at Nader's door for the public advocate having had the audacity to run for president outside the Washington establishment's sanctified two-party dictatorship.
Well, behold.
The Nation may have just planted the seedlings today for the next political round. An article appeared at their website with the heading
"How Sarah Palin Could Beat Obama in 2012", and surprise of surprises, the author's hypothesis in laying out a plan of potential White House defeat doesn't have anything to do with President Obama continuing to betray progressive voters at every opportunity. It has to do with another so-called "spoiler" candidate entering the race-- this time, popular Michael Bloomberg, a "moderate," and a high-visibility independent office-holder as the mayor of New York City.
The game is the same:
1) Use fear tactics.
Fall in line behind Obama or risk the dangerous radical Sarah Palin, they say. Progressives in 2004 were told they had to back the uninspiring John Kerry or they would be stuck with a Bush second term. Then they were told in 2008 that they had to back Obama or a John McCain presidency would be something akin to a third term for Bush. McCain was soundly defeated, but America got their third Bush term anyway.
2) Attempt to bribe the "spoiler." In '04, then-DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe tried to buy off Nader with an unspecified amount of money to stay off the ballot in 19 battleground states. Now, according to the author of
The Nation piece, the wealthy Bloomberg (who could spend billions of his own money in a third-party campaign for the presidency) may have the Treasury Secretary position dangled in front of him as a carrot to stay on the sidelines.
Stay tuned for step 3. If history tells us anything, the bribes will be replaced by blackmail, the way the Democratic establishment starved Nader's consumer and legal protection groups-- many of them to death-- in the wake of his refusal to prostitute himself. It remains to be seen what could be done to punish the lavishly-rich Bloomberg, whose enterprises are far more capitalistic than they are centered on the welfare of the public, which is what makes him, in many ways, much more dangerous.
On its surface,
The Nation article may seem rather innocuous-- perhaps it's just a little reader on some noteworthy polling numbers, but when we look closer, we see the strings. Bloomberg is regarded by the author as a "spoiler" (and those are my quotes, not his), rather than as a viably-alternative candidate. The article also reinforces the "horse race-style" narrative so preferred by the duopoly, the one that replaces the debate between ideas with the debate between political conveniences.
The most interesting element about this theoretical three-candidate race between Obama, Palin, and Bloomberg is that it would inevitably have to lead to at least
four candidates because there would still be no candidate representing the millions of dissatisfied progressives-- what with the three named campaigners all deemed perfectly-acceptable by the Lords of Wall Street. That's why a Bloomberg candidacy, so potentially-visible and well-funded however, would be such a marvelous thing. It would be a challenge for the duopoly to legitimately keep Bloomberg out of the nationally-televised debates, which are all-important in garnering candidate "viability" with the establishment media, but actually operated by a sham commission made up of Democrat and Republican party hacks. Then the door could conceivably swing open for a fourth candidate, and then a fifth, and then before you know it, we have government accountability and a truly representative democracy.
Happy 90th, Stan
Break out the harmonicas-- the Greatest Cardinal of them all, Stan Musial, was born in Donora, Pennsylvania 90 years ago today. Stan the Man, who found out this week that he will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom early in 2011, celebrated with pals at the Missouri Athletic Club Friday afternoon. I link to
this video clip of the event so that you can see his birthday cake. Most ballplayers walk away from the game having played with a few different clubs. Stan played 22 seasons for the Cardinals, the longest tenure of any big leaguer in history with one team. Just like a 10-year-old Little Leaguer in Jeff City, he gets a red birthday cake with a Cardinals logo on it for his 90th. Where's the knife?
Underinformed Boss
The Ricketts Family, the billionaire owners of the Cubs, have their proverbial hands out pleading for a treasure chest of charity from the taxpayers of Greater Chicago. But the $400 million price tag affixed to the revamping of Wrigley Field and its surrounding environs might be partially bloated due to the plan to construct a time machine.
An artist's rendering of the so-called "Cubs Alley" development, which would adjoin the western wall of Wrigley Field, implies that the Cubs won something in 1916, 1942, and 1949.
They didn't.
The Bush/Obama tax cuts
According to signals from his top advisers, President Obama is preparing now to cave in and extend the Bush tax cuts, with the major benefit going to the unfathomably rich (26.8% of the total tax benefit alone going to the top 1% of earners). When he does, it will be the moral equivalent of the moment
Tommy Carcetti turned down the school bailout funds from Annapolis.
Simply doing nothing--that is, letting the tax cuts expire-- would eliminate $3.7 trillion from the federal budget deficit over 10 years, says the Tax Policy Center.
But it doesn't sound like that's what's going to happen.
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What many progressives seem to be saying: This is not the "change" I was voting for when I voted for Barack Obama. The president has not moved aggressively enough, or been forceful enough, on the issues that are important to me. A clean-break from the disastrous financial policies of the Bush administration shouldn't have meant a national economic system led by Ben Bernanke, Larry Summers, and Tim Geithner. I was disappointed that the single-payer option, which Obama used to support, was never considered during the national debate over health care. He opposed the Truth Commission regarding the alleged crimes of the Bush presidency. He has acted to entrench our armed forces in the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He has not acted to limit the privatization of the military, to reduce the vast bureaucratic and large contractor waste, fraud, and abuse in the military, to close Guantanamo Bay, to have his Justice Department execute the nation's and the global community's laws against torture, to end warrantless spying on Americans, to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," to address the challenge of climate change in any meaningful way despite the federal government holding a majority stake in one of the world's largest automakers (General Motors), to bolster the laws against corporate crime, or to force more accountability upon Wall Street. I'm frustrated that nothing has been done to reduce the crippling budget deficit, bewildered that even the nation's
billionaires have not been asked to pay more in taxes to help protect the public safety net for average Americans, and not least of all, furious that the right wing and the Republicans have been allowed to define-- and distort-- what it is we stand for.
What surprisingly-few progressives seem to be saying: Nader was right.
The Royal Scam
I wish I might live fifty years longer; I believe I should see the thrones of Europe selling at auction for old iron. I believe I should really see the end of what is surely the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man-- monarchy.
Mark Twain, the author of this paragraph in 1889, would be terribly disappointed to have witnessed the lasting tolerance for monarchies around the globe and in his home country now a full century after his death in 1910. A royal wedding engagement was announced in Britain today, that of Prince William of Wales, to a commoner, Kate Middleton, and quite possibly only one news organization anywhere, "theawl.com," got
the headline precisely correct-- "Unemployed English girl to wed soldier from welfare family."
I awoke to find the morning "news" shows in these former colonies going ape over the announcement. Summer 2011 makes sense for the ceremony, said one reporter, because it will prevent it from conflicting with the Queen's "Diamond Jubilee" in 2012. (At last, the Queen will get the spotlight!) The happy couple, he said, had to also coordinate their wedding around preparations for the Olympic games, presumably not unlike Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly years ago.
Early on a Monday morning, Yankee news reporters were desperate to provide any inside information to us that they could-- but with a promise of more to come!
William and Kate have a lot in common, one analyst gushed,
they have a shared love for the outdoors and they're both very physically active. Oh, are they now?
It's important to them that they spend time together away from prying tabloid photographers. Oh, they do? I thought they fucked in the park.
In the United States, where the word "commoner" has no cultural meaning, and where a grown woman wearing a tiara is almost assuredly a woman being forced to do so by her friends on her birthday, we have just those couple of things still going for us. The vigilance of our intolerance towards the royal family wanes 234 years after the Declaration of Independence, and too seldom does a Sam Clemens or a John McEnroe come along to thumb his nose at the crown. Approximately 750 million people around the world, many of them in the U.S. well ahead of their alarm clocks, tuned in to watch William's parents wed back in 1981, and this union-to-be already features the very same sapphire engagement ring passed down from the Charles and Diana fairy tale so expect a similar round of voyeuristic obsession and idolatry from the peasant stock.
How does this elaborate and expensive foolishness engaged in by a group of British clods impact us? Well, Twain suggested in "Life On the Mississippi" that it led to the Civil War, for one thing. He blamed the writings of monarchist Sir Walter Scott, and the romanticism of the Middle-Ages, for creating the South's mindset to war. "It was Sir Walter that made every gentleman in the South a Major or a Colonel, or a General or a Judge, before the war; and it was he, also, that made these gentlemen value these bogus decorations. For it was he that created rank and caste down there, and also reverence for rank and caste, and pride and pleasure in them."
British imperialism in the 18th and 19th centuries begat 19th, 20th, and 21st Century U.S. imperialism, and today, the U.S. President, in addition to his being allowed to act like royalty in suspending the rule of law, torturing prisoners, and
ordering the assassination of American citizens, he has been struggling to find the personal and political stones to raise the taxes on even the top 1% of American income earners. The American people, who are told that monarchy has evolved into a harmless and benign concept even in England, tolerate these very traits of monarchy without quibble. (Says Pudd'nhead Wilson, American: "In our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to exercise either of them.") Indeed, one could argue that nobody, not even the British, takes first place ahead of the United States in its tolerance of the scepter.
But one of those steadfast Americans, Twain, that splendid small-D democrat, made his criticisms blunt in "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" in 1889, describing the farmers and the artisans of the country as "the nation" itself. "To subtract them," he said, "would... leave behind some dregs, some refuse in the shape of a King, nobility and gentry; idle, unproductive, acquainted many with the art of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world."
TV Fest wraps
If you couldn't make it to Moeller TV Fest IX on Saturday, or if you did, here are a
couple clips from TV episodes we screened in my home on a blustery, but lovely day. Hope to see as many of you as we can next year for the big event-- possibly in Cedar Rapids at Aaron's place.
TV Fest week
Blogging will be slow this week due to ongoing preparations for Moeller TV Festival IX on Saturday. Join me in getting focused.
Sparky Anderson
Andy Travis, program director of Cincinnati radio station WKRP: "Does the name Sparky mean anything to you?"
Johnny Fever: "Does it? Black and white collie. Ran away from home and broke my heart."
In addition to being the very short-tenured host of the WKRP sports program "The Bullpen with Sparky Anderson: brought to you by Sunluxe Petroleum, makers of gas, heating oil, and a crude but hearty wine," Sparky Anderson, who died today, was also an accomplished baseball manager. He was the first, and still only one of two skippers, to win a World Series in both leagues, and to win more than 700 games with two different clubs. He retired as the third-winningest manager in Major League history in 1995.
Most fans will come across the ESPN or AP story about Anderson's life and death, but I thought I would show you a surprisingly-detailed
item from the St. Louis newspaper today, which has a Cardinals angle, of course, but gives you some behind-the-headlines-type information about the man. Part of my motive, I admit, is to make a point about the information source itself. Sparky really had no baseball connection to St. Louis. He wasn't from there, didn't play there, and he didn't even come to town as a visiting manager for the last 17 years of his 26-year career, though he did manage Cardinals farm clubs for two years during the mid-'60s.
Anyway, that point is that the
Post-Dispatch, I think, is one holy hell of a baseball newspaper. In fact, it has to be the best. But also, the story speaks to how beloved a personality Anderson was around the game. Everyone's describing him today in the most glowing terms, and it seems he was very much a man of the people, and a man of the fans. Hell, during the '70s, he had even memorized the section, row, and seat where WKRP receptionist Jennifer Marlowe sat at all the Reds' homes games.
Justices booted
There is no shortage of topics this week, what with election day yesterday, a World Series championship for the San Francisco Giants on Monday, and also the return of the McRib.
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The judicial retention voting results in Iowa are nauseating, and the ousting of three of the authors of a landmark state ruling on the federal right of equal protection is getting a lot of
national attention today. Yet I was actually pleasantly surprised at how close the voting was. In each of the three tallies, the percentage breakdown was approximately 48 to 52% for retention, and this is incredible to me when you consider that only one side was "campaigning."
An actual garbage-court ruling-- the U.S. Supreme Court's
Citizens United a year ago-- opened up this vote and any others to literally-limitless outside money, and nearly all of it was spent here in opposition to the three justices. Only one side placed the hundreds of television and radio ads. Indeed, only one side acknowledged that this should even be a "political race," as it never has been before and as the Iowa Constitution dictates that it shouldn't be. In a separate measure appearing on ballots statewide, Iowans did, by a 2-1 margin, oppose opening up the state constitution (and by extension, this court ruling) to rewriting by a state convention. That's a big positive.
We're told that a healthy majority of Iowans oppose gay marriage, and yet nearly half of voters-- during a Republican-landslide election year, no less-- supported these justices for retention. Imagine what the retention results would have been if the Democratic party, with its dismal slate of candidates, had actually inspired any progressives to the polls this year.
As for the bigots, and Bob Vander Plaats and his religionist group are surely that-- good old-fashioned, fire hose-to-the-mouth bigots, we won't have to worry about them much longer. Since their principal argument on the matter is that the Constitutionally-given authority of judicial review is actually "legislating" when a result conflicts with an opinion of the majority, they'll have to quickly concede just as soon as that rapidly-approaching day arrives in which national opinion on gay rights sprints past them in the opposite direction. Then they'll be forced to make a choice similar to that of two of their predecessors-- between that of the George Wallace-like, late-in-life renunciation of past convictions and a Bull Connor-like stick-to-it-edness to infinity that will cause their human successors to look upon them as monsters. But congratulations on your victory last night, Bob & company.
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You're still not talking slow enough for them to understand: From the White House's official media release following the election yesterday, "This wasn’t a vote for more partisanship, for more ideology. … This wasn’t a vote to refight the old battles, or re-empower the special interests. This was a vote for cooperation and pragmatism."
See? Obama now recognizes the error of his ways. He was being too partisan before. He just needs to reach out to the well-meaning Republicans a little bit more; be
more Republican, if you will.
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News services are reporting that beloved former Reds and Tigers manager Sparky Anderson is now
under hospice care in California. Cincinnati sportswriter John Fay remembers today that Sparky once guested as himself on an episode of "WKRP in Cincinnati," and he even
provides a link to the episode online! I know it was a gift and all, but I think it would be a nice gesture at this point if Les Nessman offered Sparky's World Championship ring back to the manager and his family. Like Herb, I was surprised when Sparky gave it to him.
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Just an observation: Isn't it remarkable that Tom and Dick Smothers last name is really Smothers, which rhymes with 'brothers'? You would really think they made it up, but there would seem to be mountains of evidence that they didn't.
Promoting abstinence
On this election eve, I want to remind all liberal voters of some words from Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs. After the president and the Democrats were finished bailing out Wall Street criminals, escalating wars against two countries and adding a third to the mix (drone attacks on Pakistan), denying habeus corpus and due process, and breaking almost countless promises to gays, the poor, and the uninsured, Gibbs said of Obama's liberal critics, "Those people ought to be drug tested. I mean, it's crazy... They will be satisfied when we have Canadian health care, and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."
So if you raise substantive concerns about the president's policies or publicly criticize him, you're an extremist. No, check that, you're anti-American-- wanting to shut down our national defense and turn us into a bunch of bastard Canadians. That was less than three months ago that his top spokesman said that, but now the president is asking you to fall in line. Jesus, people, are you really going to get played for chumps again?
There's a lot of plastic rhetoric every election cycle-- and it comes from all corners-- about going to the voting booth and doing "your civic duty." That's hogwash. You're not only "participating" when you vote, you're "endorsing." Their votes on policy, past and future, are your votes. That's you promoting bigotry in matters of sexual orientation. That's you arming American GIs to kill innocent civilians in what amounts in numbers to multiple 9-11s on foreign soil every year. That's you handing 'get out of jail free' cards' to banking and oil industry perps, and raiding the treasury to exponentially increase the profits of private insurers while the growing underclass goes without basic health protections.
These Democrats buddy up to you every two years, but they treat you like dirt the rest of the time. You're irrelevant to them. Most liberals long ago gave up voting for their own self-interest, let alone those less fortunate than they are. We've become resigned to the best they have to offer, and they offer shit because we demand nothing more that that. When Robert Gibbs says things like this
in public, what do you suppose he-- and the president-- are saying when they're
not in front of the microphones?
Here's what they say. They say
Where else are they gonna go? They're not going to vote for Republicans. You're stuck, and they know it. You have dismally bad candidates to choose from because of a broken system and all they have to do is appeal to your sense of skewed logic in supporting the least objectionable. But guess what. The choices you have this cycle are worse than the ones you had last cycle, no? And the ones from the last round were worse than the ones before that. Yes, that strategy's working great.
Look at your ballot. Do you like either of the choices in that race? Has either of them actually
earned your support as a candidate or as an officeholder? No? Than DON'T VOTE for either one of them. Vote for a third or skip it altogether. And if you don't like any of the candidates on the ballot, then by all means, STAY HOME. It's an abusive cycle that has to be stopped. Staying the course at this point is akin to a battered spouse staying in the home over worries about where he or she will be able to find financial support. And it can be tough out there on one's own, no doubt, but before you can do anything else, you've gotta get yourself out of that house. Do it finally. Take the kids and go. You can crash at my place until you get yourself settled somewhere.
There are worse things you can do on Election Day 2010 than doing nothing at all. Even the generally-clueless pundits have been forced to recognize and acknowledge this year that Obama and the Democrats have failed to inspire their base of progressive backers, and their candidates are going to pay a political price for it. That's a good thing. Now it's a shame that the group ready to take control of (at least) the House of Representatives has so little to offer and so nothing to inspire, but there will be a lesson in their victory. Our government no longer functions, and the Reactionary Right, at least, acknowledges this fact. I begrudge their poor focus and their general intolerance but not their anger, and not their cynicism. Those last two traits are justified, and someday liberals will recognize why it is exactly that the other side seems to get everything it wants in what has really become a steady, national march to the right: They demand things. They vote based on their principles. And guess what, it doesn't matter if you or I even respect those principles because their candidates do.
