Monday, November 21, 2011

My Second Post


Barack, it is Time to Man Up

When I decided to do this blog, I laid out a plan to open with a strong Introduction, then follow up with a frightening Post about my fantasy to have Grant and Sherman finish the job they not only started but got pretty far along with before they eased off, in the final months of the Civil War, for the shock value and to hopefully get some people’s attention and create a little buzz. Then I was going to back off and, over a series of months with deliberately more clear and transparent appeals, I was going to lay out my case, with my bottom line not revealed until sometime next spring or summer. Well, needless to say, patience is not my strong suit. Actually, neither is tact or subtlety. (The best laid plans… sigh.) Anyway, Barack Obama is a smart guy and there is no reason for me to sugar coat this. I’ve heard that when you are President, it is hard to get people to tell you the truth. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Except maybe yourself, who would it not be disastrous to not tell the truth to—especially if you had some potentially important or even critical perspective, insight, or piece of information—than the leader of the (still) most powerful nation on the planet.

If I could actually talk to you Barack, I mean in a room, face to face, for real, here is what I would tell you. (I’d be in awe and nervous, for sure, but I’d still get ‘er done.)

Mr. President, the Country is on Fire. Thirty million people are unemployed or under-employed. Like me, many have been so for years. The Chinese are quickly industrializing and modernizing their nation and locking up the worlds’ precious metals and other vital and finite resources, with shrewd, exploitative, and strategic international trade deals with countries all over the planet—most noticeably troublingly in South America and Africa.  Even after a brutal one-child per family policy, famines, environmental degradation, and natural and self-inflicted disasters, there are still over 1.3 billion Chinese today and their population is going by 13,350 people every day.

For the Chinese, the long view is generational—hundreds to thousands of years. While American corporations try to maximize profits in time- frames of minutes to hours to maybe months, or, if they are led by unprecedented visionaries like Steve Jobs, ones of years, American politicians focus on the next election in two (House), four (President) or six (Senate) years, and the brightest American seniors in High School AP courses cannot sit and listen to a teacher for more that five minutes before they become bored and have to secretly open their iPhones in their laps for a little texting or sexting with their 247 closest friends, the Chinese—with over 10,000 years of a sustained, functioning, civil service and rich recorded history, are making 10-year, 100-year, and 1000-year plans: Plans to invest in their people, infrastructure, manufacturing and technology base, American debt securities, and space exploration/commercial exploitation.

A fat, stupid, lazy, corrupt, morally bankrupt,  addled, , bored, Free Market Myth spouting, “We’re number 1, shouting” America— suffering from delusions of past grandeur and a terminal case of hubris—cannot compete against the Chinese. I am a critical student of American culture, but I am also a serious and dedicated student and practitioner of Eastern Philosophies (Zen Buddhism and Tai Chi) in general, and the history and culture of China in particular. Barack, I think I know you, I feel you, I get you. As a Black man, you had to learn how to mask your rage in the face of incompetence, injustice, stupidity, and ignorance. You had to suffer fools and keep smiling to get ahead and not get yourself killed by some cracker idiot. You are a master at appearing disinterested, dispassionate, and safe. I get it that if you start telling the truth—about your real feelings about the Republicans or the Corporations that are selling the Country out to the Chinese or the Banks that screwed you after you bailed them out at great political peril, or even the Filthy Rich, who wrongly assume that their money will protect them as the Chinese dominate the world and America declines to become a third world country—the powers that be will come after you and if they cannot stop you with first whispers and then shouts of “Socialist” or “Class Warfare”, they will then scream “Crazy Negro, run for your life, we’re all going to die” and if that too fails to stop you, they will take you out just like they took Abraham [Lincoln], Martin [Luther King], and John [F. Kennedy].  (I’m not being disrespectful or a smart ass here, Mr. President, just don’t know if you are familiar with the song. I think you were probably 5 years old then.)

I get your history and the compromises you have had to make to get to where you are, Mr. President. But I do not know if your courage and fearlessness are comparable to FDR’s or MLK Jr’s.  I do not know what your advisors are telling you about the peril of our current situation. I do not know if you apprehend the very real despair, rage, and tired resignation that people like me are feeling. I do not know what you or your advisors know about the history and culture of China—if you apprehend the clear and present danger that China represents to your children’s and my grandchildren’s future.

Forgive me for being a little over dramatic here, Barack. But if things are as bad as I believe they are, and if we are going to have even a slim chance of turning this around, you are going to have to Man Up, put aside your hard-earned ability to appear safe and White and rational and dispassionate. You are going to have to take the risks that Lincoln, King, and Kennedy took, not because they were suicidal or crazy, but because they apprehended the magnitude of the problem and were willing to put at risk and sacrifice everything just to give their Country, our Country, a chance to survive.

I’m not trying to get you killed, Mr. President. I wept when you were elected. I have watched as the powers that be have persistently reduced your stature and relentlessly acted in a deliberate and coordinated fashion to try to ensure your failure. Of course you cannot admit that you understand that what I am saying is true. The people really cannot handle the truth, that truth anyway. But you can at least act like you have some clue about the evil forces arrayed against you. You can at least begin to tell the Country the truth about the perils we face, about the motives of the forces of greed and unwarranted power and influence that are opposing you, about what America will look like, and what living in America will feel like and be like, if the Corporations and the Rich succeed in turning America into a third world power.

I’m guessing that  David Axelrod—the genius who helped you defeat the tired, old, angry, ‘could care less about the Country (that is, could pick a Sarah Palin, the Wasilla Hillbilly, as his running mate)’ John McCain—is not giving you the message I just tried to give you.

I realize the “you” I am addressing here is not the President. But if you, whomever you are, think that someone with Obama's ear needs to hear this, and knows how to bring this to their attention, please do so, and thank you, whomever you are, for your assistence.

Friday, November 18, 2011

My First Post


My Ultimate Solution to the Republican problem :
  1. I build a Time Machine,
  2. I travel back to Washington, DC in late 1864, 
  3. I find Abraham Lincoln and convince him that I am from the future and need to transport him to my present (November, 2011)—to show him the consequences of his conciliatory approach toward the Confederate South at the end of the Civil War, and
  4. I then send Lincoln back to late 1864, where he can change history. Instead of holding them back, as he did in the original time-line, he directs Generals Grant and Sherman to finish the job they have already started. He explicitly directs then to burn the entire South to the ground and kill every last god fearing Confederate man, woman, and child...

Ok, maybe I should not have used the term Ultimate Solution. Although it has been over 60 years, the phrase still (understandably) touches a nerve with my Jewish friends. But just think about it: no Nixon Southern Strategy to exploit racism in 1968 and 1972; the Equal Rights Amendment passes in the 1970s; no Right Wing Fundamentalist Christian movement starting in the 1980s with Ronald Reagan's campaignhell, even batter, no President Reagan; no Right to Life Movement after Roe v. Wade starting in the 1970s and continuing to this day; no on-going Culture Wars; no NRA or gun-nut lobby; and maybe best of all, no Tea Party Republicans to have to placate in the Congress today.

I freely admit that this is an extreme approach to the problem. But someone once said: "Extremism in the defense of Freedom is no vice." (Barry Goldwater) And you have to concede that it really does solve a lot of problems we now face, in one clean shot.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Introduction


Prologue

I really don’t remember Ike. But JFK, the 1960 campaign—the debates, Nixon’s jowls and five o’clock shadow, smokin’ hot Jackie Kennedy. I went to bed election night not knowing if Kennedy had won. (At 10 years old, I had to get my beauty rest for 4th grade the next day.) My Dad left me a note, at 3:00 AM, saying Kennedy had won. Off course, he would not be declared the winner until Mayor Daly of Chicago “found” the missing votes that put him over the top in Illinois, sometime the next day. Camelot, Life Magazine, “…that we should commit this Nation to the task, before this decade is out, of sending a man to the Moon, and returning him safely to earth… We do these things, and the others, not because they are easy but because they are hard…” The bulletin from Dallas, followed by the update later that day in school; “President Kennedy is dead.” My 6th grade Social Studies teacher said, “Dammit, he shouldn't have gone to Dallas.” LBJ sworn in, Jackie with JFK’s blood and brain matter spattered on the dress she was wearing in the car in Dallas and refused to change out of—“I want them to see what they have done”. Followed by Vietnam, sex, drugs, rock n roll, the 60s man. The Civil Rights movement; Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” speech; the Marches, the Dogs and water cannons, Malcolm X and The Black Panthers. Then Chicago, the 1968 Democratic convention, Mayor Daley and the Police Riot, “Don’t leave us CBS…” and “The whole world is watching…” chanted by the protesters outside the convention hall. Dick “Southern Strategy” Nixon elected President, promising his secret plan to end the war. But still, July 20, 1969, one day after my 19th birthday, Neil Armstrong: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Walter Cronkite, in tears on national television with astronaut Wally Schirra sitting next to him; “Whew—man walking on the Moon.” The world united, our Country wins the Moon Race! It could still work out for America; we could still do great things. LBJ rounds up his racist good old boy Southern Democrats in the Senate and tells ‘em, down at his ranch in Texas: “You know we've gotten away with this racism crap for too long, the Negros have had enough of it. And every time the Republicans are in a tight race, they scream: ‘Negra, Negra, Negra’ and win.” LBJ gets the Great Society legislation, the Voting Rights Act, and other Civil Rights legislation passed. But then comes the 1972 campaign, McGovern, Watergate, the Senate Select Committee, The White House Plumbers, Republican Senator Jim Baker, Committee Co-Chair to Sam “I’m just a simple Country Lawyer” Erwin: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” The Tapes, The 18 Minute Gap, the Saturday Night Massacre, Bork, the unanimous Supreme Court Ruling ordering Nixon to turn over the tapes, the “Smoking Gun” tape conversation between Nixon and H. R. Haldeman, recorded just three days after the break in, where Nixon asks his chief of staff: “How’s the Cover-Up going?” Impeachment in the House, Nixon’s resignation in disgrace to avoid certain conviction in the Senate, Getting on the helicopter in tears, he says: “My Mother was a Saint”. Al Haig—the Secret Deal, The Pardon. Jerry “I believe that the People are going to say ‘Jerry, you’ve done a good job’“ Ford; the 1976 campaign. Carter asked in a debate about Jerry Ford and morality, he answers “Pardon?” Election night, the people say, “Jerry, you’re out of a job!” Ford too devastated to concede; his wife, drunk on national television, concedes for him as Jerry Ford sobs next to her on stage. (I actually grabbed the TV and mocked: “You’re out of a job!” But four years later, after stagflation, recession, and general weakness and ineffectiveness, President Jimmy “If you Iranians don’t please release our hostages right now… Don’t make me hold my breath or turn off the lights on the National Christmas Tree” Carter actually loses to an already brain dead grade B actor, Ronald “Jimmy, there you go again” Reagan in 1980. He may be brain dead, but his corporate cronies know how to slash taxes for the rich, stick it to The Poor, devastate family farmers in the gleeful support of Big Agribusiness, and demolish the Middle Class. The People are so pissed off at us Democrats—over years of Social Programs for the Poor and Black, funded by ever higher income taxes—that they not only elect the idiot, they enthusiastically re-elect him in 1984. Even a deep recession isn't enough, so they elect Daddy Bush--the smug rich guy, nominally from Texas, with homes in about a dozen states—over hapless Michael "Look at me grinning and driving a tank" Dukakis. Could twelve years of the Corporate and Filthy Rich interests raping the Middle Class and selling the country out to our competitors, maybe be enough?

A New Beginning

Remember the 1992 campaign: my man William Jefferson Clinton versus Daddy George H. W. Bush. That theme song, Don't stop thinking about tomorrow, don't stop [Reagan-ism is Dead]. I couldn't stop, and thanks to Ross "Here's the Deal" Perot, we beat daddy Bush big time. Ross almost out-polled Bush. Then remember the 1996 campaign: my man President Bill Clinton versus Bob "I remember those Democrat Wars" Dole? I remember it all: the pathetic debates with Bill just dancing all over Bob's slow, dumb, and obsolete stupid self; the landslide victory; the parties with Bill and Hillary. And what about hot little Monica Lewinsky? Who could forget that thong, that smile, that beefy body and those bodacious ta ta's? The Big Dog just had to have it, and why not, dammit. But then: the Starr inquisition, the Republican House impeachment fiasco and the Senate restoring sanity. Next the 2000 campaign, Al "The Intelligent but unpleasant, sanctimonious, almost Dr. Phil-ian know it all" Gore versus George "I got all C's at Harvard—and my daddy paid some guy to sit in on my classes for me and take my exams while I was getting’ drunk, snortin' coke and porking chicks. I'm a moron just like you" W. Bush. Remember thinking to yourself; there is no way Al Gore can blow this against a Texas moron like Baby Bush? Well, never underestimate the stupidity of the American people and/or ability of Al Gore to blow anything (other than Tipper, whom I'm pretty sure he never did). Ok, I'm almost there. Eight years, a recession and then a major crash, two wars and the War on Terrorism later—we'll just skip over the campaign of John "Reporting for Duty" Kerry, just too painful and pathetic—we finally come to the 2008 campaign.

Our beloved, modern, post-racial negro, Barack “Hope you can believe in” Hussein Obama and Joe “I’m a seasoned old white guy, I’ll keep an eye on the negro for ya’ all” Biden, versus John “Get off my lawn you damn kids” and “Sure, she’s a Wasilla Hillbilly idiot from Alaska, but she’s so hot—and I’ll nominate her if I want too, just to show you I don’t give a shit about the country and know I can’t beat this black guy so what’s the difference” McCain and Sarah “I can see Russia from my front porch so I get foreign policy right good” Palin. I felt the hope. I forsook Hillary and my true feminist friends and fell in with the young black man. Obviously very intelligent, articulate and competent, has the vision thing that Daddy Bush just never got a handle on, got straight A’s, made Law Review, received Honors, etc. I worked on the campaign. I cried and celebrated with not only my African American fiancée and her people but with lots of white folk and every live TV news team in America save Fox News, election night. I saved the next morning’s edition of The Washington Post, to give to my grandchildren in the 2030s before I die; even bought and saved the commemorative editions of Time, Newsweek, and the Life book—got it all in a box.

My Take on Obama Nation

So, by way of introduction, it’s now three years later. I’m still unemployed, now living with my son and his wife and their one-year-old son in Boyds, MD because my beautiful and fantastic fiancée couldn’t afford to carry me any longer. When I tried to sign up to work at a campaign event recently, I got a robo e-mail response thanking me and asking me for money. When I e-mailed my rage that they keep asking me for money—which if I had some, I’d still have medical coverage or I’d buy one of my 10 prescriptions for diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol that I can no longer afford (well, except for the five generics made in a garage in Mexico and sold at Target dirt cheep)—and demanding that an actual human being from the campaign call me to hear my rage before I go Postal, I got another awesome robo response, this time thanking me for my e-mail, and urging me to give money!

My Take on the Current Republican Presidential Race

While talking with my brother John out on the West Coast this morning (Nov 17, 2011), he asked, “What the hell is going on with the Republicans?” The resulting 45 minute discussion crystalized what is condensed here.

The Republican primary voter pool is hopelessly fractured around several mutually exclusive desires:

    (1) The Tea Party nuts want the government off their backs. That is, they want no taxes on them; they want the federal government to do only what is in the Constitution, which they have never read but are sure supports everything they believe in (deport all the non-white illegal immigrants immediately, no abortions, no taxes [except on The Rich and The Big Corporations and Banks], no rights for gays, women, Blacks, Hispanics, and Poor People, no tax breaks except maybe on the interest on their mortgage for their Double-wide Trailer “Home”; small government except when the Feds regulate who can be a citizen or get married and/or have sex with whom; they support State’s rights—like the right to bring back Jim Crow laws in The South, the right to put abortion doctors in prison for murdering 5-week old fetuses indistinguishable from a reptile fetus (let alone a mammal), and no social benefits, except their Social Security and Medicare, and maybe, if they are unemployed or under-employed, like me and the other 30-some million Americans, food stamps and unemployment benefits.

   (2) The Religious Fundamentalist nuts want to put Jesus—obviously and indisputably the One True God—back at the center of our culture. That is, they want it like it was in the good old days in Salam, Massachusetts, way before The Revolution, when you could burn women at the stake for being witches; or like it was when the Founding Fathers put all that stuff about Jesus and our Christian Nation, Under the One True God, in The Constitution [no, I couldn’t find it either when I read it again recently]; they want the Federal government out of education in general and their private, religious, Federally subsidized (vouchered) schools in particular, but in my bedroom and your womb if you are a woman; they want States Rights—like the right to teach Creation Science as a viable alternative to the “theory” of Evolution; the right to declare a fetus to be a “person” at the moment of conception;  the right to deny any and all social benefits to any “out group” as they define them; and the right to ban, persecute, prosecute, or suppress by any means, any religion that, clearly in error, does not recognize their God to be The God . [That would be Jews, Mormons, maybe Catholics, and certainly Rastafarians, Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and all the Other-ists.

   (3) The Libertarian nuts want the Federal Government to just disappear—except maybe the Armed Forces to protect their source of Oil—(inconveniently) located in the Middle East—for their SUVs and 4x4s. They even want State and Local governments reduced—except for the Police, to protect them, in their gated communicates, from the roving bands of starving, desperate people, who might decide to come after them or their possessions in their [the Libertarians’] dog eat dog, everyone for him or herself, utopia.

   (4) The Old School “Moderate” Republican nuts, who just want to eliminate all taxes and/or regulations on The Rich and Big Business, pretend Global Warming doesn’t exist, and unleash the awesome potential of the Free Market to off-shore whatever few jobs [their own excluded] are left and make the United States truly a Third World country.

   (5) And finally, the blatant racists, who just cannot stand the idea of Barack and Michele in the White House—touching all those pretty things that, in the good old days as recently as the Fall of 2000, were for over two centuries only touched by White People and their non-white servants and/or hired help. [Yes, Condoleezza Rice, that means you.] Every time they see Barack or Michele or one of their beautiful daughters sit in a chair, or think about their black asses under the bed sheets in the White House, these people lose their minds. They just want the Negros out of the White House, ASAP. [This is thankfully a small group of people, but let’s get real and admit that they do exist.]

Mitt “All things to all people” Romney has consistently polled at around 20% of Republican voters. That is because, at any one time, he is assiduously pandering directly to one or another of the five factions. The thing is, from week to week, that 20% is never the same actual people. “Global Warming is definitely man made, unless ExxonMobel and BP say it isn’t. Yes it is, as I said last week. No, wait a minute. I’m pretty sure it does exist, but who knows what’s causing it? I’m just not convinced by the “science”, especially if you include the excellent scientists owned or even just rented by ExxonMobil or BP or trained at the likes of Liberty College. I was for Health Care before I was against it; after I implemented it in Massachusetts, but it was nothing like Obama Care—although Obama Care was modeled after my plan, which I now repudiate and oppose. I’m a moron, I mean Mormon. It’s almost like being a Christian, except for all the crazy dogma—like the stupid shit about Jesus coming to North America to try to convert the pagan American Indians—and the actual history of moronism, um, Mormonism. (Ever heard of Polygamy?)  No, I don’t regularly read the Book of Moron, I mean Mormon.” What’s that song, ‘If only you believed like I believe baby, like I believe, we’d get by-y-y-y…’ Because his name and many shifting positions, ability to pander, and total lack of shame are at least well known and recognizable, he stays close to the top in polls of Republicans.

In turn, each of the other Guiding Lights (Political Giants, frankly) of the race has, at one time or another, been pushed up to around 20%—essentially tied with Mitt as the alternative to Romney—by dumb luck, or capricious fate. Unfortunately for them, once they get close to the top, the national news media has to dutifully actually follow them around, ask them questions, and report what they have said or done in the past and are saying and doing now. Let’s just review a few of my favorites here.

Michele Bachmann shoots to the top for a few minutes, and then says something about just doing whatever it says in The Constitution. But then she says, “No Wolf [Blitzer], I have never actually read it. Besides, if I don’t know what to do, I can always ask my close personal friend, Jesus what he would do.  No Wolf, I won’t ask myself, ‘What would Jesus do?’  I talk with Him several times a day—call his personal direct line to his BlackBerry—and keep up with Him with tweets and on His Facebook page or through my contacts with the Aliens from space who are in constant contact with Him. He’ll tell me what to do!” Poof: 20% today, 2% after the interview.

Ron Paul starts to inch up into the high 1s percent, maybe even goes to about 10% in the polls for a day or two. But, The Goddess bless Libertarians, they follow Ayn Rand and the rest of the movement to the logical conclusions of her and its insane philosophy. To wit: “Yes, Wolf, if someone wants to use heroin, go for it. It’s none of my or the government’s business what drugs you use, grow, sell or buy. If someone chooses to not buy private medical insurance and gets sick or hurt, oh well, guess he/she just took themselves out of the gene pool—it strengthens the species through Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest. You know Wolf, Social Darwinism man. If grandma and grandpa made bad investments in their privatized retirement account—or even just got screwed because the liaise fair oversight of, or actual complicity by, the Republicans and the Financial Sector leads to an economic collapse—well, they have to just lie down and die, like in the good old days before FDR and his socialist Depression Era safety net programs in the 1930s.” [When some of the same points are made in a debate, some idiot in the audience shouts, “Yeah!”  in support.] Poof: 10.5% today, 1.5% after the interview and debate.

Rick Perry starts to look pretty good, gets up around 20%. But then, those damn debates: “If I’m elected president, the first thing I’ll do is shut down the three most evil agencies in the Federal Government: (1) Education, (2) Commerce, I think—or wait, was it Energy? W-h-a-t-e-v-e-r. (3) Oh shit, I did say three agencies. Damn, let me just pound the front of my head here for a minute. I’ve got it. No, lost it. Mitt, did you read my position paper on this? What’s that damn third evil—needs to be shut down on Day One—agency?” Wow. Wasn’t there a recent idiot from Texas who was President, not for just 4 year but 8 fracking years? Frack me! Two wars (Afghanistan, then Iraq); water-boarding, Abu Grab, Gitmo; the greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression; the War on the Constitution [I mean Terror]. I don’t think we want to go back down that road. Poof: 20% today, 2.8% after the debate gaffe.

Herman Cain starts to look pretty good. If he can run a big pizza empire, how different from that is running America really? Herman is on fire; he’s everywhere on the TV talk shows—Black man versus Black man, the ‘race’ of the Century (so to speak). He surges. He’s at the top of the pack, over 22%. What, what? He’s had to settle law suits, with several women, for sexual harassment, totaling 10s of thousands of dollars each—Herman; you bad boy. Then that devastating “trick” question about Libya. “Oh shit, that’s a tuff one. Libya you say? Was that the one with Gadhafi, or what was that guy’s name, Osama? I know I heard something about Libya on TV just the other day. Hum. Let me think here a minute. Let me conjugate on it, think-a-size about it. Lawdy lawdy, I got all kinds of stuff rattlin’ round in my head right now. You White Devils got me on that one!” Poor Herman: 22% today, a hand full of sexually harassed White women comes forward and an unfortunate question about [damn] Libya later, and then 1.2%.

Now that all the pretenders, gadflies, and light weights and kooks are falling away, Newt Gingrich is surging. I am not fracking kidding you. Check it out on the Internet. Yep, Newt “We’re going to take our Culture back, block by block, with our Irish liquor in our flasks and baseball bats swinging” Gingrich. But why not? He’s a nut, but he’s an intelligent, articulate, internally consistent, and persistent over time and space nut. And with his many wives and former wives and future wives—what can say “Family Values” better than a somewhat serial monogamous (maybe he only porked a few women when he was married to a different one) guy? Now it comes done to Mitt versus Newt.

My (Optimistic) Prediction for the 2012 Presidential Race Outcome

You heard it here first, a year before the 2012 general election. The Republican Primary Race drags on for the rest of 2011, into early 2012. Eventually, the ten or twenty filthy rich people/corporations that really control the Republican Party get bored and decide that the primary season is over—they’ve picked Mitt Romney and they have to get him to shut up, stop pandering, get off the TV and lay low until the general election campaign—so they can try to “Repackage and Sell” him to the masses. So The Powers That Be put the word out that the race for the nomination is over. They buy off or threaten to have killed, and/or just ruined, anyone still in the race. With the exception of Newt—who is a lot of thing, but no coward or sell-out—all the other candidates withdraw and announce their support for Mitt. [If you have any doubt about this, just remember how fast the Republican field evaporated in early 2000 when John “A True National Hero” McCain was reluctantly declared the only one left standing.]

Newt fights all the way to the Republican Convention, with many awesome if wrong-headed ideas and some great one-liners. But alas, in the end Mitt wins the nomination, with a little over 65% of the delegates’ votes, on the first ballot. When invited to give a speech endorsing Romney at the Convention at 2:00 AM the day after the vote, Gingrich instead lashes out at Romney and his cabal of spineless Moderates. Before they can turn off his microphone, the damage is done.

The Fall campaign is a little scary at times, with some unbelievable missteps and mistakes from the No Drama Obama Dream Team, but Romney just can’t fight the constant replaying of every flip-flop he has made since he got into politics decades ago. The Filthy Rich and the Big Corporations spend over two trillion dollars in Right Wing Supreme Court majority sanctioned unregulated campaign money to try to buy the election for Mitt Romney.  Sadly, even out-spending Obama 2-to-1, it’s just a bridge too far. Romney gets close in the polls on a number of occasions, but every time he gets within the margin of sampling error, his poll numbers drop; as Independents and lazy, disinterested, disheartened, or stupid angry liberal Democrats ponder the thought of another Republican in the White House just four years after W.

On election night at CNN Campaign Central, Anderson Cooper is at the awesome wall-sized election screen. He ticks off each State’s returns—as the results stream in. Anderson intimates, as early as 8:00 PM, that we’re in for an historic night. He pulls up a few exit polls to illustrate. “OK, let’s look at Hispanic voter turn-out. It’s running at about 86.7% of registered Hispanic voters—allow me add, Wolf, an all time record!—and they are breaking for Obama—give me a second to bring this up on the big screen, yes! There it is: 83.2% for Obama, another record. I guess all that anti-immigrant talk during the Republican Primaries is really hurting Romney with Hispanic voters. Now here’s an interesting one, Wolf. Self described “Tea Party” voters. Wait for it, almost got it. Yes! They’re actually breaking Romney’s way, as expected, but only about 55 to 45 percent. Will it be enough? We’ll just have to wait and see. All that talk about flat taxes, higher cigarette and liquor taxes, and eliminating taxes for the Rich and Big Corporations— looks like it took a toll. Wolf; got time for one more exit pool? Independent Voters: remember how they turned on the Democrats and deserted them in the admittedly low-turnout off-year 2010 election, like rats on the Titanic as it sank? Well, this time they are going for Obama big time! Look at this now: 63 verses 37 percent, advantage Obama. Looks like the Republicans are really paying a price for all the pandering they did to those Tea Party Freshmen in the House the last two years. That 63/37 split among Independents could make this a long night for the Romney people, And Wolf, we’ve been looking at the House and Senate races very closely. We are not ready to say it, if you have not voted yet please do. However [snicker and smirk at the camera], Wolf, let’s just say that we’re going to have an historic—dare I say it, redefining—election before the night is over. Can you learn to say Speaker Pelosi again? Back to you, Wolf…”

It’s gonna be a lot closer in the Electoral College tally this time, but damn if Barack Hussein Obama doesn’t pull it off with a popular vote margin pretty close to his 54-45 percent  blow-out against McCain in 2008. Obama will lose the popular vote in a number of Border States and Southern States he carried with small margins in 2000, trimming his Electoral College majority. But the unprecedented surge in Hispanic voters, the repeat historic Democratic voter turn out in general—Black voter turn out and the Youth vote in particular—the unexpected enthusiasm of Democratic voters and the dramatic swing back to the Democrats by Independents save our bacon and give our Party at least eight years to undo the damage that was done in the eight years W and his Big Oil Buddies had to destroy the economy, Middle Class, and Country.

In Conclusion

I’m just one 61 year old second generation Italian American guy, trying to do the right thing in a world gone mad. Just like my buddy Bill “Big Dog but now a Frackin Vegan for Christ’s sake” Clinton, I’m beginning to think that the geniuses in the Obama administration and re-election campaign could actually pull a Dukakis or a Kerry here and lose this thing in 2012. I’m still trying to believe in the Hope, but getting a little tired of President Barack “I still think I can work with the Republicans—even if they hold a gun to my head or hold me down and shove a turgid organ up one of my orifices where the sun don’t shine, every time. I believe that bi-partisanship is vital” Hussein Obama.

I needed to take the blog space in this long first posting to lay out how we got here. For younger participants who may think that this shit all started a few weeks after Obama took office, just a few months after you (young people) voted in your first election in 2008, it is vital to understand that what you ignored or were bored by in your American History classes in High School and College is not bullshit or made up or irrelevant to you. I actually was alive and aware during those decades before you were born, or became politically aware yesterday, or maybe two years ago. Just like my grandfather—who was a witness and direct participant in The Great Depression, the early Labor Movement, and Socialist Workers Party in Philadelphia in the 1920s and 1930s, and who spent many hours teaching me about those times and the people and forces they unleashed when I was a child—helped make his time (my History) real for me, I am trying to make my time (your History) real for you. If your grandfather or some other elder or an incredible History teacher in your world has already taken the time to give you this wisdom, forgive me for rehashing it here.

This blog is intended to help realize my optimistic prediction for 2012. I don’t have Bill Clinton’s clout, resources, political skills, or frankly, sex appeal to women, but I do want to do my part. If Bill wants to get together with me, over a Vegan burger or whatever, to strategize this re-election campaign, his people can reach me via my Gmail link. And maybe someone in the Obama re-election campaign can at least have the kid they paid $1000 to design their awesome e-mail based fund-raising solicitation system be rehired and paid another $100 to add some code so that it looks up the person’s W-2 Wages, as reported to the IRS and, if they have had little or none for over three years, not ask them to donate money. Although I am a little rusty—having not worked as an Information Technology senior systems analyst since the Technology crash in April 2000, I think I could probably figure out how to implement this in a few hours. (I’m a pretty smart guy.) If they want to save the $100, I’ll implement the fix for free—or if they can spare it, $20. With that $20 I can buy a month of my prescription Verapamil or 20 days of Glipizide or five months of my critical Metformin or even a couple pills of Januvia (which I had to stop taking because it costs about seven dollars a pill) at Target. And, of course, if it isn’t too much of a bother, maybe someone on the Re-election committee could just pick up a goddamn telephone and call me to ask how I am doing and hear my despair and rage at the state of the Country and Obama’s timid, halting, and ineffectual attempts to fix it and the glacial pace at which he is addressing our continuing economic depression.

I’m not sure what happens now. You read my Introduction and then discuss amongst yourselves, I guess. We have got to win this election. My fiancée is already threatening to move to France if the Republicans take back the White House—for Christ’s sake, France! Let the discussion begin…