August 1, 2012: The Thrill is Gone, Purging of Moderates,

“The thrill is gone

The thrill is gone away

The thrill is gone baby

The thrill is gone away

You know you done me wrong baby

Gonna be sorry someday”        ----B. B. King “The Thrill is Gone” (1)

Since the good people of this country have elected grid lock over progress the know-nothing, no-nothing Congress has managed to pass a mere 80 bills in the last session, the lowest on record.  Accordingly the Congress now has an approval rating now in single digits, lowest on record. Richard Nixon upon leaving office, Paris Hilton, used car salesman, all have higher ratings as this congress continues to ignore the problems facing the country as it votes now for the 31^st or 33 time (depending on the count) to repeal ObamaCare.  Today, as over half the counties in the entire United States are now declared disaster areas—mostly due to the drought—Congress went on recess to get back to the urgent business of getting their individual and collective backsides re-elected but not before tabling indefinitely the farm relief bill.

Such is the state of political life in these here United States.  The purging of “moderates” from the Rescumlican party continues unabated as the likes of Richard Lugar of Indiana are eliminated in primary challenges by the idiot wrong.  Today a clown named Cruz defeated Rick Perry’s lieutenant governor in the Texas Senate primary in a contest to succeed the retiring Senator Hutchinson.  Cruz won the race with heavy backing by the so-called “Club for Growth’ and other right-wing operatives and by openly accusing his opponent of the sin of moderation.  So far wrong has the base of the Rescumlican party drifted that they now have abandoned their attacks on liberals and are now vilifying moderates.  What is now emerging are a new class of would be freshman senators who openly ridicule and deride the very idea of compromise.  It’s now our way or the highway and the mischief th to the political and economic order are too frightening to contemplate.  If elected and if this wrong-ward drift continues to find validation at the poles, what will happen the next time the debt ceiling is reached?  Will we default on our obligations?  Already Moody’s has lowered the credit rating of the nation the last time the idiot wrong engaged in such economic brinksmanship.  What will happen to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, housing assistance, food stamps, education funding, highway bills, farm supports, etc.?  

The thrill is gone.  Gone are the day when Obama could campaign on hope and change, for, alas, the nation has seen hope and change dashed on the rocks of Rescumlican obstructionism.  Instead we are now facing a campaign based on fear.  Romney and his Rescumlicans will do what the Scums have always done: wage a campaign based on divide and rule, label the President the resident Alien, raise fears about the future, and intimidate and restrict access to the polls.  Obama and the Democrats are left with no alternatives now except to raise fear about the prospect of the king-hell Vulcher himself presiding from the oval office as we watch the operatives of Wall Street finish the job of picking our pockets clean.      

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(1) www.lyrics.com/thrill-is-gone-lyrics-b.b.king.html

October 19, 2008: Colin Powell Steps Up, Acts of Courage and Vision, Spontaneous Combustion

This morning, on NBC's “Meet the Press,” with Tom Brokaw, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, perhaps America's most famous military leader and statesman calmly and quietly told his American audience that he will vote for Barack Obama for President of the United States. Professing great admiration and friendship for John McCain the Secretary quietly and convincingly explained what led him to cross party lines and tell the country that he will vote Democratic in this year's presidential contest.

First, when questioned, he said it was not race that led him to this decision. “If that were the case”, Powell said, “I'd have endorsed Mr. Obama months ago”. Speaking with Brokaw, Powell related having met with both candidates several times over the last year. What really moved him, he said, was the conduct of both candidates during the current financial crisis, as well as the tone of both the McCain campaign and the Republican party, which he accused of moving further to the political right and out of the American mainstream. Citing the McCain fixation on the Bill Ayer's connections which, he said, was near demagoguery, the Secretary evidenced a growing unease in the company of the Rovian Rescumlicans. Powell has always been a decent, albeit sometimes not the best informed, man. A genuine giant in Republican circles, often mentioned as a possible Vice Presidential candidate, who has nevertheless felt betrayed by what one of his aides described as the “cabal” that had taken over the party in the wake of the Bush victory.
Today he made a break, perhaps not a complete break with the party, but a break nonetheless. Cracks are opening in the Republican ruling coalition as the ground shakes beneath them.

Powell said that it was doubtful that he would openly campaign for Obama in the short time remaining before the election. But his endorsement will be felt nonetheless, particularly in Virginia, South Carolina and Florida where huge populations of military and former military families reside. His voice will add gravitas to the Obama candidacy among those yet undecided and especially in pivotal swing states. Colin Powell as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff emerged well over a decade ago during the First Gulf War as America's foremost military authority. It was his critique of the Rumsfeld's handling of the Second Gulf War that McCain quickly adopted producing changes in military command and what is now known as the “Surge”. Powell is one of those “transformative” figures, one of the bridges as it were, between the races. One of the first black men to emerge at the highest levels of the military and move into top governmental positions as national security advisor and Secretary of State. The phenomenon that is the Obama candidacy owes a great debt to men like Colin Powell. In a speech this morning Obama said that he is honored and deeply humbled by the endorsement he received today. The McCain campaign said it was not surprised. It shouldn't have been, Powell was simply exercising yet another act of statesmanship in a career filled with such acts of courage and vision.

The end of the week, now nearly a mere two weeks before the election, the Obama campaign has seen bedrock Republican spokesman move to join the Obama Nation.
The Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, and now General Colin Powell. Yesterday, in the swing state of Missouri, the Obama forces held a rally beneath the great Arch. Over 100,000 people gathered, 90,000 at the event and a reported 10,000 waiting to get in, to come, see and hear, Barack Obama's vision of where he would lead us in these troubled times. Many, on the periphery, could neither see nor hear the candidate but came to the event and stayed nevertheless because they wanted to demonstrate their support. Meanwhile it was reported this morning that the campaign had raised over 150 million dollars in the month of September. This is approaching near spontaneous combustion reminiscent of the “prairie fire” that swept this nation in the latter 19th and early 20th century with the Grange and Greenback movements. The ground is shaking, a fire is raging and all that the good Marshall can do now is wrap his arms around “Joe the Plumber” and hang on for dear life.