Words and phrases that ought to be stricken from politics (I might add to this list and please feel free to add your own):

Locally, we should not be allowed to talk about “Montana values”.

Test your candidate: Without these words, does this person have anything left to talk about? Remove some of those words from the following ad, and what are we left with?

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Let’s face it – American politics is not rocket science. There’s damned little that goes on in a campaign that actually translates into policy once an actor (marketed like a box of cereal; the star of 15 and 30 second TV spots) is elected. There appears to be two dynamics at work here:

1. The Republicans are captive of the far right, and McCain has to play to that base to get elected. He is getting more extreme by the day. If he abandons the far right, he’ll lose the fundamentalist Christians, the hard-nosed neocons, FOX News, and the Limbaugh/Hannity crowd. He may have nothing to replace them with. He may be destined to lose save some earth-shattering event, like an attack on Iran, not out of the question with Bush.

2. The Democrats are captives of the Democratic Leadership Council, and are following a tried and failed formula – they appeal to the liberals and progressives in the primaries, and then abandon them in the general, and once elected. Liberals will follow, progressives will bitch. We’re an easy lot to con. In case the metaphor of Lucy and the football hasn’t been used before, I am using it now. I suspect that Bob Schrum is in the Obama mix now somehow.

There’s more at work with the DLC than just (and only apparent) stupid politics. The DLC, financed as it is by powerful think tanks and corporations, is interested in thwarting progressives and holding liberals in its pocket. It is not so much interested in winning elections as keeping American politics sterile – no health care reform, no campaign finance reform, no end to Iraq, tacit acceptance of the Bush agenda, strategic retreat – these are policies that the DLC is set to advance, and if it means that certain elements of the Democratic Party have to be stopped in their tracks, if it means losing elections, it doesn’t matter. Policy is more important than party. These are not stupid people.

One of the most widely read posts I’ve ever put up here was titled “Obama, Lieberman and the DLC“, in January of 2007. I wondered about Obama back then before falling under his spell. Two things stood out – one, the DLC spotted Obama and wanted him aboard, and two, Obama chose Joe Lieberman as his mentor when he entered the Senate.

That’s circumstantial, and it’s going to take a body of evidence to prevail in a debate now about how the heart of the Democratic Party has once again been stolen by its right wing, the DLC. It will be a matter of preponderance of evidence, and it is beginning now to mount. Since Obama clinched, he has backed down on his stance on NAFTA, and abandoned the fourth amendment to the constitution. Those, denial aside, are two issues of huge importance, and he has screwed us. More to follow, I’m sure.

If indeed, Obama is part of the right wing of the party, then let’s all have a good and hearty laugh. So was Hillary Clinton. We were screwed all along!

Liberals are the most squeamish political faction I have ever seen, forever captive of the myth of lesser of evils. They’re afraid to rise up, to demand things from those who supposedly lead them. They castigate and chide one another for failure to follow. Even lefty Thom Hartmann on his radio program says that we have to hope that if we elect a right wing Democrat, he might turn out to be a progressive after all. So far, it hasn’t worked.

Karl Rove understands that if a politician plays to our noble and higher instincts, he will take a thrashing at the polls. American politics is about very smart marketing people packaging products and selling them to a very dumbed down audience. The best we can hope for in such a situation is that a politician is playing the game for show, but playing for real behind the scenes. This is why I wrote what I did before, deluded as I was, that we have to place our hope in Obama. I have a hard time admitting that I’m as susceptible as everyone else to a packaged and marketed politician.

Now is the time to pressure Obama into advancing liberal causes. To do that, we have to bargain. The only way to bargain is to threaten to withhold votes. It’s the only thing he understands. Somehow, liberals have to be able to inflict pain as a consequence of failure to lead. But they won’t. Max Baucus has never been swayed by liberals because he knows they cannot hurt him, and wouldn’t if they could. So too have liberals telegraphed Obama that it’s OK to ignore him. Just win. And then they’ll do what liberals are so good at doing – looking the other way while he carries on with the business of the DLC.

Note in passing: It’s just a blog. I try to remember that. I just linked to myself three times in this post. I’m the smartest guy I know, I guess. By my calculation, there are perhaps 25-100 of us who regularly pass through this and other places, more elsewhere than here. Most do it while they are at work, God bless ’em, so traffic on Friday afternoons and on weekends is light. I like doing it, but always try to stay grounded. It doesn’t matter. Just like those people in the park who fly their toy planes on weekends, it’s a lot of fun, but not one passenger has even been transported anywhere.

A NOTE TO ALL WHO COME HERE:  The following post is meant in jest, as the idea that a viral e-mail can actually “reveal” anything is just about as stupid as the idea that Obama isn’t a citizen.

If you believe this, you’re an idiot.  That is all.

-Steve T. 10/13/2008

The latest viral email making the rounds asserts that Barack Obama cannot be president because he is not a natural U.S. citizen. I got it from a friendly Bozeman conservative – I cannot reproduce the color and large print of the original (these emails are always designed visually to appeal to the sixth graders among us). But here it is in full:

Interesting question: CAN OBAMA BE PRESIDENT ???

It seems that Barack Obama is not qualified to be president after all for the following reason: Barack Obama is not legally a U.S. Natural-born citizen according to the law on the books at the time of his birth, which falls between December 24, 1952 to November 13, 1986.

US Law very clearly stipulates: ‘.If only one parent was a U.S. Citizen at the time of your birth, that parent must have resided in the United States for at least ten years, at least five of which had to be after the Age of 16.

Barack Obama’s father was not a U.S. Citizen and Obama’s mother was only 18 when Obama was born, which means though she had been a U.S. Citizen for 10 years, (or citizen perhaps because of Hawaii being a territory) the Mother fails the test for being so for at least 5 years **prior to** Barack Obama’s birth, but *after* age 16.

It doesn’t matter *after* . In essence, she was not old enough to qualify her son for automatic U.S. Citizenship. At most, there were only 2 years elapsed since his mother turned 16 at the time of Barack Obama’s birth. His mother would have needed to have been 16+5= 21 years old, at the time of Barack Obama’s birth for him to have been a natural-born citizen.

As aforementioned, she was a young college student at the time. Barack Obama was already 3 years old at that time his mother would have needed to have waited to have him as the only U.S. Citizen parent. Obama instead should have been naturalized, but even then, that would still disqualify him from holding the office.

Naturalized citizens are ineligible to hold the office of President. Though Barack Obama was sent back to Hawaii at age 10, all the other info does not matter because his mother is the one who needed to have been a U.S. Citizen for 10 years prior to his birth on August 4, 1961, with 5 of those years being after age 16. Further, Obama may have had to have remained in the country for some time to protect any citizenship he would have had, rather than living in Indonesia.

Stay tuned to your TV sets because I suspect some of this information will be leaking through over the next several days, weeks, and months.

The email is debunked here. He’s a citizen because he was born in the United States, the state of Hawaii, the 50th U.S. state at the time of his birth. Anyone born in this country, except for the children of diplomats, is a citizen automatically, by birth. Many would like to change that law, but it is a law, and was at the time of Obama’s birth. End of story.

More interesting is this: Where did this email originate? Who wrote it? How does it get into the “right” hands? (I am a left winger, and I never get left wing viral emails. What’s up with that?) Viral emails are a vital subculture in this land. Much information passes hands that way, much garbage is passed on without verification. If I were running a presidential campaign, and if I were unscrupulous, I would take advantage of the gullibility of ordinary people. I would make sure that untraceable emails like this went out on a regular basis. I would remember the words attributed to Mark Twain, that “a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

This email is officially debunked. Can’t wait for the next one.

June is by far the best time to be in Yellowstone, except for May. The crowds have not yet peaked, the landscape is still green, the animals still in the lush valleys. Wolves and grizzlies are killing and eating elk and bison babies, and bringing out their own young for viewing.

There’s a regular pack of people who watch wolves, kind of a paparazzi. It is led by an alpha-male, non-ranger-who-dresses-like-ranger Rick MacIntyre. Rick drives a yellow Nissan Exterra that has antennae on top, so he’s easily spotted. And 365 days a year he drives up and down LaMar Valley, chronicling every wolf kill, every pack interaction, every sighting. The wolves are spread now throughout Greater Yellowstone, mostly in the back country. Rick’s job is to foster public support, so he patrols the valley where they are most visible. He’s an excellent PR man, patiently answering every question asked and allowing we the rabble to view the wolves through his spotting scope. (Without one, wolves are nothing more than gnats.)

Anyway, my wife loves following the wolves, knows their names and numbers, and three or four times a year we go to Yellowstone to watch them and the other (lesser) animals. We’re thinking of using our stimulus money, if it ever comes, to buy a spotting scope. That’s how bad it has gotten.

This year is special. Gasoline prices are high, so the Yellowstone experience is not unlike one we had in Canada last year – free of monster motor homes clogging the highways and campgrounds. We stayed at Tower Falls campground this year, and it was filled with – get this – tents. Bear jams were manageable, as cars and pickups can sneak past one another. I counted motor homes in the Tower store parking lot – only one or two at any given time, and of the smaller Cruise America variety – none of the Greyhound class.

Yellowstone is a pleasurable experience again. Keep them gas prices high.

We got off the beaten path, hiking high above LaMar on Specimen Ridge. There were four of us and it was a beautiful day. Our hiking partners were a couple whom we met through mutual interest in wolves, and I knew I was going to like the male half of the couple when I learned that he did not fish. I’ve spent many a dinner party and barbecue talking about three things – the big three: hunting, fishing, and tools. With Martin there was a general interest in intuitive things like politics and history – he said he understood the mechanics of fishing, and also accepted that people catch and kill and eat fish. But fishing for pleasure? Catch and release? He, like me, draws a blank. Gratuitous indulgence for the human, life-threatening trauma for the fish. Nothing there for us.

Martin and his wife Ilona are both writers, he retired from McGraw Hill, where he edited a trade newsletter. That’s all I know at this time, but I look forward to learning more about them. I’m suspicious that Martin doesn’t hunt, and doubt he has a shop full of work toys behind his house in Jardine. If we by chance barbecue with them, we’ll won’t have the big three to talk about. What a pleasure that would be.

We have XM Satellite Radio, and driving through Paradise Valley on the way home, Channel 154, National Lampoon Comedy, was doing nothing but George Carlin. I was delighted (I can listen on ear phones as my wife enjoys her music or even silence). Only later did I learn that they were doing a tribute, that George had died.

That was a blow. George Carlin was the opposite of Tim Russert, the man whose death brought the scorn of proper folks upon me when I didn’t pay homage to his sycophancy. George was a candid observer, and he frankly admitted he didn’t care about us, our species. He thought we were jerks and fools – he delighted in describing the ways we kill and torture one another. He did the comedian’s most important function as well – he could Seinfeld. He reminded us of the little things that annoy us, like the driver whose turn signal has been blinking “since 1955”, etc. But George was more about the big stuff.

Everyone has a favorite George Carlin routine – I prefer to remember him for pointing out the obvious in all of his work – that we butcher and kill one another with ease and take pleasure in it; that necrophilia or torture are unique to our species, and that some among us are so pompous and self-important that they us have taken it upon themselves to “save the planet”.

The planet will do just fine, he reminded us. We are like a virus – we will pass through the system and do some damage, but the earth will adapt and continue on, easily recovering. Right now it is heating up, much as our bodies do when infected by bacteria. That may rid our planet of us, the pest.

In the end, said George, it may be that the earth was using us as an elaborate means to manufacture plastic.

I watched his last comedy special on HBO, and thought he looked more like an old man than ever before and wondered who would take his place when he died. With Russert, there’s any number of fools who will easily slide into the slot of “Dean of Journalism”. With Carlin, there’s perhaps Lewis Black, but it isn’t quite the same. He has the words but hasn’t quite embraced the music.

There was only one John Lennon, one Fred Rogers, and only one Carl Sagan. These are people who brought serious messages to us in an entertaining way. People of that caliber are indeed rare. There will never be another George Carlin.

From Fortune Magazine:

Obama says he doesn’t want to unilaterally reopen the North American Free Trade Agreement: “In an interview with Fortune to be featured in the magazine’s upcoming issue, the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA.” During the Democratic primary campaign, Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton clashed over NAFTA as both told voters they had problems with the deal — but Clinton accused Obama of not being as serious as she was about making changes to the trade pact.

From Glenn Greenwald:

Barack Obama got around to issuing a statement and — citing what he calls “the grave threats that we face” — he just announced that he supports this warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty “compromise”:

Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. . . .

After months of negotiation, the House today passed a compromise that, while far from perfect, is a marked improvement over last year’s Protect America Act. . . It does, however, grant retroactive immunity, and I will work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses.

It is not all that I would want. But given the legitimate threats we face, providing effective intelligence collection tools with appropriate safeguards is too important to delay. So I support the compromise, but do so with a firm pledge that as President, I will carefully monitor the program, review the report by the Inspectors General, and work with the Congress to take any additional steps I deem necessary to protect the lives -– and the liberty –- of the American people.

There you have it, folks. Democrats being Democrats, backing off important issues, telling us that they really weren’t serious about opposing Bush’s illegal wiretaps or NAFTA. Business as usual.

What next – Obama says he really favors free market solutions to health care? Wouldn’t surprise me.

What’s really interesting about Obama backtracking on NAFTA is the response of some Democrats – “refreshing honesty” they called it! It’s a marvel to watch them fall in line, just as they did with Clinton as Clinton governed from the right after leaving a knife in their back.

Nothing to see here, folks. Business as usual. Move along now.

From an interview with President Bush:

Q: Mr. President, turning to the biggest issue of all, Iraq, various people and various candidates talk about pulling out next year. If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what’s the worst that could happen, what’s the doomsday scenario?

Bush: Doomsday scenario of course is that the extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face – it’s bigger than Iraq – it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives. Iraq just happens to be part of this global war …

Never mind the hubris, the moral posturing, the blindness. That’s all well documented. Bush is a cold-blooded killer who uses violence to achieve his political objectives. He’s a violent extremist.

That’s well known, though approximately 45-50% of us are in denial about it. What is more interesting to me is an attitude shared by almost all of us – so-called “left” and right alike -that we have to fight “them” over there, or we will have to suffer violence here. It is the height of imperial arrogance – the attitude that we have the right to use lesser beings (of different skin color, religious persuasion, culture) as human shields. So what if Iraqi’s have died by the hundreds of thousands (most of them killed by us)? What’s important is that we don’t have to live with this carnage on our own soil.

Americans seem to believe that they – any “they” – can handle it better. They are less human than us, better able to handle death and gore. They don’t suffer and lash out in righteous anger when someone does violence with impunity on them. They don’t have normal human emotions as they watch their friends and children and parents die.

It’s as if they are not part of us, we of them. We’re detached, like sociopaths.

That’s the kind of attitude that breeds hatred and contempt, the kind of thing that sets us up for special status in the eyes of “terrorists” – that is, those who choose do their killing by more low-tech means than us.

Face it – we’re all killers, we’re all terrorists. And we’re all capable of better things as well. We’re all one. But we Americans have got so much money and so many weapons and we also have this damndable attitude that we’re better than everyone else. The weapons make us better at the killing game, while the attitude allows us to hold them in contempt from our lofty perch. We do more killing, we feel better about ourselves when we do it, and we manage to keep it all out of our sight.

American exceptionalism is a large part of the problem with violence in the world today. If we could join the world, and not set ourselves apart, we might feel some of the pain we inflict on others. In that manner, less of it might come back to visit us, and America would be safer.

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.(John F. Kennedy)

Our reluctance to entertain questions about public opinion is both strange and signular. In all previous periods of American history the expression of doubts about The People has been a marked feature of mainstream public debate. In response to the widespread use of propaganda by both the Allies and the Axis powers in World War I, so-called nervous liberals such as Walter Lippmann worried that ordinary people left to their own devices could easily be led astray by demagogues. In place of the “barbarism” of mass democracy Lippmann recommended that experts (he had himself in mind) be given the responsibility for guiding public opinion. John Dewey, though ostensibly and optimist, presciently warned that in a consumer society, which at the time had not yet fully materialized, voters would be hard-pressed to fulfill their responsibilities as citizens given the available distractions. A people who spend their evenings attending movies, listening to the radio, and taking automobile rides would take less interest in politics, making them increasingly vulnerable to manipulation, he predicted. (Rick Shenkman, “Just How Stupid Are We: Facing the Truth About the American Voter”)

…reality is that the once independent-thinking McCain has by now completely remade himself into a prototypical, dumbed-down Republican Party stooge — one who plans to rely on the same GOP strategy that has been winning elections ever since Pat Buchanan and Dick Nixon cooked up a plan for cleaving the South back in 1968. Rather than serving up the “straight talk” he promises, McCain is enthusiastically jumping aboard with every low-rent, fearmongering, cock-sucking presidential aspirant who’s ever traveled the Lee Atwater/William Safire highway.

Even the briefest of surveys of the supporters gracing McCain’s events underscores the kind of red-meat appeal he’s making. Immediately after his speech in New Orleans, a pair of sweet-looking old ladies put down their McCain signs long enough to fill me in on why they’re here. “I tell you,” says one, “if Michelle Obama really doesn’t like it here in America, I’d be very pleased to raise the money to send her back to Africa.”[Matt Taibbi, “Full Metal McCain”, Rolling Stone Magazine, June 26, 2008]

These three quotes (the JFK quote is taken from chapter one of Shenkman’s book) pretty well sum up the battle that lay before us as we head into the 2008 general election. One party is going to attempt to inspire us, help us rise above common prejudice and mythology, while the other is going to appeal to our base instincts. It’s a titanic struggle with serious consequences.

Most American elections are not that important – they are carnival shows with made-up issues, all furiously debated while the business of corporate Washington goes on unimpeded. It really doesn’t matter if the Democrats or Republicans control the congress, as we have seen, and Bill Clinton was only an ever-so-light and pale version of George H.W. Bush. But at stake now are future wars on undeserving countries (most likely Muslim), basic rights like habeas corpus, and the right of a woman to have a legal abortion if she so chooses. That’s a brief litany – there are other issues – media monopolies in every U.S. city and town, citizen control of the internet, and access to the commons by vulture corporations out to grab what is left.

Normally I would say that the Democrat is only pretending to be a man of the people, that our wars are bipartisan corporate affairs. Normally that is the case – we seldom get real choices. But I’m taking a leap of faith now, and staking a claim – Barack Obama means what he says, and offers an antidote to the raging fascism that has so infected us since 9/11. The stakes are high – never so high.

Are we up to it? Taibbi and Shenkman say no. Lippmann says that Obama and McCain need to play out the scene while holding our better interests above it all. For myself, strained by cynicism brought on by eight years of Clinton and twelve years of the Bush, and by a voting public that can barely find its way to the polls much less weigh in on serious issues – I’m hoping for a two-out bottom of the ninth three run dinger to pull us out of this one. I hope that Barack Obama is for real, and that the American public will rise to its potential rather than swim in the chum that McCain and the Republicans are going to be tossing our way.

So OK, self-important bloggers and curious passers-by, today I am a Democrat, and I am advancing Democrat[ic] ideals – a man can show us the way, and we have the good sense to follow. I support Barack Obama for president, I’m relieved its not Bill Clinton in drag, and I fear for our future if John McCain succeeds in his vile bamboozlement.

I was slightly upbraided in the post below for being “graceless”, and as I thought about it I realized that the word itself is a key into the attitude about journalists towards the people they cover. I’m just a blogger, and have no pretenses about this being a journalistic endeavor. Far from it – blogs represent a break in tradition away from business as usual. Because of the internet, the old order is breaking down. We are Philistines of a sort, bringing fried chicken and beer to a cocktail party. But the cocktail party has been going on too long, the participants so inured to one another that if a journalist were to do his job, he might be seen as a hooligan. Good journalists are a royal pain to politicians and other leaders. That is a sign they are doing their jobs.

Perhaps it was uncouth to criticize Tim Russert on the event of his death. Problem is, since he was regarded as a “dean” (a very high level sycophant), he could not be criticized while alive either. Timing matters, but only a little.

Journalists and politicians should not be comfortable in the same room. A journalist, if attending a party where politicians are gathered, should immediately develop sweaty armpits. After all, the journalist has been researching and interviewing, talking to underlings and monitoring the activities of the politicians. The journalist can rightly assume that, liquor flowing freely, a confrontation is inevitable.

A politician, upon seeing a journalist enter a room, ought to get angry. After all, the journalist has been a pain in the ass. The politician has not been able to favor his friends in dealings. The journalist has been poking his head in unseemly places, interviewing employees and former business associates. The politician might fly off the handle and let the journalist have a what-for, and then even that will become news.

In Washington, journalists and politicians are quite at ease with one another, usually attending the same parties. Politicians routinely talk up the press corp and salute its integrity, a sure sign that the system has failed. A proud profession has been co-opted, the knives and daggers have been shelved. There’s been a treaty.

Tim Russert’s obituary included countless homilies on how respected he was by the political faction. It’s a sure sign that he was a failure. But he did have access to the powerful. He got it on their conditions. They made the rules, he followed. A deal was struck.

Shortly before leaving office, President Bill Clinton lost his cool on Democracy Now!, the independent news program whose host is Amy Goodman. DN! is no respecter of propriety, and Goodman is not at all graceful. After enough confrontational questions, Clinton went on a diatribe. He said “every question you’ve asked has been hostile and combative”. It was not the kind of treatment he was used to. He was habituated, accustomed to cordiality and respect. He took it for granted that Goodman would approach him on bended knee, and when she didn’t, he got angry.

I found the exchange interesting because I was not aware that Clinton even knew of the nightly news program, much less deigning to find it annoying. But he knew about it. He called in unsolicited to promote the Gore candidacy. Interesting.

When Goodman questioned him on the Iraqi sanctions, which had killed over half a million kids, Clinton said that it was Saddam Hussein’s doing, completely exonerating himself. That was not enough for Goodman, who reminded Clinton that two former UN heads of the program overseeing the sanctions had quit in protest. It was a graceless question. One of many. I was never so proud of the profession of journalism as I was of her that day.

Clinton and Goodman would not be comfortable at a cocktail party together, not that Goodman would ever be invited. She openly confronted him with tough questions. Clinton was angry that she had dared to be “hostile and combative”. They might come to blows. Indeed, the journalists belong at the smoke-filled bars of days gone by, recounting their experiences, sharing the battle wounds. They should not even be invited to the same party, much less attend.

Compare the feisty Goodman/Clinton encounter to the standard presidential interview by a “dean of journalism” like Tom Brokaw or Walter Cronkite or yes, Tim Russert. Remove the submissiveness, set respect aside, ask tough questions, piss the guy off, and one is removed from the world of sycophant journalism to that of Democracy Now!, a news program looked down upon by the haughty practitioners of journalism in its current form.

It’s a shame. Journalism could be fun. They are not of much use in their current manifestations.