M&M Monday - Elections

It's one state, two state; red state, blue state for the 2008 Obama-McCain election above.

For any ardent red-staters, this is the 1984 Reagan-Mondale election. Only Minnesota and Washington D.C. marred your boy's sweep.

And for the blue-state crowd, the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election map. Back in the days when labeling someone an 'extremist' actually was a bad thing. (Apparently they was a problem with Florida voting back then as well.)

And finally, my personal peering into the future to the 2012 confrontation between horses of an only slightly different color.

--

M&M Election Graphics by me

What Is It Good For?

War!

What is it good for?

Absolutely nothing.

Say it again.

-Edwin Starr

Several months ago I wrote a short piece voicing my opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The very first response I got to that post was: "Would you say more about your position?" This is the first of three or four posts on the subject of war, opposition to war and the dark reaches of the American psyche that still resonate from the war that nearly destroyed us -- Vietnam.

My first point is also my primary thesis for everything that follows on the subject. War as we know today flows from the experiences in the 20th century. History, in this case, is a horrible guide to current international relations. It matters not that General Patton studied the military tactics of the Romans and Greeks, this is not World War II. Today any serious reflection on the conduct of human relations must come to the contemporary conclusion that war as an instrument of national politics is obsolete.

War is obsolete.

Not that history is a useless guide but what we learn from and what we take with us into the future are critical decisions. My parochial school education taught me that for every christian martyred by the romans another three converted to the fledging sect of christianity. Today the madrasah that indoctrinate radical islamists find their young converts in backwash of western alliance military activities. Over seven years of occupation of Iraq simply provides too many opportunities for citizens of that country to turn against the U.S. Even if you hated Saddam and welcomed the liberation of 2003, over the ensuing years your neighbor is shot, your daughter is searched on the street by soldiers, your infrastructure is not rebuilt and foreign troops patrol your country. Your heart and your mind change.

I do not blame Barack Obama nor either George Bush. I blame history. I can only imagine, but I can imagine it vividly, the first time the joint chiefs of staff briefed the new president. The new president who spent 8 years in the Illinois legislature and 4 years in the U.S. Senate must have been overwhelmed at what the U.S. presence in Afghanistan was holding back. Hundreds of suicide bombers and dozens of dirty bomb plots hatched by Al-Qaeda were going to rain down on the west without a continuing war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Iraq perhaps is more a war of the western hubris that we can and should impose democracy on those backward middle-east countries and their oil reserves. 

In either case the problem is blindly following a failed course of history. War stopped Germany and war stopped Japan but since then no country has risen up to attempt to conquer the world. Terrorism cannot be defeated with historically warlike tactics. The western world should and must present a cultural shining example of what peace can mean in a post-industrial society. An vibrant example of what society can be is what will win the hearts and minds of those seeking freedom. Instead we use bullets and predator drones to kill those who with justification believe we are trying to conquer them for our gain.

Are they right? Well of course they are and of course they are not. There is no overarching governmental policy that drives those opposed to "Amerika". But we are the wealthiest, most successful nation in human history. We can have a clear, articulate policy towards the rest of the world, that policy should begin with the words: "We have made mistakes in the past." But we wish to change the course of our historical path and we invite others to join us in this historic opportunity to abandon war and embrace peace.

Of course not everyone will come along. Of course not everyone will forgive us for past transgressions but that is no reason to compound our historical mistakes and create even more enemies. Declare our current foreign policy bankrupt. Envision change -- c-h-a-n-g-e, where have we heard that before?

To those who find this proposal naive, to those who find the words: Give Peace a Chance absurd. I would like to ask: Just how long do you think you get to prove your path of death and destruction will win out? The lessons of history are clear, when it doesn't work you stop or your culture and your country will collapse. It takes some time to turn the ship of state away from a course founded in worn out principals, but we simply have to begin and no nation on earth can make these changes except the United States of America.

The first step -- bring all of the troops home now.

Lest We Forget

Before I forget, on our recent Poker Boyz excursion to the cardrooms of Biloxi some of us were able to reconnect with a long lost member of the group. Zipman had not been seen in over four years. Zippy lives in Slidell, Louisiana and we have been ragging on him pretty good about missing the last half-a-dozen outings. Because he lives so close to Biloxi, he drove up for several tournaments and lots of laughs. At one point, the question was raised as to why we had seen so little of him since '05. His answer reminded me and I would like to remind you.

He said simply: "We had a city to rebuild."

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of southern Mississippi and Louisiana. Eighty percent of New Orleans was flooded and huge sections of the lower 9th ward remain as they were on that fateful day.

The Bush administration handled Katrina and her aftermath about as well as if Sarah Palin or Dan Quayle were in charge. We all remember the thousands stranded at the SuperDome while our FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) did nothing. The federal government has remained oblivious to the disaster that was New Orleans. Not something that would have been tolerated after the L.A. quake or if a natural disaster had hit Chicago or Boston. I guess the Civil War isn't really over yet.

But. . . I have heard that a democrat is now in the White House and I believe he made some promised on the campaign trail to the citizens of New Orleans. How is that working out for you folks still in plywood and duct tape trailers nearly five years later. I know, you didn't get the trailers for over a year, so you really can't say you have been stuck in them all that long. I mean wasn't Iowa nice that first year?

Bottom line, we did more for the victims of the SouthEast Asia tsunami than we have done for the American citizens who lost their homes, jobs and families in greater New Orleans. Remember this April when you pay your taxes, you need to live someplace where they speak English without an accent or at least have a powerful Senator or two.

Thanks for reminding us Bob: "We had a city to rebuild."

Obama 30%-40%-30%

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.

-Barry Goldwater

I would point out that the opinion expressed in this post is only one of many. Friends and enemies on both the right and the left are invited to sit on their keyboards and consider the potential kernel of truth in this offering. This post was prompted by a number of my liberal friends talking about how they wished President Obama was more like Candidate Obama. Paraphrasing Senator Goldwater:

Extremism to advance your view of 'how the world should be' can be seen as terrorism by those who hold an different view.

-me

I spent some time in Washington DC recently and came away with an interesting view from what I will call the moderate middle. Assume that there is a middle ground in American politics which we will label as 40%. There is a lot of legislation that falls into this moderate middle and it can pass with little opposition. However, there is very little legislation proposed with only elements of this 40%. A liberal will add programs and cash from a 30% left wing of the middle 40 and a conservative will do the same from the right using elements of his or her 30% conservative wing.

Here comes the tricky math part, you might think we have just covered 100% of the possibilities for any legislative proposals.

30% Liberal Ideas -- 40% Moderate Middle -- 30% Conservative Ideas

Unfortunately political math does not follow conventional rules because of the power of the American Presidential system. So today, under the Obama administration, we are in this situation:

30% Ultra-Left Manifesto -- 30% Liberal Ideas -- 40% Moderate Middle

Yes, my fellow travelers, you did indeed suffer for 8 years under the opposite configuration during the Bush years:

40% Moderate Middle -- 30% Conservative Ideas -- 30% Right Wing Jihad

A strong presidency, which nearly all of them are these days, simply blots out the 'other end' of the political spectrum and opens the door to their own extremist wing. Inside of the 70% equation, in either direction, can be found consensus in Congress and bi-partisanship. But neither party is satisfied with this, they both push for their additional perfect conservative or liberal agenda and lose not only the support of moderates in congress from the other party but also the support of the voting public.

Yes, my liberal friends that is what the Obama team is doing in DC these days. And before my conservative friends get too smug, your draft-dodging smiley-faced guy did precisely the same thing for eight years, turning his Cheney dog boys loose to ravage the constitution. Is it any wonder the middle 40 didn't listen McBush last year.

The point is that this behavior, from either party, is not governance. We elect officials, particularly the President, to govern the nation. All of them, once elected, turn to payback and vengeance at the expense of the middle 40 and even the moderate 70% of the nation. When will they ever learn? Clearly not while the two party system has a stranglehold on DC.

---

photo credit: anti-christ.com (would I kid you?)

Bi-Polar Politics

It was another auto trip today and more talk radio but this time with a liberal twist. I had enough of my current book on tape saga and was rapidly approaching my next stop - Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ann Arbor has always been my home away from home. I was raised in a village just 8 miles from here. A2 was the big city when I was young, the University of Michigan is here and the theatres, movies, museums, even one of the very early McDonalds. I also lived in A2 for several years in the early 70s and again from '00 to '06. Approaching this bastion of liberalism, a university town don't you know, I felt it only appropriate to tune in the local NPR station.

What I encountered filling the airwaves was an interview with activist Mike Farrell (B.J. Hunnicut, we were told repeatedly). Mr. Farrell is nearly the perfect liberal. He dedicates his life to issues of social justice. He is soft spoken, open to debate, agreeable to a fault but avidly critical of Obama for not doing enough on health care, immigrant rights and the remainder of the liberal agenda.

Now most of my readers know that I myself have been called a liberal once or twice in my life and therefore the agenda Mr. Farrell epouses is not unfamiliar to me, nor do I oppose it. However, the tone and tenor of his positions reminds me of why liberals so often lose to conservatives. Liberals lack fire. He advocates action over talk, while he talks on NPR; not entirely his fault and he is known for his political participation. But his audience is usually a large group of nodding listeners. The conservatives are angry now but they were also angry while Bush was in office. The venom from the right wing radio is just as nasty today as it was a four years ago. Those folks get worked up and they take action. Liberals really don't want to go down that road, they want a kinder, gentler fight.... Oh, not a fight? Perhaps a spirited debate because that is what democracy is all about.

I am reminded of another political conversation I was involved in back in the early 90s. One often quoted panacea was by the poet Rumi, he wrote:

Beyond right-doing and wrong-doing is a field;

I will meet you there.

Whenever someone made that suggestion, I told them that while they were out in the field, dancing to the orchestrations of the universe, the other side was stealing their chickens.

I had reached my limit of liberal bemoaning, so I hit the fast forward button to lo and behold land on the king of right-wing vileness, the great Limbaugh. It took about three sentences for good olde Rush to remind me that no matter how touchy-feely the left-wing gets, terms like rancid and bilious will always be owned by the conservative militia of the mouth.

For those who would like to explore more of the liberal suffering and conservative confusion. I went shopping at the new monster Whole Foods and found that there is a nacent boycott of chain, set off by a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed piece by the WF CEO.

A quote from the boycott literature: "Whole Foods has built its brand with the dollars of deceived progressives. Let them know your money will no longer go to support Whole Foods anti-union, anti-health insurance reform, right-wing activities."

For a reply to the WSJ piece from the Austin News, see this article. And be sure to have a nice, quiet, middle-of-the-road day.

---

photo credit: cellcultureclash.com

Poker Player Politics

[Content Disclosure: 35% Poker; 83% Politics, 19% Second-hand Worldly Observations]

I was playing a few evenings ago when the far end of the table began a political discussion. Down at our end there was general cynicism regarding all things political, so we were not going to lower ourselves to engage in the national political debate that was going on down there. Besides those turkeys had been winning all the big pots with straight flushes and full houses no less (it was an Omaha8 game).

So I basically got to eavesdrop on this discussion without having to offer my own six cents worth. The topic, of course, was the economic crisis, those banking bastards and those lazy politicians and absent regulators who didn't do their jobs. Right away I was ready to tune it out, I mean can't you recreate this same conversational rant from CNN, FOX, the watercooler, the unemployment line, the corner bar and your own dinner table. Yep, me too; but this one surprised me.

These guys were all 65+ and clearly retired locals, yet check out what I heard:

"No sense in being a Republican or a Democrat anymore, you gotta vote for the guy who is going to make the hard choices."

"I can't believe those news commentators going after Obama, what he has been in office for six weeks and all of this is his fault? I didn't vote for him but if I had known what he was going to do about the economy, I would have."

"...and how come the Republicans can vote like 80% for Bush givimg the banks $750 billion but 0% of them could vote for the Obama package?"

"What annoys me the most is that no one is going to go to jail for this, but a couple of hundred thousand people will lose their houses. Yeah, I know they overbought but the prices went way up when the financing got cheap... Hell, it wasn't cheap it was free!"

What finally wrapped the whole conversation was the admission by all four of the players that they had voted for McCain but three of them would go for Obama, if the election were held today. Interesting what you pick up at a poker table, if you just listen.