Keeping Eyes on the Prize

According to MSNBC Obama was not a factor in the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races. In fact, to extrapolate on that assessment, Obama doesn’t seem to be a factor in much of anything these days—certainly not health care reform.

However, Palin, Beck, Limbaugh and Armey may have been a factor in the very telling election in New York State’s 23rd district. Their candidate, Doug Hoffman, looking like someone arrested on “Dateline: To Catch a Predator” conceded, handing a victory to a Democrat in that district for the first time since the Civil War.

The strange thing about all the brouhaha raised by conservatives in getting Hoffman into the New York 23 race is that district gets absorbed by surrounding Democratic districts in a redistricting based on the 2010 census.

I can’t wait to hear how Beck, Limbaugh and Palin spin the Hoffman loss. Gingrich ought to have a bit of fun with this. Let’s keep the civil war going.

For Democrat losses, Chris Christie is said to be a moderate, a fiscal conservative but not a social conservative, so the Tea Baggers will not make any real headway there until they put tremendous pressure on him and he caves to Birther demands, if that happens.

Bob O’Donnell effectively refused Palin and her brand of conservatism and won anyway over a weak Democrat. However, she will probably take credit for his victory.

Jon Corzine was apparently an unappealing incumbent. His approval was at 39%. There is speculation that his connection to Goldman Sachs may have contributed to his downfall in addition to other issues. The voters are tired of Wall Street.

Bloomberg got a run for his money, literally, by someone without much political power or billionaire bank account. Bloomberg is also another incumbent and is associated with Wall Street.

Bloomberg and Corzine are connected to Wall Street. This does not bode well for Obama in 2010 if he does not get the economy going by then or does not punish Wall Street more harshly than Geithner and the boys have so far.

While the losses of Corzine and Deeds do not necessarily presage the future of the Democratic Party, they do presage the future of similar Democrat candidates—those weak Democrats like Harry Reid, Blanche Lincoln and others who refuse to be tough.

Reid wants to wait until next year on health care. Obama’s response will probably be, “Well, if you say so.”

Some believe this is a bad idea. I entertain the possibility that they want to move Republican refusal to participate in an historic piece of bad bill legislation that the vast majority of Americans want, despite all that poser Tea Bagger nonsense in July and August, as close to the primaries as possible.

A year ago tonight the great Anarchist of Ann Arbor and I discussed our beliefs that the first party to split, thereby creating a third party, would be the Republicans. We may be seeing that materialize right before our eyes. The Tea Baggers will be so incensed by Hoffman’s loss in New York that they will come back in greater numbers and intensity in 2010.

But the Democrats beginning to split between progressive and conservative may become the speculative talk of 2012 if not sooner.

A possible Democrat strategy for 2010—or simply my delusion—is the Democrats may be hoping the conservative wing of the Republican Party will defeat a sufficient number of Republicans in 2010 primaries so that Democrats gain the Republican seat easily in the general election a year from now.

I do not know what the issue for the 2010 general will be right now that will separate the Democrats from the Tea Bagger/Birthers. Certainly health care reform should be decided in favor of the insurance companies by then. There is still time.

And maybe that strategy applies to conservative Democrats as well. Goodbye Lincoln, Bayh and those in the House too numerous to mention. The delusion disclaimer is still in effect.

One thing I believe this election says loud and clear is: Democrats get off your asses, get some guts and do the right things before 2010.

Obama, this means you too.

A Few Days Lite

That’s me in the East Village back in 1985. Glorious days.

I wasn’t happy with what I had written yesterday about Dick Cheney, so I didn’t post it and didn’t post anything in its place. Snarky is no substitute for satire.

I left the Haudenosaunee post hoping more people would read it. I believe it is a valuable piece of American history—especially for the Birthers, Deathers, Gunnutters, Seceders and whites who hate a black president for reasons of skin color as opposed to the frustration and disappointment others feel about Obama.

I am hoping the announcements made today that the Attorney General is required by law to investigate torture could lead to Cheney going away for awhile (until Obama offers a presidential pardon) for torture.

I doubt Obama will make mention of anything significant next week when he addresses Congress about health care. Hope I’m wrong. Perhaps he’ll beg the Republicans to make another attempt to negotiate. Unless he’s playing very high-stakes poker, I don’t understand him and don’t want to try right now. To me, Obama is like an African-American, accentless Schwarzenegger.

Speaking of Schwarzenegger, he must have been someone Teddy Kennedy rolled his eyes about many times at family functions in Hyannisport when Schwarzenegger tried to talk politics. So far Obama is disappointing, but I hope Schwarzenegger is disappearing.

This post serves as fair notice that the next few posts will be light on substance because I need to cram between now and Tuesday to finish a screenplay about honor killing, a very serious subject throughout much of the Muslim world.

As I explained a couple of years ago to that close personal friend of mine who’s a recording artist up the beach, I believe one aspect of the war on terror is for we and the Muslim world to encounter each other as friends and get to know each other and discuss our realities with each other. A better shared future depends on it. This is my way of carrying that forward. A more in-depth book about the bigger issue will follow.

I’m happy about the fifth season SNL DVD release on December 1st. I will buy it its first day out just as I have with the first four season releases.

All the fires and smoke hanging in the air here in Los Angeles and the high temperatures have been a bit debilitating and exhausting.

Happy Labor Day if I don’t post between now and then.

Global Climate Change Reform

Now the Tea Baggers, Birthers, Deathers, Gunners, and other nutbags are taking on global climate change legislation by pretending they are grassroots. But the pay-no-attention-to-that-man-behind-the-curtain moment has already happened. It has been revealed that this new movement is connected to Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks and the oil industry.

Somebody had better be setting a trap for the Congresspersons who are against the public option and for the agenda of the oil industry’s “Energy Citizens” or “Climaters” or “Changers”. I want to be the first to come up with a name for them.

On another note:

This guy with the semi-automatic assault rifle and the semi-automatic assault smile he had on his face in Phoenix on Monday was black. This must have some in the pro-gun, anti-Obama camp worried because what was once, seemingly, an all-white club—the hate-Obama-because-he’s-African-not-American—has been invaded by a black guy. This is almost like the Klan being invaded by a black guy who also hates blacks. Now these gun people will use this guy as proof they’re not racist against Obama while 95 percent of these Gunners will form a separate group and the rest will learn not to be racist, just paranoid.

What would have been great would have been this guy saying he was Muslim. That would have made all the difference. And it would have been so funny to see the looks on all those pro-gun guys’ faces. They would have wrestled him to the ground and taken that killing machine away from him.

What I would love to see is we put all these idiots in a large auditorium and tell them all that there are some secret Nazi Socialists among them and if they can if they can find them they can go home. They’d all beat the shit out of each other because they’re so filled with rage and paranoia which equals zealot.

Obama had better be able to sink one from center court because the Republicans and the insurance industry are not letting him inside.

By the way, what do Dick Armey and Dick Cheney have in common politically other than being Republicans?

They’re both Dicks.

Ha ha. Oh, sometimes I even amuse (not) myself.

A scattered blog, today. Sorry. I spent a lot of time today building the eviction case against the tenant I mentioned yesterday. That can be very draining. And I had the cops in my building again today, this time asking about a former tenant.

But back to greater and lesser realities:

I applaud the Barney Frank exchange today about Nazi health care. I need argumentativeness from Democrats to feel like there’s hope.

I was once accused by a tenant of being a Nazi. I think I had given him a notice about not breaking into the mailboxes. I cannot remember exactly. But this guy was such a nutcase that he permanently disabled himself rather than ask for my help.

He knocked on the door of the on-site maintenance guy and asked him if he had keys for his apartment. The maintenance guy said no because he had just woken up, he did not have the keys with him—they were in the office.

Before the tenant could be questioned further he ran away. The maintenance guy called me. I was on the third floor, so I went back to the office and left the door open thinking he would come to me in the office. I waited and waited and finally I heard a loud slam, followed by a loud “Fuck!”. I ran out the back door and around to the side of the building and found the tenant lying on his side on the concrete walkway. I called out his name. He said, “Jim, please help me!”

He had fallen off an eight inch wide board that he put from the roof of the building next door into the window of his apartment. As he was scooting across the board, his butt hit a nail and he lost his balance. He fell about twenty feet onto the concrete, shattering both his ankles, breaking his hip and permanently disabling himself and his ability to walk.

All he had to do was follow the proceeds and be a little patient. But he was so hyper that I was evil that he became a victim of his own delusion.

And with that…on to the Changers!