Shame on Massachusetts

It's a travesty. The seat of a senator who fought for health care for 40 years has been given to a man who vows to defeat it. This is a man, one of whose campaign ads started, "I'm Scott Brown. (zoom from close-up to distance) This is my truck." Give me a truckin' break. He also did the nude centerfold thing some years ago for Cosmopolitan magazine. Admittedly he was a hunk. But still, this is conservative family values?

Young people who plan to go into politics, take note—posing deshabille in magazines may be the wave of the future.
And, let me take this opportunity to say that this would be a better country if more women would go into politics.

Uh, no connection to the magazine thing. Honest.

I don't know what was going on in the brains of the people who voted for him. Especially since they have one of the best health care systems in the country.
Martha Coakley pulled a Hilary Clinton and thought she could coast into the senate seat like Hillary thought she could coast into the Democratic nomination for president. The state's Democratic leadership played the fool as well.
I also blame the feckless Democrats in the Senate. They spent too much time trying to play nice with people who had no intention of playing nice back. People who call the president a liar while they themselves spout total falsehoods about "death panels" and other baloney. The Dumbo- I mean, Democrats should have used reconciliation to pass a health care bill with 51 votes a long time ago. The the right wing "can't have that commie Neegrow in the white house" crowd wouldn't have spent so much money pouring money into this state to get a Republican voted in. I just signed a petition to the Senate leadership (and forwarded it to a few people) to do the reconciliation thing. It read in part:
"Voters did not elect President Obama and a Democratic supermajority in the House and the Senate so that health care reform could be written by the likes of Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson.
I signed a petition telling President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid that the Senate must use reconciliation to pass a better health care bill with a strong public option. I hope you'll follow the link below and take action, too."
Here's a link if anyone is interested:
http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/po_reconciliation/?r_by=7410-2283445-4QdHh9x&rc=mailto1

I was right. I won't run out of things to complain about this year.

Ahh, Unity

So, I see that Hillary and Barack have symbolically and actually appeared in Unity, NH to promote his presidential run.
Gotta give Hillary credit. She's up there smiling and asking for everyone to support Barack. You know she wishes it were the other way around, but she's a trooper. So's the hubby, but I bet he supports Obama thru clenched teeth. Metaphorically. He's a professional, so you won't see it but it's there.
I just hope that Obama doesn't offer Clinton the VP position, and if he does, she turns it down. For her own sake, she will be in a better position to run again if she stays out of the VP position. That's a notoriously unhelpful spot for presidential candidates.
It took Nixon eight years to get the presidency and he was helped by a war that was disastrously entered into by a Democratic President.
Also, I have grave misgivings about a former president who's used to getting his own way being lodged in the VP residence. I know Hillary Clinton is no pushover, but it's got to be hard to live with Bill sometimes and maintain independence.

So the contest goes on. my prayers for alien abduction have failed (is there no merciful God?) so it looks like I'll be here for the duration. Four more months of this.

I got an email from moveon.org. "Fox smears Obama." Well, that's a surprise. There will be a lot of smearing going on. The Republican election strategy is not to highlight your candidate's virtues but to point out the opponent's faults. It's a lousy strategy and I think it will finally show it's decrepit age this year. I hope so.
It's a strategy which assumes that voters are easily swayed by rumor and innuendo, that they are unlettered and of low estate. That's a fancy way of saying they think their voters are all trailer-living high school drop outs. Republicans do have a certain contempt for most of their supporters. Else they wouldn't do that "Swift-boating thing."

Well, Johnny Mac is going to need all the help he can get. I predicted he would be the candidate (see my post Jan. 9, 2008) and I worry about his being able to ride the five years of imprisonment in Hanoi (or thereabouts) to the presidency. I don't really think he'll be Bush redux but I don't think he'll be any better.

Get ready folks. The barrage is about to begin. About mid-August you'll all be curmudgeons where the presidential election is concerned.
g'nite.

Class Act

I haven't actually heard Hillary's concession speech but I read the transcript on the NYTimes website.
From what I see, it was a Class Act, a very gracious and politically savvy acceptance of defeat.
I had some problems with her campaign of late, I have a sneaky suspicion that Bill was more involved than he should have been. He did make an ass out of himself a couple times. It's hard for someone who was the most powerful man in the world to let other people take swipes at his wife. Even when he's familiar with the territory.
But I think Hillary had her own voice tonight, and she did good. She really has made a difference in perception for women, perception of their abilities and aspirations, and also a change for men. Hey she can take it and dish it out.

Yes, there was a lot of sexist bullsh*t going on every time someone reported about her, and yes somehow her mistakes, being a woman, were writ larger than the male Obama's mistakes (amazingly ignoring his Afro-american heritage), but still, she went the distance, and isn't that what we all admire, guys?

Grace in Hillary. She's got the goods.

The Afro-American thing for Obama will be raising it's ugly head this fall.
We'll have the die-hard Aryans (what the hell are Aryans anyway, besides a bunch of migrant sheepherders like everyone else?), the born again types who think they'd vote for him if he only accepted Jesus (on their terms), the "Confederacy Never Died" types who still think that blacks should be slaves.
This is going to be an interesting year, as in that old Chinese curse, "May you have an interesting life." i.e., expect a lot of pain.

Hillary better live up to her word and support this guy or Johnny Mac will be sitting in the oval office, or orifice, depending on how you look at it, come next January.

But for now, she is exhibiting a lot of class.
And I have run out of brandy and venom.
Good night, sleep tight.