HEY! There Are TWO Elephants in MY Living Room!

A black man and a white woman are running neck and neck in the primaries and I see the comparisons and contrasts between inequalities of race and sex in America today within the primary cycle. And these issues of inequalities go far beyond simply race and sex into religion and sexual preference.

In the end, there can be only a single symbolic victory, either the symbolic victory against racism or the single victory against sexism.

It's time to stuff the symbolism.

This is acontrast of two issues that really are intimately linked under the overriding issue of inequality, and both issues have ramifications to other issues such as poverty, health care, and immigration.

That's why the message of "change" doesn't resonate as sincere, because change requires innovation and whomsoever is really the "change candidate" must articluate how innovation will be used to fundamentally alter the way the governmetn works.

There's more than two elephants in this living room.

There's a herd.

Let's ennumerate some after the flip.

The bull elephant in the living room is the fact that over the past seven years, our treasury has been plundered. We are broke and we are in hock up to our eyebrows. In days of old, government would throw money at porblems in a desperate attempt to gain some motion to at least give an appearance of change. We have historically piled stacks of money into the Pentagon. We throws moeny at pork barrel projects in key districts in order to gain support for bills that may or may not offer some relief in issues such as children's health care.

We can longer afford the old approach to problem solving and must develop a progressive approach to problem solving.

This is the problem with all of the current campaigns. Everybody (this includes my own candidate, BTW) has developed a laundry list of issues and their plans to each of those issues.

This is the same "hocus pocus" approach poltiicans have always taken, and again we CANNOT AFFORD THIS APPROACH.

What I want to hear is how candidate A's approach to immigration is going to affect the issues of poverty, education, and health care.

I want to hear how candidate B's approach to foreign policy is going to effect the economy and terrorism.

We need a holistic approach to policy making, not some damnable laundry list that, in the end, won't be enacted and isn't going to solve any problems!

So that, perhaps, brings me to the biggest, fattest, ugliest damned elephant in the living room. It's the fact that the American People and the candidates we have are all missing the herd for all the damned elephants.

•  Tip jar n/t

  - Albert Einstein

  by Walt starr on Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 06:35:40 AM PDT

•  Good thoughts - and some irony

  The bull elephant in the living room is the fact that over the past seven years, our treasury has been plundered. We are broke and we are in hock up to our eyebrows.

  Wait - I've heard this somewhere before.  I remember - it was 1992!  After the last time the Bush family and their friends plundered the treasury!

  And the remedy has to be the same now as it was then - actually paying for government instead of borrowing.

  That's going to take some heavy work (and taxes), and someone who's dedicated to the task.  The irony is that the person who actually accomplished that task was named Clinton.

  by Ralph Kramden on Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 06:54:41 AM PDT

•  Frankly, why any Democrat would WANT to be

  president is beyond me. The elephants are going to sit on whoever is in the Oval Office. On top of this, they will be dealing with low level Bush ideologues in every department attempting to sabotage change. It's going to be very hard, to say the least.
  Obama's strategy is correct in one respect. By putting some onus for change on the population at large, he is  attempting to empower people to force change. Hillary and Edwards are in the "elect me, I'll deal with it, you have enough on your plate to deal with" mode. We are going to need an active citizenry to deal with coming troubles "holistically".

  by the fan man on Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 07:09:42 AM PDT

•  Time for a "new improved" New deal!

  With the commensurate taxation to pay for it.
  This would be the time to make taxation truly progressive; and make the progressive tax rates PERMANENT rather than the cuts for the rich that shrub wants made permanent.

  by manwithnoname on Wed Jan 09, 2008 at 08:22:04 AM PDT