Below the fold is my rant. After a six-month hiatus and one-week back, I was motivated to somewhat calmly express my views on the mood of the diaries lately. It's nothing personal towards any diarist as we all have a right to our opinions.
I hope that we can keep the discussion civil and have a lively debate. Again, this is my rant. There are not quotes or videos or links to back up my opinions. Just my opinions. If you don't like them, let's discuss it. If you do like them, let's discuss it too. Don't be shy, I love a good debate.
I, blessedly, have spent little time on this site for the past six months as my work took me away from a normal schedule and into the realm of working nights. It’s a different world when you work nights and the reality is I was much calmer. As I now have two months of being a "normal" person, I’ve ventured back to my political sites to catch up. Not that I was out of touch as I spent about 6 hours a day listening to SIRIUS radio and the POTUS station. What I discovered was the reality of news. I would listen to POTUS at night and to NPR during my hour commute to work. They would report something, distorted even by NPR standards, and then I would get to listen to the entire presser for myself that very night.
Many of you here bitch and moan about Obama, Gibbs, Reid, Pelosi, and on and on. Have any of you ever taken the time to actually contemplate a McCain/Palin WH? Have you stopped to consider what the SCOTUS appointments from those two would have looked like? You say Obama moved the court to the right. That’s not even freaking possible with the likes of Alito, Roberts, and Thomas on the bench. How much more to the right do you think it can get? Are you saying that Sotomayor is a conservative? I think not. Are you saying that Kagan is going to be more conservative than Roberts? Not even possible. However, what if McCain had appointed two SC Justices? Do you think there would be a prayer that it would have been one woman let alone two? Do you think they would have been liberals or conservatives? Our reality might be that Obama isn’t the G-d we all wanted in the WH.
Good lord the man has been President for less than two years and he hasn’t managed to undo every single policy of the 8 years of republican lordship. He hasn’t managed to live up to every single one of our dreams. True. As a lesbian, I’ll admit he pisses me off with his stance on marriage, DADT and DOMA. As a woman and a mother and a human being, however, he keeps me enthralled with what he will accomplish next. He intrigues me with how well he knows policy and how he pisses off the Republicans so much they can’t do anything but piss in the wind and throw up candidates like Rand Paul and Sharon Angle.
Again I ask what a McCain WH would have accomplished at this point. Do you think the drawdown in Iraq, so unnoticed my MSM, would have happened? Look, he campaigned that he was going to ramp up in Afghanistan. I didn’t like it, I don’t like it and I may never like it but I knew it when I voted. I’m not in the WH; I don’t get to see the intelligence reports every day that our President has to review. I don’t know the harsh reality of war and thank G-d that I never will. I know that Obama has stood by the vets and increased their funding. I know that he’s put someone in charge of the vets that knows what the hell they are doing and I know that McCain, even as a vet, would have done none of that just as he campaigned.
The economy sucks. Unemployment sucks. Wall Street reform sucks. Did you really believe that Obama, again the President, not our dictator or King, could change all of this on his own? Did you really think that he was going to be able to control the Senate even if he was a Senator? If you did, you were insane. The Senate is a body of incumbent professional politicians who really don’t give a damn about their constituents. I know because Brownback and Roberts are my freaking Senators and they don’t represent a damn thing I or anyone in my family believes in. If you want to get pissed, great, get pissed. Get so pissed that you walk into your politicians re-election headquarters and tell them if they want your help, they will spend the next hour listening to what you have to say. Then, sit down and very calmly tell them just how off track they are. See what they say. If you don’t like it, walk down the street to the other guy and do the same thing. Maybe you’ll find out that you support one more than the other. Maybe you’ll find out that you don’t like either one. Whatever you find out, it will be in person and not from the crap spewed forth from any media outlet.
RenaRF has a great diary up in the recommended diaries. Check it and refresh your memory on some of the things the Bush era brought us. Then stop and think about the last two years. Specifically, think about where we were during October of 2008 when McCain suspended his campaign snark to deal with the financial crisis. Then look at the guts it took for this administration to stand up and get the recovery deal we got. Again, it wasn’t perfect. I know. It’s still a million times better than the Republican belief that we should screw the little guy and protect the business. Think about the comments McCain made about Iran and then look at Obama’s reaction to the elections in Iran. McCain presidency, would we have been at war with yet another nation? He sure seemed to want it, even as a failed presidential candidate and lame Senator. Think about the Health Care Reform Act. Again, I know, it’s not perfect. Medicare wasn’t perfect, it’s taken years of alterations and still it’s not perfect. Would we even have seen health care reform under McCain?
Take the blinders off and accept that politics is a business. It’s a game. It’s about who can play the game. I worked on a US Senate campaign and saw first handed that he who has the most money generally wins. It sucked because my candidate was awesome and would have been way better than Brownback (who sadly will be my next Governor). Doesn’t mean I didn’t work my butt off trying to get him elected even though he had a "D" next to his name, which in KS generally means dead on arrival. In this game, we have all the cards. We hold the white house, we hold the house and we hold the senate. How are you going to play the game? Observer, active participant, or the one who throws the board over and then complains because some of the pieces are missing?
If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. Don't complain. Maya Angelou
...evil will always win, because good is dumb! -Dark Helmet, "Spaceballs"
"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election." – Bill Vaughan