Somewhere before the end of the Democratic primary, I really got tired of the whole damn thing and stopped listening. I just wanted to be told who finally won. Now, three months before the election, I’m tired of this whole thing. Wake me up when somebody wins it. But no matter who, I bet three years from now we’ll still be in a military quagmire in the Middle East, we’ll still be losing our freedoms piece by piece, the rich and the powerful will still be ruining/running everything, and the "news media" will still be stories of movie stars' sex lives, how to make the best of the _____ crisis, and "Oo! Oo! Senator Dumdum made a no-no in his pants!"
OK, so this time, instead of two double-crossing candidates who talk out of both sides of their mouth we only have one, McCain. Obama is a dreamer of big promise who actually believes in what he says he believes in (though he seems to be on the slippery slope of "If I just change this position, I can get a few more voters..."). But come ON, folks, when was the last time a president actually kept any big promises?

Hope is a wonderful thing. It is true happiness. Every American right now should be hoping in Barack Obama because it is a true hope. Dems for BO have been feeling this happiness since the Iowa primary. Now the whole country has to opportunity to join in. Hope means something better, possibly great, maybe even superlative. So from here to next January, anybody who does not believe in hope and a promise of a better world is just plain missing the boat. And it may be a long long time indeed before we again have the chance to feel deep happiness as a nation.

Right now, we have broken out of the storm wall between the Democrats, and there are a precious few minutes before the storm wall from the Republican storm troopers begins. So I’ll ignore Muqtada al-Hillary’s defiant stand to extort concessions from Obama and just float out all the dreams I have about America.
I dream that if George Bush orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff to bomb Iran, each of them in succession resigns their commission rather than follow an order that is contrary to the good of their country. (No military junta on OUR watch!)
I dream that the Republicans will get pasted this November, with Obama getting 65-70% of the popular vote. I dream that the Dems get 62+ seats in the Senate and a huge majority in the House.
I dream that the Democrats in PA, OH, WVA, et al,  who for the last year had been groomed and programmed into backing the machine candidate of Hillary, will be groomed and programmed to back the officially-sanctioned Democratic candidate. These people are the closest Democratic version to Republicans who are ordered to vote what the party says – not that there’s anything wrong with that.

... with anguish at loss on one side, unbelievable joy with the winners, the political liberation of the black American, cries of retribution, lost loyalties, the exhaustion of everyone who got into it, let us listen to the advice of a Republican:

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.

It’s the Presidential Campaign, 2000. Gore is in a teeter-totter struggle with Bush to get a win. Several states hang in the balance, Arkansas among them. What a great opportunity for the most-recently beloved President, who just happened to be from Arkansas, to go in there and barnstorm for the Democratic Presidential candidate and make sure Arkansas came in as a blue state.
Did that happen? No. Bill Clinton sat on the sidelines, Arkansas went for Bush.
But wait!  you say. Bill stayed away from national campaigning because the Democratic Party said they didn’t want him to participate. Okaaaaaay....
Eight years later, Hillary Clinton is waging a scorched-earth policy against Barack Obama so she can claim the Democratic nomination for President, a battle she has no real chance of winning but which is escalating tempers and vitriol inside the party, causing real disunity. But wait! you say. Hillary would stop doing that and end the campaign if the Democratic Party leaders asked her to, just like with Bill.
If you believe that, I’ve got some subprime mortgages I can sell you.

1. A politician who is running for office changes his stance on issues to match whatever public sentiment is current. He morphs to appear to be one of the crowds of whatever voter group he is campaigning to, no matter how wildly divergent each is on issues and core values. He indulges in innuendo, attacks by surrogates, half-truths, mud-slinging, and outright fabrications about his opponent. Would you expect this person NOT to use those tactics if he wins office?

2. In a future scenario, food supplies worldwide are tightening. China comes to the US grain market determined to buy a huge amount and announces it will pay 50% more than the current market rate for a bushel of US wheat. Would you expect free-market multinational agribusinesses to honor their obligations to maximize shareholder profits or  sell to US food processors for less profit?

A simple test; no trick questions. Answer honestly.
This government is unjust and we must reject it.
A.Yes, I am a patriotic American.
B. No, I am a loyal subject.
I am willing to die in my home or my town to protest this government.
A. Yes, I am a patriotic American.
B. No, I am a loyal subject.
Anyone who advocates rebellion against this legally-mandated government:
A. Is a true American.
B. Is a terrorist.
Any "legally unacceptable" act defying actions by this legal government:
A. Is justified by Americans.
B. Is treason.
This whole system of government needs to replaced.

While the US general public watches Reverand Wright dance and Hannah Montana strip in the mass media, George’s Gang of Nine has been quietly setting the future of Anerica as a secure police state. Maybe the upholding of the Indiana law that brings back a new twist on that old ploy of using literacy tests and poll taxes to suppress minority and poor voters showed up on the media you were watching. But if it did, it was no doubt used as a lead to play up our ongoing political soap opera histrionics between the Dems and Repubs.  
So a week before the Indiana primary, everybody who doesn’t have a driver’s licence or similar picture ID will have to get a free one from the state. In a week. After getting a form and filling it out. And bringing it back with their original birth certificate, proof of current place of residence,  original Social Security card, etc. And the state will get that good ol’ ID out to you. In a week. Right.
The other two rulings of George’s Gang are almost as good – rejecting consideration of some death penalty cases (after ruling last week that lethal injections are A-OK, why not?)  -- which has been interpreted legally as a go-ahead to capital punishment.

Aug 8, 2011 (AP) It has been called a war of liberation, a savage civil war, an epic test of wills. Though the American people are sick of it, their political system seems powerless to stop it. It has suspended the holding of a national election, and threatens another. It has drained America of money, talent, will. And the world waits, and wonders: when will the Democratic primary of 2008 ever end?
Hillary Clinton has vowed to fight in Denver for one hundred years, if need be. Barack Obama is confident he will eventually prevail, but repeatedly states that if Clinton wants to keep at it, he will let her. The old Red vs. Blue has become Hope Blue vs. Skill Blue; brother has turned against sister, children against parents.
And this battle may gain even greater historic import because key sources have admitted  Democratic Party leaders are going to seek a Supreme Court injunction against holding the 2012 Presidential elections, as they did successfully in September 2008, on the same grounds that holding a presidential election with no Democratic candidate would deprive millions of Americans of their Constitutional right to vote. With the Roberts’ Court favorably disposed to leaving George Bush  and Dick Cheney in office until this roadblock is cleared, the injunction will no doubt be granted.

Ethanol May Not Solve Our Energy Problems, But It Makes Lots of People Happy
The successful Chevron test oil well in the Gulf of Mexico last year suddenly changed things for gasoline. With an estimated 3-15 billion barrels of oil newly available in the Gulf, it would seem that arguments to drill in ANWAR and new areas off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts fall flat – there’s no doubt the cost of political battles and arctic drilling expenditures would be way too high, even compared to the increased costs of drilling these new, deepwater oil wells. Oil companies can now shift efforts and money away from that cause and into rushing to get their share of these new reserves pumped out. Thus, even though this new oil is some 5-7 years away from getting into our production system, our gasoline shortage worries are eased, SUV’s are saved, etc, etc.
So what’s going on with ethanol?

This is actually a lot of fun for me, doing these diaries to see what the responses will be. Why, you ask?
I can tell you people I was but one part of a major university’s psychological research program studying general attitudes and reactions of internet users to various input. This site (daily KOS) was chosen for my group. The parameters for the program suggested our group use a style of expression in the mode of L. Rust Hills and H.L. Mencken and were presumed to garner the same types of reactions the originals did in their time. Sorry if the diaries were nowhere near as excellent as their models, but of course we have no Mencken on the staff.

Mr. Obama,  you saw the American people were lost and unsure, their government in the hands of greedy opportunists who thought nothing of starting a horrific war so they could brag about how much power they had. You thought you could take that great need of the people to believe in something better, but not to trick them and use it to profit yourself and your friends. You wanted to channel that power through your leadership, to direct America’s energy to a better purpose, a higher purpose.
Mr. Obama, you knew you would face derision, and prejudice, and lies, and rabid irrational hatred, and just plain old meanness for the sake of meanness. You suspected there might  be powerful forces of perverted money and motives arrayed to stop you, that have no qualms about using any method, even murder, to do so  – in the back of your mind you try not to think of what happened to JFK, MLK, RFK, men so very much like you. You realized that you would have to fight against people you had considered to be on your side -- from the Democratic Party, from the black race, from the very people you have lived your life with. You knew this would not be easy.  

Again, America and all its political pundits have missed the big picture of the Democratic primary election of 2008. There is no fight between Hillary and Barrack – there was a chance of one at first, but now the obvious shifting tide of public sentiment, the defiantly-positive fierce loyalty of the Clinton supporters versus the calm, sure, wondrous optimism of Barrack’s, shows that, at least for the historians among us, this battle – a very low-key, polite battle – is over. What were they fighting about? Both Democratic candidates want to do all the good things that America needs to do, and to stamp out the neoconRepublican infestation that is poisoning us. They both, as all observers agree, have pretty much the same plans how. So the only thing they were fighting for was whether America should have its first woman president or first black one? That’s IT??!?!?! It’s like asking somebody, "You can only get to choose one: a million dollars in hundreds, or a million dollars in fifties." The point is, we get a million dollars either way.

Here we go again, folks, choose your President: do you pick the one you don't like? Or the one you really hate? McCain vs. Hillary, no matter which one we get at least half the people in the country will be pissed off with the outcome. Way to go to "fix broken Washington". How did that song go, "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"?  And the winner will stubbornly plow  ahead with his/her solutions: solving the Problems of USA 2009 with the Answers From USA 1992 -- back to the Terror (nee Cold) War or gridlock politics, which do you prefer? Step up in November and vote your choice!