As idiotic as this is, the extent of President Bush's limitations escaped the vast majority of Americans until Katrina, for reasons I will never, ever understand. Standing in line at a bakery on the day the Chief Justice died, I heard any number of people who had obviously voted for the the President angrily discussing his and the administration's incompetence, based on Katrina but spilling over to the war and, as news came of the Chief Justice's death, the Court, and cronysim, and so on and so forth.  And I stood there, dumbfounded, wanting to scream at these people who seemed to be suddenly discovering the nose on their own faces.

Though the DailyKos community is broad, it should be reasonable to expect that a huge majority would agree that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest president we have ever had.  Many would, in fact, agree with the view that the "greatness" of this nation, founded on an idealism which was not completely realized through slavery, a civil war, and the turmoil of modern industrialism, was a function of the Roosevelt administration, in putting the government between otherwise unchecked forces which preyed upon our citizens, and, eventually in establishing our country as the ultimate force in protecting freedom around the world.

What follows is not meant for the "fans" on this web site: meaning those who have chosen a candidate and follow his or her campaign the way I do the Red Sox.  That is how I approach baseball, rooting for the team I first latched onto when I was six years old, growing up in Massachusetts.  It is not how I follow presidential elections, especially this one.

Aside from my annual confusion about why people who celebrate Easter do not also celebrate Passover, I do not quite understand why only Massachusetts, Maine and, uhhhhh, Wisconsin, celebrate Patriots' Day, especially after the John Adams thing on HBO has explained its importance.

All the blather about the ABC News debate and then  then today's Times article about the Pentagon conning cable tv (the modern equivalent of taking candy from a baby) furthers my favorite subject about howtelevision, particularly the cable version, but broadcast as well, has become overpopulated with the stupidest, least educated (but well dressed and beautiful) people ever foisted upon us (I suspect that, for instance, Edwin Newman could not get employed as an intern were he beginning his career today, and Edward R. Murrow would not have gotten within 100 miles of a microphone).  They have also become so intolerably undependable that it is scary.

I am certain that the rules do not permit me to repeat anything posted here before, but in view of this ridiculous cable tv tempest over comments Senator Obama would be better off not having made, but see Bob Herbert today, and the truly obnoxious way in which Senator Clinton has tried to hurt Sen Obama by a phony unctuousness, that rule needs to be broken to again raise a fundamental question.  

I don't think I am.  I stand by the view that the poor and getting poorer education that our children are getting is responsible for the elections of, in particular, such obviously unqualified (and proudly so) candidates such as the current president and the Reagan that has caused so many to become mistily reverential.  I adhere as well to the view that the failures of the modern press and broadcast media have made a bad situation worse.

But then, in rapid succession,there are three signs that things could be getting better, though very slowly

When we were growing up, there was television and it was, it seemed, always on.  Television was not always uplifting and often failed to meet the expectations of the best of those who appeared on it or those who valiantly tried to use the organs of government as instruments for the public interest.  

But, yet, amidst the "I Dream of Jeannie"'s, and "Mr. Ed" and "My Mother, the Car" there was some sense of responsibility among the networks:  some sense that they, too, had obligations as citizens.  And, sometimes, often when they had to because of tragedy, but often because the best among them demanded it, they rose to the challenge to either inform a dubious public or commemorate events of importance, and the history of our nation and world.

While we put all our intense attention on a presidential election that, for the moment, is in the hands of "professionals" other matters, critical to our lives, our freedom and our country, slide on by and, from where I sit, not in a very good direction.  I have written before about this general subject and the public’s responsibility for the re-election of an obviously unqualified president and that of a presswhich focused on his opponent’s windsurfing and ridiculous contentions about that opponent’s military record while reporters who mentioned that the president had lied about how he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam were fired.  

I don't know who this is, other than Keith Olberman's extremely touching obituary of the person who taught Keith politics as a student at Hackley in Tarrytown, NY.  (It is, yes, a prep school.  Let's not get into that, huh?)

So, Senator Obama spoke to the country about race, his pastor and the need to move ahead.  As John Stewart described it, Senator Obama decided on a novel approach and acted as if his audience were adults.  I hope that was not too optimistic.

Schadenfreude, or something like that, compels me to publish here something I wrote and published over the summer.  This appeared elsewhere and not Daily Kos, in part because the national audience need not dwell on the vaunted dysfunction of the state in which I have lived and worked for more than 30 years.

In light of today's stunning, and to me welcome and almost predictable news (not the specifics, but the hubris and arrogance behind it, perhaps) with a few explanatory links added in this version, might now interest the wider audience.  I publish it again so that at least a few people understand that this is not just some minor lapse in what is claimed to be a stellar career

This is the year. You should be able to feel it in the air.  Not since President Carter squandered the mandate given to the Democratic party after the unmasking of what Richard Nixon intended, and what so many Republicans enabled, has the country been so ready to announce that they had seen the light, realized what Republican leadership had brought us, and decided to change direction.  

If the old television show "Wild Kingdom" were profiling liberals or progressives instead of, say, giraffes, the host, Marlon Perkins, would note that we are usually identifiable by our tendency to find a way to attribute horrible political developments to our own supposedly poor decision making.  Every week or so, I read a few dozen emails explaining, for instance, that the elections of 2000 and 2004 resulted in favor of President Bush because of some deficiency in the Democratic party nominee or his campaign.

My New Year’s resolutions included the pledge to post a diary every week as much as a discipline to require actual thought over emotional crying, as to inform any would be reader of my ramblings.  There are either so many things worth writing about this week, or I am unable to wrap my mind around one sufficiently to compose a full diary about it, that I am required to steal the old Jimmy Cannon device, that Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan among others have borrowed with aplomb, and empty the desk drawer of my mind in this space.

I am willing to sacrifice a little more of the important anonymity that comes from writing under a pseudonym to reveal the remarkable fact that I am a middle aged white man.  I am also Jewish, which qualifies me as a member of a picked on minority group and a lifetime Red Sox fan, which used to be another vehicle for being picked upon and a minority, but is not any longer.

This Super Tuesday on Super Sunday thing is really fascinating since it made the talk shows quite revealing today.  Three things jumped out at me, one which could get me flamed, but unfairly.

This post is not literally about The Election, though really it is.  It is not actually meant to be yet another one of those what was so great about President Reagan pieces which show up every now and then, such as during the orgy of memoriam when he finally passed away after a long and, for his family, very painful illness.  It probably will resemble one anyhow.