[Cross-posted at The Left Coaster.]
In 1992 during a state dinner in Japan George HW Bush suddenly vomited out of nowhere, an embarrassing incident the US media basely ignored, given their previous giddy braying over the allegedly clumsy Gerald Ford. The Japanese were totally cool with it, instantly minting the term Bush-suru, to vomit suddenly in public, a quite common sight in binge-drinking Japan, if food author Anthony Bourdain is to be believed.
I was reminded of the incident when one General Patraeus suddenly fainted yesterday during a Congressional hearing, he quickly recovered and everything seemed fine, but no matter the sheen attempted on the incident nothing can buff away a general unease over the situation, whatever happened to make Big General Man faint away like a debutante in a corset, well, it can’t be good.
Senator Orrin Hatch introduced an amendment yesterday that would force the unemployed to undergo drug testing to receive benefits. To me the issue is not the outrageous cruelty wrapped in a sick manifest failure of federal policy, but that this utter slimeball felt no compunction in being so blatantly, public sick about it all, as if Bush was his hero and the vomiting of his psychotic brain onto the Senate floor was perfectly fine. If our Senate were a real human place of health no Senator would ever dare act that way, but here was stark demonstration that institution has terribly regressed, this can’t be good either.
Nor was the terrible polling data that thudded onto political geek’s consciousness last night ("a veritable buffet of suck"), nor the President’s big speech last night, which didn’t forge a new path forward in a specific energy alternative. I’m terribly sorry, nothing would please me more than to pass on happy encouraging news this morning, but it just isn’t there.
Another evolution I’m loathe to undertake is an angry knifing of I-told-you-so, I’m a small person who wishes nothing more than to serve my Party aligned with correct principles. I’m absolutely convinced that if we had always put the little people first and fought with the slimy Republicans instead of some ludicrous attempt at partnering with them we as a Party wouldn’t be gulping over that polling data this morning.
Plain fact is we did not, and I or the administration don’t have good results to show for it, because of course it won’t work. The sooner we take the fight to the Republicans the happier I’ll be and the better the country will be for it, that truth has been with us since day 1 and will be with us to our graves.
Meantime I am whipped politically, not exhausted but certainly very weary. That’s what happens with a US poverty rate that horribly slams our children at 20%, yet we continue that insane Afghanistan war with a fainting general, the little people know this can’t be good or right in any sense.
End that war and work fervently to get our children out of that insane poverty rate. If we as Democrats don’t put the little people first and seriously fight back against terrible Senators like Hatch we’re so plainly on the wrong path, and we’ll continue to endure mornings like this.