Gettin' that feeling good feeling again.

I'm thinkin' I could get used to all this hope and optimism. Feels good after the last eight years, doesn't it? I couldn't help singin' along with Pete Seeger on this one....



Monday morning postscript: Do kids learn these American standards in school anymore? A while back, When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again (Hurrah! Hurrah!) came up on my Ipod. (Thank you Ken Burns.) My kids, 10 & 15, hadn't ever heard the song before and frantically rolled up the windows while I marched out the tune as we drove past the Arcata Plaza.

Do the public schools still teach the music of our collective heritage? Do kids today open dog-eared music textbooks after morning recess to learn America the Beautiful, God Bless America (favoring Kate Smith's Broad Street Bullies rendition over the Bronx Bomber's 9/11 Irish cop tenor), This Land is Your Land, The Star Spangled Banner, America America ("Oh beautiful for spacious skies"), and We Shall Overcome? Have these standards fallen victim to music program budget cuts and political correctness? Did I just answer my own question?

Sure, some of these songs glorify war, or a particular god, or contain subtle racism in the second or third verses, yet they are essential elements of the American soundtrack, no? And, I believe, there is tremendous value in learning our collective history behind the music, including its sordid or shameful elements.

It's lonely (not to mention hard on the ears) being the only one singing along with our national heritage as we drive along those ribbons of highways. Lord knows I need the accompaniment. Do I sound curmudgeonly enough yet?

Let us begin the work together

All of you chose to support a candidate you believe in deeply. But at the end of the day, we aren’t the reason you came out and waited in lines that stretched block after block to make your voice heard. You didn’t do that because of me or Senator Clinton or anyone else. You did it because you know in your hearts that at this moment – a moment that will define a generation – we cannot afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing. We owe our children a better future. We owe our country a better future. And for all those who dream of that future tonight, I say – let us begin the work together. Let us unite in common effort to chart a new course for America.

Barack Obama, June 3, 2008

The Definition of Bitter (or, Why ABC News really really sucks)

What an embarrassing night for ABC, and more importantly for a nation theoretically founded on the principal of intelligent discourse, in their conduct of tonight's phony made-for-idiot-TV campaign "debate". Nearly an hour devoted to rehashing trivial comments on sidebar People Magazine issues, issues that no one outside the joke that is the American coporate media cares a damn about. Jeremiah Wright. Lapel pins. The meaning of the word "bitter". Well, I'm bitter now dammit.

It's probably a good thing my girls shuffled me and my culturally elitist organic Petit Syrah out of the TV room. After an hour of unrestrained cursing and ball cap throwing at political flacks and coprolitic media pitchmen Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous, the three of 'em wisely and carefully escorted me out the door, favoring the half hour of mindless American Idol commercials presaging the narrowing of the faceless karaoke pop star wannabes down to six to the sight of la casa's lone male sputtering and fuming at the silvery-screened orb inside a faux antique cabinet.

Damn. I really wonder sometimes about the future of this country. I'm pissed and frustrated. I'm grieving and, yes, bitter, but without guns or religion to soothe me. And I'm wonderin' where a middle career guy with a mortgage and a 70 mile daily commute on 4 buck a gallon gas goes to make sense of it all.

People are dying in a needless war.

Millions wander the streets homeless.

We can't, we won't, pay our teachers a decent salary for the most important jobs in the whole damn world.

We're selling semi-legal dope on the plaza to professional panhandlers on phony medical pretenses.

Our planet is rapidly melting itself into oblivion.

And ABC thinks we should give a shit about whether Obama wears a half inch composite metal American flag facsimile made in Taiwan on his friggin' suit?!? Go to hell ABC. If I actually watched any of their programming I'd boycott it, but I suppose they're not really gonna miss me since there's nothing there to watch anyway.

I'm not gonna sleep well tonight, am I? Someone pass that wine cork puller thingie over here. This bottle's empty.

My Endorsements: Super Sunday & Super Tuesday

Not that anyone of sound and independent mind should really care, but here are the crucial picks for the crucial issues of the day from one middle-aged, middle-class, middle-mortgage, mid-level bureaucrat, husband, and dad.

Super Sunday: I grew up just outside of Boston in the ‘70s, back when they were the Boston Patriots led by QB Jim Plunkett, RB Sam Bam Cunningham, and WR Randy Vataha. The Philadelphia Eagles supplanted the Pats as my favorite team in high school, but I continue to follow ‘em, and, quite honestly, the Patriots have provided a few more opportunities to cheer in recent years than have the Birds.

After an impossible and impressive run to 18-0, it’d be a shame to see ‘em lose this last and championship game. While I usually run with the underdogs in the Super Bowl just to see top dogs get knocked off the roof of their dog house, Fate demands a Patriots victory today. A season-long streak like this comes along once a generation. And it’s time to witness a little perfection in our world, don’t ya think? I’ll be grinding up some salsa and guacamole, frozen mozzarella sticks, and boilin’ up the chili dogs by 3pm today. It’s the Patriots’, all the way.

Super Tuesday: I will stand in line on Tuesday morning and color in my voter's bubble for Barack Obama…because it’s time to change. I have no doubt that Hillary would be a solid, formidable, effective president. If she emerges victorious at the end of this process, I will support her with all I have available to give. The positions taken by Clinton and Obama are not all that radically different. In all fairness, I’m having a hard time figuring out what they would do differently than the other when elected.

But……

I’m so tired of the language of politics today. So beleaguered by the pettiness, the crassness, the obnoxiousness, the shiftiness of the dialogue. I’m exhausted by right v left, blue v red, east v west, Hannity v Colmes, Carville v Matalin. For 16 years, this country has done nothing but holler at each other across increasingly rigid lines. You can blame talk radio, the insipid corporate media, and the internet, but we are no longer one country, indivisible. We are not united to stand; we are divided to fail. Another four or eight years with the Clintons in the White House just prolongs the angry, short-sighted, politically expedient rhetoric, not only in Washington, but in our own communities across the continent.

It’s time for America to speak with a new voice. It’s time for someone who can lead us with a vision for the future, a vision that includes justice and opportunity for everyone. The only one in this race capable of changing the nature of our national dialogue is Barack Obama.

I admire the way Senator Obama has kept his campaign focused on the future, on changing the framework of the debate, and generally steering clear of the name-calling and blame-placing brought upon the race by the Clintons. I was among the hundreds of star-struck fans at Bill’s Eureka performance a few weeks ago, but the Clinton campaign proved itself that night, and continues to prove itself today not only capable, but eager to sink into the political muck to reach a political victory, and not of reaching up to take us to a new place.

Perhaps my vote is a vote against something as much as it is a vote for something. And it’s likely that my vote for Obama will be cancelled out within my own household. But, and it’s become cliché, it’s time for a change. For the country’s sake, we have to end the politics of polarization, stop this rhetorical inanity, and move forward, to a new future, a future we where can are proud to be United States and united Americans again. Barack Obama is the only one standing in the campaign capable of leading us there.

What about all the ballot initiatives, Bob? I oppose the entire ballot initiative process in principal, so I probably won’t vote on any of ‘em, out of pure spite. This is idiot special interest democracy run amok. I’m tired of being hustled at the Farmer’s Market and the Safeway parking lot by students and ne’er do wells who don’t understand the nature of what they’re asking us to sign on the dotted line for, and who are almost always paid by the signature by some corporation, special interest group, or billionaire. How about doing away with this ridiculous ballot initiative process altogether and making the legislature do the job we send ‘em to Sacramento to do for a change?

And while we’re on the topic, we already have a term-limit law in place, folks. It’s been there since the founding of the state and the US Constitution. It’s called an election. If you don’t’ like your congressman, vote him/her the hell out of office. There’s absolutely nothing stopping you.

Enough ranting. I’ve got guacamole to create.