Michelle Obama

Quite a few Republicans I used to bicker with back in the day when saying anything against the president was tantamount to treason have told me that they are supporting Barack Obama. After eight years of Bush, everyone's not only ready to chuck party allegiences, but to chuck a lot of things, like prejudice.

As for me, I'm ready to trade in Laura Bush for a much cooler first lady. I love Michelle Obama. She's not just cool, she's real. When she gave a very impish grin to Maria Shriver's mention of Mitt Romney's good looks during the potential first wives forum, all I wanted to say was "You go, girl!" He might be a total downer on the political stump, and he never pushed the military onto any of his five sons, but damn, that man is good looking.

Black leaders seem to have a problem with Barack Obama. They ought to zone in on Michelle. She exemplifies everything cool about being an African American. She's smart, she's got attitude, she's got sass. She's all that.

I figure if Barack Obama was smart enough to marry this extraordinary woman, he's more than capable of making good decisions were he to become president of the United States. Moreover, I'm confident that should he falter, Michelle would be more than happy to let him know.

The American Flag

I send out packages to Japan every Christmas. We have Japanese friends and I try to buy them things that are specifically American. You have no idea how hard it is to do. Most of the junk we have here, you can find in Japan no problem. Thank you globalization.

I found a quilt on ebay which looked really cool and American. It had little flags on it and rather primitive looking log cabins. I won the bid and before I knew it, I was holding a plastic bag with a large "Made in china" label with the quilt neatly folded inside. Another thing I bought was a set of five really gaudy looking boxes, each with some American theme like The Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Bell. On each box was stamped a "Made in China" label.

I don't really know what to make of this. Yeah, it's fodder for jokes and cartoons, but in fact this isn't a joke or a cartoon. It's real life. I can't even peel those made in China stickers off. I'm sending my all American trinkets to Japan with label in tact. I give up. May as well fly the flag with a huge made in China stencil right across the middle stripe. It might not be patriotic, but it will be honest.

The Republican Debate

I have to confess, I didn't watch the CNN sponsored republican debate last night. I watched a Stephen King horror movie called Trucks. It was terrible. Killer trucks plowing into human being or objects containing human beings. If only Halliburton had those things in Iraq, what a better world this would be. The military wouldn't have to blow them up everytime they blew a tire. They could blow themselves up, maybe taking a few insurgents with them. Instead of blackwater security guards, the State Department could simply hire alien trucks to mow down local traffic. No one could sue a truck.

Very few people really care about Halliburton and their disposable trucks, or how Blackwater treats Iraqi nationals, least among them Republicans. From the debate recap on C-span this morning, it seems all Republicans care about is immigration, homosexuality, and abortion.

One featured highlight fromt he debate showed Rudy Giuliani accusing Romney of having illegals doing work around his mansion. Romney should have come back at Giuliani by asking him whether he had strawberries in his yogurt that morning, or lettuce in his salad, or whether he makes sure all his fruits and vegetables are imported from countries where foreigners are legal. But no, he just sputtered something about not having to ask his workers for their papers. Wild applause from the audience.

Homosexuality made for a fun evening. The Youtuber who asked a question about gays in the military happened not only to be in the audience, but also a member of the Hillary Clinton for president steering committee. How ironic that CNN, which some people refer to as The Clinton News Network, would allow this man to stand up and speak extemporaneously for two minutes. If I were Mitt Romney, I'd be thinking "And the Democrats refused to attend a Fox sponsored debate...why?" The whole episode made me think of male call boy Jeff Gannon being called on to ask questions by Ari Fleischer at White House press briefings. Or Larry Craig with his bathroom hand signals. Or that whole congressional page pedophilia scandal...

As for abortion, it's a bit hard to take the subject seriously while little Afghan kids are being blown apart in Afghanistan and Iraq, much as the alien trucks I mentioned earlier. I saw a TV show once about a woman giving birth in a hospital in Afghanistan to premature twins. Here, they would have slapped those two kids into an incubator, but over there, they just put them aside to die. I guess you would call this nature performing a late term abortion.

These issues are all retreads, but they make for lively debates and good television. And really, the whole point of being American is to stay entertained. It's that pursuit of happiness thing. The only part of the Declaration of Independence anyone seems to remember.

We've won the War on Drugs!

The magic realization that we've actually won the war on drugs came to me as I watched CNN the other Day. They showed a crude video of Barack Obama admitting he used illegal drugs in his youth. Naturally, as a follow up, they ran the famous "I didn't inhale" clip of Clinton's, followed by President Bush telling reporters that what he did in his past was no one's business.

Like it or not, using illegal drugs has become a right of passage, especially among presidents, or potential presidents. I guess it really doesn't mean we've actually won the war, so much as we've called a truce. Much like the political posturing about North Korea, everybody pretty much just shrugs their shoulders because though we know they can kill you, it's just not worth making a fuss about.

Afghanistan is another indicator of our having won the war on drugs. With poppy production booming after liberation from the Taliban, Afghanistan's economy now depends on this flower of happiness. To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you're stuck with the flower you have not the flower you wished you had. If an increased drug trade is the cost of freedom, so be it.

There are a few areas of the war which still need a bit of mopping up. I'm talking about mandatory sentencing, mostly involving the use of crack cocaine or metamphetamines. It's what's keeping poor niggers and white trash behind bars. That being said, it sure doesn't seem to be affecting the general middle class inhaling public, i.e. the voters, the people who count.

Moreover, winning the war on drugs gives me hope that the war on terror will someday be won as well. We'll know we've won that war when we elect a president who has admitted to planting a bomb...and I'm not talking about the little firecrackers Dubya used to shove up the orifices of little frogs when he was a kid either.... I'm talking something just short of nuclear.

Business wises up

Back a few years, after 9/11, we went on a business trip to Japan. It was a strange time. If even your deoderant hand an anti-Bush scent, you'd be pummeled by the true believers. Our fellow travelers, American businessmen, all had their sniffers out. "Don't you go there!" one screamed at me when I tried arguing that universal healthcare by simply existing would cut down on lawsuits.

But that was then, and now is now. The Wall Street Journal this morning ran an article entitled "Affluent Voters Switch Brands". I think the most telling line quoted the editor of the Denver Business Journal: "Colorodo already has low taxes and has always. And we began in the 1990's to start feeling the things like higher education and transportation, which coincidentally became more important as economic-development issues for the business community." The Bush administration non-support of infrastructure maintenance perhaps has perhaps slapped a few business leaders across the face.

Pundits on the television of the Republican persuasion are practically begging on their knees for government help in border control, tracking product from China, and so forth. However, the Bush administration has been busy forcing the government down the bath tub drain, as Grover Norquist advocated.

For the past eight years, the hard work of the Republican strategists like Karl Rove has cobbled together a strange coalition of fanatical right wing religious types, I'm talking Jewish as well as Christian, and ginormous corporations. In fact the article begins with a $39,000 a year hispanic Union member lamenting Guiliani as a candidate because of his abortion stance. But between the extremely rich and the extremely hoodwinked, there are millions of fairly practical Americans.

The proof is in the numbers. Currently, 51 per cent of people making $100,000 or more support the Democrats. In 2004, that percentage was 41.

What's best is that for the past six years, I've been labeled a pinko liberal because I thought Bush and his minions were a bunch of jerks. Now I'm back in the middle.

I am, however, very thankful for the Bush people in that they've defined the political extreme. Now maybe everybody can get off of their keisters and actually start doing something.

Good Times in Iraq

There's been a lot of good news coming out of Iraq. Less killings, less of our troops getting hit. One would feel perfectly positive if it weren't for the State Department.

Yes, the State Department is having difficulty finding volunteers for its Iraq assignments, so it's decided to force its employees to go. They showed the resultant hand wringing on TV. One guy got up and cried about what would happen to his kids. The State Department workers don't seem quite as sanguine about Iraq as the news media.

Someone should explain to them that Blackwater is there to protect them, much as the State Department protects Blackwater. I refer of course to immunity granted by the State Department to those Blackwater employees responsible for the Nissour Square killings of seventeen innocent Iraqis.

And besides, what about patriotism? I'll bet you many of those same cry babies were supportive of the Iraq War, and even the ones who weren't probably never said a word.

Iraq is beautiful these days anyhow. Bring the family. Have a picnic. Enjoy the view.

Economics...not

I was reading today about the problems Andrew Jackson had with the Second Bank. That was a long time ago. You probably don't remember. Jackson had a deep belief in hard currency, none of this fancy credit that gets people in trouble. His stubborness ended in the demand that all large transactions be paid for in shiny metal coinage as well as a bad depression handed to his successor, Martin Van Buren. No, credit is a good thing.

Our present economy runs on credit. Nary a single person saves money any longer. What's the point? If you max out one credit card, you pay it off with another. Hell, you can finance your entire retirement that way. Social Security? Bah. Visa or Mastercard. Walmart, Target, Sears, they all depend on our credit cards. They love our credit cards. They keep asking if I want more everytime I stand waiting for things to be scanned by the cashier.

It makes each of us a de facto millionaire, this access to as much money as we can possibly desire. But no, it doesn't work that way. I don't know why, because theoretically it should. Imagine how the economy would hum along if all of us just bought whatever the heck we wanted. Some banker should think of that. If we were all millionaires, the economy would be jazzed beyond description. We wouldn't need welfare or socialized health care. We could be free market all the way, baby. We could invest with impunity. If our investments dry up, we just pull out the old credit card and invest in something else. No worries, no cares. We'd all be republicans.