The mote in our eye

Ladies and gentlemen, my first blog post in almost four years.  Did I miss anything?

Hopefully you all will not be waiting another four years for the next one.  As you might be able to tell from the content, it was not external political matters which kept me away — although I’ll admit that those have had a toll on my spiritual and mental well-being from time to time.  Please feel free to leave comments, as before.

There’s been a bit of pearl-clutching on this side of the pond over an opposition candidate in the upcoming Russian Presidential election, Alexey Navalny. Navalny is a reformer, and has made combatting corruption the centerpiece of his campaign, with strong and reasoned policy points concerning the economy. Of course, one of the weak points of modern Western democracy is that policy is a very distant concern among observers of his campaign, and many aren’t even looking at it at all. That’s human nature, of course, but it is amplified by media reaction. On that side, Russian media is essentially an arm of the Vladimir Putin campaign and ignores Navalny. They will get around to ridiculing him later, if he gains any traction with his campaign. (This is not a behavior that is confined to Russia, as I’ll discuss later in this article.) To Western media, Navalny has become a cause celebre because he seems to be the only reform-minded candidate running against Putin, and Putin has been transformed into something of a Blofeldian caricature in the U.S.

Out standing in my field

Unusual times I find myself in of late.  My view on several issues is well-represented in the opinions expressed in Congress and among the public in general, even if it is not necessarily shared by the majority.  As an example, on the Affordable Care Act, while certain provisions are useful and I’m glad they were included, I am overall opposed to it and believe it should be repealed.  On the legality of President Obama’s actions as Commander-in-Chief, I believe that the President has committed impeachable offenses, and would be in favor of articles to that effect being drawn up and debated in the House of Representatives.  Both of these stances should place me squarely within the ideological grounds of Congressional Republicans, and perhaps within their vocal “Tea Party” minority.

Green VP pick: it’s Honkala

Jill Stein has selected her running mate the day before the convention opens: Cheri Honkala, of Pennsylvania.  CBS has the story, in the inimitable style that is the Mainstream Media attempting to understand something that hasn’t been gatekeeper-approved yet.  At least CBS isn’t openly mocking Stein, but read the story and see if there isn’t an undertone there of, “Wait…who are you again and what are you doing in our election?”

The choice is mildly interesting.  Honkala is National Coordinator of the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, among other accomplishments in a fairly impressive resume; I’d put her up against Joe Biden, certainly, and whomever Mitt Romney chooses.  Her record and speaking style (I have heard her speak briefly) suggest someone who can stand her ground, and her choice highlights Stein’s commitment to domestic economic issues as the primary focus of her campaign.  It also represents something of a reversal for Stein, who during the primaries suggested she would be looking for geographic balance for the ticket, which seemed to indicate Kent Mesplay of California, who ran a distant third in the voting in his third attempt at the nomination.  Mesplay certainly would have been the better choice in terms of foreign policy and environmental policy, but wasn’t a dynamic speaker, sometimes coming across as awkward and ill-prepared.

Quick update: 2012 Maryland Green Primary election

Results from the Maryland Green Primary election (which I suppose should be considered unofficial, even though I was one of the guys that counted the votes…)
Jill Stein: 79%
Roseanne Barr: 14%
Kent Mesplay: 2%
scattering: 5%

As a result, Jill Stein will receive five of Maryland’s six delegates to the Green National Convention; Roseanne Barr will receive the remaining one.

The most recent ray of sunshine

The news is in from Louisiana, and it isn’t good.  The perfect capper on this House-of-Horrors election cycle for the Green Party.

Rahim did everything with a candidacy that one could: he was a well-known, locally and nationally recognized community organizer under the most difficult circumstances one could imagine – Hurricane Katrina.  He was running against a Republican unknown, a Libertarian perennial, and a multiply-indicted Democratic incumbent in a postponed, light turnout election.  He was well-financed (over $20,000, all of it from clean non-corp sources), well-backed by volunteers, and kept to a message that was sane, salable, and principled, with a lot of local resonance.  And in the end…

News you can use (against me later)

First of all, everyone who’s coming here from the Green blog rolls and such, welcome.  THM won’t be participating in the upcoming Green blog “parties” on Election Day…mostly because I’ll be “on the air”.  Yes, our sister site, The Secret Frequency, a Green podcast, will be on for much of the night with updates, in a fashion that I’ll explain in the next post.

For right now, I wanted to make some predictions having to do with the election and some politics and events in general, because…y’know, that’s what blogs like this do, and because I’m seeing some trends that are neat to mention.  I don’t have the benefit of the megascientific-but-still-somehow-flawed polls…so most of these are a combination of trends with some numbers behind them and a lot of gut feelings.  Ordinarily I cast aspersions on such gut feelings, but hey, going with your gut can often give you some insights that those too deep in the forest might miss.  And of course, going with your gut in doing a blog post and going with your gut when running the country are two very different things, the first being merely fanciful and slightly edgy and the second being galactically stupid.

Anyway, here they are:

Reasons why this election sucks, Part LXXXVII

Earlier I had posted that due to the second Presidential debate between Obama and McCain, I was more likely to vote for Cynthia McKinney.

I am now considerably less likely to vote for Cynthia McKinney.

A few parting comments:

• This does not mean that I think any greater of Barack Obama. I can still thank my lucky stars that that particular flavor of Kool-Aid has yet to pass my lips, and I don’t have to fall back on the usual two-party nonsense.
• I don’t, however, know who I’m going to vote for. And yes, I’ll vote for someone, or do something to deliberately register my distaste with all the nominees available. (Edit: McKinney is still a possibility; Obama is still a possibility. Hell, Nader or McCain or Barr or Chuck – Bah Gahd – Baldwin might be as well. Lord, give me strength.)
• In the meantime…does anyone have any helpful tips on removing the imprint of a forehead from my desk?
• *sigh* Least I know how the Republicans feel now. The ones with a high school education, anyway.

Concerning the Emperor, and his lack of clothes

One of the important but least relished roles that Greens have in our political debate today is that of the professional killjoy. Those who are derided for being so out of touch and so pie-in-the-sky with their views that they “think they can win” an election look around them at the two-party chicanery and the wild pronouncements of their followers and can only just shake their heads, and in many cases, thank their lucky stars that they remain so “deluded” by the truth.

The State of the Union, abridged

And now, a quick summary of where we are, courtesy of your friends at the Hidden Message.

• We’re broke. No, I mean really. Really, really, no dough, all skint. As in out-of-doors, hand-to-mouth, ramen-is-lookin’-good broke. Wall Street is advising clients to invest in canned goods and ammunition.* And those in charge – the ones who nominally have to fix all this – are the idiots whose belief that everything is best when it’s auctioned off for a profit on the way to the golf course caused about 95% of this mess in the first place. This means that not only are we broke, we’re also screwed. And so is the next President.
• Speaking of which, the nominal “opposition” “party” is lining up to drink the Kool-Aid proffered by these same idiots. Doing the dispensing is the current Presidential candidate, who is just happy that his base thinks he walks on water and everyone else is distracted by the wailing and gnashing of teeth on Wall Street – otherwise they might realize that caving in when the chips are down is really nothing new for this guy (FISA, war funding, etc.)
• The Great Reformer, John McCain – a “maverick” in the same sense that Obama is “opposition” – is “suspending his campaign” and heading back to Washington so he can strap on his Superman cape and save the country. This apparently means…um, we’re not sure. He’s still collecting money, doing interviews (except on Letterman), running ads, and the like; he knows as much about the economy as he does about taming mountain lions in the Kalahari; and he really can’t strap on a cape without his wife’s help. But he won’t debate, given that this is so all-fired important, and especially he won’t allow have Sarah Palin debate. She should be seen and not heard, after all…meanwhile, the “maverick” is cozying up to the current Pres Resident on his recovery plan (*ack ack ack*) and desperately hoping no one brought along a camera, or otherwise makes the connection that this walking disaster incumbent of the 30%-and-falling approval rating is actually, y’know, in his party.
• While McCain drops the Cone of Silence on his cartoon-character running mate, Cynthia McKinney has offered to debate Obama in McCain’s absence on Friday. This will of course happen, right after Sen. Obama removes his own appendix with a bottle of Scotch and a rusty chainsaw.
• The Libbies believe that the reason all of this happened is that there was just too much regg-uh-lay-shun, durn it!…which is the best reason I can think of to not allow the LP to run a luncheon, much less the country. Or, rather, they would be saying this if they weren’t currently having an ego-fueled bitchfest between Bob Barr and Ron Paul that makes Ralph Nader look like Mr. Rogers (more forthcoming from the HM on that score).
• In a related topic, Chuck Baldwin of the John Birch Soci Constitution Party, the noted pastor who believes that America was founded solely as a Christian nation, is the current crush object and donation recipient of the Ron Paul Blimp of Luuuvvv. In further related news, Verne Troyer has signed as a center by the Los Angeles Lakers, and a spokesman for the sun has revealed that it will be rising in the west tomorrow, “just for a change of pace”.

Yeah, I’m watching this election. The problem is, I’m not watching it from far enough away.

* Yeah, I nicked this line. Couldn’t help it.

Marriage is a little bird, tweeting in a meadow…

[Title=cult. non-seq. ref.; 10 pts.]

I don’t yet have the second part of my last post.  In fact, I’ve been avoiding all mention of politics for the past several weeks, ever since the Green convention.  I’ve been told by reliable sources that I haven’t missed much, which was rather my perception that led to the sabbatical in the first place.

I’m still thinking that I’m not quite ready to come back.  I’ve been paying a lot of attention lately to baseball and theatre and my kids and trying to get a better job.  I went bowling over the weekend, which I didn’t do well at, but I could console myself that I was a helluva lot better at it than Barack Obama.

You have to pay attention to politics in this country for the same reason you have to pay attention to deer by the side of the road while driving, because God alone knows what’s going to happen if you take your eyes off ’em.  This isn’t necessarily a criticism as much as it is one of the problems of democracy, or at least the democracy-cum-kleptocracy that we’ve developed…and yes, you can cue one of Jefferson’s quotes about liberty right here.  I’ve done a great deal of paying attention over the last several years, and sometimes it’s just good to let your mind dwell on other subjects for a bit.