left brain

Time to Change Our Politics

And it begins...

This is unofficial, however you can just imagine the level of ads to come.

Yes I AM !

Lets hope so !  See Ya Hillary.  You now have no chance, sorry.  Though you have my vote if he decides against running.  hehe.  If you want to know why, follow the jump to the article I talked about here.

Dreaming of Obama in 2008

One of the most stunning sentences in the NYMag article is how people are begging Barack Obama to run for President.  People will walk up to him, hug him, and then beg.  "Please, you need to run!"   Now I don't consider myself to know anything about politics (nor do I care to) but I generally get the sense lately that the only people who think that the United States is doing GREAT are lunatics, the freak religious people (also lunatics), and the incredibly rich.  A great friend of mine was his teacher at Harvard and knew when he was a "boy" that he was going to do great things.  I hope that we are about to be on that threshold of greatness.

Obama (if you don't know his name,  you absolutely should be ashamed of yourself) is the freshman Senator from Illinois who creates hysteria in most places he appears at.  His speech at the Democratic Convention in Boston awhile back brought him eyes and ears from around the country because he was the rockstar we should have been voting for.   The NYTimes calls him that "rare politician who can actually write."   In 1995, he wrote a memoir before he entered politics trying to trace his familys roots and his attempts to come to terms with his father abandoning him as a child.  He acknowledged youthful struggles such as pot, booze, and maybe a little blow.  He wrote, "could 'push questions of who I was out of my mind,' flatten 'out the landscape of my heart, blur the edges of my memory.'"  Senator Obama recently published a new book titled "The Audacity of Hope" which supposedly reads as a stump speech and outlines his stance in a lot of issues.   

Obama may be a straight shooter. But there’s one question he has a hard time answering these days, and he gets asked it a lot. At the town hall in Effingham, it takes exactly eleven minutes to come up. It’s whether he’s interested in a certain job. Candidates who are interested in it tend to attend certain dinners in Iowa, where Obama would go the following month. “I’m looking for an intelligent, highly educated man,” says a Democratic precinct committeeman from a nearby county. “Someone who hasn’t been around long enough to be labeled by the opposition in ’08—”

Obama tries to cut him off. “Uh, I think this is a setup—”

“Someone,” the committeeman plows on, “who was not from the Northeast for a change, but from, say, a large midwestern state, someone who was opposed to the war in Iraq from the beginning, someone who’s not afraid to discuss his religious experiences—”

“Um—”

“Someone who’s charismatic—”

“Uh—”

“Someone who could unite his party, unite black and white, who’d have the unwavering support of his own state. Do you know anyone like that?”

“I don’t,” said Obama, smiling but looking mildly relieved. “But if I run into the guy, I’ll let you know.”

And then he just continues with sentences, paragraphs, speeches, and acts (like the ones that follow) that pretty much are so head on and splendidly perfect that they give me chills.  I would vote for him in a second.  He is the only politician that I can name that comes across as "real" to me.   But Obama, thankfully, also comes across as a smart, strong, leader who can change the direction of this country and bring it back to greatness.

"We have seen the psychodrama of the baby-boom generation play out over the last 40 years,” says Obama as we’re driving through ravishing acres of corn and soy. “When you watch Clinton versus Gingrich or Gore versus Bush or Kerry versus Bush, you feel like these are fights that were taking place back in dorm rooms in the sixties. Vietnam, civil rights, the sexual revolution, the role of government—all that stuff has just been playing itself out, and I think people sort of feel like, Okay, let’s not re-litigate the sixties 40 years later.” He rattles off some of the familiar dichotomies—isolationism versus intervention, big government versus small. “These either/or formulations are wearisome,” he says. “They’re not useful. The reality outstrips the mental categories we’re operating in.”

Another of Obama’s political advantages is authenticity, that overused term which, for Obama, seems exact. “He’s real,” says Senator Jay Rockefeller, Obama’s colleague from West Virginia. “He knows who he is. And he’s someone who, I assume, would vote the way he feels.” For a party that just ran Al Gore and John Kerry—two men fundamentally estranged from themselves, terrified of saying anything that hadn’t first been printed on index cards—this trait has enormous appeal. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Obama on the Senate floor: He was telling a story to his colleagues when suddenly, quite theatrically, he struck a runner’s pose, like Jesse Owens at full tilt. It was such a strange, un-Senate-like moment to witness, totally unself-conscious and free of pomp. The other senators started laughing wildly. Later, I asked what he was doing, expecting he’d fudge an answer. Obama grinned. “Uh …” he said slowly. “We were talking about, uh, the strategy that I’d observed among some unnamed senators for, uh, ducking out of boring hearings.”

“I don’t think that those two are necessarily opposing,” says Obama. “I don’t want people to pretend I’m not black or that it’s somehow not relevant. But ultimately,” he says, “I’d want to be a really great president, you know? And then I’d worry about all the other stuff. Because there are a lot of mediocre or poor presidents.”

“Name me a state he can’t go to,” he says. “John McCain can go to New York all he wants, but it ain’t gonna happen. New York ain’t gonna vote for him. Or George Allen, for that matter”—a Republican senator from Virginia, also a presidential hopeful—“or Mitt Romney.” (The governor of Massachusetts.) “But I think Barack could be a player in all 50 states, if he wants to. Or 40. There are states we have lost, historically, that he’d be a major player in.”

And if you need a sorta weird reason to vote, read on.  It just seems ironic given the abombination we are in now.

So much hope and so much fuss. All over a man whose father was from Kenya and whose mother might have been a distant relation of Jefferson Davis. Whose meals in Indonesia were served, for a time, by a male servant who sometimes liked to wear a dress. Whose first and last names inconveniently rhyme with “Iraq Osama.” And whose middle name, taken from his Muslim grandfather, is, of all things, Hussein.

And if you need another reason to come to the conclusion that our "president" is a horses behind:

He recalls a meet-and-greet encounter at the White House with George W. Bush, who warmly shook his hand, then “turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a big dollop of hand sanitizer in the president’s hand.” (“Good stuff,” he quotes the president as saying, as he offered his guest some. “Keeps you from getting colds.”)

Foley. Reader Discretion Advised.

So after reading this I have to say that Foley should just move to Costa Rica or the Serengeti because his life in the United States is over.   Who would go anywhere near this loser?  And checking oneself into fucking AA rehab seems to be a total deterrent from the actual issue.   Foley, the fuckin lunatic right wing pervert, seems to well be a homosexual.  Not surprisingly the fun people in the Republican party tried to cover it up.  All I have to say is that, if the Democratic party can't get on top this November or in 2008, we should all move.  If they can't do it this time, they are just hopeless.

ABC News: READER DISCRETION STRONGLY ADVISED: Foley's Exchange With Underage Page.

September 29, 2006 — The following is an instant message exchange a former page says he had with Rep. Foley in 2003. Warning: sexually explicit language, reader discretion is advised.

Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:57 PM): my last gf and i broke up a few weeks agi

Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): are you

Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): good so your getting horny

Xxxxxxxxx (7:47:29 PM): lol…a bit

Maf54 (7:48:00 PM): did you spank it this weekend yourself

Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:04 PM): no

Maf54 (7:53:24 PM): on your back

Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:30 PM): no face down

Maf54 (7:53:32 PM): love details

Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:34 PM): lol

Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:36 PM): i see that

Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:37 PM): lol

Maf54 (7:53:39 PM): really

Maf54 (7:53:54 PM): do you really do it face down

Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:03 PM): ya

Maf54 (7:54:13 PM): kneeling

Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:31 PM): well i dont use my hand…i use the bed itself

Maf54 (7:54:31 PM): where do you unload it

Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:36 PM): towel

Maf54 (7:54:43 PM): really

Maf54 (7:55:02 PM): completely naked?

Xxxxxxxxx (7:55:12 PM): well ya

Maf54 (7:55:51 PM): cute butt bouncing in the air

Maf54 (7:58:37 PM): well I have aa totally stiff wood now

Maf54 (8:08:31 PM): get a ruler and measure it for me

Xxxxxxxxx (8:08:38 PM): ive already told you that

Maf54 (8:08:47 PM): tell me again

Xxxxxxxxx (8:08:49 PM): 7 and 1/2

Maf54 (8:09:04 PM): ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Maf54 (8:09:08 PM): beautiful

Xxxxxxxxx (8:09:38 PM): lol

Maf54 (8:09:44 PM): thats a great size

Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:00 PM): thank you

Maf54 (8:10:22 PM): still stiff

Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:28 PM): ya

Maf54 (8:10:40 PM): take it out

Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:54 PM): brb…my mom is yelling

Maf54 (8:11:06 PM): ok

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:02 PM): back

Maf54 (8:14:37 PM): cool hope she didnt see any thing

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:54 PM): no no

Xxxxxxxxx (8:14:59 PM): she is computer dumb though

Obama for President !!

When I hear him talk, I get chills. I have no idea where he stands on gay shit but I honestly don't give a shit, lol. He has my vote, now, tomorrow, 2008, 2010. Etc.

Gay Ban?

The following is a reason why I have given up on politicians in this country. They not only are childish cunt assholes, they act like them too !

Senate Panel Approves Gay Marriage Ban - New York Times.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate panel advanced a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on Thursday as the committee chairman shouted ``good riddance'' to a Democrat who walked out of the tense session.

``If you want to leave, good riddance,'' The Senate Judiciary Chairman, Republican Arlen Specter, told Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, who refused to participate because, he said, the meeting was not sufficiently open to the public.

``I've enjoyed your lecture too. See you later, Mr. Chairman,'' Feingold told the Pennsylvania senator before storming out of the private room where the meeting took place.

The testy exchange highlighted tensions over the proposal, which seeks to amend the U.S. Constitution to prevent states from recognizing same-sex marriages.

Where ru ?

You are a Social Liberal (73% permissive) and an... Economic Liberal (6% permissive) You are best described as a: Socialist Link: The Politics Test  on Ok Cupid Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

The Reign is Over, soon

'American Theocracy,' by Kevin Phillips - The New York Times

Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist who helped design that party's Southern strategy, made his name with his 1969 book, "The Emerging Republican Majority," which predicted the coming ascendancy of the G.O.P. In the decades since, Mr. Phillips has become a populist social critic, and his last two major books — "Wealth and Democracy" (2002) and "American Dynasty" (2004) — were furious jeremiads against the financial excesses of the 1990's and what he portrayed as the Bush family's "blatant business cronyism," with ties to big oil, big corporations and the military-industrial complex.

As he's done in so many of his earlier books, Mr. Phillips draws a lot of detailed analogies in these pages, using demographics, economic statistics and broader cultural trends to map macropatterns throughout history. In analyzing the fates of Rome, Hapsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic, Britain and the United States, he comes up with five symptoms of "a power already at its peak and starting to decline": 1) "widespread public concern over cultural and economic decay," along with social polarization and a widening gap between rich and poor; 2) "growing religious fervor" manifested in a close state-church relationship and escalating missionary zeal; 3) "a rising commitment to faith as opposed to reason and a corollary downplaying of science"; 4) "considerable popular anticipation of a millennial time frame" and 5) "hubris-driven national strategic and military overreach" in pursuit of "abstract international missions that the nation can no longer afford, economically or politically." Added to these symptoms, he writes, is a sixth one, almost too obvious to state: high debt, which can become "crippling in its own right."  Mr. Phillips methodically proceeds to show how each of these symptoms applied to great powers like the Dutch Republic and the British empire in the past, and how they apply to the United States today.

He reviews how deregulation, the implosion of American manufacturing, the rising cost of oil imports and substantial tax cuts have contributed to skyrocketing debt levels and trade deficits, and how the country's net international indebtedness has soared, he estimates, into the $4 trillion range.  He argues — not altogether persuasively — that the Bush administration was pushed toward war with Iraq by pressure from Republican constituencies: energy producers worried about dwindling oil supplies; financiers worried that OPEC could end the dollar's virtual monopoly on oil pricing; and fundamentalist Christians, convinced that recent developments in the Middle East were signposts on the road to Armageddon and the end-time.

ASShole of the day

And the winner is?

DeLay Is Indicted and Forced to Step Down as Majority Leader - New York Times.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 28 – Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, the powerful House Republican majority leader, was accused by a Texas grand jury today of criminal conspiracy in a campaign fund-raising scheme. 

Mr. DeLay was indicted on one count charging that he violated state election laws in September 2002. Two political associates, John D. Colyandro and James W. Ellis, were indicted with him.

The indictment of Mr. DeLay, while not entirely unexpected, still reverberated through the Capitol. The House Republican rules require a member of the leadership to step down, at least temporarily, if indicted.

Isn't it time we brought back the guillotine?