Show your gratitude for gift givers by sending out thank you cards. It's a great way to show your appreciation for the gift they gave as well as the thoughtfulness of their generosity. Whether you receive gifts for a wedding, shower, or birthday, all gifts and acts of kindness should be reciprocated with a thank you card.

-from Thank You Card Etiquette
by Concrete Abstract

Dear Bush Administration,

I received your gift of President Obama yesterday, and I LOVE IT!

Now don't act shy. You've been too modest about your generosity in the past. Why, I remember when that Valerie Plame thing showed up on the front steps one day. You were all like, "Where did that come from?"

I knew it was you!

But not this time. You're going to take a turn in the spotlight even if I have to shackle your legs and frog march you out there! ;-)

Because I want everyone to know that we owe the outcome of this election entirely to you.

You see, some people would say this election proves that America has changed. That we're ready to acknowledge that complicated problems require nuanced solutions. That courage is trumping fear. That we're finally stepping into a post-racial future.

Bzzzzt! Wrong!

What's remarkable about this election is the mind-boggling amount of coercion, brow-beating, and finally the all-encompassing catastrophe that it took for America to even consider changing course!

What administration but yours could have kept its eyes on the prize and made it happen?

The storm warnings of your first term elicited yawns. The rising waters of the second term, shrugs. And even in the week before the election, polls showed that 12% of the bloated corpses bobbing on the flood you caused were still not sure how to vote!

It's not for lack of effort on your part. You've been trying to give this gift since the moment you came to power. You tortured people, denied habeas corpus, committed election fraud, wallowed in corruption, and spied on your own citizens. You wasted hundreds of billions on a pointless war. You bungled attempts to get Osama Bin Laden. You sat on your hands while an entire city was washed away.

Any ONE of these things ought to have been sufficient to assure the election of ten Barack Obamas. And yet, at the end of the primary season, he was running no better than even with McCain. A candidate barely palatable to his own party!

You must have been wondering, "Christ! What is this going to take?!"

I know I was.

A better administration would have thrown in the towel. But you didn't give up!

There were only two options left: to have the House Republican caucus drink the blood of Christian babies on prime time national television, or to hurl the country into a depression.

Personally, I think the former option would have shown a lot of style.

But that's quibbling.

So, sure, special gratitude has to go out to all the politically-appointed heads of regulatory agencies who were supposed to be patrolling the financial sector, but instead, with a knowing wink, kept a protective vigil at the front door while a circle jerk of hedge fund CEO's did belly shots from the navels of trashy mortgage derivatives.

You know who you are. I love you guys.

But ultimately, this was a team effort. And while the contributors were too numerous to mention here, I've got to give a special shout out to the committed few that did more than just break our laws and betray our trust. They made that extra effort required to rub America's face in it, just to be sure we'd notice.

To Larry Craig, David Vitter and Mark Foley. You knew that anybody can get themselves busted with their pants down. So you were sure to be moralizing, holier-than-thou crusaders right up until the moment they snapped the cuffs on you. Way to dazzle 'em with the depravity, then send 'em to the canvas with the hypocrisy!

Take a bow!

To Karl Rove and his corps of political assassins. You could have just played dirty when the score was close. But you went for the groin again and again and again--cold-cocking Don Siegelman in Alabama, canning U.S. attorneys, outing covert operatives--even when you had the game in hand! Talk about dedication!

Take a bow!

To Dick Cheney--there just are no words. You are the ultimate bureaucratic ninja. You could have quietly dismantled our democracy and no one would have even noticed until the unopened mail at the Rayburn House Office Building started piling up. But you played out of your head for eight straight years! It was like you were everywhere at the same time! The overreaching, the surliness, the swagger. You lied us into a war. You tortured innocents. You crapped on the Constitution. And then, like some kind of geriatric James Dean, you looked us in the eye and dared us to do anything about it.

Wow. That's giving 110%.

Take a bow.

OK. Now take another.

And last but not least, to you George.

For exhausting America's seemingly-limitless reserve of cowardice by pressing the fear button over and over, so that when John McCain went to that well to warn of a black man named Hussein, the bucket came up empty.

For valuing intuition over intellect. We watched you thrust your arm into one political wood chipper after another. And each time you'd regard your mangled digits with bewilderment, and then commit the same boneheaded mistake again! What less-numbing display could have driven the great unwashed into the arms of some brainiac college professor to be drearily lectured on economics?

And finally, thanks for exhorting us to aspire only to our basest instincts. For urging us to shop for trinkets, to suspect our neighbors, to get all we could get while the gettin' was good. By offering not a scrap to quell our pangs for more wholesome fare, you ensured that an ethereal menu of hope, change and unity would be welcomed as the starving welcome biscuits and gravy.

When I think about the effort you made. The commitment. I just...

I promised myself I wouldn't cry.

I will not cry.

Some people will say I should just display my new Barack Obama on a shelf. And sure, if I left the shrink wrap on, he'd be worth plenty on eBay in 2016.

But no sir! I can't wait to start using my Barack Obama to reverse every policy and repeal every law you've supported in the last eight years. And each time he does something smart, something competent, something Constitutional--or even when he commits mere misdemeanors in the places where the felonies used to go--I will think of you. And smile.

There may come a time when the destruction you've caused seems no more than a bad dream. When agencies are run by skilled professionals rather than political hacks. When other countries laugh with us, not at us. And when, with the wiser eyes of a Jimmy Stewart saved by an angel, we delight in the modest charms of our old, exasperating, imperfect, break-down prone jalopy of a government as it chugs unsteadily into the future.

Indeed, there may come a time when my Barack Obama has erased virtually every trace of the mess you've made.

But there's one thing he'll never erase: my gratitude.

Sincerely,

Me

p.s.--tell Barb and H.W. to send Thanksgiving pics!

Only Sayin's mother was very disappointed that this note was not hand-written. And on good stationary! Not that cheap stuff!

An email came to me by a circuitous route the other day. Normally I would pass on responding to something like this--particularly since the specifics have been rebutted by others more effectively than I dilitentte such as I could ever manage.

But this one is special--it comes from a person that I worked with very closely for many years. This person was a veteran of business affairs. A longtime senior executive. And I was his right hand.

We spent much time together in foxholes, but never talked about politics.

It turns out that was a wise decision.

Here's what he wrote, and the responses that will ensure, should he read this, that he will never speak to me again.

I just don't get it - and it's time I do get some things off my chest (it would
make my Dr. happy)...

I am sure we are all fed up with the non-stop daily negative ads by everyone running for something. Probably, those of us in NE can't get over the barrage of the Shaheen/Sununu NH senatorial campaign attacks, seemingly >100 times each night overtaking the Obama/McCain slams. But what I can't get is why the overwhelming print and TV news media are so openly biased in favor of Obama. Yes, so typical of the oh so vocal liberal groups, the masses of entertainment people, and network news speakers - but so overboard lately it makes me sick. I can't watch Letterman anymore, given his nightly, for weeks, rant against McCain and Palin - more than jokes. Having carefully watched, and
have never seen a single Obama slam in weeks. "The View", makes me sick (can't
have that on when I'm around).

Ma! Look! I'm about to defend the media! Well, in just a second...

OK, the media suck. Mainstream reporting avoids making its audience feel stupid at all costs. This means complexity, and thus truth, is out of the question. If they aren't jumping on a winner's bandwagon in an orgy of starfucking, they're equating Nancy Pelosi with Hitler and calling it balance.

But...

The media is big business, and big business does not have a liberal skew. If you detect a bias in favor of Obama, it could be because he is right. Just a possibility.

Why is Obama so insulated and protected - is it because he's black (just saying that, one is considered a racist then anything that follows is discarded - well, more is going to follow here and I detest having to defend by saying I am not a racist and so won't consider the need to do so here):

Note: saying what you're not going to say is, uh, saying it. Let's come back to this one.

On to the trivia!

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he refused to wear a flag pin - yes, it is absolutely no big deal, it certainly not representative of anyone's patriotism, and after he was handed the pin on 2 different occasions from vets in his audience, he now wears the pin.

I'm confused. Are you accusing him or vindicating him? If the latter, it seems like you would have omitted it altogether. Are you using reverse psychology on me? Cuz' if so, it isn't not going to never work.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he turned his back on stage and did not pledge allegiance to the flag when other major campaigners did so (Hillary, Richardson, others) - which when I first got that picture, I sent a reply-all scold back to the sender and others that I could not believe that was true...but later Obama never answered any questioning about it when asked at other campaign stops..and then I was told by others of it's accuracy by those who watched the video that showed it clearly. Maybe he had a reason, but this one bothers me, why not put your hand on your heart and look at the flag, what reason not to - I bet he does so now.

This thing that someone told you that one time he appeared to do in a video tape, that's pretty damning. And then he never denied it. I don't think he has ever denied having sex with sheep either. Hmmm.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he has an association with an avowed terrorist, Bill Aires, who fostered bombings and murder - Obama first answered that the bombings had happened when he was 8 yrs old, that didn't suffice, so he added, he (Aires) lived in the neighborhood, then said he only served on some Boards together, then he denounced the actions - he seems to have never come clean with an earnest full answer on this subject. Yes, Aires was voted a Chicago citizen of the year and has many ultra-progressive supporters (there are even many lined up who want to marry Charles Manson...and his killings occurred many years ago, but who in their right mind would associate with him). As recent as 2001 (about the time of Obama's state and US senatorial campaigns) Aires again said he wished that there were more killed on 9-11 and regarding his earlier bombings, he was non-repentant and would not rule out that happening again. But you can't mention him, for fear of being labeled just a mud-slinger, and should just stay on the
issues.

The tale of a secret Obama / Ayers cabal is utter, soup-to-nuts manufactured nonsense, fabricated by Republican partisans and shamelessly peddled by the McCain campaign. That they undoubtedly spent millions digging in Obama's past but couldn't produce anything better is in itself a ringing endorsement of the Senator from Illinois.

The board on which both Obama and Ayers participated, along with lots of other Republicans and Democrats, was convened by a powerful Republican. Obama and Ayers are like two people that happened to be on the guestlist for the same party. You may disagree with the way Ayers expresses himself or the acts of his youth, but now he is widely respected in Chicago and does more good in his advocacy for education than you or I will ever do.

Also, it's spelled "Ayers." If you are going to claim to have the earth-shattering inside scoop on someone, you should make sure to spell their name correctly. Your slanders will seem more credible that way.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he is a supporter of ACORN, now under investigation (again) by the FBI for voter fraud having registered 1000's maybe over 1MM illegitimate voters in several states; and by the way, just revealed that one of the Boards he sat on with Aires, recently provided a quarter-million $ to ACORN.

Wait. I think I'm going to sneeze... Ahhh... AHHH... BULLSHIT!

Let's put aside the FBI investigation, which stems from the same kind of politically motivated shenanigans that resulted in the improper firing of all those federal Prosecutors during the last election cycle. And I'll ignore the way you've tossed the word Ayers in there to create the false sense of a sweeping conspiracy. Let's just talk about ACORN.

ACORN is a group that hires people to go out and register the poor and minorities to vote. Because their employees may be paid based on the number of people they register, ACORN does have an issue with employees filling out false forms to pad their quotas.

But the suggestion that these fraudulent registrations are part of some attempt by ACORN to tip the election for Obama is completely false. The only reason ACORN submits suspicious forms is that they are required to do so by law. This law exists to keep voter registration organizations from selectively destroying forms in order to further an organizational agenda. ACORN is not trying to get Mickey Mouse a voter's card. They even flag dubious forms for the authorities to insure they will be vetted and, if appropriate, discarded.

ACORN wants to help poor people and minorities, so it certainly stands to reason that they despise Republicans. And yet we can be sure that the group isn't perpetrating what McCain has called the greatest election fraud in history. How do we know?

Because putting non-existent voters onto the rolls accomplishes nothing unless you also create a vast conspiracy to turn those false registrations into actual votes at the polls. Nobody, not even those who wear tin-foil hats, thinks that ACORN is engineering such a conspiracy. If McCain's team of Rovian machinists could think of any way to make that seem plausible, don't you think they would? But there being not even the flimsiest thread with which to span the gap between fake registration forms and a stolen election, they hope to vault the gulf assisted by the upward draft of hot air that results from their own manufactured indignation.

And make no mistake, all this indignation is manufactured. Every time McCain and his surrogates go on the news and swoon in feigned horror at the injury ACORN is about to inflict on democracy, they are lying through their teeth. Nobody better knows how to recognize actual election fraud than they; when it comes to fraud they are the undisputed champions.

It is Republicans that distribute leaflets in Virginia telling Democrats to vote on November 5th. It is Republicans that tell students they'll lose their scholarships if they vote. It is Republicans that expunge people from voter rolls because two public records of their address differ by a period or abbreviation. That, my friend, is what I call fraud. In this one instance at least, you may take just pride in your party's competence.

Perhaps you are rolling your eyes, thinking that my argument rests upon the notion that Republicans are inherently more corrupt than Democrats. But it doesn't. Everyone's scrambling for power here, and there is no red or blue America when it comes to lust for power. But the simple fact is that Democrats want to increase turnout, while Republicans want to suppress it. And Republicans have a host of effective, nefarious, and illegal tricks at their disposal to achieve their desired goal. Democrats have none.

Onward!

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he has received over $1MM from Fannie Mae, who's CEO that left in 2004 for outrageous performance, Franklin Rains, left with about $45MM in payout - AND is now an advisor to the Obama campaign, and some say a likely future cabinet member. He happens to be black, and when a mention was made of him some weeks ago, there was a cry of racism over the mention. I wonder how many of these readers have even heard of it.

Your right. The Democrats--led by Barack Obama--are the true party of big finance and deregulation.

Of all the ploys that conservatives have used to deflect attention from their own culpability for our economic catastrophe, none takes more chutzpah than this one. It's complete bull of course, but I take my hat off in admiration anyway.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - there is a continuing question of his legitimacy to be president by virtue of his birth - is he a citizen. It was clear when Schwarzenegger ran for Governor, the question of his Austrian birth put to bed his inability to be president someday, because he is not a natural citizen...with Obama, questions still linger.This may take a bit, but when I
first heard of it months ago, I thought the issue was somehow put to bed...

OK, I'm cutting this one short because frankly, I'm just embarrassed for you. I've spent countless hours with you and this is just the kind of whining you hate! If there was any good evidence for this it would long since have become front page news because it's the media's most vivid wet dream. Giraldo Rivera is burning incense and sacrificing chickens to make it true.

But it's not.

As it is, you sound like someone who's about to lose the big game and is desperately trying to call time out and get the outcome reversed on a imagined technicality.

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he wants to "spread the wealth" - a general socialistic
ideology and point of view (much further than the current nationalistic position
being temporarily taken to help our country's awful financial condition). "Joe
the Plumber" has been slammed - "he's not licensed"...yeah, well he has worked
as a plumber for a company with a license for years. "His name's not
Joe"...yeah, well his name is Samuel J, with the J being Joseph and he has gone
by the name of Joe for years. With Obama, middle names don't count, and of
course can never be mentioned, or one would be called an inciter, and fear
mongerer if you mention his middle name - no-one has mentioned it for
months...don't you dare. The news stories about Joe now just say he is not
licensed and his name is not Joe - deliberately with no further discussion or
clarification - Joy Behar of The View, yesterday (my wife heard it); Jack
Williams on WBZ news the other night (I heard it).

Wait, I'm going to sneeze again... This is also such an absurd canard.

First, how blithely you excuse this bailout. It's just a $700 billion socialistic emergency gesture. It "doesn't count."

Sorry. It is absolutely, indisputably, a formalizing and finalizing of the biggest transfer of tax payer wealth to the wealthy than has occurred since, well, ever. If all you were doing was sprinkling some fairy dust of dismissal over it, you would be no more than wrong. But the fact that you expect to be taken seriously as an authoritative, hard-headed of realist while dismissing those parts of reality you find inconvenient--it's just really unbecoming.

Secondly, I'm frankly surprised to hear you parrot this "socialist" line because it is no more than a desperate semantic tactic directed at people a lot less intelligent than you. It's been pulled off a dusty shelf because the word "liberal" seems to have lost its magic power. And since "socialist" is proving ineffective as well, we're seeing a host of other synonyms for "BOO!" come out of cold storage as well: like "Marxist" and "Communist."

Again, sorry. Like whiskey left to long, these retain their flavor, but not their potency.

I hate to bring up facts, but Obama has only promised to roll taxes back to their pre-Bush level. If that's socialism, then the U.S. has been a socialist country since Roosevelt. Hell, since the Roosevelt before that Roosevelt.

Perhaps you think precisely that. In which case, you're right: Obama is a socialist. And thank goodness.

But regardless, you ought to be thanking your lucky stars that you're getting Obama's restrained, thoughtful pragmatism rather than the real populist uprising for which your favored ideology has paved the way. Which brings me to...

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - he spent more than 20 years listening to his spiritual advisor spew venomous anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-American garbage. Then Obama very slowly, in multiple steps, under pressure, leaned to a cloudy denouncement of that advisor. Are white Americans so loaded with civil war era guilt or more recent time guilt over the oppression of blacks, that we can't even mention the notion of racism - which to me, is apparent on the side of Obama and his supporters. 96% of all blacks polled will vote for Obama - that to me is "OJ like", and should be considered "voter nullification". You really will almost never be wrong, that is you will be right 19 times out of 20 (that's an "A"), if
you ask a black who they are voting for. Sure, there is some "familial/communal" drive to vote for one like yourself (black, Irish, Jew, etc) but 96% is way out of the norm. Imagine for a moment - a white junior senator, with very little experience, who happened to have attended a church for 20 years, family events occurring there, listening to his acclaimed spiritual advisor who spews anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-American government sentiment; believing the American govt caused the Aids virus to spread it to blacks in Africa and
worldwide; the American govt conspired and was directly responsible for the 9-11 destruction, etc. That candidacy and outrage probably wouldn't last very long, in Obama's case the outrage went on for a week, in this case the outrage would probably last a few weeks more, but would end clearly with the end of the candidacy of that white senator. Whites would drop him, Blacks would never have touched him, Hollywood would scream their outrage, news stories would bury him alive. Would anyone vote for that senator (even though it was his pastor's words not his), I think not, he would have been dropped before he could gain a start - and rightly so! Reverend Wright - but you can't mention him, for fear of being labeled just a mud-slinger (and a racist), and should just stay on the issues

IT'S NOT JUST THAT - Michele has such a negative view of this country, seemingly angry, which she has now pushed back or camouflaged well.

The church thing is such a yawn. His "spiritual advisor?" Give me a break. There are a million reasons people sit in church while the Minister says things they don't agree with. Obama may share some of Wright's concerns--about racism, about poverty, about justice--but every ounce of evidence we have shows he doesn't share Wright's inflammatory and combative approach.

Should Obama have got up and left? Maybe. But remaining engaged with people with whom we don't always agree is a great way to learn and to create a foundation for difficult consensus. I for one am more than a little weary with those who make endless puritanical theatre out of turning their backs on Congressional or International constituencies who don't observe their own petty orthodoxies. We recognize these characters from Victorian novels of manners. They are called "hypocrites." And they don't accomplish anything.

And I'm afraid I have to disagree with your hypothetical parallel about the swift destruction in store for any white Senator who associated with similarly edgy people of the clergy. John McCain has spent plenty of time sucking face with hate-spewing white pastors. And they weren't in his community church. He made a special effort to seek them out for the sole purpose of sticking his tongue down their throats, just so he could pander to the troglodytes in their congregations.

And those folks are angry too, but with a whole lot less of an excuse than the black folks.

Let's ponder that anger for a moment, shall we?

Personally, I think the whole Michelle Obama-is-angry-and-hates-America thing is completely baseless. It sprouted from one ill-phrased comment, and the reaction and manipulation of that moment says little about what she thinks, but speaks volumes about white America's fear of a smart black woman. I'll go further. I think Michelle Obama may be the most perfect would-be first lady in history. She has the brains, the looks, and the smile to be an asset in every formal situation. And yet she is a mother to those two adorable girls, which should keep the traditionalists happy. If she was white, 99% of the country would be fawning at her feet.

But let's get to the real issue: you've discovered anger in the black community. Congratulations Columbus! You're damn right many black people are angry. Some of it is even justified. Racism in every form is alive and well. There are plenty of places in this country where life was hardly different for blacks in 1960 than it was in 1860. I don't know whether you believe that or not, but I do know you have no first-hand knowledge. So you might do a little research before you scoff.

Some of the anger is more inchoate. Things are imperfect for American blacks, to say the least. Just look at the number of single mothers, the AIDS epidemic, the incarceration rates, and the poverty. Meanwhile, African Americans watch more recent arrivals to this country from asia and latin american assimilate and succeed with relative ease.

So there's anger. Some of it gets targeted at whites, rightly or not. Some gets targeted at other groups. And some just sits there and festers. This you should understand. You keep a little anger of your own that you've never been quite sure where to file, yes?

But the relevant question is not whether you're angry, but whether you convert it into a source of positive motivation. And I can't think of any politician who is more unswervingly positive than Barack Obama. If it's anger that's driving him, I hope whatever's pissing him off keeps happening.

One last point here: you're really upset about the fact that African Americans overwhelmingly support Obama because he's black, and not because they think his policies are far better aligned with their interests. I trust you will have equally strong words for the middle- and lower-class whites who have for years voted themselves into an economic grave rather than be disloyal to the party that looked most like what they see when they look in the mirror.

IT'S NOT JUST SOME OF THE ABOVE (AND THERE IS MORE)...IT IS ALL OF IT!! We
have to wake up and not let this happen (as the polls and pundits are trying to
indicate it's over as they just want to simply coronate him). I am not
fully happy at all with McCain-Palin, and certainly recognize the interest by
anyone wanting a change from the last 8 years (although not all the blame of
everything goes to this administration and its people); but McCain-Palin is
better than Obama-Biden. Yes, Obama presents well, has become more
confident, connects with people with his oratory (even when empty, or confusing
at best, or not really listened carefully to), relaxes people with his smile,
and coolness - while McCain presents poorly and awkwardly. But when you think of
"THIS Country First"...a future with Barack H. Obama as president SCARES
ME...far more than McCain-Palin!

OK. First, let's go back to all the points you made before your crowning summary.

All these little points. You seem to be winding up to deliver the lethal blow. To say that Obama is anti-American, some kind of alien mole trying to worm his way into the White House so he can execute a long-planned Manchurian Candidate strategy to destroy America from within.

Is that it? Is it?

Than why don't you just say it?

Why all this veiled suggestion, this collection of minutia worth nothing individually, adding up to nothing when combined?

Colin Powell, Richard Lugar, and Chuck Hagel, all seem pretty comfortable with Obama's intellect, loyalty and patriotism. If these impressionable innocents are being conned, hadn't you better reach out and show them all the startling truth you've discovered on the Internets? Before it's too late?

Bad enough to attack someone's character rather than their policies. But to do so in this roundabout way, and then refuse to own it. Well, as you were always so fond to say: For shame.

I know you prefer traditional conservative policies to what you percieve as liberalism. I can respect that and find plenty of room for dialogue.

But what about competence?

Nobody knows better than I how you do business. The attention to detail. The steadiness. Your respect for ability.

Is that really what you've seen from McCain and Palin?

What goes through your mind when you see McCain swing from talking about cutting taxes to offering to buy a country's worth of worthless mortgages? When he trumpets the importance of experience over all, and then selects a small-town Alaskan mayor whose biggest strengths are her boobs and her appeal to religious extremists to be his running mate? When he sacrifices the national interest in favor of petty political gamesmanship, suspending his campaign and rushing to Washington where his indiscretion promptly torpedoes a deal to resolve what you yourself just said was a genuine crisis of the highest order?

I know what you would have said about a business associate who behaved this way. Your disdain would know no limits.

Meanwhile, Obama runs an efficient juggernaut of a campaign, puts out some of the most detailed policy proposals that we've seen from a presidential candidate in ages, and demonstrates nothing but sense, stability and competence.

But you find that "empty" and "confusing." I don't think it's the message you have a problem with. It's the messenger.

You say it's not racism. I won't say it is.

I think it all comes down to your last words. You're scared. And what you're scared of is not policies you don't agree with. It's people who aren't like you and ideas that differ from yours.

I'm sure you would say that the mess the country finds itself in right now is not the result of your philosophy. I think you would argue that the underlying philosophy is sound. That the problem has been incompetence.

I don't buy it.

You have no problem with the opacity of conduct, with the authoritarian style, with the unalloyed rule of wealthy white guys who hire their fishing buddies for cabinet posts.

Well I've got news for you. That's the petrie dish that bred the incompetence. And that petrie dish will breed incompetence 100 times out of 100.

The fact that you would have the gall to suggest you know what's best when what you think best is such a monumental and self-evident failure is beyond presumptuous.

You're scared of what will happen if Obama gets his way? Well, I don't need to agonize over some ill-defined fear of what might happen if the country was run your way. I'm living it.

And frankly, it blows.


This post crawled through raw sewage to escape from Only Sayin'. It got a lot longer in the process.

Sarah Palin was an idea John McCain believed just crazy enough to work. That now seems too fond a hope. But hold your head high John. No one will ever accuse you of scrimping on the crazy.

From the moment Palin entered the race I've maintained unswerving confidence in her ability to kill the Republican ticket. I don't know how anyone could say anything negative about this woman. She has exceeded my wildest expectations, and I will be indebted to her until the day I die.

The media was slower to take her proper measure, but it's easy to see why. She presents a baffling array of conflicting cliches, this feminist dominionist with the smart glasses, sweet ass, and reality-tv family. Even now it's not clear whether she can best be used to sell advertising for bibles or lingerie.

So they poked her warily with sticks until she showed her true colors. She's a talking bobble-head figurine! And if you keep pushing the button, there is no end to the riotous absurdities she will utter. The pretensions of foreign policy expertise. The cringe-worthy attempts to don the ill-fitting mantle of reformer and maverick. The tortured fragments of syntax spilling off her assembly line like forgings from no mold.

And now, to keep this story on it's wobbling legs, the media informs us that our mockery on all these counts must cease. Jocularity has its time, but this matter has passed from farce to threat, and nothing less than the future of our democracy is at stake. With that in mind, we must all pull together and henceforth mock her exclusively for her belief that the Constitution grants significant authority to Vice Presidents.

The press' outrage is manufactured, but valid nonetheless. Constitutionally, the vice President is our great government's sole spare part. Its job, like all spare parts, is to sit on the shelf and to cost too much. Thus, historically, those who have been most comfortable in the role are those that don't feel the need to be productive... well, pretty much ever.

So let us do our patriotic duty and mock Mrs. Palin. She may not have been smart enough to demur when McCain asked her to be his running mate, but I'm pretty sure she's not mentally disabled. And that means we can laugh at her with a clear conscience.

But remind me what exactly is so far-fetched about the possibility of Vice Presidential authority? Has everyone forgotten old you-know-who? The most powerful person in the world for the last eight years?

True, Dick Cheney had and has no formal authority. But like some diabolical political acupuncturist, he has altered history with a few pin pricks.

Who was the prime mover of the wars that cost trillions? Of the belligerent anti-diplomacy that has destroyed our international standing and which hastens the twilight of pax Americana? Of an altered balance of power that favors an authoritarian executive?

Sure, the orders came from a smiling puppet with a Texas twang. But in this production, Lady Macbeth is the one with a pace maker.

So it's embarrassing to watch the media haggle over Constitutional fine print like rabbis hashing out Talmudic arcana. Would somebody please ask the only question that matters?

How the hell did Dick Cheney happen?

The answer of course, is that Vice Presidents can wield exactly as much power as their wit, charm, connections, experience, and evil powers of sorcery can command. And as the President will cede.

Thus, Dick Cheney's successful conquest of the universe prompts two conclusions.

First, has there ever been a President more suggestible than George Bush? Mother of God, who reminds him to breathe out after he breathes in? Does he get hypnotized by the windshield wipers when he drives in the rain?

Second: Dick Cheney must have wit, connections, experience, and satanic power in spades, cuz' he sure didn't do it with charm.

Our experience with Mr. Cheney is germane. It tells us that Sarah Palin is more than just ignorant about the Constitution. She is also deeply deluded about her potential authority as a VP.

Sarah Palin is a simplest of one-trick ponies, a mere tool for getting John McCain elected. Her job is to smile, wave, praise Jesus and bash liberals. In the increasingly unlikely event that the guy that's always standing next to her--the one that looks like her grandfather--actually wins this thing, she will become invisible. Not because of anything the Constitution says, but because of who she is: an unconnected, unconvincing half-term Governor of an insignificant state who can't use the word "Machiavellian" in a sentence. No one in Washington knows her, respects her, or fears her. John McCain least of all. She'll be lucky if she can score Redskins tickets.

Sarah Palin the next Dick Cheney? As any movie goer knows, only the Dark Lord can wield the One Ring.

So if McCain is elected, and miraculously manages to keep senility and cancer at bay for the duration of his term, we won't need the Constitution to insure that Sarah Palin is one of history's most irrelevant Vice Presidents.

Though if John McCain is elected, Palin will be the least of our worries.

This post is the product of a lapse in the medication regime at Only Sayin'

Obama devotees may be inclined to see the ascendancy of their favorite as a great reawakening of the American body politic to its true self.

But I'm not so sure.

It's been 40 years since a significant portion of the populace shook off their torpor to inquire what the fuck, exactly, is going on here?! It was a volatile time, but that's not a bad thing. As lawful and tolerant as this country has typically been compared to just about anywhere else in the world you can think of, there's never been a shortage of black folks hanging from trees or support for murderous repressive foreign regimes. Rioting in the streets is an indication that at least somebody notices.

But that brief interval of optimism dissolved into successive decades of cynicism, jingoistic belligerence, superficial materialism, and finally--icing on the cake--the last eight years during which our country turned into your reprehensible cousin Todd, who lies, cheats, molests children, hits his mom and manufactures meth in the garage. Or at least that's what he was doing last time you visited and he stole your credit cards and ran up all those Internet porn charges.

So it's only natural that anyone eager to see the nation embrace ambitions loftier than gettin' rich and killin' A-rabs would speed to lash their dreams to this Democratic star from the windy city. That they would squint to see in this moment just what they so desperately want to see: the return of the true America of tolerance, moderation, compassion, and respect for intellect and accomplishment. This, they imagine, is not an America rendered temporarily placid by the anti-psychotic medications the international community begged her for years to take, but America casting off an evil magic spell and being itself again.

How very charming.

But forgive me. That's not what I see.

Perhaps I'm embittered beyond salvation. Give me lemons and I will take the seeds and the pith and make something so sour and rancid that it will blister your lips before it even hits your tongue. Or perhaps it's the profound discomfort with which I regard good times. When society is at rock bottom, there's nowhere to go but up. But if this is a shining renaissance, duck and cover, baby.

No, the thing that I find so striking about America inviting Obama into their living rooms is the mind boggling degree of coercion that was required to get them to unbolt their front doors.

I mean, yes, it looks like he's going to be President. But he's been staked to such an overwhelming advantage that it seems a bit odd to call what he's doing "winning."

How stacked is the deck in Obama's favor?

To the extent that all elections are a referendum on the party in power, the Democrats should be able to store the public disgust with the last eight years and use it to hold the executive branch for the next half century.

Is their anything the Bush administration hasn't bungled catastrophically?

The war in Iraq is an unqualified failure. Don't waste my time with some crap about the surge. Is that shiny penny supposed to distract us from the fact that when it's all over, what we will have obtained for our trillion dollar investment is a distinctly less-desirable strategic position in the middle east, responsibility for thousands if not millions of lives destroyed, and an indefensible squandering of our international prestige?

And maybe it's because we focused all our energies and resources on Iraq that the fabric of our foreign policy is in tatters. Truly critical issues of national security like the Palestinian situation, nuclear proliferation, and global warming have been either ignored or addressed only with the administration's favored pour-gasoline-light-match tactic. Or maybe we should be thankful for the Bush administration's absurd obsession with Mesopotamia. Can you imagine what disasters would have befallen had they reserved more of this monumental incompetence and applied it to countries that matter?

Our Republican-led international failures are, if anything, exceeded by the swath of their domestic destruction. Let's set aside the torture, the domestic eavesdropping, the politicization of the justice department, and the alteration of the balance of powers so that our federal structure more nearly resembles the dictatorship our founding fathers always envisioned. Set them aside because, by modern conservatives, these are counted accomplishments. There's no point in arguing about it here. But what about the things Republicans are supposed to be good at? What about the ballooning size of government? What about the deficit? What about the economy, for chrissakes!?

OK. We know the Bush administration is awful. Maybe the worst ever. But John McCain is a man who has bucked the Republican party time and again, a war hero with a Roman sense of honor and public virtue. No wonder then that, despite our pitiful circumstances, more than 40% of our populace will vote against Obama.

Please.

The whole idea of John McCain as a formidable candidate has never been more than wishful thinking. He is no more than a distillate of his party's fragmentation. Events have shattered the tenuous alliance between social, political, and fiscal conservatives. To say that John McCain represents all these groups is to call half-full a glass that is all but empty.

McCain is the great compromise, wholly appealing to no constituency of his party. In fact, he doesn't have much in the "appeal" department at all. There are the physical tics. The explosive temper. The jokes that are--to put it generously--off-color. And the man can barely read off a teleprompter. Appropriately or not, these aesthetics impact electability. These things are McCain's "Kucinich ears."

So here is Barack Obama, running for office for the opposition party at a time of almost unprecedented public dissatisfaction, against a despised Republican President and the weakest Republican Presidential candidate in living memory. Yes, Obama appears headed for a solid, perhaps even a landslide electoral victory.

But given the circumstances--how could this thing be so close? It's as if Martians have come out of the sky and promised to infect every man, woman and child with syphilis unless they vote for Obama. And the people's response?

"Can we have a few days to think about it?"

Perhaps real change is coming for this right-of-center country, floating behind the cresting wave of the baby boomer die-off. But it's not here yet. The American majority may be settling comfortably into the Obama camp, but they had to be driven there at gunpoint.

This post is up for adoption at Only Sayin'. It's been neutered and had its rabies shots.

Ah, our financial meltdown. Could any crisis be better contrived and timed to elicit every unbecoming, cut-off-your-nose, dig-your-own-grave tendency in our national character?

It bodes not well.

However, such crises also seem to produce their own opportunities for redemption. Opportunities like anti-matter in a crap-strewn universe, and every bit as elusive.

We'll get to that in a moment. But first, let's spend some time on the ledge.

Collected in the window frame behind us, quietly chanting "jump, jump, jump," is every negative influence ever isolated in the laboratories of self-help science. Fear. Fury. Bewilderment. Vindictiveness. Selfishness. Hate. All the impulses we should strive to hold at bay when it's time to make life-or-death decisions.

Evidence that our most rash and counterproductive urges threaten to win the day is everywhere. The blogs are alight with cries of "let them fail!" Never mind that the "they" in question are holding your retirement.

In the recent Senate hearings on the crisis, Senator Sherrod Brown informed Treasury Secretary Paulson that not one of the torrent of calls to the Senator's office was in favor of the bailout plan. I suppose we should be pleased that looming disaster has rekindled America's moribund interest in civic affairs. Thanks to all those who paused their Wii's long enough to contact their representatives. But too bad our idea of constructive criticism is a collective wail of hysteria.

Garbage in, garbage out, says an old rule of thumb, meaning bad information produces faulty conclusions. And in the political sphere, our national hissy-fit ensures that we'll get more fluff than substance from the legislative sausage grinder. For example, capping Wall St. salaries is about as important right now as turning off the bedroom lights before fleeing a house fire.

Anyway, relax, I say. We'll all be taking a pay cut soon enough.

This is the allure of all our worst instincts on display. How do we respond? Do we boldly push them away? Do we resist their corrosive attraction? Of course not. We drink them down like shipwrecked sailors gorging themselves on salt water.

Stupid, stupid us. In penny romances, there is a moment when the protagonist recognizes their mistakes, is filled with regret, and sets out to make all well. They've traveled through a dark tunnel but come out to light.

Life is not like that. In real life, we come not to the tunnel's opening, but to a dead end where we realize we're inhabiting a disaster. But before we can set anything to right, we must first hack our way back through the recent track of our own dysfunction, blaming everyone but ourselves, lashing out indiscriminately, and sowing every bit as much misery and pain on the way out as we did on the way in.

Aren't we delightful?

So the question is, where on this trek are we right now? For several years now, polls have shown that most Americans think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Perhaps then it doesn't require rose-tinted glasses to think this economic collapse is more of a final comeuppance than a wake-up call.

One other observation justifies optimism. I believe that there is an almost Newtonian physics to two-party politics. That a period of anomalous extremism can involuntarily generate its own antithesis. That out of the reeking, toxic decay of Republican depravity is coming some kind of exotic, mysterious particle of unsuspected positive potential. And its name is Barack Obama.

Look, I have no illusions about what the reality of an Obama administration is likely to be. In all likelihood he will be beaten to a political pulp by the problems he will inherit and will forever be tethered to Jimmy Carter in the revisionist worldview of the 12 consecutive Republican administrations his disastrous tenure will ensure. And who knows what unexpected failings of character he will display. He's as human as the rest of us, and if you think I have an inflated opinion of humanity, well, you haven't been reading very carefully.

And yet one can hardly deny that he is a very different quantity than any candidate to come to the brink of the Presidency in the last 40-odd years. And that his viability is a product of our 8-year-long national catastrophe.

Were it not for the lies, the pointless war, the corruption, the disdain for competence, the indefensible use of torture, the disregard for the rule of law and constitutional democracy, and now this great hundred-year-flood of our financial system, is there any chance we would be on the verge of electing a black man whose middle name is "Hussein" President right now? Any chance?

Impossible.

So I think something different is about to happen. Something special. We are on a cusp that has the potential to be transformational, rather than just a slow, dreary crawl back to mediocrity. And it's happening not in spite of the calamity that envelops us, but because of it.

This slime-covered post was found in the sink-strainer when we did the dishes yesterday at Only Sayin'

I have no talent for admitting I'm wrong. Not because of any surfeit of pride. But rather because it is a skill I have never had occasion to practice.

Until now.

Recently, I wrote about the coming liberal dictatorship. I foresaw a world in which the instruments of power, sharpened by our current leadership to compel absolute submission, would be wielded by a liberal administration for ends every bit as extreme as intended, but far less palatable to people who live in Texas.

That could still happen. But it's like a television program preempted by breaking news: it may be in the can, but it's not what anyone will be watching.

Our constitutional crisis has been supplanted by an economic crisis. We paused momentarily to put our head between our knees and breathe into a paper bag, and when we looked up, we discovered we're having a socialist revolution--engineered by neo-conservatives!

Holy. Fucking. Shit. I'd like to think this is a simple matter of a spectacularly misguided policy coming to a head like an angry, puss-filled carbuncle. But we've been fleeced so many times by the carnies who run this country that we can hardly be faulted for suspecting this catastrophe is just another Republican sleight-of-hand designed to reclaim an initiative that seemed hopelessly lost. Are they once again stealing a march on their political opponents by doing something so unexpected, so out-of-left field, so bat-shit crazy that those who would resist are simply paralyzed with shock?

If so, admiration overwhelms my disgust. I mean... it's just... diabolical! And it's so freakin' BIG that even I never conjured such a thing in my wildest dreams--and I am not in the habit of constraining my imaginings. If you only knew the sick things I am picturing right now...

Just think! In the course of a few days, the people who have for a decade belittled their detractors with the epithet of socialism, who made a sacred mission of kneecapping the mere patina of a welfare state created in the 1930's, who have attempted to demonize Russia in a barely-disguised ploy to reanimate the politically convenient bete noir of world communism--these same people have swarmed to a one trillion dollar takeover of the entire American financial system like sailors on the decks of the battleship Potemkin!

Look! There's Henry Paulson driving the kulak financiers of lower Manhattan into the overcrowded bar cars of the MetroNorth railway. Soon they will disappear into the cavernous conservatories of their Greenwich homes, where they will forevermore consume canapes and cognac in miserable obscurity.

And there! There's Ben Bernake storming the New York stock exchange in a tricolor cockade! It impossible to tell what's happening amidst the cigar smoke and the roar of the press corps, but rumors fly that Goldman Sachs has declared a commune of lower Trinity Place. And who can calculate the human cost? The dry cleaning bill alone will run to six figures!

And now a hush falls on the nation. For returned from his long march to Crawford Texas is Chairman Bush, the Great Leader! For love of him, children expose their parents for shorting T-bills. With a glance and gesture he makes spareribs tender and biscuits moist.

Viva La Revolución! To the barricades! All power to the soviets! Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!

Uh...

Something feels oh so wrong here. Aren't socialist revolutions supposed to come from below?

That the cries of "Power to the people!" are coming not from the downtrodden peasantry, but from the Tsar and his minions is testimony to the fact that what the people are going to get here is anything but power. It is a whole boatload of grief.

How bad is it? It is all the way bad. The bad, to borrow the idiom of Spinal Tap, will go to 11.

Envision the worthless paper of 10 million home loans that America is buying as the sorriest looking Ford Pinto in the used car lot. It's a colossal lemon. And the problem with lemons is not a philosophical one to be debated by earnest sophomores in bong-hit fueled bull sessions. The problem with lemons is that they break down right on the entrance ramp to the freeway in rush hour while your wife howls in labor on the passenger side and the air conditioning doesn't work and it's 105 degrees and the rest of your little monsters are trying to disembowel each other in the back seat and you feel you have no choice but to do the job for them yourself and that's going to take some explaining if and when the highway patrol ever arrives.

That's the problem with lemons.

For our economy, catastrophe is every bit as imminent as it was before our dear President signed us taxpayers up to bail out his rich friends. More so, perhaps, because those Wall St. wizards--major asshats though they be--actually do know a fair amount about navigating difficult financial straits. But they no longer give a damn what happens. They're off the hook and our fates are now in the hands of a completely different but much less skilled collection of asshats called Congress.

Why do you think there were so many smiling faces on the floor of the stock exchange when the bailout plan was announced and the Dow surged? Because we've been rescued? Of course not. The traders were smiling because they've been rescued.

We'll be sure to write frequently to those former Wall Streeters at their spas in Hawaii and let them know how it's going as the housing market goes from slide to plummet. As credit becomes impossible and business contracts. As pain cascades through the population in the form of sweeping layoffs. As inflation soars because that will make paying back the massive debt we've taken on cheaper.

We've chained ourselves to this falling anvil with the same rash ignorance with which we bought that 10,000 sq.ft. McMansion last year. And now we're living in one of those 1970 conspiracy movies where the hero is killed just before he can save the world, the bad guys get off scot free, and everything is most assuredly not going to be alright.

Looking for a bright spot in all this is like looking for the bright spot in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. The only brightness comes from the roaring flames, which serve to silhouette the doomed figures in the window frames just before they leap.

But let's indulge in a brief bit of Panglossian self-delusion anyhoo, yes?

One upside is that the crackers of middle America, stunned by sudden crisis, will probably not come to their senses until just after they've elected a colored fella President. Boy, will they be grumpy once they realize.

And this: It's true that America will be vomiting and watching our hair fall out for years as a result of the radioactive fallout from this disaster. But can you imagine how this would have been packaged if the Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac / Lehman brothers / AIG mushroom cloud had come even one hour after Barack Obama locked down the election in the predawn of November 5th?

Our present storyline sure wouldn't be about the apocalyptic comeuppance of mindless deregulation. Or the destruction of the myth that the mindless Darwinian churning of free markets is somehow tempered by an inherent goodness. Or about the essential hollowness of a society built on the corrosive notion that wealth is the same thing as virtue.

No sir. If this atomic blast had been delayed, there would be only one storyline trumpeted by the tools of conservatism and a p-whipped (c-whipped?) media: Barack Obama as pilot of the Enola Gay. That's right. We'd be told that an otherwise vibrant economy had collapsed at the mere thought of the prosperity-hating policies he would inevitably implement.

So we can breathe a big sigh of relief that the world is ending sooner rather than later.

This economic convulsion also alters the landscape of political possibility in intriguing ways. Free marketers talk reverently of creative destruction--the rise of new mercantile opportunity from the decaying matter of endeavors that have failed and fallen. But they never considered what might grow from the steaming corpse of their entire beloved system.

For example, though the words "universal health insurance" were spoken in the campaign, only a fool could have believed the idea more than a political pipe dream. But the shattering mental impact of seeing the establishment dissolve, combined with the soon-to-be-palpable effects of unemployment and the credit crunch on our already tenuous access to the proctologist we desperately need may yet give unexpected substance to that dream.

Not all political pigs will fly. But don't be surprised if some sprout wings and, like turkeys, make a whole lot of unforeseen commotion.

And finally this: Conservatives are ever fulminating that Obama---contrary to his voting record or his public statements--harbors secret intentions of outfitting America in Mao jackets and handing out Little Red Books. But now they've been compelled by the deformed product of their own extremism to lurch leftward in advance of his arrival. Will they therefore restrain their urge to tag his administration as the enemy of all that is American? As the undoer of freedom? Will they exhibit that most minimal degree of decency that shames us from accusing others of our own failures?

Don't be ridiculous. Of course they won't. And their misrepresentations will be swallowed hook, line and sinker by a culture whose worldview is shaped and reshaped by no experiences more distant than those of the previous two weeks. By February, Barack Obama will be solely responsible for our metasticizing economy, the plight of Katrina victims, the terrorist attacks of 2001, and the burning of the capital by British regulars in the War of 1812.

Yet some small weight has undeniably been lifted from Obama's shoulders. Centering economic governance will no longer require a massive heave to the left certain to provoke opposition from formidable conservative constituencies. And in the continuing chaos to come he'll find more freedom of action than he could have hoped for six months ago. It's a lot easier to be a builder when the demolition's already done.

And let's be fair (even if it isn't much fun), the real villain here isn't conservatism, any more than the savior is liberalism. The villain is absolutism. It's extremism. It's the absurd idea that if less regulation is good, no regulation is even better. Would any rational person argue that commerce is possible without the regulation of contract law, accounting rules, and the like? And if that's true, shouldn't we just scotch all the scorched-earth, anti-regulatory ranting and start a measured discussion on how to do it right?

So here's to hoping we can get back on track for balance and moderation. That we can enact the kind of regulation that let's us maximize the benefits of the free market while minimizing the risks. That we can stop chasing the chimera of perfecting our system, and settle in to the hard, never-ending, and unavoidably messy task of optimizing it.

Until then, Viva La Revolución, baby!

This post is the indentured servant of Only Sayin'

Dear Mr. Vice-President

Regarding the proposal I submitted for your review entitled “How to Solve the Climate Crisis: Must I Do Everything Myself?” Thank you for a your prompt response. It was most gratifying that your representatives contacted me even before I had fully withdrawn my hand from the postal box into which I was placing the completed dossier for delivery to you office. Given the astonishingly swift reaction my query elicited, I can only conclude that the media has created a false impression of your disposition on this matter in the public mind.

Clearly, you care very much about the environment after all.

My thanks to your staff. In these past several weeks they have been unfailingly attentive towards me. I am ashamed to tax your hospitality even further by respectfully requesting some additional luxuries. A little natural light, perhaps? And some clothes. And if someone would be so kind as to phone my wife and let her know when she might expect my return.

By the way… When exactly might my wife expect my return?

But your time is valuable...

Sir, I am not one who pays much attention to contemporary politics, but I am an unerring judge of character. I see the torment that is in your heart. You want desperately to alert the world to the dangers of global warming, to light the great beacon of public peril. But, like a Hamlet, all your urge to action is swamped by the erratic tides of an internal equivocation you cannot suppress.

Why, you wonder, why can't you ever just make a decision?!

Do not be ashamed that I have read your innermost thoughts so clearly.

And even if you were to speak up, how can one quiet-voiced, soft-hearted man hope to convince the sour Brahmins of conservatism to cease their obstructionism? To date, they have parried every approach. We have engaged in dialogue, but perpetual political dueling has poisoned the soil where compromise would sprout. We have pleaded for modest restraint of industries that pollute, but reluctance to regulate is their central imperative. We have offered facts, but the pronouncements of scientists they slough off as the naval-gazing of an effeminate academia.

So let us speak to them in terms they understand. Let us sell them insurance.

Conservatives love insurance. It provides a means by which they may hedge against the mischief of death, the fires soon to be set by their estranged children, and the divorce that must ensue when they at last acknowledge their own homosexuality. Insurance lets them profit each time the world proves to be as dark and menacing as they secretly wish it to be. And though they may witness one of their children tragically sucked into a wood chipper, they find satisfaction via the miracle of remuneration, and more still in the validation of their negative outlook.

Like you, I can only pity their wretchedness.

But let us take the opportunity presented by our opponents' spiritual deformity. Let us address the issue of climate change not as one political or scientific, but as one actuarial. Let us eschew the patchouli-scented, flower-powered argument of harmonious planetary stewardship that conservatives find repellent and propose the horse-sense of a fiscal hedge.

What would they offer in refutation?

Perhaps they would be reluctant to insure against an event they believe to be without precedent. They might note that insurers have audited history's track of eyeballs gouged, limbs severed, homes devoured in flame and luxury yachts drunkenly grounded. Actuarial odds makers can offhandedly calculate precisely the chance that you will regain full use of your fingers after fishing around in an airplane lavatory for the meth pipe you dropped. But we have yet to lose a planet. Come back after that happens, they will say. Then we'll talk.

Others on the right will know that the planet has indeed been lost before. Paleogeology shows that life on earth has been ravaged to its barest foundations by climatic reversals on several occasions in its deep past. But those who grasp earth's history can be no less stubborn. They seem to believe that the fact that disaster can strike even without cars or coal-fueled power plants means we should adopt a fatalistic passivity. As they watch their grandchildren scraping the baked clay for grubs to eat, they will take comfort in the fact that it might not be completely their fault.

But the masters of industry will open themselves to the message if it comes from you whom they blindly believe to be one of their own. Tell them! Tell them how data from ice cores and fossil samples, from ocean temperatures and atmospheric analysis, from studies of forestation patterns and species extinction all add up to the most tragic thing they can envision.

Reduced growth.

Paint the horrors of this future for them in all its sickening detail. The consumer products collecting dust on store shelves because a malnourished populace has not the energy for shopping. Sales of jet-ski's drying up as fast as the rivers and lakes upon which they once frolicked. Thousands of Mediterranean cruises refunded because the fleet is being used as temporary housing for 200 million African refugees.

"No!" They will cry, "Not refunds!"

Compel them to confront the monstrous horror of commerce impaired, the piteous site of profits reduced, and the soul-crushing purposelessness of life when quarterly revenue targets are not achieved. Then they will ante up. They will beg you to take their money to build windmills. To install solar panels. To convert cars to run on fryer oil.

For you, Dick--may I call you Dick?--the sacrifice required may be total. You must never allow the forces of evil to know the real you. You must be to all observers unfeeling, bitter, selfish, and cruel, even if the strain causes the true light of your spirit to flicker and go out.

But you can do it. Just be yourself.

This post was busted for smoking in the lavatory at Only Sayin'

Dear Mr. Vice-President

Regarding the proposal I submitted for your review entitled “How to Solve the Climate Crisis: Must I Do Everything Myself?” Thank you for a your prompt response. It was most gratifying that your representatives contacted me even before I had fully withdrawn my hand from the postal box into which I was placing the completed dossier for delivery to you office. Given the astonishingly swift reaction my query elicited, I can only conclude that the media has created a false impression of your disposition on this matter in the public mind.

Clearly, you care very much about the environment after all.

My thanks to your staff. In these past several weeks they have been unfailingly attentive towards me. I am ashamed to tax your hospitality even further by respectfully requesting some additional luxuries. A little natural light, perhaps? And some clothes. And if someone would be so kind as to phone my wife and let her know when she might expect my return.

By the way… When exactly might my wife expect my return?

But your time is valuable...

Sir, I am not one who pays much attention to contemporary politics, but I am an unerring judge of character. I see the torment that is in your heart. You want desperately to alert the world to the dangers of global warming, to light the great beacon of public peril. But, like a Hamlet, all your urge to action is swamped by the erratic tides of an internal equivocation you cannot suppress.

Why, you wonder, why can't you ever just make a decision?!

Do not be ashamed that I have read your innermost thoughts so clearly.

And even if you were to speak up, how can one quiet-voiced, soft-hearted man hope to convince the sour Brahmins of conservatism to cease their obstructionism? To date, they have parried every approach. We have engaged in dialogue, but perpetual political dueling has poisoned the soil where compromise would sprout. We have pleaded for modest restraint of industries that pollute, but reluctance to regulate is their central imperative. We have offered facts, but the pronouncements of scientists they slough off as the naval-gazing of an effeminate academia.

So let us speak to them in terms they understand. Let us sell them insurance.

Conservatives love insurance. It provides a means by which they may hedge against the mischief of death, the fires soon to be set by their estranged children, and the divorce that must ensue when they at last acknowledge their own homosexuality. Insurance lets them profit each time the world proves to be as dark and menacing as they secretly wish it to be. And though they may witness one of their children tragically sucked into a wood chipper, they find satisfaction via the miracle of remuneration, and more still in the validation of their negative outlook.

Like you, I can only pity their wretchedness.

But let us take the opportunity presented by our opponents' spiritual deformity. Let us address the issue of climate change not as one political or scientific, but as one actuarial. Let us eschew the patchouli-scented, flower-powered argument of harmonious planetary stewardship that conservatives find repellent and propose the horse-sense of a fiscal hedge.

What would they offer in refutation?

Perhaps they would be reluctant to insure against an event they believe to be without precedent. They might note that insurers have audited history's track of eyeballs gouged, limbs severed, homes devoured in flame and luxury yachts drunkenly grounded. Actuarial odds makers can offhandedly calculate precisely the chance that you will regain full use of your fingers after fishing around in an airplane lavatory for the meth pipe you dropped. But we have yet to lose a planet. Come back after that happens, they will say. Then we'll talk.

Others on the right will know that the planet has indeed been lost before. Paleogeology shows that life on earth has been ravaged to its barest foundations by climatic reversals on several occasions in its deep past. But those who grasp earth's history can be no less stubborn. They seem to believe that the fact that disaster can strike even without cars or coal-fueled power plants means we should adopt a fatalistic passivity. As they watch their grandchildren scraping the baked clay for grubs to eat, they will take comfort in the fact that it might not be completely their fault.

But the masters of industry will open themselves to the message if it comes from you whom they blindly believe to be one of their own. Tell them! Tell them how data from ice cores and fossil samples, from ocean temperatures and atmospheric analysis, from studies of forestation patterns and species extinction all add up to the most tragic thing they can envision.

Reduced growth.

Paint the horrors of this future for them in all its sickening detail. The consumer products collecting dust on store shelves because a malnourished populace has not the energy for shopping. Sales of jet-ski's drying up as fast as the rivers and lakes upon which they once frolicked. Thousands of Mediterranean cruises refunded because the fleet is being used as temporary housing for 200 million African refugees.

"No!" They will cry, "Not refunds!"

Compel them to confront the monstrous horror of commerce impaired, the piteous site of profits reduced, and the soul-crushing purposelessness of life when quarterly revenue targets are not achieved. Then they will ante up. They will beg you to take their money to build windmills. To install solar panels. To convert cars to run on fryer oil.

For you, Dick--may I call you Dick?--the sacrifice required may be total. You must never allow the forces of evil to know the real you. You must be to all observers unfeeling, bitter, selfish, and cruel, even if the strain causes the true light of your spirit to flicker and go out.

But you can do it. Just be yourself.

This post was busted for smoking in the lavatory at Only Sayin'

If I read the headlines aright, John Conyers really means it this time.

Harriet Meiers, Karl Rove, David Addington, John Ashcroft, David Hasselhoff--all will testify, the truth will out, and there will be hell to pay.

For what we're not exactly sure. The politicized hiring and firing at the justice department? The persecution of Don Siegelman in Alabama? The EPA's willful disregard of a court's mandate to regulate greenhouse gasses? What about all that domestic eavesdropping? The war lies and forgeries? It's a list without end. Trying to find a thread that connects just one person to just one crime is like trying to remove just the shallots from a bisque.

But can you feel it? The pressure is building. The suspense is intolerable.

Buckle up people, we are headed for a shattering anticlimax!

In a normal world, there would be a predictable postscript to such an orgy of malfeasance. One that included resignations, indictments, arraignments, Alberto Gonzalez in an ill-tailored orange jumpsuit, and ultimately, Dick Cheney as the only reliable source for cigarettes at a Maryland Federal prison.

In a normal world.

But in our world, absolutely none of this will happen. Yes, the Democrats will shuttle these investigations hither and thither through committees with all the frenetic purposelessness of a flock of agitated turkeys. But these escalations from suspicions to subpoenas to contempt, these are not the executioner's blade falling in irresistible stages. These are shaggy dog jokes. And, as with all shaggy dog jokes, the punchline is your own slack-jawed gullibility.

You really thought someone was going to go to jail, didn't you?

Sucker.

The Democrats, however, are victims of their own jest as well. Eventually, flushed with a sense of victory, they will retire to their homes to exchange self-congratulatory phone calls. And the perjurers, torturers, profiteers, influence peddlers, and felons miscellaneous will saunter off to empty their Swiss bank accounts, write their best-selling memoirs, or take lucrative yet undemanding positions as lobbyists.

Surely the handful of Republicans who are not yet the subjects of an investigation must feel a little queasy to see such general indifference regarding the enforcement of justice? Isn't the magical deterring power of draconian penalties the only thing preventing us from plunging into anarchy?

But deterrence, in the conservative mindset, is really only an operative concept when applied to the lower classes, who, because they spend so much time in the criminal justice system, know exactly what kinds of sentences they don't want to receive. Lobbyists, legislators, and Presidents Vice- and otherwise can't be held accountable to a code with which they have so little firsthand experience. Nor would it be appropriate to place rigid constraints upon them, for the salubrious functioning of a vibrant kleptocracy such as ours requires that those in command be granted a certain expansive prerogative of conduct. In other words, as long as our government is making a good faith effort to secure the American way of life for future generations, who's to say just how much perjury is too much?

Armed with this enabling perspective, Republicans have worked as mechanically as a colony of ants for eight interminable years to remake government on the model of organized crime. Leveraging a terrorist attack to create war and fear, they manufactured the enormous social and political upheaval required to cleanse America of its quaint expectations of due process, a limited executive, respect for law, transparency, and human rights. The fact that the architects of this madness have been spared all consequence just shows that their success is complete.

Or is it?

Perhaps these would-be autocrats have been so intent on the nearness of their prize that they've been blind to the fatal flaw in their plans. Yes, they have created a Franken-government optimized for tyranny. But if my calculations are correct, they will be ready to pull the switch and imbue this horrific creature with Life! Life! right about...

January of 2009. Just in time for Barack Obama to take over the controls.

All hail the coming liberal dictatorship!

Is justice not sweet? Will payback not be a bitch? I know it is unbecoming to savor the discomfiture of others, even one's enemies. But I have not had the opportunity to stretch, and if I were to resist the urge to revel, I might pull a muscle.

So, dear conservatives, let's consider what the next four years hold--besides compulsory abortions, that is.

All food will be locally grown, organic, and vegetarian. French fries will be taxed exorbitantly. Three days after the policy takes effect, fat people will eat fast food wrappers from trash cans in scenes reminiscent of Stalinist collectivization in the Ukraine.

Not only will there be medical marijuana, marijuana will be the only medicine. Cancer patients will eat and go into remission. People suffering from all other illnesses will endure unbearable suffering, but--small mercy--will later have no memory of it.

Everyone will be issued one of those cars so small that it looks like it caught some kind of necrosis of the flesh and had to have its ass amputated. Road rage will become cute. Teenagers will be so mortified that dating will cease. University researchers will compete to successfully miniaturize fuzzy dice.

Hundreds of luxury "Welcome Centers" will receive Mexicans along our southern borders. As part of a new national service program, debutantes will bathe the immigrants and massage their tired calves with scented ointments. The Department of Agriculture will fund the development of new, easy-to-pick varieties of fruit trees.

Each American will be given the names and addresses of 20 people from other countries to whom they must send a sincere-sounding note of apology. Hand written. And on good stationary--not that cheap stuff. That's right. Just like your mother taught you.

The tax rate for people making over $200,000 per year will be 90%. But they can have half of it back if they ask very, VERY nicely. And sign a paper denying Jesus.

That is just a small sampling of what is in store. The complete list of planned decrees is far too voluminous to transcribe here. And of course it is full of the kind of egg-heady, hard-to-read intellectual language that liberals use because they think they're better than everyone else.

But perhaps those of you who have seen it would like to describe some of your favorite provisions?

This post is a love child of Only Sayin'

If it turns out the military really is the sole protector of my liberties, I'm going to have to make some other arrangement after they read this.

A cousin of mine was kind enough to forward a now-viral email--enhanced with some supporting commentary of my cousin's own--exposing Barack Obama as a hypocrite and fraud. It seems I have been greatly mislead by TV footage of the candidate in the middle east greeting ecstatic throngs of US service people. The truth is that Obama has been rude and distant, snubbing the troops in his haste to butter up the generals and the media. Everywhere, he has left shocked and insulted soldiers in his wake.

I watched the news footage again on You Tube. The ingeniously doctored images of a beaming Obama against a backdrop of cheering service people look unassailably authentic. Is there no limit to what they can do with special effects these days?

I did not respond to the email. I imagined the dressing down I would receive from the team of case workers that I can only assume attend my cousin. What could possibly have possessed me to engage and provoke someone so obviously delusional? Do I tease children with cancer about their hair?

Gaping is the gulf between the words we write and the message we send. The words in the missive my cousin sent were lengthy and detailed, and for the most part grammatical and correctly spelled--not to be taken for granted in works of this genre. Yet the message received was many orders of magnitude more succinct:

"Hello. How are you? I am completely bananas."

It seems disrespectful not to accord each individual pearl of preposterousness in this email its opportunity to shine en solo. But let us concede to the demands of brevity, and give special honors to the fervently hymned assertion that the United States military is the supreme granter and guarantor of our freedom.

First off, cousin, the Founding Fathers--whose hagiography should always be invoked when their perspective conveniently reinforces the particular point we want to make--viewed standing armies as the pernicious enabler of a tyrant's will.

So as a young cub of a country, we had no army to speak of. This proved a terrible approach to winning wars. We owe our independence less to the disheveled Continental Army and its talent for retreat than to British exasperation and the serendipitous arrival of the French fleet. Our strategy in the war of 1812 was equally as clever. We simply waited for the Redcoats in the sacked wreckage of Washington to get sick of the mosquitoes and go home. Yet somehow, despite our martial floundering, liberty flourished: John Adams remained free to wander the moors of Braintree, MA and irritate all he encountered. People voted. Unless they were women. Or black. Or renters. And marginally human pioneers on our remote frontiers bred with their siblings and engaged in unspeakable acts with livestock, with never a worry about animal rights activists.

Isn't freedom rich and wondrous?

Have we become more free as our military has expanded? It depends what kind of freedom you mean.

I suspect when you talk about freedom, you are primarily referring to the freedom from subjugation. You have hazy, apocalyptic visions of being herded around in shackles and rags and compelled to move rocks from one side of the road to the other for no discernible purpose. You probably even picture your tormentors as the French, whom we have just learned are the same nice folks who saved your sorry ass in the Revolution.

You ingrate.

But if you will sharpen the focus of your mind's eye for a moment, you will see that the figures wielding the whips in your vision are not La Gaulois, but rather actors in gorilla suits. Because your nightmares of conquest are no product of some savant-like intuition for history's trajectory, but a vague recollection of that time you saw Planet of the Apes. And your fear of defeat at foreign hands is about as realistic as the monkeys.

For though many across the world owe their freedom to the prowess of our military--a thought that for you elicits only chauvinistic indifference where pride should swell--none have displayed any inclination to cross the oceans and subdue the people of Oshkosh or Coral Gables. The only defenses against foreign invasion we seem to require are our unwieldy geography and the world's terror that, if provoked, we will strike back by withholding our delicious snack foods and game shows.

But maybe the freedom you believe flows from a benevolent military is more abstract--the freedom of expression. As someone who spends most every waking moment trying to think of shocking and inappropriate things to say, this is a freedom I treasure. But dear cousin, if I am free to cheerfully belittle our nation's abysmal culinary predilections, to howl over our penchant for glorifying ignorance, and to suggest that our unbecoming narcissism is the hallmark of losers, it's not because the army is here to protect that right. Quite the opposite. It is because the army is expressly forbidden to deploy domestically absent the provocation of foreign invasion, and so can do nothing to stop me from making an ass of myself. It's an arcane legal remnant of a simpler time, and one which--take heart, cousin--I'm sure the President means to remedy before he leaves office. But until then the army can't shoot people in the nifty fifty. Which is why they're always so psyched when they get to travel abroad.

There is one kind of domestic freedom that the military is protecting these days, but I think you will regard this genuine concession on my part as only a veiled barb. OK--it's a veiled barb. The freedom the military is protecting is our freedom to be wealthier than other people. How do they do it? Most notably by hanging out innocuously in the middle east and saying things like, "Oh--is this an oilfield? We didn't notice." But don't be smug, because the balance sheet of our martial proclivities won't tolerate scrutiny. For whatever benefits it provides--yes, $4/gallon is cheap!--the military industrial complex absorbs countless billions of dollars that might otherwise be used for public education or health care, so rendering us less free to go to college or to get that lump checked out.

You probably think I'm a Utopian dreamer. But I'm not advocating for disbanding the army. I know well that foreign nations periodically behave as badly as the foreigners with which they are infested, and I believe our diplomatic tool kit should include a big, up-armored, military-style pipe wrench we can use to bludgeon the recalcitrant into unconsciousness when necessary. Nor am I a troop-hater. I'm confident the vast majority serve out of a sense of responsibility, selflessness, and desire to make a positive contribution. I can only hope that I too may one day rise to display an equal generosity of spirit. Dammit, so I shall if the anti-depressants ever kick in.

And I know my tactlessness tempers my power to persuade. "The more sacred the cow, the better the barbecue," I always say, and as a result am no longer invited to Indian weddings. But I am keenly sensible of your attachments in this matter. I know that your close family has a history of military service, and I know your children are serving now. It is only natural that any attack on the institution of which they are a part should arouse your defensive maternal instincts. I expected no less. I assure you the oil people, the arms people, and the ocean of hangers-on that stand to gain from our wars expected no less as well. The ferocity with which you cling to your faith in the benevolence of the military is most convenient for them. Perhaps, once our current crop of wars have been edged out of the market by a fresh round of conflicts, and your children have come home again--not in a box, god willing--these real victors will share some of their windfall with you. Out of the goodness of their hearts, of course.

My point is that you should protect your babies, not the bathwater. The nobility of your children's service cannot be more or less pure than their intent in offering it, no matter to what ends it is manipulated. Nor will you diminish it if you set aside your preconceptions and the superficial patriotic palliatives you fondly recite and instead think critically about the cause and effects of America's flourishing belligerence. That would not be a betrayal, but rather the exercising of a mother's due diligence.

I take it that you, like the author of the scurrilous fabrication you abetted, "usually don't think much about politics."

Maybe it's time you started.

Given today's Wall Street Journal report on government spying on Americans, a little something I threw together of an evening at Only Sayin' seems apter than everer.

Have fun...

----

What do we know of the so-called Total Information Awareness program?

Though it is much in the news of late, what we read and hear generates much noise, but sheds little light. We glean that it is so secret and vital to our minute-to-minute survival that everyone with knowledge of its details has already been killed. We know it gives Dick Cheney a woody. (Can that be good?) We know that it is favored by the clear-eyed and crew cut patriots at Denny's restaurants across the country, for unlike those effete eastern homosexuals and dope smokers, they have nothing to hide. And we know that the democrats, in a display of the infinite cowardice for which they are justly renowned, have just pumped it full of amphetamines, soaked it in gasoline, and given it the keys to the hummer, much liked a stunned football player staggering triumphantly towards his own end zone, elated by the roar of the crowd, unable to hear the words they scream:

"You're running the wrong way!"

We know these things, but none of them is one of the two things that are the <i>only</i> two things you need to know about this program.

In a moment, I will reveal these two things to you. But first, I am going to tell you exactly what this top secret program does. The personal consequences of this treasonous disclosure will be dire. In the aftermath, I will be granted the highest level of security clearance so that I may then be ceremoniously stripped of it. I will be extraordinarily rendered; I have already charged my iPod and packed my comfy neck pillow for the flight. And I will be tortured: I will have to watch Karl Rove dance, to read the complete works of Bill Kristol, to follow the briar-choked, corpse-strewn track of  Dana Perino's logic.

National security, you best put on something sheer and lacy, 'cause you're about to get compromised.

The surveillance program in question involves intercepting and recording telephone conversations, and likely email as well. Supposedly, only communications in which one participant is outside the United States will be targeted. But the physical telecommunications infrastructure doesn't always support such a surgical partitioning of the internal and the external, so it would be naive to think that no purely domestic communications will get swept up in the mix. The collected information will then be subjected to analysis by an array of automated processes that will look for suspicious key words and patterns, in hopes that a few potential needles can be extracted from this astronomically big haystack and brought to the attention of the finest analytical tool at our nation's disposal.

Which is a guy named Alan who drinks 17 cups of coffee a day, has an enlarged prostate gland, and has been sitting at the same desk in Langley, VA for the last 20 years.

Alan will then decide whether the potential suspects identified by the system warrant further investigation.

If this sounds a little bit backwards to you--to first record phone calls and then decide whether the people on the phone deserve to be targeted--you're right. And thus all the whining from those fixated on quaint notions like "liberty" and "the law."

Historically, agents of law enforcement have to first establish that there is reason to suspect that person X is a criminal, and then they can get a warrant to spy. Whether the changes to technology and to the security threats we face over the last few decades justify this new approach is a legitimate subject for debate. But there can be no doubt that it is a sea change.

Shall we now examine the issues manifest in our technological advances? Shall we take measure of our altered security outlook and probe the myriad scenarios of dirty bombs and poisoned water supplies? Let's not. For that would be dull for you, dear reader. Far worse, it would be taxing for me, and that is something to be avoided at all costs.

Thankfully, such exertions are unnecessary. For as I said earlier, there are only two things you need to know about our new, steroid-enhanced government surveillance program. First, when you balance the effectiveness of the program against the costs both monetary and inherent in the erosion of our privacy, it turns out that it isn't very effective. Most experts concede, and past experience has shown, that if we took the bazillions of dollars that are spent to collect and analyze all this data and spent it instead on agents like Alan so they can infiltrate extremist networks, establish informants, and do the kind of targeted, legal (warrants and everything!) surveillance that has borne so much fruit in the past, we'd catch far more bad guys.

Alan would probably appreciate the opportunity to get out of the office. Certainly, he could use the exercise.

In other words, this isn't a choice between security and privacy, it's a plan to make sure we get neither. File it under "S" for "Sucky Plans We Shouldn't Do."

On to the second thing you must know about the surveillance program: it is overseen by the people in charge of executing it. Will the ability to invade our privacy therefore be abused for political ends?

Oh, that the lord would send me an all-powerful font face of fire in which to type these words...

<i>Yes. It will.</i>

It is the most mortal of locks.

Tell me, what is the central foundation of our system of government? No, not life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. No, not the right to get filthy rich and then consider yourself better than everyone else. (But good answer. Half credit awarded.) No, the central truth which has made this nation successful is this: People are awful, and you should never, ever, ever trust them. Tyranny follows unchecked power as surely as the drain clogs when you give yourself a haircut over the sink.

I heard an analyst argue that this program does not represent a threat, because the decent, dedicated career civil servants at our intelligence agencies would never use it in an untoward manner.

Please. No argument could be better contrived to make the founding fathers howl with laughter.

I'm not saying that the power now granted will be used to determine what toppings Barack Obama likes on his pizza or to capture and later capitalize upon the involuntary exclamations of Hillary Clinton in the throes of passion--though, given our present administration's dubious track record, you could perhaps be forgiven for acknowledging that possibility. I'm not even suggesting that an all-hands conference call between Osama Bin Laden and the heads of his international network might be overlooked because the last bits of computer disc space were filled with an account of the late night goings-on at the U. of Iowa girls' dorm. But will the government claim successes that can never be confirmed as a basis for further expanding this program and others like it, until all of your daily communications and utterances become tools to be used on a whim by the public servants-cum-gangsters in the White House, and by the public servants that will follow but become gangsters themselves via the influence of that same corrupting power? A temptation even more compelling than cookies?

I say again, in a mighty font: <i>You betcha.</i>

So do not be confused, dear friends. Do not let debaters on all sides of this issue cloud your thinking by dragging you down into the details of implementation, or with scholarly disquisitions on the niceties of interpreted law regarding privacy rights. Even the most familiar objects of daily life are unrecognizable when examined under a microscope, and once manipulated into debating the fine points of a topic we'll wake to find that we implicitly conceded the proposition as a whole.

Ask yourself, should you be heeding those distant but urgent alarm bells ringing faintly in your head?

<i>Yes.</i>

Hillary Clinton is playing a hand dealt by Obama. And the dealer peeked.

Actually, he did more than peek. He laid out all the cards face up and selected the aces for himself. Aces like hope, freshness, change, and unity.

To Hillary he sent deuces and tres like competence, hard work, reliability and experience.

And now she's cornered. It's clear she's made the decision to play her hand to the hilt, raising the ante round by round. But if she thinks this can work, her naivete is stunning. And isn't Hillary supposed to be the shrewd one?

She should have cried foul the moment he took out the cards and with feathery touch sent them acrobatically arcing from one hand to the other. At the very least, she should have fought for a new deal like it was a matter of survival. Because it was.

Now it's too late. She has a losing hand. And the harder she plays it, the bigger she will lose.

Granted, Hillary entered the game confronting some intrinsic challenges. One is that she's a woman. There are those who would argue that this creates an unfair and impossible obstacle for her. How can any woman display the toughness that makes a credible Commander in Chief without also being pegged as an abrasive shrew?

Before long, a woman will come along who is equipped to use her gender as a point of strength. A woman who taps naturally into all the positive feelings people have towards the powerful and influential women in their lives. Voters will defend this woman when she's attacked as if their own sister were under assault. And they will bend to her will to avoid disappointing her, out of an almost holy respect, as they do for their mothers. Such a woman will come along, but it appears her name will not be Hillary Clinton. Except in a case of monumental coincidence.

You may lament the superficiality of a politics that elevates personality and carriage to a par with policies one advocates. But as well to rue inconvenient realities like the need for sleep or ear wax build-up. These things aren't going away either.

And while women have a bigger hill to climb in presidential politics--at least until someone breaks the glass ceiling--gender expectations cut both ways. Dennis Kucinich can never be President. He's short. And those ears! Even his wife, ravishing as she is, cannot restore him to manhood.

So Obama and Clinton are competing for the voters' affections each against a different set of gender expectations, like apples and oranges. But only one of them can be the winner, and Obama is proving that people like his orange more than Clinton's apple.

Some--you?--may find Clinton to be more personally compelling than Obama. You see in her a commanding presence, evoking warmth, loyalty and a host of protective instincts. But if so, you are incontrovertibly in the minority. In a race in which the policy differences between the two candidates are barely discernible, the wave of enthusiasm that is carrying Obama can only be attributed to the impact of his style and personality. It isn't just minorities that gravitate to him. It isn't just men. It isn't just Democrats. His support cuts across virtually every demographic except the sourest of dead-end conservatives. People like him more than Clinton.

She was slow to grasp both the fact and the significance of this. Perhaps she smugly believed Obama's expansive style would be his own downfall, that America had learned its lesson about selecting Presidents for their likeability. Given the experience of the last eight years, we might have come to believe that anyone we like enough to elect president must also be utterly incapable of doing the job. We might have forgotten that a winning personality does not preclude intelligence, and in fact what a powerful aid personal magnetism can be in the pursuit of well-considered goals.

Even if the Clinton team recognized early in the race that Obama was winning hearts, they can hardly be blamed for sitting pat as the candidate for the head. If the utilitarian fluorescence of her personality seems pale in comparison to the radiant aura generated by her competitor, what could she hope to do about it over the course of a few short months, if ever? Politicians make required mechanical adjustments when their pollsters identify negative responses to their bearing or facial expressions. Acting differently is mere stagecraft. But being different is a much taller order. Witness the plasticine smile that John McCain's advisers have hot-glued to his face in recent weeks. We'll see how that works out. The electorate may go slack and numb when confronted with even a glimpse of tax policy detail, but they can spot a phony in a second.

So Clinton stuck to her plan and waited for the Obama brush fire to show itself no more than a flash-in-the-pan.

But she underestimated both the staying power of Obama's talents and America's hunger for inspirational leadership. A preponderance of the electorate has recognized--consciously or not--the staggering scope of the challenges ahead. When in the memory of the living have so many explosive issues--the economy, international relations, energy security, global warming, immigration, terrorism--come to critical mass at the same time? For many years our leaders have denied, ignored, or obfuscated these difficulties. We've pulled the blankets over our head and in the suffocating dark shouted slogans of pride, courage and belligerence. But now we are gathering ourselves to face the onslaught. It's not bravery. It's an involuntary reaction. We are turning to face the wave just before it hits. And we are scared to death.

There is a profound emotional vulnerability that accompanies such an imminent trial. Clinton might argue that this moment should put experience, reliability, and familiarity at a premium. Indeed, those are great qualities to lean on when you spot the storm ahead. And they will be needed when we're tossing in high seas as well. But here, as we stare up into the yawning belly of a breaking mountain of water, what people want is courage. Someone who makes them feel rather than think. Any more prosaic narrative becomes an irritating distraction.

All this was manifest, if still partially obscured, right after the Iowa primary. That's when Obama slid the cards towards her and asked her to cut the deck. Clinton hesitated, her campaign paralyzed by the shock of that first blow. Had she gotten up from the table, insisted they play a different game, there might still have been time to alter the dynamic of the race. But confident in her game plan and her formidable tactical strengths, she took the bait. She hammered on her experience and her competence. She leveraged warm memories of the Clinton years and let her husband share the spotlight. She strode into the Augean stables of policy minutia and valorously wielded her shovel. She misread her victory in tiny New Hampshire as a validation of her strategy.

She was snookered.

Now it is obvious that all the thematic terrain she so triumphantly occupied was willingly ceded by Obama in a tactical retreat. What appeared to be a shining prize when viewed from afar--to command the territory of experience and workmanlike capability--turns out to be dreary and lackluster. Any mid-level brand manager would identify her positioning as catastrophic. The harder she fights, the deeper into quicksand she sinks, building Obama up in the process. If she paints herself the worker, he appears the leader. If she is the manager, he becomes the executive. If she is a return to a safer past, he becomes a pioneer into the future. He owns all the high ground, and he will easily reoccupy her territory after she packs up and goes home.

And in a crowning irony, her struggle for viability compels her to co-opt some of the most distasteful Republican talking points. She is playing the fear card, raising the spectre of the disaster that will ensue if we put an untested Commander in Chief in the White House. It's a cry that might serve to shave a percentage point of voters her way in a tight race, but it will never be heard above the roar of pounding feet as the mob rushes to Obama's banner.

With that play trumped, she is driven to go negative and attempt to sow doubt about the lesser man beneath the soaring rhetoric. Such a blatant appeal to cynicism certainly serves to clarify the stylistic gulf between the candidates. But not to her advantage.

Still, what other cards can she play at this point? If she had locked Bill in a closet in mid-January and remade her message from scratch, everyone would have thought her mad, but she might have a chance in the fight now. Instead she took the safe and ostensibly smart route. Since then she's been outfoxed, out-maneuvered, out-positioned, and just plain whupped. Now, the old expression about playing the hand you're dealt is the only one that applies.

And on March 5th, she will have no choice but to fold.

Barack Obama is all talk. More than an empty suit, he is stupid.

Hillary Clinton is a power hungry shrew who will stop at nothing to gain the Presidency. She will arrange for Obama's assassination if it appears she is destined to lose the primary election battle.

Both of these sentiments are ubiquitous in the discussion threads of political Web sites, staining and obscuring what little thoughtful dialogue can be found there. Even the redoubtable Erica Jong is not immune. In an ill-considered polemic on the Huffington Post, Ms. Jong let her fury cloud her judgment, baselessly intimating that Barack Obama offers no more than "soundbites and attacks on 'the' Clintons." Particularly ironic was that the pitch of her 12-paragraph shriek only served to reinforce the false stereotypes about women that she has debunked so artfully over her lifetime.

Whatever its source, hyperbole about Clinton or Obama arrives always cloaked in terms superlative and self-discrediting. But while we may dismiss the ravings of those intent on instigating discord, it's instructive to consider the role that emotions play in heightening our political enthusiasms and distastes, and eventually turning us all into blathering idiots.

Evolution has equipped the human psyche in wondrous ways. Unfortunately, most of the tools she has equipped us with are designed to protect us from charging tigers, or to assist us to confront feces-flinging upstarts in our clan. We have made successful physical adaptations in civilization's brief time frame. For instance, in a mere few thousand years of bovine domestication we have come to produce the enzymes that digest cow's milk.  Meanwhile the kinds of dangers and challenges to our status we must face have evolved as much as our dietary habits. Peril wields carcinogens rather than claws, and every super model that pouts at us from billboards is a seratonin-depressing put-down. These are elements of the new that we have not learned to digest. In fact, it appears that we may require some millions of years to rewire the infinitely multilayered interraleation of our emotions to metabolism and behavior. In other words, we confront the modern world with the emotional equivalent of rocks and pointed sticks.

Make no mistake, the outpouring of bile in this primary process is not the result of conflicting opinions about policy. Its triggers are primitive. Are we being relegated to a second-tier status because we are black, or because we are female? Will we feel personally shamed by a less-bellicose stance towards Iran? Is our place in the social hierarchy threatened when others question our judgment based on our support for one candidate or the other? Who dares affront the tribe of Obama? Or of Hillary? These are the keys to our emotional floodgates. And when the sluice opens, we behave in ways that might make sense when our spouse flirts with another partner, or when there's a burglar in the house, but that are remarkably stupid in the context of a political debate.

For example, when we percieve a danger, we become acutely sensitive to input that we associate with that threat. In the burglar scenario, we become conscious of even the subtlest sounds. Are those footsteps we hear in the hall? In this state, we tolerate a high incidence of false positives—suddenly every creak and clink we hear is an intruder—but our heightened alert might save our lives, and the downside is no worse than a night's sleep lost.

But in the political dialogue, our paranoia is expressed in letters and conversations, and takes on a corrosive life of its own. It evokes equal and opposite defensive responses in others, and is sustained and amplified in the echo chamber of 24-hour news and online social media.

More importantly, as feeling intensifies in response to percieved threats, all our mental capacity is directed towards immediate self-defense. Our mind gathers itself for an imminent leap, whether to hide, or attack, or to flee. As a result, we reserve little capacity for deliberate and considered thinking. And I'm sorry to tell you that we didn't have much of a surplus in that area to begin with.

So we find ourselves reduced to an animal state. But if we could collect ourselves for just a moment, we would see how ludicrous is most of the shouting. I suppose it's possible that Barack Obama is a dim bulb, but if so, shouldn't he get some sort of credit for slipping under everyone's radar to become an editor of the Harvard Law Review? And perhaps Hillary will take out a contract on Obama's life, but he'll have plenty of warning because someone on the review committee she's sure to convene on the matter will certainly leak their plans to the press.

And it's not just crackpot opinions like these that have garnered unwarranted credibility. Many of the narratives espoused by an enflamed electorate and boosted by a craven corporate media—hungry as ever for the drama that makes advertising gravy—have little grounding in likely reality. I'll go on the record right now to contest each of these memes.

If Obama maintains a solid lead in non-superdelagates after March 4, there will be a tide of superdelegates eager to demonstrate their respect for the popular will by coming to his support.

If Obama is clearly the popular choice, Hillary Clinton will not implement a burnt earth policy and destroy the Democratic party in a fit of pique. Instead she will gracefully and honorably step aside, voice her support for the nominee, and work to ensure his election in November.

If Hillary wins the popular vote fair and square--which is the only way she'll get or accept the nomination--Democrats that supported Obama will rally to her side. Likewise, Hillary's supporters will stand behind Obama if he is the nominee.

And unless there is a sea change in public sentiment before November, the presidential contest will not be nail bitingly close. Voter turnout during this primary season clearly shows there is enormous enthusiasm on the Democratic side, and a significant lack of the same for the Republicans. When you consider how close the 2000 and 2004 contests were, 2008 is looking like a relative no-brainer.

All this will come to pass. Unless some reader has just said "jinx."

One final point about emotion and politics. It is clear that many are attracted to Obama because he moves them, and they have been seeking such a connection. And it is just as clear that many of Clinton's supporters cleave to her campaign because they are wary of good feelings as a substitute for competence. But like it or not, emotion remains a key factor—arguably the dominant factor—in determining how we relate to everyone we encounter. It determines whether we listen to them, whether we give them the benefit ofthe doubt, whether we forgive them when they err, and whether we follow where they lead. The broader the audience, the more important emotional appeal becomes, because while you may be able to get most people to agree they like you, you will never get them to agree on a health care plan. And nobody has to sway a broader audience than the President.

At least, that's how I feel.

Has an American national political contest ever been so utterly transfigured in so short a time as the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama?

Just a few short weeks ago, we were falling inexorably, willingly into the waiting arms of the woman we knew would protect and provide for us. Sure, we flirted a little bit with the boys at the bar. We felt a thrill when our hand "accidentally" brushed John Edwards' knee under the table. We admired Bill Richardson's Latino éclat. But we were just having a little fun before settling down to eight years of blessed sanity and nutritious policy.

The prospect wasn't exciting, but we'd had enough excitement to last our lives. Our previous relationship left us broke, disillusioned, and inclined to flinch in response to any sudden movement. We had learned our lesson, and we were determined to exercise better judgment this time. Hillary cared for us, we knew. Might not respect and admiration blossom into a warmer devotion in the fullness of time?

And then... There he was.

He had been there all along of course. Why didn't we notice? Was he wearing a new tie? Had he shaved off his goatee?

Or was it the incandescent bolt of heaven's white light that set his chiseled profile aflame?

Our heart raced. Our blood rushed. Our minds went all higgledy piggledy. And we think we might throw up.

Oh my God, we're in love.

Political campaigns pass from phase to phase in ways that often seem predictable in hindsight, and this latest turn of events is no exception. We watched Barack and Hillary debate prior to Super Tuesday and vainly endeavored to detect meaningful policy distinctions. We were like a child trying to choose between two cupcakes in a bakery display. Does one have a more icing than the other? We closed one eye and bent over to get a fresh sight line.

Then there was a flash. And when our vision cleared, it was a new world. And we discovered that our two cupcakes could not be more different.

Obama's astounding Super Tuesday comeback, in which he erased a double-digit deficit to achieve near-parity in a mere two weeks, attests to the sea change that occurred. Much of the credit for the turnaround is due to the man himself and his magnetic appeal. But there was calculation as well. He and his staff envisioned this transmogrification and consciously positioned themselves to reap the windfall of the moment, lighting match after match under the Democratic electorate and praying feverishly that the flame would catch before it was too late.

But if the punditocracy was caught off guard, it was because they were so busy watching the spark that they ignored the tinder. In short, they underestimated the magnitude and intensity of latent emotion in American voters. It seemed that the race would be about a return to competence and stability, that political cynicism was so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that it could only be courted, not confronted.

But now it is clear that we were primed for an emotional outpouring. We were a super-saturated solution just waiting for the faintest touch of the catalyst that instantaneously alters everything. Obama is that catalyst, and what is precipitating now is a genuine political fervor.

This was supposed to be Hillary's moment. Didn't she check all the right boxes? She's smart, hardworking, right-thinking, and intimately associated with a past that most regard--with their usual selective and myopic recall--as days of wine and roses.

But in the context of this new narrative, the promise of competence and safety is underwhelming, and to wish for a return to the familiar ways and faces of the Clinton years seems an act of cowardice.

Yes, we enjoyed Bill's homespun wit, his studied good-old-boy affectation, and his bedroom eyes. He charmed and soothed us, and he was a perfect match for his time. Oil was at $10 a barrel and the stock market was juiced. Who wanted to make waves?

And he left us with fond memories. That's why when Hillary asked if it would be alright if he lived in our basement for a while after the wedding, we agreed.

But no cabinet post. And he buys his own groceries. And as soon as he gets a job, he has to find his own apartment.

We concede Hillary's impressive resume and talent. But let's not pretend the choice before us is purely one of head versus heart. Obama is not some smooth-talking Lothario looking to seduce an America on the rebound. There's a reason that the most educated segment of voters trend strongly his way, and it's more than his dreamy eyes. But at the same time, it's undeniable that the Obama juggernaut is driven by emotion.

Does that mean we are setting ourselves up for disappointment? Is the excitement imbuing us with a fleeting and fickle courage doomed to evaporate in the face of adversity?

No.

This outpouring of faith and feeling does not displace our hopes for administrative success, for legislative progress, for remade international relationships and a thriving economy. Rather it is an indispensable vessel to carry those hopes to fruition. Those who think this enthusiasm speeds us on a fool's errand, consider: For many decades we have repressed all traces of political idealism within ourselves, always seeking safety, predictability and stasis. Doing so has served, at best, only to ensure that as we marched drearily into poverty and disrepute, we did so to a steady beat.

Now, the problems we confront are more daunting than any in our history. Global warming requires an internationally coordinated response for which no prior model exists. Our economic woes are the product of suffocating debt and permanent resource scarcity; if there is a cure, it will not be pleasant. Our relationship with the international community is going through a change more profound than any since the end of the second World War. Policy alone, no matter how brilliant, simply will not bring us intact through the challenges to come. We'll need a leader who knows how to cultivate the qualities of optimism, restraint, and selflessness within us, and how to wring out every ounce when the going gets rough.

That is why this tide of emotion is more than relevant. It is the crucial prerequisite of whatever success can follow.

But the biggest change we will make is the one we've already begun.

You see, Obama doesn't talk about what he is going to do. He talks about what we are going to do. And in that phrasing, he expresses the most frightening truth that any politician can utter. A truth so terrifying that no President has whispered it in almost 50 years. He is telling us that the problem has never been our leaders.

The problem is us.

It's a mortifying realization. But if we broke it, doesn't that mean we can fix it too? So we're going to solve our problem, and we're going to start by saying "yes" to the notion that government can be better than it is. Whatever comes after, we will never regret it. Because saying "yes" isn't the precursor to a triumph. It is the triumph.

So that's it, baby. It's not you. It's us. We're sorry it had to end this way. We never meant to hurt you.

You can keep our CDs. But we want our superdelegates back.

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