• The EPA should avoid preventing coal plants from opening on account of excessive pollution, because coal is proven and will keep the U.S. energy-independent. Besides, [put your state's name here] has the cleanest air in the country, and that's a fact.
• We're drilling so deep because Mean Joe Green banned drilling on land and in shallow water.
• The reason we need to drill here and drill now is because that way, we can go to the gas station and buy gasoline made from American oil instead of foreign oil.
• If we do everything we can to encourage drilling here and keep the EPA toothless, then Hugo Chavez won't control our gas prices. We will.
• You don't oppose offshore drilling, you imbecile. You're typing on plastic keys. I win the argument, and you lose.
• I ated the purple shrimps. They tasted like . . . burning.

This is a stupid blog post, but:
Check out the live feed, y'all! They're putting something over the leak again.
(This takes me back to when I was seven and kid-obsessed with oceanography.)
http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/spill_cam/

As a scholar of Austro-German music of the early-to-mid twentieth century, I'm accustomed to reading cowardly screeds against this or that modern thing being a Verwesungssymptom or symptom of decay, a rotten spot on the fruit of our great [enter your ethnic or national self-identity here] culture.  (And, to my amusement, I always hear Mark Levin's tiny voice narrating it.)  I guess it's sort of like being a proctologist--it's work, so it doesn't really shock you.

But this does.

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I keep seeing this face on TPM, the NYT front page, and the muted TV in the library that is always set to CNN.  The hair varies, the skin color, even the bone structure, but one thing is always the same: both lips are tucked behind the front teeth.

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Please hear me out.  I like Obama.  I read The Audacity of Hope and loved it.  I voted for him.  But I see a trend that makes me worry.

My wife and I watched the infomercial last night.  We were both sort of bored, since we've been following things so closely and have heard much of it before.  But for me, what stood out the most is that the Obama campaign keeps pressing on with this propagandistic marketing.  I felt this way for a long time, even before I settled on him in March.  That torturingly obvious sunrise logo, the "Vero possimus" gaffe, the suggestion that he is running in part as a metaphor--it made me uncomfortable, but I generally like Obama's politics, so I ignored the silly marketing.

And then the infomercial aired.

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This article just appeared on USA Today (I saw it in the SPLC newsletter).  Basically, white supremacist groups are working on their image in order to form a better fit with the average American middle-class white bigot.

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I love to snark on liberal fora as much as anyone, and Rachel Maddow's one-sided laugh attacks are my most highly treasured guilty pleasure.

But, man, I keep finding myself in situations where that sort of discourse is completely useless.  With my center-to-right parents.  With my conservative friends.  With my apolitical coworkers.  As much as I love to make fun of Walnuts and his druggy Skeletor trophy wife, I keep feeling as though that stuff is weakening my capacity for rational political discussion in the real world--a world in which there are tons of jokers on the right, hitting below the belt every single day and threatening the longevity of a nation in which partisan citizens can interact and get along as friends. 

No one has ever spat in my face or behaved in the ways recently unaired on YouTube and elsewhere; if they did, I'd have to sock someone in the eye.  But I live in one of the most Republican cities in Texas, and I intend to be understood here for who I am politically.  My Republican friends argue with me, but they manage to do so without talking about "slick Willie," "Bitchary" or "Barry Hussein Obama." 

And I don't mind standing up and saying that I can return that respect without losing my backbone.

I realize that this isn't as coherent as it could be.  But I've been thinking a lot about how best to navigate these tricky waters of political discussion, of mutual understanding among Americans with different outlooks.

Any thoughts on this?

Are any of you becoming hysterically, arm-flailingly alarmed by the increasingly brazen behavior at Republican political events these days?  I sure am.  I'm a regular chicken.

I've had an Obama bumper sticker for about three weeks now, and so far no one has spoken a word to me about it, positive or negative.  But I check my tires now before I get in the car. 

One thing's for sure:  I'm going to start lifting weights again.  I also need to learn how to hold up in a fight.  Do you take lessons for that, or is it more or less intuitive?

Anybody else feeling as lily-livered as I am?  Let me hear about it. 

If anyone is impatient with my cowardly kind, I'd like to hear what you have to say, too.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw this. Here are some highlights:

John N Sarah tell ya Just what they think And they're not gonna blink And they're gonna fix this country Cause they're just like you N ole Hank

And perhaps the worst (are people going to dance to this?):

Now this old Union's got problems That is plain to see The Democrats bankrupted Fannie Mae N Freddie Mac Just like 1, 2, 3 The bankers didn't want to make all those bad loans, But Bill Clinton said you got to Now they want a bail out, what I'm talking about Is a Democrat liberal who doo

Now, Mr. Williams has been known to speak for the American everyman on many other occasions, but he sure has sold out, here.

Remember the narrowing Texas race for Senate? Rick Noriega vs. "Big Bad" John Cornyn? If the candidates' debate performance was any indication of the future, that race may narrow more. Noriega looked like he knew what he was talking about and where he wanted to go. Cornyn looked like a Bush rubber stamp. Here are some early reactions. The Houston Chronicle's coverage is pretty good. There's an AP article, too, but it's kind of awful. Noriega's campaign has taken and is running with Cornyn's embarrassing comment, "I support the status quo." At Burnt Orange Report, Karl-Thomas Musselman's response is that "tonight, I saw a Senator, and I'm not talking about John Cornyn." (By the way, there was a third-wheel Libertarian candidate there, too. Kind of awkward.)

And they send each other (and me) email forwards about the election. They're sort of terrible and pathetic all at once. You'll see what I mean. My sister sent me this (warning--it's racist): http://tinyurl.com/48d2q4 And my uncle sent me this (warning--it's from the AFA): http://tinyurl.com/4j7h28 Do I respond? I see my sister once a year, and I haven't seen my uncle since around 1998. Does my silence condone this? Should I send them something that they would find offensive, as a retaliatory measure?

Rasmussen announced the results of its Sept. 29 poll on the Texas race for U.S. Senate.  I've posted the link below.  Right now, Cornyn is ahead of Democratic candidate Rick Noriega 50 to 43 (margin of sampling error is 4.5%).  Noriega's numbers are up considerably, then, from where they've been before.

Here's how the Rasmussen polls have gone since May:

Cornyn - Noriega
5/01  47-43
6/02  52-35
6/25  48-35
7/30  47-37
8/21  48-37
9/29  50-43

If any of you Texans needed that little boost of optimism to get you canvassing or phone banking, I hope this helps.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_senate_elections/texas/election_2008_texas_senate

Most people who follow this site care a lot about what it addresses.  Any one of us could rattle off dozens of issues that require attention, that demand action.  We care!  We post about it.  We read about it.  We blow of steam about it around the water cooler.  We read theories about these issues and discuss them over at TPMCafé Book Club.

We care.  A lot.  So what can we <i>do</i>?

I ask the TPM readership this, not merely for myself, but for all of those who--like me--are blindly groping around for the right action.  For me, it started in the surreal political aftermath of September 11, 2001, when rational thought fled Washington like a soul from a corpse.  Since then, I took the following pathetic and powerless measures:

- reading TPM
- mildly disagreeing with someone who called Tom Daschle "just a dick"
- joining mailing lists for progressive organizations
- reading MoveOn.org's 50 Ways to Love Your Country
- talking politics (but with like-minded individuals only)
- secretly and impotently burning inside whenever I hear irrational conservative arguments
- listening in on AM talk radio shows, like an angry spy
- wearing an Obama T-shirt (at home, indoors, of course)

Has anyone else behaved as worthlessly as me?  Who else is mortally afraid of losing an argument and reflecting poorly on one's cause?  Who else has trouble getting past the social anxieties of political confrontation?  Who else wishes they could find a worthwhile path to action, a fulfillment of his or her deeply-felt convictions?

What do you do?