I've been a little busy this week, but I did notice that the Yankees won yet another World Series, and for the first time since the Dodgers left Brooklyn I wasn't that bugged by it. I like some of these guys and find them a lot easier to take than some of the old impossible to defeat super Yankees thumbing their noses at any team with less money and therefore less clout etc. I mean, who can object to Derek Jeter? Not me.
Then there were those pesky elections that a lot of Republicans, including many of the rightwing variety, meaning most, took great pride in. But if we look closely, which others have done quite well (one of the most entertaining being Gail Collins' column in today's NY Times) what you discover is a rightwing Republican ran for governor of Virginia as a very moderate Republican, holding his own past at more than arm's distance to try his best to disassociate himself with anything smacking of anything close to the tea-baggers etc., beating what appears to be a totally inept Democratic campaigner (though maybe his main problem was he was from the rural part of Virginia that's dominated by rightwing Republicans who reject his more centrist politics and the urban and suburban voters who vote Democratic didn't see him as one of their own, etc.) and a closet rightwing Republican who made his reputation as a DA prosecuting Democrats positioned himself in the New Jersey gubernatorial race as a moderate against a Democratic incumbent who came originally from BIG BUSINESS and because of previous Republican mess ups in the state capital, and even bigger ones in Washington under the last administration (Republican) and Congress (Republican) faced a financial crisis that obviously requires some spending and some taxing which is political suicide....etc.
Oh, and then there was that little election in upstate New York where as I hear it a Democrat won for the first time in a hundred years running against an out rightwing Republican who wasn't ashamed to come on like a tea-bagger and was supported by all the big rightwing Republican muckamucks who came from far and wide to push for his election, as did the normally more moderate Republicans who are so in awe of the true rightwingers awesome power and political acumen they too urged the more moderate Republican to drop out of the race so that the real "conservative" (I haven't see a "real conservative" since I was a kid, all I see is faux conservatives more interested in personal and party power and serving as lackeys for whatever corporate interests are paying the bills, etc.) could run and apparently get his butt whupped.
So the Republicans are declaring the end of their long drought in the wilderness of etc. (the not-even-a-yea-since-Obama-took-office one) as a great "turnaround"! What cartoon network do our political pundits and commentators and politicians and media and...oh yeah...the scared-to-death-of-Fox-News-ratings universe.
But as I see it, what happened in these elections is the rightwing Republicans lost big time (first Democrat in a century anyone?!) and moderation, even if faked, seemed to win the day. Hmmmm.
As for why I've been so busy this week...stay tuned.
[If you had trouble with the"cartoon network" analogy, just put the word "universe" after that phrase and that paragraph may make more sense.]
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6 comments:
NY h23 Democrat 45% vs Conservative 40% and RINO Republican @5%. The Democrat is in for 1yr. We shall see next year. Tea Party Conservatives are emboldened to hold RINO Republicans to a higher standard of fiscal responsibility. That is a good thing because Republicans usually do well when they run as fiscal conservatives, and according to polls the American public is overwhelmingly alarmed by the run away deficits of the Democrats. We will have primaries rather than county leaders picking candidates next year.
Virginia is a bellweather state. The swing from Obama's win to McDonnel's win was well into double digits, which many Blue Dogs should find unsettling. We should have a good indication with the health care votes.
Dear Lal--As a resident of Connecticut myself, I had to smile at the last sentence in the Gail Collins column you quoted. Is it not completely absurd that the Democratic Party has not kicked Joe Lieberman out? His vote is no longer necessary to maintain a filibuster-proof Senate, and his reactionary stance on the "public option" section of the Health Care Reform bill is an insult to working people in Connecticut needs to tell Joe Lieberman to hit the bricks. He'd be welcomed and right at home among John Boehner, Dick Armey, Orrin Hatch, and the rest of his true colleagues in the reactionary ranks of the Republican and the Libertarian Parties.
Bob Berner
man, your blog title suckered me right into thinking it was going to be a play on marvin gaye's song - and at a stretch, maybe it is ...
like many of us, i only hear what i want to or am ready to or what that hole in my soul is looking to be fed by - like when i heard a campaign slogan that said vote for 'change' - i started to forget that it was 21st century politics [which isn't as prudent and sagacious as the word suggests, but more polemic in its controversy and dispute] and not a battle cry for cultural consciousness that could help shift the gunslinging, bible-thumping, knee-jerk reactions of bigotry and divisiveness ...
sports often seem to emphasize some of those short-sided character flaws in a culture that is predisposed to a lack of grey scale - and really, its the most passive, non thinking way to engage ...
i couldn't help but see some of the series - and often forgot who was playing and more involved in what each player was playing against - 90 mile an hour fast balls, rain, cold, fatigue, peer pressure, jeering hoards, management, coaching, performance anxiety, etc ...
it's so much more than the quick-fix results of winning and losing - its the game - and i rarely hear anyone recount an aspect of that struggle - just the final score with some associative superiority or defeat ...
for the time being, baseball is over but life and the way we're governed goes on with all its petty bickering, self aggrandizing team loyalties, and strategies of greed and conceit - and to what end - more of the same?
obama's presidency marks a historical shift in consciousness and policy for a nation that's been long overdue as a global team player - and as david bowie said "it's no game" ...
Lao Tzu says: in the pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added; in following the Tao, every day something is let go. In the end, all that matters is to do good everyday. And remember that a deer ambling through the woods has as much right to live its life as you or i do.
It seems like the Democrat's PC form of protecting the homeland is paying dividends. The problems is that terrorists are collecting the dividends in the form of soldiers killed a FT. Hood. Hasan was known to be a suicide bomb sympathiser for months if not years, yet he was allowed to remain in the service. That Hopey Changey stuff is not good when it results in deadly attacks on US soil.
Mr. Zuckerman,
The deer has every right to walk in the forest. I purchase an archery license most years to attempt to put venison in my freezer. I shoot a longbow and must get within 30 yards for me to be put an arrow in the kill zone with my longbow. The odds are with the deer as can be illustrated by venison less freezer. I have had mountain lions on my property and even on my deck. I saw cat tracks crossing my snow shoe tracks and up on to my lower deck the morning after I snow shooed in by moonlight a couple of winters ago. In mountain lion logic it is perfectly legitimate to take me down as it is in my eyes to hunt for venison. It is a tough world out there. Most Conservatives recognize it. Many if not most Liberals seem to want to repeal the laws of nature.
Ps I had the numbers wrong on H23. What I meant to say was the combined totals of the Conservative and the Rino exceeded the Democrat.
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