Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Barack Obama has got the endorsement of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. The hometown newspaper explains,

Who wants to relive the soap operas of the 1990s?

Bill Clinton says his wife excelled at “making positive changes in other people’s lives.” Consider that construction. Then listen as Obama talks of bringing people together to change their own lives.

America needs a fresh start. Barack Obama is the Democrat to provide it.

Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray has also endorsed Barack Obama, and was out in Youngstown campaigning for him yesterday.

Obama has the endorsement of Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman too.

Of course, the endorsement that matters is the endorsement of Ohio’s voters, and that won’t be given for another two weeks.

The mayors of Akron and Canton, Ohio, anchors of the old Ohio industry, have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. They know Clinton is the one to bring the industrial majesty back to the Buckeye State. Akron and Canton are also anchors of rural Ohio, and as a rural American I know I appreciate Hillary Clinton’s plan to revitalize America’s rural areas with reinvestment projects and country-of-origin labeling that will stop our local products from having to compete with cheap foreign-made substitutes.

According to a study by the Wildlife Conservation Society, jackrabbits have suddenly disappeared from the area around Yellowstone National Park. They disappeared so quickly that no one even noticed that the jackrabbits were in decline until they were all gone.

Scientists say that they have no idea what actually caused the sudden disappearance of rabbits from Yellowstone. All they have to offer is a bunch of guesses: Disease, maybe. Predation, maybe. Weather events, maybe.

In the face of this ecological calamity, wouldn’t you rather have certainty? It’s time to turn to religion.

I say that Jesus is the explanation. It’s clear to me that the rabbits of Yellowstone have experienced the first wave of Rapture. Isn’t it just as the End Times prophets have predicted, that all of a sudden, people would turn around and notice that all the rabbits had disappeared?

The only proof I need is the Bible. Did you know that the Bible never once mentions rabbits? Just like there are no rabbits anymore in Yellowstone? It is as if God himself told the ancient Israelites that the Rapture of jackrabbits from Yellowstone would be a sign of the imminent return of Jesus.

The time is at hand! Prepare ye for the coming of the Lord! Greet him with carrots!

Fidel Castro is retiring, and I don’t care.

I won’t go so far to say that it doesn’t matter, and I’m not trying to say that Castro’s release of power, coming on February 24th when the Cuban government shall select a new President, is uninteresting, as far as it goes.

Still, in the larger scheme of things, it isn’t within the larger scheme of things. Cuba is now just an island. It never managed to overthrow the United States from our soft Gulf underbelly. There is no international Communist conspiracy any more, except for the one to have more potlucks.

Castro may be retiring, but outside of Cuba, he was already irrelevant.

Communism only matters politically to the extent that it serves as an insult that right wing zealots can hurl against progressive policies that they do not understand. To our everyday lives, Fidel Castro mattered in the end only to the extent that he interfered with our ability to get good cigars.

Whatever happened to the days when people would patiently wait in line for their turn? The great unspoken issue of the 2008 Democratic presidential election is that it is not Barack Obama’s turn to be President. It is Hillary Clinton’s turn.

For all of her life, Hillary Clinton has selflessly worked to promote her husband Bill. She has put up with more Monica Lewinskies than we will ever know about. But has Hillary Clinton stepped out of line? No, she has waited, patiently, for her turn.

With all that Hillary Clinton has been through, she deserves to be President of the United States. People in the Democratic Party who have any sense of decency can understand that. Others, who are trying to push their way ahead in line, need to remember their place.

The following is from a conversation I had with a white woman, maybe fiftyish.

We need to have a Methodist for President.

First of all it’s not true that Methodists are going to all vote for Clinton. The ones that are voting for Obama have their own reasons.

The country is really messed up after so many years of Bush, so we need someone really pious in the White House. It’s going to take someone really religious, like a Methodist, to straighten everything out.

Did I really have this conversation? No, of course not.

If the statement is true, then it’s a stupid thing said by one person. Is there a trend of such stupid things being said, on the record? Are such things being said by the Clinton campaign? If so, then that’s a worthwhile basis for conversation. If not, then it’s just about as informative as me saying that I had a conversation with a person who said that we should not vote for Bill Richardson because Hispanics should be working at gas stations.

Let’s set this issue straight with some direct documentary facts proving that Barack Obama was against the Iraq war from the start – before the war began, and has stood by that position. These videos have historical footage of Barack Obama speaking out against the Iraq War before it was begun, and since then.

Barack Obama’s rivals cannot produce such video documentation of their early and consistent opposition to the Iraq War. There’s a simple reason why. They were in favor of starting the Iraq War from the start.

John McCain was an eager booster of invading and occupying Iraq. McCain even said that the whole operation would be quick and easy.

Hillary Clinton supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq from the start too. Since then, what’s Hillary Clinton’s position on Iraq? That’s really difficult to say – I’ll let Clinton boosters try to explain it. The simple fact is that Hillary Clinton gave her assistance to George W. Bush and helped him start the war. When a million Americans took to the streets to demonstrate popular opposition to the invasion of Iraq, Hillary Clinton did not join them. In fact, Hillary Clinton spoke out against the agenda of the antiwar protests.

Has Barack Obama always done exactly as I would have liked him to do on the issue of Iraq? No. However, only one presidential candidate has gotten it anywhere close to correct on Iraq from the start. Thus, only one candidate deserves our support for President of the United States. That candidate is Barack Obama.

I was just having a conversation about the 2008 presidential election, and the reasons that so many people have decided to support Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Some people might express it in terms of which candidate is better able to strongly campaign against John McCain. Bill Clinton himself has said that Hillary Clinton and John McCain are such great friends that any campaign between the two of them would probably put voters to sleep if they ran against each other. Bill Clinton couldn’t seem to understand that such a thing would be unattractive to Democrats.

What the trouble of a Hillary Clinton vs. John McCain presidential campaign boils down to, however, is that Hillary Clinton is just too much like John Kerry. She’s got the same vulnerabilities, the same indefensible position of criticizing the Iraq War while refusing to say that it was a mistake to start the war, and having gone along with Bush’s whole Iraq invasion idea from the start. Hillary Clinton was for the Iraq War before she was against it.

Not Barack Obama. Barack Obama was against the Iraq War before he was against the Iraq War.

The real moral values of the Republican Party are demonstrated in brutal, sadistic form in the last federal budget proposed by George W. Bush.

The federal budget President Bush proposes for 2009 begins a program of cutting 196 billion dollars from Medicare health care benefits for the elderly and extremely impoverished Americans.

Why would the Republicans do such a cruel thing? Well, part of that money taken away from Medicare will go to pay for policies that make rich Americans even richer.

But, some of the money the Republicans will save by cutting Medicare benefits for senior citizens will go to pay for something even more inhumane. The Republicans propose using some of the money taken away from Medicare to pay for a new generation of nuclear bombs.

What do we need new nuclear weapons for? Terrorists cannot be defeated with nuclear missiles. Nuclear weapons are designed to kill civilians by destroying entire cities, vaporizing them, melting them, burning them into nothing more than radioactive cinder and ash.

These are the moral values of the Republican party: Less medicine for the sick, and more nuclear weapons to kill people by the millions.

This isn’t about getting tough, or being fiscally conservative. It’s inhumane. It’s just plain insane.

The Republican Party agenda, led now by George W. Bush, and to be continued by John McCain, leads on a path of fear and destruction.

America can do better. We must do better.