The Fire In Ice

http://www.thedailyshow.com/collection/262945/best-ben-bernanke-moments/176740

Treasured moments from what I consider a national treasure.

For some six years I wondered where President Bush could be found while his policies and their enacted consequences jammed the airwaves. Did he really just emerge from the White House to mount the transportation that got him home to Texas? It certainly seemed so.

This president barely body-warms White House upholstery. As I watch him right now he is standing before House Republicans at their retreat in Baltimore, taking questions.  Meanwhile, I know journalists and professionals I respect and faithfully read, are busy composing another blogpost about Barack Obama’s failure to crystallize his message, let alone his manhood. Wimp is a word I’ve bumped into more than once.

Barack Obama as president does seem to equivocate on issues and priorities that most of us thought were set in concrete in his campaign. But that’s an easy defense: there’s no more succinct definition of American politics. Promise change- deliver it diluted in the soup of compromise. Only dictators get real results.

After reading his books, I began to fancy the idea that the audacity of hope that may have irretrievably settled in Obama’s marrow is the notion that it is always possible to “call out the better angels” in any man. Enough of us are unwilling to even entertain the possibility (rough, tough and ready to rebuff under any circumstance: now that’s a man).  One blogger even suggested that Barack Obama, though noble and intelligent, is not presidential material, and I won’t quarrel with that: seeing what I have seen of that strut the stage since JFK was shot crumbles the criticism into a compliment.

But Barack Obama is the current president and he consistently pushes his person out in front of diverse pockets of this country’s body politic, some noxious, some benign.

For that, I remain grateful, and though quivering of late, steadfast.

You guys need to understand that we are saturated with your nonsense.  PTDB (Pass.The.Damn.Bill) skipping from bloggers like Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish, to Matthew Yglesias, Think Progress to Ezra Klein at The Washington Post to economists Simon Johnson and Paul Krugman to health professionals writing a letter to congress is all we can stand.

“Call your congressman!” Fuck. The blame gets laid on us because we failed to lead you puppies to the paper. The overstuffed loose-leaf notebooks of health legislation are in front of you-not us.  The power to enact is with you-not us. The oath to public service has been taken by you-not us. But that comfortable pension down the road will be paid by us-not you…if funds are available on that horizon.

The anger’s so overwhelming we need  paper bags against hyperventilation. But, wait, alas, here comes our president:

To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town-a supermajority-then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it’s not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

If you noblemen can’t wrap yourselves around that mission then, please, lunch with Senators Dodd and Dorgan and ask them to pen your retirement announcement. Otherwise, head boldly and blindly towards the November mid-terms.

We will be waiting for you there.

Misty day on the roadway. I was heading east on Hwy 84 out of Portland proper and suddenly I could feel my late husband in the cab of our beloved car. Funny presence: he was a tad too corporeal so he could be soft as down at the same time he was hard as rock. And musky. Always musky. A warm, but compassionately dry, cave.  And I crawled in, every time. After he came along, I knew what was best for me.

What I wanted today was for our car to levitate off that asphalt, hold a 45- degree angle until we reached the skies and picked him up.

After all, there were holiday errands to do.

And we had a globe-eyed grandson to please.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/joe_lieberman_lets_not_make_a.html

This man is worthless…worthless!

C’mon, c’mon you guys. It’s not affordable health care: it’s affordable premiums payable to insurance companies who negotiate the price of care with health-care providers.

It’s the middle-man capitalism on which an overpopulated society depends.

We should thank Tiger Woods for sacrificing some of his privacy and dignity to expose the hideous lunacy of the modern American press.

If it remains the fourth estate in this country, it leaves small wonder as to why the preceding three fail us so miserably.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-1-2009/tiger-woods-newzak

This should be all we need said on the subject, please.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/18/is_there_a_palin_doctrine

During this morning’s CSPAN3 telecast of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee’s interrogation of the Bank of America/Merrill Lynch merger of 2008, Rep, Kucinich (D-OH) began his closing comments with the statement that 46 million Americans are now hungry.

In the last six months, we have had it pounded into our heads that 46 million Americans lack the insurance (i.e. permission) to obtain health care.

Part of the  1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide’s definition of that war crime reads: “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…”

And so it begins.

Sweet Christ, after 40 minutes watching PBS’ Nature, I logically wonder why I operate under the presumption that should I wish, so should I be granted, a long life. The predator-prey equation, survival of the fittest metaphor that comprises the subject of PBS’ Nature series mocks my assumed options.

Creatures dart between wakefulness and slumber on the tortured string of a violin.  They are the earth’s true grace.

Fuck me.