Why the Republicans Want to Run Against Hillary

It's funny isn't it? Not a single primary has been held, and yet all the talking heads on the cable networks have declared that Hillary Clinton will probably be the Democratic nominee. The Republicans are almost unanimous in their certainty that it will be Hillary against whatever they can throw against the wall in '08. Even our illustrious President, in an unprecedented early injection of his opinion into the mix, has said the nominee will most likely be Hillary. Sounds almost like somebody published a talking points memo, doesn't it?

What's behind this almost obscene early endorsement of Hillary? It's really quite simple. Hillary is the officially endorsed challenger of the Republican party. She is the candidate they would most like to run against. "Why?" you ask? You've got to hand it to the poor Republicans. Look at the situation they find themselves in. Their incumbent is so unpopular that virtually anyone looks more presidential by comparison, and they know that the odds are that the Republican party is going to take the fall for the debacle that is W.

But why Hillary? Simple. Hillary may look OK in the Democratic primary, but in the general election her negatives are SO high that she simply cannot be elected. Here's a list of types of people who will not vote for Hillary.

1. Republicans. They hate her. They REALLY hate her. They'd sooner die.
2. People, mostly men, who find her shrill, dishonest, not genuine, and a business-as-usual politician.
3. People, maybe mostly men, who don't think that being first lady is any kind of real preparation for being President. Once Hillary botched health care and got cut out of the loop, didn't she mostly just figure out what china to use for dinner with visiting dignitaries?
4. It's all about Bill. There are people, and I include myself, who believe that Bill Clinton does not deserve to ever be back in the White House, even as First Gentleman. Clinton was a decent, maybe even a good President, but he embarrassed those of us who supported him. He soiled the office. He cost us 8 years of George W. Bush. He should NEVER be back in the oval office in any capacity. That is not to say that he deserved to be impeached over having an affair, but his behavior doesn't really deserve the reward of being sent back, does it?
   
5. People who think that cheating on your wife, probably multiple times, is a bad thing. They'll blame Hillary for Bill. That's just the way it is. (Note that Giuliani cheating on his wife in the mayor's mansion never gets a mention however.) Likewise, people who think that the Clintons have more of an arrangement than a marriage.
6. And did I mention the biggest reason that Republicans would rather run against Hillary. They're betting, and they're probably right, that some large percentage of neanderthals in this country are not ready for a woman President. In this year of all years they think they'll need those voters.
   

So, from the Republican point of view, if Hillary is the nominee, they hold onto all of their base. They also gain a decent percentage of independents and even some Democrats who will vote, but can't hold their nose long enough to pull the lever for Hillary. The also get the sexists. More important, they can count on a fair number of people who might have voted for one of the other Democratic candidates to just stay home.

The Republican situation doesn't look great no matter what, but their best shot, maybe their only shot, is running against one particular candidate. Republicans for Hillary! Watch. It's going to be more and more unanimous. Watch more and more of the right try to say it's a foregone conclusion. You heard it here first.

How to Live Forever

To laugh often and much;
To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition;
To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

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I have bad news for you. Barring some very significant medical breakthrough in the next hundred years or so, someday you will cease to breathe. Your heart will stop beating. Your brain will cease to be electrically active. You will die. You may take heart however from the fact that, like the proverbial pebble in the pond, the ripples of your life may continue virtually forever. You may gain some degree of immortality.

There are, of course, relatively easy ways to be remembered forever. Do something infamous. Adolph Hitler and Osama Bin Laden are not likely to ever be forgotten by history. You can be exceptionally good at what you do. Babe Ruth and Thomas Edison will not be forgotten. You can even gain immortality by being majorly incompetent. George W. Bush comes to mind. And of course, folks who have left behind major works of literature, audio, or video recordings live on in a way. I have a friend who, among other recordings, played on the seminal recording of a Christmas song you hear annually. I've discussed with him what it must be like to have that semi-anonymous immortality.

But what of the rest of us, those of us who will never achieve fame, can we live on long after our mortal bodies have rotted away. Well, depending upon your own religious persuasion you may say, "Of course," and argue that we'll live on in heaven or maybe come back to earth as a cow, but that's not the kind of immortality I'm talking about. I'm talking about the immortality that comes from being remembered, and from having the actions of your life ripple on throughout history. The good news is that this type of immortality is within all of our grasps. Here then are a few short steps to becoming immortal.

1. Love someone.
   Find your soulmate. Love another human being with all of your heart and soul. Commit to them and entwine your life with theirs in such a way that after you are gone others will look upon the two of you as the prototype of the perfect relationship. An unfortunate side effect of this is that when you die you will leave this person utterly heartbroken. This is unavoidable.
2. Be a true friend to as many people as possible.
   My Dad used to say he had many acquaintances, but only a very few friends, and I'll have to say I'm probably the same way, but if you truly want to be immortal be a friend to many, and I mean a true friend. Be there. Really listen. Give of yourself. Be the kind of friend you'd like to have.
3. Care.
   Care about others. Care about the environment. Care about animals. Be the most caring person many people know. Be a grown up flower child. Work for peace, and justice, and care about leaving the world better than you found it.
4. Teach.
   "Teach your children well," the song says, but it's bigger than that. Pass on what you know to a child, whether it be your own offspring, your niece or nephew, or the child of a friend. Know that when you are just living your life, little children are watching you, and adjusting their world view accordingly. Professional teachers have the biggest opportunity. A third grade teacher may directly influence a thousand children during her career. Those kids will go on to affect others, who will affect others, ad infinitum. Volunteer to help kids. Promote education. You'll be achieving easy immortality.

If you're lucky, you know someone who will never die. Their life lives on in yours, and in the lives of everyone who knew them. The ripples in their pond are innumerable. Your job then, maybe your sacred duty, is to take that spark of their life, and pass it on.

---

The gray clouds parted briefly, as if to give her a better view of the solemn gathering. We stood on the bridge, the midday tide change behind us, watching the ashes drift swiftly to sea, pursued by a wake of flowers. Salt water flowed unbidden, caught on my lip and was gone. Must have been the wind. Goodbye Sharon. You are with us always, immortal.

It's not bias. It's intelligence.

I had to move the car this morning in order to put the trash out. The consequence of our new trash system, where huge red trucks come with their robotic arms to pick up our one allowed trash barrel, dump it out, and set it down neatly again by the side of the road. Problem is that with the new robot approved trash barrel, I can't get the trash out of the garage without moving the car.

In the roughly ten seconds it took to move the car out, I heard one tiny little snippet of talk radio. Some, from what I've seen typical, caller was on the line. "Hello. Hello. Is this the host?" "Ya. I'm me you're you and you're on the air. What's on your mind?" "Well. I just wanted to say that I agree with you that the media is heavily biased towards the democrats."

Ding. Right there. I knew what I was going to write about today, this myth that the media is biased towards a political party. Real media, by which I exclude Faux News and 99% of talk radio, is biased not toward a political ideology, but towards sanity. That is not to say they get it right. Heaven knows they are largely market driven cowards, but I think that one of the characteristics of a true journalist is that you have to have somewhat above average intelligence and be intellectually curious.

That is not to say that the remaining die-hard Bush defenders are morons. That would be cruel. Some are unintelligent, to be sure. Many are anti-intellectual. You see them tearing down some of the best candidates as "effete intellectual snobs." Some are uninformed. Some are extremely gullible. Some suffer from an acute psychological inability to admit they are wrong. Many have been playing the republican role so long that they don't know how to do anything else. Some of those in the public eye are just playing a role period, cashing in on the rest to make a buck. The remainder, and I choose to believe it's actually a small number, are just plain evil.

Another Bump in the Road

So what did I tell you. Apparently the Shrub-in-Chief has gotten his little bump in the polls from the Patraeus hearings.

According to the poll, just 30 percent approve of Bush’s handling of Iraq, but that’s an eight-point improvement from July. The increase comes primarily from Republicans, men and independents, the NBC/Journal pollsters say.

I don't understand these die-hard Republicans. Maybe it's like an abusive spousal relationship, i.e., "This time he won't hurt me," "This time he won't lie to me," or maybe it's just a refusal to admit when you're wrong.

I heard a radio talk show host yesterday espousing how "We" had gotten ourselves into Iraq, and however it was we got here doesn't matter, but that now we need to find a way out with grace. Yada. Yada. Yada.

Wrong.

"We" are not responsible for this mess. At least I'm not. If you voted for George W. Bush in 2000, if you were deluded enough to for some reason vote for him in 2004, YOU may bear some responsibility, but I had nothing to do with it.

No News is Good News

My friend John Farr has been on a self-imposed exile from news and blogs of late. I think he's arguing that the news is terrifying and doesn't change. He's got a real point.

I recently read a great book called The 4-Hour Workweek, which, in small part, makes a similar argument regarding news. The author, Timothy Ferris, lists a whole bunch of time wasting activities he's given up. One is reading news. Mr. Ferris hasn't read a newspaper in years. He glances at the headlines at the newsstand as he walks past. Anything really important he figures he can get from that.

Of late, I've tried to spend less time on the news. I've always been somewhat of a news junkie. I used to read two newspapers at breakfast, surf the web for other news, listen to Air America Radio all day, and watch the cable news shows around dinner time. I've cut my newspaper reading to a skim of the local paper at breakfast. I've set up iGoogle to give me a homepage with the latest headlines. That way I can further edit what news I care to read. It really has freed up some time.

If you think you can't live without the news, go camping. Try spending a few days in the woods, away from television, radio, Internet, and newspapers. When you come back you'll find something miraculous. Nothing has changed! The democrats and republicans still hate each other and the latter are still evil and the former are still incompetent. The country is still run by a moron and we're still on the brink of irrevocably disastrous moves. The world has not changed a bit because you dropped out of the information stream for a bit, and your blood pressure is probably lower.

Betray Us Patraeus

I'm now convinced that part of the military training of all of our general officers must include several courses in marketing. From Colin Powell's PowerPoint presentation that got us into the war in Iraq to the dissembling yesterday of General David Patraeus, it would seem that our generals are possibly more expert at the fine points of selling war than fighting them.

So what came out of yesterday's dog and pony show. Well we learned that the general recommends that we begin withdrawing troops from Iraq soon, and that we possibly get to the pre-surge level of troops in Iraq by next July. How convenient given that we can't sustain the present troop levels past next summer given our over-stressed military. As for the rest of the troops, well it would apparently be imprudent to speculate as to when those folks might be coming home, but I'm betting it's after the 2008 election.

Betrayus was careful to specify, upon starting his speech, that his report had "not been cleared by nor shared with anyone in the Pentagon, the White House, or the Congress," but it does seem at least slightly coincidental that just last week the Shrub in Chief started talking about possible troop reductions.

Oh, and the military can proudly point to reduced violence in Anbar province. Well, that's nice, except the surge was around Baghdad, and the reduced violence in Anbar is because the area is more under the control of local warlords than the U.S. propped up central government. So much for the "breathing space" for the purpose of the Iraqi government getting their act together that was sold to us by Shrub back in January as the purpose of the troop surge. Man, they must really think the American public has collective Alzheimer's.

So, Republicans can now breathe a collective sigh of relief as some cover has been provided for doing nothing significant about the course of the war until after the 2008 election. They can point to modest recent troop withdrawals. (Doesn't the concept of upping the troops so that you can later reduce them remind you of furniture store sales?) They can also have their cake and eat it too! They can point out that the number of troops in 2008 will be the same as when the Democrats took control of Congress, so they've really done nothing.

As for our congressional democrats, don't they just make you so proud. Ever seen such a group more collectively interested in covering their own collective behinds than in doing the right thing? One thing Republicans can count on is that that group won't do anything courageous or risky to their re-election chances between now and the next election. Wouldn't want to be viewed as being anti-military.

There's a route I travel often, on which there's a sign on the side of a hill. It says, "Support our troops. End the war." Our yellow democrats would do well to repeat that mantra to themselves daily. And I'm tired of hearing that with their slim majority they can't do anything. No money. No war. Cut off funding for anything but maintaining the safety of our troops. Period.

Oh well. Ain't it all just grand?

Osama Bin Who?

Oh ya! That guy! Apparently Osama Bin Laden is supposed to release a new video on the 6th anniversary of September 11th. I heard someone yesterday say, "Well, I won't watch it. I have no interest in what he has to say!" Well, I'll watch it, and I'm very interested in what he has to say.

First and foremost, I'll want to see if it's really him, and how his health is. Here we've been chasing a 6 foot 5 inch man whose face has been plastered around the world, and who is rumored to have kidney disease and possibly need dialysis, for 6 years, and we haven't caught him. I figure if the most wanted man in the world is going to do a video I want to see some signs of stress; maybe a wrinkle or two; a twitch; some gray or receding hair.

Of course my bet is that the sheeple of this great constitutionally limited democratic republic will be all atwitter after seeing ol' Bin, and we'll actually see a spike in the approval rating of the worst President we've ever had. You watch. I'd bet on it. People will rally around W and he'll be gratified. Tell you what. Instead why don't we get rid of the mental child in the big white house and put in someone who, instead of invading sovereign countries where Bid Laden is not, will go flush out the bastard from his hidey hole and put him away in a small room in Levinworth for the rest of his life. Just a thought.

So roll that footage OBL. We'd like to see what you've been up to.

John H. Farr

The first link added to our list to the right is the website of John H. Farr. Why? Because John is an artist, a crafter of words, a painter of pictures, and I only recently rediscovered how I love reading his stuff, not to mention viewing his beautiful photographs. He's also only semi-sane, and I really like that in a human being.

So what's this blog about?

This blog is about thought. It's about cogitation. It's about being able to write on any topic I choose. It's about politics, religion, society, technology, philosophy, and it's about none of those things as well. You are welcome to join in and make this more of a discussion than a soliloquy, but I'll probably climb up on my soapbox whether any one's listening or not.