Seriously? At this time last year not only did we just have a new president that we were all excited about, we also had a brand-new super-exciting majority in the Senate. 58 votes! SO COOL!
Oh yeah, that’s right. We’ve had 60 votes for a couple of months, after Arlen Specter switched and Franken finally got his seat. While Franken’s made the most of that seat, the rest of the party has been mostly fucking spineless, undisciplined, and too busy worrying about the center.
The center didn’t elect Scott Brown. The tea party crowd elected Scott Brown with the help of a depressed Democratic base (gee, let me think, a boring law & order prosecutor type who doesn’t campaign and makes John Kerry look like a raging populist is gonna get them all fired up? Plus, um, Liebercare looks a lot like MassCare, which is not exactly popular with a lot of the Dem base either.)
Lesson we SHOULD learn from this shit? The teabaggers have the strategy right. Make a whole lot of noise, throw some money around, and bend the party to YOUR will instead of folding your hands and giving it the benefit of the doubt. (Also, candidates matter. A lot. Just ask that guy…what was his name again…Obama?)
But come the fuck on. With 60 votes we were going to get watered-down shitty health care reform that would mandate us giving our hard-earned cash to the people who’ve been fucking us for years. Can we stop pretending that we lost anything valuable Tuesday night? We lost the myth that any seats are safe. That’s GOOD news. Let’s have some real campaigns now.
Back before the Pennsylvania primaries, I interviewed Bill Cahir, then running in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 5th District Congressional seat. He was a thoughtful, eloquent candidate, sharing his positions on media consolidation and making a case for single-payer health care as well as elaborating on the best way for the US to get out of Iraq.
Bill Cahir was killed in Afghanistan on Thursday, according to the Washington Post.
Cahir had to get an age deferment to join up with the Marines after September 11, 2001, but he felt that it was the right thing to do. When we spoke, he was still trying to do the best thing for America, and he died still serving his country. He would have made an excellent congressman, and I truly had hoped that he would run for office again.
Before signing up with the Marines, Cahir was a journalist, and he returned to reporting after his tour of duty in Iraq, before deciding to run for Congress. I stumbled across the news story by accident today while fact-checking a piece for the Nation and it brought me up short: I have several friends who’ve served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but no one (thank whatever you believe in) has yet been killed. I only spoke to Cahir once, but it brought the war back home to me.
Every death in Afghanistan and Iraq is tragic and unnecessary, and Cahir’s is sadly not out of the ordinary. My interview with him is here, if you’re interested.
I’ve been following the story on Twitter all day, as U.S. news outlets are really not covering it at all. People livetweeting from Iran as the country explodes at the election results, information being passed on as it is received and people attempt to verify it in real time…
Nico Pitney at the Huffington Post has been liveblogging and collecting info as it happens, but watching the story come in over Twitter is really exciting–and frightening. We place a certain amount of trust in news that comes to us from mainstream outlets, while here we just assume that people are who they say the are and that they are where they say they are. Or we desperately try to verify, a task that would be much easier if news outlets had nearly the amount of reporters on the ground that they should have.
Video, however, is worth a thousand words.
Live video shot by amateurs and uploaded to YouTube has an even more visceral effect than the glossy photos taken by professionals. It feels real, immediate, frightening, and exhilarating. No doubt the repression is coming, but these people are willing to face it.
I’ve got my own thoughts on the nomination, and they’ll be up later. But for now, WOC PhD (as usual–she’s one of the best bloggers out there and I’m so glad she’s returned to regular posting!) has an excellent rundown of Sarah Palin, plus some bonus analysis of Hillary Clinton’s misplaced comments.
I’m sort of fascinated by what’s going on in Zimbabwe right now. I wish I knew more about it, enough to have a more intelligent analysis of the situation (but I have no clue).
It reminds me of how little awareness we have in the U.S. about the goings-on in other parts of the world, and particularly in Africa.
We tend to write things off as “another disputed election in Africa” and the coverage is pretty limited. Anyone heard much about Kenya lately? Didn’t think so. I doubt everything is peachy keen there, but we’ve got another election story to follow.
From what I’ve read on the BBC and heard on NPR, it seems that Mugabe went from revolutionary hero to dictator in a series of power-consolidating years, and is willing to use violence to maintain his grip.
The cult of personality that builds around any popular national hero is kind of amazing. Just this morning, I was reading Jack and Jill Politics about Colin Powell. And I must say I feel much the same way. I’ll never forgive Powell for making that damn speech on Iraq, and I’m even angry at him for waiting to resign until after Bush’s reelection. He obviously knew he wasn’t going to serve another term, and the residual respect for him could’ve swung the election if he’d resigned before the election.
But despite plenty of evidence to the contrary (like the commenter on that blog who mentioned Powell’s party in the My Lai cover-up), I still carry some respect for Powell.
And he’s just a guy who led a war that I was too young to really understand.
Imagine if George Washington, instead of stepping down, had decided to consolidate his own power and stay president. Nothing was stopping him. Who would’ve argued with the hero of the Revolution?
Even FDR, if he had lived longer, could’ve kept running. Wasn’t until 1952 that the 22nd Amendment limited the president to two terms.
So instead of writing Zimbabwe off as another African country with a disputed election, I prefer to think about the ideas of loyalty and admiration and what happens when a politician you used to respect becomes one that embodies everything you fear.
Remember the John Edwards “I feel pretty” video? (It’s on YouTube if you missed it.) Women are expected to spend a certain amount of time on their appearance, and even Hillary Clinton’s monochrome pantsuits and short, swept-back hair require more work than Obama’s basic lack of hair and monochrome suits.
Honestly, with all the talk of sexism around this election, this was one thing I hadn’t thought of.
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season of the bitch.
