Bond lives

As I keep saying, it's not terrorism if you're not terrified. The notion of a United States with 300 million people cringing and cowering in fear that a dozen nutjobs from abroad might come and shoot us all is, quite frankly disgusting and reminding ourselves at every football game that we live in the home of the brave doesn't seem to have much of an effect. Very odd in a country where so many of us are heavily armed.

As one who grew up in the years immediately following WW II, I've long been impressed with the stories of the citizens of London going about their business, upper lips as stiff as Sheffield steel while the bombs and rockets fell from the sky, night after night. People slept in the underground and in the suburbs, houses such as my parents once lived in had a reinforced bomb shelter in the back garden. If they were terrified, they kept it to themselves. England was devastated, the English were not.

I have to be impressed by the story related today in the Daily Mail by an Englishman who took refuge in a restaurant in the Taj Mahal hotel while the shooting went on on the other side of an improvised barricade.

"I was extremely lucky. I was with a very good bunch of people. Three or four of us were Brits"

said Nick Hayward. Remaining calm and sober, they conducted a search for booby traps and built barricades.

At 5 O'Clock int he morning, as it began to seem that Indian troops would soon retake the hotel lobby, the group, stirred but not shaken, found some glasses and a bottle of vintage champagne.

"the head waiter came rushing across to me and said, “No, no, you can’t do that!” and I said, 'Well we’re going to' and he said, 'No sir, those are the wrong type of glasses. I shall find you champagne flutes.' "

My kind of people -- and my kind of hotel.

Enough already.

Is anyone else as annoyed with the CNN coverage of the tragedy in Mumbai? It's not just the total eclipse of every other story in the world, it's the obsessive attempt to tie this to al Qaeda. Sure it's possible, but at this stage all kinds of things are possible, yet we have Wolf Blitzer inter alia, asking one "expert" after another and getting the same "uh, we don't know, it could be anyone."

Blitzer: Yes, but they're all saying these people had combat training

Expert: But of course India and Pakistan have been fighting in places like the Kashmere for decades and both sides have many, many combat veterans; many groups have many reasons to want to hurt India.

Blitzer: yes, but they're organized - like Qaeda. They have funding, like Qaeda.

Expert: So? The Boy Scouts are organized and it will be weeks or longer before anyone knows who they are.

Blitzer: Qaeda, Qaeda, They could attack us. Qaeda, Qaeda. Oh the humanity!


And on, and on all day long while the "Possible al Qaeda connection" banner scrolls across the bottom of the screen. It won't be too much longer before I have to conclude that these people have no other agenda than ratings and no scruples about fomenting fear and hysteria.

The nightmare before Christmas

No one expects this to be a Christmas season retailers will celebrate. Even people with reliable income are cutting way back and when I read that local stores would be open as early as 4:00 AM today, I pictured yawning employees drinking coffee, trying to stay awake.

Nope.

A Wal-Mart on Long Island had its doors literally blown off the hinges just before 5 O'Clock this morning and the stampeding mob trampled anyone who got in the way. A 34 year old stock clerk tried to control the crowd and was trampled to death. Merry Christmas, et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis - and we don't mean you, Wal-Mart shoppers.

We don't mean the commenter on CNN.com either, who wasted no time before blaming it on the Liberals and African Americans who will, no doubt, now that Obama is waiting to go to Washington make this sort of thing commonplace from now on.

"Get used to this folks. These are the kind of people that liberalism has created. After four years of Obama and the food , power shortages, and gas shortages that will be engineered by the marxists in order to take down this country, this kind of thing will become routine."

Joy to the world.

Thankstaking

Having been severely beaten down and expensively trodden upon by global economic conditions of late, I like to dwell upon the wonder and beauty of life that I'm privileged to enjoy. Life is sweet, as Buffalo so often reminds me; but not for everyone.

It's not sweet for the three defenseless people gunned down by holdup men in a Delray Beach Dunkin Donuts last night. It wasn't sweet for the parents of a two year old boy run over in his own driveway yesterday by another SUV in West Palm. The world is full of hunger and disease and war and the innocent are never spared while the guilty prosper. How offensive to them, should I be thankful it didn't happen to me. How revolting to thank an imaginary entity who allows such suffering.

There will be quite a few formerly comfortable retirees here who won't be having one of those belly busting Thanksgiving feasts this year. They simply can't afford it on social security and the few bucks they're lucky to make bagging groceries and pushing carts at Publix ( no tipping please) and besides the kids can't afford to come down here this year. Evictions are up tenfold. In fact putting food on the table is going to be harder than last year and nearly impossible for some and the food banks are depleted. It's going to be a dumpster based banquet for the homeless and yes, it's cold here at night this time of year.

So the kids aren't going to get big checks from me this year. Instead I'm planning to stop at the wholesale club and load it up with food for the local food bank. I'm not a saint, I just have found that there's nothing like the feeling you get making life a tiny bit sweeter for someone else. It feels good -- do it.

Scott free

Anyone who has been hoping that the end of the Bush autocracy would entail the opening of Cheney's information crypt will probably be frustrated. It's possible that nothing prosecutable ever done by this administration will ever come to light. Although there is enough evidence of a vast smorgasbord of crimes, misdeeds and prosecutable acts above and beyond the deliberate instigation of a war by means of false information; although the unrestrained domestic spying continues, although the evidence is there that even foreign leaders like Tony Blair have had their bedrooms bugged, that domestic groups have been infiltrated, wiretapped and followed; even eye witness testimony may never be backed up by official records. Millions of White House e-mail records may disappear into the bit bucket forever.

One of the first actions of the Commander Guy was to dismantle the system for archiving electronic records and replace it with a system that never has worked. Apologists for Bush might argue otherwise, but this was just another act in the unprecedented assault on openness that has obsessively classified not only the records of executive misprision, but nearly every day to day thing that was previously held to be public record.

Some argue otherwise and cite the need to "move on" but just as the discrediting of Nixon was held up for decades by his pardon and the loss of crucial records, Bush may be able to stifle history and thwart accountability as thoroughly as the folks who recently tried to arrest Karl Rove were stifled. The resurrection of George W. Bush may take place long before his demise, his policies given a new coat of paint and unmerited dignity and launched against us again. The Party that once convinced us that criminals were regularly let go because of Liberal Judges will, in effect, get away with murder,will be set back on the street to loot and pillage -- and there's probably nothing we can do about it.

We used to pray for them, but it's all over now

Well the word is out on Main Street - Tim Geithner can't be trusted as Treasury Secretary because he is Jewish and Jews have divided loyalty. I was interested to hear that and not just because Geithner's family assures us he's an Episcopalian raised and married in that Church.

Is the phony honeymoon over? That the Republicans may be abandoning their pretense of being in love with Israel is a possibility. One perennial Troll at The Reaction called me "an arrogant Kike" for having asserted that no, Barney Frank bears no discernible responsibility for our global recession; but it's really too soon to tell if the frustrated masses yearning to breathe fire will switch scapegoats and replace witches, Liberals, illegal aliens and the ACLU as hate objects. Maybe they consider all those straw men to be Jewish anyway.

Of course it's hard to think of any immigrant group that isn't or hasn't been accused of divided loyalty in this nation of immigrants. John Kennedy stared down that bit of bigoted Waspery with grace nearly 50 years ago, but ask a Muslim -- hell ask someone who isn't a Muslim but has a suggestive name.

Of course it doesn't often occur except to cynics, that preaching the impending destruction of mankind and the dissolution of secular nationhood might be taken as a dilemma in as much as commitment to preserving the USA and praying for lakes of fire and brimstone aren't compatible, at least to me. I can't think of loyalty more divided than that of the Religious Right, promoting the Christian Bible as the foundation of the United States, rather than its secular Constitution. I can't help but think of divided loyalty when presented with a candidate who looks longingly forward to the destruction of our country and the flight of the elect to the Holy Kingdom of God in Alaska (no witches may apply.)

Stupid Republicans

If we think the very rich are indeed different from you and me, it may not be much of a complement to them.

The talk around the Yacht Club these days involves a lot of snickering about Barak Obama and what "that man" will do to the economy. No, I'm not joking, but then neither are they. Perhaps Malcom Gladwell is right that material success has as much or more to do with circumstances than with talent or intelligence. Take the fellow with a yacht worth far, far more than than Joe the Plumber will make in his lifetime; a fellow who thinks that we're seeing a "slowdown" that will "bounce back" shortly and a slowdown that has nothing to do with George Bush, a Republican congress, deregulation or the idea that debt has no consequences if you cut taxes and pour money down a hole. I have as much faith in his genius as he has in the notion that America's success has been the result of its Christian piety.

Obama of course will raise taxes. That's axiomatic because he's a Democrat. Raising taxes will harm the economy, they say, even though it would be as fair to say that a bullet will harm a dead horse and the economy has done better under Democrats since WW II. Supply side economics will work eventually and even if it doesn't, even if the "slowdown" becomes a full blown depression, we have to keep making it easy for the Great Gatsby to keep the twin Diesels fed. Did I mention that Obama is going to ruin the economy by raising my taxes?

Past imperfect

Anna Quindlen writes in the current Newsweek about Loving V. Virginia, the mostly forgotten 1967 Supreme Court opinion that "Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man" thereby ruling against the Racial Integrity act of 1924. Of course we consider a ban on interracial marriage a bit archaic today, even though the fundamentalists who told us that since God had "separated the races" we shouldn't allow them to mix are still here and telling us what God wants and damn the Constitution and its heretical equal protection clause. It's probably what they mean by "Judicial activism" when they complain about the Supreme Court of the 1960's, but of course our constitution was specifically designed to thwart the impositions of religious institutions; impositions that are still the backbone of Conservative culture.

Does anyone sane still think the purpose of our government is to enforce sectarian rules as interpreted by self appointed mullahs? Apparently so. Karl Rove sets forth in the same issue to tell us that in reconstituting the Republican party, the values traditional to people who traditionally oppose any concept of freedom other than their own freedom to impose rules, should absolutely never be compromised. Can we really separate the "conservative culture" he champions from the long standing tyrannical opposition to things as diverse and numerous as "Misogyny," Women's suffrage, the five day work week, segregation or Social Security? Can Republicans seriously consider themselves to be the "Party of Lincoln" when Lincoln was a Liberal willing to ignore biblical tolerance for slavery?

The Social Conservatism of Karl Rove, whether or not it's a smokescreen hiding the dragon of tyranny, is outmoded and has been abandoned by countries along with fundamentalist religiosity and bigotry toward social minorities. In fact it's obvious that much of the world has begin to recognize the freedom of people to define their own family relationships, make domestic contracts and partnerships as they see fit. So far, despite the Fallwellian demagoguery, nothing bad has happened and isn't likely to happen when we catch up with the Canadians, as eventually we will do.

Republicans should come across ( not necessarily be) as morally serious, says Rove, although Rove has long demonstrated that victory is the root of morality. What escapes him is that the Constitution of this country protects me against other people's moral seriousness when it comes to the rights it guarantees. What escapes him is that his vision of a reconstituted party is a party still attached to the losing side of history.

"We can't just dwell on the past" says Rove without any apparent sense of irony. "The Future is already here."

Indeed it is and I'm hoping that the conservative impulse toward clinging to that past is part of the past, and that Karl Rove and the other enemies of liberty and personal responsibility are not part of the future.

Rising star.

There's a 25 foot observation tower in the Hobe Sound Federal Wildlife preserve about 150 yards from my house. I took flashlight and binoculars up the steep stairs at about a quarter to 8 Friday night. The night was beautiful and I had a full 360 degree panorama at above treetop height. The full moon was up about a hand's breadth above the mangroves to the east and reflected off the water of the intracoastal waterway below.

As my watch closed in on 7:55, I began to wonder if I could actually see anything through the haze on the horizon, if the launch would go off on time (I forgot to bring a radio) and whether I was being silly for braving the mosquitoes to try to see something over a hundred miles away. I didn't bring a compass either and wondered if I would miss the whole thing because the tower's roof blocked the North star.

Then the sun began to rise in the North, the few clouds traversed the spectrum from a dim, hardly perceptible red glow, to a brighter orange, to yellow as silently, majestically, the long trail of flame rose above the sunrise like a comet.

At about 30 degrees above the horizon, the solid fuel boosters dimmed, separated and fell, leaving only an ever-rising blue-white star climbing and arching over until it appeared finally to be falling as it made it's way across the Atlantic. By the time I got back to my house they were over Africa and half way to dawn.

The Commies are (still) coming!

If you really thought the Obama-as-Communist insanity had anything to to with Obama, with National Health Care or progressive income taxes or anything else in the real world, here's some evidence that might change your mind. We've seen many attempts to make us afraid of creeping Communism during the last two years and I've written about some of them: stern lectures about how frogs won't notice if you boil them slowly, fake letters from professors quoting "exchange students" who warn us about small increments of socialism being what brought on communism in Vietnam. Of course Communism never did arise that way anywhere, but by armed revolution or invasion, nor did it grow from or replace socialism but rather corrupt feudalism or colonial fiefdom. The slippery slope argument they all share is a fallacy of course; an unsupported assumption or extrapolation designed to deceive and frighten, but it's one of the few things left to Obama haters and they continue to use it.

The recent recrudescence of a fake quote by Nikita Kruschev that first appeared to the delight of wingnuts nearly 50 years ago is a perfect example. Titled "And so it begins!" the screed tells us that:

" We cannot expect Americans to jump from Capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of Socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism"

That Kruschev never said it or anything like it and that extensive research supports the fact that it was cooked up by people who had private reasons to object to social security, minimum wages, welfare and unions, doesn't really matter. This is the USA and most of us are either ignorant, dishonest or both and a substantial number are barking mad and willing to believe anything that validates their obsessions, their fears and their greed.

I'm nearly convinced that the biggest problem facing our new administration is not terrorism, depression or climate change, but the enemy within; the enemy who disseminate viral e-mails, throw tantrums on AM radio, giggle and sneer on Fox News: the people who make stupid jokes and the people who pass them on and on and on.

Same old Party

I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night,
alive as you and me.
Says I "But Joe, you're ten years dead"
"I never died" said he,
"I never died" said he.

_____

Neither did Dick Nixon, I guess. Whether or not Jesus ever resurrected anyone, public relations, advertising and propaganda regularly do, and while I was disappointed, while watching his funeral on TV, that Nixon didn't rise from the coffin, the old, drunk, anti-Semitic gangster had already been relaunched as an elder statesman and his spirit, like Joe Hill's, lives on in people like Karl Rove and in the Bush administration in general.

Karl Rove may be one of the most disliked men in public affairs but although his brand of politics may have helped sink the Republican party he's been given the robes of a political pundit and a seat in front of the camera. What will happen to the ragged survivors of the GOP's biggest defeat in decades? Will the party flee to the arms of Jesus-in-arms or will it return to it's alleged roots? Ron Paul thinks I'm asking the wrong question.

We should, said he, be asking why the country itself went in the wrong direction. In an essay at CNN.com, Paul suggests that the Republican party became irrelevant in 2000 when it took control of Congress and the Executive and became more interested in its own power than in the future of the country or in addressing what he calls the cancerous growth of government under Bill Clinton.

"Once the Republicans were in power, though, the promises faded, and all policies were directed at maintaining or increasing power by trying to whittle away at Democratic strength by acting like big-spending Democrats."

That the Democrats actually balanced the budget, shrank the size of the executive and left us with a surplus is not something Paul seems willing to discuss, the straw man of the big spending Democrat being so central to reactionary Republican principles. Yet when he says:

"The Republican Congress never once stood up against the Bush/Rove machine that demanded support for unconstitutional wars, attacks on civil liberties here at home, and an economic policy based on more spending, more debt, and more inflation -- while constantly preaching the flawed doctrine that deficits don't matter as long as taxes aren't raised."

I find it hard to disagree with him and with his distaste for the "dirty tricks" used to foist this upon us.

If a government commensurate with the level of minimalism Ron Paul envisions is, in my opinion, as unlikely and unworkable as any of the great social and economic dogmas of the last centuries, I none the less have to stand up and salute his statement that

"Opportunity abounds for anyone who can present the case for common sense in fiscal affairs, for protection of civil liberties here at home, and avoiding the senseless foreign entanglements which have bogged us down for decades and contributed so significantly to our fiscal and budgetary crisis."

I have some faith that Barak Obama does substantially offer such an opportunity; Ron Paul is sure he doesn't. In any event, the GOP seems no more likely to listen to listen to Ron Paul today than it has since he became a member of that party. It seems far more likely to seek new leaders in the old mold, the old medieval religious mindset; to repaint the old institutions, dress up the old jingoism, xenophobia, bigotry and class warfare in clothes from Niemann Marcus and to sell it using the same old slime and slander.

If to ask "whither the GOP" is not the right question to ask, I think Ron Paul has answered it none the less.

Capturing the flag

During the Bush years, I hardly ever flew an American flag from my home. Only for a period in 2001, did I hang it from my front porch as a gesture of national solidarity, but as it was during the Vietnam era, the flag became, after 2003, an emblem of support for war for war's sake. Don't get me wrong, I'm an emotional sap who gets tears in his eyes at war memorials, even those the public has largely forgotten, but today, I'm putting up the flag again and it's message is clear. It's veteran's day.

The war that wasn't

Well the election is over, but the struggle will go on forever -- the struggle to pretend there's a War on Christmas, that is. As early as a week before the election, e-mails were hitting the web claiming Home Depot had plenty of Hanukkah stuff but no mention of Christmas: none. The one I got was in the form of a letter from Donald Wildmon, Chairman of the American Family Association and excoriates the "politically correct" people for "censoring" Christmas. It urges you to e-mail Home Depot and warns you that these villains may "block" your message.

As usual with messages that mention "family Values" or contain pictures of the flag or the World Trade Center in flames, it's bullshit designed to elicit the knee jerk reaction American jerks can be depended upon to make. By "Politically Correct" of course, they mean Jews and perhaps atheists: anyone who isn't supportive of making this secular Republic into Jesustan, complete with mandatory religious observances, oaths and recitations.

Some people would think that October 27th would be a bit early to start flooding the web site with Christmas promotions. Customers typically are out buying Halloween supplies and decorations at that point, but apparently the AFA is more concerned with their bogus message than with any pretense to objectivity. While stores seem to be pushing Christmas stuff earlier and earlier recently, it's probably done out of desperation born of the economic crisis and not from the demented sputterings of Wildmon's wildcats. Home Depot already has Christmas ads up and it's still weeks before Thanksgiving. Christmas is the only holiday mentioned by name.

I'm sure Fake News will be picking up the story and running with it soon enough, but check for yourself. It's Christmas time at Home Depot, just as it was last year when these miscreants insisted no Christmas trees were for sale at Home Depot, only Jew stuff. Of course last year, the local HD had at least half an acre of them and I'm sure it will once again, once it's actually the Christmas season.

Still, there will be believers and believers will believe and Fox News and AFA and all the other people and organizations for whom Jesus weeps will be helping their delusions. They're not doing it for Jesus, they've been defeated at the polls and must redouble their efforts to snap and grasp at the ankles of Lady Liberty like predatory animals, hoping to bring her down.

Perhaps you'd like to contact the American Family Association and tell them what you think about their war on religious freedom. Perhaps you'd like to tell them that Christmas is a national holiday, and nobody in the government will ever tell you not to say Merry Christmas or will try to ban the holiday, nor is anyone "trying to silence the Christians" by asking them not to silence the rest of us. Perhaps you'd like them to stop trying to bully private businesses and private citizens into observing any holiday according to the proclamations of the AFA.

Pretending to be a victim; telling people that some group is trying to silence them and stifle them
is a time-honored tool of tyrants, particularly those who are trying hard to silence and stifle the public. There is no war on Christmas and the only people who every tried to get Christains to stop celebrating it were other Christians. It's a lie, it's a ploy, it's a trick and it's a war on freedom; a war that we lose by losing our freedom.

The AFA is your enemy whether you love Jesus or never heard of him. The AFA is your enemy if you love America as it was intended to be. Call them, write them, let them know.

Le mot Juste

A kind word turneth away wrath and saying just the right thing can create confidence. President Elect Barak Obama said all the right things and looked as presidential as anyone ever has in his first press conference this afternoon. Chris Matthews even had to admit that there was no sign of a "redistributive" mood in his tax plan although in fact there never was, and who could resist a smile when Obama compared himself to a mutt from the animal shelter?

This is a man confident in himself and who appears to be confident in his ability and confident in our country. It's in sharp contrast to the anonymous e-mail I got last night showing the Obama campaign logo as African tribesmen danced almost naked around a fire. So while I've come to feel that for once I voted for someone I believe in rather than the lesser of two evils; while I am at this moment as proud of the USA as I have been and more proud than I have been in many years, I'm beginning to daydream about blowing the heads off racists.

A christian friend of mine once said that such people were ignorant and should be pitied. I know he's right, but it doesn't help. It only encourages them. So whoever you are "floridajoker" be aware that pity only makes my aim better.

Hide the guns!

It sure doesn't take long. My mailbox has begun to collect hysterical warnings about how the second Amendment is in grave danger and we're in for an era of bigger more intrusive government. No, I don't think any of it comes from Mars or from troglodytes raised underground. It's hard to understand though, how any Earthling is able to associate Democrats with big, free spending government in light of the history of the last decades and it's as hard to understand Obama's statements about the second amendment as advocacy for "gun grabbing," as it is to understand how the idea of income taxes is Marxist.

But Americans are as irrational about guns as we are about politics in general. As far as I can tell, Obama supports the current court's interpretation, which affirms the individual citizen's right to keep and bear arms, but insists that communities can pass gun safety laws such as to require background checks. This is hardly "gun-grabbing" in my opinion and although I do question the wisdom of requiring traceable serial numbers on bullets (in fact I think it's a supreme act of sanguine ignorance) it's not "gun-grabbing." It's just an unworkable day-dream only possible to someone who knows nothing about firearms and how they work.

Still, this kind of anti Democratic fanaticism is promoted passionately by organizations from the NRA to Jews For the Preservation of Firearm Ownership. Democrats raise taxes and grab guns - even if they don't. So it is written.

Obama did indicate support for Washington DC's handgun ban and I strongly disagree with him. Of course so did the Supreme Court and there's the catch. Obama can't write laws and although congress can write laws and presidents can sign them, the courts can override them and the courts have indicated that the second amendment, "shall not be infringed" clause and all, means what it says. As a constitutional scholar, Obama knows it.

Obama also knows, at least I think he does, that he was elected to restore fiscal discipline, to restore sensible regulation to financial markets and stop the hemorrhaging of our economy. It remains to be seen, but I think the pet projects of Nanny State Democrats aren't going to be on the agenda for quite a while. Who worries about needing a haircut when their femoral artery is severed? It's way too soon to think about burying your AK in the back yard.

Yes, but. . .

Did Florida redeem itself last night? It depends. Yes, there were enough Homo Sapiens to put Obama over the top, but the Neanderthals won far too many local contests. The miserable bastards of Martin County Florida voted heavily Republican and no Democrat, including Barak Obama came anywhere close to winning. I'm at a loss to explain it.

This is a small county, much of which is rural and much of it is state and federal park land. It's a county that prides itself as conservation minded and it shows, A recent poll showed than nearly 90% of us favor slow and limited growth and many favor no growth at all, but it's a county that regularly -- invariable votes for councilmen owned and operated by rapacious developers. That is to say they vote Republican.

I've regularly been chastised for hinting that Sarah Palin isn't qualified. People bristle at any criticism of Bush, at any suggestion that there is any option for the voter than to go straight Republican. Wealthy people, upper middle class people; you can almost see the reptilian nictitating membrane blink over their eyes at the suggestion that there is no official state religion, that the Constitution does not mandate that people pledge allegiance to (the Christian) God and that we stamp our mandatory faith on our coinage.

Yes a slight majority of Floridians voted for Obama. Counties containing Universities, counties with a high African American population, even Miami-Dade with it's very large Cuban population voted for Obama, but not Martin County with it's relatively large population of billionaires and multi-multi millionaires and a very large number of retired military personnel. This county votes in lock step with the people of central Florida: the people in the rusted out trailers and tar paper shacks and dead cars in the yard.

These fine folks also passed a constitutional amendment banning any kind of same-sex domestic or civil contracts, even though Florida law already prohibits same-sex marriage. Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised that a State with such a diverse population would have such an affinity for small minded, authoritarian and puritanical politics, but I am and I'm disgusted.

Yes, Florida voted for Obama, but. . .

YES

I would love to say something eloquent, but I can't. Our country has done something eloquent, or at least a majority has and all I can say is

YES

Long day's night

Now it is election day and the rising hopes and the long road to who knows what. Before the date changes we will probably know whether the rage of the right has been able to overwhelm the national desire for a departure from the Republican juggernaut, with the lies, the slander, the invented scandals and fake outrages we've seen lately. Obama hates coal miners, Obama is a Maoist Muslim who broke the law by visiting his dying grandmother and Joe the Plumber says he hates Israel. I'm tired of hearing it, tired of arguing with demented idiots and religious ravers and condescending crackpots.

Of course we'll hear from them regardless of the outcome. Ideas and candidates come and go, but the ugliness of American politics endures. The gods themselves fight stupidity in vain, said Schiller and he was right. We're hardly as powerful.

I'm looking forward to being able to fly the flag again without being mistaken as a supporter of the worst administration in our history and its misbegotten war. I'm looking forward to an administration that at the very least will respect our constitution and laws and most of all will respect our citizens who have been living under suspicion and surveillance for so long. I'm looking forward to not being ashamed of my country's attitude and actions and of its crude, ignorant, egotistical and stupid President, but it's going to be a very long day.