Greetings from Dicksea, my Yankee friends, Double-Damned Yankee here.  

I recently drove from the ATL down to Columbus, Georgia, home to Fort Benning, where there are around 120,000 active duty US military.  

The main drag off the interstate into Columbus is called Veterans Parkway.  Along both sides are all sorts of bidnesses that are rare and/or non-existent in Vermont – pawn shops, title loan shops, massage parlors, ‘lingerie shops’, strip clubs, used car lots where you can pay by the week, check-cashing and payroll-advance storefronts, and others of similar ilk and repute.  Flim-flamming and scamming soldiers is the game here, like in many military towns.  

(There are eight Walmarts within 30 minutes of the base.)

It is a long proud tradition.  Back in the 1950s, Phenix City, just across the river from Columbus in Alabam, was put under martial law because soldiers were getting rolled, beaten and killed – moonshine, gambling, and prostitution businesses ran the town.

There are a million and one reasons to oppose the F-35s at BTV.   Having grown up a mile-and-a-half from a 3/8ths-mile Saturday night dirt racing (modified stock), and upstate NY 2 cycle-engine snowmobile drone from November to April (back when we had winter), I certainly can appreciate the noise argument.  

Out of sight (and out of hearing range), these planes – and the military excess they represent – might be out of mind.  But, rest assured, citizen, you paid for them (well, you and the Chinese), this is YOUR military, and these planes will be somewhere.

Perversely, precisely because you are the kind of people that care about these things, the folks who fly them and keep them in the air would be best off in your back yard.  

Just sayin’.

Tom Graves is one of the new tea-bagger congresspeople, elected to Georgia’s 9th district.  I borrowed this from Jim Garrison’s column at the AJC:

U.S. Rep. Tom Graves recently made the defunding of National Public Radio a topic of a fund-raising letter. He wrote:

   “I never listen to NPR. As I travel across Georgia, I tune in to hear Glenn Beck or Rush, Hannity or catch the news or just relax to good ole country music. NPR is too snooty for my taste.

   “The politically correct drivel that passes for entertainment on NPR doesn’t appeal to me. Plus I’m probably like you and I believe that NPR is rightfully under fire from conservatives for firing Juan Williams for having the audacity to be conservative and appear on NPR’s most hated rival, Fox News.

   “Whether NPR is on the air or not wouldn’t matter to me except for this cold hard truth: They’re funded with your tax dollars and mine….

   “The NPR types like to project the image of being all lovey-dovey, but when it comes to negative campaigning, they’re cruel, relentless, personal and fueled by a self-righteous disdain for anything and anybody conservative.”

I call it hatin’ on stoopid.

Our governor has suffered two veto over-rides in the last couple of months.  What does this bode for his political future?

Don’t count Jim out yet.  Smily-faced obstructionism is the new (old) GOP strategery for the 2012 presidential cycle. Pawlenty from MN and Douglas from VT are well positioned for the 2012 GOP nomination with their smarmy, school-marmish Church Lady personas.  

The GOP might try to rally ’round the rebel rag one more time and put the Wasillabilly forward, but the GOP is going to find, much like the Democrats did when for 48 years the only Dem presidents that could be elected were from Dixie, that the only pols with a ghost of a chance that their party can put forward will have to be from the Nawth.  And even if Sarah does get the nomination, the ticket will have to be “balanced” (I know, hard to “balance” a ticket when one of your candidates is imbalanced) with a bonafide Yankee.

Pawlenty is stepping down at the end of his term.  He is dragging his feet on seating Franken, knowing that the big GOP donors will pay him off for keeping the Dem Senate majority under 60.  

His slow-walking Franken is burning his bridges in MN, perhaps, but not nationally.   For one, he’s got the fact that he was elected in a fairly blue state on his side.  Unlike Romney, who also can make the same claim to fame, he’s not seen as particularly slick/slimy, even if he is.  

The same with our governor.  There’s nothing slick about Douglas (but what he lacks in slickness he makes up for in mendacity and unctuousness).  

This may not be a good year for Douglas in VT, but it could be a great year for him nationally.  The vetoes might not play so well for him here, but they’ll play better in Peoria, and great in the red states and red areas.  He’s now on the record strong for gay-bashing and gutting government services, bloody shirts for the increasingly Southron GOP base.

And, perversely, he has the Vermont brand working for him, too.  He can’t be all bad if those crazy folk in VT elected him 4 times.  He must be a nice guy. (Isn’t that special?)

The folks in the rest of the country aren’t going to understand the Dem/Prog circular firing squads that have kept the governor’s office GOP.   One of the unintended consequences of the progressive (note – small “p”) infighting and squabbling could be Douglas on the 2012 presidential or VP ballot.  (America says “gee, thanks”.)

Douglas has assembled a big PR team.  That team is way too big to keep just for VT.   I think a big incentive for him to run in 2010 is to keep the team on the public teat for a national run, and, if the Progs and Dems get the circular firing squad together again, it will make it a done deal.  

Tangential to the Dem-Prog debates, third parties potentially changed the electoral vote outcomes in three states Tuesday.  

In Missouri, McCain will get the state’s 11 electoral votes, having beaten Obama by less than 6,000 votes.  Our friend Ralph Nader received over 17,000 votes in MO.

In Indiana, Obama won by 26,000 votes.  Libertarian Bob Barr received 29,000 votes, more than Obama’s margin.

And in North Carolina, Obama won by just under 14,000 votes.  Here Barr got just over 25,000.  

These numbers would indicate that Barr was worse for McCain than Nader was for Obama.

In Georgia, Saxby Chambliss missed 50%+1 by about 16,000 (0.2%) votes, thanks to the Libertarian candidate, who polled over 3.5%.  The runoff is scheduled for December 2.  Traditionally, turnout in Georgia runoffs has been light, but if Obama campaigns for Jim Martin, it could get interesting.    

My America kicked your “Real Amerikkka’s” ass!

I must say, Obama is running a brilliant campaign. While I still am not willing to misunderestimate the red voter’s stupidity and hatemongering and declare an Obama victory, Obama has played it real well.

We saw it come front and center in West Virginia, when Hillary stooped to conquer that primary.

Her fairly blatant appeal to racism brought the loonies out of the woodwork – and out from under the rocks.

During that portion of the campaign, America began to be regularly exposed to the insanity, stupidity, superstitious and vile nature of far too many of its citizens – e.g. the clowns that think Obama is Arab, that he is a terrorist, that he is a Commie, a foreigner, the not-so-closeted racists, etc.

Hilary won the Battle of West Virginia, but lost the war.

She won the “Joe Sixpack” vote – but what Obama got was the Joe Sixpacks’ exposure. Joe Sixpack came to center stage of our political process, and it is becoming a disaster for John McCain.

McCain floundered and meandered over the summer. Obama stayed on his message, hope and change, while the indecencies and incompetencies of the Bush GOP administration piled ever onward and higher. The Joe Sixpacks rumbled and grumbled, and then McCain threw them some red meat in the form of Governor Palin.

Joe Sixpacks ate her up, drooling over her, wetting their pants over her. Her acceptance speech was filled with homespun hate and bile, and they loved her for it. (That and the pictures of her with the real big gun, which is another post ;-)).

On the campaign trail, Palin gave them the simple-minded hate and character assassination that, after 20 or so years of hate radio and Fox, and 40 years of Southern Strategery politics, had become like their mother’s milk for them.

Stoked by their lust for hate, their fear of the future, Joe Sixpack became even more unhinged. Her campaign rallies became more mob-like.

Unfortunately for McCain, the Google, the internets and video cameras have undermined his Joe Sixpack strategery. Hundreds of videos show the Joe (and Jane) Sixpacks for what they really are – crazies and hatefilled cowardly bullies.

This uncomfortable truth has more and more Republicans and independents saying enough – I might be a racist, I might be a homophobe, I might be a xenophobe, but I am not rabble, I am not going to be part of a bloodthirsty mob, I AM NOT ONE OF YOU MORONS.

Meanwhile, Obama and Biden stay above the fray, not getting in the gutter with McCain, Palin, and their bully crowd. They rattle the cage every once in awhile, and watch the GOPers consume themselves with their own hate and bile, hoping that exposure to the light of public opinion will begin to kill the cancer that the McCain-Palin campaign has become.

Like I said, I still think the Joe Sixpacks could pull it out November 4. Our country has been a nation run by whiners, haters, and losers on and off since the failure of Second Reconstruction in 1968.

But Senator Obama has run a brilliant campaign, and done humanity a great service by standing strong in the face of hatred, stupidity, and the unceasing slanders of his opponents. He has played a masterful game of ‘rope-the-dopes’ since West Virginia, letting his opponents show us their true natures.

November 4th is not so much an election as a character test of the American people… are we a nation of crazy ignoranuses, cowards and bullies, or not?

There are a lot of Joe (and Jane) Sixpacks out there…

Stay tuned…

Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation has come up with a great way to deal with the high cost of healthcare, and sudden loss of income due to catastrophic illness… from the front page of their website:  

What's New Thank you for your interest in donating to the "Tony Snow Family Trust." Click here to make an online contribution >> You may also send donations by check, made payable to the “Tony Snow Family Trust” to: Center for Health Transformation Attn: Tony Snow Family Trust 1425 K Street, NW Suite 450 Washington, DC 20005

 According to the website, the fund is for the educational expenses of Tony's children.    That Newt is quite the thinker and innovator – it's pure genius, actually.  If people will donate to this, they'll donate to pretty near anything.

(I think this is is a well-written diary that could generate some really interesting responses. Well done UY!   – promoted by Christian Avard)

It will be a loooong one.  

One score and fourteen years ago, I was a college student, home for the summer.  When I wasn’t working, I was on the floor of my parent’s living room, sprawled out watching TV, glued to the news and the Watergate hearings.   The Nixon administration, despite their November 1972 mandate, was twisting in the wind; for us political junkies, it was great theater.  And come that August, I was glad to see him go, a happy ending.

And I howled inside when Ford let him off.  Outside too.  To put it mildly, I was quite indignant.   I, along with many others, wanted to see “justice done”, which is a catch-all phrase which usually – for me, I won’t speak for you – includes fantasies of revenge, public humiliation, and often enough, taking the sumbitches down to the beach and shooting them, like they did in Liberia in 1980, and leaving them for the high tide.  Suffice to say, there is a part of me that wants my ‘pound of flesh’, likes the idea of ‘an eye for an eye’, (or at the very least, a pie in the eye).  Hey, I’m a primate.   Would I do it?  No.  Probably not.  

George Walker Bush’s administration has left their skidmarks all over our Constitution.  Bypassing the FISA courts is just one of many of those skidmarks.  They are without a doubt guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors as outlined in Article II Section 4 of the Constitution they keep wiping their butts on.  By and through them, monumental injustices have been perpetrated against Americans and innocents all over the world.  

But, let’s face it – the injustices and lawbreaking started with the man’s very (s)election in 2000, and they have continued pretty much unabated and certainly unchecked ever since.  (Since 2000, two Vermonters have been in a position to follow their oaths and defend the Constitution – Bernie Sanders (until 2006) and Peter Welch – by indicting/impeaching Bush and/or his many slimy cronies as members of the House that have that authority.  Both would rather read the polls than follow their sworn oaths.)  

Please note that Obama didn’t make it to Washington until 2005.   By that time, the horses were long out of the barn.  Bush had had a full term of trashing and shitting on the Constitution, and the American people had just asked for more.   We were four-plus years into Constitutional freefall.   Note that the American people were – and are – complicit in the trashing of the Constitution.  These are all our duly elected (and/or selected) “leaders”, such as they are.

(This is not the first time in our history that we’ve had leadership that threw the Constitution out the window, exploiting fears and panics of the people – Red Scares in the 1950s and the 19 teens and 20s, and New England’s own John Adams come to mind.  But this is where we are, in the middle of one of those periods.)

Lots more below the fold.

Obama sees his job as – first – talking us back from the ledge, the abyss.  That’s his higher form of defending the Constitution and what he sees as the American Way, since the problem is not the trampling of the Constitution, but the failure of the people to do anything about it.  

I take him at his word that he will revisit the FISA mess if elected.  He, so far, has shown himself to be a brilliant strategist, he constantly reframes issues in a larger context of hope and opportunity.  

Tellingly, he’s even tried to engage the fundamentalists in dialog – including some of our sickest most scared people, people with a fear based worldview and an an active belief in an “end of the world” eschatology.   But fundamentalists are people too, and for better or worse (usually worse), our fellow Americans.   He’s talking them (and us, since they can take us there) back from the edge, trying to engage not their fear and insanity, but our hopes, our common humanity.

It’s hard hard work.   There remains a huge portion – perhaps the voting majority, come November we’ll see – of Americans mired in their fear, their prejudices, their thirst for blood and vengeance, their vicarious love of war.   Some of them will hold on to that no matter what.  But we can’t give up, because the alternative for the planet – a crazy sick people with a crazy sick leadership with crazy sick weapons capability – is not good.

Back to 1974.  To Nixon.  To Ford’s pardon.

I didn’t get my “pound of flesh”.  Vengeance was not mine, or anyone else’s.  It pissed me off, for a long time.

We must brace ourselves for the likelihood, the probability, that we will never get our “pound of flesh” from the Bush administration perpetrators.  

As progressives, we are wired to be outraged by injustice, but “vengeance” is not supposed to be our thing.  (In New England and the northeast, they build ‘reformatories’, and ‘penitentiaries’ and ‘corrections facilities’.  Other places, they build ‘prisons’.)

Somewhere in Vermont, Michael Jacques sits alone in a cell.  Some Vermonters have been exercising their revenge fantasies, some more than others.  I’m sure there have been plenty of talk radio calls that have gone something like this “just give me 20 minutes with him” or “stick him in the general population, let them take care of him”.  

But Michael Jacques is a sick sick man, not well wired for decency or compassion, and probably not well wired for guilt and shame.   He is where he needs to be, keep him there and he is not a threat to anyone.  Anything else we do to him is vengeance.

George Bush is a sick sick man, too.  On many levels, his crimes are every bit as foul as Jacques’.  Like Jacques, he is poorly wired for guilt and shame and dealing with reality in general.  But the underlying – and much more immediate – problem is not his criminality, his sociopathy, it is the fear and vengeance in the heart of the American electorate.  

There’s a gun to the head of our republic.  Obama is asking us for the gun, asking us to live in a different future, one unstuck from old paradigms of right-left blue-red, etc. etc, etc, ad anauseum.

I am realizing that “yes we can” is a lifeline – a lifeline of hope.  Hope.  

He’s throwing it our way.  But we have to swim for it, and it will probably mean dropping our desire for revenge – and finding other ways to slake our thirst for justice, at least for the short run – if we want to reach the rope of hope and the peaceful shore…