obama at 100...a new day comin?

first, let me put my politics in plain view. i am a late 1960s liberal of the flower power persuasion.

i detested the eisenhower-kennedy-johnson-nixon vietnam war and the racist-sexist-polluter-corporatist (mad men) society of the time.
naturally then, i considered the reagan-gingrich era another era of social, economic, cultural, and environmental destruction.
the last nine years of republican (repub) hegemony were, simply, the collapse of the philosophic foundation of the right-wing military-business class.

i consider the peak of contemporary american culture to have been when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the Moon on 20 July 1969. (for a moment the whole world seemed to stop and we seemed to be all one 'mankind'.) after that, although technology has evolved enormously, its been straight downhill. no moon base. no mars. just war war war and trillions spent on war toys. (just think of where we'd be if that money had gone into manned space...)

no...repubs and mad men have left the 'ordinary guy in the street' (e.g., me) with nothing to look forward to but a generational war with the islamic world and a hollowed out post industrial economy.

let's be honest, the future for the working class or anyone without at least an undergraduate degree is going to be grim without traditional unionized factory work.
infrastructure maintenance, fast foods, security, and enlisted military will be the biggest source of working class jobs in the near future. but there will be no job mobility and no way to advance the next generation on service economy wages.

however, before we go down that road, let's enjoy the moment! for the moment, the repubs are finished!

the repubs have no more ideas and no more ‘leaders’ worth serious consideration!

(the corks pop *!*)

in this interregnum, there is a wonderful opportunity to eliminate the whole scaffolding of the military-capitalist-polluter-theocratic society
and replace it with a rational-scientific-ecological society. by ecological i mean both social and physical ecology.

now, if only...there was a leader...


into this gap comes barack obama...44th president of the u.s. congratulations to those of us who had the presence of mind not to go the other way!
grampy & moose girl would have been a real joke. but, perhaps obama is the answer.

it is obvious that he’s a vast intellectual improvement over bush.
from his rhetoric we can feel the compassion missing with the conservative. and yet, now that the voting is over, what remains seems, somehow...lacking? is it 'morning after' blues?

instead of the bold practitioner of the political arts we find a timid, tentative, and seemingly unsure occupier of the office. this is rather
disturbing, given that the dems, as a whole, are a timid and conflicted party (always running scared of the repubs).

what we need now is a clear, clean, and complete break from the repub policies. i think such a break would start with:

(1) nationalizing the banks and underwriting the ‘underwater mortgages’ of people with single homes, who have no history of flipping homes.
(2) using the u.s.-iraq sofa to accelerate our departure from iraq (like the brits).
(3) realizing that there is no win in the afghani-pakistani talibani wars that bush inflamed and getting out of there as fast as possible.
(4) telling israel that its now a big technological power with a first class military and nukes, so it's on its own! good luck and no more handouts!
(5) telling the american people the truth about the u.s. auto industry (and old fashion industry in general): it's dead. no more mass manufacturing of cars on assembly lines, just boutique custom cars with lots of smarts. maybe segway-coffins.
(6) cleaning out the bush repubs remaining in important government positions from which they can undermine his governace.
(7) prosecuting the people who founded the ‘bush torture policy’ (btp), or at least handing them over to the hague if we are too gutless to do the job!
(8) and (i almost forgot), decriminalizing most drugs for adults so we can save money on policing and jailing and warring (with ourselves) and reap the benefits of taxing the stuff, researching the stuff, and enhancing medical techniques with what comes out of the research.

oh well, in summary, obama may not be 'the one' (given his recent comments and policies on all of the above), but he'd better wake up and set a whole new course. (or the dems in congress better make him) because periods of opportunity for big cultural change come rarely and are fleeting (before the next crisis).

on the other hand, obama gets kudos for his changes in: stem-cell, climate, and basic research funding policy!

more later…