Friday, August 29, 2008

Reaching for the Stars

So, being a political wonk, I watched a fair chunk of the D's convention. I thought the major speakers hit homers, and that Barack Obama's acceptance speech drove in the winning run.

He's got my vote.

I'll watch the R's confab, too, but I'd be lying if I said I believed I was going to be as impressed by what they have to say. Or impressed at all.

I'm of the no-way, no-h0w, no-McCain mindset, and I think the R's have screwed it up enough in the last eight years -- let the D's screw it up for a while.

Can Obama deliver all he promises? In a word -- no. I don't think he can. But there's an old saying, "If you reach for the stars, you might not grab one, but at least you don't come up with a handful of mud ..."

Better, in my mind, to reach and fail than to grab a shovel and start digging, and what the Current Occupant of the White House and his Gang have done in the last eight years is, in another word, criminal. Debt, war, Constitutional and civil rights, violations, the list is long and sickening.

You don't have agree, that's your right. But if you want to say so, don't say it here -- I don't want to hear it, because no matter how you might season it, it's bullshit to say we are in any way better off than we were when Clinton left office.

Plenty of that around already. Don't need any more.

8 comments:

  1. I'm in general agreement but I think Obama choosing Biden was a bad idea. And McCain shocked me with his choice of Palin.

    McCain seems to have chosen outside the box while Obama has done nothing but jump right in since the primaries. What do you think?

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  2. The best line from the convention was delivered by Kucinich but edited out.

    "The Republicans want four more years. In a just world they'd get ten to twenty."

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  3. I think that at the level necessary to play Presidential politics, you can't get too far out of the box and expect to win.

    Neither of them did anything particularly amazing -- Biden was chosen because he offset Obama's perceived weaknesses; same with Palin.

    How smart or dumb they were remains to be seen, of course, but I think Biden was a better choice than Palin.

    If Obama gets hit by a truck, Biden can do the job.
    I don't think Palin can if McCain keels over. Being a one-term U.S. Senator and a state congressman from the Land of Lincoln might not be the fattest resume, but being two years the Governor of Alaska? Please.

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  4. I saw the Kucinich speech. Leaping and hopping around like Tom Peterson -- "Wake up!" -- and looking like Tom Cruise on Oprah bouncing on her couch?

    A double-portion of Fruit Loops ...

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  5. I agree Steve..The Biden choice was IMHO the right call..it shores Obama up on a couple of different fronts and actually gives him a nice attack dog. Biden is no push over and will go for the jugular. AS to Senator McCain...wow that pick is to me a death letter...I mean come on what was he thinking...now she may have an ace up her sleeve bjut if they actually think she will lure Hilary supporters they are sadly mistaken. She is anti everything Senator Clinton stands for.

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  6. There are Hillary supporters who won't be able to bring themselves to Obama. I suspect that most of them also won't be able to bring themselves to vote for McCain, either.

    If the R's think that putting a woman on the ticket will automatically pick up all of Clinton's disaffected voters, they aren't playing with a full deck. It's not the skirt, it's the philosophy.

    Anybody who would vote for McCain-Palin just because of her being female, regardless of what she espouses is, not to put too fine a point on it, an idiot.

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  7. He or she might be an idiot, but remember what H.L. Mencken said...

    "Nobody every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American People."

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  8. I don't think McCain's strategy is to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. it was to piss them off.

    The Dems didn't nominate a woman, even the most qualified one out there, for VP but the Repubs did. That's going to really piss off Hillary's camp.

    I think McCain just successfully split the vote. Will it be enough?

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