Only one more year until President Bush leaves the White House.

365 days.

It’s not soon enough for me.

We have a disasterous war in Iraq, Pakistan in shambles, Bush took a tin cup to the Mideast and came back with nothing but stupid photo ops, Darfur goes on, North Korea is digging in its heels, is there a single point in foreign policy where this president can claim even a tie?

At home, it seems clear we’re headed into a recession. All those years of voodoo economics are coming home to roost and the home is being foreclosed. Housing starts are disasterously down, unemployment up.

So, who will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2009?

Well, on the Dem side, Sen. Clinton is up by about 8 points in the national polls compared to Sen. Obama and Mr. Edwards. She trails Obama by 5-10 percentage points in South Carolina right this second, but she leads him by double digits in the big states that follow on Feb. 5 Tsunami Tuesday. The Nevada caucus reporting confounds me, in a way; Sen. Clinton was up by 20 points just about three months ago and it’s a big victory for her to split the delegates in a 6 point win? Seems like Obama covered the spread to me, but then I’m not a big time New York salsa.

I think if she manages to corner Obama into being “the black candidate” in South Carolina, she’s won the war even if she loses the battle. (P.S. I’m not the only one.)

On the GOP side, Sen. McCain pulled out another “comeback” victory in South Carolina’s Republican straw poll last night while Romney made deserting the field in the South look like a win by trouncing the Quixotic Ron Paul in Nevada.

After this, however, McCain’s road goes rocky and steep, in part because there are no more “open” primaries when his independent vote can make up the difference between his party supporters and the Huckabee evangelicals and the Romney fiscal conservatives.

Just to show how f-‘d up the GOP is, Fred Thompson couldn’t figure out how to quit last night, to the laughter of MSNBC’s commentariat and backstage crew. Just how much competence does it take to lose?

Head to head, all three Democratic Party contenders beat the GOP field EXCEPT for McCain. McCain beats Clinton 4% and Obama 1.7%. Even Edwards beats Huckabee, Thompson, Guiliani and Romney by double digits.

As you know, I back Obama. Nevertheless, I think it looks like Hillary will lead a somewhat divided Democratic Party in November.

I’m even less qualified to guess about the Republicans, but I’m taking the kool aid and guessing Romney. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and he’s got it. McCain will, like the old soldier he is, fade away. Guiliani will have no choice but to take out Huckabee in Florida and he will do it by a focus on the Arkansas governor’s silly “fair tax” proposal. Guiliani’s only shot is to take out someone and Huckabee, underfinanced, is the most likely now that Thompson and Duncan Hunter are gone. Romney, meanwhile, has to take out McCain or Guiliani; in Florida, McCain is the better target. Huckabee and McCain will hang in through Feb. 5, but neither one has the stones for a national campaign in 22 states.

Bloomberg will not run an independent campaign. The New York City press needs to just get over it.

While I’m “taking out” people, I think Obama (and Clinton to a lesser degree) may think about taking out Edwards in South Carolina. Recently, Russ Feingold noted that Edwards voted for the Patriot Act and now campaigns against it; voted for the Iraq war authorization, but now campaigns against it; voted for … you get the picture: “flip and flop”. It’s a perilous gameplan. Who are the Edwards supporters going to support once he’s out? Some significant portion of those voters are ABC: Anybody But Clinton. Some significant portion of those voters are mainline, FDR Democrats who like his populist economic appeals and will go with the “establishment” liberal candidate, Clinton. Obama faces the McCain problem: no more “open” primaries where independents can jump in and give him a push over the top. He NEEDS mainline Democrats to be a success, even if more of them go to Hillary in the short run. However, the two person race is better for Obama than a three way going forward. How do you take Edwards out without looking nasty and hateful and repulsing the very voters you want to gain? About the only way I see for Obama after S.C. is if Hillary’s campaign gets greedy and goes after Edwards for that short term split of his votes in her favor, going for a take out of Obama on Feb. 5. I do not think that will happen; her campaign is too good and in too good a long term position and all she needs to do is nothing.

Obama is down 20-30 points in polls in the big states of N.Y., Calif., N.J. It won’t stay that way, he’ll make up a lot of ground between now and Feb. 5. But, it’s like being down 3 touchdowns in the fourth quarter; you can make the game look a lot closer but you can very rarely win. One small, but perhaps vital, grace note for Obama: in Nevada, he started doing something Hillary just can not do — having a laugh at politics. Responding to a red-faced and angry Bill Clinton, Obama said: “He was a lot nicer to me when I was 20 points down.” Obama did everything but a stand up comedy routine about Hillary the night before the Nevada caucus. A kind word turns away wrath and if he can keep that up, it will make Sen. Clinton look like the “bitch” her detractors insist on saying she is without sullying his mythical image in the minds of his supporters as a “new wave” movement guru. Since I’m one of the kool-aid drinking Obama “movement” supporters, it’s what I want most: a return to “cool”. The more likeable he seems, the less warm and nuturing Hillary seems. In the end, that’s how I think most voters choose: with their “guts” and not their heads.

Here, is what I think is the number one reason to vote AGAINST Sen. Clinton. (the speaker in the video is David Brooks, conservative commentator for the New York Times)

I don’t have a video, but today, Obama spoke at Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on the Sunday before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. The link takes you to his speech, given from King’s former pulpit. It’s my reason for supporting him this week. (If you really want to watch the 45 minute video, you can find it at cspan.org.)

Well, as Ring Lardner Jr. once remarked, “the race is not always to the swift, the fight not always to the strong, but that’s the way the smart money bets.” I like Obama, but if I had real money on the deal, it would be on Hillary. Same on the GOP side. I like McCain, but if I had to bet, it would be a bet on Romney’s money and good looks.

All that means that my look ahead a year brings me to the conclusion that as a nation we will be deeply divided next Jan. 20 and have another squeaker of an election next November between a very rich hedge fund manager and the most polarizing figure in the Democratic Party.

New Year’s Resolution:

I will not obsess about politics.

I will not obsess about politics.

I will not obsess about politics.

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Yes, I think I’ve found her. “The One”. The girl of my dreams.

She’s Yulia Temoshenko, the prime minister of the Ukraine.

Hubba Hubba.

For women in national political leadership positions (heh heh, he said “positions”. shut up, beavis explained.), she beats the tar out of Sen. Clinton. For that matter, Margaret Thatcher and Indira Ghandi and, God Love Her Pea Pickin’ Heart, Golda Mier, and Lady Bird Johnson and Eleanor Roosevelt. Got carried away there, but we’re talking Jackie O good looks.

She was part of the “Orange Revolution” in her country and was pivital in sweeping away the former corrupt government of the old CIS coalition that followed the Soviet Empire.

She’s a Ph.D. engineering, among other things.

It’s the braid. That’s really hot. Kind of BDSM faintly. Hot.

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Can’t embed the video, but go watchTom Cruise discussing Scientology. The Scientologists and/or Cruise have sued to keep the video off the internet and were successful with YouTube and have threatened suit (for copyright infringment) against The Gawker, which is the site carrying the video.

Seriously, wtf?

Here’s some more serious wtf:

Third time’s the charm.

This is a story about “real” superheroes among us. Seriously, wtf?

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For more than three years I was with MB and those were blissful days. Her oldest son was a member of an entertainment troupe out of Edmond Schools called One Hit Wonder (OHW). This is a one hit wonder. Mel Carter’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me.” There’s no reason for me posting this or telling about MB, it’s just me free associating like the rest of this blog. Anyway, I love this song and always have. On YouTube, there are several versions and I really like Gloria Esteban’s. I found this song because I read a long article in the New York Times Magazine about a singer, Shelby Lynne, comparing and contrasting her to Dusty Springfield. One part of the article talks about how important was the album “Dusty in Memphis” and this was one of the cuts off that album, if I remember how my link bridge to this came. Ms. Lynne also has a YouTube version of this song, if you’re interested, and I also like it.

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MindOverMary privately emails me to say that I’m not blogging enough for my ADHD readers, specifically, her (Quel Suprize!).

Okay, Okay. You know I have to do what you say.

First, you need to know that I heard from No. 1 Sister and she’s great. I love love LOVE getting handwritten notes and think it’s a lost art and the most genteel of gestures left between those bonded by blood and love.

Read a quote from Oscar Wilde upon his first taste of ice cream: “It could only be better if it was a sin.” Made me laugh.

I guess my big news is that I’ve been on the art scene lately and glad for it.

A week ago Friday was First Friday on the Paseo and I was well pleased by the group show at PAA and especially knocked out, as always, by the small works of Michi Susan. I adore her work and I’m too awe struck and afraid to even speak to this extraordinarily talented woman. OMG how I wish I could afford even the smallest of her works, but I’m flat broke these days.

Down the street was the JRB ART show and, although a break somewhat from her previous shows, I loved the energy of the huge canvases and the young artists. Joy Reed Belt does her openings right, in my opinion. She has lovely and challenging taste in her selection of artists and their works. The invitees are always a very mellow and lovely crowd, almost neighborly. I never fail to enjoy her hospitality and her staff and associates are very nice, very helpful, very professional. Everything about JRB is top shelf and she deserves praise.

Later, I went to see the two artists at IAO and even caught a little of the short films they showed, especially a charming and amusing “documentary” about the history of Oklahoma. The two main room artists, a photographer and a painter, had lovely, warm and rich pallettes; I was very at home and intriqued by the general use of colors, although there was little to tweak my love for loud, proud and bright colors. The photographer took her images, separated them into constituent parts and sewed them back together (or otherwise affixed them). The images themselves were often interesting and then the technique of pasteing together the various parts (often geometric shapes) gave the images a background “feel” while also giving them a new and creative texture. The painter used wood, including the frames, as canvas. This young artist achieved her textures through the grains of the wood and other materials. The images were fanciful and, as I said above, richly colored in a way that impressed me as being something that would “wear well” in one’s home; I was very comfortable thinking of having her work somewhere on one of my walls.

Last night, I went to the “furniture” show at Untitled and the only criticism I have is that I suffered from checkbook envy. I would so much like to have some of this breathtaking work, but I’d have to sell my home to buy the work and then buy another house with a significantly larger dining room. Nevertheless, I found myself with my jaw to the floor at several of the installations. Make no mistake. This was art. The plates were art. The tableware was art. The tables, chairs and chandeliers were each individual works of art, despite their functional form. It was sculpture. The worship of a communal meal. And, it was stunning. The crowd itself, by the way, was also a work of art. I’ve not in a long time seen such a crowd, although it seems that once I saw this crowd often. Many many friends were there. I had my 12 hug per day quota filled before I’d seen the third setting. World’s biggest small town. Larry Pickering strawbossed the thing, I think, but in all events, his entry of Bewley glass tile topped table with eight stow-away chairs was magnificant. I’ve heard he’s teamed up with Brian (and Titi) and I wish him luck.

Tonight, I scrounged a trip to the Momentum show, OVAC’s emerging young artists annual show. Went with Oz and Deb and their friend The Shrink. I could have taken someone, but my black book is so depleted after I rip out the “married” and “engaged” categories I gave up the project before I began. Oz curated the show and it was a surprising display by a group of artists, all of which are under 30. Hundreds of people there; band; bars; installation art; it seemed like 100s of paintings; videos. It was beyond stimulating, it was overstimulating. I was very pleased to see a great many works of mature skill and energetic new talent. The grand prize winner(s) of a trip to France was affecting and avante guarde. Speaking of Guards, saw Tanner there and he had his smiley face on. I loved a large canvas of much emotional content of a mother with children. There were just too many to try and describe even the very very best. Lots of lovely Sauced and Red Cup types there, the new wave, the 20 something crowd.

A shout out to Tammy who finally got an email addy!

Love you, sis. Don’t worry. I’m not sitting at home fretting. I’m doing bookkeeping (three consecutive double letters!) and it’s boring, so there’s not much to write about that.

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Remember the O.Henry story “Gift of the Magi”? It was about a couple and she cuts her hair and sells it to buy hubby a watch fob but hubby sells the watch to buy her a hair comb. Classic. Well, this is the 21st Century, so the story is just a little tiny bit different, as this Reuters story out of Europe details:

updated 9:01 a.m. CT, Wed., Jan. 9, 2008
WARSAW, Poland – A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment’s employees.

Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

“I was dumbfounded. I thought I was dreaming,” the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday.

The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported.

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Hillary leads Obama 39.2 to 36.8 with 95% of the votes counted at midnight OK time. Edwards a distant third at 16%+ and Richardson trailing in single digits.
McCain bests Romney with Huckabee a distant third on the GOP side, but who cares.

Just shows what pollsters know. Or, rather, pundits who don’t notice that 15% were undecided 3 days out.

To show the oddity of 1) caring and 2) listening to what the media pundits tell us, consider that in November Obama was supposedly 18 points behind in N.H. and that his supporters would be overjoyed with a close second like this and have only been backing a “frontrunner” for five days.

I will refuse to believe any facile explanation because elections and campaigns are too nuanced for a bumper sticker to explain things. There are a couple of hundred thousand people, each with their own individual reasons for voting as they did. I think many independents who were going to vote for BHO decided they could “afford” to vote for McCain and against Romney and Huckabee or Guildiani as a result of Obama misplaying the “expectations” game. I think Hillary did a helluva good job over the past five days, even if some of it was inadvertant: 1) the “angry” moment in the debates and 2) the “tearful” moment on the stump; I think both were seen as gaffes by the press but as motivating moments for wavering women voters and this was badly misinterpreted by the commentators. I think she had a better organization in N.H., built on ties that go back to 1992, and that the “ground game” we heard so much about in Iowa is important in N.H. and primaries as well as farm state caucuses. Obama will have to get back to this basic to win South Carolina.

As long as Edwards stays in, and he still maintains he’s in to the finish, it’s a hash. No one has yet clearly established themselves, in my opinion, because this three way has seen no one break into a commanding lead anywhere. No state I know of has any of the three as a 50%+1 winner. As long as Edwards stays in, this could leave the convention “open” with multiple votes necessary to establish a ticket for the party. I wonder what happens if/when Edwards “releases” his delegates? Or does he make a deal with one of the other two? Why would he even think about another vice presidential campaign?

With only 16% in NH, Edwards is close to dead in the water, I think, and I also think he must win somewhere and somewhere soon. If that somewhere is South Carolina, it’s a tough go against a woman and a black. First, there aren’t that many white male Democrats in S.C. If black women vote their race instead of their gender, Obama looks very good and that’s where he has to make his stand. I think Hillary can count on a majority of white female voters in S.C., but that has to be one place where Edwards makes his play, so that will be a big fight. I think the Obama “bounce” after Iowa in N.H. was not as important as what happened in South Carolina, but I’m not sure what that was because I’ve seen no poll since Iowa from S.C. that tells me how much movement there has been among black voters of both genders. Because Bill was the “first black president”, and because the Clintons have close ties to all the party establishments in all 50 states, that means that Hillary locked up a lot of the black leadership in S.C. months ago, but that might have changed since Iowa and changed again since last night. Edwards has an economic populist message that will appeal to the S.C. black middle class and working class, perhaps. For long years now, we’ve become accustomed to talking about the evangelicals in the Republican party, but that doesn’t mean that the church is unimportant in the black community; many of their Democratic Party political leaders are also their church leaders. Hillary has talked about her earnest Methodism and Romney his Mormanism; perhaps S.C. is where Obama speaks as he does in his biography about his decision to become a Christian because what is said in churches across S.C. on Sunday will greatly sway their Tuesday ballots across racial lines. Since Obama is already facing a “Muslim” smear, he could hit two birds with one stone.

Bill Richardson long ago bet everything on Nevada, a cul de sac in the race prior to South Carolina. That’s his must win and it’s not looking good. Don’t know where his 4% goes, but 4% may be the spread between two of the top three. Supposedly the culinary union, representing many of the workers in the Nevada gaming industry, is ready to endorse Obama. That’s all I know about Nevada.

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Barak Obama was 18 points down to Hillary in November in New Hampshire, but polling is showing him leading by 10 points and more. Watching the debate on the internet and reading the instant blogging at the same time was a fascinating experience. It’s the first time I’ve had DSL for an election night and it was an interesting way to see an election.

I come to praise Clinton, then bury her

The Illinois senator seems like he’s in a groove these days. Here’s some commentary about his debate response to Hillary’s White House years and it’s an eviscerating yet polite critique of the last Democratic president: XPOSTFACTO

I know JFK and you’re … well, maybe you are

“I find the manner in which they’ve been running their campaign sort of depressing, lately. It was interesting in the debate, Sen. Clinton saying ‘don’t feed the American people false hopes. Get a reality check, you know?’ I mean, you can picture JFK saying, ‘we can’t go to the moon, it’s a false hope. Let’s get a reality check.’ It’s not, sort of, I think, what our tradition has been,” — Barak Obama

Hard bitten soldiers of fortune wept

Sure he’s a gay Republican conservative, but ANDREW SULLIVAN at Atlantic magazine is gaa gaa about Obama and dredges up some campaign hack with tears in his eye. It’s actually interesting when professionals get caught up in the emotion of the moment in a campaign.

Last night, my friend and I were sitting in the living room
and I said to her, ‘I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent
on some machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull
the plug.’

She got up, unplugged the TV, and threw out my wine.

She’s such a bitch…..

I just didn’t understand, I guess. I was raised with three sisters and the rule was that you don’t hit girls. That didn’t seem exactly fair when three of them ganged up on me, but that was the rule. Or, at least I thought that was the rule. Seems that there are times when there MUST be violence against women. Yep. Read it on the internet right HERE.

The first reform law respecting domestic violence against women in the Anglo legal tradition is the so-called “rule of thumb”. Until passage of that Act of Parliament, it was legal for a man to strike his wife, one of his possessions or “chattle”, with any size stick he could find. After the act, it was illegal to beat your wife with anything bigger around than your thumb. Don’t laugh. If it was you and the choice was get hit with a two by four or get hit with a stick the size of your thumb, which would you chose? Helped lots of women in their daily lives. Very compassionate at the time.

Bleedin’ heart ponces, them wot passed that, is wot I sez, now pass down that pint, willya?

Just jokin’ with you girls, just pullin’ your chain.

But, I did kind of want to write briefly about this article because it makes clear that one part of the problem that Islamic people have with Western cultures is that we try to incrementally change their culture to suit ourselves based on what seems to us like the self evident truths of our Declaration of Indepence.

For them, though, it’s not that simple. For them, their entire culture is organic and it seems to them that we are asking them to use salt as a substitute for sugar in their cake recipe. Sure the salt won’t be as bad for our burgeoning belly as sugar, but it would ruin the cake. For them, even parts of the society they don’t like are also necessary, it’s a gestalt and you take the bad with the good.

And, even those of us who are good old Western Rationalist liberal 1st Amendment red blooded patriots gotta say that, if we look at everything we do with respect to women, not all of it might look too good to someone on the outside. For example, are you really proud of America’s obsession with breasts and short skirts and buttcrack bluejeans? If you’re an Islamic mother or father — even “westernized” and civilized and literate and urban blah blah blah — do you really want your daughter running around like Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan and Nichole Richie? Now, imagine if you are a parent of a daughter and you live in rural areas of poverty in the Islamic Crescent and see American television and movies.

Let me put it to you another, I hope provocative, way. OK, World War II comes along and we have Rosie the Riveter and all that and going back to the kitchen was boring and so the 60s and 70s comes along and we get N.O.W. and millions of women who want to work go to work and your fate is no longer so limited and hooray for our side. Great. But, how about now when almost every woman MUST work either because she’s a single mom or it takes two incomes to keep a roof over your head. Is the life of the vast majority of American women so great that a women in Damascus in a harem room covered in silks might not say, well, this ain’t so freakin’ bad compared to standing on your feet 12 hours a day sloshing coffee in some trucker’s lap.

One more attempt to see rotary blades and defecation interact: the Yemen writer guy clearly sees this as a way to avoid divorce. I wonder how many divorces would be avoided if, for the first and only time in the relationship, a man could legally, ethicaly and morally get away with just slapping her face hard and telling her to get over it, divorce is a bitch and it’s a hell of a lot better to work things out. What seems like an unthinkable idea to you seems to me to be rational and defensible as long as one starts from outside our culture and in one where family relationships are much more horizontal.

What I’m trying to get to here is an understanding of their thinking, I’m looking for ways to cross this cultural divide in order to look for places of contact. The beginning of engagement must be to lose the flinch whenever the topic is raised and be willing to see things from a different perspective. If I understand the scheme he explains, it’s fight, sleep on the couch, fight, hit, go to your mother’s and get advice from everyone in the family before you split up. That doesn’t seem all that different than what happens here except that in America, the guy goes to the pokey and all your girlfriends get to call him a jailbird bastard.

Me? I don’t have a dog in the fight, personally. I like what we got here ’cause it’s what I’m used to. I still don’t hit girls and still think it is just wrong when anyone else does. I oppose personal violence across the board.

That said, we are engaged with the Islamic world and this, I think, gives us an insight into their way of thinking. Maybe the way to go would be an Islamic “rule of thumb” instead of entirely transforming their way of life? There must be some way to get the Prophet behind a little mercy when it’s all in the family even under the Sharia. Of course, if you’ve got three wives, it may not be advisable to hit one of them when the three of them can gang up on you in your sleep, like maybe younger sisters could maybe do to some fictional other guy older brother you know.

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POST SCRIPT: A Personal Aside

I don’t know bleep about attachments and such but I know when I’ve got it good, does that count? Just a few days ago, we were freezing without power in the dark after a horrible winter storm and today I’ve had the top down on my MidLifeChrysler. Tonight, I treated myself to sliced pineapple and cottage cheese early and I made a big pan of scratch brownies filled with pecan halves this evening. Today, I received not one but two missives from two very important people in my life and the good vibes from that shared love has me all goo goo melty inside. Perhaps it would be better to follow another path, but i’m content to be attached to my daughter and the feel-good I get from getting a note from her; maybe I’m bad to revel in the chocolate and nuts and the time when you eat the chocolate brownie batter with a glass of ice cold milk right after you put the pan in the oven, but you’ll just have to judge me bad, I guess, because I just couldn’t help myself; and, if finding simple pleasure in having the wind and the sun in my face, the joie de vivre of whipping in and out of traffic, the feeling of being released from a freezing corner of hades, well, if that’s wrong, as the song goes, I don’t want to be right. At least I was in the moment, dude. I wasn’t thinking about anything else but the brownie batter and the cold milk, I promise. I don’t mind getting all Marcus Aurelius but let me have a bit of my Epicurius as well, thankee very much.

Hedonism Rulz!