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I just noticed it’s been a week since my last unpost, the video below.

I’ve been spectacularly unengaged lately.

I completely missed the Spring Arts Festival, maybe my favorite event every year, and full-on blew off an obligation to volunteer for Soartstar.

In politics, it’s Indiana and North Carolina and gas tax holiday and Rev. Wright and denunciation and ho f’n hum.

I got asked out on a date and I went and it was … confusing, and now it’s over and I’m back to petting a cat.

I go to my AA meetings and keep my mouth shut and listen and the meetings are good and good for me and the one last night was as usual and I came home and fixed myself a sandwich and some pear halves with cottage cheese and went to bed early.

This week, I’ve been working hard and billing hours and I’ve got lots to do.

Next month, I’ll be taking Mom to Mississippi to visit her sister and the best part is that I’ll get to visit my son Jack in New Orleans.

I’m guessing my new meds are finally kicking in and that it’s to be expected that the highs and lows are never too high or too low. My goal was to get back to work and stop obsessing about trivia and I’ve reached that goal, whatever the price.

I’ve been reading my fellow bloggers with interest. My sister has an exciting new job and I couldn’t be more pleased and Nina is writing about her (non) love life and going out to dinner and it’s a very engaging thread to keep up with and MCARP is on a star tour of photo ops and that makes me laugh because it’s the punctuation to long exhalations about non-attachment. Those three seem engaged in a way that I’m just not right now.

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m not in any way unhappy. Like MCARP, I’m perfectly content to have no drama in my life. It is a good thing for me to habituate going to bed early, getting up early and going to work and billing hours and coming home and fixing dinner. It’s a good thing to have a fairly set schedule of AA meetings and Wednesday dinner with my Paseo companions. Not only are these things good and good for me and a goal I’ve been striving to accomplish, but it’s also an end to some other very self destructive elements that had been in my life for far too long.

It’s just not very interesting to write about.

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WANTED: Punk band enthusiasts for new band by the name Diebold Blitzkreig. Our first song to rehearse will be a cover of the Ramones’ “Blitzkreig Bop”. C’mon. It’ll be fun. You know you want to do it. Yes, I’m talking about you geezers who read this.

(At 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, and 98.9% of the votes counted, it’s Sen. Clinton 54.3%, Sen. Obama 45.7% and about a +10 delegate gain for Hillary. Not bad guessing on my part, he boasted.)

Since guesses about tonight’s primary in Pennsylvania are like belly buttons (everyone has one) and one is just about as good as another, my guess is that the primary will be about 54-46 in Clinton’s favor, with a net delegate lead of 10-12.

That said, I’d like to make a note or two about the fall campaign.

First, something’s happened with the Obama campaign that’s never, to my knowledge, happened ever before. He’s built an on the ground volunteer organization in every one of the 46 states where’s he’s campaigned so far. He didn’t use the Dem Party apparatus of teachers and union members, he built his own 3 million volunteers and contributors. About half of that 3 million donated an average of $100 each to his campaign. He’s declined the “old school” black organizations of street money in South Carolina and now in Philly in favor of his own brand of enthusiastic volunteers. The historical precedents are Goldwater and William Jennings Bryan and they aren’t really that close; Andrew Jackson, who created the Democratic Party in the first place, is the closest of historical analogies.

The unprecedented door to door canvassers and phone bankers are joined by another unprecedented aspect of the campaign.

Almost every voter in America has now seen a variety of repeated television commercials from his campaign. No campaign ever has spent so much money on television and radio for a year before the general election campaign. The vast majority of these ads have been the “meet the candidate” and “hope and change” variety. No Democrat has ever gone through a primary with so many “views” by the television viewing public and few have come anywhere close by the time November arrived and in the next six months, assuming his nomination, he will overwhelm even Republican ad campaigns of the past.

Finally, this is the first “YouTube” campaign. The internet has played a large part in this campaign in an unprecedented way for all three of the major remaining candidates. Obama’s campaign has seemed a quantum leap ahead of the others in this regard. His videos and blogging sites are 90-10 over the other two combined. Think about the Will.I.Am video, just for a single example.

The Clinton and Bush elections were the rise and flowering of the 24-hour news cycle cable elections, the Reagan and Bush I elections were the culmination of the 40 years of the television elections preceding them. It is difficult to assess at this point whether this campaign is like the break from the Civil War to FDR domination of the Republican Party and the Reagan break of Democratic Party domination that followed, but it “feels” like something brand new. I’m not suprised that the TV networks have not figured out how to cover or talk about this campaign, they are too busy with their short cycles of news.

No matter your partisan leanings, this is the first 21st Century election campaign and we are witnessing something remarkable, unique and historic. The political hack and historian in me is amazed. This is all aside from the fact that Obama is a mixed race candidate running against a woman, another remarkable, unique and historic event in America’s democracy/republic.

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The returns have now been made official.

My lying, cheating, stealing, low-down, no-good, so-called “friends” slashed and burned my retirement savings for another $6.00 last night at what was laughingly called “poker”, but what in reality was a “demean and punish” Blogblah night.

Oh, and happy birthday Hitler and Suzanne, your Oklahoma surrogate.

“Bitter”?

Hell yes I’m bitter.

I’m clinging to my belief in God in hopes that all of them will be punished in the hereafter.

mutter mutter mutter … .

They better hope I don’t also cling to my guns.

mutter mutter mutter … .

They better hope I don’t go all McCain on them and really get angry.

mutter mutter mutter … .

Hey, you kids! Get off my damn lawn!

mutter mutter mutter … .

I think I just pooped in my pants.

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According to Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic Magazine online:

Two major stars of the Democratic foreign policy establishment — former Sens. Sam Nunn and David Boren, have just endorsed Barack Obama and have agreed to serve on his national security team. Nunn served as the Democratic Party’s coverman in foreign policy debates for two decades. He voted against the 1991 Gulf War and thereby gave many other Democrats permission to take that political risk. He’s a social conservative in many respects, too. More recently, Nunn has associated himself with the cause of nuclear nonproliferation. He spent 8 years as chairman of the Armed Services committee in the Senate. Boren left the Senate in 1994 and is a former chairman of what used to be called the Senate Select Committee on intelligence. He also spent 16 years as governor of Oklahoma. In the statements they provided to the Obama campaign, both Nunn and Boren sound Obama-esque notes. Here’s Nunn: “Demonizing the opposition, oversimplifying the issues, and dumbing down the political debate prevent our country from coming together to make tough decisions and tackle our biggest challenges.” Here’s Boren: ““Our most urgent task is to end the divisions in our country, to stop the political bickering, and to unite our talents and efforts. Americans of all persuasions are pleading with our political leaders to bring us together. I believe Senator Obama is sincerely committed to that effort. He has made a non-partisan approach to all issues a top priority.” Last summer, Boren held private talks with associates of Mayor Mike Bloomberg about a possible independent presidential bid.

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