Dear DNC

Dear DNC,
  We want our peace signs back.
Sincerely,
The 60s

I am a person without a political home. The political landscape in the United States is a turgid cesspool. Elected representatives openly shill for big money at the peril of an overwhelming majority of the electorate. Meanwhile the Democratic National Committee incessantly spams us for campaign contributions.

I'm weary.

In a thinly veiled fund-raising questionnaire the DNC asks,

What would you say to another Democrat to inspire them to get involved with or contribute to this organization?

What would I say? I'm running on empty.

In fairness President Obama has been dealt an awful hand:

A nincompoop-infested, right-wing extremist House of Representatives - dishonorable men and women bank-rolled by the highest bidders. 

The President deserves credit for trying to do the right thing. By all reputable accounts, Barack Obama has been a reasonable, consensus-seeking centrist. Who could have predicted how insanely intransigent House Republicans would be?

Sadly the childishly-stubborn and counter-productive behavior exhibited by House Republicans will not deliver a Democratic majority because American voters don't pay attention to public policy. Many American voters are not critical thinkers. Many Americans' opinions are influenced foremost by fear and secondarily by what they perceive to be their self-interest superseding the Common Good. Some American voters allow their opinions to be deftly manipulated by the fact-averse drivel that is broadcast by hate-filled, right-wing media. For an overwhelming majority, day-to-day living is a proposition of lose-lose and lose some more...

after corporations automate or outsource your job and fudge-pack your sorry ass into poverty.

There is not much for progressives to get charged up about. The rich fleece the middle class and the poor get third-world poorer. Income inequity grows unabated.

I am unsure how we turn the tide. I suppose the Democrats could use more stalwarts like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.

I would like Democrats to focus more on JOBS and much, much less on elective military incursions into global civil wars and much, much less on electronic snooping into the private communications of its citizens.

Arms Are The New Cleavage

Has there ever been a more eloquent First Lady? Intelligent and heart-felt, Michelle Obama's 2012 DNC opening night speech was one for the ages.

Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee

Without mentioning her husband's opponent by name, the much beloved first lady defined presidential hopeful Mitt Romney as a man who was born on third base, but thinks he's hit a triple.

Favorite Michelle Obama Convention Quotes

• "...these issues aren’t political—they’re personal. Because Barack knows what it means when a family struggles."

• "If you are fortunate enough to get an education and be successful, you don't slam the door on the others behind you."

• "How hard you work matters more than how much you make; helping others means more than just getting ahead yourself."

• "I have seen firsthand that being President doesn’t change who you are. No, it reveals who you are."

• "...success isn’t about how much money you make, it’s about the differences you make in people’s lives."

Favorite Convention Tweet

On Michelle Obama's chiseled physique:

Arms are the new cleavage
— Kim Bondy

Favorite Convention Picture

The Obamas watching the First Lady's DNC Convention Speech

What Moral Authority?

Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

I'm loath to criticize President Obama when he's running against a coin-operated automaton like Mitt Romney, but the President's human rights record is abysmal.

President Obama, and by extension the US, has squandered the necessary high-ground for credible human rights advocacy around the world.

1. The President didn't close the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp despite a January 22, 2009 promise to close the camp within a year;
2. The President did not immediately end the war in Afghanistan, rather he escalated troops; and
3. The President has overseen the use of drone strikes.

In an Op-Ed called A Cruel and Unusual Record, former President Jimmy Carter says:

The United States is abandoning its role as the global champion of human rights.

Carter is dead right.

US foreign policy, specifically its human rights record under the George W. Bush administration and continued under the Barack Obama administration, has cost the US whatever moral authority it had to decry human rights abuses around the world.

Pakistan furious as US drone
strike kills civilians

President Carter reminds us that in 1948 the US led the way in adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.

Fast forward 62 years -- Now the US targets people to be assassinated abroad, including American citizens.

With little public outcry, drone strikes and assassinations have been sanctioned and escalated by bipartisan executive and legislative actions. Controlled by the Central Intelligence Agency's Special Activities Division, the US has made hundreds of drone attacks in Pakistan alone since 2004.

As a result, our country can no longer speak with moral authority on these critical issues.
~ Jimmy Carter

How does the world at large view these activities?  See for yourself -- this Guardian poll asks, Is Jimmy Carter right that drones have cost the US moral authority?

This is American Music

The White House performances hosted on the Obama's watch have been nothing short of Milky-Way stellar. Last time, the First Couple invited Sir Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder to the East Room. This time, they showcased a fantasy blues team of substance and breadth that ranged from Susan Tedeschi to Trombone Shorty.

The celebration of a REAL, home-grown musical idiom like the Blues, with all its tribulations and slow-burning soul, gives me goose-bumps. To know I participate in an American experiment with all its lofty ideals and all its obvious warts, moves me.

Blues legend Buddy Guy paints the arc of our nation's recent journey:

"I was born on a farm in Louisiana. My family were sharecroppers, and I picked cotton by hand, not by machine. And all of a sudden you go to sleep, wake up, and you're invited to play at the White House. This is something so special, you know, I just close my eyes and say, thank you God."
~Buddy Guy at 0:37 below..

Jimi Hendrix said the Blues aren't hard to play, just hard to feel.

A guy will promise you the world and give you nothin', and that's the Blues.
~Otis Rush, Blues guitarist and singer

I don't know that there's a satisfactory definition of the Blues. But there's no other musical genre that so poignantly encapsulates hope and despair. The Blues is the narrative of the non-native American, but its hard luck themes and searing licks are universally resonant.

The Blues is quintessential American music.

Beware the Flat Earth

Barack Obama broke his campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. By any reasoned measure, Gitmo is like a black hole sucking the last grains of moral high ground the US had vis-a-vis human rights -- into distant, telescopic oblivion.

Democratic principles in the US are no longer visible with the naked eye.

The US is still mired in two inexcusable wars & now, inexplicably, the President finds himself sucked into mulling over a NATO-led Libya no-fly-zone.

Obama is the new Republican.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
~Pete Townshend

How much further right does the US have to slide on regressive, wing-nut jizz before falling off a flat earth?

Obama Freeze Appalling Sham

In Obama Liquidates Himself, Paul Krugman calls the Obama administration’s spending freeze appalling, bad economics, and a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working toward.

I agree on all 3 charges.

The biggest head scratcher is why would the President exclude military spending? The US Congress nickels and dimes programs meant to help ordinary schlubs like me, and those less fortunate, but with a complicit President, hand out unmonitored blank check after unmonitored blank check to military expenditures and dubious nation building operations.

US Congress 2009 Budget Allocation
chart and spending figures from War Resistors League

An estimated 54% ($1,449 billion) of the US Federal budget in fiscal year 2009 was allocated to current-day and legacy military expenditures (of that, roughly 200 billion poured down the rat hole of elective wars in Iraq and Afghanistan).

I fear the terror-industrial complex pre-saged by Gen. Colin Powell is upon us. The following quote is from an October 2007 interview GQ Icon: Colin Powell

The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn't do it to ourselves, and we shouldn't use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.

~ Colin Powell

In October of 2008, during a presidential debate, Sen. John McCain proposed a spending freeze on federal programs except the Department of Defense. Now President, then Sen. Barack Obama, countered by saying that approach would be the equivalent of

"using a hatchet where you need a scalpel."

I say we do need a hatchet -- to chop military spending.

The Obama administration has to do better. The people expect more than a politically motivated sham like a spending freeze - particularly when it ignores the money-sucking black hole of military spending.