So This is How a President Goes Out...

Apparently, President Bush has enough free time (while the media focuses on the Democratic Catfight between Obama and Hillary) to attend a taping of Deal or No Deal. That's right, President Bush is spending time making guest appearances on crappy NBC luck-based game shows instead of - what's that thing he's supposed to do? - oh yeah, run the freaking country.

Bush must have an affinity for showbiz, first breaking out a little tap dance a few weeks ago, and now this. Who knows, this could be a good thing! Judging by last week's Clinton/Edwards/Obama threesome on The Colbert Report, it appears Presidential candidates make for good guest stars. In fact, this could be a great thing if Bush were to make a stop on, oh, I don't know... The Daily Show?

Coming Out for Obama

I'm supporting Senator Obama for many reasons, but what put me over the top is his stand against and continued leadership in the US Senate regarding the Iraq War. I believe that the Iraq War is the greatest atrocity of a generation, in terms of what it has done to our military and their families, and, just as importantly, to the Iraqi people. I believe that George Bush and Dick Cheney fit the textbook definition of "war criminal," and many Democrats, fearing for their political lives four years ago, signed on as enablers of this awful, shambolic misadventure in American foreign policy. Among these enablers, unfortunately, were Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.
It's easy to dismiss Senator Clinton, because she's the consummate "finger-to-the-wind" politician, even more so than her husband, and she just joined the anti-war movement a few months ago. She expects us to forget what she has done---she didn't just vote for the resolution late in 2002, she was one of the staunchest hawks in a Congress that enabled Republicans to lay waste to our military and cause the deaths and maimings of over 30,000 American soldiers and tens of thousands (maybe even hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis.
Edwards is a little more difficult, but I must ultimately put him gently to the side as well. While he's still my "#2," assuming Gore doesn't take the plunge, saying you're sorry isn't enough. Edwards and Clinton are running all over the country saying things like "I'm accountable for my vote," or "I take responsibility for my vote." This is code language for "thanks for bringing that up, but let me dismiss that issue in one sentence."
True responsibility and true accountability often means that you face the rewards or consequences for your actions. And the consequence, for Sens Edwards and Clinton, is that they won't get my vote for President of the United States. When you see the carnage and waste (what EVIL profiteering we are seeing while Iraq burns and our own soldiers don't even have the boots and toiletries they need, much less body armor!), you have to remember that when these folks had their time in the hotseat, they wilted, either due to political calculation (Clinton) or just plain getting it wrong (Edwards, as he admits). While I admit that we can't know for sure how Obama would have voted as a US Senator had he been one at the time, we do know how Clinton and Edwards cast their respective lots.
So, while all the Dems would be a million times better than Bush, my choice is simple. While they all have great plans and records on the environment, healthcare, and helping the disenfranchised, not to mention women's reproductive rights and civil rights in general one, and only one, has an unblemished record of leadership on the number one issue in the realm of war and peace in our time---Barack Obama.
Even still, I love Edwards (and I really love the details of his plans for America), and I'll forgive him and give him my support if Obama fails in his run . But for now, I can forgive him and support somebody who's gotten this one right from the start. As angry as I've become about the war (see Anglico's blog about how Republicans treat the troops), I just can't support anybody in the primary who's got blood on his or her hands, even if it's just a small amount (Edwards) or covered with it (Clinton). I'm not trying to be vindictive---I love Edwards and can even bring myself to like Sen Clinton quite a bit sometimes, it's just how I'm making my choice.

Stand Up

I think it's great that Ann Coulter and the conservatives at this weekend's CPAC convention in Washington want to slur John Edwards with homophobic slurs and laugh about it. The HUGE irony here is that many at the convention are fretting over the slate of Republican presidential candidates lacking true Christian values.

I think it's great because it shows these people for what they really are----power-obsessed jerks who will summon up all measure of bile and hate just to win an election. A far cry from Jesus Christ's sermon on the mount, don't you think?

To Edwards's credit, his campaign has responded by using Coulter's slur to raise money. This morning on his website, they are trying to raise a little "Coulter Cash" to help end the culture of bigotry that folks like Coulter, Karl Rove and the men they serve----that's you, George W Bush---have created in this country. Inspirational leadership in response to the smallness of the right. I smell a big victory in 2008, which just might consign their anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-woman, anti-poor agenda to the dustbin of history.

Avoid ring-kissing

Is there anything more disgusting than the GOP candidates' scurrying to kiss Christian Right rings to certify their contender bona fides? Watching Romney, McCain, and Giuliani gyrate to the music (Contemporary Christian, of course), makes me want to gag. McCain, in the last couple of weeks, has visited Seattle's Discovery Institute, the inaptly named think tank in Seattle, which promotes the creationist intelligent design theory (a theory also inaptly named). This, after visiting Pope Jerry the First at uncivil Liberty University last year.

I exhort our democratic candidates to refrain from kissing rings as much as they can. Don't rush to meet with folks who claim to represent large, diverse groups of people but only represent tiny, monolithic sects within the party (for every GOP Jerry, we have a Dem Jesse to match). Fortunately, we don't have a faction as noxious as the Christian Right, nor as fun (no meth-fueled romps in Denver hotels). But we do have the capacity to damage ourselves by pledging fealty to the more extreme individuals in the party.

Spoken by a true extremist, ironically enough.

October Surprise?

Looks like our old friend Al Gore is doing all the right things to prepare for his next presidential run. First, instead of putting out a book and jumping into the fray immediately, he's put out an award-winning documentary and played hard-to-get.

This seems to be his recipe for success:
1 Produce Academy Award-winning documentary
2 Abandon wooden image on talk-show/awards show circuit promoting said documentary
3 Coyly dodge press questions regarding 2008 race entry
4 Host series of Live Aid-style concerts to promote the fight against global climate change
5 Win Nobel Prize
6 Watch as other Dems engage in Tarantino-style Mexican standoff, which evolves into circular
firing squad
7 Enter the race as the last man standing
8 Ascend to the throne he rightfully won on his last try
9 Star as himself in Leo DiCaprio's directorial debut, Al