The Desperation Express

Yes, folks, six days away from the eletion, we are indeed seeing what desperation does to people. The McShame-Caribou Barbie ticket is calling out the theocrat brigade and robo-sliming formerly sewn-up Red State Arizona.

I've yet to be blessed with a robo-slime call, but I'll probably get at least one, or maybe twenty. I have the same telephone number my parents had for over forty years -- having inherited their house -- and they were stalwart Republicans. It's been weird, moving back here and once again having the same telephone number and address I had growing up. And there's nothing weirder about it than getting nutty Republican propaganda in the mail on almost a daily basis.

I am proud to say that my home state is no longer a solid red. It may not be blue yet, but it is at least a very bold shade of Phoenix Suns purple.

I only hope a real person calls me, instead of a machine. I would love to have some fun with these morons. But I would like to think the McShame campaign would have at least as much trouble staffing an entire call-center full of stooges to call people up and read lies about Senator Obama here as they've had in Indiana.

Now, about those theocrats (as the theme from Halloween begins to play...) Seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people? Some of them are actually resorting to saying that God is ordering us to vote for McShame, and that "He" will send us to Hell on a super-slide if we fail to do it.

And if you thought that, to find such dangerously deluded folks -- the sort who get special messages from God -- you had to go to Afghanistan, Iran or at least your local mental hospital, just think again! Nossir, we've got 'em right here, walking around free, armed and loaded in the good old U.S. of A.!

Well, theirs is a false god, and he's robo-sliming us. Blow it out your asses, you conceited, idolatrous kooks. Do me a favor...call me up and lay this crap on me in a way that gives me the chance to give you an answer.

Six more days, people! Six...more...days. Or, as a Vietnam vet friend of mine would put it, "five days and a wakeup."

Don't bother robo-sliming him, either, McShame. He, too, is voting for Obama.

I'm not sure just where the "Straight Talk Express" has gone. But the Desperation Express has now definitely left the station.

Out of Our Heads

Already, I hear progressives obsessing over whether or not those on the Right will "accept" the election of Barack Obama when -- we can still only hope and pray -- he becomes President.

People, here is the correct answer: WHO THE HELL CARES?!

Who cares what they think? Can we doubt they'll bitch and moan and whine that somehow the election was "stolen" from McLame and Caribou Barbie? Of course they will, and we never should have been so naive as to expect otherwise.

Look back at the times, in the past, when the Left was at its strongest, and you will see a common theme emerge. They kept their heads high, kept on looking ahead and didn't worry their pretty little heads about what their enemies said about them. As a matter of fact, they paid them little attention at all.

Get ready for four (or hopefully eight) more years of Republican and general Right-Wing ranting, raving, character assassination and attempted sabotage. If they did it to a White conservative-lite Democrat like Bill Clinton, they certainly aren't going to spare a Black man -- and an at least would-be progressive -- like Barack Obama.

If we leave it up to Right-Wingers to determine whether or not we're "allowed" to be really progressive, can you just guess what they're going to say? How about "not no, but hell no?" And then -- know what? No matter how Olympic-gymnastically we may bend over backwards and sideways and upside-down and inside-out trying to convince them that -- oh, no -- we're not liberals, THEY'LL SAY THAT WE ARE, ANYWAY. So if we're gonna get called liberals anyway, what are we so afraid of?

We cannot -- and MUST not -- even let these people into our heads. We must beat them, and beat 'em again, and keep right on beating 'em until we've totally destroyed what's left of the Republican Party. If it ever rises again, we must make sure it doesn't happen until a total power-shift has taken place within the GOP "big tent" and nobody but moderates or libertarians remain in charge there.

Destroy the whacko-Right brand. Drive Limbaugh and Hannity clean off of the air-waves. Take no prisoners. Leave behind only scorched earth.

And in the meantime, we must retain our serenity. We are in the right, and we deserve to lead this country that we so love into a brighter era. We must save it, and only we can.

If they start to get to you, sit in a Zen garden and contemplate your toenail-cuticles. Take up underwater basket-weaving. Swim with cuddly dolphins, bond with them and learn their special language. Take a pill, smoke a stogie, fix yourself a great, big, stinky-dirty Martini. But don't fret! Don't let 'em damage your confidence, and never, ever let 'em get you down!

Right-wingers tend to be very spoiled and infantile people, and they want it all -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- to be about them. Progressives tend to think about others, not merely about themselves. Of course that explains why this dynamic of obsession over Right-Wing opinion so often happens. But for our own sake, the country's and the whole world's, we have got to stop that. If they're able to make it all about them, then they have, indeed, truly won. No matter what any election tally might happen to say.

We can only keep our adversaries from driving us out of our heads if we keep THEM out of our heads.

Too many people in there make a crowd.

Putting "Us" Back into the U.S.

Well, it looks as if Barack Obama will indeed win the White House. And already, there is moaning and sighing from people who think he won't be progressive enough.

Excuse me, but that's where WE come in.

No, he does not support gay marriage. He's the most pro-gay presidential candidate in history, but that doesn't seem to be enough for some people. The Log Cabin crowd is criticizing him for not being a full advocate of gay marriage. What they're overlooking is that (A) he has not ruled it out for the future, even for his own administration and -- more importantly -- (B) John McCain not only opposes gay marriage, but opposes gay rights in almost any form. He's for keeping the ban on our open military service, he's against including us in hate crimes legislation, and -- in his home state of Arizona -- he favors cutting our partnerships out of all legal protections.

Excuse me again, but what the hell is the matter with the gay Republicans? Why are they criticizing Obama for being one stroke less than perfect on gay rights, but supporting McCain for being TERRIBLE to us? Hello? What planet are these people living on?

In the first Obama term, the priority will be on cleaning up the unchristly mess the Republicans have made of our country, the Constitution, and world peace. For any real progressive progress to be made, he'll need a second term. And again, that's where we come in.

We must hold his feet to the fire. The Democratic Party (not merely the presidency, but congress) must be turned away from the ruinous "centrist" course it has been on for far too long. Instead of sitting passively back and expecting things to just magically change on their own, progressives will have to work -- and fight -- to make things better.

Greens should join (or rejoin) the Democratic Party and stop throwing childish tantrums because the Democrats aren't giving them their way. In order to GET their way, they've got to join the Democratic Party.

No party listens to those who remain outside of it.

In the same way, Libertarians should join (or rejoin) the Republican Party. It's up for grabs right now, and the way to oust the fascists who have taken it over is to JOIN it and shove them out. That is the only way to save the GOP from permanent powerlessness -- or from a fascistic resurgence. The nuts and whackjobs won't leave voluntarily; they've got to be thrown out.

The United States is no longer the country of those who love freedom and believe in progress. If we do not salvage it within the next four years, I really believe it will become something monstrously unrecognizable. If the rest of the world comes to believe that it must be rid of us in order to save itself, then we will be doomed.

Let's not go the way of the Roman empire, or of its would-be successor, the Third Reich. Let's step up to the plate and save America. We need to put "us" back into the U.S. It won't be our country anymore unless we fight for it.

The crucial first step is voting Barack Obama into the White House. Not only is this Job One, but the rest simply will not happen without it.

The Crazies Act Crazy -- and the Clueless are Surprised!

People are reeling from the shock of hearing yahoos, at Sarah Palin rallies, threaten members of the press and clamor for Senator Obama's murder. They may be surprised, but I'm not. And if they had any sense, they wouldn't be, either.

The nation has largely awakened to the fact that the Religious Right adheres to an ideology that is insane. McSame has backed himself into a trap, in which he must appease this crowd or lose the election -- but the rest of America has come to realize that the Religious Right is not as bad as the Taliban or Al Qaeda only because we the people will not allow them to go that far, and so he's going to lose the election anyway. If we did allow these fanatics to go as far as their Islamist brethren in the Middle East, they certainly would. Most of us know that now -- and I pray that we will never forget it.

Whenever you try to reason with these nuts, they tell you that the Bible condemns reason in favor of blind, "obedient" faith. Oh, they will try to reason with you as far as they can, but because they can only take their nonsense so far, at some point they have to stop there and resort to the "Because God said it in the Bible" argument, instead.

What they can never quite explain is just why God would have given us the power to reason in the first place, if "He" didn't intend for us to use it. Their quick-and-easy retreat to "biblical inerrancy" is -- truth be told -- not the result of a strong faith, but a weak faith. They quite simply, when they're alone in the dark, do not trust that their faith makes sense -- which is another way of saying that they don't really believe in it at all.

Fundamentalism -- ALL forms of it (including the Christian kind) -- is actually a very weak, cowardly and dishonest form of atheism. These people believe in absolutely nothing. They're like little children, hiding under the covers every time they hear a bump in the night.

True, muscular, vigorous faith certainly does admit there are limits to our finite ability to reason, but it follows God all the way to the edge of the Grand Canyon of unknowing that looms beyond what even the smartest of us can figure out for ourselves. It then stops at the edge of that gaping chasm and says, "You take it from here, God...this is as far as I can make it." To the degree that Scripture warns against trusting overmuch in our own powers of reason, THIS is the course that it counsels. To say that it forbids us to reason at all is not only absurd, but a downright blasphemy. It takes God's loving gift of reason -- and the responsibility that goes along with it -- and flings it right back into "His" face.

Let Sarah Palin do her Fuhrer routine for her screaming, lunatic base. The crazier they get (in other words, the more honestly themselves), the greater will be the reminder to the rest of us that we never dare trust these people, or even consider them benign, again. But let's hope that the Secret Service is doing a damned good job of protecting Barack Obama. Beyond the willingness of the rest of us to stand vigilant against their lunacy, the Religious Right really is no different than Al Qaeda or the Taliban.

I said it here. Mark my words -- and never, ever forget them.

More Gay Conservative Nuttiness

Now they've got the vapors because McSame deigned to grant an audience with the Washington Blade. Good night nurse, these people are pathetic.

It makes no difference that he says he thinks the states should make laws regarding marriage, rather than the federal government. He favors an amendment, here in Arizona, that would deny any same-sex couples' rights to gays and lesbians. He merely thinks that the states should be the ones to slam the door in our faces instead of the feds. As we used to say when I was a kid, "Big whoop."

I have somehow managed to get myself on the email list of a group called "Conservative Gays." These uncle toms blather endlessly about every little crumb the Republicans toss us.

I will say it once again. Just because there are homophobic Democrats, that in NO way means that the Republicans are better -- or even a tiny fraction as good -- on GLBT issues. What it means is that progressive Dems need to take the party back from the sleazeball "triangulators" and "centrists" who have stolen it from us.

But from now 'til Doomsday, the uncle toms will keep needling us about those anti-gay "liberals." Flash bulletin, dipshits. NOT ALL DEMOCRATS ARE LIBERALS. Particularly not these days.

The patter of the conservative gays relies heavily upon the pretense, however, that Democrats and liberals are all interchangeable. A baldfaced lie. And any real progressive -- gay OR straight -- will be quick to tell you so.

Liberals -- the genuine article -- are far more frustrated with Democratic squishiness on GLBT issues than these truth-challenged gay conservatives dare to admit. As a matter of fact, their shtick depends entirely on their not admitting it at all.

They simply flunk the smell-test. And tomorrow night, their new "diva" -- unquestionably the most homophobic VP candidate in recent memory -- will crash and burn in her "debate" against Joe Biden.

You heard it here. The election won't even be a close one. We'll see Republican carnage from coast to coast. The only thing "red" in this country on November the 5th will be the blood from all those Rethugs the American voters will have ripped to shreds.

Let's get on with the election, already -- and get it OVER with. I, for one, can't wait 'til I hear "Hail to the Chief" played for President Obama.