A Straight Shot of Politics

A blog from a gentleman of the Liberal political persuasion dedicated to right reason, clear thinking, cogent argument, and the public good.

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Location: Columbus, Ohio, United States

I have returned from darkness and quiet. I used to style myself as "Joe Claus", Santa Claus’ younger brother because that is what I still look like. I wrote my heart out about liberal politics until June of 2006, when all that could be said had been said. I wrote until I could write no more and I wrote what I best liked to read when I was young and hopeful: the short familiar essays in Engish and American periodicals of 50 to 100 years ago. The archetype of them were those of G.K. Chesterton, written in newspapers and gathered into numerous small books. I am ready to write them again. I am ready to write about life as seen by the impoverished, by the mentally ill, by the thirty years and more of American Buddhist converts, and by the sharp eyed people [so few now in number] with the watcher's disease, the people who watch and watch and watch. I am all of these.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Checking In Of A Thursday Morning

I have been under the gun. My very secret, hush-hush, job has started up again--the one with a certain company who recently made a very big boo-boo, kept some of their business so secret that they didn't even know about it, and made a very embarrassing splash in the national news. It takes all my evenings, twenty hours worth of work piled on top of the seventeen I have been averaging at my first job, and my bipolar limits [about 24 hours work per week] have been stretched. I even had a full manic episode one day at job one, and didn't get fully back on an even keel until the first hour of job two, which requires my total, and soothing, concentration for four full hours.

I kept the episode under control, concealed enough from my co-workers and the clients to be functional, but I had to, in good conscience, inform my boss. I am in what is known as "sheltered" or "accommodated" work during the day [I am picking up needed extra income at night, while I fight the long fight for Social Security Disability, or I wouldn't push so hard] and, since they cut my mental health needs much slack, I have to keep them current on my actual condition.

That combined with the episode detailed in the post below, where the better posters of the conservative blogosphere finally ceased to be "my good friends" and have become "my adversaries" [but not, I assure you "my enemies"] have kept me too far away from the keyboard here. I have another long piece 3/4 finished, in longhand, but it may take me until the weekend to get it up.

In the meantime, the news once again has been an utter bore. Iran has pushed one step closer to going nuclear, exploiting still further the boneheaded maneuver of George W. Bush in invading Iraq. We are operating from weakness, and like the weak and cowardly everywhere, we are threatening the big things we can do with the strength we have left.

We are, at least indirectly, threatening to use our own nuclear weapons unilaterally. It makes no matter that the Hersh article has been denied by the highest authorities. No one in Iran will believe the denial for the moment, even if it is true. So the threat is out there, and possibly even deliberately so, since the Bush Administration has now kited out the flat out lie that the Iranians can build a bomb in sixteen days! [God Almighty! What will they not assert shamelessly in contradiction to facts, intelligent and informed opinion, and simple common sense?]

Our actual and current military options against Iran are really unenviable. For unless we mount a sustained campaign of conventional airstrikes, spreading far beyond the actual Iranian nuclear facilities themselves to degrade much more of the Iranian infrastructure, and further exhausting our vaunted military resources, we have no assurance that we can do more than delay Iranian nuclear ambitions, and this at the cost of setting the entire popular sentiment of the Muslim world aflame against us.

So, as a result of this, and my own little tussle below, I have finally and fully reached a state of simply tossing my cookies when I contemplate the inane Cult of Personality that my adversaries have built around a President whose smarmy mendacity, defective intellect, and sheer arrogance of attitude renders totally unfit for the highest office of what is still the most powerful country in the world.

It cannot be repeated too often. The current mess simply didn't have to happen. It was manufactured solely by the inept way in which the President has handled Iraq, and the rest of the Middle East, for the past three years.

If they still interest you, you can still access the better Cultmeisters from by blogroll to the left. But they have ceased to interest me. However much I still retain quite a lot of personal liking for most of them, what they are spreading is simply and irredeemably poisonous for this country.

Luckily, more and more of the country is finally waking up to this fact. I am hoping for a Democratic avalanche. But I am confident, at least, of significant Democratic gains, even in the face of the probable, and most transparent, political ploy [already suggested by British journalists who are well-informed, and well-connected to Tony Blair and Downing Street] of attacking Iran immediately before the November elections. I strongly suspect that the shameless louts in the Republican portion of the government have gone to this well once too often, and such a ploy could actually completely backfire in November.

The avalanche is possible. It is within reach. All it would really take is for the national leaders in our party, particularly those in Congress who have more of the press' ear when they speak unilaterally, would more courageously confront the Bush Administration over it's ineptness, its falsehoods, and its genuinely malicious domestic intent.

What my small voice can do to convince them will be added to the virtual chorus, when time, health, and circumstances permit.

3 Comments:

Blogger Hillary for President said...

Great post. what you say about Democrat need to confront Bush avec les neo-cons is exactly right.

NEED
To
CONFRONT

your article I mostly scan really. You could be more concise.

but anyway.

hillary-for-president.blogspot.com

10:47 AM  
Blogger Joseph Marshall said...

Thanks for stopping by. Unfortunately, I simply write long. There is a marvelous quotation from somewhere, "How can I know what I think until I see what I say!"

In my case this is an exaggeration, but I do write to clarify thought as much as express it, and that takes time and words.

10:55 AM  
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9:48 PM  

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