Today’s customary availability of energy is the necessary force behind historically high standards of living in established nations. Personally, I have made it a priority to live close enough to my job to be able to bike there and to live in a neighborhood where I can walk to most destinations. I often consume one tank of gas (approximately 12 gallons) per month. But I also know that gasoline is an highly efficient source of energy and that its scarcity would have a cascading negative impact on my lifestyle. Efforts to “Green” gasoline need to recognize that one cannot replace it without replacing its benefits. Solving this conundrum should be the primary motivating force for government and entrepreneurs, but in the meantime, I respect the people that do the actual work of delivering the energy we need today.

Our polity has an unfortunate habit of lumping vehicular energy (gasoline) in with the electron energy that powers our homes and businesses. Absent a change to mostly Plug-In Electric Vehicles (PEVs), a new wind farm will do nothing to directly “ween us off foreign oil”. Our laws and customs treat the two kinds of energy differently, too. In the American West electrons are mostly delivered by Peoples or Public Utility Districts (PUDs) that are owned directly by the ratepayers, or else by Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs). The IOUs, however, generally still need the permission of a governmental Utility Commission to raise their electricity rates. Whether your electrons are delivered by a private or socialized source your electricity provider must prove that it is charging rates that are necessary to continue to deliver the energy effectively, not to enrich itself. (Ironically, most of the socialized energy is delivered in rural — read conservative — areas whereas IOU energy is concentrated in urban — read liberal — areas as PUDs were largely formed because it was not cost-effective for early for-profit utilities to deliver energy to sparsely populated rural areas. So they didn’t. But I digress.)

Vehicular energy is different. In America, it is a commodity that is sold for profit to enrich investors. Of course, the market for oil is global and, unlike electron energy, America does not have the supply to provide for itself. Still, imagine if BP, or another oil company, chose to operate like a utility: it would garner enough oil to provide for its share of the market, it would sell additional oil to other markets at a profit, and then would use a substantial portion of that profit to lower the price of the gasoline that it sold in its market. In other words, it would treat its gasoline like a public good that provides wealth for the nation by facilitating commerce and pleasure, rather than a means to enrich itself.

The quest for riches has had the effect of creating the technological phenomenon that was the Deepwater Horizon and its supporting infrastructure. Deepwater featured a drill that could drill sideways, a boat that used satellite technology to steady itself against open ocean waves, and unmanned submarines. Given this brilliance, it is surprising that BP is not capable of plugging the oil geyser. The expected cost of a catastrophic failure, however remote, were evidently determined to not be as great as the benefits of obtaining more far flung oil. Risk Analysis Fail!

The blame game in front of the Congress today was Beyond Pathetic. To be clear, as the entity that wanted that oil, BP is responsible for the acts of its contractors unless those contractors are criminally fraudulent. To put it another way, none of the actors responsible for the accident would have been there absent BPs desire to extrude the crude.

The Deepwater Horizon tragedy illustrates that other jaw of a purely for profit modis opperandi for energy extraction and delivery. The western utility model, in which energy is delivered for the good of the people that consume it, would have placed a higher premium on safe and ecologically defensible energy generation. When BP is done cleaning up for this mess and paying for it (and assuredly they will be paying for it, directly, and indirectly) then perhaps they and their oily colleagues can rethink the purpose of their business and get to the task of using their coin to delivering efficient vehicular energy in a means that doesn’t choke the planet or destroy one of its bays or Gulfs or coastlines every 25 years. If they don’t begin to see their role in delivering energy as a public good then, watch out! Utilities and their PEVs might take their business!

Osama bin Laden is a serial killer. A demon. Pure evil. But such hatred creates its own choice. Whatever validity one may give his grievances (and I give him little) violence against innocent people is not a legitimate recourse. As self-styled extremists Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda chose the hateful path and went down it. America did not have to. America is a free and respectful society that has a reasonable ability to chose its own destiny. But America did choose the venal chart. And whether you shouted until your throat hurt in defiance of Iraq War II (I did not), or thought it was a terrible and foolishly incorrect action at them time (I did), or were one of the lobotomized flag waving masses of nimrods that proved that “It” can happen here (I was not) you are complicit. All Americans are complicit.

So as a final decades end rejoinder to the Flat Landers and Texans, to the Rural Socialists and Junior Varsity Fascists, to the Tea Baggers and Polite Racists, to the Middling Concern Troll Masses and the FDNY Cap Wearing Confederates, to the Red States and the Red Counties in the Blue States, to Generalissmio Bush and the Conservatron Hate Machine please let me scream that NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED TO YOU ON 9/11/01! THERE WERE NO FUNERALS IN YOUR HOME TOWNS! YOU HAD NO GRAVEYARD GREY ROTTEN MILK STENCH CLOUD HOVERING OVER YOUR HOME! YOU DID NOT HAVE THE FAMILIAR ARCHITECTURE OF YOUR CHILDHOOD RENDERED INTO DUST!

NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED TO YOU! YOU ARE MEDIOCRE AMERICANS! AND YOU ARE DESTROYING AMERICA!

In the early 1960s Rod Serling observed that, in his teleplays, he could have aliens say things that Democrat and Republican characters could not. From that observation sprang “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” and “Eye of the Beholder,” two rapier sharp and thoroughly mainstream denunciations of McCarthyism as goosed by the Twilight Zone.

Similarly, once public opinion turned squarely against Generalissimo Bush’s Iraq War II in 2007, Hollywood responded with harsh, realistic films like “Stop Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah” that attempted to demonstrate the difficult sensations of that quagmire. While the films had no problem stating their political purpose they failed to resonate financially and intellectually with the polity. Like Serling, James Cameron has found surrealism to be a simpler path to an effective political polemic. Avatar is an over-the-top unapologetic left-wing hook — a parting swipe at the miserable Bush Aughts.

The plot to Avatar is simple and predictable: think “Dances with Wolves” meets the Endor battle scene in “Return of the Jedi”, with a generous pinch of “Dune” flavoring the whole stew. Time and again, the surrealism of the  venture rescues its tougher political points. The vaguely Afro-Polynesian-Native American dandruff-shampoo-blue hued Na’vi are almost too precious in their literal oneness with their planet — they embody the simplistic deification of indigenous people that a dreadlocked freshman white dude might trumpet in between bong hits in his dorm room at an obscure small liberal arts college in southern California. As glorious as the cultures of obscure tribes in the Amazon may be, would this dreadlocked Strawman give up his sedan, dorm room and zip locked narcotics to become a Tree Person? Of course not. Unlike Amazonian tribes, however, the Na’Vi are not human. Using the biological UBC cord in the Na’vi’s ponytail to mindmeld with the local fauna happens to be the logical way to get by on this imaginary world. Here the 3D aspect of the flick is also vital, as it creates an otherworldly sensation of size, scope and gravity. The texture of the 3D surrealism allows the Na’Vi’s actions to be a demonstration of how to live on their planet, rather than being a neo-luddite scold about how humans should live on Earth. This allows the truth of the films’ strongest rhetorical punches — “there is no green left there”; “they destroyed their planet” — to land without being undermined by their facile moralizing.

Far more interesting than the Na’Vi are the “villains”. I use the worry quotes because Avatar does nothing to Otherize the human inobtanium Colonizers of Pandora and the Na’Vi . The Oppressors in this case are a private mining company replete with a military wing. The fact that they are almost all white and speak with an American (not British!) accent is surely no mistake. Lets face it, there have been lots of white American colonizers in the scope of human history. At no point does the leader of this venture disobey orders from high command and go too far in his inobtanium conquest, thereby showing himself to be a rogue amongst otherwise noble people. None of the bad guys commit any sort of destruction or rape or act of private unconscionable immorality that reveals their evil souls. In the climax of the movie, when the Colonizers destroy a precious tree to get at the inobtanium underneath to the dismay of the Na’Vi, they appear distressed by what they have done. The leader is a smart corporate project manager type that does not appear far removed from a protagonist  in a contemporary TV procedural drama. The military leader is the sort of square-jawed mix of violence and cunning that is the star stuff of a million action movie heroes. When he hollers “we will fight terror with terror” and the Colonizers do just that he is simply revealing the complicity that all of us not bad Americans share in Iraq War II, whether we thought it was a good idea at the time or not. Avatar does not let the average American off the hook in the way that most entertainments do.

Some have argued that there is a racist element to the white marine avatared Na’Vi leading the Afro-Polynesian-Native American real Na’Vi in their fight against the Colonizers because this shows that “indigenous peoples” were not up to this task themselves. The other jaw of the “white savior” trope is that it allows the oppressors to redeem themselves by becoming one with the Natives; this is the soft way that “Dances With Wolves” Otherized the white Union Army but forgave the crowd that was busy sympathizing with Kevin Costner’s character. Here the surrealism of the movie distills its politics. Our hero doesn’t join the Na’Vi’s culture; he literally becomes one of them. In so doing he acts, in the final battle scene, as a missing link to a more “natural” state of being rather than an industrial one. In Avatar, humans cannot meld cultures with the Natives, or simply find the capacity to treat them right and be down with them as we all are now, of course. You either are one, or a rare select friend, or you are not.

The final scene of the movie is a Trail-of-Tears-like procession of not quite villainous white Americans being frog stomped back into their spaceship and off Pandora. Like the whole movie it is very predictable, but one only realizes how unusual such a scene is when one sees it.

Avatar is painted with a broad brush and is over the top and unapologetic in its moralizing. In it’s audacity, and beneath its pyrotechnics and holy moly 3D, it offers a mule kick in the solarplexis about the kind of violence and imperialism that most Americans know about but rarely pause to consider.

Bravo Mr. Cameron! Bravo!

Similarly, as adults, it is the live salmon that go against the flow. They use cues from the water running towards the ocean to  navigate their way upstream. Should they make it back to their natal steams they will spawn and die. Thes dead adult salmon also do not go with the flow. Rather, they rot on the banks of the steam and transfer the nutrients they consumed in ocean back to the forest stream bed of their birth.

Not sure if there is any symbolism in this brief salmon life cycle lesson befitting Sarah Nilap’s goof city, farewell verbal lobotomy. Never mention marine nutrient transfer to a gobbeldy-gooker, I guess.

Anyhow, at least Spitzer’s wife stood beside him and at least he wasn’t a total pussy at his press conference like Sanford was.

Mr. Bill Hicks on Abortion.

Thus the Conservatrons win the meme war, but for the rest of us actual Americans, the idea that an accomplished Latina might once have made a jocose statement appropriating broad stereotypes about her ethnicity/culture by stating that a person with her background might reach a better conclusion on an issue than a white man without her life experiences is boring. That’s because we know a variety of people and and get how a person celebrating their own culture does not equate to them hating everyone else. Duh! I know this because I am a wily Jew.

In short, while the Conservatrons are still decent tacticians, their resentment mongering is so impertinent and ugly that no reasonable person takes it seriously. Sadly, this is where the Conservatron tragedy comes in.

Generalissimo Bush and the Conservatrons coup d’etated and fearmongered the reactionary Nixonian/Reaganite conservative ideology well beyond the expiration dates of its ideas. During Conservatisms long nadir (2005-2008) Team Bush used their official power to stall and delay popular positions on the economy, health care, environment, foreign wars etc. etc. Once power finally returned to the Democrats, the vast majority of America’s polity had progressed far beyond the Conservatrons’ politics. The ensuing era of rapid but orderly change is still at the start of its beginnings.

It is no surprise that the shrinking minority of Conservatron dead enders are feeling bewildered as their countrymen lap them in the great 8000 km steeplechase towards modernity. It is doubly no surprise that some of these encrustations turn to violence when the majoritorian political process leaves them so greatly outnumbered. The purposeful inciting of these “left behinds” is the disturbing place where the stressed out hyperbole from the Conservatron echo chamber meets the attacks on Democratic lawmakers in Arkansas or the murder of Dr. Tiller or the creepy venom of last fall’s McPalin rallies that sought to tar the current President of the United States as a terrorist ally. Conservatron commentators are not directly at fault for the violence, but violence is the logical extreme of soft-serve racism that has been the engine of their ideology.  That’s how it shook out forty-one years ago when the Conservatrons first attained power.

I have no idea if there is an able Native justice out there, but since there will be an element of “just because” to this selection then you might as well go with a Local.

Also, I welcome the inevitable Conservatron hyperventilating and projectile vomit of fnords over whoever Obama selects. Please let them fool themselves into believing that a proxy fight over whatever wedge issues no one cares about anymore is their way out of the wilderness. This is just proof positive that there is no need to take them seriously for now.

As for me, I am mostly happy with the start of Obama’s beginnings and gratified that the Conservatrons have validated my reasoning for jumping on the Obama bandwagon after Iowa: a black President has undermined the polite racism at the center of their ideology and thereby driven them crazy, leaving them with the missing-chromosome crowd’s accidentally hilarious teabaggery.

Now back to ice hockey….

To the Bailout Corporate Welfare Queens: this is what is known as leadership, you venal Demon Piglets!

Is it fair that a good employee, the proverbial .350 batting average and 44 home run superstar on the last place team, should be harried and harassed and heckled into handing back his AIG bonus? No. But guess what? Life isn’t fair! Even for bright and able bloviators like Mr. DeSantis. “‘Shit happens!’ It’s not Just for the Bottom 99% Anymore!” Now, shit happens to plutocrats too!

Boo-fucking-hoo.

It’s really not that complicated. The American Street is not  trying to claw back the lip smacking kills of successful business Cenetaurs along with the weasel gains of the Credit Default Swappers willy-nilly. Rather, America does not want to see AIG, the Mothership holding both these heroes and villains, pay extra compensation to any of its employees when the scope of its overall failures are threatening to deep six the economy.The 742K Mr. DeSantis is sniffing about is money we gave AIG to fix its problems, not award its “Team.” The super star on the last place roster does not get to participate in the playoffs.

How can anyone not understand that they themselves should not be getting a bonus from their employer the year that their employer lost the most money in corporate history? The ham-handed outrageousness is almost too consuming to comprehend.

I’m sorry that life sucks and you are not be rewarding for your hard work the way you thought you’d be, Mr. DeSantis. But you were a well-equipped player in a free market, and that’s the risk you took when you signed on with AIG, whether you knew it or not. Lets be clear as a glacial lake here: The American people did not fail you. Nor did it’s polity. Nor even did its goofus politicos. AIG failed you. AIG’s Credit Default Swappers failed you by being venal; AIG’s management failed you by fanning and facilitating their venality.

So please, return to your domicile and appreciate your rich fortune in being able to ride out the Great Economic Collapse in relative comfort. I’m sure there is a  well-equipped bright and able person anxious to do your job for 150K a year and no bonus.

If the *fnord* populist *fnord* impulse to stay on hold on the phone until you can speak to an actual hominid and shriek “I want my fucking money back!” or to throw rocks at the AIG building, or to drag one of their executives out of his platinum tower and mug him and send him to the Bowery with a broken femur and missing teeth make more self-evident sense the empty huffing and puffing from Congress and Team Obama, then President Obama is more in danger of having his salutary Presidency swallowed by a Jacobian spirit than our institutional polity realizes.

Nationalize them! Liquidate them! Fire the venal nitwits and advertise their jobs for 150K a year and healthy benefits and no bonuses!

It’s time to act! It’s the cerebral thing to do.

And then there are those that add to the normal.

In their more Lennonist turnings the Beattles were a revolutionary band, and no song subverted the dominant paradigm more than Birthday from the White album. This ditty has no ideology, but it was conceived for the purpose of setting itself aside the indelible Happy Birthday to You, which is probably the most ubiquitous song in the English language. It succeeded.

With his 552nd record breaking win Martin Brodeur made his own Birthday. Cutting the Net will be the new momentous goalie celebration evermore.

May have noticed that the Conservatron legs were a little creaky in rising for the applause line in bold above. That’s because their entire ideology is predicated on some people loving their country more than others, or somehow being more American than others. Of course, in the unofficial State of the Union context, no Conservatron could sit through that statement, even as it drove a stake through their fetid dark hearts.

All that leaves the Conservatrons is Bobby Jindal the Page, sounding like he is reading a children’s book full of false choices and nonsense, having his own McCain Green Screen moment.

Example One is 1933 when FDR passed a substantial part of his New Deal legislation with minimal GOP support. The media back then was owned almost entirely by the same class of people that attempted a fascist Coup against FDR. In spite of the negative reaction from the out-of-powers-that-be, the Democrats expanded their majorities in the 1934 mid-terms and FDR won more states and total votes in 1936 than he did in 1932. This neat feat was accomplished even as the Depression dragged on because, regardless of what the Conservatron elite claimed, the New Deal made things better. Where once there was no job, now one was a part of the CCC. You didn’t have electricity, but after the New Deal, you did. This self-evident improvement was the cornerstone of the Progressive Populism that reigned over the American polity until 1968.

Example Two is Clinton’s Balance Budgeting of 1993. The 1993 recession was not as bad as the Great Depression; but personal desperation is personal desperation, regardless of how society at large is fairing. Clinton came into office without a popular majority and could not get a stimulus bill through Congress and had to nix the Middle Class tax cut that he had campaigned on. The Budget Bill that finally passed reduced taxes on the poorest Americans, raised them on the richest Americans, and cut the budget. Although the economy soon recovered it did not begin producing many new jobs until late 1995. Without the stimulus or the Middle Class tax cuts, and with typical venal negativity from the Conservatrons and their water carriers in the media, the lot of most Americans did not appear to improve. The Democrats got trounced in the 1994 mid-terms and Clinton had to largely play defense for the rest of the 90s.

The Great Economic Collapse is closer to the Great Depression than the early 90s recession, but in many ways self-evident improvements are harder to establish. Developing and deploying non-GHG emitting energy through an Apollo style program would better the lives of everyone on the planet and probably set the stage for an economic boom. It would also take several years before the benefit became obvious.

My instinct (and it is just that) is that the full extent that America is screwed economically has not become entirely apparent yet. While the Stim is probably not enough, it is something, and could well be just about the only game in town for quite sometime. More importantly is includes most of Obama’s promised tax cut. Conservatrons can poo-poo the $13 per week nature of it, but having an additional $26 in each bi-weekly paycheck will make a tremendous difference to this typical American because it extends, for one day, the amount of time at the end of a pay period when I am not broke. That the Conservatrons cannot grok this demonstrates just how far through the looking glass they have fallen.

The Stimulus will create or preserve jobs for millions of Americans, and it will put some important extra dollars in the pocket of everyone. It will be up to Obama and the Democrats to keep on pointing out these benefits to underline them for those that are not directly assisted. With the economy lagging but the Stimulus bill providing a few sparks of sustenance the Democrats should be poised to win a few House Seats and, more importantly, a couple more Senate seats.

With over sixty Senators Obama may be able to complete the New Deal/Great Society and pass Universal Health Care, thereby providing the last technologically feasible self-evident benefit to everyone and setting up a landslide reelection in 2012.

The Republicans are now the GoBots to the Democrats’ Transformers.

There were only a few hours for sleep before the cellphone alarm woke us at 3:00 AM. We dressed, swallowed some coffee, and walked to the Vienna Metro station that was across the street. There was already an impressive line of cars waiting to park there. We made our way to the Metro and at 4:00 AM it lumbered towards DC as the inhabitants stuffed inside cheered.

After a few stops the train was packed like a tin of spam and many people were left on the platform, unable to negotiate the tangle of bodies inside. We exited with much of the throng at the Federal Triangle and began to step towards the Capitol building. The Washington Monument and the Capitol itself glowed in their electrical light in the pitch darkness of that cold morning like great ivory Totems.

We stopped six rows back from a steel barrier. This was about as close as you could get without a ticket. Before we had time to even think if we were in the optimal spot, countless hominids were standing behind us.

The immediate crowd around us appeared to be over 90% African-American and largely college age. Two older women stood out. One said that she had marched on Washington with MLK in 1963. The other had no story, but was wearing fine clothes and was glowing and beaming from the very core of her being. As the morning darkness gave way to sunrise people coming and going  jostled the crowd. You had no choice but to grab your companion and let the multitude take you where it would. Somehow, this joyous woman aglow always managed to migrate closer to the front with each tectonic shift. She’s the one wearing the fuzzy purple and black hat in front of the leather jacketed arm in the photo below.

Every community has its demon. At Mr. MacGregor and ST’s corner of the Inauguration, our demon presented himself as two paramedics hurried an elderly gentleman that had collapsed out of the crowd. The demon followed the tunnel that the paramedics made through the multitude, and planted himself in the front of the throng. Despite substantial hate from all those around him and the glacial movements of the masses he did not budge from his perch directly in the way of most of my pictures. He was tall and, ironically, hooded. He will be reincarnated as a batch of herpes atop a hemorrhoid.

The early chants of “Fired up! Ready to go!” and other songs dimmed as exhaustion set in. The sun did little to warm the day. Space only got tighter. ST and Mr. MacGergor were wise to eat their sandwich at about 9 AM, because shortly thereafter it became almost impossible to lift your arms up from your side. We chose not to drink any water, because we knew that a bathroom break would mean the surrender of our spot.

It was arctic freezing cold. Some gave up and bounced. “We’re from Florida,” one guy said on behalf of his girl, “we don’t do this.”

Early portions of the program at least provided entertainment in the numbing cold. The appearance of Generalissimo Bush on the Jumbotron ignited a bellow of boos and hisses that morphed into arena-like renditions of “Hit the Road Jack” and “Hey Hey Goodbye.”

Finally, the show began. While the crowd never quite quieted down, the waiting finally became worth it as the benediction echoed, Joe was sworn in, Aretha sang, and Yo Yo et al “played.”

The Moment finally came. I will admit that I always feel a slight itching at the bottom of my heart whenever I see Obama. There is a tiny part of me that is waiting and fearing a fatal gun shot. This tension was a touch higher than usual just then, and I was trying really hard to get a photo of history around the obstructive hood of the demon. In that moment, Justice Roberts’ oath snafu was but a weird hiccup that could not dent the speed of those seconds. This is what I got:

Obama’s speech lacked a singular line. It was a series of topic sentences that severed the ties from these awful eight years. The snuffles I heard were a combination of tears and running noses from the cold. A few tears, in my case, at hearing something aspirational and sensical from a real President at long last. The crowd clapped and cheered, and then began to disperse. We wanted to stay for the poem and convocation, but after being compressed like a ball of krill for so long, it was counterintuitive not to get out of there immediately.

Before we got swallowed in the wayward exiting of the crowd, we watched as Marine One, the Pesidential helicopter, flew over the Mall like a giant grasshopper, spiriting Generalissimo Bush away, at last. The balloon animal in my intestines suddenly unwound, my chest  relaxed, and my shoulders felt lighter. It was truly over. Generalissimo Bush was gone!

Getting out of DC was a dress rehearsal for being a refuge. All in all, we did not actually sit down for 12 consecutive hours. Somehow, the Turnpike was closed, which added another hour to the journey back to Central New Jersey. A warm cheesesteak and a good nights sleep later, and it was all definitely worth it.

A few days later Mr. MacGregor and ST were headed towards Ellis Island. We were surprised to see Ken Salazar, the new Secretary of the Interior, as our ferry stopped at Liberty Island. The ferry followed his special Secretary of Interior boat to Ellis Island and we got a good view of him meeting some functionaries there. Turns out he was in NY/NJ harbor at the behest of local Congressmen that wanted the upper reaches of the Statue of Liberty reopened. In means iconic and minute change had finally come to America.

Somehow, seeing Secretary Salazar clarified the whole purpose our trip to President Obama’s Inauguration. The eight terrible years are over. America is America again!

Well, there has been much talk about America’s first black president, which is important for an infinity of reasons, but in addition to that here are some more purposes for the journey:

* Obama is America’s first “urban” president since perhaps FDR. By urban I mean that he generally spent his formative years in multi-cultural and densely populated areas. This is in stark contrast to all other recent President except for, perhaps, JFK who made a large to do about their rural origins, as if this confided some sort of sincerity superiority along with giving a nod to the Ghost of Disinterest.

*  Upon reading “Dream From My Father” it is evident that, like me, Obama is the rare and often misunderstood INTP personality type on the Miers-Briggs assessment.

* Obama is the first non-Southern President since JFK. I know I know, Nixon and Reagan were Californians and Ford was from Michigan. But Ford was never elected, even as a Veep, and Nixon and Reagan were Southern in their perpetuation of reactionary, divisive, politics. Even liberal Southerners like Clinton had to surf this resentment-oriented terrain. LBJ changed it through Civil Rights legislation, but with the knowledge that Democrats (and with them, Progressives) had lost the South for a generation. Well, the ceremonial power in the hands of a black President will completely obliterate this assumption, for all but the most pathetic Conservatron dead enders, for good.

* Obama is the first President since the 1960s to have not had his idea of the world forged by that decade. Rather than refighting the ancient wars of the sixties and ruminating on the histrionics of the Boomer experience, perhaps we can actually solve problems.

* Obama is not Generalissimo Bush, meaning, at least, that he is intelligent, has read more than one book on a given subject, and is capable of speaking in complete sentences with words with multiple-syllables.

* Obama actually groks and uses technology. This is hardly a big deal, except when you consider that we have been governed by someone that didn’t for the last endless eight years.

So, overall, after almost 30 years of being governed by people that are not at all like me in physical location, formative experience, or thought process, I am proud to finally have a President that is, somewhat, akin to me and people I know. The Florida Putsch in 2000, the crimes of Tom Delay, the awful frustration of progress, and the sadness and embarrassments of the last eight years and the Bush junta may have seemed like the brutal exercises of the powerful. They were not. Rather, they were the whiny death throes of a mediocre and failed ideology that had little support. After all, popular and wise ends would never have necessitated such undemocratic and viscous means.

The Conservatron Era of 1968-2008 — a reactionary time of fear, hate, resentment, stupidity, vitriol and mediocrity — is over. The 2010s, the crucial decade, begin on Tuesday!

Others have certainly cataloged the cavalcade of Conservatron chicanery of the last eight years with precision. I am more concerned with where the rest of us stood in the massacre.

Remember, remember we must remember fellow Americans the Fear Years. That awful epoch between 9/11/01 and early 2004 when Generalissimo Bush turned any sense of humanity stemming from 9/11 and twisted it into Iraq War II. Disagreement was deemed betrayal. Our real enemies were allowed to skitter away and regroup. The reign of Generalissimo Bush is now almost universally recognized as a mammoth failure. But Bush was no more and no less of a failure in the Fear Years than he is now. He was no more or less of a venal demon then as he is now. The falsity and surrealism of the Iraq venture was evident then with as much critical thinking as it takes to decipher the nutrition label on a cereal box. The only thing that has changed is us. If America had a Parliamentary system then Generalissimo Bush would have been bounced from the White House long ago. Yet, stuck with him as we are, his power has been largely drained by his unpopularity. We proved we could cauterize the wound. Yes Bush deserves the brunt of the blame for the massacre. But we all let it happen.

What more could we have done? I myself argued the evil and stupidity of the Iraq War and Generalissimo Bush in general, often to barking, furious rejoinders from my countrymen. Others marched, which I thought would be ineffectual. I voted the right way. Horror at how Generalissimo Bush was mutating America (and the ineffectual response to it from Democrats) was an impetus for this blog. These are all well and good gestures on the “I told you so” level, but the massacre still happened. Not enough of us made a large enough effort to prevent it.

We all share the culpability of our America’s comprehensive failure during the Fear Years. All we can do now is learn from our errors. Know then, America, that “it” did happen here and “it” can happen here again. The kind minds of your friends and neighbors can be forged and fluxed by anger and anxiety into cheering the violence and delusions of a man of fear and hate. The words of our Constitution and laws are only words. They are nothing if their letter is usurped and ignored. The American experiment is fragile and can be aborted into a bizarre kind of fascism if we let it.

Remember America! Remember the Fear Years! Remember America’s fascist moment! Remember the massacre!

Parker and Stone only took about a week to turn aggravation with the Star Wars blunder Jar Jar Binks into ferocious satire. They even popped out a topical episode about 9/11 as quickly after “everything changed” as was socially acceptable. So why were they silent through a two year election that forced all of America’s goopy, agonized and weird feelings about race to the fore? Why was South Park mute in an election where millions of boomer feminists transformed Hillary Clinton’s long march into a catharsis for a lifetime of frustrations, only to see the goof city Sarah Nilap turn the “Hillary, women, ME given the shaft!” collective thought wave into a parody of itself?

Methinks the reason is that all of the annoying roustabout regarding Obama’s blackness, Hillary’s tears, and Nilap’s aw shucks fascism was the sound of America’s subterranean emotions about gender and race — which was the star stuff of so many of the later, not as funny, “South Parks” — being expressed. As these things became real topics in our polity, they stopped being “yeast for the daily fucking grind,” as Bill Hicks once said, and therefore grounds for satire.

What would’ve been funny, even after the fact, was the South Park treatment applied to Bush Patsy McCain’s dadaist attempts to keep Nixonian resentment-mongering alive through Nilap, “‘Joe’ the ‘Plumber,’” absurd campaign tactics, and finally guilt by association “terrorist” claims that made his later rallies sound like the part of The Wall where Pink becomes a Nazi. (“That one in the spotlight he don’t look right to me, get ‘im up against the wall.) Instead, South Park finally addressed the 2008 election by placing all of the candidates into a Jewel Thief Ring and playing it as a parody of “perfect crime” movies. Yes, there was some bits about the tiring over-exuberance of Obamites and the silly fatalism of McCainers with some general support of Obama there between the lines, but given the material, it was weak sauce.

Anyhow, South Park was a Bush Patsy through much of this venal, miserable decade (“No Satan,” lied Saddam, “it’s a chocolate chip factory”) so fuck it anyway.

Obama and Ike are surprisingly similar. Ike was adored for being vital to winning World War II, but was a political ink blot. No one knew if he would run as a Democrat or Republican at first. Although he had to throw the Conservatrons of his day a bone by Veeping Nixon his administration was centrist to the point of being almost non-ideological — Nixon had almost no portfolio as VP (today Ike seems more Democrat than Republican). Obama is an obvious liberal, yet his calls for post-partisanship and his relatively thin voting record coupled with the acknowledged practice of others grafting their own aspirations onto his barrier breaking story makes Obama, oddly, a vague quantity akin to Ike despite Obama’s detailing of his policies in the 08 campaign.

Ike and Obama are both unlikely Presidents. Ike wasn’t a politician, but his military expertise was ideal for 1952 when the quagmire in Korea appeared unsolvable. Obama has less experience than most Presidents, but his newness and potential energy are the canvass on which the 2010s will be written; in 2008 Obama was the necessary redeemer for what Leonard Cohen calls America’s “spiritual thirst” in the bitter wake of the venal Bush occupation.

Eisenhower translated his novelty into action by delegating. Due to his dowdy public persona, Ike was criticized for being a hands off or even clueless president. We now know that he was intent and engaged behind the scenes. He took his military experience and applied it to his cabinet by giving his subordinates room to succeed and fail, while using the bully pulpit and the ceremonial aspect of the presidency to maintain his own personal popularity rather than trying to sway the polity to his vision, which was largely “post-partisan” anyway.

Obama has chosen more of a Team of Experts than a “Team of Rivals”. His cabinet includes sitting politicians like Salazar and Clinton with their own power bases and political capital. For the more technical work like energy and environmental policy (despite the broad passions stirred by these issues, actual work on them is all about nuances of details) Obama has chosen able technocrats that will be led by Carol Browner in a new energy/environment coordinator role. Vice-President Biden will be the point person on the economic stimulus activity.

Obama appears to be updating the Eisenhower Model by giving substantial ownership of policy to his cabinet members/subordinates, while largely staying above the fray himself. Hopefully, he will also use his preternatural talent as the greatest Persuasive Leader of his generation to create the space for his team to succeed.

This is brilliant politics for three reasons. 1.) Giving ownership of policy to subordinates makes Obama harder to hit. Early in the reign of the Bush junta Progressives were driven to distraction by the very visible Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, but Bush remained popular and Rumsfeld and Ashcroft only became unpopular when Bush did. The Public at large does not care about Secretaries, but ideologues do. By leading with his subordinates Obama will force the Conservatrons to swing wildly to try to hit him. Their foolish fixation on trying to link Obama to Blagojevich is an early example of this and has, of course, been a massive FAIL. Subsequent attempts by Conservatrons will be cat-chasing-tail exercises because scandalmongering for the sake of scandalmongering does not reflect the seriousness of the times, but Obama’s “no red America, no blue America, just the United States of America” trope does. That the Conservatrons have completely abandoned this high ground is astounding in its stupidity 2.) When Obama does stake political capital on a policy outcome it is more likely to be effective and decisive because it will occur relatively rarely and only after his subordinate has spent his or her political capital. 3.) Everyone prefers a boss that does not micromanage. I imagine that one of the reasons that Obama’s campaign was so tight is that he let his people do their part their way. Obama is more likely to win the devotion of his Team of Experts by following Eisenhower’s model.

Eisenhower’s governing style was not a complete success. After his heart attack in his second term Ike appeared to lose some control of his administration and it became mired in silly scandals and transgressions. The Republicans got trounced in the 1958 mid-terms. The U2 Spy Plane incident seemed to be a sign of Ike’s detachment. Still, when all was said and done and remembered Ike was popular and maintained the Leadership necessary to make a credible warning about the Military-Industrial Complex in his farewell address.

Team Obama is filled clever, able people that are also keen students of history. I think they can perform even better than Team Eisenhower.

As of Monday December 22 there are only 17 business days left in the Bush junta’s occupation of the White House (December 26 is a federal Holiday this year). Of all it’s miserable venal failures, the use of TARP has not been the worst, but at this point horse sense dictates that the Obama administration could do a more effective job of revitalizing the loan market. Holding the remaining TARP money until the real president takes over will also stop Generalissimo Bushfrom doing something fratish and evil at the eleventh hour like bailing out Haliburton for 223 billion.

Stiffen your cartilage Congressional Democrats, and hold the money until a President with the popular support of the citizenry can spend it.

Where Andrew Jackson represented a new class of people being given the franchise Barack Obama symbolizes new segments of voters being counted. The electorate that chose Obama was younger, blacker, and browner than the one that “elected” Generalissimo Bush twice. What this Expansion does not want, by and large, is the reactionary resentmentmongering over the upheavals of 1968 that the Conservatrons have been spewing for a generation. What it does want, by and large, is economic security, better health care, real action on global warming, and government competence. In other words, the broad ideas that progressives have expressed for years. There isn’t really too much that is new here. There are just more of us now.

You would never know this by viewing the insider bloviation-a-thons where the “center right nation” myth holds sway. Their’s is a world without the Expansion, where people really did just reject the cosmic screwing of the Bush years, but not the Conservatron memes that have become accepted wisdom for these antiques over the last 40 years. The audience for these talking heads does not include the Expansion, and they still cannot fathom its existence. Consider the concern trolling in the MSM over the flakiness of the youth vote throughout the election season and then consider Polemic’s experience in Nevada where one of the leader’s of the office was an eighteen year old kid. Who wound up having a bigger impact on election night, the talkers or the doer?

The New Jacksonianism will not be televised… at least not too often, but it will be downloaded, streamed, considered, chatted, and calling you on the phone and knocking on your door.

All of the mathematical data and dancing in the streets on November 4 were not deceiving you. Obama’s New Jacksonianism has made America a center-left country. Our crucial decade, the “2010s,” begins on January 20!

After upsetting the Newyarkansas Clintons in the eight overtime of Game 57 in their best 29 out of 57 series to capture the Democratic Conference Championship the Chicago Obamas were strong favorites against the Conservatron Conference Champion Arizona McSames. The Democratic Conference had been outperforming the Conservatron Conference all year. Even though the McSames’ run to the Finals was swift after they recovered from poor play in the quarterfinals, their competition was weak whereas the Obamas emerged from, arguably, the strongest and deepest field in Democratic Conference history.

The talent gap was evident from the drop of the puck. The Obamas scored on their first rush up ice on a patented tic-tac-toe Obama Great Speech to start the general campaign. On the next shift, the Obamas caught the McSames’ Lobbyists skating through the neutral zone with their head done. The Obamas delivered a devastating, Stevensesque clean open ice hit on the Lobbyists by noting that their presence was contrary to the McSames’ famous rhetoric. The McSames’ Lobbyists were concussed out of the game and the referees were forced to pick their teeth off the ice like so many wayward Chiclets.

The McSames’ strategy relied heavily on the Lobbyists’ efforts. The Obamas continued to dominate play and it appeared that it was just a matter of time before they broke the game wide open. The McSames made it to the Finals by adapting, however, and they brought in Steve Schmidt off waivers from the Texas Bushes to change their strategy. Schmidt cut down on the McSames sloppy play and established a forecheck by noting that the Obamas had limited direct foreign policy experience. After a few strong shifts the McSames got too aggressive with their talking point. The McSames careless use of their stick by noting that the Obamas had not visited several foreign countries drew blood and the Obamas were awarded a four minute power play. The Obamas applied constant presure on the first half of the power play and finally scored off a rebound with Obama’s Foreign Tour to take a 2-0 first period lead into the locker room.

The McSames retooled their attack in the intermission and shocked the Obama’s by springing an advertisment short-handed breakaway. The McSames scored five hole with the Celebrity Commercial to cut the Obamas’ lead in half. The unexpected goal appeared to rattle the Obamas, and while the McSames were not generating much offense, they were exceeding expectations by keeping the score close. Despite the Obamas’ almost supernatural talent, by the mid-point of the contest it had become clear that they could not polish off the McSames without the tough, down-low, home spun “grinding,” cycling and forechecking game perfected by the Newyarkasas Clintons that had produced the last National Presidential League champions from the Democratic Conference in 1992 and 1996.

The Obamas successfully integrated the Clintons into their attack during the Democratic Convention. The new teammates produced several strong shifts, and long periods of puck possession, but could not score another goal. Obama’s Convention Speech hit the post.

The McSames immediately reversed the Obamas’ Convention momentum by calling up a little known right-winger named Sarah Nilap from the Melting Tundra League’s Wasilla Meth Houses. Although the Wasilla Meth Houses are a Conservatron Conference farm team, the young phenom had impressed drunken Conservatron scouts with her nice Talent & Acumen for pleasant blathering laced with distilled hatred. The unexpected entrance of Nilap on the first-line as Vice-Presidential Candidate and her controversial family and personal history upended the contest and turned it into a penalty fest. The McSames took control of this narrative in their Convention and produced a goal on a one-timer from the top of the right circle with Nilap’s VP Acceptance Speech. The contest was tied heading into the third period.

The McSames emerged from the intermission with momentum and carried play for the first time in the entire contest, producing scoring chances on  every shift. Their best opportunity came on the Lipstick On A Pig one-timer from the blue line. Several spectators thought the shot had gone in, however, the Obamas’ goalie got a glove on it at the last moment by pointing out its conceptual abusrdity. The play was reviewed for two news cycles before the pundits declared that it glanced off the goalie’s glove, hit the cross bar, and sailed out of play.

The Obamas’ caught a break as the McSames shot the puck over the glass by declaring the “fundamentals of the economy are strong” in the face of the Great Economic Collapse. The McSames flailed about in the ensuing penalty kill, changing their strategy on an almost moment by moment basis. The Obamas kept the puck in the economic zone, and wore out the McSame’s defense finally scoring over the blocker on a give and go with their Understanding Of The Great Economic Collapse.

By this point the Obama’s had figured out that Nilap had good political instincts, but poor fundamentals. Rather than pressing Nilap and allowing her to react using her raw politicism, they forced her to make plays. The new strategy paid off as Nilap muffed a routine break out pass and banked the puck into her own net off a McSame defenseman’s skate by Being A Moron In The Katie Couric Interview. Nilap’s effectiveness was permanently marred by the mistake, and the Obama’s had a 4-2 lead.

The McSames understood that the contest was getting away from them and tried to change the momentum. McSame’s call to “suspend” his campaign forced off-setting penalties and the first four on four play of the contest. Although McSame initiated the four on four, it played directly into Obama’s strength of mental acuity, calmness, and economic understanding. McSame’s strategic errors during the four-on-four led to an easy two on one goal for the Obama’s by Displaying Superior Leadership In Crisis and a 5-2 lead.

The Obamas scoring outburst left the McSames with no choice but to play dirty. A series of high-sticks, elbows, trips, and dives by bringing up tenuous negative Obama associations excited the Conservatron partisans, but failed to intimidate the Obamas. The Obamas erased all doubt in the contest by putting home a backhander off a goal mouth scrum by Winning Every Debate and going up 6-2.

There were only five minutes left in the elimination game. With nothing to lose the McSame’s pulled their goalie for “‘Joe’ the ‘Plumber’” another unknown call up from the Ohio Delusional League. The McSame’s picked up the hitting, and kept the puck in the Obamas’ zone, but they did not get any more serious scoring chances. The Obamas iced the game with an empty net goal from Colin Powell’s Endorsement. The Obamas’ army of volunteers made no mistake in the closing seconds, fighting hard to the end despite the overwhelming lead.

As the buzzer sounded euphoria blossomed throughout the land like a thousand starbursts. After eight years of heartbreak and despair starting with the Texas Bushes controversial “chad in the crease” victory in the year 2000, the Democrats had at last regained President Washington’s Cup!

Chicago Obamas 7   Arizona McSames 2

Scoring Summary

First Period:

Obamas (1) :33, Obama Great Speech (McSame Green Screen, History Making); Obamas (2) 19:22, Obama World Tour (Power Play) (Foreign Enthusiasm, Media Excitement)

Second Period

McSames (1) :10, Celebrity Commercial (Short Handed) (Starlets, Complicit Media); McSames (2) 18:43 Nilap VP Acceptance Speech (Melodrama, Speechwriter).

Third Period

Obamas (3) 2:32, Understanding of Great Economic Collapse (Power Play) (Calmness, Reason); Obamas (4) 7:11, Nilap Being A Moron In Katie Couric Interview (Tina Fey Impression, Blogosphere); Obamas (5) 10:00, Displaying Superior Leadership In Crisis (Intelligence, Planning); Obamas (6) 14:33, Winning Every Debate (Unflappability, Joe Biden); Obamas (7) 18:01, Colin Powell Endorsement (Empty Net) (Call For National Unity, Intelligence).

Attendance – 115 Million

2008 National Presidential League Trophies

Conn Smythe Trophy – Barack Obama

Hart Trophy – Barack Obama

Lady Byng Trophy – Michelle Obama

Calder Trophy – Sarah Nilap

Art Ross Trophy – Obama Ground Game

Vezina Trophy – Hillary’s Establishment Support

Norris Trophy – Bill Clinton

Selke Trophy – Joe Biden

Masterson Trophy – Hillary Clinton

Maurice ‘Rocket’ Richard Trophy – Barack Obama

Jack Adams Trophy – David Plouffe and David Axelrod

Holik Trophy – Joe Lieberman