Anti-Bush despite my dream in which I was Laura Bush and loved George and was so grateful to him for making me the First Lady that - although I knew he was really doing a bad job - I decided I was going to work for his re-election because being the First Lady was so much fun and I sure didn't want to give it up...

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Reality: Hillary Doesn't Have The Votes

I haven't posted on this blog for nearly a year.

Frankly, I felt: what was the point? I was getting heckled by wing-nuts with only the occasional kudo, and those were mostly ingenuous comments left by people wanting to leave links to their sites in my comments section in order to promote their businesses.

So why bother?

But the long slog of 117 million taxpayers coming to some kind of realization about how the country operates these days and what it means to have robber baron Republicans in the White House seems to be dawning. Hence the excitement over Barack Obama.

But - again - I see too many divisive comments a la the "I would have voted for Hillary, but now I'm voting for McCain" variety so that my despair over the future of this country has not yet lifted.

Yet, don't get me wrong. I'm doing okay. I am busy and happier with my own life than I've been for years. In fact, there seems to have been a reversal. I'm now ike everyone else was six to eight years ago when I tried to raise the alarm among friends about the vipers in the administration. Ha! I was spitting in the wind and left in the dust.

But times have changed. My ideas are no longer so easily dismissed. In fact, many Americans have come to the same conclusions about how toxic Bush et al has been for the nation.

And what about all those Republicans who switched coats, abandoned the president yesterday and helped democrats override his veto on the farm bill? They know which way the wind is blowing. . .

Did you read the reason why Bush vetoed it? It's hilarious. Typical NewSpeak. He says he vetoed it because it did not go far enough in eliminating subsidies for millionaire "gentlemen" farmers (who never grow anything but get paid to have homes out in the country where they can have horses for their kids.)

Right. No, Bush, we know you vetoed it because 1) the farm bill gives more nutritional aid to poor kids and 2) some of your rich buddies in Texas are no longer going to get their farm subsidies and they were probably calling you about it.

But I digress.

Back to the Hillary/Barack contest and my original impetus for writing:

On May 13, 2008 I read posts on the New York Times website in regard to an editorial published by George McGovern in which he pled for democrats to unite behind Obama who - even two weeks ago - had the electoral votes to assure him the democratic nomination, no matter what anyone else would have you think.

Yes, 8 days is like six months in Internet time. I'm writing about old news. But let me get it off my chest, would you?

Because I’m still struck by the insults leveled at Mr. McGovern for stating the obvious:

Obama has the electoral votes sewn up to win the nomination, Hillary's chance is OVER, and if the candidates don’t make peace, McCain will win the presidency.

Yes, it's deplorable how Hillary was - virtually - raped by every clever pundit in town, including Maureen Dowd. (Whose biting wit I usually enjoy.)

If Hillary cried, it was an act. If she didn't cry, she was "too cold."

Virulent sexism poisoned the campaign with the result that the woman could not do anything right.

No male candidate could have handled what was done to Hillary and it is a tribute to her immense ability and strength that she stood strong.

So, yes, I believe Hillary “should have” gotten her party’s electoral votes. But she hasn't. Count the votes. Math doesn’t lie. It's over.

So the question is: Do you want the gutting of America to continue under Republican leadership?

Do you want to continue a war that was - make no mistake - started as a business for vested interests?

Do you want no environmental plan, gutted protection laws, mountain top removal mining that’s destroying the Appalachians?

Do you want under-funded public schools and – eventually – only private schools?

Do you want PBS abolished or its integrity eroded?

Do you want the poor to bear the tax burden for running a government that takes from them, but gives nothing?

Do you want there to be only rich and poor, with no middle class?

Do you want rotting infrastructure, falling bridges (like the one in Minnesota) and the continued goosestep march toward privatization?

Do you want the U.S. to be a purely dog-eat-dog country with no compassion, no safety nets, no care for anything, but our own, personal bottom lines?

Would you sacrifice the country and the working poor for your own egoistic bruising because your candidate's chances are over?

Would you choose war within your own party to unity that might actually solve our pressing problems (including our 9 Trillion dollar deficit which represents over $80,000 in money due from each of 117 million taxpayers?)

Because it sounded like - from most of the comments I read – that the answer is, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

So be it.

Insist your candidate slug it out to the end instead of returning to the Senate as the most powerful female force for change on the planet who, under a democratic administration, could make very good things happen.

Insist you’re doing it “on principle.”

The party - and the country - you will help destroy will be your own.

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