On John McCain.

Like the majority of capitalist wars, Vietnam occurred because power elites needed enriching. It was not a "just" war by any remotely sane calculus, but this isn't the fault of those ordinary people enlisted to wage it.

In the main, we're raised both to follow orders and to rationalize matters that make no sense, like this one: we praise heroes who fight plainly unjust wars, so long as they're on our side. Ask us to apply the same thought process to ordinary German soldiers in WWII, and we make gurgling sounds.

Obviously this remains a contradictory and perhaps irreconcilable ethical quagmire, and so we gratefully sidestep it.

America as an entity currently is killing people all across the planet in the name of anti-terrorism, just as occurred a generation previous in the name of anti-communism. Big money is the cause and the only beneficiary of these wars, and while I fervently hope that some day our anger as muddy commoners finally is directed against capital accumulation -- our true oppressor -- it's also understandable that we use whatever mental tools are at our disposal to mitigate cognitive dissonance.

This brings me to John McCain.

McCain was a soldier, and soldiers follow orders. His bombing raids killed innocent civilians, and this in another ethical morass. He was captured, and endured his captivity with absolute courage and resolve. Upon entering politics, the ex-soldier displayed occasional quirks and was referred to as a maverick even when the bulk of his political activity was devoted to keeping the elites enriched, thus guaranteeing more ruinous wars.

By periodically standing up to our diminutive Trumpolini, McCain was praised by progressives even before his death, and termed by his ideological opposites to be the far better man; then again, I have discolored pocket lint of higher caliber than The Donald.

The former POW also foisted the plainly fascist Sarah Palin on the public, and whether or not he regretted it, one must concede a noticeable absence of real-world judgment.

There it is, and here we are, arguing about John McCain's legacy.

Humans crave the certainty of black and white, and we'll always conjure it from the prevailing gray shades when necessary to help us sleep. Far be it from me to deny my own role in the charade. I do it as much as anyone else, so rest assured no fingers are being pointed that haven't already been jabbed in my own eyes.

In McCain's legacy there is typically American nuance and ambiguity, and speaking only for myself, I'm comfortable with the pea soup fog. McCain was and was not a hero. He was and was not a noteworthy Senator. He was and was not memorable in these and other ways.

Like us all, in our own microcosms.

In the time it has taken me to write these words, a few trillion dollars more has nestled safely in the bosom of the 1%. We apparently cannot fathom this pathology of destructive inequality, and consequently, we take to social media to debate the merits and demerits of dead leaders, and resume screaming at each other.

Our squawking absolves us from hard thinking, and that's the way life works -- until it doesn't.

A belated R.I.P. to Delmer Berg, who fought against fascism.

The decidedly anti-communist Senator John McCain was moved to reflect on Delmer Berg's generation, his thoughts filtered through memories of a Hemingway novel.

John McCain: Salute to a Communist, by John McCain (New York Times)

... You might consider them romantics, fighting in a doomed cause for something greater than their self-interest. And even though men like Mr. Berg would identify with a cause, Communism, that inflicted far more misery than it ever alleviated — and rendered human dignity subservient to the state — I have always harbored admiration for their courage and sacrifice in Spain.

Berg died several weeks ago, even as Bernie Sanders continued his campaign for president as a democratic socialist. I wonder what Berg thought about that? I'll close the loop and think about Berg when I cast my primary ballot for Sanders.

Delmer Berg, last Abraham Lincoln Brigade veteran, dies (SF Gate)

Delmer Berg, the last known living veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which vainly fought against fascism’s advance into Spain in the late 1930s, died last Sunday Feb. 28 at his home in Columbia (Tuolumne County). He was 100.

His death was confirmed by Marina Garde, the executive director of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in New York, who said Mr. Berg was believed to have been the only survivor left of the nearly 3,000 quixotic young Americans who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War in a bloody prelude to World War II. About 800 of those who volunteered were believed to have been killed.

Mr. Berg, an unreconstructed Communist, was a 21-year-old union-card-carrying hotel dishwasher in 1937 when he spotted a billboard for the brigade and, through the Young Communist League, enlisted. After cobbling together bus fare to New York, he boarded the French luxury liner Champlain for France.

“I was a worker,” Mr. Berg told the Modesto Bee in November. “I was a farmer. I was in support of the Spanish working people, and I wanted to go to Spain to help them.”

REWIND: Matt Taibbi, John McCain, The eXile, Rolling Stone and the Open Air Museum.

First, the update: Matt Taibbi is leaving Rolling Stone.

I've linked to his articles far less often than I might have, simply because I didn't want it to be a weekly habit. Back on November 23, 2008, it was time to provide some background. Here is the full reprint.

---

Matt Taibbi: "A Requiem for John McCain," in Rolling Stone.

My first exposure to Matt Taibbi came from a book called, “The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia,” which our on-line book discussion group tackled circa the year 2000. Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say about it.

In 1997, two American college-educated slackers began publishing the eXile, a no-holds-barred newspaper, in Moscow. The paper includes irreverent discussions of Russia's sex and drug scene and off-color humor pieces, such as an article poking fun at a U.S. African-American basketball player who was toiling for a Moscow team after he was kicked out of the NBA following a forced sodomy charge in the U.S. Their attitude toward Russia's expatriate community, including themselves, is clear: "Any affluent or even middle-class American who renounces the good life of sushi and 50-channel cable delivery" is "motivated by a highly destructive personality defect."

The pranks the newspaper plays are entertaining: convincing an aide to Mikhail Gorbachev that New York Jets football coach Bill Parcells wanted the former Soviet leader to give a series of inspirational pep talks to his team, for example. The eXile also takes on the herd mentality of reporters, managing to convince one of its rival papers that basketball hall-of-famer Wilt Chamberlain was considering a comeback in Russia. (In between its humor and its testosterone, the eXile has reported some important stories, most notably that much aid money from the U.S. went directly into the hands of some top Russian politicians.)

Only those with a National Lampoon mentality will enjoy the descriptions of the editors' sexual conquests and their comparisons of Russian and American women. Like much of the paper itself, the book, which recounts the newspaper's history, is tasteless. There's little doubt, however, that both incisively probe contemporary Russian reality--and the expatriate indset.

Wikipedia adds to the merriment:

Rolling Stone magazine said in 1998 that then-coeditors "Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi take the raw material of this decadent new Moscow and convert it into 25,000 instantly snapped-up issues of The eXile, consisting of misogynist rants, dumb pranks, insulting club listings and photos of blood-soaked corpses, all redeemed by political reporting that's read seriously not only in Moscow but also in Washington."

To be honest, I lost track of Taibbi’s writing for a number of years, and having ceased subscribing to Rolling Stone some time back, it wasn’t until the recent election campaign that I became aware of his work covering it. I still haven’t figured out how the subscription resumed without my paying for it.

Subsequently, I've been delighted to read Taibbi’s political essays. He grafts Hunter S. Thompson’s chemical-addled sneer atop the more urbane (and less overtly aggressive) analysis of mainstream journalists like Frank Rich of the New York Times, leaving me with yet another writing role model to absorb in small doses only, lest I subconsciously seek to emulate too obviously. It’s a quality I formerly admired in P.J. O’Rourke, at least until the ex-Lampooner dove completely off the deep end and abandoned pants-down Republicanism for the genuine non-ironic and fascistic article.

Like Thompson before him, Taibbi thrives in a habitat of surreal absurdity, and his descriptions of the waning daze of the doomed McCain/Palin bid for the nation’s highest offices are filled with sassy but deadly accurate imagery, as in this passage documenting the extent of the Arizona “maverick’s” sell-out to the dark side of the GOP (warning: the following contains brutally graphic figurative language):

In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove's cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn't know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?

Seeing as surreal absurdity is also the order of the day in learning-impaired New Albany, it’s a shame we couldn’t bring Taibbi here for a brief time and turn him loose among the ward-heelers, rednecks, underachievers and Luddites. However, the results might hit too close to home, and after all, we’ve been documenting the Open Air Museum’s freaks and foibles for four years ourselves, dodging shrapnel when merited and beginning each and every day with a glance at the prices for one-way tickets out. It isn't a mere coincidence that "The eXile" stands as metaphor for the experience of leftists in New Albany.

Here are beginning and concluding passages from Taibbi’s piece on McCain, and the link to the whole story. Enjoy.

Matt Taibbi: A Requiem for John McCain

It sounds strange to say, but this election season may have done to the word "Republican" what 1972 did for the word "liberal": turned it into a poisonous sobriquet that no politician with bipartisan aspirations will ever again welcome. The Republicans didn't just break the party — they left it smashed into space dust. They weren't just beaten; the very idea of Republican conservatism was massively rejected in virtually every state where large chunks of the population do not believe in the literal existence of a horned devil, and even in some that do …

… When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome
sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.

For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.

Matt Taibbi: "A Requiem for John McCain," in Rolling Stone.

My first exposure to Matt Taibbi came from a book called, “The eXile: Sex, Drugs, and Libel in the New Russia,” which our on-line book discussion group tackled circa the year 2000. Here is what Publishers Weekly had to say about it.

In 1997, two American college-educated slackers began publishing the eXile, a no-holds-barred newspaper, in Moscow. The paper includes irreverent discussions of Russia's sex and drug scene and off-color humor pieces, such as an article poking fun at a U.S. African-American basketball player who was toiling for a Moscow team after he was kicked out of the NBA following a forced sodomy charge in the U.S. Their attitude toward Russia's expatriate community, including themselves, is clear: "Any affluent or even middle-class American who renounces the good life of sushi and 50-channel cable delivery" is "motivated by a highly destructive personality defect."

The pranks the newspaper plays are entertaining: convincing an aide to Mikhail Gorbachev that New York Jets football coach Bill Parcells wanted the former Soviet leader to give a series of inspirational pep talks to his team, for example. The eXile also takes on the herd mentality of reporters, managing to convince one of its rival papers that basketball hall-of-famer Wilt Chamberlain was considering a comeback in Russia. (In between its humor and its testosterone, the eXile has reported some important stories, most notably that much aid money from the U.S. went directly into the hands of some top Russian politicians.)

Only those with a National Lampoon mentality will enjoy the descriptions of the editors' sexual conquests and their comparisons of Russian and American women. Like much of the paper itself, the book, which recounts the newspaper's history, is tasteless. There's little doubt, however, that both incisively probe contemporary Russian reality--and the expatriate indset.

Wikipedia adds to the merriment:

Rolling Stone magazine said in 1998 that then-coeditors "Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi take the raw material of this decadent new Moscow and convert it into 25,000 instantly snapped-up issues of The eXile, consisting of misogynist rants, dumb pranks, insulting club listings and photos of blood-soaked corpses, all redeemed by political reporting that's read seriously not only in Moscow but also in Washington."

To be honest, I lost track of Taibbi’s writing for a number of years, and having ceased subscribing to Rolling Stone some time back, it wasn’t until the recent election campaign that I became aware of his work covering it. I still haven’t figured out how the subscription resumed without my paying for it.

Subsequently, I've been delighted to read Taibbi’s political essays. He grafts Hunter S. Thompson’s chemical-addled sneer atop the more urbane (and less overtly aggressive) analysis of mainstream journalists like Frank Rich of the New York Times, leaving me with yet another writing role model to absorb in small doses only, lest I subconsciously seek to emulate too obviously. It’s a quality I formerly admired in P.J. O’Rourke, at least until the ex-Lampooner dove completely off the deep end and abandoned pants-down Republicanism for the genuine non-ironic and fascistic article.

Like Thompson before him, Taibbi thrives in a habitat of surreal absurdity, and his descriptions of the waning daze of the doomed McCain/Palin bid for the nation’s highest offices are filled with sassy but deadly accurate imagery, as in this passage documenting the extent of the Arizona “maverick’s” sell-out to the dark side of the GOP (warning: the following contains brutally graphic figurative language):

In short, McCain entered this election season being the worst thing that anyone can be, in the eyes of the Rove-school Republicans: Different. Independent. His own man. He exited the campaign on his knees, all his dignity gone, having handed the White House to the hated liberals after spending the last months of the race with numb-nuts Sarah Palin on his arm and Karl Rove's cock in his mouth. Even if you wanted to vote for him, you didn't know who you were voting for. The old McCain? The new McCain? Neither? Both?

Seeing as surreal absurdity is also the order of the day in learning-impaired New Albany, it’s a shame we couldn’t bring Taibbi here for a brief time and turn him loose among the ward-heelers, rednecks, underachievers and Luddites. However, the results might hit too close to home, and after all, we’ve been documenting the Open Air Museum’s freaks and foibles for four years ourselves, dodging shrapnel when merited and beginning each and every day with a glance at the prices for one-way tickets out. It isn't a mere coincidence that "The eXile" stands as metaphor for the experience of leftists in New Albany.

Here are beginning and concluding passages from Taibbi’s piece on McCain, and the link to the whole story. Enjoy.

Matt Taibbi: A Requiem for John McCain

It sounds strange to say, but this election season may have done to the word "Republican" what 1972 did for the word "liberal": turned it into a poisonous sobriquet that no politician with bipartisan aspirations will ever again welcome. The Republicans didn't just break the party — they left it smashed into space dust. They weren't just beaten; the very idea of Republican conservatism was massively rejected in virtually every state where large chunks of the population do not believe in the literal existence of a horned devil, and even in some that do …

… When Obama took the stage in Grant Park as president-elect, that question was answered. We pulled off an amazing thing here, delivering on our society's most ancient promises, in front of a world that still largely thought of us as the home of Bull Connor's fire hose. This dumbed-down, degraded election process of ours has, in spite of itself and to my own extreme astonishment, brilliantly re-energized the American experiment and restored legitimacy to our status as the world's living symbol of individual freedom. We feel like ourselves again, and the floundering economy and our two stagnating wars now seem like mere logistical problems that will be overcome
sooner or later, instead of horrifying symptoms of inevitable empire-decline.

For this to happen, absolutely everything had to break right. And for that we will someday owe sincere thanks to John McCain, and Sarah Palin, and George W. Bush. They not only screwed it up, they screwed it up just right.

Sean Kennedy: "Obama’s better ideas, McCain’s bad ideas, and McCain’s poor record on some rather critical issues."

For me, voting against John McCain would be the easiest thing in the world to do.

The fact that he married into Anheuser-Busch wholesaler money is reason enough for me to reject him. The fact that McCain has tirelessly sought make stupidity into something fashionable is an equally solid reason to check another box, as is his unwavering support of the worst president in United States history, the marvelously shrivelled George W. Bush.

However, what I've waited seemingly forever to do is be genuinely inspired to vote for a presidential candidate. This essay by Sean Kennedy summarizes my reasons for voting for Barack Obama on November 4, and touches firmly on the reasons not to vote for McCain. I hope Kennedy doesn't mind the reprint, which is titled "The Case for Obama.

----

I am an independent thinker with an independent mind. Therefore, I've been a registered Independent since 1992. I'm an issues voter; I don't vote for a party. I don't even have to like a candidate; I just have to like where he/she stands on the issues. I vote for the best, most qualified, candidate, or the best, most constructive, ideas to help our nation.

That’s why I support Barack Obama for president over John McCain.

I have reached this decision out of a combination of Obama’s better ideas, McCain’s bad ideas, and McCain’s poor record on some rather critical issues.

The critical issues facing America right now are the economy; energy independence and the need for clean, renewable energy sources; affordable healthcare that doesn’t hinder workers or employers; global warming; education; the two wars our military is presently fighting in separate countries; and paying down our massive national debt through budget restraint and spending controls.

When it comes to the environment, Barack Obama clearly comes out on top.

Right now, we have the scientific knowledge and the cutting-edge technologies we need to create new jobs and industries, cut global warming pollution, and build a cleaner, greener energy future. But technology isn't quite enough—we also need to have acommitted, pro-environment president. Obama is that person.

The League of Conservation Voters – a non-partisan, independent group that champions environmental issues – backs Obama.

On its 2007 National Environmental Scorecard, the LCV gave Senator McCain a score of ZERO. According to the scorecard, McCain was the only member of Congress to skip all 15 crucial environmental votes scored by LCV.

Then in February, McCain continued this pattern. He was the only Senator to duck a crucial vote on thefuture of clean energy in America -- dooming to failure the measure that would have helped make renewable energy more affordable and accessible.

McCain's lifetime LCV score of 24 (out of 100) reveals “a history of siding with polluters and special interests, and a consistent pattern of ducking important environmental votes.”

McCain has voted against increasing fuel efficiency standards (twice recently) and renewable energy, and supported billions in subsidies for Big Oil and other polluters. According to the LCV, “John McCain's energy plan is nothing short of a continuation of the Bush-Cheney dirty energy plan.”

However, the LCV says the Obama-Biden team has “the most comprehensive energy plan ever put forward by a presidential campaign.”

When it comes to healthcare, the Obama plan is reasonable, sound and comprehensive.

Contrary to some hysterical conservative claims, Obama’s plan does not call for government healthcare. Instead, the Obama plan would strengthen employer coverage, make insurance companies accountable, and ensure patient choice of doctor and care without government interference.

The plan would provide affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, building on the existing health care system, and using existing providers, doctors and plans to implement the plan.

Importantly, the Obama plan would do the following:

- Require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions for all Americans, regardless of their health status or history.

- Require coverage of preventive services, including cancer screenings.

- Give the public access to a plan based on the benefits available to members of Congress, allowing individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage.

- Create a new Small Business Health Tax Credit to help small businesses provide affordable health insurance to their employees.

- Ensure everyone who needs it will receive a tax credit for their premiums.

- Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.

- Lower drug costs by allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, increasing the use of generic drugs in public programs, and taking on drug companies that block cheaper generic medicines from the market.

- Require hospitals tocollect and report health care cost and quality data.

- Reform the insurance market to increase competition by taking on anti-competitive activity that drives up prices without improving quality of care.

This reform plan would be paid for through cost savings, by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year, and by retaining the estate taxat its 2009 level.

While one in seven Americans remains uninsured, McCain proposes nothing but tax credits ($5000 for a family; $2500 for an individual). But the poor aren't paying much in taxes to begin with, so their policies would still be socialized, which is anathema to Republican ideology. And the credits they’d receive under such a plan won't cover the expense of health insurance anyway; this year, the average family policy cost $12,680. So the poor would still need to come up with money they don’t have in order to cover the difference.

In a 60 Minutes interview, when asked if he agreed with Hillary Clinton's assertion that providing universal healthcare is a moral responsibility, McCain answered, "Well, I think that's one of the big differences we have about the role of government. If you think that the government should mandate anything to the American people besides a safety net -- and I don't view it as a safety net -- I view Medicare and Medicaid as a safety net. But to mandate that all Americans are required to do something, then that's just not within the fundamental philosophy that I have about the role of government in America."

But universal healthcare is the fundamental definition of a safety net. Yet, incredibly McCain doesn't recognize this. That's tough to reconcile -- especially since he has been protected by such a safety net for the vast majority of his life.

From the mid-'50s, when he entered the Naval Academy, to his retirement in 1981, McCain was covered by government healthcare. And from the very next year, 1982, until now, McCain has remained covered by government healthcare. That's over a half century, and yet, he still opposes government healthcare. Strange, isn't it?

It is, indeed, time for a change, and John McCain in no way represents change. McCain is part of the old guard and represents the past. His time came and went. The 2000 election should have been his time, but it wasn’t. I liked and supported McCain back then. But now the only change I associate with him is the fact that he’s changed -- for the worse. He now seems like a callous, bitter and angry old man.

McCain makes the case that he would bring change and reform to the White House. Here’s the problem with that claim: McCain has already been in Washington for 26 years. How is that change? The Republicans have controlled the White House for the past eight years. How is that change?

According to Congressional Quarterly, John McCain voted with President Bush 100% of the time in 2008, 95% of the time in 2007, and 90% of the time during the Bush years.

As McCain himself acknowledged, “I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time, higher than a lot of my even Republican colleagues.”

With all of this in mind, how could the election of McCain possibly represent reform? It would just be more of the same. And isn't the status quo the opposite of reform?

The Republicans have cynically attempted to turn being intelligent into something bad – “elitism” is what they shamelessly call it. No matter, intelligence is never a bad thing; rather, it is critical quality, an asset and an attribute. Barack Obama has it in spades. The man served as the president of the Harvard Law Review and graduated magna cum laude from this most prestigious of law schools. At every point in our nation’s history, this fact would have been lauded and heralded in a presidential candidate. If this is now deemed too “elitist” for some, we have regressed as a nation and truly lost our way.

On the other hand, we have been introduced to the intellectually bankrupt and incurious Sarah Palin. John McCain’s selection of her as his running mate is an affront and an insult to all Americans, whether they realize it or not. There were so many other competent, qualified, conservative women on the national scene, with vastly greater experience than Palin. And yet McCain chose her. How’s that for judgment?

The great misadventure that is the war in Iraq has become a national disaster of epic and historic proportions. Iraq was not behind the 9/11 attacks and did not possess the WMD promised by the Bush Administration. Yet, the ghastly cost of the war has exceeded $845 billion – higher than the cost of the Vietnam conflict. And the costs just keep mounting, at $10 billion each month. It is bleeding our Treasury and keeps us from being able to invest in our own country; schools, hospitals, healthcare, roads, bridges, and other critical infrastructure.

John McCain acts as if his support for the so-called “surge” (simply a troop increase) makes his unwavering support for this poorly conceived war from the very beginning okay. It isn’t okay. The “surge” isn’t the end, and it certainly doesn’t justify the means.

If that isn’t enough, McCain - the war hero - doesn’t walk the talk and put his money where his mouth is. The Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans of America is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that advocates on the behalf of returning military personnel and their families. It just released its 2008 report card, detailing which members of Congress are working for veterans, military members, and their families. McCain received a grade of D, while Obama received a B. Go figure.

Barack Obama is the first presidential candidate born in the '60s (1961). A new generation is finally coming of age.

He is the classic outsider, a man beholden to few in Washington; he is just the man to break grip of the special interests. He has lived around the world and is anything but simple or provincial. He will not take a cowboy approach to foreign policy and will restore our once great international image. He has forsaken big business opportunities in order to address the problems of the working class; he may be ambitious indeed, but he has also proven himself to be selfless.

Barack Obama possesses the power of charisma, a critical element that allows a politician to inspire a nation, lend confidence to its citizens, rally them to a cause, and keep them focused and determined in the face of great difficulty, or even desperation. It is exactly what this nation needs at this moment in its history.

I believe that Obama can compel the American citizenry, and invest in them the will to participate in a common venture with their fellow citizens. Obama has the gravitas to focus the country on a common goal -- like renewable energy and energy independence -- by illustrating the common good that can be served when we are united, not divided, in pursuit of this goal.

America needs to think big. There are very clear national goals and objectives at hand. We are facing many crisis' all at once. I think that Barack Obama, as president, will possess the necessary charisma to inspire this nation, create the will to rise to these many challenges, and see to it that our missions are accomplished.

For all these reasons, I think Obama is best suited to be the next President of the United States.

This post's got no title, just words and a tune ...

... with apologies to Elton John and Bernie Taupin.

Historically, I've been reluctant to publish the words of other writers, primarily because the conceptual basis of this blog from the beginning has been to compel me to push aside my slothful instincts and to write on a daily basis.

Like many, I'm my own worst critic, one capable of pole-vaulting from abject laziness all the way to compulsive rewriting. So far, I've been able to avoid the latter, although some days I still need a gentle shove to write when I'd rather be doing something else or simply don't have the time.

One way is to continue reading as much as possible. Doing so gives me ideas and makes me competitive: "Hey, I'm as good as he (or she) is. I can do that, too."

But ... there are times when the best strategy is to gracefully relent and become the editor of the anthology, pointing the way to those writers who are saying what I'd like to say, and doing so better than I've been capable of doing.

Thus far during the two-year presidential election cycle, I've been unable to consistently organize my thoughts as to why I believe Barack Obama to be the superior choice for the nation’s highest office -- given that I continue to find the American two-party system annoying.

Gazing upon the turgid streams of vitriol aimed at Obama, I've felt a renewed puzzlement. Has there been a time since the American Civil War when such a cultural gulf exists between people living across the road from one another, who profess to share a belief in the concept of America, but whose ideas about what that belief implies are so utterly divergent?

It does not make me happy to add that in this cultural fratricide, I find a certain amount of vindication. To borrow a description from Christopher Hitchens, who echoes my viewpoint of a lifetime, it’s quite plain that religion poisons everything.

Axiomatically, the people screaming anti-Obama epithets at Republican rallies identify themselves as religious people. They go to church. What’s more, it isn’t that they’re somehow guilty of incomprehension, or of misunderstanding the sermons they hear while awaiting the collection plate. In general terms, they’re grasping the point perfectly well: It’s us, and them. “They” must convert. “We” must proselytize. The message is clear. If you’re not one of them, you’re not really American.

And that’s bullshit. Always has been, and always will be.

I’m vilified locally as the resident municipal atheist, to be regarded with equal parts condescending pity and violent loathing, and most of the ones throwing stones in my direction believe in God – not that they’ve grasped the part about professing their strong convictions without the use of “anonymous” masks. But not once have I proselytized believers on behalf of atheism, and in fact, I’ve no intention of picketing their churches, knocking on their doors, or wasting my valuable time caring one way or another – just so long as they extend me the same courtesy and respect my principled unbelief.

To me, that’s what America is all about, all of which brings me back to Barack Obama.

From day one, what I’ve heard coming from Obama is a pervasive tone of respect for thinking, for thought, for ideas, and for the merits of educational attainment, the sort of achievement that has driven human history forward. He’s undoubtedly a believer when it comes to religion, but he’s not asking me to convert, simply to listen, to consider, and to reach a conclusion. That’s okay by me.

On the other side, the worst angels of our nature have been unleashed by angry people, practically all of whom believe themselves motivated by their possession of religious “truth” to the exclusion of anything else. That’s not okay by me, and it me, it’s contrary to the intellectual principles that prefaced the founding of this nation. I’ll continue to actively oppose the notion of America as “Christian.” During the Inquisition, in Iran and in Afghanistan, we’ve seen exactly what a theocracy is. We don’t need one here.

For the remaining three days prior to the election, I’ll be posting pieces written by others, some of local origin, other from elsewhere. The gist of each is why the author is voting for Barack Obama, and not merely against John McCain.

Thanks for reading.

More humorous political reality.

Photo credit ... not sure. It was sent to me by a friend. If you know the point of origin, send it and credit will be given.

“William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.”

Thanks to Bayernfan for pointing to this essay. It deserves full marquee treatment, and is reprinted in its entirety. Photo credit: The Daily Beast.

---

Sorry, Dad, I'm Voting for Obama, by Christopher Buckley

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance.

Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr. to Address Democratic Convention,” but it’ll have to do.

I am—drum roll, please, cue trumpets—making this announcement in the cyberpages of The Daily Beast (what joy to be writing for a publication so named!) rather than in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column. For a reason: My colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. She’s not exactly alone. New York Times columnist David Brooks, who began his career at NR, just called Governor Palin “a cancer on the Republican Party.”

As for Kathleen, she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster. There’s Socratic dialogue for you. Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.

As to the particulars, assuming anyone gives a fig, here goes:

I have known John McCain personally since 1982. I wrote a well-received speech for him. Earlier this year, I wrote in The New York Times—I’m beginning to sound like Paul Krugman, who cannot begin a column without saying, “As I warned the world in my last column...”—a highly favorable Op-Ed about McCain, taking Rush Limbaugh and the others in the Right Wing Sanhedrin to task for going after McCain for being insufficiently conservative. I don’t—still—doubt that McCain’s instincts remain fundamentally conservative. But the problem is otherwise.

McCain rose to power on his personality and biography. He was authentic. He spoke truth to power. He told the media they were “jerks” (a sure sign of authenticity, to say nothing of good taste; we are jerks). He was real. He was unconventional. He embraced former anti-war leaders. He brought resolution to the awful missing-POW business. He brought about normalization with Vietnam—his former torturers! Yes, he erred in accepting plane rides and vacations from Charles Keating, but then, having been cleared on technicalities, groveled in apology before the nation. He told me across a lunch table, “The Keating business was much worse than my five and a half years in Hanoi, because I at least walked away from that with my honor.” Your heart went out to the guy. I thought at the time, God, this guy should be president someday.

A year ago, when everyone, including the man I’m about to endorse, was caterwauling to get out of Iraq on the next available flight, John McCain, practically alone, said no, no—bad move. Surge. It seemed a suicidal position to take, an act of political bravery of the kind you don’t see a whole lot of anymore.

But that was—sigh—then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994, “We came to Washington to change it, and Washington changed us.” This campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination. What on earth can he have been thinking?

All this is genuinely saddening, and for the country is perhaps even tragic, for America ought, really, to be governed by men like John McCain—who have spent their entire lives in its service, even willing to give the last full measure of their devotion to it. If he goes out losing ugly, it will be beyond tragic, graffiti on a marble bust.

As for Senator Obama: He has exhibited throughout a “first-class temperament,” pace Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s famous comment about FDR. As for his intellect, well, he’s a Harvard man, though that’s sure as heck no guarantee of anything, these days. Vietnam was brought to you by Harvard and (one or two) Yale men. As for our current adventure in Mesopotamia, consider this lustrous alumni roster. Bush 43: Yale. Rumsfeld: Princeton. Paul Bremer: Yale and Harvard. What do they all have in common? Andover! The best and the brightest.

I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al, I’m libertarian. I believe with my sage and epigrammatic friend P.J. O’Rourke that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.

But having a first-class temperament and a first-class intellect, President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.

Obama has in him—I think, despite his sometimes airy-fairy “We are the people we have been waiting for” silly rhetoric—the potential to be a good, perhaps even great leader. He is, it seems clear enough, what the historical moment seems to be calling for.

So, I wish him all the best. We are all in this together. Necessity is the mother of bipartisanship. And so, for the first time in my life, I’ll be pulling the Democratic lever in November. As the saying goes, God save the United States of America.

What's maverick, doc?

Now that the NA Health blog appears to have become exclusively devoted to radical right-wing extremism, I thought it appropriate that NAC plays against type and delves into pressing medical news, as in the following gripping article from The Lancet:

Use of p16-INK4A overexpression to increase the specificity of human papillomavirus testing: a nested substudy of the NTCC randomised controlled trial.

Whoa! That's drier than a cork leg. Maybe we should stick with meat & potatoes presidential politics and offer a necessary rejoinder to the good doctor's (and my friend's) latest instance of rhetorical excess. It's by Tim Dickinson, and appears in the current issue of Rolling Stone:

Make-Believe Maverick: A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty.

Here's an excerpt:

It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."

Rural "values"?

Ten days and an unprecedented financial “bailout” have elapsed since the publication of The Economist article excerpted below, and the question it poses may already have been answered. The “Palin effect” has proven to be little more than a vacuous feistiness barely concealing a startling (and as for John McCain, entirely cynical) absence of gravitas.

But he has very little choice, does he?

McCain remains inextricably linked with the disastrously failed presidency of W, a fact that even a foaming-at-the-mouth Neo-Con like Charles Krauthammer recognizes, and the geriatric must campaign on the basis of ceaseless gimmickry, desperately seeking to divert attention from his damning proximity to Shrub’s all-around catastrophe.

McCain still will receive plenty of votes from the bedrock core of the nation, or some forgettable silliness like that. It is this phenomenon that The Economist considers.

Rural voters: Bucolic ballots … Could the economy trump the Palin effect?, from The Economist print edition of Sep 25th 2008.

A new poll for the Centre for Rural Strategies, a think-tank in Whitesburg, shows John McCain leading Mr Obama by ten percentage points among rural voters in swing states. The poll, conducted in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Florida, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, found that 51% of rural voters said they would vote for Mr McCain, while 41% preferred Mr Obama.

Only a fifth of Americans live in rural areas. And Mr McCain’s advantage among rural voters is slimmer than George Bush’s 13-point lead over John Kerry in a similar poll in 2004. But it is still a useful vote bank in a very close election. And the reasons rural voters give for preferring the Republican ticket are revealing.

Asked who would deal better with problems facing rural areas or the economy more generally, rural voters are about evenly divided. But when asked who shares their values, they prefer Mr McCain by a 14-point margin. And they love his running-mate, Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska. Fully 65% of rural voters in swing states think she “represents the values of rural communities”.

Echoing the advice of the ancient Greek philosophers whose wisdom purportedly girds our non-Christian intellectual experience in the Western world, this rural poll result begs a few “define your principles” questions.

Exactly what are these rural “values”?

If they do in fact exist, are they pertinent to our contemporary experience?

Do these rural “values” still embrace the lingering shadow of racism, which might yet trump both the economy and Sarah Palin in the minds of far too many voters?

If so, shouldn’t any such “value” be summarily disavowed?

Speaking for myself, I don’t accept the frequently bandied proposition that “rural values” somehow preface the presumed glory of the American experience, and I suggest that a healthy skepticism be applied to any such claims. The pervasiveness of religious zealotry in the back forty would be enough to arch one or more eyebrows, but too often, the countryside’s prevailing worldview is far less savory than the imagery of a few millennial crackpots behind a pulpit.

But that’s just one man’s hungover opinion.

The Economist on Sarah Palin: "The most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history."

With your indulgence, the following is a column reprinted from The Economist.

The woman from nowhere: John McCain’s choice of running-mate raises serious questions about his judgment

(Column by Lexington; Illustration by KAL)

The most audacious move of the race so far is also, potentially, the most self-destructive. John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running-mate has set the political atmosphere alight with both enthusiasm and dismay.

Mr McCain has based his campaign on the idea that this is a dangerous world—and that Barack Obama is too inexperienced to deal with it. He has also acknowledged that his advanced age—he celebrated his 72nd birthday on August 29th—makes his choice of vice-president unusually important. Now he has chosen as his running mate, on the basis of the most cursory vetting, a first-term governor of Alaska.

The reaction from inside the conservative cocoon was at first ecstatic. Conservatives argued that Mrs Palin embodies the “real America”—a moose-hunting hockey mum, married to an oil-worker, who has risen from the local parent-teacher association to governing the geographically largest state in the Union. They praise her as a McCain-style reformer who has taken on her state’s Republican establishment and has a staunch pro-life record (her fifth child has Down’s syndrome). Who better to harpoon the baby-murdering elitists who run the Democratic Party?

Mrs Palin was greeted like the reincarnation of Ronald Reagan by the delegates, furious at her mauling at the hands of the “liberal media”. And she delivered a tub-thumping speech, underlining her record as a reforming governor and advocate of more oil-drilling, and warning her enemies not to underestimate her (“the difference between a hockey mum and a pitbull—lipstick”). But once the cheering and the chanting had died down, serious questions remained.

The political calculations behind Mr McCain’s choice hardly look robust. Mrs Palin is not quite the pork-busting reformer that her supporters claim. She may have become famous as the governor who finally killed the infamous “bridge to nowhere”—the $220m bridge to the sparsely inhabited island of Gravina, Alaska. But she was in favour of the bridge before she was against it (and told local residents that they weren’t “nowhere to her”). As mayor of Wasilla, a metropolis of 9,000 people, she initiated annual trips to Washington, DC, to ask for more earmarks from the state’s congressional delegation, and employed Washington lobbyists to press for more funds for her town.

Nor is Mrs Palin well placed to win over the moderate and independent voters who hold the keys to the White House. Mr McCain’s main political problem is not energising his base; he enjoys more support among Republicans than Mr Obama does among Democrats. His problem is reaching out to swing voters at a time when the number of self-identified Republicans is up to ten points lower than the number of self-identified Democrats. Mr McCain needs to attract roughly 55% of independents and 15% of Democrats to win the election. But it is hard to see how a woman who supports the teaching of creationism rather than contraception, and who is soon to become a 44-year-old grandmother, helps him with soccer moms in the Philadelphia suburbs. A Rasmussen poll found that the Palin pick made 31% of undecided voters less likely to plump for Mr McCain and only 6% more likely.

The moose in the room, of course, is her lack of experience. When Geraldine Ferraro was picked as Walter Mondale’s running-mate, she had served in the House for three terms. Even the hapless Dan Quayle, George Bush senior’s sidekick, had served in the House and Senate for 12 years. Mrs Palin, who has been the governor of a state with a population of 670,000 for less than two years, is the most inexperienced candidate for a mainstream party in modern history.

Inexperienced and Bush-level incurious. She has no record of interest in foreign policy, let alone expertise. She once told an Alaskan magazine: “I’ve been so focused on state government; I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” She obtained an American passport only last summer to visit Alaskan troops in Germany and Kuwait. This not only blunts Mr McCain’s most powerful criticism of Mr Obama. It also raises serious questions about the way he makes decisions.

Vetted for 15 minutes
Mr McCain had met Mrs Palin only once, for a 15-minute chat at the National Governors’ Association meeting, before summoning her to his ranch for her final interview. The New York Times claims that his team arrived in Alaska only on August 28th, a day before the announcement. As a result, his advisers seem to have been gobsmacked by the Palin show that is now playing on the national stage. She has links to the wacky Alaska Independence Party, which wants to secede from the Union. She is on record disagreeing with Mr McCain on global warming, among other issues. The contrast with Mr Obama’s choice of the highly experienced and much-vetted Joe Biden is striking.

Mr McCain’s appointment also raises more general worries about the Republican Party’s fitness for government. Up until the middle of last week Mr McCain was still considering two other candidates whom he has known for decades: Joe Lieberman, a veteran senator, independent Democrat and Iraq war hawk, and Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania (a swing state with 21 Electoral College votes) and the first secretary of homeland security. Mr McCain reluctantly rejected both men because their pro-choice views are anathema to the Christian right.

The Palin appointment is yet more proof of the way that abortion still distorts American politics. This is as true on the left as on the right. But the Republicans seem to have gone furthest in subordinating considerations of competence and merit to pro-life purity. One of the biggest problems with the Bush administration is that it appointed so many incompetents because they were sound on Roe v Wade. Mrs Palin’s elevation suggests that, far from breaking with Mr Bush, Mr McCain is repeating his mistakes.