A Few Random Thoughts

Bear with me.

I usually approach these entries as if I were writing an opinion column and try to adhere to certain standards, and right now I'm not doing that. I'm simply sorting through random thoughts in my head. More column-style entries will follow, naturally, but I just feel the need to purge right now.

As a registered Democrat, I wish our nominee wasn't going to be Obama or Clinton. I respect Obama and the man gives hell of a speech, but for all the 'dangerous liberal' rhetoric from the right, he strikes me as too centrist in a world that requires more radical solutions. I think those solutions will have to come from the left, as the right is unwilling to solve problems. They want to profit from problems. The other choice for Democratic nominee? Hillary Clinton, or as her friends call her since she started campaigning so hard for the redneck vote in places like West Virginia and Kentucky, 'Lyonne.' That's a Lynx and Lamb joke. If you don't get it, Google 'Prussian Blue.' I know Hillary isn't genuinely a racist, but her pandering to racist motivations is disturbing.

Why didn't any of you people who claim to be against the war in Iraq, torture, illegal surveillance of American citizens, and corporate corruption and for national health care and the rebuilding of a just social safety net for America vote for Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel?

That's what people mean by 'blue collar white voters' and 'rural voters', you know. Rednecks afraid of the idea of a black president. Since when did Hillary think we were in a war against the liberal elitists anyway? Isn't she supposed to be a liberal elitist?

I really wish I could bitch-slap John McCain with a rubber chicken. He used to be my favorite conservative and now he's so busy campaigning for the General Robert Toombs vote that he sometimes appears to be to the right of the president who once beat him in a primary by circulating fliers accusing him of fathering his adopted daughter (Bangladeshi, for the record) with a black mistress and then forcing his white wife to take her into the family home.

General Robert Toombs is the man who, in a classic case of 'damn the revolution, don't sully the cause', wrote to Jefferson Davis that offering black volunteers their freedom in return for fighting for the Confederacy should not ever, ever be contemplated because if freedom was an inducement then slavery was morally wrong and of course slavery could never be morally wrong. A true conservative.

I was born and raised in California. I feel better qualified than most of the politicians involved in the debate to have an opinion on illegal immigration. My opinion? Let anybody who wants to come into the country come into the country. If everyone in Mexico comes to the United States, maybe the Saturn factory will move north of the border again.

Regulation of trade and commerce is necessary to ensure free markets. A free market is a competitive market in which the consumer and the producer are as free as the capitalist and the merchant. An unregulated market leads to a monopoly economy in which no one is free. If you don't believe me, ask Alexander Hamilton. Then take a look at the history of the oil industry.

If you're opposed to all corporate and income taxes, what will pay for your corporate welfare and government bailouts?

Now the right is using its own failures as proof the left is wrong. Conservatives are using the Bush administration's total failure in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as an argument against the perils of government. What sort of a political process do we have where one side uses its own failures as proof of its argument against the other side's successes and solutions?

What is the last problem you can think of that was actually solved by conservatism? Think about it. Take all the time you need.

Will the Democrats really take advantage of the Republican implosion to implode even more self-destructively? And do I get to blame Hillary for it?

Let's think about elitism for a moment. Is it a really a bad idea to let qualified people do jobs for which they are qualified? Is it really a good idea to let scientific laymen and the clergy decide what science should be taught in schools? Is it really a good idea to elect a 'man of the people' if the aristocrat actually knows what he is doing? Would anyone with an understanding of history choose Cato over Caesar or Wilkie over Roosevelt?

Have you noticed the people who cry out against 'elitism', from Jefferson down to Bush, are all rich aristocrats who've never done an honest day's work in their lives?

Thank you for bearing with me. I'll try to be more coherent next time.