and another one bites the dust
Romney Suspends Campaign.
Now there's a bit of a shocker. I thought surely Huckabee or Paul would drop out first.
Now there's a bit of a shocker. I thought surely Huckabee or Paul would drop out first.
I've been really impressed by the young people all around being interested in the days leading up to the primary, including actually paying attention to the news and all that's being said, along with hungering for more than soundbites.
I dunno - I think I've been disillusioned about results since the '72 election, along with having memory of older folks around me being shattered by Bobby Kennedy's death, so I'm kind of past the hopefulness and feel like we get what we get.
But I totally agree that whoever gets the job has a long, hard road ahead of them. Thanks to pundits on both sides, you have the extremes of each party that don't want to work with each other, thus contributing to gridlock. I don't like this polarization of society. I'm sick of people who refuse to acknowledge that another point of view than their own might actually be valid.
I don't believe that any one point of view holds all the solutions to our problems. The economy is number one for most people. There was an interesting editorial in the Times yesterday about how prices will continue to rise for the middle classes of first world countries because of the rise of the middle classes in formerly third world countries like China and India, leading to a greater demand for resources/products, raising the cost of living for everyone around the world. The declining housing market is a big one for a lot of folks, not to mention the rising cost of an education if you want your kids to remain middle class when they grow up.
And of course, the war. The problem that I have, and this is because I come from a family with a military tradition of hundreds of years, is that we invaded on a shady premise. Our military went in under the guise of saving the Western World from Islamic Fundamentalist Terrorism, when really, the military was acting on W's personal vendetta against Sadaam because he wanted to kill his "daddy." We had no legitimate reason to invade. The Iraqi people have never been ethnically united or single minded - the British created the borders after WWI. Iraq has needed strong oversight, first by the British, and later by Sadaam to keep the sectarian infighting to a minimum. He may have been a bastard, but he kept a lid on the region. Now, we have deposed the factor that kept stability in that country, if not peace in the region. We have destroyed their infrastructure and security, and we have allowed 5,000 years of cultural heritage to be looted out from the descendants of the Mesopotamians and Babylonians. I believe, along with others, that we cannot in good moral conscience just leave the Iraqis to clean up the mess that our President-select created. Not only that, but another native leader has to emerge there, who can build a consensus amongst a majority of the people, and unless they start moving people to different regions based on ethnicity and religion, there is going to be no peace in Iraq. Unfortunately, because of our initial invasion and actions in the past however many years, we are stuck there until the job is done - not necessarily 100 years - but until they either choose to split the region like the former Yugoslavia or find someone who can put the genie back in the lamp. I doubt the latter will happen. I'm just being realistic, not optimistic.
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I really dislike Hillary, but I think it's silly to use as visceral a term as "hate." I tried not to pay attention to the CPAC event, just because those are people I have nothing in common with. They seem to thrive on logical fallacies, including slippery slope thinking, ad hominum attacks, sic hoc ergo propter hoc thinking. I have a hard time dealing with people who think and believe in absolutes.
My earlier facetiousness notwithstanding, I still don't believe that Mr. Bill will sit back and attend to the hosting duties and social duties the way previous first spouses have. I worry about the Constitutional legality of him backstage. And if you remember back in '92, they were proud of the fact that they were coming in as a package deal. Two leaders for the vote on one. I don't like Hillary because I find her a tad disingenuous. Like W, she spins according to expediency, and I don't care for that quality in anyone. But then again, I didn't like that about Bill either. I do believe I sat out the elections in '92. I just couldn't get thrilled about either of them, so I didn't give a rat who got elected at that point.
And this is the thing that bothers me about politics. Corporate interests have pretty much hijacked the political process, which is why I was a strong supporter of the McCain-Feingold act (bipartisan, btw). However, despite that bit of legislation, no matter which party gets elected, it seems to me that corporate interests outweigh the needs of every day folks when it comes to votes in Congress. Why didn't health care get fixed during the Clinton years? Why do we still have subsidies to corporate farms and big tax loopholes for multi-national corporations. All the progressive reforms that started with Theodore Roosevelt, continuing through FDR and Johnson have pretty much been wiped away. We've been deregulated into loosing not only jobs but industries. NAFTA came in under Clinton, and while it's been o.k. for some of our businesses, first we, then Mexico lost jobs, when cheaper labor popped up in Asia. And those jobs aren't coming back. So no matter which side wins, those corporations are still going to find ways to influence legislation that ensures that they still come out on top. Unless we change to a "third way" system like Switzerland or Norway (which will happen when hell freezes over because "tax" is a dirty word now), things are not going to change.
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