Maybe the Republicans Were Right

I did want a president that was like me.

 

Barack and Michelle:  A more perfect union?

 

A married couple that obviously love and respect each other and aren't afraid to show it. AND he can read and write and think and be open to new ideas. I just want to cry.

One Week Later

 

Here we are one week after the presidential election. One week since I woke up to a happy face painted on the Sun, rainbows in the sky and Unicorns frolicking in the meadow. There has been a lot of news since then. Many stories about Obama and the transition. Not much about McCain. Too much about Palin.

As far as Palin goes, while I found it frighteningly amusing that she couldn't name the countries in North America (even though she lives in one of them and can see another one from her house - if she turns her back on Russia) or that she thought Africa was a country not a continent I do have to say...enough already. We really need to let her go back to Alaska and fade away. The attacks and criticism will only serve to keep her in front of the cameras and shore up her base of supporters ensuring that we'll have to deal with her again in four years if not sooner. Leave her alone and let her go home wagging her tail behind her.

Just a couple thoughts about some of the stories I've read covering Obama.

I'm not sure what to think about Rahm Emmanuel personally but to paraphrase Leon Panetta, he may very well be the right son of a bitch for the job. I think the position of white house chief of staff is a difficult one and Emmanuel could be a very effective Edward Hyde to Obama's Henry Jekyll (in a good way). We'll see.

There was a behind the scenes story about Obama prepping for a debate where he was expressing irritation over stupid questions. He commented about how he HAD to answer and how he'd LIKE to answer. I like knowing that he throws the F-bomb around. And that he can be irritated by stupid. Two things I have in common with the next president.

Another article, Writers Welcome a Literary President-elect reinforced for me that we did the right thing last week. Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning authors are excited to finally have a "...writer-president — and I don't mean a published author, but someone who knows the full value of the carefully chosen word..." The final quote sums it up for me, "...the larger issue is cultural. There's a trickle down from the top in the way art exists inside and outside of the culture as a whole. Here in the USA, you could feel in the Bush years how little regard there was for it. People who disliked art, literature, dance, fine arts, they had a lot of cover for this antipathy. There's reason to believe that we are in for a much better period." Oh wouldn't that be nice. I hope someday soon I can stop ranting about the laser-like focus on teaching only Math, Science and Standardized Testing in this country.

I don't know if this is important but I thought it was kinda cool. The Obama Family Secret Service Code Names have been announced. Listen up people...Renegade is on the move. I repeat, Renegade is on the move.

The Audacity of Hoping for Purple

"There are no real and fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation—we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from." America's veterans have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America—they have served the United States of America."

-Barack Obama

All the other issues are important. But the message above is the one I'm voting for. Will it be the motto selected by the founding fathers, E pluribus unum? One out of many. Or will it continue to be a nation fueled by fear? A nation whose politics meet the definition described by Henry Adams. "The systematic organization of hatreds."

Back in September 2007, the month I started this blog, I did two posts called "The New Kid" and "The Rise of the Three Brained Man". The first about a kid who had been bullied growing up, losing his way and becoming a bully himself. The second about irrational fear and its roots in the reptile brain. Both posts directly apply to tomorrow.

We desperately need to find our way back to the original path and to do so we must abolish the fear and move toward reason. No great advance or discovery was ever made without swallowing back the fear and taking a risk. Ya'll know what has to be done tomorrow. Let's get out there and put it all on purple.

"There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as expectation of something better tomorrow."

- Orison Marden

Fascinatingly Frightening...

...or frighteningly fascinating. I'm not sure which.

An article from John P Briggs, M.D. and JP Briggs II, Ph.D., father and son psychotherapists, on the mental state of President Bush on Truthout.org frankly scared the hell out of me. It's entitled "What Is He Capable Of? The Presidential Psychology at the End of Days" and it explains a lot. It puts the behavior we've all been watching since the beginning of his first term (hell, since the first election) into medical and psychological terms. It doesn't change anything but at least it helps us to understand what's going on in his head (hold the jokes) and the country's response to it. It also gives some interesting insight into the behavior of the Democratic controlled Congress when dealing (or not dealing) with Bush. In a way it's rather like reading the engineering analysis of the damage inflicted by the iceberg as you stand on the deck of the Titanic waiting for your feet to get wet.

I found the following passage interesting in relation to a blog entry I wrote a while back called "The Rise of The Three Brained Man":

"Polarizing tactics work because they provoke and rely on fear in those at the receiving end - fear of being wrong, fear of what the other guy will do, fear of uncertainty, fear of mistakes. Fear these things less and the tactics will work less. Such fears make us feel like children again. But we're adults. Binary, absolutist categories are always an inadequate description of the real world, which is, as Lincoln said, an "inseparable compound" of various polarities. As adults, we can think and speak about subtleties and complexities. If we do, fear will go down, not up. Most adults implicitly understand that the real world is, more often than not, nuanced, and an appeal to the truth of shades has its own strong power."

Fear and the response to it lies in the reptile brain. The ability to "think and speak about subtleties and complexities" sits squarely in the reasoning brain. Oh the things we are capable of when we use all the tools we were given.

I doubt the sanity of anyone that would actually WANT to be president, however, I think I'd like to see a psychological profile of each of the candidates from this point forward. Might be nice to know who has mommy & daddy issues BEFORE they take the oath.

At Last A REAL Candidate!

It is official. After a teaser on last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert followed through on his promise to make his decision on whether to run for president and to announce that decision on "a more prestigious show". His own. That's right. Stephen Colbert officially threw his hat into the ring on last night's Colbert Report.

Here's the segment from the Daily Show:

And here's the big announcement:

Finally, a candidate we can take seriously.