Letter From America

Dear former ambassador of Nigeria for petroleum export excise revenue Mbuoto-wigan,

I am hoping this missive finds you and your battered family in good spirits . I am not writing you (this time) to inquire about the $875.00 which was unfortunately and accidently withdrawn from my wife’s checking account during those troublesome days of the confusing oil tariff revenue transfers last year.

Defending A Pro Obama Media

All the rasping noise about the media being biased for Obama is annoying the (ex) Cowboy's whiskey-ringing ears. Listen, they do like the guy more, um we all do. And no one should have to apologize for that. But here is the reason why for the frustrated and pundificatory amongst us. Maybe if we write this down now we can save a few million trees from the op/ed pages next week, and just start the drinking early:

The Biggest GOP Defection to Obama yet?

In a mildly surprising turn of events last night Barack Obama received another endorsement from a defecting Republican.

“I am afraid for the country if we don’t elect this guy as soon as possible..” offered the lifetime GOP Stalwart.

“I can’t see any way past the, really the almost stupid reality at this point. The latest increase in venomous negativism from the Palin McCain Campaign has started to break apart whatever remains of America’s ability to be seen as an ethical center for the world and for main street here at home. I mean, look; the race card? Scmidt and Palin and those guys are just about shoving the race baseball bat straight up America's anus at his point. My friends, well, all of my friends are stunned that we have to face any kind of reality here in the GOP. However, it has just gotten to be un-American, un-christian and un-dignified, the way this campaign is being run by the GOP campaign leadership. ”

“Sure, it’s a bit awkward, but let’s face it, our elephant has become an ass and Obama’s inspiration has turned the Democrat’s donkey into this great, sort of national inspirational elephant in the room. So it’s almost, to paraphrse the bible here lightly, it’s like the elephants have become asses and the asses have become elephants”

“I will be handing out these stickers to show my support for the guy. I really hope he wins, it will just provide us, me and my friends a chance to get out from under our fear.”

The Word on the Street

Apre's le Deluge, Tois (Revising Down Bush)

(What did you see at the empire, oh Peggy dear?)

Uber neo-con "statesman" John R. Bolton just came out (on the pages of the Murdoch's WSJ, of course) as the first, in a very long line, of Righties waiting for the freedom to flay George W. Bush.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385733887027383.html

Once the term is over the great Bush Cheney loyalty-of-message gag order will no longer apply to the average Republican's free speech. They will scatter in the night, like wounded coyotes, cackling and darting about, nipping now at each other and now at the flames of media spotlight, as they sort through their own bones and ash to seek a new leader for their pack. (More on that later - it is not Newt but he might be from Arizona.)

A Day That Will Live in Ignominy

A Day That Will Live in Ignominy
Sin to Win becomes Pray to Stay
The Old Man and the Sea
The Green Flash

The Sound of train not running
Has been keeping me awake…
- Chris Knight w/ Del McCoury: Moneyland


Yesterday, September 29th, 2008 was a day that will live in ignominy.

It was a barrel of bad whiskey for the American soul, a bonfire of the “vanitas”, a rebellion without applause. It was a double-armada of “Big-Bopper” plane crashes hard into the spotted liver of the American Dream. Like all good plane crashes it was caused by a 500 mile an hour mixture of bad weather and deranged addiction.

The addicts are still stumbling through the smoldering ashes like zombies, many are headless or limbless but they all retained a single finger to point. As with all hard-core junkies their words fail to mask their obvious, light of day desperation for another fix. One party in particular, but both to degrees, have burned down main street as they over dosed on that powerful re-election heroin.

It is about the economy, stupid. Mark the (ex) Cowboy’s words, they were wrong and YOU were wrong. We are all in the smoke now. An army of rusted bagpipes are firing up dirges, but this time the flag may well ride down main street inside the pine box.

Nancy Pelosi is getting (justified) blame for bad leadership but let’s be realistic. The Republican Sin-To-Win machine hit is nadir yesterday. They deployed the Vietnam strategy and are stuck now crying that they had to destroy America in order to save it. The complaint that Nancy Pelosi threw gas on a fire cannot escape a greater truth. The fire in question was a dirty nuclear bomb. 65% of the GOP did not hesitate to place their partisan and personal re-election greed so far ahead of our nation’s security that our future stability is not even visible behind them on the horizon.

The Republicans also managed to destroy their core, and I mean really deepest core, ideology. Which is where you complaining GOP voters get to share some blame. Most Americans remain skeptical that the bailout crisis is real. Most voters, conservatives especially, are unable to process the desperate, massive, terrible downside to the Paulson Plan’s failure. The real intel, as they say, is as bad as bad gets, and no average joe can comprehend it in a day or a week.


I heard a GOP guy at the gym say that we should allow the economy to collapse to teach the other party a lesson. That’s everything you need to hear about Republican patriotism in one sentence. This crisis is not about avoiding a few bad years, kids. The BEST CASE scenario is now that we have the hardest decade in any of our lives ahead.

(Consider this: After recent meetings with Paulson the White House confirmed orders that place forward elements of the 4th Infantry Division on alert for “training” under a Northern Command program to control civil unrest inside the united States.)

This is not a celebrity re-enactment of the great depression, with bottled water and fresh sushi to help us stay the course. This is worse than that, this is the civil war; this is Washington drowning in the Delaware River on that fateful Christmas eve. That hard to accept reality is why the Republicans failed so ominously.

They are the party of representative government. All campaign balderdash about Elitists in the DNC aside, Republicans, by historical definition believe that an elite, educated, informed and upper crust layer of society should control the critical power and leadership. They hold that the masses, the temperamental and emotionally charged mob of the citizenry is not qualified to make life-or-death decisions.

In this case, the GOP abandoned that premise like a wounded dog on a rain swept highway. Congressional Republicans bowed, in slavish election year desperation, before an archetypical case study of a shocked, ill-informed, prejudiced, angry and fearful mob. Everyone who voted “no” yesterday was unpatriotic. This regardless of what Nancy Pelosi said to hurt their little feelings; regardless of what your and my main street sentiment is; Regardless of whether they would get re-elected next month.

The sun also sets tough guy.

Yesterday was the end of the Post 9/11 primacy for the Republican Party. Even if they bring the head of Bin laden home as their “October Surprise”, even if they bomb Natanz, Iran. The (ex) Cowboy watched closely yesterday and saw the great burning orb of Republican fire fall down below the horizon. There was a piercing Green Flash and then only an ear-ringing silence remained.


Ignominy:
(n.) Public disgrace or dishonor; reproach; infamy.
(n.) An act deserving disgrace; an infamous act.


Thanks for letting me Share
Ride for the High Country

A Party Non- Declarative

The (Ex) Cowboy finds solace in the wind swept prairies of America's less travelled ideological wilderness. There are lonesome nights and cold hard blizzards, but on occasion the (ex) Cowboy remembers why he came out here.

Yesterday, September 29th 2008 was a barrel of bad whiskey for the soul. But it reminded your humble commentator that he chose his political affiliation for a reason. Neither side has lock on being right, or righteous and, neither side is less dangerous when cornered by the ephemeral and ever present greed for election-year success. One side has broken more things lately, yes that us undeniable. But arguing with a sinner, does not make you a saint. Each side is enslaved by the same elective temptations.

Your party is not my church.

Your church is not my religion.

Your religion is not my country.

My country is my Mistress.

My Mistress is not your whore.

My Party is Not Declared.

Thanks for letting me share..

What Would Goldwater Do?

Charles V ascended his throne after a monumental religious comprimise. He famously intoned:

"Paris is worth a Mass"

The price for Republicans to continue pilfering marginal electoral victories, under Karl Rove's "Thousand Year Campaign", looks like the exact same sell-out. McCain ignored twenty or thirty million Republican primary voters and succumbed to a blackmail deal. Sarah Palin would join his ticket in exchange for getting Megachurch evangelicals to support his candidacy. McCain has been driven to be the President his entire life. He determined that the only way he could win his election was to sell theirPresidency.

(As if the hard-right christians would have voted for Obama..)

The modern conservative movement began with Barry Goldwater fifty years ago. The guy who took over Goldwater's Senate chair just ended it. The White House Republicans will still use the Goldwater brand, but their claim to Goldater's ideological conservatism went out the window with baby Palin's bath-water.

What would Barry say about Palin's religious end-run around 20 million Republican primary voters?

Barry Goldwater went out of his way to have this entered into the public record:


"However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly.

The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in 'A,' 'B,' 'C,' and 'D.' Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate.

I am warning them today:

I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of 'conservatism.' "


Senator Barry Goldwater
Congressional Record, September 16, 1981



The (ex) Cowboy knew Barry Golodwater and Sarah Palin is no Barry Goldwater!

Ride for the High Country

Why Sarah Palin #27 ?

Among the 250 million or so citizens that the secretive power-elite of the Republican machine seeks to manipulate?

Sarah Palin is the easiest for them to control.

Ride For The High Country

Questioning The Media

Karl Rove's "J'accusism" belligerence is cheap bully-tactic intended to oppress free discussion.

There's only seven words that are out of bounds for political media:

If George Carlin could say it, or ask it, so can journalists.

Sin To Win

Well I went to church on Sunday, I was feelin’ blue.
Saturday night sat down beside me, in the very last pew.
- The Ambulance Brothers, 2003

(Cowboy's note: This one was written and published during the 2004 election cycle. Apparently American Christian voters have suddenly had their "philosophical" - hunger and lust satiated. A fulfillment was delivered unto them in the form of a speaking-in-tongues, college drop-out with pretend eye glasses named Sarah "barracuda" Palin. You know, "barracuda", like the little fish embalm on the cars?)

Bush and the Republicans rose to power on a platform of religious fervor. The "values" message has been extremist in it’s zeal, but there is a confusing contradiction between their words and their actions. Almost any unchristian act is acceptable, provided it furthers their power and is backed up by properly coded words extolling "family values". The Reagan Revolution has devolved into a surreal pendulum between Sunday Morning Christianity and Saturday Night Sinfulness.

The Sunday Morning Christians of the GOP go to church once a week and say they believe in Christ’s Path. They refresh their dented faith for an hour, set an example for the kids and show the voters they are “clean”. Once they leave the church, however, they carry their political flag forward using acts and deeds that are the very definition of what Christ died to protest.

Rove’s Republicans take the Jesuit doctrine that “The Ends Justify the Means” one step further into the American Democratic experience: They made it heroic to push the limits of Christian behavior in pursuit of more power, more money and more glory. If the ethos of the Republican Party can be boiled down into one of their own simpleton-minded talking points it would be this:

SIN TO WIN.

It worked well for a time, mostly because nothing unifies like prejudice. Being judgemental against other population groups is as easy as it is unsophisticated. It drives the fearful masses like a blizzard drives cattle across the prairie. Now, however, the Republicans face serious election year blowback from the faithful. They built a national chorus of judgmental speaking but it was to polished. The reality of their actions could never match their promise of perfection. Christians are more than mildly concerned. It is suddenly late in the evening of W.'s Presidency and the date that brought him would like to dance.

… Lest ye be Judged


Under the current leadership Republicans openly proclaimed themselves to be the Party of Christ. But lately they are acting like the Party of Caesar. On Sundays they gleefully rouse the pitchfork and torch crowd, under the guise of Christ’s Path. But on Saturday night they trade, sell, conspire, deal, abuse power and ignore truths in a way that would make even the Romans bow in awe. (See "The Party of Dog" entry below.) They define themselves at every issue and every contrived moral crisis by what they are against. They proudly destroy any people (christian or otherwise) who disagree with them or any idea that threatens their power.

I have enormous faith in my heart. I believe Christ walked the earth. I have only ever wanted to ask him one thing: How can so many intelligent people be so loyal to you with their words and yet so sadly faithless to the key details of behavior that you died to espouse? I see the fish icons and the W. bumper stickers on rows of SUVs at the churches in our neighborhood each Sunday. I see them on the road on Monday and I wonder:

Why don’t you drive like a Christian?

I was raised to believe that Christian ethics are very, very simple: You determine what is right and what is easy. You do what is right and not what is easy. You suffer the discomfort, or rewards, of your choice as God has chosen for you. You move on down the path.

I was a Reagan independent. (I also recall that Reagan defeated a devote Christian.) I am sad that the GOP has grown away from Reagan's gentle but resolute faith in all Americans. They turned the party into a vitriolic marketing machine that brands faith in Christ like pro sports brand cheap beer. The Republicans of this era carry the same great cross of the ages before them in their march. They wave the same large, crisp flag of patriotism. But the only devotion they show in their deeds and works is to make sure that someone else is riding the cross this time up the hill.

Thanks for playing.

Ride for the High Country

America's Palin Problem

Senator McCain suddenly looks like he has ten weeks to live eight weeks before the election. That gives American Democracy a bigger Palin problem than anyone has yet figured out how to address without a Karl Rove "J'accusism" attack.

The problem Palin gives America is that she has not ever received a single national vote for any federal office and she has never served in any sworn (military) or Senate confirmed command chain position. If McCain is elected, Palin will have no legitimate claim to having earned any of their ticket's votes specific for her candidacy for the Presidency.

Of all the VPOTUS names in contention now, or nearly every other historical contest since Washington was elected it is un-paralleled for such an inexperienced person to be considered without having a single federal vote or previous peer-reviewed, confirmed or promoted-under-oath command service. The "experience question" people are dealing with in comparing her to Obama is pretty simple, even for an ex Republican to do the math. He has 25 or 35 million votes in his column and she has zero.

That's right I am saying it out loud and Karl Rove be damned. McCain looks like he won't live through his first year, let alone the next eight.

The GOP/ Rove machine has all but admitted that she's dumber than a fish. They announced today that she will not do ANY unscripted media interviews before the election. She's going to be an unelected, unselected, un-vetted, untrained, un-stable, barely educated President from dim-wit Idaho. Her ascendancy would probably be the 4th or 5th most delicate and critical moment in American Presidential history. She would be an unelected President without a single pre-September loyalist in Washington. Not a single Vote. Never been background checked for a basic federal security clearance.

There's outside the beltway, there's outside Democracy itself and there's outside rational balance. McCain's impulsive, age-addled Palin nomination choice is beyond the perimeter fences on all counts.

Thanks for letting me try and share my thoughts...

RIde for the High Country

Hurricane G. and the Pregnant Pause

suspiscious minds are talking
they're tryin' to tear us apart
they don't believe in this love of mine
they don't know what love is
I know what love is, and baby?
you can leave your hat on.
--Randy Newman (Sung by Joe Cocker)
(On iTunes)

Regarding the Hurricane, McCain was quoted in Phoenix as saying:

"We need to take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats"

The Cowboy invites them to stay under their American hats for a while.

Indeed, perhaps if Republicans could put their "American hats" on, for something, anything less political than an election-year, convention-week, post Katrina hurricane hitting Texas and Louisiana, they would not be the most distrusted, unsupported and despised political machine in United States History.


Well, and they might get some down-time to consider this advice, for the next four years or so. Now that their surprising VPOTUS choice has a surprising choice of her own to make by Wednesday:

Does she stay home to help her 17 year old daughter raise the child she is pregnant with. (Said pregnancy Mrs. Palin hid from the GOP investigators.) Or, does Mrs. Palin continue campaigning for VPOTUS and thus demonstrate that her moral high ground is an island. One which doesn't have room for her kids when the dirt hits. It is a tough choice that affects many, many families.

The good christian ones don't hide an underage pregnancy from a front-running POTUS candidate and then pretend it's just another day for a zealous pro-famiy campaigner.


Ride for the High Country

The Price of Tea in St. Paul

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/30/rnc.protest/index.html
police temporarily detained and photographed at least 50 people who were inside the building.
St. Paul Police spokesman Tom Walsh said they were executing a search warrant.
"The cause for the search warrant is not public at this time," Walsh said.
As many as 30 police officers entered with guns drawn, according to witnesses in the building

What young people stand for is generally ill-informed, misguided and meaningless in these affairs, yet no greater threat to our freedom exists than telling them they are not allowed to stand for it.

Freedom of speech used to be real in the United States. It is just a campaign metaphor now, a faded dream of misty plateaus with one horned rainbow goats and Ronald Reagan standing fifty feet tall. Secret terror raid? Guns up, against teenage dissenters?

For freedom to be real, the young must be able to throw the odd egg or two, break a window, yell across the street and then run back home to rejoin their more timid young peers. Indeed, that egg is the vessel in which we deliver liberty to our descendants. When we bar the egg, we trumpet for the musket...

Those peers are the ones who will eventually be judges and scholars, and Reagan-esque leaders. They will know in their maturity, that freedom can only ever be guided by people who have worn an egg on their lapel. Those leaders will never admit how much it empowered their future, when they saw that the geeky little Jones boy, from the back of the class, had a carton of eggs hidden in his locker. And one was missing.

Democracy is born anew, and only sees light during that dangerous, adrenaline-surged moment when the egg cannot be recalled to the hand; when the smoke bomb sizzles; when the miss-spelled banner unfurls before live cameras. Speeches are just poems about freedom - freedom itself is the electric moment when a trembling young man watches as the crates of tea turn, and roll and drift slowly out on the pre-dawn tide.


Ride for the High Country

The Cowboy Gets One Right!

Your humble ex-Cowboy blasts his analytical six-guns across the political landscape many times each day, without piercing the beer can so to speak. So when he even nicks a target he is tempted to exaggerate the accomplishment:

There is one prominent idea that has been repeated over and over in these articles for the past two years. This is the analysis that that the candidate who wins the next election will probably have a Western, Red State, Moderate or conservative, Female Governor on the ticket in order to prevail.

McCain has one now. Obama does not. It's a lot less of a gamble than the first wave of punditronic reaction is suggesting it is. It is really one of the most calculated decisions either side has yet made.

Ride for the High Country

The Cowboy Moved

Your Humble (ex) Cowboy moved to Elect-O-Rama for the 2008 general election season//

http://www.electorama.blogspot.com/

Ride for the High Country

The Platform You Wish You Could Vote for

Let's face it tough guy, partisan America is no intellect's wet dream for human freedom. On the one hand, The average Republican wouldn't cross party lines even if Hitler was their candidate (and he may have been recently.) On the other hand, Organizing Democrats is like using landfill trash to build a skyscraper: All the material is there, and for half the price, but you'll never bring it together into anything that actually works.

Everybody talks about sacrifice, but nobody shows up early with an empty backpack to haul rocks. Here is a platform that won't please everyone, but everyone will see that it builds something better for America's future. Are you so patriotic that you want to prove it with a gun? Maybe you should prove it with a compromise instead...

The Ten Essentials of True American non-partisan value-Voting.

1) Let's Stop The Killing and Stop Killing.

Let's ban public support for abortion AND the death penalty and get on with anything else that matters. They are both a kill job. And no, sorry, but it is NOT more complicated than that (for now). Texas will become overpopulated from both ends in nine months but so what? Catholics can live by their sword, so to speak, for a change and everyone else can go to Canada or Mexico until we elect a female President. The later event sure to be in the next cycle, since American elections will no longer be enslaved by the 5% of the country and 1% of the voters who actually care about this "hot button" issue.

2) Let's Save the Planet AND Drill for Oil.

We'll Mandate a 100% smokestack scrubbing and pollution filtering implementation on EVERY coal and Fossil Fuel burning power plant in America AND allow drilling in the arctic, or the sands of Yuma, or under the Fresh Kills landfill or anywhere else T. Boone Pickens can get a derrick built.

We are a few busloads of crying indian chiefs * past saving the caribou at this point, kids. It's come down to saving the humans (and maybe some soylent green for food.) Scrubbing our coal fired generating stations' carbon and sulphur and nitrogen etc... exhaust will deliver the most significant reversal of the GCC causing pollution possible from America. The scrubbing requirement will also raise the price of energy so much that we won't be able to afford to buy gas. This will eliminate the demand for arctic oil anyways.

Maybe we can move on this before moderates, like your humble (ex)-Cowboy, start eyeing the pitchfork and torches and wondering at what point George Washington would want to change greenpeace to greenwar if he were alive today.

3)Let's run destructive lenders out of town on a rail.

We'll cap credit card and all other legal lending charges, interest and fees combined, at 4 times the Federal Rate (apr) for the total duration of the loan.

There's no trade-off here. What could you trade for ending the most institutionally corrupt and destabilizing blanket that Wall Street (and Ohio) has ever pulled over America's eyes? Predacious loan charges cost consumers more money than three hurricane Katrinas a year. We borrow from the bank, the bank borrows from the fed and the fed borrows from China and Suadi Arabia. Do you think American foreign policy might be affected by the fact that Saudi Arabia is our 4th largest debtor? We owe them one Katrina a year, just in interest.

4) Let's ban deviance and allow love.

We'll ban internet pornography and allow gay marriage. Internet Sex is a hell of a lot more deviant than Gay Love. There's no forced morality conflict with employer benefits, either; because of number 8 below.

State supported interstate infrastructure carries the internet, so we can regulate it just like we can tv, trucking and whiskey. We don't allow sewage in our tax funded drinking water lines - let's ban the display of erect penises, and Hot Milf Action on the little screens we replaced tv with. Then we can all go back to work and get some @!$%# done in America. Not to mention we will stop creating sex addicts who commit savage crimes of depravity every other day or so. If we can ban smoking in the workplace we can ban Beating-Off there as well. And if it makes Ellen funny again, like she used to be, that'll just be a bonus.

5) Let's defeat the illiterate savages AND teach our own kids how to read.

Let's institute a 6 year Military Draft in exchange for allowing parents to deduct ALL of their kid's college tuition and fees from their taxes. And if the CEO, or corporation in number 8 wants a tax break - they can write off 100% of their tuition paying grant (not loan) contributions. But let's roll this out yesterday, 'cause the savagery is already dire.

We need the draft. It sucks but we do. It's a simple priority. The Russians will be in Damascus by next Easter unless we get another quarter-million Kill Generation boys onto the playground. Right now, an entirely new and additional, Marine Division (Heavy) is more important for our security than making sure that no one sneaks a pocket knife on a Jet Blue flight to Kingston, Jamaica.

Look at it this way: We are all gonna die sometime. A few of us when an over-worked Air Marshal shoots out a window at 29,000 feet over Nebraska, a few of us crouched behind an Army-rejected Humvee on the road to Khandahar. Let's "Embrace the Suck".

If we really want Freedom itself to live on after us, we need more guys who can pierce a foot-mobile target from 250 yards, off-hand, while wearing 75 pounds of combat schwag and getting yelled at through the earpiece by a limp-dicked college-boy Lieutenant.

Being the strongest tribe is meaningless if you are also the smallest one. We need more shooters in the game, and, since we also could use more American born employees who can learn to program in Fortran or that " C++" gibberish, or even, god forbid HTML, this is what we have to do.

We can pay for these two activities, and then some, by reducing the Air Force budget by 25%. The entire Marine Corps costs the same as a single wing of Joint Tactical Fighters. Guess which one is actually fighting the war on terror? The swing-state Air National Guards from Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan can probably defend us against a simultaneous attack by every foreign tactical aviation threat that currently exits. it is a chance worth taking - because only a Marine division can pacify Fallujha.

6) Let's lower corporate tax rates AND collect more corporate taxes.

A five year moratorium on ALL Corporate tax breaks in exchange for a reduction to a 12% flat rate for all companies of any size. Really, this idea cannot possibly be worse than the criminally disfunctional corporate-industrial-congressional love fest of fiscal corruption we have now inside our failed GDP.

Let's try it for a few fiscal years and see what happens. My guess - more real money for Congress to waste, less accounting costs for tax evasion and an end to one of the "thousand points of @!$%#e" of corrupted congressional tax-break gridlock. It will cost Wall Street far less to pay the massively simplified and reduced, one page, flat-rate than what they currently spend to lobby, lie, cheat and steal their way through the existing five thousand page corporate tax code.

7) Let's eat better AND exercise more.

We'll Place a 5 cent per-serving non-negotiable tax on anything containing partially hydrogenated oil OR high fructose corn syrup AND use the proceeds exclusively to fund a reinstatement of public school Physical Education programs. We are stupidly fat and it is embarrassing. We eat food made in refineries. Do you enjoy knowing in your teens that you will definitely have cancer in your forties? The prisoners of Russia's gulag were provided healthier food than middle class America is, (and they exercised more.)

8) Let's pay higher wages and spend less on payroll.

Raise the Minimum Wage 4 dollars in exchange for terminating all mandated benefits that employers are required to provide. While we are beating down corporations, let's do allow them a fighting chance to create some new jobs where it matters - in small and mid sized entrepreneurial companies.

Let's make payroll taxes flat rate, payable quarterly and, allow companies to pay more in real wages instead of having to manage complicated benefit, pension and other commie bull-crap safety nets for their employees. Most pension and benefit money is eaten by corrupt unions, ponzi-scheme brokerage houses and management expenses before we retire anyways.

You wanna a good retirement plan? Stop betting on rigged American sports every weekend, or buying Internet-order shoes if you are woman. Get an E-trade account, set up an automatic 100 dollar a month deposit into a index fund. You'll be a millionaire in 25 years.

Unless you are a coal miner, a cop or a lettuce picker, your union is a macro-economic wrench in the gears of American productivity. Stop whining, buy a coffee can and a shovel to manage your own benefits plan, and go back to work. And you corporate big shots - you want to get paid in stock options? Fine but the company has to expense them and you have to pay that same 14% tax every year, no exceptions.

9) That planet thing. Again.

Lets save the planet AND re-build our lost global power AND create a new, generation-long economic expansion. The currrent plan to spend 10 % of our (borrowed) national budget to go back to the moon is the dumbest public science alchemy in the entire history of knowing stuff. Climate change is real, and if you don't believe fossil fuel use is bad for us, you can spend an hour in your garage with the engine running and call us back. Let's get off the dime on this thing in a way we all know we are good at, and that we all know will be good for the economy.

Let's subsidize the biggest pork-barrel jelly roll in American history, in order to save the Planet!

We will re-name NASA the National Aerospace and Science Administration. Put them in charge of all the public science agencies and task them with "Ensuring the highest probability of habitable environmental stability for the next 5 generations of the Human Race". Let's order up an economic stimulus that drives technology, capital wealth, national security and international status on the scale of the Marshall Plan. But this one's for us, baby!

Even Dick Cheney can understand that seizing technological control of the planet's entire oxygen supply will go a long way towards returning our lost great power status. We can even make Haliburton the prime contractor.

10) That's it, actually.

We need to do more with less and our platform is no exception. We need to stop paying for ten things when we only need nine.

*someone please say you remember the crying indian commercials...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1QQWJK_OUk

Obama's Seal of Approval

The (ex) Cowboy studiously avoids American news television. So I missed this hullaballo about Obama's Seal. There is one unanswered question about the Great Seal fiasco that I am surprised no one is asking.

The whole thing came out of left field, like a car accident in the night rain. It was all to weird for immediate comment.

Was it a twisted and nerve-brushing portent of the same kind of reckless delusion of POTUS ascendancy that sunk HIllary like a lazy mule off a swift-water ferry?

Was it merely a human moment of bad humor and even worse graphic design prowess?

Your humble (ex) Cowboy went after the WHOLE STORY , the INSIDE SCOOP with the discipline and work ethic of a, well of a noon-drunk, knee-strained ex mountaineer. I started looking in every nook, and speaking with inside sources ..and ...and

WHAT THE HELL?

WHO MISSED THIS?

Someone at NYT should be FIRED BEFORE DARK!

(Ex) Cowboy has it:

THE POLITICAL SCOOP OF THE SUMMER BLOODING SEASON:

Excuse me, um, sorry for that outburst. I'm alright now. I just get freaked when two thousand self-appointed political hack pundits all miss the most obvious, important and interesting election story of the week.

I Know that TR suddenly fled the earthly realm, and it was a distraction from the remaining few outposts of serious whiskey-and-truth journalism left standing; but, um really. Did you guys ALL miss this nutkicking bombshell?

Anyway, Thusly. Allow your humble (ex) Cowboy to be the first to ask the only question that matters regarding The Obama Seal Story:

WHY WAS VPOTUS LONG-SHOT JANET NAPOLITANO SEATED AT OBAMA'S RIGHT HAND DURING THE DEMOCRATIC GOVERNOR"S MEETING!?!

Ha.

Ride for the High Country!
The (Ex) Cowboy

The long Road Home From Birmingham

The primaries showed that the U.S. is actually the nation we had believed it to be.
• Minoru Morita, Japanese analyst.

… the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward….The right change recognizes that many of the policies and institutions of our government have failed. …
• John McCain


These words are the starting gun for the long homestretch to November. If you believe in the Idea of America, without prejudice or cranky- political bias, well, then something your humble (ex) Cowboy told an aggressive salesman last December seems clear: We already know who the next POTUS will be. This campaign is about nothing other than getting used to it.

That is not an opinion based on personal desire or partisanship. Though many will assume it is. This is simple observation. It comes from humble commentator who sees Obama as an unoriginal, paraprahsing tent-show preacher. Who thinks the entire Obama campaign is nothing more than exactingly paraphrased and concisely rendered “cover song” presentations of Martin Luther King Jr. speeches. Who hears intonations and deliveries that are specifically, meticulously crafted to follow the rhythm of MLK with a bit of JFK’s brain trust speech-writing thrown in and Ronald Reagan’s precisely positioned photographers just down and left of the "Obama chin".

We’ve heard this Idea of America stuff before. It is kind of annoying to the (Ex) Cowboy how unoriginal it is. In the end however, it is undeniable how powerful and good this preaching is for the Reality of Americans and America's place in the world.  

We have all heard this emo-speak dreaming nonsense about the Idea of America before. We heard it from equaly inexperienced politicians and less-proven leaders than Obama. We heard it  from the first Muslim-named President: Abraham. We heard it from the “October Surprise” consiprator: Ronald. We heard these very words from an activist now known to have plagiarized most of his Doctoral thesis: The Reverand  (Dr.) Martin Luther King Junior.

The Rhetorical link between MLK, (or for that matter; Reagan, or Lincoln) and Barack Obama is a real as we want it to be. Believers in the Idea of America, coming from both parties, should want that link to be direct, strong and openly discussed.  The Idea of America’s Promise took a midnight flight to Birmingham 45 years ago. Reagan sheltered the idea with great honor but he did not bring it back home. Barak Obama can bring it back home.

Thanks for Playing

The (Ex) Cowboy

The Coming Doom (Part II)

When the Levee Breaks (I’ll have no place to stay)


I guess the point of these two shabby essays, is for your humble (Ex) Cowboy to explore the thin line between realistic concern and angry fearful complaining. There is no shortage of either in America. A recent article about how people in Idaho are grabbing their guns and heading for their bunkers hit a nerve. Sure, let’s be weary - but let’s have some perspective as well.

Someone commented on Part I (The Dirty Bomb Martini) that my optimism and faith in humanity must make me a Bush supporter. That is typical behavior for a “sayer”. Sayers know what is right, or more typically, what is wrong with America. They think talking about great big things excuses them from doing good little things. It is an epidemic, and neither party has a monopoly on sayers.

As far as the Bush thing, you will have to dig around here in my blog for the truth about my leanings. Until you have done so, please don’t waste time by blathering your assumptions about the Cowboy's views.

The sayers are all about greatness. They are full of spittle about the greatness of their America, the greatness of their church, the greatness of their political leaders, the greatness of their home places. Then, of course, they are obsessed with the wrongness, the stupidity and the sinfulness of everyone who disagrees with them when it comes to any specific concern. Everything is either Greatness or Doom for the sayers.

Before you develop certainty about what I am so wrongheaded about, let’s agree that there really is frightening change in the fabric of our entire socio-economic stability now. Let’s reconsider a few well known recent circumstances:

• Malfeasance by The Corps of Engineers facilitated a flood event that displaced 700,000 - 1,000,000 people. Most of the hardest hit were impoverished African Americans who were abandoned during the flood in survival conditions by a moral and practical collapse of government response.

• Mideast conflicts and fears of wider war and terrorism centered in Iran and Iraq, along with greed-driven speculation, caused a major spike in oil and gas prices. The price of oil doubled in a few short months causing a great shock of inflation, and contributing to an ongoing real estate downturn.

• No other administration in history has faded in such paralysis and discredit. The President is without credible policy impetus at home or abroad, openly shunned by the international community, and stymied by loss of majority control of the congress. Popular support for a sitting President has never been worse. In the upcoming election the incumbent party can only appeal for votes on the implicit ground that the next administration will be totally unlike the one in office. In a year of deepening economic downturn the nation suffers a crisis of confidence unmatched in our history.

• Pushing against the barriers of prejudice, a woman and a Black Man share the liberal party’s nomination for Presidency to run against the Republican. The tensions caused by moral prejudice have never been more delicate.

Are times worse for us, or are we softer as we face them? The (Ex) Cowboy just doesn’t claim to know. The (ex) Cowboy is not certain about very much. We do know that twenty million people live in a world where a plastic sheet between their children and the sun, or rain is a luxury. So this (Ex)-cowboy is just gonna keep trying to do good things, instead of say great ones. We are not doomed, but we are going to have some long days.

The center is strong, quiet and mighty in America. The center is not great - but it is very good. America is good, churches are good, political discussion is good, our home place is good, our faith in ourselves is good. The center is doing good little things, instead of arguing about great big ones. In this (Ex) Cowboy’s humble view, America is no more, (or less) great then ever, and no more (or less) doomed. The opportunity to choose between saying great and doing good has never been larger.

While you are seething at my shortcomings you can go over to wikipedia and look up the events I listed above. By and large they are forgotten stories, but the people involved seem fascinating. They must have wondered if the country would survive. After each of these cycles a new wave of entrepreneurs, respected political leaders and self made doers raised human goodness from the dust of failed greatness. Good triumphed over great.


The Great Mississippi flood of 1927.
The second Great Oil Crisis (1978)
President Grant (1869-1877)
Victoria Woodhull and Frederick Douglass (1872)


Thanks for Playing

The (Ex) Cowboy

The Coming Doom Part I

The Wake Up Call


There is this swelling sentiment in America that we almost need a little Armageddon times – just to prove Armageddon times are really coming. There are a few variations, but they all contain the phrase “Wake Up”. As in: we need to “wake up” to the coming doom. The specific peril itself is usually terrorism, but it can also be economic ruin, political collapse, race war, something vague about Mexico. Bird flu is in there occasionally.

My favorite variation is what I have come to call the Dirty Martini Bomb…

This is when you give an otherwise reasonable, sane wealthy white American man two Martinis and let the conversation drift towards politics. This eventually slips out: “Well, We need another attack to wake us up.” Or, as Rumsfeld was quoted just last week:

“This President's pretty much a victim of success….The correction.., I suppose, is an attack."

Yes Professor, I think a modest dose of terror just now would do wonders for us.

I’ve personally heard at least four millionaires ape this same line after a martini or two in the past six months. Always Martinis and always a dirty nuke. It is tempting righteousness, but it just doesn’t pass this Ex-Cowboy’s offal-detector.

You wanna talk Armageddon times? Let’s go back to our roots, and our religious lore. Let’s talk floods Jed. Whatever tribulating doom-blast you favor is easy to prepare for. Just replace the word “flood” below, with your disaster of choice, and you will be among those who survive to re-populate a more righteous democratic utopia.

America might not need anything really, but if we do it is something like a “Go Right Now Bag” for the soul. This is what should be in it:

• A Prescribed Dose of reality, Jack. The Dirty Martini Bomb premise is as brain-fouled as you could ever hope to become, and still have a college degree. I mean think about it: Do we need another flood to prepare us for the next big flood?

• A sense of driving hope and optimism that life has enough value to justify half an hour a year to awkwardly discuss with your family and plan realistic options for the flood that will probably never happen. Teach your kids the science of weather, so they know what a flood is. (And plan on the phones not working at all.)

• Swimming Lessons. Seriously, you live in New Orleans? It’s sixteen feet below sea level, the ocean is rising, and you don’t know how to swim? Your Armageddon experience will be easier on you and your overworked rescuers if you spend a few hours a week shaping up your body and getting some basic awareness of the surroundings you will be hunkered in. Nobody shot their way through their roof after New Orleans: Sell the pistol - buy an axe.

• A Hero Story. Ex-cowboy grandfather-in-law was everything good about an American man, in one shirt. He dammed a western river, shot it out with cowboys, even played minor league ball with Jackie Robinson. He was elected sheriff and got a killer to surrender, confess and ask him to walk him to the chair. (I never knew of him to drink a martini.) He often said; “you can tell a hero story or you can tell a victim story.” Are you a millionaire who worries about the coming flood? Maybe you could put something else where your mouth is. Some carefully thought-out advertising for flood awareness might help more than a "wake-up" flood. Look what that skinny bicycle guy did for cancer...

• Love for thy Neighbor. Seriously now, who are you going to shoot with that pistol? An anonymous black man who manages to swim from fifty blocks away, or the gangly Shimfield boy whose parents never made it home from work? Put the things on this list in your “go “ bag and then make sure the neighbors see it as often as possible. Don't talk small about big things - act big about small ones. Can you cook for the neighborhood, perform emergency medicine, build a shelter from busted stuff, or grow food in a hurry? Any two of these skills will get you appointed the first new mayor rubbleville. That pistol will only make you the lonely dictator of your own attic.

This ran long, so I’ll break it up. Stay tuned for another way to think about how bad it could get before it’s as bad as it could get….


Thanks for playing

The (Ex) Cowboy
www.blogspot.blogofacowboy.com

Word of the Day at the Addictionary!

The Cowboy is pleased to announce that his entry was chosen as a prestigious "Word of The Day"
at the Political Addictionary:

Read all about it:

Pissenfranchised:

(noun)Democratic voters who threaten to cross party lines to cast their ballot if the candidate they support does not win the nomination


http://political.addictionary.org/

Debatcle

A Vox On Your House
The Ghost of Peter Jennings
ABC Political Unit presents: "The Not"
Checkers has left the building

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Emergency byline note to Any Editor:
The top three concerns rattling the Citizenry are listed here in order:
Global Pollution/GCC/Climate Disaster
The Economy
The Economy
(Tie pins and angry black gospel preachers didn't make the list)
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>



An Open Letter To ABC News,

cc: Clinton Campaign

Dear ABC News,

Regarding the recent debate you hosted:

REALLY?

We "get" that George Stephanopoulos is one of the last, bunker dwelling heavy Clinton Loyalists. We assumed he will be blatantly supportive of the Clinton Campaign's desperate win or-burn-the-nation-down strategy. We accept this, in moderation, for giving us something other than Fox News to read and watch.

We "get" that the media handed Obama the nomination in November and December. You failed to see the rise of a vast and powerful wave until it crested. You fell into a role last fall as pansy-soft adulators of the Movement instead of journalistic investigators of the Man. We watched it in fact, so we "get" what went down.

We "get" that ABC is flummoxed by the new media world. Journalism is (still) dead and an Australian zealot runs the media business table in the U.S. Peter Jennings death was a personal and an American Tragedy to us much as you. Apparently, our love and respect of his honorable efforts were greater than yours all along. His passing has marked the end of Journalism in the U.S. It confuses you editorially, and we understand, we remain flexible on it. For a while...

We "get" that the ABC political Unit and specifically; "The Note", WAS the best political media center in American History. That was last time around though. M.H. is gone to a better gig. We "get" that in Mark's shadow you are bit lost, and confused. Even if you ARE less objective or less substantive than the average false-science blog from global warming deniers or Pharmaceutical P.R. campaign, we give you some slack.

We "Get" the backstory context more than you seem to realize. Our "intel" is actually better than yours most days (hint, we read "the wires" online). So, we "get" the nuances of the New Media; your "news" editor's motivations; the pressures you face; economic, political and even from verbally abusive individual superpower egos. We understand these things make you nervous and mistake prone. We are patient and forgiving, after all we are pretty much on the same side, and it is important we ALL start getting some of the big stuff right again, A.S.A.P.

But that "debate" thing last night?

OMG, WTF, AYFKM?

Really?

Is this really how you wanted to manage the last debate between Barack "The Rock" Obama and Hillary "Going Down The Road Feeling Bad" Clinton? Wow. This is hard to tell you but, um, the thing is, er, to paraphrase The Captain:

We Can't Get Behind That!

We might be able to arrange a "do over" but we should talk about some things first, in private, you dig? We will start with general things, like what color the sky is here on the home planet, and the scientifically observed phenomena of a chicken running in circles and dancing in apparent glee in April long after it's head was been chopped off by the farmer, back in December.


We invite you to join us at the Adult Table. Come on over and face the realities with more, um, sanity and stuff. You know, the way WE have to. Just leave the red and blue colored cool-aid over there with the scary clowns, and edible glue, and join us for a minute. That's it, just sit quetly here with us, and if you must interrupt, please, we insist, use your words.

We think it is childish and dangerous for our future as a quasi-free empire that you have abandoned reality with this outburst. We are disturbed by the depth of your witless shock as you wake up to the new political landscape. It is pretty chaotic, sure but here's our concern: You put us in this position with your painfull absence from the campaign trail last fall. You failed in November and December to do YOUR JOB. If we may we be so bold, from out here in the greylands of Middle America, you failed in your sacred editorial DUTY. We let it slide. But we have to hold you accountable now, going forward.

You will be getting a lot, like maybe 100,000, emails for this "Debatcle". They are symbolic, you only have to read this one. Put it on the damned bulletin board above the pretty rainbow crayon pictures, please. Here is the important stuff:

You can't go back in time and change it now. We have to face this weird shit and we sort of need you to face it with us.

Your Christmas list said "Anybody But Bush" (as it has for the last eight years) and Santa brought a Black Man for POTUS. We understand this makes you uncomfortable from a certain pro Clinton P.O.V. It freaks us out to, but it is done and we are gonna be good with it. We are the people, we have to be good with it.

You have simply got to stop going cry-baby freak-out in public like this. And we aren't asking. This latest public display of affectations scared the children, or scarred them, or both. Now wet-himself grandpa is even talking about taking over again. So we just want to say one thing as clearly as humanly possible to your childish ears:

KNOCK THAT SHIT OFF!

Thanks, sorry.

Obama DID win it all in November and December and nothing any of (us) who wanted HIllary to win can change that now. It is strange, weird and painful, but undeniable. Supporting Hillary today, the way ABC blatantly allowed George S. to do in this recent debate is the same dis-service to reality that you profer by allowing voice to science-deniers in the Global Climate discussions. Editorially, your oddball bias is, well professionally suspect, as H. herself is of late with her Clinton-At-Any Cost psycho endgame...

The only story here is the sad, dangerous and dishonorable fall of MY OWN PREFERRED POTUS candidate: Hillary Clinton.

And the end of all journalism, if that matters to you.

Go back to the kids' table now, and try to hold it together for us in public. Remember, were are strong or weak as a family!

Thanks for playing,

blogofacowboy.blogspot.com

The Lost Art of Taking One For The Team

The Ones Who Show Up
Drunks at the Wheel
The Silence of The Hams
Taking one For The team


Until you're ready to look foolish, you'll never have the possibility of being great.
Cher


A few weeks ago, the Democrats had a “Clinton Problem”.

The American media is like a mad party bus driven by a whiskey crazed deaf-mute. This half-drunk chauffeur, who leads public perception, had swerved slowly into incoming traffic since the beginning of this primary cycle. Hillary was in the headlights coming the other way. There has been a great sudden lurching now, drinks have been spilled, celebratory song has been interrupted. As is so often the case, history is being made while assumptive victors are weakend by their own vanity.

Until just a week or so ago, it was obvious that Hillary had a choice between smashing her political career, head-on into the Obama-hypno-media bus, or doing everyone the favor of withdrawing and thus plowing her own wagon off the road, into the dark snowy forest beyond the headlines. Guess who decided to stand her ground?

Recently, the media woke up to something critical: There may be some truth to Clinton’s ongoing complaints that Obama is just a glorified “idea man”, without any meaningful experiential education in matters of delicate politics and forceful moves. The Clinton campaign has, by chance or by design, forced Democrats and the media to test Obama’s personal (not his team’s) abilities under fire. He appears to be hiding behind the sandbags of his 100 delegate lead.

THE MATH is important, and Obama is not counting. Hillary knows she cannot win the delegates required to secure the nomination. Everyone has known this since last month. In seeking a path to victory she has realized the greater truth of this situation. As long as she is campaigning hard for her predictable 45 – 55% of the primary voters, Obama might not secure enough delegates to win either.

In the fog of this recent battle, Clinton herself responded to her flagging campaign’s direction. SHE seized the Message and by doing so SHE seized the media as well. She is risen, as they say, to challenge Obama directly for control of the contest. She is challenging Obama by being more Presidential than he is: She is suddenly more sophisticated, more aggressive, more effective and far more willing to accept strategic defeats towards a tactical victory.

What no one knows how to admit yet, is that Hillary is the only Democrat with a solution to the self-destructive end game of this locked primary. She has tried to offer it up as delicately and as professionally as any President has ever offered any international or domestic political deal in history. The Obama camp, by it’s silence and non-response, has failed to show that the big man can stand alone and above his staff of adulators, to be a decider under fire.

Sure, the background is full of the sound of breaking glass and crunching metal. The drunk chauffeur called “the media” has started to wail in ecstatic embrace of it’s own deconstructive ability. But battles are loud by nature. The great leaders separate the giant sounds from the little pieces of iron flying around. Hillary is on the battlefield herself now. Like so much of Hal Moore in the Ira Drang, Hillary has moved beyond that awful emotional inconvenience of being surrounded and outnumbered by a robust enemy. She is commanding her forces.

Obama is deep in his bunker. He seems resigned to that uninspired tradition of depending on repeated tactical assaults, with no strategic endgame vision. He has to close the deal now in order to achieve true victory. Hillary is giving him a choice, as clear and obvious as the sky is blue:

COMMIT TO MAKING ME YOUR VICE PRESIDENT OR I WILL SACRIFICE MY CAREER TO DESTROY YOUR ADVANTAGE OVER McCAIN!


The pressure Obama faces now, is nothing compared to the shrug-off treatment Hillary received during November, December and January. Still, he is running out of time to emerge from his eroding shelter and make a deal to be the Strategic Victor. Sure, he wants to make Napolitano as his VP. She is smarter and a better leader than either Obama or Hillary after all. But this contest might result in another white male POTUS unless someone takes one for The Team, and soon.

It is time for someone to show some metal. Maybe Janet has to step forward and throw herself on the line by convincing Obama to agree to Hillary’s childishly obvious but as yet unheard offer. Hillary has decided the battle: Make me your confirmed VPOTUS now or we are all going to get wiped out

A supposedly great leader as Barack Obama shouldn't need his underlings to sell him on this tough but obvious decision. It is so simple an (ex) Cowboy can figure it out. The truth is, if he is half the man he claims to be with his MLK borrowed rhetoric, he MUST prove it by standing above his staff’s reluctance to concede anything to Hillary. And if Janet figures this out soon enough, she can thrust herself into a favorable national presence by being the one who makes the deal work.

The Democrats suddenly have an "Obama Problem". Janet N. might be the only one who can resolve it. Obama himself doesn't seem to understand it.


Thanks for Playing

Girl In The War

Peter said to Paul: “you know all those words we wrote,
Are just the rules of the game,
And the rules are the first to go."
But now talking to God is Laurel begging Hardy for a gun.
I got a girl in the war man - I wonder what it is we done.

Josh Ritter
http://www.joshritter.com/
Girl In Ther War (iTunes)

Can Hillary stay in the game?

Tuesday was a great day for America and the world we still influence. We are officially caught up in a close Presidential election contest between a Woman and a Non White Man. The last time the world looked like this the (ex) Cowboy was two, and even Doonesbury had to wear a helmet to the Democratic National convention.

McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton about that time. He is officially irrelevant now. A token white man in the new blended soul of America's great dream. The rich white guys have shown themselves to be a failure at protecting the emotional security of anyone who is not white, or male, or stupidly rich. Unless Wall Street makes a raging comeback in the next few months, we will have a black man and a woman in the White House before Martin Luther King Junior’s next birthday (celebrated or actual). Hillary Clinton is fighting tooth and nail to be that woman.

But will she be?

Clinton just threw down with a very strong comeback in Ohio and, a survivor’s victory in Texas. The media buzz today is all over her new statement that she would consider a Clinton-Obama Ticket if she wins.

People suggest she is offering to allow him to be her Vice POTUS. Your humble (ex) Cowboy sees another meaning in her words:

Hillary just offered the biggest olive branch possible in this contest. How Barrack Obama (not the campaign, but the man himself) responds is nothing short of THE STORY OF THE ELECTION OF 2008. And maybe the most important moment in American Political history since the man called “Throat” met the Washington Post kids in the underground parking lot at 1401 Wilson Blvd in Roslyn VA.


Your humble Cowboy thinks Hillary’s comments are not at all an offer to put Obama on the "Hillary for President" Stickers. They are a last ditch plea agreement, that she will concede the nomination fight if Obama agrees to put an H. on His signage.

Obama may have pressure to put Hillary on his ticket, due to the votes she has gotten, but it is not a rule that he must. Barack has a much better woman for his ticket. She is strong; confident; experienced; a Washington outsider; a conservative Democrat; and, a popular Western governor to top it off. She is waiting in the wings to stand next to him for a few months on stage and then be the first woman elected to the White House. (And then, in 8 years be elected the first woman President). She is removed from the contest enough to actually serve under his authority. Yet she also has the ability to excel independently in overseeing whatever portfolio the next VPOTUS is responsible for.

The Cowboy thinks Obama may have answered Hillary’s proposal on Monday, in West Texas. That being a region deeply loyal to Hillary on the Democrat side and considered critical for yesterday’s Texas primary. It was important enough that the Clinton campaign sent former POTUS Bill himself to make last minute appearances. Obama’s surrogate to oppose the Great Bill Clnton? A woman you've never even heard of. Who recently enjoyed a landslide re-election. To her second term. As Governor. Of a heavily Republican state. A Western State. That happens to be represented in the Senate by John McCain……


Thanks for playing....

Your Humble Cowboy Approves This Message

One outfit recently published a book consisting of other people's six word autobiographies. Said lazy-man’s haiku assemblage was not, therefore, even written by the “authors”. One wishes any story was really simple enough to be axe-chipped down to a six word story line. Even if the minds who conceived the words aren't getting credit or money.

The Cowboy celebrates this kind of intellectual discipline and hard work. It makes America Great. Well, lately it makes us a global melting pot of lazy and greedy creative plagiarism. William F. Buckley is dead, so we must embrace the new style.

In a way though, The Cowboy sees a beauty in the form and format. Our current media era is defined by unsophisticated ticker-scrolled headlines. From Presidential candidates to smash-mouth athletes, America is being drowned by precisely packaged, creatively recycled, overly sober and woefully un-original voices.

Here are a few current headlines, all in 6 words or less. In tribute to the hero of your (ex) Cowboy: She is a 45+ divorced, stay-at-home mother of four from the frozen heartland. She struggles each Monday to reach out to the world of her former dreams in staccato e-mail missives. Her freak flag flies tattered, bloody and unbowed.

1)Jack Nicholson Ad: “I Approved this.”
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7276796.stm

2)Four More Murders, This Time Memphis.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7276651.stm

3) Chavez Ally Killed, Probably The Teams.
• http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7277313.stm

4) CDC: “Hepatitis Outbreak Tip of Iceberg.”
• http://www.ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i8B3EkgPbRHRxqB6l6BG6ZL1bn9QD8V69MQG0

5) 17, 275, 442, 5,377, 61,655; Favre
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/04/sports/football4.php

6) Warren Buffet says: This is Recession.
• http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/03/business/buffett.php

7) N. B. A. : All About Kobe
• http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/23440749/

8) Experience Vs Dreams, Texas and Ohio.
• http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23463159/

9) Man in Ricin Investigation A Loner
•http://www.ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iKTvbgBD4wAvysJWCK0LFWjV9VwwD8V6GBA00/

10) First Ever Images: Avalanche on Mars
• http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=4381763



The Cowboy Thanks You For Playing

Watch the Green Witch Melt

Ghost Woman of the Hotel Del Coronado
Pretty Much Gone


The Cowboy wants to be honest for a few sentences. Well get back to the truth later…

Your Humble Cowboy spent a strange grey week hunting for the fabled ghost of the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. There was off-season foul weather, a double conference of lawyers and a mild case of this years’ inoculation (and alcohol) resistant flu strain to set the tone. The sky was yellow and the sun was blue, as the old man said. The ghost proved elusive, but those dayless hours made it clear why this wooden wonder of beachside Americana was the inspiration for Frank Baum to write the Wizard of OZ.

While ghost-hunting, it became clear that, like the green witch, Hillary is suddenly done. (Apparently she also melts under exposure to something as innocuous as fresh water to the face.) It is a strange and twisted experience, like watching a hanging.

We appear to be a country obsessed with watching fools perish at the gibbet of modern media humiliation. Our media, like so much more of Salem’s puritans, delivers a steady viewing of doomed young dreamers and damaged souls alike. Lead by the likes of “American Idol” or that anger-loving Trump show whateverthehell it is called. However, in the real reality, we don’t like to see that stuff. It is uncomfortable, and it reveals us all to be a bit diseased.

We don’t mind a small dose of “yeah but for the grace of God go I..”. The genre ages fast, however, when the poor bastard being wrongfully humiliated, eating bugs or wetting themselves purposely, all towards an obviously losing effort, bears so much resemblance to, well, to us.

Even the Foxwatchers are uncomfortable watching the end of Hillary.

Admit it now, you felt shocked and disturbed when the suffering green witch got melted by that brat farm girl in blue gingham. Sure, the damned flying monkeys were an order of magnitude of terror never seen on the screen before. But still that chemical warfare was extreme. During those terrible final seconds we saw a witch that was somehow less wicked and more vulnerable, more mature. Dorothy looked like she actually savored the sight of her grieving, widowed, dust bowl surviving Aunt getting dissolved away in agony.

Maybe in hind sight, OZ would have been better off with the Wicked Witch. She was experienced, thick-skinned and strong enough to keep the damned terror monkeys from grabbing up all the funny little people and dropping them to their deaths on the dark cliffs above the far off sunless sea. We will never know.

The little farm kid followed a brainless, gutless, soulless trio down to the place of dead roads, only to see the kingdom’s fragile economy and territorial security collapse drunkenly because of one compelling child's’ fantasy. (In the old days that kind of hopeful innocence was called "being naive".) The bratty child escaped back from dreamland. But the little guys were left to fend off flesh eating winged monkeys while watching the technological “grid” of their society collapse into anarchy while the previous wizard stole away with a balloon basket full of looted gold paving stones.

Sound familiar?

Barack Obama may be the best thing to happen to America. There is no doubt that his ability to give young Americans hope and faith in the country may be the exact turn we need to survive. The Cowboy really hopes this is the case. Yet it is alarming how little we really know about the guy.

We don’t know anything about his real intentions, his true values and his actual opinions about things like climate change, the Supreme Court, the Chinese, The FISA Act, Internet regulation, management of our vast and dwindling public lands and many other issues that remain unexplored by Obama's "I Have A Dream" speechwriters. He has a wonderfully brief history of words, but no history of deeds to engender our confidence. The ideas he espouses are stellar (because they come directly from MLK and other great minds). But in his practical abilities there is no proof of life.

The media is a straw man, afraid of pushing, afraid of probing into what he really intends to do as President. Journalism is (still) dead and getting deader. The media would rather hoist Hillary to her demise, as difficult as that is turning out even for them to handle, than confront Obama about his real values and prejudices. It is a sad repetition of history, by good men who do nothing. Like when W. first ran for office, or later when American journalism failed to question his path to War.

Your naive Cowboy wonders if there might even be a connection between the fact that Presidential campaigns shovel several billion dollars of advertising money into the hands of our corporatized media, and their unwillingness to ask tough questions...

It may be fine to once again trust a charismatic young politician with blind faith. But let's not call it change because it is nothing new. It would nice to hear some of this Man’s real ideas, presented with his own words in a legitimate journalistic interview. The inspiring, but intellectually plagiarised speeches of Obama may well lead to a new Camelot, for a new generation. But Camelot was short lived.

And then there are those damned flying monkeys to be dealt with.



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Quote of the Week (2.27)

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

Scott Adams

Quote of the Week

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat.

-George Carlin

Take The Long Odds

The key … is keeping the people who hate me away from those who are still undecided.
Casey Stengel

The Super Bowl just pulled out. It was the grandest sports event in recent history. The circus is gone but there remains a strange aftertaste of something like diet sweetener for the soul. The whole experience reflected a new joyless but safe American Dream we share. Yeah, it was fun, but nothing reckless occurred. Maybe the YOUNG PEOPLE are right. Maybe change in any direction is better for our souls than our current obsession with safety from every peril.

It doesn’t matter. The Cowboy always bets the underdog. I took the Giants over the Pats, not because I follow the game, or even care. It was the principal of the thing. I hold with a sort of sinners prayer of American sports: “Grant me the serenity to accept that all sports are fixed some of the time, that some sports are fixed all of the time, and the wisdom to pick the spread.” That is why I like Obama tomorrow, on Super-Tuesday.

Obama’s campaign is a street-fighting machine that can swing on a dime. They left Carolina behind and embraced a new slogan, “Yes We Can”. (Which means “Si, Se Puede” in Spanish.) In case you have been asleep or east of Albany for the past ten months, you know this slogan was used by Caesar Chavez. It is THE rallying cry for Hispanic voters. They will swing with the wind tomorrow and bury Hillary under the stale sheaves of her own outdated campaign speeches.

Barrack is rolling in 2008. He stole the stoner vote from Ron Paul, he got an endorsement from every Kennedy sober enough to show up for the photo op and he raised $30 million. His face is the favorite of news editors nationwide. He is, to put it bluntly, the new Reagan everyone on the other team has been looking for. He brings fun back to the game.

Tomorrow he will beat Hillary just like the underdog Giants beat the over-hyped Patriots

Hillary campaigned like a deer in the headlights after South Carolina. Maybe it was the hubris of her failure to control Bill’s addiction to celebrity. Maybe she is just trapped in a bubble, run by the two least capable political activist demographics in U.S. history: Women and Gays. I any case, she was Nixon the conqueror for a while, but now she is just McGovern the crybaby. She will be lucky to get a VP slot on Obama’s ticket. The odds are changing. Old is new and new is old.

Hillary outpolled McCain by a 100,000 votes in the Florida primary and that fact should have been her public message ever since. She never mentioned it though, and now it is too late. After Carolina, Hillary just flittered around with a worn out stump speech and a bright yellow jacket.

Obama will run the Democrats’ table after Super Tuesday, but he remains a hard underdog against McCain. An absolute long shot, like Giacomo in the derby last year - a laughingstock entry at fifty–to-one.

Unless she reclaims a commanding lead by midnight on Super Tuesday, Hillary will be gone to the dustbin of POTUS campaign history. McCain is the man to beat and the place to beat him will be on his own turf, right here in Arizona. The person who can beat McCain is a woman, but she is not from New York.

Governor Napolitano is the woman you will want to watch now. Napolitano beat a Mormon Republican to become a western Democrat Governor. That trick might come in handy before the year is out. It is defintely a long shot that Janet Napolitano will second Obama's ticket. Fifty-to-one is about right. Still, it is an easy bet for The Cowboy. And free money at twice the odds.


Thanks for playing.

The Man Who Won The War

Captain Travis Patriquin,

We hardly knew ye ...

Capt. Patriquin devised a cartoon solution to our challenging and, up to then, failing presence in Iraq. He was killed by an IED in December of 2006, but his ideas, his solutions and his “dumb it down for the politicians” attitude, are uniformly responsible for our national survival and the new trend of undeniable success in “The Sandbox”.

His stick figure presentation, titled “How To Win In Al Anbar” is something no one in the command chain, least of all at The W. House, wants us to celebrate. Your humble Cowboy, long tired of politicians abusing the label “hero”, offers this humble reminder of who the greatest hero of the W. Bush years is. Without him we would not be winning.

Mission accomplished Captain Patriquin.








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A Poll To End All Polls

An AP poll, January 23rd, determined the following (as quoted):

McCain is the favored candidate of women, men and voters who classify themselves as non-conservative
Clinton still leads among women and men, and non-liberals.

This game is FUN for the first time, in many, many years.

Quote Of The Week

The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and coal products of the present time."

-Rudolph Diesel  (Inventor of the Diesel engine, of course)

1895

The Enemy of A Nut-Job is My Friend

I have started a collection of illegally placed "Ron Paul" signage from the neighborhood. 

I have it, from my usually accurate sources,  that the local high school stoners have joined the 'Bong Paul' crusade due to his "Legalize Marijuana" platform. 

These promising young dissidents obviously enjoy hanging illegal political signage. Your humble host enjoys good political sport. The stoner kids giveth and The Cowboy taketh away....

This my top ten R.P.-inciting list. It was composed while waiting for a red light to turn green adjacent to an illegal campaign sign:

Top Ten Reasons why I love the 9/11 conspiring, vote stealing bastards that Ron Paul's paranoid supporters are always ranting against:

10)  The send The Teams  to kill savages before the reach our shore.

9) They fight about wether 2 or 4 parts per billion is the acceptable limit for toxins in my bath water.

8) My stocks are still up for the 12 months ended January 18th 2008

7) We make planes that don't blow up now, even when crashed so hard the wings are torn apart.

6) Our Doctors still cure more diseases than all the others on the planet combined.

5) Why obsess with Ron when we have TED ?

4) They Killed Elvis, but let Dave Alvin Live

3) Even you paranoid  R. P. freaks would be shocked at how close they watch you.

2) They already have iodine tablets stocked for my family, in case one gets through.

1) One doesn't get through.

Thanks for playing..

After New Hampshire

3:10 To Yorba Linda

The Republican/Fox News machine has made seeding national hatred against Hillary a number one priority for the past decade. Suddenly now the Democratchiks are not far behind in the hunt.  On the road to New Hampshire no one considered a comparison between Hillary and the other most hated candidate in American history. In so doing, they have made the campaign fun again.

The whole wagon train of POTUS campaign sluttery, on both sides, has a lust for some lovable new Reaganesque candidate.  The desire is stronger than the hunger of the undead for flesh. The sentimental Reagan seekers form zombie packs as they wander the streets of primary states.  While many on the left think he has been found. Many on the right cry that he has not.

The one truth both sides embrace is that HILLARY IS THE NEW NIXON, and it is true, but not necessarily, as they hope, because we won't have her to kick around much longer. Any journalist who hasn't tried to understand how she has survived the attacks and why she is still in the game at all, should be punished. Their flaming credentials should be shot off the suberbowl halftime stage, from the same canon that fired Hunter S. Thompson's ashes over the Maroon Bells. Because the answer to that little question is the key to the entire current election cycle. Reagan may have been clothed in a thin cover of teflon, but Hillary is Up-Armored, sandbox heavy.

Speaking of The Good Doctor: You might recall 1968. (When you were two). In that fateful year, coming back from a long decade of nearly unanimous, bi-partisan public hatred, Richard Nixon kicked ass American style. In less than a year he painted the battlefield with the blood of his enemies. His enemies being absolutely every public person from both parties and a small naive parade of horehound independents.

It wasn't these sissy preacher boys we have today, either....

He kicked George H.W. Bush's ass before Easter; He kicked George Romney's Ass; He beat Wallace and Humphrey senseless, simultaneously, in one day. Richard Nixon, the most hated man in American politics, beat Ronald Reagan, the most beloved, like a baby harp seal on an ice floe. Hillary is a lot like him, and people should pay attention before they get knocked down.

Nixon was dark, strange and universally loathed. He never slept and he ate raw meat each day for breakfast. He never forgot that every public and private political figure in America was his sworn enemy. He knew, as a result, that the only people he owed political favors to were the voters who had listened to their survival-seeking hearts when they defied the polls to elect him. 

He ended up doing  what had to be done, for the most part, regardless of partisan arrogance and corporate influence.  He ran a mean White House, and regardless of what your party loyalty forces you to believe about the most hated candidate prior to Hillary, he saved America. He saved your ass before you turned six. 

A Place Called Hopeless

We are almost perfectly hypnotized by the bland timidity and paper bag packaging of POTUS campaign "journalism".  So much so that any instance of ACTUAL HUMANITY causes media dick-heads nationwide to blow their gaskets and spew special alarmist reports about their own ongoing lack of sophistication as observers.

The New Media is a weak and joyless reflector of the aforementioned generic packaging. So when Senator Clinton cried on the eve of the New Hampshire primary it sent shockwaves through the entire system. It was like she used a word that neither O'Reilly nor Blitzer could find in their partisan dictionaries. That curious national feeling in the news after New Hampshire was actually a stiff blast of Oxygen sneaking into the broadband. The early feeds were wrong across the board - the story happened first and was written after.  

Actually, what sparked the voters'  reaction was the modus delecto of Hillary's near-tears moment.  That little lapse exposed a small truth that is too complicated to ever be captured by a mainstream  American  journalist. But voters sensed the themes.

Clinton was upset for the same reason Nixon was when he gave his famous "checkers" speech. Runaway punditry has aided everyone in the fight to break Hillary down.  Her enemies, like Nixon's, need the help, because no one can beat her in a fair fight. Her enemies have sliced a thousand cuts into her American "legitimacy" and political media hacks have provided the razors by allowing her to be the only allowable punching bag. The result is a passive national accusation that the Good Senator is too political to be President. 

Yeah - wait, what?

She is not only perfectly attackable, she is the only one who is attackable at all without accusations of severe political-incorrectness, such as racism, religious prejudice or anti-Americanism. Enough voters will continue to knee-jerk to her because of those very attacks and the distinction of toughness they create between her and the other candidates. 

Likability Is Overrated In The Smoke

Zogby's polls "failed" infamously in New Hampshire because they consisted of a person talking to another person.  Polls happen on the phone, live, in clean well-lighted places. They were conducted in the open, in front of Internet and TV screens. The media grossly forgets, that their screens are not windows to the real world. The New Ballot - boxes may have wifi for ease-of-fix, but as long as they still have the old fashioned curtains, we are gonna be o.k.

The polls "failed" because when the curtains slide shut, a human heart beats alone, one time, with no media and no screens. In that instant enough voters look through the real window. Outside it is a dark and stormy night. Outside the toughest ten years of all of our lives started last week. The markets are trembling and this is no game. Outside, the savages are coming.

That Woman won, behind the curtains, and she will continue to win, because she has an un-nuanced, un-speechified reality of character that only the ancient mariner McCain can possibly try and equal. Senator Hillary R. Clinton is the toughest, meanest, most politically hated mutherfucker since Nixon. She will not apologize for being too political to be President.  YOU my new friend should be grateful for it, because unless you have twenty million in the Cayman Islands - YOU and I are Checkers. We are the dog.  She will destroy every comer when the curtains are closed. And then? 

She Will Save The Dog.

And I, for one, will be at her inauguration. I am the only moderate American who publicly supported her from the beginning, (which was a long, long time ago...in a galaxy far, far away...) There will be plenty of room for me on the stand. It will be an unnaturally warm winter's day.  I will have a small flask of whiskey but I will only share pulls with Bill. 

Even the rat Carville will be buying me drinks, come the day. You all will. I will become the Innaugaural's  proxy celebratory drunk. A lone revelor, breaking down the stiff and weird new decorum of America for all the world to see. I will have my flak jacket on under my 'respectable moderate cloth coat', upon which I will proudly wear the American flag pin I stole fair and square from Ronald Reagan's oval office. Beneath it I will have a tiny banner, made just for the occassion. That one will be a picture of Nixon and it will say:

Save the Dog. Save the World.

Thanks for playing.

 

Election Times

Election Times is Come!

Here, at the barn, iTunes is on permanent dedicated access standby, for background music support. The three young 'uns are sent off to the big State College; a dowager's long day theater group; and some kind of secular kiddie care with the new double learnin' and every-day-all-day option. Pure Hawaiian Coffee, by the kilo, is cached in the cupboards. Anchor Steam beer and Old Portero Whiskey  are stacked like cordwood in the halls. 

It's the New Weather now,  if'n  you believe it or not.  Spring come early this year, so if your corn ain't in, you best be dragging you Rose-o-Sharron for that great western Garden of Eden or you'll be croppin tubers afore the bowl day comes.

The official BOAC election watch season has begun....

An Open Letter to Iowa

There is sad absence of candidate voices that offer any real connection to a nervous America this season.  Regardless of party loyalties or economic demographics, we share a common tension this week as we watch the early polling.

Publicly we smile and show confidence in our chosen party or candidate, while privately we all mourn a light that has dimmed considerably. Iowans alone may determine who is the next President. This circumstance is a wonder to the remaining 298 million of us.  You will choose based on a campaign media onslaught the likes of which the rest of America has never seen.

But we know.

We know and we grow quiet this week as we watch and we wonder. We wonder if you even live in the same America as we do.

We wonder: Do you see through the posed Life Magazine style head-shots? We wonder, can you sacrifice a vote defined by faith in your religion, to cast a vote for a leader more likely to understand and thus protect the best interests of all Americans of all faiths? Do you parse out the shallow moments of smiling likability to see the rough insolence of effective warfighting global leadership?  Do you have the integrity to cross a line of loyalty, because you know in your heart that what is right is so distant from what is easy ? Can you look through the needle eye and distinguish a wealthy egoist from a humble honorable patriot? Will you in end vote for someone, or will you remain caught up in the storm of allegiance to party clique, and vote against  those you are now so well trained to despise? 

We offer you Iowans our hope this new year. Hope we cannot find in the embarrassment of dissemination our party machinery has become.  We drive through cities that have more cars than your entire state; more jobs; more criminals; more unemployed; more wounded veterans; more advertising signage; more poluution; more arts; more corruption; more greed; more steel; more churches and more sin than all of Iowa (and New Hampshire) combined.

We walk seashores you only see in fleeting visits and from them we watch the sun turn across a horizon shared with our allies, our rivals and our savage foes. We look across the empty place where the World Trade Center was, over a polluted bay to see Liberty's maternal host standing in darkness, shuttered by politicized fear. We watch over the parched borderlands and witness daily a human wave of (almost entirely christian) refugees from failed and failing nations to the south.

We close our eyes, and we feel sad, and we are nervous. It will be a tough year for America. It will be a tough decade. We hope you know that. We want to make certain you do know that we believe in Iowan's ability to choose, and choose well, because, for just this moment, you are all we can believe in.

Thanks for your consideration.