Even though my Christmas behavioral tendencies are Scrooge-like, I've spent some of my free time recently doing a limited amount of Christmas shopping and haven't spent much time following current events. The blogs have been neglected as a result.
It won't be long until we reach out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new day, which is January 20th if memory serves. Anyway, we're about a month away. Barry "Mutt" Obama hasn't even been sworn in yet and he's already got people on both sides upset. The lefties are pissed off that he's not as liberal as they thought he would be, and so are the rightwingers. The latest affront to the left is the selection of lardass Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the inaugural ceremony; Rick is one of the evangelunical opponents of gay marriage.
I don't know why people are upset, though. If there was one consistent theme running through Mutt's presidential campaign it was that he wanted to reunite the country in an effort to restore its greatness to pre-W levels. This would by necessity involve governing from somewhere in the middle rather than from a liberal extreme. Mutt has proven he's a shrewd politician if nothing else, so he's bound to have figured out the Dennis Kucinich agenda's a loser. Mutt wants to be the proverbial "president of all Americans." The sweeping and mopping that will be involved in the restoration effort is enough work without added burdens of placating every vested interest that comes along.
The Bush-Cheney administration, with Karl Rove at the controls, was devoted to keeping the diehard conservative deadenders happy and to hell with everybody else. We can see where that got us, so I say more power to Mutt. If he can't win friends on both sides, it won't be for lack of trying.
Conservatives are busy trying to shoot Mutt down before he takes office because they're also realizing he's not going to be as liberal as expected. The worst Republican fear is that somehow Obama and the people in his administration will figure out how to fix everything the Repubs have broken, and the relative tranquility and prosperity of 1998 will be restored. It's not likely to happen, but I can see how the prospect would scare the shit out of the GOP. The last thing on earth they want is a President Barack Obama with an 80 percent job approval rating.
Meanwhile, in Iraq, the biggest recent news involves a guy named Muntadhar al-Zeidi, a television reporter who threw both his shoes at W and has become a folk hero as a result. From what I gather, throwing a shoe at someone in Iraq is comparable to shooting the extended middle finger in this country - the ultimate disrespectful gesture. I didn't know that. Anyway, Al is the most popular guy in Iraq these days, and people are cheering television replays of the incident. Al is like Joe the Plumber in this country, except his fifteen minutes of fame got him arrested.
Another name in the news is Caroline Kennedy, who wants the Senate seat Mrs. Clinton will vacate if she becomes Secretary of State. Like everything else lately, this has conservatives pissed off. Frankly, I think they need to calm down and get a life. Repubs are questioning Caroline's qualifications for the position, which is fairly ridiculous coming from people who a few weeks ago were praying that Saxby Chambliss would win his runoff election in Georgia. When your party's Senate standard bearer is Mitch McConnell, how tough can the job requirements be ? Really, name one Republican senator you'd hire to do any other job.
According to a headline at Huffington Post, it looks like Al Franken might win the Minnesota recount and take Coleman's Senate seat. Al wrote Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations, a great book that's on my Recommended Reading list. When it comes to writing about politics, Al is in the same class as the late Molly Ivins for my money.
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