PENSHILLVANIASo CNN projects that Senator Clinton will carry Pennsylvania. I won't be staying up to update, but I had Hillary winning by 8 percentage points on the continuing Democratic political death march towards November.
The issue with this down to a one party horserace is that the press who continue to be unimpressive and unintellectual and just show incredible resiliency in just trying to make this a scandalfest of Paris Hiltonesque proportions, who misremembers or misspeaks in a game of "gotcha" for the highest international stakes.
These are two candidates who have incredibly large negatives, some of which are unintentional, accidents of birth in a nation still growing away from sexist and racist notions. Hell, less than 50 years ago it was a challenge to elect a Catholic. But some which are accidents exacerbated by personality, choice of company and a 24/7 news cycle.
Clinton will argue she wins the big states, while Obama chips away in the small states and caucuses which are driven by Democratic activists and party insiders. How she'll have the chutzpah to attack the insiders is beyond me, but we currently have a Skulls and Bonesman, son of a President who ran for President as an outsider so who knows. In many ways, thus far, this has been a civil, Civil War. I'm still not sure what any of the three candidates is going to do about major issues internal and external but I know that Hillary is partial to Blue Moon wheat beer, Obama to green tea and I would just assume that McCain has a Budweiser while watching the end of the Suns game.
I've got to the point that I can't watch a debate or a stump speech, I keep waiting, keep waiting, but so far nothing. Nothing to inspire me to do anything but wait for 2012 and hope for the best. Just like going over your handlebars and hoping to land in the soft sand and not the asphalt.
WHAT IS CHINESE FOR LENI RIEFENSTAHL?China is in a weird place right now. In some ways, it is just entering the Industrial Revolution at a blinding pace, shedding it's Communist past very rapidly just keeping those lovely parts of Communism around, central financial planning and political repression. It's having it's own issues with the Warsaw Uprising, errh domination of Tibet and some really, really bad international PR, so bad they have to hire thugs in powder blue pajamas to run alongside the torch. There have got to be some comparisons made between the Berlin Olympics of 1936 and the Beijing Olympics 0f 2008. This is China's coming out party.
There is actual an Internet theory about how long a conversation takes place before it breaks down into analogizing about Nazism or Hitler, (Godwin's Law) but hear me out. China's economy is growing geometrically as it has thrown off the cuffs of socialism to produce the world's cheapest products through the world's most efficient cheap labor. Simultaneously it is building it's brain power, educational and physical infrastructure as it skips from the 19th to 21st century with the deftness of a prima ballerina. A rising star economically that will eventually have to move from it's robber baron like oligarchy to a less stratified consumer culture with the potential for a massive middle class hungering for oil, SUV's and big sides of beef from Texas. The terrifying part of this is something like auto ownership, currently Chinese auto ownership is the equivalent of the US in 1918, the idea of 1.3 billion Chinese owning cars simply boggles the mind, and all the Jangaweed oil in the world is not going to fuel those vehicles, and ANWR ain't going to solve the issue either.
So is China's lebensraum the petroleum supplies of the Middle East and Africa? Do the 100's of billions of American T-bills and interest building up eventually get played against the United States as oil runs up to $200 a barrel as America sleeps and plays the world policeman? Or are the Olympics of less evil intent, a chance to showcase the New China, beyond the Oriental backwards, racist stereotypes of bound feet, smoking opium and clever copycats. A China where Google, Microsoft and other large corporations of the information economy compete for the most highly trained scientists and technicians. What is curious is if these scientists and other intelligentsia can begin to drive social and economic change in China, in one of the great "what if's" in history, who knows what the outcome of WWII would have been if the great Jewish scientists had not been forced out of Germany by the anti-Semitism of Nazism. Will these scientists choose to march with their feet to the freedom of the West or Japan or Korea?t
These are interesting times, where at some points, China seems to be holding a lot of the cards. Still however there are issues on the horizon, a huge aging population in a country where social security is usually the back bedroom of your kid's apartment, the potential for environmental and health disasters that come from rapid growth and perhaps what has the most potential for the United States, the quest for rule of law and the hankering for freedom that comes when capitalism starts to infect the middle class. So is it the 1936 Olympics, I hope not, I'm not sure what the world would look like after World War III.
AH, WHISKEYOh, whisky you're the devil you're leading me astray over hills and mountains and to Amerikay.
There is nothing worse that someone running for President that wants to be a "regular guy". I'm a regular guy, and you don't want me to be President. I like whiskey, some people would say a little too much. Doesn't make me more likely to vote for someone who has a shot and a beer like a regular guy.
There is an amusing story about Hillary and McCain going vodka shot for vodka shot while overseas, I appreciate that more, this country needs to understand more that the opposing party is not the enemy and that there are more things that make us alike than make us different. Reagan and Tip O'Neill were known to tipple and tell Irish stories despite the battles that took place on Capitol Hill. These weren't photo ops, in fact it's how a lot of things get done. It's hard to think that there could be any civility or understanding that could come back to politics, given the last 20 years or so of politics, but especially the explicit weirdness that has come to the White House, particularly since the beginning of the Iraq War and the growth of stomp your feet, tantrum, blowhard, accusatory politics of the Bush administration. As Mayor Bloomberg was recently quoted saying, "at least we'll have an adult in the White House".
The point is, there's no reason for a "regular guy" (or gal) to be in the White House. Certainly we should be hoping for the extraordinary candidate, the Roosevelt, the Eisenhower, not another guy we want to have a beer with. Hell, I'm sure GW is great at a Ranger's game, didn't mean he wasn't the worst president of the past 8 decades who has mortgaged America's moral and financial future.
Oh yeah and Hillary, you're running for President of the United States not queen of Canada, can I suggest a nice American bourbon? A Knob Creek or Maker's Mark even? A Booker's if you are feeling particularly saucy.
