Wanted : Curmudgeon

Oh. Wait. I've found one. Me, still too busy, cranky and disgruntled. And the news of the week is all making me crankier. Is the world going to hell in a handbasket? Do I simply disagree with the issues at hand? Feel free to guess.

Did you see and/or hear this interview of an Obama surrogate by Chris Matthews? Argh. The outline of the interview is Matthews asked surrogate to name some of Obama's legislative accomplishments. Surrogate was unable to answer the question.

Plays right in to the continuing Clinton effort to cast Obama as like a all-talk no-action light-weight. There were so many possible answers to this question, from the truthful "I'm an idiot and I don't know" to the also truthful "Well, we all know the Democrats have done NOTHING in the Senate or House in the past year but kiss the collective Republican rear end" to the still truthful "Obama is a freshman Senator who has had little time to accomplish anything, particularly given the little support any liberal agenda would receive from his fellow Democrats and viperous Republican colleagues".

It's sad that the Obama campaign sent out someone so supremely unprepared for the very likely question. It's amusing that, following the interview, Keith Olbermann asked Matthews the very same question, to which Matthews also had no reply. Don't ask questions if you don't know the answers.

This headline rolled by on my RSS feeder: Israeli MP blames quakes on gays. Yep, I sure believe that God is up there, rocking our little ball of dirt because She's ticked off that Israel has decriminalized private sexual activity.

If you believe in God and thump that Bible or Torah with confidence, please read it carefully enough and with heart open so you can see that She has better things to do than send earthquakes our way over something so insignificant. Now, if He were making us shake, rattle, and roll because we let children starve to death or because we torture people for political gain or because we are ravaging the beautiful ball on which we live, that maybe I could believe. But sexual activity between two loving adults rocks only the bed they are in, in my humble opinion.

Oh. You wanted me to go back and address the substance of the shot that Obama has none and is simply airy fairy speechifying? My reply would be a question: Was Martin Luther King Jr. merely all talk and no action? Action does not take place in a vacuum. Action must be prompted by something. Words can lead to action. Inspiring words usually do lead to action, in the right time and place. Increasingly, I believe that now is the right time and place.

Do I believe that Obama will accomplish all he's promised to do? No, because no presidential candidate ever does. They don't rule by fiat. They need a cooperative legislative branch to move forward with their agenda, such as Bush has this past year. But I do believe that Obama has the intellect, moxie, and inspirational message (in addition to his legal, legislative, and organizing experiences) to push us to push forward. Changes won't happen in this nation until WE hold our representatives accountable for what we want to have happen but doesn't.

With Obama leading the way, I am filled with the possibility that if he is unable to remove US from Iraq, he will rally us to remove our representatives from office until there are sufficient votes to support the majority public will to do so.

Finally, if you doubt the Presidential campaign outcome matters, I point out (again) that the Supreme Court matters, and its composition matters, and its composition is darn conservative at the moment. Witness the FISA and Katrina/insurance company rulings to know some of what is at stake here.

Liz