Finally up for air

Well, it has been four months since my last post, and frankly, those of you who know me personally know what profound personal challenges have faced me and my family. To be honest, I do know that a fair number of souls read this blog (though with its lack of activity lately, probably far less.) However, I do not feel comfortable sharing intimate aspects of my life with a lot of strangers at this time, and if I were to write about my life, that would be a major topic. Suffice to say there are enormous challenges and a lot of beautiful moments every day, and I am grateful to friends/musicians (from very close to fairly distant) and family for providing support, laughs and love.

My son continues to astound and amaze, and will be starting his sophomore year of college in the fall at 16 (yup!). He is a poli sci major, and one area we have really bonded in is our shared love/morbid fascination for the political process. He has perhaps as good a mind as anyone I know in these areas, and is incredibly well-informed. So, since he and I email back and forth and post to many political sites, I thought I would revive the blog portion of the site as a political commentary. I do understand that some of you will take offense, that rare breed of modern jazz loving right-wing Republican, so please note that my music is a separate beast from this, and you can keep enjoying it, even if you think I am a woefully misguided lover of the "Black Muslim presumptuous, arrogant, vacuous celebrity" Barack Hussein Obama. Surveys show that 4/5 of country music, nascar and baseball fans are conservatives and 3/4 of jazz and basketball fans are progressives, but that still leaves a lot of progressive country music, nascar and baseball fans and a fair number of reactionary jazz and basketball aficionados. Anyway, with that caveat, here's a post to start off the political thoughts for this heated season:

This election is the death rattle for the ugly Nixon Southern strategy begun in 1968 and "improved on" by the Bushes and Lee Atwater/Karl Rove and their relentless character assassination. Other than Reagan, GOP have not had a candidate they feel good about since Eisenhower. The trick is to demonize and caricature the opposition, aided and abetted by the right wing echo chamber and the corporate media.

This will be the ultimate test of that, with a brilliant, young and charismatic, inspiring change agent versus an old, cranky and mentally diminished status quo agent. What makes this the stuff of novels is that Obama, for all his exceptional gifts, fights the reality of his name, appearance and background.

If you had told the Atwater/Rove/Davis crew that they would run a generic "maverick" seasoned Republican war hero against a Biracial man whose last name is one consonant from the demon Osama, whose middle name is the same as the demon Saddam, whose first name sounds like a bird call, who was raised by an atheist single mom in Hawaii and raised for a while in Indonesia, a Harvard Reviewed, inner-city Chicago law professor...

Well, the generic matchup there would have McCain up by 20 on Obama, so it speaks volumes to the strength and power of Obama and the disaster that is McCain that Obama leads. All those factors listed above should be worth 25 points to McCain, so the question should be, why is HE not doing better against "black muslim arrogant celebrity Barack Hussein Obama?"

Any dying animal will fight to the death, and with so many potential criminal cases pending against the Bush crime family, it is no wonder the GOP are fighting ugly and low road. If Obama gets in, some of them will end up prosecuted and in jail...W cannot pardon everyone, and last I checked, he cannot pardon himself.

Stay Tuned...