End of the End

This is the first time I have heard this term used by a blogger of the stature of Kos but his description is exactly correct about an emerging class of Democrat which I have always proudly identified with.

What would litmus test Democrats not like? (VA-Sen candidate James) Webb was a Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, and is a moderate- to conservative Democrat.

Or so I thought at the time. Since then, I’ve been pleasently surprised with Webb’s politics, exhibit A of the new breed of pragmatic Libertarian Democrats that I think can win tough territory long ceded by Democrats to the Republicans. Gay marriage? He doesn’t want government in your church. Abortion? He doesn’t want government in your doctor’s office. He doesn’t want government in your bedroom. And, just as importantly, he’s not too crazy about Big Business sticking their nose where it doesn’t belong either. (My emphasis)

We used to be called Jeffersonian Democrats and in some parts of the country we still are, but what Kos identifies as Libertarian Democrats is indeed a relatively new phenomenon.

If there are libertarian Republicans, why shouldn’t there be a faction of libertarian Democrats? I have always closely identified with the libertarian philosophy and in my early years self identified at the time (late 80s Reagan-Bush era) the serious dark clouds on the political horizon that drove me into the Democrats’ bosom. Tip O’Neill was House Speaker and in his twilight years, the end of an era I missed that was the Democrat Golden Age.

O’Neill drew his philosophical lineage from classic liberal beginnings dating back through decades of that Golden Age of FDR-Truman-Kennedy Democrats. There was a time when Massachussetts Liberalism was not a political slur and was identified as the ideology of the working man. Regular Joes voted in near unison behind Democrats who were patriotic, respected our historical liberal democracy and were known as moral leaders who looked out for the common good. My father spoke proudly of these folks in our house growing up. He loved Tip O’Neill and Teddy Kennedy and would teach me about these and other heroes of his day.

I was always a fan of American history and particularly the early history surrounding our Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson became my idol as a young student in Catholic school. I always thought he was the smartest of our Founding Fathers.  I just felt drawn to his story and over the course of my lifetime his interesting history with Sally Hemmings has come to be known and so we have learned more and my curiosity about the man has been rewarded with new facts to be added to the record.

After early dissapointment with the Clinton Administration I was driven first to independent status, followed by a sojourn into the Libertarian Party where I actually helped on some campaigns that did better than previous LP candidates ever did in Indiana.

After the September 11th attacks in 2001 I soon left the LP due to deep philosophical differences with a sect of Republican Lite (or Republican Dope Smokers to some of us) members of the party who supported the imperial impulses of the BushCo hordes. These folks hijacked the libertarian label and smeared the philosophy all at once.

I slowly drifted back home to the party of Jefferson in an effort to regroup and salve my political wounds. Mother’s milk and all. Then I noticed there were some like minds jumping onboard the Democrat Party who were newly awakened everyday folks concerned about the direction of our country and actively taking part in communication with like minded folks centered around the blogs in the Left Blogosphere.

It appears that a strain of libertarian democratic activism was created by the BushCo Constitutional Demolition Team and was in a growth phase. It was a combination of former activists coming home, new recruits, Republican defectors and other Libertarians taking refuge in the netroots movement.

Their common issues all share a basically libertarian view on a variety of topics. Pro choice, anti discriminatory, pro privacy rights, environmentally aware, pro entrepreneurial business and concerned for worker’s rights. In some way or another all of these issues have a libertarian philosophical point to be made.

I’m going to start self identifying with this term as it truly does fit me best. I gotta give a hat tip to Kos for coining the term, thank you for that. Chalk me up as yet another blogger pledging blogofascist solidarity with Our Leader and Royal Bloggishness Kos!!!

The blog-o-sphere can be a pretty rough and tumble place at times.  It can also be a pretty tight-knit community as well, and one of our friends, Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher, lost her mother this evening.  Please keep Jane and her family in your thoughts these next few days.

One of the greatest cliches ever invented is the phrase "the elephant in the living room". Since I am a VLM (Very Large Mammal) I like to use this phrase sometimes to refer to myself. It's a self deprecating humor defense mechanism to draw early attention to my considerable girth just so I can establish that I like fat jokes and have a sense of humor about my fat ass so that whoever is in the room that doesn't know me can feel at ease.

While I usually use that phrase for humorous purposes, occasionally I like to bring up actual subjects that the cliche fits to. One of those issues I would like to lay out for you now is the United Nations. We used to hear a lot about the UN and how evil and so omnipresent they would soon be RIGHT HERE! IN OUR STREETS!!! THE GOLDARN YEEWWWWW EENNNNNNNNNN HAS CAMPS! BUILT BY FEMA!!! IN BEECH GROVE!!!!

Fast forward to August 2005. Katrina pretty much lays waste to the idea that there are any FEMA camps. While I at first saw a few stories about some alleged actual FEMA camps operating in Oklahoma or something, it turns out it was some church run camp that FEMA was going to use, but then something happened and hardly anyone went there or no one did or a few did and then left or something. End of that conspiracy theory, check it off the list.

There used to be this near hysterical fear of an impending UN invasion by folks on the right. My survivalist cousin Eddie has always driven me crazy with these ideas he hears about in the Wingnutosphere and on shortwave radio late at night. We call shortwave and CB radio the Redneck Internet. These mediums are what talk radio aspires to be and where Limbaugh, Hannity and Beck all get their loopiest ideas. It's the source material.

So I take a listen to the shortwave recently and there is the usual mishmash of racist propaganda, pyramid schemes, antitax rebels, prosthelytizers, antigay diatribes and more wingnuttia deluxe, but none of the usual suspects from the anti UN crowd. What happened? Did the UN go away? The UN Building is still in NYC spawning more unpaid parking tickets than you can shake a fist at, what gives?

I know John Bolton is supposed to be overseeing the dismantlement of the UN and he sure is trying hard. His recent threat to cut the UN off made a kerfluffle for a moment, but that was taken as seriously as an errant fart in church by the altar boy (but thats a funnier personal story for another time). What this little incident did though was wake up the little mouse in my head and make it start sniffing around for some cheese.

So this leads to my elephant in the living room question. What were to happen if the United Nations voted to investigate Abu Ghraib, Haditha, Hamaniya and all the other killings, beatings and various sundry atrocities our troops have committed across the whole of Iraq? What if the International Criminal Court indicted George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, et al?

No one ever wants to discuss these and other questions, but the evidence exists out there. It is simply waiting to be investigated but why hasn't that happened? If we have lost so much stature in the world, why hasn't the international investigation of Abu Ghraib taken place? Where are the Human Rights Commission hearings? Where is the official action taking place in any of this? DC and London are not going to investigate themselves, and what little bit of invetigatory work has gone into these and other scandals always focus on the lowest ranked individuals responsible.

Just let that mouse run into the living room, I have some foreign visitors in there who need waking up.

I have three odd little creatures that inhabit my abode with me, this is the first time in a long time I was able to capture the rock star of the group, Oatmeal, on camera.  She usually runs at the sight of the camera as if she thinks it will steal her soul if used on her.  No she isn't Siamese like she appears, her parents were, and her brother Jesse Owens are all black cats, Oatmeal got her name because she was born the color of oatmeal. 

One of the blogs I read regularly is a great source for Deep Politics analysis called Singularity written by the always spot-on Kelley B.  In a post entitled Making Enemies Faster Than They Can Kill Them Of Kelley provides a fantastic overview of the foreign policy driven by its focus on worldwide control of the energy market.

The trouble with this policy is, of course, you are dealing with sovereign nations who have other ideas in mind than to kowtow to the boy king in the White House. 

They may have been able to hoodwink the world once with a regime change op in Iraq, but the same tricks just don't work twice once you yank the ball away from the UN like Lucy yanks the football from Charlie Brown in the old Peanuts comics. 

Our international friends will not let us do that with Iran, they know screwing with Iran will turn the Middle East into a raging bonfire.  This is why Condi Rice is spending so much time on diplomacy with the theocratic republic.  After all, theocratic regimes ought to stick together, even if they're of different faiths.

I'm gonna start using this blog to share some of my professional work stuff along with my political and other views on life in general. To start with, I am in the process of redeveloping a couple of websites for some long time friends and business associates, Jimmy Cain and Dan Niswander. Both are incredibly talented singer songwriters from Indianapolis, but have completely different musical backgrounds that I think perfectly showcase the talent Indianapolis has to offer.

Jimmy's site has been launched and is entitled Adventures in Hoosieria. Jimmy and I are going to keep the site updated about his professional acting and musical engagements, but also on life in Indiana circa 2006 and beyond. We live in one of the strangest cities in America and Jimmy is a bit of a ringleader for some of that strangeness. We will be posting reports from the freak show on there regularly as well as expounding on our favorite musical artists and tours.

Dan Niswander is a very entertaining musician and comedic actor. His project, Niswander, has been one of the bright spots in the musical tapestry of Indianapolis of the last several years and he has achieved cult favorite status in some circles. His shows are known for their high energy and intensity and are always a lot of fun for everyone that sees the band or his solo performances. He has taken his act to the Internet now and we are rapidly digitizing massive amounts of video from his archives for posting all over YouTube.

I am in the process of digitizing videos for both of these great friends of mine and will be posting more in the coming weeks on both of their sites, as well as on this blog. On that note, I present to you the first of several videos from Niswander, here is the video for Fun to the Nth Degree.

In a story about the mixed effects of newspaper blogs, we learn that newspaper sites and blogs are equal in popularity these days as sources for news among the 18-34 set.

It’s like what Eddie Murphy talked about in one of his comedy bits long ago. If a man walks out of the desert after many days, hungry, and you hand him a cracker, that man is gonna think it’s the best meal he ever had. Newspapers have been serving up crap for so long that even the most mediocre blogger conveys more newsworthy information than the average newspaper reporter.

The difference between bloggers and newspaper reporters and editors is in natural curiosity vs. professional news gatekeeping. Bloggers tend to mimic old school reporters who used to track down every remote bit of information about a given story before assembling the story for dissemination via the newspaper.

Modern reporters and editors are so obsessed with “the scoop” that they get sloppy in reporting, miss entire chunks of stories, ignore facts and inconvenient truths that don’t fit the standard narrative or defer to third party interests when reporting a story. This is true even before you begin the ongoing debate about partisanship in the editorial process. That is a whole other article on its own.

Blogs are always going to hold attraction to new junkies because blogs are instantaneous gratification. A newspaper has a production schedule, a blog has no time contraints. Newspapers have lots of filters between story and consumer.

Blogs have one person between story and reader. People do not like their information filtered and tampered with and newspapers have been caugt doing this far too many times for them to ever regain their full measure of credibility in the marketplace. The best newspapers can hope for is to continue to keep their star reporters that have managed to maintain their credibility.