2010 mid-term election recap

Apparently I have once again over-rated the common decency and good sense of a significant cross-sectional share of the electorate, Right, Middle and Left alike.

2010 election prognostication

Pounding a stake in the sand with my crystal balls.

California 2010 Election Voter Guide

From a Progressive point of view.

Hipparchia, this one’s for you

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Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid on the Public Option

Dear Madam Speaker and Mr. Majority Leader;

Passing a health insurance reform bill without a public option is poor policy. It is also political suicide.

Dandelion Wine

When life gives you dandelions, make dandelion wine.

José’s Cousin’s Chilies

Being a life-long obsessive omnivore with a penchant for unusual tastes, it isn’t often anymore that I come across a new edible. But at the end of last summer one of the Mexicans on the block offered to show me a special chili pepper plant he was growing and it turned out to be unlike anything I’d ever encountered.

Rahm Emanuel was wrong: Leftists who target Democrats are not “retarded”

Because the retarded mentally challenged have a legitimate physical reason for being sometimes slow on the uptake. Intelligent, educated, politically sophisticated Leftists have no excuse for their behavior.

Bill Clinton confession: “I had no clue what I was doing”

Or words to that effect.

Endgame looms for health care reform battle

During this prolonged struggle, Obama and the Democratic Congressional leadership have been roundly excoriated and condemned by both the Right and the Left. From the Right they’ve been called socialists, communists, fascists, micromanagers, Big Government promoters, Tax-and-Spend Liberals, and every possible denigrating term one can conceive. From the Left they’ve been called cowards, fools, shills, sell-outs, insurance industry tools, Republicans in Dem clothing, and every other possible denigrating term one can conceive including a mocking accusation of being engaged in “11 dimensional chess.” With condemnations coming furiously from both directions, little wonder the Bewildered Middle is losing confidence in Obama as well as Democrats in general and government as a whole.

But it appears that Obama and the Big Dems are playing quite a different strategy that anything their accusers have imagined, one borrowed not from sainted political or social philosophers but rather from The Greatest boxer ever; Mohammed Ali. This health care reform exercise has been, more than anything, a classic application of the Rope-A-Dope.