In my opinion, the past 66 days have been among the most dramatic in US political history – a span marking the distance between the election of Republican Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat (and celebrations from Fox News marking the apparent death of health reform) to the final passage of a reform bill via reconciliation today.
I have never seen such a dramatic swing of fortune in Washington, with Democrats apparently half in the grave two months ago only to stage a rapid turn-around, and toss their Republicans foes into the same hole face first.
For anyone who may have noticed, my blog here has been fairly quiet of late.
This is due to me working on a fiction project which has been gestating literally for years—around seven by my count—and during the past few weeks has been growing almost daily. I hope to get the story (dubbed “Project One” for my purposes here) put to bed and submitted by September, which judging from the current rate of progress should be doable.
But in the meantime, if others are wondering why my output of political screeds has been lax lately, well, now you know why.
I love America. I truly do. After all, it’s my home.
America is also a truly great country built on the labor (some voluntary, some not) and sacrifice of millions of people over a span of 234 years. The social progress made by Americans over the past five decades has also been astonishing.
However, I am stymied by those on the right who constantly trumpet the meme of “American exceptionalism,” as if every day they fail to do so could prompt an eagle to plummet from the sky, struck down by a lack of recognition from its fellow citizens. And nobody wants that on their conscience.
Yet we still get crap like Mitt Romney’s latest book with the loaded title, “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” which among other things is a slap at Barack Obama for trying to repair many foreign policy bridges torched by the Bush Administration over the past eight years. Nevertheless, Mittens is clearly on the American Exceptionalism Express so look for him to beat this particular drum early and often throughout the '12 presidential campaign.
And make no mistake, Romney will be running – both for POTUS, and away from his own record.
After all, it would allow Palin to do two of her favorite things in one stroke: pump the media cash cow, and craft a tightly edited narrative to present herself in a scope of her own perceptions.
So for her, it’d be a win-win. I just find it deeply ironic that for someone who’s consistently moaned about the cultural evils of the Left Coast, Palin sure seems to have grown enamored with it.
"I hope Senate Democrats tonight vote for their own 'pay fors' and show Americans that they are committed to fiscal discipline. I will be watching them closely and checking off the hypocrites one by one.”
– US Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Uh, so I guess that means you’ll begin with yourself after playing chicken with people’s lives while trying to score political points over an extension of unemployment benefits? You sir, are a disgrace packing exactly the same amount of functional brain cells you indicate above.
