Third of July Musings

The streets were empty on a Saturday night, as Plot and Duck drove to the East Bay for dinner at their favorite Persian place and a show at The Marsh Berkeley. Dinner was good, the show was good, empty Bay Bridge, no traffic in either direction. People must be out of town for the Fourth of July.

At dinner Plot and Duck were talking about President Obama. Plotnik truly does not want to feel disappointed in this man. He knows that he holds Obama to a stricter standard than the mediocre-at-best norm by which previous presidents have been judged. Obama's election seemed to promise so much, so fast.

What we have gotten is progress, but compromised down to very little, on a few issues like national health care, but on the great issues we seemed poised to tackle: little. Or nothing. Or nothing, disguised as something.

Whose fault is it? Who knows anymore? Republicans, certainly, and Americans willing to listen to tea party distortions of the truth wrapped up in patriotic nonsense.

But where is leadership on immigration reform? Tax code reform? Election finance reform? Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are we participating in bombing Libya? How can we fire teachers and close libraries and kill preschool lunch programs? How can we bankrupt states instead of raising taxes to help them pay for all the programs we all want and use? Where are leadership and solid stands on the most important problems our country faces?

Plotnik heard a Republican congressman from South Carolina say yesterday that education was over-rated, that kids come out of college knowing no more than when they went in. This was to rationalize huge cuts in education spending. Really.

Osama bin Laden is dead, hoorah! We did it! We promised we'd punish them, and we did. So how about punishing the finance thugs who came within a whisker of bringing down the financial stucture of the entire world, instead of marijuana growers in Humboldt County? How about realizing that the Democratic Party is as corrupt and beholden to special interests as the Republican party?

How about admitting something that is obvious to everyone: the internet golden egg has hatched out and changed the world of commerce. All those jobs you talk about bringing back are gone forever. It happened a lot sooner to some than others -- want to talk about songwriters? -- but everyone has been affected. Don't you want to buy the cheapest car? Book? Airline seat? Computer? Cell phone? When was the last time you spent $12 for a movie, instead of watching it on Netflix? And did you spend $19.97 for your HDMI cable at Radio Shack or $0.60 on line?

So what are we going to do about it? Ignore it, right? Pretend none of this has happened? This is exactly what we will do.

Unless...and I hate to say this, knowing there is probably some guy with thick glasses and a red, white and blue cap stuck in a cubicle in Chevy Chase, Maryland, reviewing every word that is spewed into the blogosphere -- we have another crisis.

We don't move 'til we have to. Bush was SO ignorant, so 1950s. He had a chance to move us decades forward, and instead he took us back to Leave it to Beaver. Obama, too, has had a chance to bring an American vision to the world, after we pulled ourselves out of the financial compost pile, but he is quite possibly over his head too.

Plotnik is still in love with Obama, The Promise. He is willing to wait a little longer for Obama, The Leader. But if Obama doesn't wake up we will all wind up with General Petraeus or somebody like him in 2012. Is this what we want?

Maybe we do. Maybe we miss Ike. Maybe we really do need a tyrant to tell us to shut the f___ up and do what he says. Bush tried, but was too ignorant, and Obama doesn't appear to have those kinds of instincts.

And the Plotzers are in last place and deserve to drop lower.

Anyway, Plotnikkies: Happy Third of July from Saint Plotniko. America First Class. A Sparkler (and a bottle of Il Gioiello 2007 Mourvedre with notes of blackberry and persimmon) in Your Glass.