Progressing forward

It's Veterans Day, and after having spent several hours watching inspiring reminders of days gone by when America faced a crisis by saying "one for all and all for one", it's back to reality.

During the past week we were treated to George Bush shaking hands with the new Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi in the Oval Office. In reality everybody thinks he's a bigger lame duck than Daffy after a tussle with that Abomidable Snowman character, but we can still hope our elected officials might learn to just get along.

Ms. Pelosi looked quite prim, formal and cordial but everybody wants to know how the dems will really behave after six years of trash-talk. It's wrong to take every nutty comment uttered by Howard Dean as the voice of the entire party (even if he's the voice of the entire party) since such a broad brush approach ignores other points of view. For instance, there are many current views over at the Huffington Post where today's edition features the following headlines:

Veteran's Day Message To Karl Rove: Take Your Terror Scares and Shove Them Up Your Ass!

Hmm, don't remember too many scares coming directly from Karl Rove, but we have seen a few coming from actual terrorists. Shall we save that line and send it to the victims from the next attack, or would that be tacky?

Here's another from some guy named Bob Cesca, who no doubt believes strongly in tolerance and bi-partisanship:

Time For A Big Ol' Cup Of 'Shut The F*** Up'

Of course he's referring to the quaint retort used on message boards. Fine, we understand Mr. Cesca's need to vent, but he's writing on a major liberal blog not the Democrat Underground. Hopefully his attitude represents a small minority of the new progressive wave just elected.

Oh, and by the way, the reason people say the "Democrat Party" as opposed to the "Democratic Party" has to do with logic, something Mr. Cesca seems to lack. For example, Republicans belong to the "Republican Party", Democrats belong to the "Democrat Party". Personally I've never connected the later to 'rats' anymore than I've connected Republicans to "repukes", etc, but it's interesting Mr. Cesca would think that way.

The term "Democratic" refers to a process, not a party. It also refers to a form of governance providing everyone a voice, even the minority, which based on the first sentence in Mr. Cesca's second paragraph he knows absolutely nothing about. Well that's ok, there will be time to learn. By the early returns about two years or so.

THE OTHER SHOE 11/11/06

Al-Reuters is speculatin' on whether VP Cheney will be the next figure to exit stage right. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that one out--the dems are in control, there's no real damage from him leaving and he doesn't seek the presidency. Why not get a viable candidate in place before the impeachment begins, etc. There are some obvious side effects from such a strategy, but that's for another time.

The story read as if Bush might in effect fire Cheney. Unless he's actually Hitler, that can't happen since Cheney was elected. It's the Veep's call. But I'm sure that fly-fishing stream is starting to look better and better.