Uncelebrating July 4th

I've thought and thought, but I just can't come up with anything to say or show to mark our national day.

I love my country, and there are still good people in it - but when I look beyond our little home and neighborhood, what I see is a nightmare version of America, a Bizarro world turned upside down, inside out.  Not the country I grew up in.

Instead of a republic, we live now in a corrupt and corrupting dictatorship centered on the worship of a conceited egomaniac without a conscience, supported and sustained by supine legislators and venal judges.  He is the complete antithesis of everything an American president should be, a monumental disgrace to the office held by Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, and so many other honest, honorable, decent men.

The dictatorship is not yet total, but his lickspittle lackeys, verminous henchmen, and deluded supporters are straining every nerve to make it so.  If they succeed, we shall have, not the blessings of liberty, but the scourging of a theocratic and plutocratic autocracy.  Which is just what the Founding Fathers feared and tried to prevent.  

The truth is, both the right and the left have gone far wrong, and no matter how the politics turn out, the old order of thing in this country and abroad has been shattered to pieces and will never return.  The clock never runs backward.  

This old man has outlived his time.  Things may get better eventually, or they may get worse - either way, there's nothing I can do to affect the course of events.  With the infirmities of advancing age, it's all we can do here just to keep ourselves and our little home in working order.

I could say many other things about politics and society, history and morality, but that's all I can manage for now - except a prayer:  God bless America and God help us all.

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I don't feel like singing today, but here is the late, great Kate Smith with the song she made famous when my dad was in England serving with the U. S. Air Force, and my mom was working in a defense plant here in Texas, turning out artillery shells:

Bonus, 5 p.m.:  Former President Bill Clinton has issued an encouraging statement on America 250 and the state of the country.  Excerpt:

Our Founders were wise when they gave us our mission to form a more perfect union. They knew America would never be perfect but could always be better. That’s what they meant by “more perfect.” We’ve done that by being courageous enough to acknowledge our flaws and missteps—and then bold enough to leave them behind for brighter tomorrows.

That’s the lesson of our first 250 years: we can always do better. In how we treat one another, in person and online; in building a better future for ourselves, our families, and our communities; and in standing up, showing up, and speaking out for our democracy.

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DNC Day 3 Highlights

See Politifacts for fact-checking of statements made by Walz and others
at last night's convention.

Hope and joy are here again!  It was a great night for speaking and cheering at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  PBS provides a short recap of the evening:

 

CBS News Face the Nation provides full speeches by handsome Hakeem Jeffries (he's gay, really?!!), Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Oprah Winfrey, my man Pete Buttigieg (looking and sounding very presidential), and Coach Tim Walz:

Ya know, fellas, this is the most fun we Democrats have had in years.  What a blast!  We should do this more often.

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Three Presidents Agree

NBC recorded an informal meeting of the three ex-Presidents - Obama, Bush, and Clinton - at Arlington National Cemetery on the afternoon of Inauguration Day, and you'll like what they said:

 

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Bill Clinton Honored by GLAAD

Clinton accepts the award, flanked by Chelsea

Former President Clinton accepted GLAAD's "Advocate for Change" Award at the GLAAD Awards in Los Angeles on Saturday, making a moving speech in which he praised gay-rights activists for helping America progress towards "a more perfect union" - and credited daughter Chelsea and her gay friends with helping him evolve in his views.  The speech is quite good, well worth your time:



In March of this year, Clinton wrote an editorial for the Washington Post, urging the Supreme Court to overturn DOMA, an act which he signed into law in 1996 after being passed by overwhelming majorities in the Republican-controlled Congress. Excerpt:

In 1996, I signed the Defense of Marriage Act. Although that was only 17 years ago, it was a very different time. In no state in the union was same-sex marriage recognized, much less available as a legal right, but some were moving in that direction. Washington, as a result, was swirling with all manner of possible responses, some quite draconian. As a bipartisan group of former senators stated in their March 1 amicus brief to the Supreme Court, many supporters of the bill known as DOMA believed that its passage “would defuse a movement to enact a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which would have ended the debate for a generation or more.” It was under these circumstances that DOMA came to my desk, opposed by only 81 of the 535 members of Congress. . . .

When I signed the bill, I included a statement with the admonition that “enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination.” Reading those words today, I know now that, even worse than providing an excuse for discrimination, the law is itself discriminatory. It should be overturned.

Marriage News Watch, 3/11/13

Matt Baume of the American Foundation for Equal Rights reports:




Read Clinton's complete statement here.


Also, here's a chart of states currently working on marriage equality from Policy Mic, via Joe.My.God.:

Click to enlarge.

Revealed: Romney's Tax Plan

Click for details, you really should.

Honk to Joe.My.God.

FYI: The second presidential debate begins tonight at 9 Eastern, 8 Texas time. You can watch it live on YouTube, choosing from among several live streams.


BONUS: A couple of must-see videos:

Convention Recap: Three Speeches

For reasons I'll explain in a later post, I missed watching the convention this week, but overnight here I've been catching up with the major speeches and things. Probly all you boys have seen these already, but in case you missed them too, here's my three favorite speeches from the convention.

1. Zach Wahls pays a short but fervent tribute to gay families and "My Two Moms":



Money quote:

Mr. Romney, my family is just as real as yours.

2. Bill Clinton demonstrates that he still has the golden tongue when it comes to oratory, and teaches the Republicans a little something about arithmetic:



Money quote:

Don’t you ever forget, when you hear them talking about this, that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office, and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic.

It was a highly inconvenient thing for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was four.

It’s arithmetic. We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double-down on trickle-down.

Now, think about this. President Obama’s plan cuts the debt, honors our values, brightens the future of our children, our families, and our nation. It’s a heck of a lot better. It passes the arithmetic test and, far more important, it passes the values test.

My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we’ll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take- all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we’re-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

3. The honeymoon being long over now, there's not the same excitement about Obama's campaign this time around - but he still had your Head Trucker in happy tears by the time he finished:




The money quote, which references the gays three times, among other things:

We don’t think the government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that the government is the source of all our problems, any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.

Because, America, we understand that this democracy is ours.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That’s what we believe.

So you see, the election four years ago wasn’t about me.

It was about you. My fellow citizens, you were the change.

You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage.

You did that.

You’re the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he’d be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance.

You made that possible.

You’re the reason a young immigrant who grew up here and went to school here and pledged allegiance to our flag will no longer be deported from the only country she’s ever called home, why selfless soldiers won’t be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love; why thousands of families have finally been able to say to the loved ones who served us so bravely: “Welcome home, welcome home.”

You did that. You did that.

If you turn away now--if you turn away now, if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible, well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: the lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election, and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should be making for themselves.

Only you can make sure that doesn’t happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.

Those of you who watched the convention live will recall that after the President and his family took their bows, they were joined onstage by the Vice-President and his family - and the song playing at that time was this one by another pair of your Head Trucker's favorites, Brooks and Dunn. This song sums up all that America means to me in these two simple lines:

We all get a chance,
Everybody gets to dance

I hope it means something to you fellas, too.

Reagan, Fallwell, Clinton: Back to the Future?

Found at Joe.My.God. David Mixner discusses Bill Clinton's treacherous turn on DADT, along with clips of Reagan and Falwell mouthing about teh homosekshuls.

Does history repeat itself? You be the judge, guys.