cue ben hur, cracker delegates, and "executing" the law...

another school with another tragic shooting...adding to a saddening string of similar incidents in recent weeks. this one hit close to home - several of my friends attended northern, the campus is about an hour from my childhood home. now come the inevitable head scratches and trying to understand how, in this country, a seemingly healthy, normal young man was driven to take several lives as he ended his own. and ben hur will possibly hold another rally and tell us we can try and pry the automatic rifle out of his "cold, dead hands" and the nimrods that have no understanding of the historical significance of the second amendment will cheer wildly. which raises the question - when the hell are we going to wake up to the simply reality that our love affair with guns (as much else of what the conservative movement has given us) puts us on a level with the supposed "evil-doing" peoples of the world. its time for america to quit trying to have its cake and eat it too - either we pay obscene amounts of money that could be used to better this nation to a professional standing army (a scenario which would horrify the founding generation), or we admit that we have no state militias anymore and the second amendment has become moot (yes, I know, this would take an understanding of colonial and revolutionary america - something that has been lacking from every leader this nation has had since...well, colonial and revolutionary america).

a friend of mine reflected back to watching columbine unfold years ago on the couch, and I remember the moment well - because as a white suburban kid, pointless random violence got personal. she said she thought once it started happening to us crackers america would do something about guns. apparently cracker fear only serves to arm more citizens and lengthen minimum mandatories. I have to believe that our time is coming, and that with it perhaps an intelligent gun control policy will finally have a chance - and then I wonder, if we are deprived of our moment now...will the powers that be regret maintaining an armed populace?

speaking of cracker fear - as we all know the democratic nomination will likely come down to those spectacular delegates (I much prefer spectacular to super...its got a little more fabulousness in it). granted, even I think they are highly unlikely to buck the popular/elected delegate count (although if any party would fuck that up, it would be the post-2000 democratic party), it is amusing that, in the end, the nomination fight between a woman and a black man will be decided by those old stalwarts of politics - wealthy white men. thanks to qualifications for spectacular delegates, the party "leaders" get a big say in who will be the nominee. and as much as we like to pretend we've moved forward (and don't get me wrong - a woman vs. a black man is progress - if he survives), in the end power remains strongly vested in the hands of elite crackers with penises. it does not have to be that way - and perhaps that is part of the draw I feel towards obama's campaign...not because he is a black man, but because the coalition that is building behind him is far more than elite crackers. and now that he has beat hillary to the punch with a populist economic proposal (which hillary is now trying to claim for her own - not sure how anyone could take her seriously when she rails against business...perhaps she will give us an updated iraq war line - "with the information I had at the time, NAFTA sounded like a good call...and my husband personally assured me he would not craft it in a way to benefit only wealthy campaign donors and fuck average americans." - hell, we already basically got the line with welfare reform, which she supported when bill killed a big chunk of the safety net - if she knew throwing poor mothers off of welfare would hurt kids she never would have supported it...just once hillary, admit you were fucking wrong...we've seen what stubborn refusal to admit mistakes does when given the white house, and we don't need another four years of it) expect to see that coalition expand to include a heck of a lot more working class americans. and maybe, just maybe, we can wrestle just a smidgen of power back from those elitist fucks...

the boy king is begging the supremes to hear a case out of the d.c. circuit now that the full circuit decided not to rehear the matter. see, they were upholding their oaths of office as federal judges and faithfully seeing to it that the constitution was followed...by requiring the government give over evidence in its possession relevant to classification of persons as "unlawful enemy combatants." (shudder - I know, how incredibly naive of them, assuming we should actually have to follow some semblance of due process and fundamental fairness in a process which involves the government trying to kill people it has detained...how fuckin unamerican). and with the recent hoopla (or incredibly depressing lack thereof) over torture being applauded by the bushites (including mr. mccain...your pow/mia brethren are spinning in their graves/psych wards) I am reminded that the boy king simply misread his oath of office. see, he saw it his duty to faithfully "execute" the laws of the united states and immediately determined he was sworn before god and mankind to kill the rule of law. and since he is surrounded by fools that got where they were because they were loyal to the royal family - nobody pointed out that there might be another, more appopriate reading of "execute" in that context. and so we have torture, rendering, the death of habeas, and a dismantling of the first, fourth, fifth, sixth, eighth, fourteenth and other amendments. say what you will about the child...but technically, he's done a hell of a job upholding that oath. yes mr. obama - we want change.

and we'll all float on...